Disruption

For as languid as the Tuchuk can stretch out at the fires, when they are on the move they can be as quick as lightning. It took a double step to try and catch up with that long legged Ubar. Deciding to cut him off at the pass, I opted for a short cut between the wagons. Nice little ambush it would have been too. Instead I ran full speed into a wall. THUD. A tall, wide, thick wall with tree trunks planted at its base. Definitely rang my bell and sprawled me back on my bottom wondering who and why someone would erect a behemoth barrier in the middle of the harigga. It took a full ehn or two to realize I'd run slap into a Master, a really big one ... standing there minding his own business, or so it seemed. Apologies were not sufficient for having disrupted whatever thoughts he had been so deep in. He had to know where such a pale little wisp was going in such an all fired hurry.

You guessed it, he got one of those run on long winded sentences ... "Well see, there is a Master that used to be my Master and he had called my name looking for me as he was walking into the darkness and I was hurrying to try and catch up with him to ..."

"To what?" I may not have been able to see the scarred cheeks but his amusement dripped from that resonating bass voice. He was making no move to move and I could not exactly back up and go around. "Tooooooo seee what he wanted of me?" Was that a safe enough answer? A girl cannot presume, you know, even if he had whispered in my ear earlier in the eve a vague description of what he wanted.

Nope. That was not going to cut it. "What do you think he wanted of you?" Well it wasn't to be sung to sleep. That was a direct quote mind you. The laughter rolled through the ends of the wagons, sort of reverberating off the sides and echoing as it escaped down the lanes. I could only imagine at this point that my prey was doing much the same. It only took one hand to pick me up so that my feet dangled horts above the ground and a massive paw swatted at the dust on my chatka. Owwwwww. After settling me back on my feet, he sent me off with a hand print on my tush. "Then Harta girl."

I wanted to tell him I was in the process of doing just that when he became a barricade but enough time had passed that the paga the other Master had been drinking would be reaching a crescendo. Time was wasting. I only spun around once to look back and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Screeching to a halt, I stared at the tangles of rich red hair then ... at the tow headed waif I had missed seeing earlier, standing next to him. She was a fragment or maybe a figment straight out of my dreams. I reached up to rub my eyes and when I looked again ... they ... were gone. But by then so was the man I had been trailing.

If the skies thought putting up roadblocks ... even ones as big as a wall would keep me from him, I was still determined to prove them wrong. I was simply going to have to be more stubborn than ... well more stubborn than a Tuchuk.