2

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You pull aside the yellowed sheet. The fabric is paper thin with age, and tears slightly around one of the nails that keeps it in place. The mattress sits above a larger living space—a wagon fit for a small family. Cedar rafters curve across the ceiling, grasping tightly to short sidewalls of the floor. The ceiling is lined with a patterned chenille stretched over the framing. Nailed clumsily to edges, and creasing uncomfortably at every corner, tears and worn spots revealed the canvas hidden underneath.


In the far left corner a small wooden crate clatters with sheets of metal scrap and wire below an angled cupboard. In the far right, a small wrought iron furnace rests comfortably, an vent stretching from its top through the ceiling of the wagon, surrounded by a shelf hiding all manner of tin goods. Between them, an ornately painted door stands raised almost a foot above the floor, closed to the unknown.

Padded seats line either side of the room, suggesting an area for storage beneath. A chest of drawers separates splits the seat to the left, a long wool coat, a simple shirt and pair of pants neatly folded on top of it. On the floor below rests a pair of boots, worn but shined like new, and a small covered pot.

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(images from Journey Folki)

1

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You look through the cold wire mesh to the gray night outside. The moonlight does little to help you see, as it fights to push through the thick fog. There seems to be some sort of movement, the yellow-orange glow of dirty lamplight shifts somewhere out of sight, casting dim shadows across the ground. From the shape of the shadows, you would guess you're in some sort of wagon, high above the wet, uneven ground.


The shutters outside the window rattle a little in the wind. You hear footfalls across the ground as the voices grow louder. You struggle to hear, finding the cricket songs almost unbearable as they muffle the words of the people outside. You're almost certain it is only a matter of time before one of them enters the wagon.

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(Creative Commons image by Vincepal)

0

You awake, eyes nearly glued together with the dry crust of sleep. Rubbing your eyelids helps to clear the rheumy ground, but makes you suddenly aware of the throbbing pain in your head.

The room shakes, and you realize it's not your own. As the movement calms to a gentle rocking, a tinny chiming can be heard in the room beyond. Your hands slide across the soft, worn fabric of an old quilt—a sharp contrast to the hay filled mattress below you. The ceiling is only a few feet above your head, covered by a yellowed sheet with mold-like floral pattern you can barely make out in the moonlight. The sheet falls to one side of the mattress, hiding the rest of the room like a thin veil. On the other side of the mattress, a window is carved from the thin, wooden wall, covered only by an uneven wire mesh.

The cool breeze of night flows through the window, bringing with it the fresh scent of rain. The sound of wagon wheels crawling across the damp ground almost masks the crickets singing in the distance. There are voices outside, low and whispered, speaking in an unfamiliar tongue. Unfamiliar, but somehow comforting.

You turn your head slightly, and the scent of the room becomes apparent: stale, like dirt and neglected old books—a library in a desert. But, there was something else. Something almost unnoticeable. Something just below the surface. The malodorous air of salt and fetid meat. For a moment you feel a sickness burning at the back of your throat, but your attention is quickly taken from the moment as the room lurches forward, and shakes softly to a stop.

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