Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Fettered Fledgling

between days, and into thursday morning. with the man what persists.

The little lady's laid down a little ways off from the fire, and she ain't asked for no blanket or nothing to rest on, neither. The flames crackle and pop, and the storm rages on like an animal outside, thrashing and roaring and spitting tongues of white-hot fire, but the little lady keeps sleeping, and when a gust of wind rakes by her, she shivers and pulls her arms in close.

She didn't even wait for supper. Ain't nothing to write home about—fox meat with a little bit of pepper—but it's better than nothing.

"Whatcha thinkin'?" Cyrus inquires suddenly. He's talking low and quiet-like, but Elijah turns his head at the sound of his brother's voice. Cyrus is watching the gunfighter, and the younger's man brow is furrowed some, but it ain't just the pain what's making the dark-haired man frown.

Elijah runs a hand through his hair and then ruffles it, and a couple droplets of water come raining down on him. He's got one leg up, and he pulls his other leg in and then rest his forearm atop his knee, but he frowns some first and sighs, and then he shakes his head and says, real low, "Nothin'."

That sheet of rainwater what falls down over the cave entrance wavers some, and Ms. Little, whose wedding dress is already sticking to her like it was made out of gossamer, shivers. Must've left behind a handkerchief, or something. Threw it down maybe when he left her with Cyrus. He should've checked. Goddamnit.

Cyrus said he didn't see nothing. Too glad to be out and alive, maybe, and she can be discreet when she wants to be, but only if she's making to shove a knife into the backs of their necks.

Ain't that something? How awful would it have been, if the fella what she was wanting to save her ended up being the reason she died? That'd be poetic, and a damn shame. She's a pretty woman, but ain't no nice pair of legs worth a bullet in the head.

How thick a skull she got? Or maybe she's just a real persistent grudge-bearer. They're already going to Hell; she ain't gotta start paving the way herself. Enjoy the ride, and just be glad she ain't got a front row seat.

"Must be an awful lotta nothin'," Cyrus remarks. He starts shifting and tries leaning back on his hands, but he's moving his legs, and he winces some, holds his breath, and then exhales real slow. "To make you this quiet."

Elijah curls his fingers some, but just as they're starting to make fists, he starts peeling off his wet socks and wrings them out off to the side.

"She did a good job patchin' you up," Elijah comments. He glares at one sock in particular and twists it real firm, but the trickle what drips from it ain't satisfying, and he gives it a hard shake before laying it out to dry.

Cyrus has a bit of fox meat between his fingers, and he narrows his eyes at it and then tears off a bit with his teeth and mutters kinda firm, like it means something to him, "She said she used to be a nurse."

"That right?" A bit of surprise finds Elijah, settles right at the crown of his head like some kind of bird, and he glances over at the little lady. Guess that checks out, don't it? She was real careful with Cyrus, real gentle, like she ain't got a single bitter bone in all her body, and it wasn't her what led those bounty hunters right to them.

A nurse should know that lying in wet clothes'll make her sick.

The trees outside rustle and shake, and another breeze pushes at that sheet of rain and sprays some of it into the cave. The water splatters the stone, and Ms. Little's on her side, out cold out in the cold, so Elijah pushes himself to his feet with a grunt, and then he trudges on over to their things and starts touching their bedrolls and blankets. There's one what ain't so damp—nearly dry, or in a state what some learned folk somewhere might start arguing is more dry than wet—and he pats it some and then glances over at Ms. Little again.