Traveler trilogy Book 2, updates every Friday!
Five years after killing Levi Cornwall, Arthur Morgan is happy. He has a wife who loves him, an honest job he enjoys, and two beautiful children named Sadie and Hiram. All of it is turned on its head, h...
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Francis sat next to Mac's bed. The man lay breathing quietly on the bed in the corner, but Francis knew he wasn't out of the woods yet. Mac's body still burned with fever, and it worried him. It seemed that the combination of honey packing the wounds and administering penicillin was working to prevent blood poisoning for now, but it might not work forever. And if it didn't, Mac was done without a modern hospital.
Francis had always hated losing patients.
In spite of all the stress he was under, he was also bored. Being cooped up in this cabin was damn near torture for a man that thrived on experiences, and whose main hobby was observing the past. So, to pass the time, Francis meditated on the future.
He was obviously clairvoyant, given his terrifying vision of the future the day of the brawl in Smithfield's Saloon. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to replicate such a vision without having Jackson clobber him over the head with the butt of his rifle. Jackson would if Francis asked, but one goose egg was enough to last Francis a lifetime.
And so he meditated. Given his humanity, it was no surprise he would have to work twice as hard as the Celestials (the name he'd given the species of godlike creature his father and aunt belonged to) if he wanted to use his abilities. It seemed easy for them, but for himself it would take work. He had nothing else to do at the moment besides watching Mac sleep, so meditation helped him pass the time.
Interestingly, he seemed to have no trouble getting flashes of the past. In a way, he supposed they'd always been there, and he simply had no way to comprehend them until he knew who his biological father was. Perhaps these flashes were why he'd seemed to become obsessed with things that had happened centuries, millenia, and epochs before his time. Why he'd roamed the pages of history, searching for something he couldn't explain, hungry for knowledge he could never attain. He'd been searching for himself all along, and now that he'd found it, it seemed physically traveling through time was no longer necessary.
The future, however, was a different story. Thanks to his vision of the impending apocalypse, Francis knew he most certainly could see the future if he wanted; he just had to figure out how.
The door to the cabin opened, and in walked Jackson. While the other members of their party continued to stay in Valentine to be closer to Jenny Kirk and the rest of Dutch's gang, Jackson had followed Francis here to West Elizabeth. Francis was glad of the company, even if it meant Jackson was away hunting or traveling constantly back and forth.
On this particular day, he looked to have embraced the rough, rugged, fur-clad style of the mountain men that lived around here. He wore chaps made of bearskin and a cloak made of gray sheepskin with a pair of rabbit-fur gloves. His beard grew rough and scraggly, and his hair needed a trim as well. He looked the exact opposite of Francis' neatly shaven face, tidy hair, and crisp, proper, factory-sewn clothes.
"Mornin'," said Jackson. He threw a dead rabbit on the table and strode over to Francis to give him a quick kiss before removing his coat and settling himself at the kitchen table. "He doing any better?" he asked, gesturing to Mac as he pulled out his knife and began to butcher the animal.
