Spear: 43 (2930/13781)
Sword: 31 (5772/7123)
“Oh, cool. I hit 282 at some point.” Tanisha nodded. “That sure helps.”
“You’re… are you the real…” He looked down at her chair for a moment. “Of course! You’re Koest! I read your article to my dad! That’s how I got started with the game!”
“Oh, awesome. That’s great.” Tanisha tried to keep her tone as even as possible, but the mention of the article made her want to groan. It was an interview she had done earlier in the year when the game first hit the top of the AR category in the Cyborg store. “I’m glad I was able to help.”
“My dad has vision problems, and when I saw the part where you talked about the game helping people like him, I had to share it!”
Tanisha smirked. She brought up the learning AI systems the game was helping to build whenever the interviewer had tried to get too personal about her disability. Unsurprisingly, Tanisha didn’t like talking about it, and the fact that the article was mostly about what the game could do for the world in the long term spoke ill of the interviewer’s focus on the subject.
He’d tried to ask her out at the end, too.
Obviously, that didn’t happen. Tanisha was totally for dating guys. She was bisexual, and open to dating people of all genders. But his absolute obsession with her wheelchair and the story of how she ended up in it was too much. Not to mention the way he seemed to assume she would be flattered by his offer.
She had to change the subject with this kid.
“Glad to be part of the solution for him,” Tanisha said in a tone that said the subject was over. “But we should get moving towards the ranger station. Your parents are likely worried about you.” She put her phone back in the holder on the arm of her chair and began to push herself onwards.
Most of the trip to the road was spent listening to the kid gush about the game. If he started playing when the article came out, it meant he had only been playing for two months. But he had a million stories to tell. Most of them focused around where he was and wasn’t allowed to go in his neighborhood, though. Tanisha tried to offer what advice she could, but she really couldn’t relate. She was an adult when the game came out, and an outdoorswoman to boot. Her hunting was done in the wilderness, not the suburbs.
It was almost an hour later when they broke through the treeline and onto the gravel road she’d first arrived on. Tanisha took a moment to catch her breath now that they were on flat ground, knowing it would be smooth rolling from here on out. Well, relatively. Gravel wasn’t her favorite, but it was easier than navigating the foothills.
Tanisha was familiar with the area they were in, but she checked the GPS on her phone before turning right and heading down the trail. It wouldn’t do to get the kid more lost if this was the time her brain told her that south was north. Again.
Halfway down the trail, the kid was gasping for breath as hard as she was. He had been out in the wilderness for at least five or six hours, likely without food or water. And he’d spent the last hour talking almost non-stop. It was a wonder he hadn’t yet collapsed in the heat. But he was a trooper, and held it together until they reached the ranger station. Tanisha could see her truck, parked just past the gate that blocked vehicle access up to the mountain. She knew there was a bottle of water behind the front seat, and her throat was practically crying for it. But she had to deal with the kid first.
“Do you know where your campsite is?” she asked the kid as she rolled herself towards the ramp that led up to the door of the ranger station. “The name of the campground?”
“Jones Creek,” he said, though he yawned halfway through. He paused to lean on the railing next to the stairs Tanisha had avoided. “We camped in the middle, away from the water.”
As she approached the door, it opened, and Tanisha smiled up at the ranger who looked at them curiously. “Hey folks. Can I help you?”
“I found a lost kid,” Tanisha said, gesturing to where he sat on the steps behind her. “Found him about three-quarters of a mile up the mountain from here. Someone might be looking for him down at the Jones Creek campground.”
“Come on in,” the ranger said, pushing the door behind her open again. “There’s some chairs in here that’ll be softer to sit on than those stairs.”
The kid groaned but got to his feet, and he climbed the stairs slowly.
“Do you need me to stick around?” Tanisha asked. “I’m actually parked just over there. I’d like to get going. Just wanted to make sure he got back to his parents.”
“Yeah, sorry,” the woman said, smiling. “I need to take down your name for the record.” She held the door open as the exhausted kid made his way inside. “Feel free to take a seat in any of the chairs in the next room.” Her attention returned to Tanisha. “Just a formality. You’re basically checking the kid into our custody, and we can’t do that without a name, even if you aren’t a legal guardian.”
“Sure,” Tanisha said, a little irked that her dry throat would need to wait a few minutes longer. She followed the kid inside. The narrow door was a tight squeeze for her outdoor chair, but she made it inside and followed the ranger to a desk by the door. “As long as it won’t be too long. I’m hoping to get home in time to have a real dinner.”
“It’ll just take a minute.” The ranger’s pained smile told Tanisha this was just as trying for her. “Do you know his name?”
Tanisha looked over to where the kid had found a seat. The back of the ranger station had a small sitting area with plush, padded chairs. He already appeared to have nodded off.
“No, sorry,” she admitted with a guilty smile. “I was more concerned with getting him to safety.” She frowned for a moment. In his rambling about dARkness, he had referred to himself as his character name: EWilliams. “I think his last name might be Williams, though.”
