FNVFFCHP 1 – Sian
Oooowww...my head hurts. The young womangroaned. Her skull felt like it was shattered but she pushed past the pain and managed to sit up. Her head was spinning with the effort. She winced at the bright light when she forced her eyelids open.Okay, take a deep breath. You'll be fine. Just find out where you are and what the hell happened. The pain was slowly receding. Her head jerked up when she heard footsteps approaching. That was a bad idea though and she hissed as the pain flamed up again.
"Well, hello. You're awake, how bout that." A bald man with a white moustache and scruffy clothes stood in front of the bed. Her first reaction was to jump up and pin the old timer to the wall. Whoa, where the fuck did that come from?
Since jumping out of the bed was not an option in her current state, she swung her feet off the cover and prepared to stand up.
"Whoa, easy there. Easy. You been out cold a couple of days now. Why don't you just relax a second? Get your bearings."
"Where am I?" Her eyes were still a bit unfocused so she opted for looking at the floorboards. "Who are you?"
"The name's Doc Mitchell and you're in my house in Goodsprings." He sat down in a chair in front of the bed. "You were brought to my place more dead than alive. I did what I could but I had to go rooting around there in your noggin to pull all the bits of lead out. Now, I take pride in my needlework, but that bullet will leave you marked. Not the first mark on you from what I've seen."
"You like eyeballing your patients, Doc?" The cheeky grin told Doc Mitchell his patient was already feeling a lot better than she should have been. Huh, this girlie must have had some heck of a training to just brush off being shot in the head.
"So, how about you tell me your name?"
"My name is..." Wait, what's my name? Why don't I know my name? Who am I?"I don't know my name. I.. How can I know that I don't know? Doc, what's going on in my head?"
"Okay, calm down girlie. You took quite a blow to the head, retrograde amnesia is normal. You might wake up tomorrow and remember everything, it might take months. Now in the mean time, we might look through your bag. Maybe we'll find something."
The old man grabbed a messenger bag from under the bed and pulled it onto his lap. It was worn and dirty, with many strange patches sewn onto it. The one that caught her eye was a stitching of wheat on the lower left corner of the flap. She didn't know why, but she was drawn to this particular patch. Doc Mitchell opened the bag and started rummaging inside, extracting two pieces of paper.
"Well, this one here is a Delivery note for the Mojave Express. Looks like you're a courier, Missy."
"Really? What does it say?" Her vision was getting clearer and while these tidbits about who she was were interesting, she did not feel that Doc was talking about her, rather telling her about a stranger.
"Hmm, a lot of business gibberish. You'll have to check with the office that wrote this. Then there's something about a platinum chip. You were supposed to deliver it to New Vegas it seems."
Right, that weird guy in the checkered suit pulled out a platinum chip."So that little disk is the reason I got jumped? What the hell was I carrying?"
"It doesn't really say anything more. This other piece of paper is strange though. Take a look. Maybe it'll make sense to you."
The girl reached for the folded piece of paper and began to examine it. On the outside stood four strange symbols. After a minute she realized they were letters and that, apparently, she could read them. Sian.. Sian. It sounds... I know this word. What does it mean?
Doc Mitchell was watching her. Her face betrayed nothing, but her eyes clearly showed how upset she was. In one fluid movement her head snapped up and every muscle in her body tensed. She sat like this for about a minute until her head slowly turned toward him. Her eyes were wide, her face as pale as a sheet.
'Sian, my fire burns inside of you! This flame will always illuminate your path!'
"My name is Sian."
"Now where did that come from all of a sudden?"
Sian shook her head in wonder. "I don't really know. It.. The name sounded familiar and then I had a... It just felt right."
I think I've heard this before.It sounds like the echo of a dream.
She rubbed her face with her hands and groaned out of pure frustration. "Urgh, this is so confusing and it makes my head hurt."
Doc got up and smiled at the young woman on the bed. "Well, Sian, seeing as figuring out your name was more than we could hope for, I'd say you lie back down. Sleep a few hours and I'll wake you for dinner. You can stay here as long as you need to, so don't push yourself too hard. We'll take it a day at a time."
Sian smiled up at this scruffy old man who had opened his home to her so graciously.
"Thanks, Doc. Sleep and food sound like a plan to me."
