A Spaceman

Chapter 20--Leaving on a spaceship

"Anybody want to go home?" I ask, looking at my tablet which I've had charging inside the Interloper which sadly shall remain here in the jungle.

"I'm happy camping," Lizzie says.

"You're happy me running out of alcohol—"

(that too)

Devil.

"Thorn? It's going to be 40 overnight, a bit chilly," I say.

"Yes, let's head for town," he agrees, "If we stay here too long the others might find us."

"Yeah, and there have been Isylgyns spotted in these woods," I say, to Lizzie, "We should probably head for some sort of road."

"Okay," she says, "What about the bible freaks?"

"You feel kinda responsible for them?" I guess.

(yeah)

"You'll get over it," I say.

(really?)

"They should not have run off I would still be feeding and takin' care of them if they were here but they are not," I point out.

"Yes, same with mine, they'll be fine, those three or four, I don't remember, they like wandering about talking to one another, they'll be just fine," Thorn assures us.

"All right, road should be about an hour that way," I say, consulting the maps on my tablet.

"If---if the road is so easy to find won't----other people find it?" Thorn asks, nervously, holding his hip flask protectively.

"No, 'cause the Russian Space Command base is equally easy to find and the smart people will want to go and prove they can talk Russian to each other and stare at it and I happen to know for a fact that Titus Card has always wanted to fly a Russian ship five will get you ten that's like 90% of the reason you wound up crashing in New Russia," I guarantee.

"What---you know that? Why didn't you tell me that sooner then I'd have known we'd be here?" he asks.

"He talks about a lot, like, a lot, while he's flying, so it's kinda hard to pick what might be important to relate to when I was trying to forget about it," I explain, "And like, he didn't entirely remember telling me either, like he was just talking away because he was actually happy and I would try to ignore it because it was so much like what he would be like while having sex it was disturbing me."

"People talk through sex?" Lizzie asks. I forgot she was listening damn I'm such a bad parent.

"Yeah, no, just---just him, I mean you might like say the odd thing, but not have like full running conversations and I feel like that's what he does because flying is nearly equivalent to sex with him we're going to stop talking about this now," I say, wincing.

(can we talk about it later?)

"If I'm really drunk yeah," shit why did she have to die this girl needs a mom and I'm not even a good dad?

Lizzie at that or however much of that she can get out of my head, hugs me very tightly.

(love you forever)

love you forever

"That's very sweet, about being very drunk, let's do that, where those people can't find us," Thorn says.

"Yeah when I'm super drunk remind me to tell you about all the things those people have done to Thorn to drive him to drink," I say, squeezing Lizzie.

"He's told me about painted flags," Lizzie says, finally releasing me.

"Oh that was just the beginning," Thorn says.