“Alright, I’ll put that down. No use waking him up just yet.” The ranger started scribbling on a green-colored piece of paper. “I’ll get his name from him after I get off the phone with the rangers at Jones Creek. He looks like he could use the rest.” She smiled and scratched at the page for a moment, and Tanisha watched the rough description of both herself and the kid crawl across the page. Notably, she realized there was a lack of mention about her chair. “And your name is?”
“Tanisha. Tanisha Richards.”
“Alright. Anything else to report about him? Any animal encounters, injuries, anything?”
“Nothing that he mentioned.”
“Great. I’ll start making my calls, and you’re free to leave.” The woman offered Tanisha a smile. “I’m sure his parents will appreciate your help.”
“No problem. And thanks for taking him off my hands,” Tanisha said, returning the smile. She turned and started to roll back towards the door as the ranger finished filling out the green form. When Tanisha noticed the board next to the door, however, she paused. The corkboard was marked as “missing hikers” and every inch of it was covered with paper. Each sheet contained a black-and-white picture, a name, and some smaller-print information about where and when they went missing. “Is this normal?” Tanisha asked. There were more than twenty notices from all over the state.
“What’s that?” The ranger had the phone against her shoulder.
“Missing hikers?” Tanisha pointed to the board.
“Well, some is always normal,” the ranger said. “People leave bonfire parties early and their drunk friends overreact, or they get left behind on hikes and find their own way home. Because no one ever thinks to call us when the friend turns up safe and sound, those get left up all season.”
“Should you have a bigger board, then?”
The ranger chuckled. “Maybe. We’ve gotten more notices this year than normal. A lot of inexperienced hikers have been coming out because of some new phone game. They think they’re doing people a favor by making a game that encourages you to go for a real hike, but it just creates more headache for us when groups get separated.
Nobody brings enough water. It’s just—” She paused and held up a finger as she brought the phone back up to her ear. “Yes, this is Frankie up at Station 228, by Lester Creek. I’ve got a kid up here that says his parents are down with you folks.”
Tanisha gestured at the door, and the ranger nodded, shooing her away.
Chapter 4
The drive home took about two hours—nearly an hour longer than it should have—thanks to traffic she hit on the way crossing through Portland. Tanisha was an old hand at navigating the haphazard and almost unintuitive arrangement of freeways and bridges around the city, but not everyone else on the road was. At one point—driven by the frustration of people refusing to zipper merge like decent human beings—she found herself remarking aloud that she had made better time along the gravel roads in the woods than she was on the four-lane highway.
And it made no sense.
If only everyone were smarter.
Tanisha’s home was to the east of Portland, on the other side of the large city from her hunting spot. When researching alternative living situations, she had found a tiny-house community in Eagle Creek, and so it became her destination when she fled Seattle. Her entire house was built from scratch, and to her own specifications. It was paradise, or a close approximation thereof, after the absolute nightmare of the big city.
Sitting in Portland traffic was so unbearable that Tanisha briefly entertained the idea of stopping somewhere for dinner. There was a Thai place she was a huge fan of not too far from where she was stuck, but she felt gross and smelly. She needed a shower before she could eat, and then after she would just wanted to relax. Even if she wasn’t self-conscious about the cloud of B.O. filling the cab of her truck, she would have to navigate getting in and out of the truck and then also drive home, instead of just climbing into bed.
Her arms just felt like they wouldn’t be able to take it.
So instead she crawled ahead in the inefficient gas guzzler that was her truck, and listened to Portland’s only classic rock station to keep her mind from diving into rage. It wasn’t easy, especially when she got to the point where traffic cleared up and she could see there was no accident or even lane closure to account for the slowdown. But she made it. Somehow.
It was nearly sunset when she parked her truck, and while she was irked about how long it took her to get home, she was actually pretty happy it was so late. If the sun were still out, a neighbor might catch sight of her and ask for her help with the community garden.
Tanisha liked helping—she loved the sense of pride and accomplishment evoked by coaxing food out of the dirt—but right now she was too tired to suppress her introverted nature. She wouldn’t be able to put on her ‘people’ face. And any stupid comment or question, especially one that dwelt on her heritage as a Native American, would likely send her over the edge. She’d managed, so far, to help out without snapping at anyone about their misguided expectations of her when it came to the ‘natural world’ and there were only so many times she could smile before discreetly searching the internet to answer their inquiries.
It was likely best that she wasn’t able to tempt the strength of her self control right now.
Besides, she wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour for a change. She’d need to wake up early to make it out to Three Forks in the morning to poke around for signs of bear there as well. Just because she was confident about Tillamook didn’t mean she couldn’t have a backup plan.
The thick wheels of her chair rumbled deeply as she made her way up the ramp she’d built to her front door. Fumbling the door open while wrestling her chair over the threshold was always blessedly the final struggle of her day.
On the outside, her home was plain and unassuming, and seemed so much like the other tiny homes in the little community. But she had designed and built the tiny house herself, and so every inch of it was for her, and her alone. Tanisha had spent her adult life in a world built for people with working legs, with minimal minor concessions made for people like her. By building her house for herself, she was able to make exactly as many “accessibility” modifications for fully-abled folks as there had been for her in her so-called “handicap accessible” apartment in Seattle.
