On Your Side [Randy/Rum Tum]

R U M  T U M

For a good while I’d stayed in the settlement. I’d been away from Freya for so long, and Fenrir had gotten so big, I’d lost the urge to run off on another mission. We finally got to spend time around the long wooden table one of the neighbors had made while I was away. And Fenrir told me about all that he was learning from his tutor. How to count and how to read, about the stars, and all sorts of things a boy of ten should’ve already known.

But months could pass and I’d still feel the need to go out again. I’d made a promise to bring all those who’d wanted to join our colony to freedom, and when another note made its way to us I’d set off toward the districts again, packing up my bag and saying this trip would be shorter than the last. I’d spent the whole evening before I’d left holding Freya and telling her how when I stared up at the moon, I’d be thinking of her.

It’d been a message from district six this time. The sort of place that was always gray, and full of smart folk that had at least a hair of common sense. A woman there was thinking of leaving with her brother to come to us.

About a week in, I was making good tracks to the district when I’d come across them. I’d been setting up a shelter that afternoon and getting water to boil from the river when I could hear someone in the distance. We were too far from the capitol for me to be too worried about trackers, but it didn’t mean I let my guard down.

“Hey! Who’s out there? Friend?” I gathered my walking stick. “Or foe?”