Return to the Old Homestead

> *After the events of To Defy Doom, Peter and Emily Silverstine, along with Mrs. Richardson, are left alone at the old homestead.*
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Peter felt much better today. Most of his wounds had finally scabbed over, finally started to heal. He still hurt all over, but it was the dull, aching feeling of his body beginning to work itself out, instead of the sharp outcries of fresh wounds. At least, as long as he didn't move and break the new scabs open again. He'd wanted to sit outside and see the sun come up today. He reminded himself that he needed a quick recovery, and one of the best ways to do that was to remain positive. What better way to do that than enjoy the sunrise?

A quick gust of wind threatened to steal away a blanket.

Hmm. Perhaps a hot cup of tea would have made it better.

Instinctively, he began to get up, before a broken rib spasmed from the forward movement. Leaning back with a hiss, he decided a hot cup of tea wasn't worth it, and wrapped his blanket more tightly around himself.

The Sun was indeed coming up, off to the East. It was very quiet. Peter wondered why there was not more birdsong. Somewhere in the yard, metal hinges squeaked rhythmically in the gentle breeze.

The Porch door opened, and his sister, Emily, came out with two steaming cups of tea. She handed one to him. "What are you doing out here? Did Sandhya banish you out here?"

"Who? Who is 'Sandhya'?"

Emily smiled apologetically. "Oh, sorry. I meant Mrs. Richardson."

Peter smiled back, sipping the hot tea gratefully. "No. I got myself out here early this morning."

It was rather pathetic, he thought, but he was proud that he'd walked out all by himself.

Emily looked out to the east. "You watching the sunrise?"

Peter nodded, turning to look back that way. "It's not as beautiful as the sunsets here, since the horizon's not as flat eastward as it is westward.

Emily nodded. "The best sunrise I've ever seen was on the edge of the Fire Desert, near an old town called Leer. They call it the Last Western Town."

Peter looked back at his sister. She looked so different. Her skin was dyed so dark, and underneath a borrowed shawl, she wore a sari. And even though her cheekbones were clearly not easterner in structure, the smile she wore now seemed to be tailored to hide that fact. Without his childhood memories of his sister, he would have thought such a face was natural, and not practiced to the point where it was not subconsciously automatic.

"You've traveled the Fire Desert?" Peter asked.

Emily nodded. "Yes. All the way to the Eastern Sea, and back."

Peter tried to wrap his head around such a distance. "You and Mother?"

"And Mrs. Richardson. And Beth." Emily's smile faltered.

Peter saw, but instead of letting silence grip the two of them, he held an arm out to her. "Tell me about her. About your adventures."

Emily nodded. "Ok," she said, and dragged another chair over. She sat down, and began to tell him about how she and Mother had met the Richardsons at Leer. How their western complexions had garnered the attention of some foolish drunk men. How things had escalated quickly into a street brawl, and how the two Silverstine women had leapt in and saved the Richardsons, taking them to safety and eventually forming the 'JC Merchants', the all-women Caravan of the East.

As the sun came up, Mrs. Richardson came out and listened to Emily tell the tale, which she continued without interruption by either of her listeners.

Peter was amazed by the feats his mother and sister had accomplished, never once doubting the fantastic tale his sister told. They had fought bandits, discovered long-lost treasure, freed slaves, survived sandstorms,  and much more during their travels making 'JC Merchants' legendary in the East.

Near the Ten o'clock hour, Emily was beginning to tire of her storytelling. It occurred to all of them that no one had seen to breakfast, unless the tea could be called such. Rather hungry, they all decided to head inside and make an early lunch of some sort.

Both the women sought to help Peter up, but he waved them off, not unkindly.

"I want to give it a try at least."

Emily clearly thought it was a bad idea. "You picked the worst chair to 'try' it in. A rocking chair might be easy to get into, but out?"

Her disbelief in his abilities fueled his desire to prove her wrong, naturally. Who ever said sibling rivalries were all bad?

His ribs gave him some grief, but he managed to stand up straight and tall. "There! See?" He said, grinning triumphantly.

"Yes, I see you grinding your teeth. Come on, before you drop to the floor and really hurt yourself."

He let his challenging, toothy grin fall apart into the wince that it really was as Emily came up on his right side and helped him walk.

As he passed Mrs. Richardson, who held the door open for him, he looked past her, to the Northwest. Flat farmland and plains for miles with the big blue sky, clear of any clo-

"Hey. Look!" He pointed.

The two women followed his finger, and they saw it too.

A large brown dust cloud floated in the air, nearly dissipated. Wherever it made contact with the ground was obscured by the Barn across the yard.

