Oriphiel

Thanks for the recommendation, Pet_Sounds! I'll check them out!

Now, as promised, here's the next part of "The Western". I was going to update it weekly, but I've already written so much of it that I wanted to put a bit more out there. It's a one-time thing, though, as I'll definitely stick to weekly updates from now on.

Western - Part 2

The two walked on, until they came to a patch of dry bushes. There, concealed very well by the thick mess of branches and half buried in a ditch, was the corpse of a man. Not far from the body was a revolver. The pale metal of the pistol glittered under the fiery sun, giving off an air of majesty as if it were the sword of a heroic knight, or a fang in the mouth of a horrible demon. Lady Fate smiled with an honest grin as Rachel picked it up, and she said “Oh, well isn’t this just a painting? It’s like somethin’ out of an old book with a name that everyone’s heard before, yet nobody ever reads the damn thing. Except me, of course.”

Rachel turned the revolver over, running her fingers across all of the grooves and mechanisms, eyes wide with excitement. She pulled the hammer back, a feat that required all of her strength, and the gun gave out the ‘click’ that oft precedes death. “You know, I think it suits you,” said Lady Fate, “more than milk and tears, anyway. Say, how ‘bout you give it a shot?” Though Rachel was tempted, she knew a gun shot would raise the hairs of everyone in town, her parents included. And a scared parent is an attentive parent, enough to notice that their child was missing.

Thinking about her parents, Rachel realized that she ought to find her way back home; it was almost time for dinner. She started to dash for the town, when she heard Lady Fate yell after her. “Rachel! Don’t let your parents see that pistol! You hide it good, hear?” Rachel stopped, looked back at her, and then looked down at the gun in her hands. “Can’t have them snakin’ it ‘fore you learn how to quickdraw, can we? Oh no, couldn’t have you missin’ out on that memory.” Rachel continued on with her sprint towards home. Once there, she hid her revolver in the hollow of a nearby tree, and stepped inside her home to complete the few chores she had left.

The days passed as they had always for Rachel, with her sneaking away from her chores whenever possible. Only now, she was obsessed with becoming a gunslinger, and her favorite haunt in her free time was the saloon. It was a place of blood and alcohol, where the curses and stories of the world took life. The first few times Rachel entered, the bartender swiftly kicked her out and threatened to inform her parents of her wandering, yet her determination always brought her back, until everyone simply got used to her being around. She would drag the piano stool (which, as there was no piano player, was never missed) to a table, and sit on it while the gunslingers spun their tall tales. Her wide eyes now had a shine to them, such that they could have been hiding a flame within, or were frozen quite solid by a cold and unforgiving wind.

She would be lost to the excitement of the wild west; the glitter of a well polished navy revolver, the dull sheen of a leather duster coated in patches of alkali dust, the large boots with heightened heels so that the stirrup could fit in the large and stabilizing groove, and of course the metal spurs that, even on the most unhygienic and unwed to charisma, never stopped glittering in whatever beam of light found them in the dark saloon. It was among the drifters and gunslingers that Rachel found the mirror; the thing that, when you look into it, allows you to see yourself. And so it was with a crystal clear resolution that she started to become her ideal.

She set about retrieving her revolver, and spent a good amount of her free time “practicing” with it outside of town; she would point it at bushes and cacti, pretending that she was gunning down bandits. “It’s a fine gun, little chalk, and a fine gun deserves a fine holster, hm?” spoke Lady Fate, squinting through the sunlight that managed to pierce her parasol. Though it was a gruesome affair, and it took quite awhile for her courage to meet her, Rachel managed to remove the leather gun belt from her deceased benefactor. It was an old and weathered piece of brown leather, but she cherished it all the same.