Yrsa arrived at work to see that her boss was still out on delivery. It was at this point she realized she was never actually given a key, her boss left after and arrives before her. Looking around she tried to see if she could see the bird that was singing nearby. It was the peak of the day with the heat causing the air to make everything wavy. Stewie was trying to bury under the wooden porch leading into the post office. As she was looking at the vehicles parked outside the diner she heard Stewie make a snuffling noise. Looking down she stopped the cause slithering across the packed in the gravel. Completely ignorant to Yrsa’s presence the rattlesnake made its way past here.

  It managed to halfway cross Yrsa’s path to be tackled by a brown blur. Blinking at the sudden disappearance of the snake she looked around to see where the venomous reptile went to. Several feet away the brown blur turned out to be Stewie now biting the wriggling snake.

  “Stewie, no! That’s dangerous.” Yrsa chided getting up from her seat to maybe separate the two somehow. Upon hearing her Stewie turned back to look at her, snake firmly in its mouth. She stopped in her tracks seeing that the head was almost severed from its body by the hare’s giant teeth.

  “Oh. Uh. Never mind then.” Yrsa backed away from the hare as it continued to chew on its catch. While this was going on her boss had come back from delivering the mail.

  “Hey!” He shouted, “You coming in or what?” Yrsa gave one last glance back at the hare now starting to eat the snake. She followed her boss behind the counter to the disorganized back area. Dirty stamps were piled on the sorting table as a ribbon of postcard stamps trailed off the counter. Her boss waved for her to take a seat as he dug something out of the delivery box.

  “I was going to originally ask if you were sick or something but now,” He paused as he pulled out a delivery slip. “What’s this about?” He handed her the paper. Trying to make eye contact she read over the slip.

Dear Yrsa,

Do you have a ledger? Also, do you have a number we can reach you at?

Sign, Ales Papadakis

  “Well, he wanted me to deliver some things for him.” She explained setting down the flimsy paper.

  “Delivery? What kind of delivery?” Her boss’s large eye narrowed.

  “Goat…stuff.” Yrsa internally berated herself for continuing to get herself into these situations.

  “Makes sense. Can’t ship manure through the mail.” The Cyclops shrugged leaning back in his chair. “Look, I don’t mind you having a side hustle and all but don’t allow it to interfere with this job. It won’t will it?”

  Yrsa paused. She had no idea.

  “No?” Yrsa did not mean for that to sound like a question. Her boss gave a grunt as he got up from his chair. The ruffled the sparse wiry hair on his head as he made his way towards the Rolodex on his desk. He flipped through several note cards before pulling one out to hand to Yrsa.

  “Here’s Ales’s number. The phones right there. I’m getting lunch.” He picked up the pale blue battered phone to pull it closer to Yrsa. He then left Yrsa still holding the yellowing cardstock awkwardly. Looking down he reminded herself that this is what she wanted. She wanted this change for herself. She placed the tip of her claw into the first number careful not to mark up the cheap plastic any further.

  She held the receiver close to her ear as possible. She gave a chuckle internally. Many folks get frustrated trying to hear her through the phone and her skull. The fact that the postal service used C/B radio made life a lot easier for Yrsa and her boss. On the other side of her skull, she heard Mr. Papadakis answer his phone.

  “Amalthea Ranch. Head rancher Ales speaking.”

  “Hey, Mr. Papadakis its Yrsa.”

  “What? Yrsa?” He shouted over the line. She pulled the phone away from a little as the centaur’s voice rattled her skull a little.

  “You wanted me to call.” She stated loudly hoping he would hear her.

  “What? Call? Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about a possible delivery to Sabana Encantada.”

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  “I have no idea where that is.” She stated.

  “I don’t…it sounds like we have a bad connection. Can you come over later today so we can discuss this face to face? Eight o’ clock maybe?” He shouted

  “Sounds good. See you at three.” Yrsa replied before hanging up.

  “So that’s why you never got a phone.” Yrsa gave a start when her boss spoke up from the door. Trying to save face Yrsa walked past him just standing there eating chowder from a bowl from the diner.

  “I don’t mind you have a second job.” He spoke up as she reached for the door handle. “However, if it interferes with your job here.” He gave a pause to make sure she was paying attention. “You have to decide which job you want more.” She gave a wordless nod as she stepped outside to the blazing hot sun.

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  The first thing Yrsa did when she got back to her RV was riffle through the glove compartment. It was an odd collection of Drive-thru napkins, a pressure gauge, and an outdated registration paper from Selfæta Island. Slamming it shut she remembered that her grandparents kept the maps under the passenger seat. As she extracted the two-foot-tall book from its place there was a thud on her hood again. Cursing she thought she had properly ditched the hare at the post office when she left earlier.

  She was going to try and ignore it again when it began to try and borrow through the glass. Panicking she yelled while waving her hands to discourage the creature. When it was un-phased she turned on the windshield wipers. The light blue liquid shot the creature in the back causing it to fly off the hood. Shaking her head she collected the map to look at it at the table.

  She flipped through the spiral bound road atlas of The United Districts of Scaeso (UDS for short). It took her a minute but she finally found Oasis Springs. Not seeing Sabana Encantada anywhere nearby she began to search the rest of the District. She began to worry if the place wasn’t even in Thubirda. She flipped the book over to look at the index.