"Do you think-" Peter began, but Emily didn't need to think. She handed her brother to Mrs. Richardson and dashed down the porch steps, running to the corner of the barn.

"Emma!" Peter yelled, but Mrs. Richardson put a heavy, comforting, hand on his shoulder so that he wouldn't stagger after her.

"Your sister is smart, she won't reveal herself. But you should not yell."

So he just stood there, feeling like a useless idiot as he watched his sister slide up against the barn towards the corner. There were some old lumpy hay bales at the corner, which she stood next to before bobbing her head around the corner and back with one fluid motion, like a bird. She waited a few seconds, then did it once more, a tad slower. She slid down the wall below the hay bales and poked a small hole between them and the barn's wall. In less than a minute, she backed up from the corner and ran back towards the house.

"We have to hide, it's Paradox Rogues," she said, as if commenting on future rainstorms. She shooed them inside. "Where's a good place to hide?"

Peter tried to follow his sister's calm example, but internally he was... Well, angry, and a little scared. Both because of his feeling hopelessly useless. The only thing that was really working fine was his mind. He would focus on using that. He stared at the ground, while Mrs. Richardson began 'disorganizing' to make things look more like how it had been when they had arrived. More, 'unlived in.' Emily left Peter standing next to a chair in the main room, and checked the stoves for residual embers.

"That reminds me!" Emily's voice came from the kitchen. "The rogues have thermal vision, which means they can see body heat. So things like hiding in closets or underneath furniture are not going to work."

Peter noted that. That meant they couldn't hide anywhere that they would even look. They had to be above or below. . .

They could hide on the roof! No. It was too risky now. If Emily had seen them in the distance, then they clearly might see them climbing up on to the roof. Besides, they would need to find a ladder, and climb up, and then how would they get rid of the obvious ladder? Besides, who knew if the old roof would hold all of them?

Mrs. Richardson and Emily were still running around doing various things to hide that anyone had ever lived here recently. Their footsteps pattered and thumped on the floorboards. Every time they passed by Peter in the living room, the boards would creak.

Above or below...

The floorboards. They could go into the crawlspace beneath the house!

"The crawlspace!" Peter cried.

Emily came out of the kitchen with a large knife. "What?"

Peter looked up. "If we can't be on the same level as them because of their... what was i-"

"Thermal Vision."

"Yes. Thermal vision. If they can look through most anything and see our heat, then why don't we go below them? They might be so busy looking in all of the closets and such that they won't look straight down." He pointed at the floor.

Emily considered it for a moment, her features tense as she thought of everything that could go wrong. But ultimately, this was pretty much a worst-case scenario, and she didn't have any better ideas.

Mrs. Richardson appeared behind her, also from the kitchen. "I have an idea to help with the body temperature, but you won't like it."

"Try me." "Let's hear it" said Peter and Emily, respectively.

Mrs. Richardson raised a wooden bucket, and dumped the water it contained on Emily's head, who squealed like a little girl.

Peter chuckled.

Mrs. Richardson gave a rare smile, revealing many more wrinkles than there should be for a woman her age.  "If we're all soaked, and shivering, our body temperature might not pick up so well if they look down."

"Brrh!" Emily shook herself, her wet hair clumping in thick strands. "I like it. Let's do it."

Peter stepped out towards the porch. "We should break open the crawlspace below the porch, so it's not so noticeable," he suggested.

"Agreed. Mrs. Richardson, is there anything else we need to do in here?"

Mrs. Richardson suddenly looked at the watery mess she'd made. "Hmm. No, just this." She quickly found a sponge and began wiping it up. "I should have thought before I acted, hmm?"

Emily smiled. "Happens to the best of us!" She headed outside with Peter.

Peter had already gone down the steps, wincing with each one. Now, holding onto one of the porches pillars, he was surveying the wood lattice below the deck, considering which existing small hole he wanted to enlarge for an entire person to fit through.

Emily passed right past him, heading to the well in the middle of the courtyard, and drew water as fast as she could. The sound of engines was a distant rumble. They would be here in minutes. She thanked the Most High that the barn had been built where it was. Then she remembered the Paradox Rogue's special vision capabilities, and began drawing water even faster.

Meanwhile, Peter had decided that the right corner of the porch would make the most sense to break off. He looked around for something to smash it with, and saw a rusty metal rake. He went over and gingerly tried to bend down and reach it, but stopped once he realized it would only hurt himself.

Swallowing his pride, he called for Emily, who came over with the well-water.

"You're going to dump that on me ar-"

She couldn't quite get it over his head, but she did throw the vast volume of water directly in his face.

"Lovely. Refreshing."

"You're welcome!"

"Now how about taking this rake and bashing the corner in over there?"

Emily grinned even wider. "Then take the bucket."

