The wagon trumbled along slowly, jostling over each deformity of the land with an uneven heave. Shoko sat perched on the edge of her bed, feet hanging down. The bed was affixed halfway up the wall with thick bolts and a pair of suspending straps. They were all that way, hanging to one side and stacked above each other. This wagon had four beds in it, a small table, and a wardrobe against another wall. Everything was fixed and bolted so that it would not fall about. A wax paper window let in some sunlight.

There were four people jammed into this wagon, though only two of them were present at this point. Tommy sat somewhere on the room, and a man named Jason was up front to guide the oxen. His voice was occasionally audible through the walls as he called out to the other drivers or whistled to himself. Tommy was silent. His location could only be ascertained through the creaking noises of his infrequent movements. Sometimes he would pass by the porthole in the ceiling and be visible for a moment. Other than that, Shoko never saw him during the days of travel.

Mostly she sat inside and talked with Travis. The man was glad to have some company, since he couldn't move around much with his injuries. He'd nearly bled out during the attack, but was making a fine recovery. There were no doctors with the caravan, but some medicine and bandages had been liberated from the stock for his sake. Now he stayed in the wagon, resting and talking with Shoko.

He was embarrassed by how weak the injury had left him. The man never said anything to this end, but Shoko figured it out through some things she had seen. For one, he had spent nearly a weak trying unsuccessfully to get the ceiling's porthole open before she finally noticed the difficulties and helped him. He was grateful but reserved after that. Shoko had just opened it without saying anything, and that was what he seemed most grateful for.

With Tommy and Jason both gone to their places before dawn, Shoko and Travis were left to sit around during the day. It grew frustrating, the small room and lack of activity. Early on, Travis had assured her that she would get used to it, but Shoko couldn't be certain. She had never really gotten used to the Dojo's constricting halls, but she didn't mention that.

She had told him a little about the place when he asked where they were from, but only in vague answers at first. However, Shoko soon remembered that there was no secret left to protect, so she began to speak with less restraint. She had grown up there with Tommy and many others, but the place had been attacked and was gone now. That was all she'd told him at first, but in the coming days had become more comfortable with talking about the past.

Travis talked about where he'd come from. It was a little farming town by some mountains. Yes it still existed, so far as he knew. Travis had not been forced out into the world as it seemed so many others were. He'd been interested in seeing it, so he took a job with a caravan.

"This caravan, actually." He said this lying flat on his bed, the lowest bunk. Travis's voice was muffled by the mattress between them, but she could still understand the words. "Oh that was many years ago. I was twenty at the time… twenty five? I don't know. Somewhere around there."

"That's a long time, I'll be you've seen a lot."

He chuckled, and it turned into a cough. However, that went away quickly, subsiding into words. "Yeah, I did what I meant to. These wagons have been all over the place. You'd think we would know how to deal with a silly little ambush like that, though."

"It's not your fault," Shoko said, "There were a lot of them."

Travis made a noise like a sigh, and muttered something that she couldn't quite hear.

"How did you kids pick up on the sword like that? I didn't see any of it, but that was nineteen men. I mean, you two can't be more than fifteen but you fight like trained soldiers."

"I'm thirteen," she said automatically. Actually, she hadn't thought about her age in some time. The only one who had really paid attention to those numbers was Sam. All of a sudden she found herself missing her friend, and all the others that had been left behind in that town. They had been away for almost two months, but Shoko still felt sometimes that they were all just hiding somewhere among the wagons or hills. "There was a man at the Dojo who taught us about swords and surviving."

"Must've been a good teacher."

"Yeah, he was."

Shoko pulled her feet back over onto her bed and laid down, staring at Jason's bed just a few feet above. She hadn't thought about Stephen in a while, really thought about him. The Dojo and her friends and their childhood all seemed like things in the corner of her eye. But just now, she'd turned all the way around to see Stephen dying and Sam waving goodbye and Tommy laughing a long, long time ago.

She sighed.

Maybe this was the way Tommy thought all the time. Maybe he just saw all the things that had disappeared and somehow tossed him out into a wild, strange world. Could it be possible that all Tommy heard was the promise he'd made to Stephen and every point in which he'd failed that?

Take my sword and take my dream.

Shoko wished that she could see Tommy through the wooden walls, or that she could make herself go up there and say something to him. What, though? What was there that Shoko could say to make anything better?

The wagon was silent for a while as they mused over separate thoughts.