Karda: Adalta Vol. I Chapter Two
Mid-morning the next day Bren left Marta in a small market town, and she walked on toward Rashiba Prime. Traffic crowded the road—wagons, riders, walkers like her with packs and bulging sacks. This world was a mix of ancient and crude with elements salvaged from pre-collapse Earth as were the other diaspora planets she'd worked on. But here there was no high technology. A man pedaled by on a three-wheeled cycle, an enormous pack in the basket on the back. A family rode in an open carriage with an ornate brass bound metal box behind the driver’s seat, a thin wisp of steam rising from a small pipe and no horses harnessed to it.
She didn't trust herself to talk to anyone. As the road grew busier, it was as if her vision were layered, and messages from everything and everyone around her echoed and bounced in her head. She had to step to the side of the narrow road and prop herself against a tree when a man and a woman in a buggy drove past. They sat silent and upright next to each other. His anger and her fear threatened to send Marta to her knees. And the bit in the mule's mouth pinched. It was too much.
Read More