Sabana Encantada, Death’s Desert.

  Yrsa gave a pause. Death’s Desert. It reminded her of a conversation years ago when she first started to travel with her grandparents. Shortly after they bought the map there was a big debate about which route they were going to take. Grandpa was worried about taking Yrsa through one of the hottest places on Earth. The discussion ended with them agreeing to finish the conversation when they got closer. That was the last time they ever spoke of it.  

  Leaning over the map she rhythmically tapped her claws along the length of her skull. She was older now and living the last five years in the desert helped build up her resistance to the heat.

  But would it be enough?

  Figuring that there is no point in fretting over something that might not even happen she left map open on the table. She walked back to her bed calculating how much sleep she would get if she was to fall asleep in less than five minutes.

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  Yrsa was in a great mood when she arrived at the Ranch later that night. She got a good stretch of sleep, and even Stewie was nowhere to be seen when she left. Mr. Papadakis was trotting up as she drove up to the long winding driveway towards the main house. Over the sound of the engine, he instructed her to go inside as he finished up for the day. She gave a wave to show she understood him and he took off back towards his flock. Parking her bike close to the porch hoping it was far enough out of the way to not cause issues she made her way inside.

  The first thing she noted was there was no place to sit. Feeling she was just being dense she physically turned her head to get a better look. A female voice from further back of the house beckoned her to the kitchen. Yrsa’s suspicions were confirmed when she noticed that there was a table but no chairs. Wearing a light blue horse blanket that matched her shirt was a female centaur moving about making dinner.

  “Hello. You must be Yrsa.” The woman stated checking the timer on the rice cooker.

  “Uh…yes. Your husband wanted to talk about a delivery.” She shifted from foot to foot before speaking again. “Is this a bad time?”

  “Oh heavens no. Did my husband not tell you we were going to serve you dinner?” She stopped stirring the thick brown liquid in the large pot.

  “No. But to be fair talking on the phone can be difficult for me.” Yrsa gave a lazy wave at her head. The centaur gave an ‘ah’ before bustling back to making dinner.

  “Well, you’re here now. Hope you like goat curry.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Yrsa admitted leaning against the wall trying to get comfortable. The back door leading into the kitchen opened to a teenaged carrying in a folded chair.

  “Sorry, it took so long mom. There were a lot of spider webs. WHOA.” The centaur teen looked started at the sight of Yrsa.

  “Mary this is Yrsa.” Mother Centaur introduced dispelling the awkwardness. Getting over Yrsa’s imposing figure the teen placed the chair closest to the door.

  “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to be so-“The teen paused for a second choosing her words carefully. “Tall.” Not saying anything besides ‘thanks’ Yrsa took the spot given to her as the teen stood at her spot waiting for dinner to finish.

  “Mary, can you call your Father in?” Mother centaur asks/told as the teen clopped off back out the door. Mr. Papadekis came in his daughter in tow. Yrsa watched the family finish loading up plates and setting the table in relative silence. Once the family had a few bites Mr. Papadakis got down to business.

  “So how is it?” He asked as she was raising her spoon. Both Mrs. Papadakis and Mary were both hyper-focused on their own plate.

  “It’s good. I’ve never had goat before. Let alone curried goat.”

“Glad you like it. So I had a few questions I wanted to ask you over the phone but something was wrong with our connection.” He gave a look when Yrsa started to chuckle.

“Sorry. Should have warned you.” At this point, the whole family was looking at her. Using her left hand she formed her hand into the shape of a receiver to hold up to her ear. Seeing that with her larger hands it didn’t reach under the skull.

  “Why don’t you just stick the talking part under your skull?” Mary asked before her mother smacked her arm.

  “Never thought about it before. Don’t talk on the phone much.”

  “How do you talk to your friends?” The teen pressed ignoring her mother’s shushing.

  “I don’t really have any friends.” She admitted casually. The room got awkwardly quiet again.

  “Is it because you live in a trailer?”

  “GO TO YOUR ROOM!” Mrs. Papadakis roared causing Yrsa to give a start. The girl rolled her eyes dropping her spoon dramatically before walking off. Mr. Papadakis was hiding his face in his hands utterly mortified at what he just saw.

  “Well, she’s not wrong,” Yrsa spoke up taking a bite of curry to show the question didn’t upset her. “I’ve with my grandparents but they lived in an RV, not a trailer. They wanted to travel all over UDS in it. They made it here.”

  Hating the silence and wanting to get the dinner over with as soon as possible Yrsa spoke up again. “So about this job.”

  “Yes. Right.” Mr. Papadakis dropped his spoon to gather up some papers for them to go over. “Ok.” It was a jumbled mess that took him a minute to spread out over the table neatly.

  It took an hour to shuffle through the papers to have a crash course in using a ledger. The date for when the delivery would happen was placed on hold until her truck was functional again.

  As she drove through the darkness she felt a little accomplished.

  SHE got to decide if she was going to take the job or not.

  Even the small bubble of anxiety at the thought of what could go wrong seemed minor compared to her finally take some initiative in her life. This feeling lasted her until she saw the light on in her RV. When she got closer she saw the vehicle of the person inside. Her father had come to pay her a visit.