Resolutions
ONE
An old-fashioned funfair... too faded and decayed to be much fun, but in the grim outer towns of Gauda Prime it had always been better than nothing. Soolin remembered several such travelling shows from her childhood, only the galleries, the lightshows and the cheap pleasure machines changed. The food certainly didn't.
As far as she knew, the others were dead, had died in that disaster ten days, eleven days, a lifetime ago. The thought caused a faint, cloudy sense of pain, but she pushed it away. She'd left in the confusion, left without finding out, and had no intention of going back.
She sucked on a goldfruit - bought by her new partner, only a few degrees slimier than Dorian and certainly stupider - and gazed around. She had blended into the crowds quickly - cut her hair and coloured it, swapped her practical grey for pink showgirl tights sewn with bobbles, and now played the marks at the shooting games, doing as well with the substandard laser pistols as anyone could.
Well enough to win, take the marks' money, and split it with her new partner. Who didn't know she was saving for a better gun of her own, or what her plans were when she got it.
If bounty hunting would pay better, bounty hunting was the next plan. Soolin had made it off Gauda Prime once, she'd do it again.
Her resolution, as the year of the Old Calender died around her in a cloud of cheap laser displays, fake holographic fireworks and tinselly laughter and screams, was simple: get off this planet, again, and never look back.
~oOo~