Peter did so, and poured what remained on his head as Emily took the rake up.

"If you can break it off in large chunks, maybe we can even put it back up once we're-"

She charged the porch like she was jousting, and it broke like twigs, utterly shattering the entire corner.

"What were you saying?" Emily asked, already skipping back to Peter, and taking the bucket from him to draw more water.

"I said, 'Hurry up, we gotta break in', and then 'good job'".

Emily raised an sarcastic eyebrow, but went back to drawing more water.  "Check with Sand- heh, I did it again- Mrs. Richardson. She might be able to use you to get water from the rain-barrel inside.

Peter scrambled back inside. Going up the porch steps was much harder, but he grit his teeth and accepted the pain.  Acknowledged, let it pass.  Mrs. Richardson was about to pick up two buckets full of water and head outside, but when she saw Peter, she asked him to fill up the large soup pot with water as well. He did so, and lied about it being too heavy for him. He followed her out and barely made it down the stairs before spilling it all over himself. Thankfully, the ground out here was still wet from the sleet the night before last, so the extra water was not noticeable.

What was noticeable were the footprints they were making. Everywhere.

Apparently, Emily saw it too.

On one hand, it was a horrible jumbled mess. After all, nearly 10 people plus horses had been here in the past 48 hours. This courtyard would be any trackers utter nightmare...

On the other. There was no way to get rid of this irrefutable proof that nearly a dozen people had been here.

Peter only hoped that it also looked like they all left.

Mere moments later, as the rumble and thump of the approaching vehicle became louder and clearer, the threesome dumped a third round of icy cold well water on each other and scrambled under the porch and into the crawlspace underneath the house.

Nameless things crawled over them, and Peter writhed in silent agony as much as army-crawled, having dove down first. His face was covered in spider webs, and his fingers sank into unlit decay. Nevertheless, he made room for the others to follow. They all came together somehwere underneath the main room when they heard the car pass the house on the west side, skid, and crash into the south fence.

Muffled static sounds and some light radio chatter reached the ears of Peter. The three fugitives didn't make a sound, but they all shivered with the cold... and fear.

Four doors slammed, and they heard footsteps. A minute later, those footsteps came into the house.

Even though Peter was shivering with the cold, he found he was sweating.

*"Dear Lord, please spare us from these evil men."* He fervently prayed. *"Please don't let them take my sister or Mrs. Richardson back to that forsaken place."*

The thing that chilled him most was that if they found him, there would be nothing he could do to stop them. Surely, he would die before giving them up, but they would still be captured. How the tables had turned.

*"Lord, why is it that you let me live, so broken as I am?"*

Peter wasn't sure, but... Logically speaking, if he wasn't dead, then he guessed that God still had something for him to do here among the living... Right? He wasn't sure what that could possibly be...

Then he remembered Peragrine's last words to him.

*"Peter, I want to let you know I'm going to do everything I can to get your family back together. But for now, you need to focus on getting better so you can be there for the reunion, wherever it might be held, k?"*

*Peter remembered staring him down, and then replying:  "I'm glad Stirling was lucky enough to have someone like you at his back. God be with you, Peragrine. Come back safe."*

*Peragrine had grinned back. "Thanks, Peter."*

Well, he wasn't sure God just wanted him around for the family reunion, but that was reason enough to keep living. If Emily, and Mother, and Stirling, and Austin were all going to stick it out, so would he.

Emily tugged on Peter's sleeve. So quiet, he wouldn't have heard her if she'd gotten his attention, she whispered. "The vehicle."

Peter had the same idea. "Steal."

She nodded in the half-light.

Peter tugged on Mrs. Richardson's sleeve, and together they crawled to the far wall, around various rotting support posts. Emily pointed to an area with more points of light leaking out of it. Then she withdrew a large kitchen knife, and began prying the boards away as quietly as she could.

Peter briefly felt like a coward for running from a fight. Then he realized that it wasn't cowardice to run from a fight you couldn't win. It was smart. Better to get the girls to safety.

Emily had hacked a small hole now, and slipped her petite frame through. Turning around she used her full range of motion to quickly hack it larger. Peter readied himself for one more frantic push on his mending body, and tumbled out of the hole.

A low rumbling sound came from the thing that his sister had called a 'vehicle'. He gripped one of the strange, non-wooden wheels and pulled himself up with help from his sister.

Behind them, Mrs. Richardson peered out from the hole. "Ready?"

Emily looked into the vehicle, seemed to confirm something, and then nodded to Mrs. Richardson. "They left the key in there, thank our lucky stars."

Peter silently thanked the Lord for His Divine Omnipotence that they hadn't left a guard either.

