It's a brand new day / and I'm miles away
~Turning My Life Around, Malcolm Cumming & Ella Hunt
She'd always been a loner.
For as long as she could remember, she had preferred to be on her own. As a child, she'd played with Bingo, her favorite street dog, while all the kids were playing marbles. Once her parents had died, she had taken to working under shopkeeps and hunters instead of joining the bands of street rats.
And after she had been falsely arrested, and spent more than her fair share (at least at the time) of time in Sisika, she had only become moreso. She never stayed in one place for long, drifting in and out of town before anyone could get attached. Instead of sticking around Horley, doing work exclusively for him and his Mistress, she had become a mercenary of sorts, taking on work from various people across the states.
She'd never been one for building relationships. Any relationships she did allow to form were strictly business, and even those she was leery of. While she was well aware of the benefits of a strong business relationship, she tended not to work with the same person for extended periods of time and, if she had to, she tried not to do it often, to keep from getting friendly. Give her a good, strong (or fast, she wasn't picky), horse and maybe a dog, and she had all the companionship she could ever need.
Which was why her current situation was so odd.
She was curled up as close as was safely possible to the fireplace in Flaco's cabin, hair dangling loose around her face. Blood was drying on her jacket, she had her payment in her pocket, and her guns needed cleaning. But, for once, she hadn't headed right back out into the snow. It had begun to snow heavily while heading back to his cabin and, by the time he paid her, it sounded as though ghosts were wailing at the door; she dreaded the ride back down the mountain in such a storm. The gunslinger had given a dramatic sigh, before offering for her to wait out the worst of the storm in his cabin.
Despite her reservations, it was well worth it. It was still chilly in the cabin, but she had a fire to sit by. And, as it turned out, when Flaco had enough to drink, he got chatty. Particularly about his hayday, when he was the most notorious gunslinger in the West. As a budding gunslinger, and someone who was always interested in a good story, she was fascinated.
From his stories, it was hard to believe he had lived to be so old . Leaping onto trains (she'd only jumped off a train before, and now she fully intended practicing jumping on and off an abandoned one so that she could properly raid trains in the future), being, quite literally, stabbed and shot in the back. Standing on the gallows, rope around his neck, making miraculous getaways as the trapdoors dropped out from beneath his feet.
She felt almost like a kid, really. Leaning forward in anticipation to hear how he got away this time, eyes wide and mouth open in wonder. Clutching her legs when he got to the climax, tense despite knowing he would survive seeing as he sat in front of her, but he had a way of telling his stories that had her entranced. Twice already, he had slammed the heel of his boot into the ground, howling with laughter when she jumped.
For once, spending time with someone was… nice.
As of late, she'd slowly been growing used to people. Flickering in and out of their lives - that boy, Sean, though probably he was a bit older than her, sitting at the fire while she waited for the wagon to get closer, listening to an insane story of his; the Adlers, giving in and supping with them when she returned from the work they'd sent her on around dinner time; even that cruel bastard Joe, sticking around as she bandaged up her wounds as she came back to get her pay.
But this was… a lot.
She yawned, and Flaco laughed, "Tired, mi asesina?" and she glared, fighting the urge to reach up and rub her eyes. Yes, of course, she'd spent all day tracking down a gaggle of bounty hunters for him, what did he expect?
It wasn't long before she was dead asleep, dozing off to the low rasp of his knife shaving a block of wood that never did seem to take shape.
She woke, and headed out, early, to a call of "Stay warm!" from Flaco, a two fingered salute to him, and a stomach full of awful offal - she didn't trust many people, but especially she didn't trust anyone who liked the taste of offal.
Even her half blind, mostly-toothless dog refused to sniff in the direction of offal.
Mounting up, she trotted towards Colter, than paused. Evan enjoyed the cold, but not Grizzlies cold, and wanted to get down to Valentine so she could sell off the pelts she'd piled up on the Ardennes' rump and restock her ammunition, but it had been a nasty storm and the Adlers hadn't dealt with too many.
The Adlers had been awful kind to her.
So she sighed and turned Cassim towards the Adler homestead, kicked him into a trudging walk, only to be nearly thrown when he reared, coming down hard and dancing away from a strange shape on the road.
A man lay face down, half-covered by the snow.