By the time Sarah finally found the first hints of civilization (other than the very nice but very boring dirt road), the alien sun was low in the sky. She had no idea how many hours had been spent hobbling painfully along the road, but it had been many.

How far had she come since the incident with the [Horned Fox]? Two miles? Closer to three? And that was what? Five kilometres?

She paused, panting and leaning heavily on the makeshift crutch that was her spear as she pondered.

The average adult human’s walking speed on Earth was three to four miles per hour. (Yes, she knew that random bit of trivia; no, she’d never thought the knowledge would actually be useful.)

How long had she been walking since she got hurt? Three hours? Four? At least that, based on her levels of exhaustion, hunger, and thirst. She’d swallowed the last drops of her water a few minutes ago (the small creek had, alas, not returned to the roadside as she’d hoped) and eaten her [Travel Jerky] long enough ago to regain an appetite since. So yeah, say four hours. At the average human walking speed, that should be twelve to sixteen miles of travel, right?

Except she hadn’t been moving at average human walking speed. Her many cuts, scrapes, and bruises had wearied her; the damage to her left leg had turned her previously crisp and enthusiastic stride into a painful hobble; the accumulated exposure to too much sun had left her uncovered skin red and painful and her head heavy and pounding; and the need for ever more frequent rest breaks had slowed her progress even further.

As a city girl who rarely travelled, Sarah had never developed the knack for estimating distances of more than a few city blocks, in metric or imperial, (her countrymen having the peculiarity of using both systems), but she was fairly certain she hadn’t come more than three miles (five kilometres) since killing the fox, maybe even less.

In truth, it mattered not one whit how far she’d hobbled, but Sarah’s exhausted mind was desperate for distraction from all the pain and accumulated discomfort, and so kept latching on to random trains of thought.

Just as she was about to force her weary legs to begin moving once more, Sarah’s mind stopped muzzily muttering about 1.6 kilometres per mile, 2.2 pounds per kilogram, and 2.54 centimetres per inch, and recognized the significance of what she’d been staring at.

The forest had been thinning for a while now, but the place where Sarah had stopped marked a clear difference. To the right (back the direction she’d come) were trees and undergrowth, though much less tightly packed than before. To the left, the trees quickly dwindled to occasional lone sentinels, and the undergrowth immediately gave way to a lush grassy field.

Between the two was a fence, with wooden posts and wooden crossties. It marched through the fringe of the forest in a straight line, right up to the road, and then turned the corner sharply to follow along the edge of the ditch.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Blinking in stupefied wonder, Sarah turned to the other side of the road. Sure enough, there was forest on one side, field on the other, and fence in between. There was even a large group of what looked like some kind of grazing beasts, similar to cows, though the details of their forms were rendered hazy and indistinct by the lowering light.

Sarah poked her brain, forcing it to follow the trail of logic. There was a group of large animals, grazing in a field of grass, surrounded by a fence that was obviously manufactured instead of natural. That meant these were pastures, which meant farms…which meant people!

Reinvigorated by the thought of much-needed aid finally being in reach, Sarah began walking again (aka, hobbling slowly and painfully, but “walking” sounded much more positive), carefully scanning for further signs of civilization.

Before long, a cluster of buildings appeared on the right-hand side of the road. There were two large buildings, at least half a dozen smaller ones, and a collection of fenced areas, some of the latter holding animals that Sarah was far too tired to investigate, beyond noticing that they seemed more or less contained and therefore were unlikely to pose an immediate threat.

As Sarah hobbled closer and closer to what could only be a farmyard, she saw that the smaller buildings seemed to all be made of wood, while the two larger ones were wood atop thick stone foundations.

One of the larger buildings was tall, long, very basic in shape, with huge double doors set into the end visible from the road, leading her to guess (based on her less-than-extensive knowledge of all things agricultural,) that it was a barn. The other was clearly a two-story house, with warm, orange light spilling from the windows and a thick thread of smoke rising from a stone chimney. The walls of all the buildings glowed softly in the last light of the day, as if with a freshly applied coat of whitewash.

Did they have whitewash here? Sarah paused a moment to rest, leaning on her spear. The farmyard was right there; the house – with its promise of food, shelter, and safety – tantalizingly close, but her legs were trembling and her head spinning. If she didn’t take a short moment to rest, she’d end up sprawled face-first in the dirt before she ever reached the front door.

As she rested, Sarah pondered the problem of paint, for she was too tired to resist the lure of the mental rabbit trail. She’d seen no signs of tractors, trucks, telephone poles, electricity lines, or any other kind of modern convenience she associated with farming and rural living. If technology of that level existed here, it was in a form she couldn’t recognize. That meant modern-style paint was probably out as well, so…yeah, there was a good chance the buildings before her had been whitewashed.

Whitewash was easy, right? Just mix water with some kind of mineral. Tom Sawyer had it in the 1840s so it couldn’t be that hard to produce without advanced tech.

Wait…no…Tom Sawyer wasn’t real…he was a fictional character, created by that American author, Mark Twain, or whatever his real name was. Did that invalidate her conclusion about the availability of whitewash in pre-modern societies? It shouldn’t, right?

In the last moment before Sarah’s thoughts spiraled down into darkness, she reflected that maybe she should have risked toppling over on the way through the yard instead of stopping to rest after all, since a strange woman flopping face-down on the front porch was more likely to be noticed than one sprawled out on the dark road.

I can be such an idiot, she thought.