Mrs. Richardson took a minute longer to get out, as the two younger ones scrambled into the jeep.

"Do you know how to move this thing?" Peter asked Emily in wonder. It looked like a cart with no horses to him. Basically useless.

"It can't be more different than steering a ship!" she said optimistically.

Emily's fiddling with the steering wheel and pedals told him a different story.

Suddenly, the sound of a window breaking alerted them to a Paradox Shinobi leaning out of the bedroom window. He threw a blade that had a length of glowing purple chain attached to it, and it stuck into the hood of the car.

"Time to go!" Emily yelled, as Peter braced himself, and Mrs. Richardson summersaulted into the backseat with a "Whoop!"

Emily pulled a lever in the center of the console between her and Peter, to a letter 'R' symbol, and then stepped on one of the pedals at her feet. In response, the horseless carriage *rocketed* backwards, throwing the unprepared Peter against the windshield.

"Gahk!" Peter cried out

"Sorry!" Emily said,

"Whup!" Mrs. Richardson yelled, as she fought to sit upright in the backseat.

The Shinobi's eyes widened, and a moment later, he was pulled out of the window, screaming, attached to the 'vehicle' by his chain and blade.

Emily held the steering wheel with one arm and turned herself around with the other, still accelerating backwards and bumping and jostling over the uneven terrain of the southern farm field.

Mrs. Richardson finally righted herself and her Sari. "You will want to turn around at some point, dear."

"Once this Shinobi lets go."

Peter, who'd recovered himself from the windshield, pointed through it. "He's stopped screaming, and he's climbing it."

Emily glanced back for just a moment. Yes, the Shinobi wasn't screaming and panicking anymore. He was dragging himself closer and closer to the Jeep. Persistent bugger, he was probably part of some elite force or something.

Peter looked at the blade lodged in the hood. "We just need to remove his anchor!" he said.

Mrs. Richardson gripped both of the front seats as she shakily stood up. "Very well."

"Sandhya, I'll do the acrobatics if you want to drive," Emily said, flashing an apologetic smile to Mrs. Richardson.

Mrs. Richardson nodded once, then a large bump aided her transference to the front seat, partly on top of Emily, and partly on top of the middle console.

Quickly, so as to not lose speed, Emily wriggled out of the driver's seat, and gripped the door and windshield, as Mrs. Richardson slipped her feet down and mashed the pedal. Then she mimicked Emily's backwards driving. "I will try to keep it even, but hurry!"

"Hurry!" Peter urged, noting the Shinobi's increased speed. He knew what they were trying to do.

Emily swung out onto the Jeep's hood, maintaining her grip on the edge of the windshield, and kicked the flat of the blade with all her might.

It barely budged.

Bracing herself against the windshield, she pushed it again. The metal of the hood creaked as the blade began to turn.

But just then, the Shinobi's hand landed on the hood, and he pulled himself up, chuckling with nervous energy and exertion.

"Look out!" Peter called out pointlessly.

Emily drew the large kitchen knife from the folds of her sari and set it forward in challenge.

Mrs. Richardson slammed on the brakes.

And everyone was introduced to the concept of inertia and momentum. For some, this was more lethal than others.

Peter hit the back of his seat, and was flipped into the backseat, where he stayed for a bit, groaning softly.

Mrs. Richardson hit the back of the driver's seat, and had little more than a bruise and a grunt escape her.

As for Emily and the Rogue Shinobi, however. The Shinobi landed on Emily's knife, and helped to prevent the lighter woman from sliding up the sloped windshield and into the air.

As the dust settled, and everyone got their breath back, Emily tossed the dead shinobi off of her. She turned to Mrs. Richardson.

"How'd you know that would work?"

Mrs. Richardson shrugged. "He had already boarded, so there was no point in continuing the speed."

Peter groaned.

Emily glanced back between Peter and Mrs. Richardson. Then the nervous, relieved laughter began.

Reorienting himself, Peter saw Emily and Mrs. Richardson switching seats. Emily chuckling, and Mrs. Richardson smiling.

"Did we get him?"

Mrs. Richardson nodded as she slipped into the shotgun seat.

"Where to now?" Peter asked.

"Anywhere but here," Emily said. "Hopefully somewhere where we can get you a doctor, but for right now... anywhere but here."

Emily shifted the car into 'D' for Drive. Then she turned the car towards late morning sun. East.

They drove off.

Bumping pleasantly, Peter gripped the back of the shotgun seat, and felt the wind in his wet hair, numbing the continual squeals of agony his wounds gave him with every jolt.

Yes. He was broken. But he would mend.

The whole world was broken. But it would mend.

He'd be there to see it.

> **>>>Next Suggested Reading>>> To Find Friends**
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