The Relentless: Roadrunner

November 22nd, 1860

Mary Ford 

Wanebrough, Maryland, United States of America

The cool autumn wind swept down over the rooftops creating a nice breeze. The clouds covered the sun and the air had just the right amount of chill. Mary sits on her porch with her woven blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a hot cup of tea with lemon. She takes in a deep breath of the streets and earth around her, she always loved the way it smelled after it rained.

With that she returns inside to her small abode, she didn't live in a large house, it was nice and quaint and just the right size for her. Exactly what she sought after when she left her home in Kentucky, but the longer she remained away the more she grew to miss her family. She missed her mother and father, and her brothers. Hell, she even came to miss the damned tick hound, Bo, who she had truly found to be a blundering and frankly disgusting creature.

She left to escape the emptiness, the complete void of purpose that came to own you more and more with each passing day. There was no future for her out there, or at least, none that she would have wanted. No, there was nothing out there but dead ends and broken people.

Here she could make a life for herself. She found a job teaching, shaping the minds of our future, there was a career, something she could feel proud of. And yet, as she stared over the assignments, grading and analyzing them, she still felt incomplete. A need for more despite achieving more than she even set out for.

It filled her deepest dreams and fueled her greatest nightmare, of dying without purpose and living without a cause. On this evening she found herself in desperate need of supplies and had made her way to the local store just as it approached dusk. As she was returning home she came across a carriage broken down to the side of the road. A large man was standing right offside of it holding a lantern as another man knelt beside it and examined the wheel axel.

"Are you in need of help, neighbors?" Mary asks pulling her carriage to a halt.

"Oh, nothing to trouble yourself with missus. We just..." The man holding the lantern begins to say before being interrupted by the man on the ground.

"Well hold on, we may have crossed state lines but these parts still ain't friendly. If someone's offerin' to help, maybe we should take it." The kneeling man says up to the large man with the lantern.

"We can get the wheel back..."

"No, we can't." The other man replies before looking to the woman, "Is there any chance we could get a ride miss?"

"Mary, Mary Ford, where do you need to go?"

"Near eleven miles due west of here, I'm Joseph and this here is my wheel-horse William."

"How do you do?" William asks removing his cap.

"Just fine and that shouldn't be too much trouble, hop on," Mary responds from atop her carriage.

"Just one moment, we just need to grab our things," Joseph says before they unload two large suitcases and climb up onto Mary's wagon.

Once they get seated, Mary cracks the whips and takes the west road towards the riverbanks.

"So what happened to your carriage?" Mary asks.

"Looked down for one second and hit a rock, knocked the damn wheel right off." Joseph hollers back from inside the wagon.

"That's a shame, so where are we heading?"

"Well, we just need a ride to the river from there we should be fine..."