Which was to say, very, very few.
Seated in her chair, the ceiling of the first floor was barely two-feet above her head. It wasn’t technically up to code—Oregon declared a space non-habitable if the ceiling clearance was less than five feet—but she got around that by calling it all “utility room” with a certain sense of satisfied sadism. There weren’t many able-bodied people who would fail to sympathize with the feeling of a building that seemed to be built with a direct hostility against them after a visit to Tanisha’s home.
With a groan of joy usually reserved for removing her underwire bra after a long day, Tanisha shifted from her “outdoors” chair into the smaller, lighter one that waited just inside the front door. The whole house was designed with the dimensions of this chair in mind, and, as soon as she was in it, she rolled through the house easily. Her wheels didn’t thump or bump over uneven surfaces, or wallow in the thick carpet that lined the living areas.
She negotiated her way between the kitchen counter and dining table without striking either—both surfaces were low and had enough overhang to accommodate the chair beneath her—to make her way back to the bathroom. A standard tiny house usually had a very small bathroom area with a standing shower only, but Tanisha required a tub with an outward opening door. Hers was outfitted with jets much like a hot tub as well. It was a luxury, sure, but it was worth every penny. Especially after a day like today.
Thirty minutes of nearly-scalding hot water and rich lavender soap later, Tanisha felt a thousand times better. She even hummed to herself as she dried off before snuggling into her cozy robe. By the time she was wheeling herself back out into the kitchen to start cooking, she was even singing.
Despite her good mood, Tanisha almost lamented being so accustomed to her setup here. Everything was in easy reach, and every countertop had space beneath it for her chair and her legs. There was no challenge. She didn’t bump her wheels into things, or bang her knees on the corners as she moved between stovetop and sink. The cabinet space was all just a little bit above her, and where it wasn’t in reach from a seated position, there were reinforced bars for her to grip so she could climb out of the chair.
It was all too convenient, and after so many years of bitterly facing a world not meant for her, it almost felt like a contrivance. As if she had just given up on trying.
When she finally plated her meal and rolled over to the table to eat, she shook the laments away. She would only regret the time she had spent here if she had to leave and go back. If she had to once again live in a place built by someone who was paid to do the bare legal minimum for her comfort. And if her time here had taught her anything, it was that such a return would be unlikely.
Tanisha played with her phone while she picked her way through the simple dinner—a half a bag of pasta shells, some wilted spinach, and an improvised butter and garlic sauce—she’d cooked. The food itself wasn’t important, as it was only serving to quell her hunger pains. She hadn’t even taken the time to give her thanks to the Creator, which she realized moments after the first bits of food had passed her lips.
“Oops,” she said, around a mouthful of pasta. Her parents would be so disappointed.
To distract her guilt, Tanisha opened Eris, the chat program of choice for the modern gamer, and navigated her way to the “Unofficial dARkness: Online” channel. She posted her earlier screenshot of the legendary antler drop and was almost immediately assaulted with a few congratulation messages in response. They were the usual crowd, whom she suspected had bots running to always congratulate everyone for everything. She did get a few direct messages from people on her friend’s list, asking her how she got it outside of the holiday event. Tanisha didn’t really have an answer for them besides luck, but she kept her responses encouraging anyway. W
hen a few people were obviously looking for more involved conversations, Tanisha navigated her way out of them with the skill and ease of an introvert. It helped that she was too exhausted to feel bad.
She polished off the last of her dinner as she loaded up dARkness to queue up the first steps of crafting so she could finish up her Yoichi Bow as soon as possible. The refined Bloodthread would be the worst part, now that she had the antler in hand. It would eat up two of her crafting bench slots for the next twenty-four hours. Gross. But, soonest begun, soonest done.
Once that was finished, she deposited her dishes in the sink (leaving them for a future version of herself to deal with) and navigated her chair to the ladder just outside the kitchen. She climbed up to her loft and clambered into the bed that was set into the floor, and then set her phone on the one clear space of her headboard and plugged it in to charge. Before she could collapse against the mattress, Tanisha rolled over and grabbed her nightshirt—a loose cotton t-shirt featuring an anime robot and the logo for Roll for Greed, a pop-culture crate subscription company—and exchanged it for her robe. She’d return it to the bathroom in the morning.
Tanisha settled back into bed and grabbed the book she’d been reading the past few nights from its place on her headboard. With a stretch and a yawn she settled into it, diving into the pages like a treasure hunter looking for some mystical loot.
Her routine had been to read a chapter a night, but as she neared the end of the book, such a thing was becoming impossible. She was diving past her self-imposed rule into the second chapter for the night—Chapter 40—when her phone chirped. Immediately she was irked that she’d forgotten to put it on Do Not Disturb, but she picked it up to check the notification anyway. And also to activate DND mode.
The icon on her lock screen was one for dARkness, and Tanisha pulled down on the notification bar to see what it had to say that was so important as to interrupt a dramatic showdown with a dragon.
Darkness Named Page 3
