I Remember:
I was sitting on a rock in Shadow. Dirt swirled around me--the sort of gritty sand/clay common to badlands literally everywhere I went. The sun lay high overhead, taking up what seemed like a good half of the sky, and beat down like abuse from a loved one. Even I had started to feel it’s effect, and it seemed that no matter where I'’d gone recently, that sun had been over me
For now I sat, baking on a rock, trying to rest with dirt in my teeth and my brain sizzling.
Frankly, it was a shitty place to be, and I didn’t particularly like the fact I couldn’t get out of the situation. That was when she came. Pressing forward out of the wind and swirling dirt, a shadow formed -- resolved into a woman.
She came up short of me just a bit and stopped, bringing her eyes up easily. They were blue, the eyes, and squinted now to keep out the sun and the dirt. A tan face-- young, unwrinkled and unchapped, with white-blonde hair pulled out of the way tight and ending midway down the back of a big tan duster that went to her knees. A white shirt was tucked into a pair of worn jeans, and she wore traveling boots. Her hands were gloved in light leather, and the left one toyed with the hilt of a sword slung low on her hip. Strong, young looking, but... not... somehow -- if I’d been pressed to, I’d have said her age was all in the squint. The wind seemed to die: I could hear the creak of leather as she shifted slightly, took in my own sword, the gun, the eyes.
"Interesting place for a rest, stranger." she said, voice without inflection, but fairly pleasant, a low sound like raw silk. I nodded, saying nothing.
We stood like that for several minutes, perhaps an hour, it was difficult to say, each testing the air around the other. Finally, she nodded once and turned to her right and walked on, pushing back into the rising wind. I watched her go, rolling together a smoke I'’d never get lit in this world. With my other hand, I pulled out a familiar rectangular shape from a pocket and unwrapped the Trumps. I flipped through them one-handed -- a trick Random showed me a while back.
Finally, I came to it.
Same face, she wore a loose cotton top and
leggings in earth tones, standing with that sword before her, point
down, both hands together on the hilt. I thought about the woman I’d
seen and the girl in the card, and when I flipped the image back into
the deck, I made sure to remember where I'’d put it. I stood and made
ready to leave the shadow (I figured I could get away from it now), and
the two images lay in my mind, side by side and superimposed...
Selena