The Gunslinger

Of Betrayals (Scene 05)

"You haven't asked me what happened." Charlie stated later, whilst they took a break from riding, basking in the first rays of sun spilling over the horizon. A couple of bees as big as a man's thumb flew around them lazily, though the bees seemed indifferent to their presence and instead investigated the nearby flower-fields.

"Do you want me to ask?" Genna asked with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders.

"I was just expecting it to be something you'd want to know." Charlie only met Genna's eyes once while she spoke, a quick glance as if to make sure she still held the Gunslinger's attention.

"I have some ideas about what happened," Genna said and didn't miss Charlie's eyes flying up to meet her's for just a moment again. "But I won't ask if you're not ready to talk about it." She shrugged again and looked away from Charlie because the thought of all that the young woman had just lost hurt her.

Genna had seen and heard a lot of sorrowful live stories since she'd involuntarily become an active Gunslinger but that didn't mean she'd stopped being an empath yet. Perhaps, after as many years as her father had had, she'd become numb to the pain of others too.

She shuddered, thinking about her father's cold grey eyes. Even when his lips pulled up into one of his rare smiles, his eyes never changed.

Genna knew she had her father's eyes, too.

"It's not a very interesting story. You already know that I'm a Witch. They burned my mother for being one too but took me in afterwards because I was so young. I couldn't not practice, I felt like it brought me closer to her. And the magick is in my blood, like it is in yours." Charlie didn't avert her eyes when she spoke the last sentence and her gaze felt burning, intense. Genna wanted to correct her, insist that there was no magick in her blood but that off the curse, which might as well be nothing; but she let Charlie continue her story, it was obvious that it wasn't easy for her to share. Silently, Genna watched as Charlie wrung her hands and picked at her cuticles.

"The people knew I was practicing, I think. What I did couldn't be explained just with prayers and knowing the right herbs, but they ignored it because I healed their children and saved their crops. But of course, if confronted, none of them would have accepted a witch among them." Her face fell and her voice turned sour as she spoke, and Genna was awestruck that someone could be so good of heart to stay with the very people who'd killed her mother. Perhaps is was stupidity rather than goodness but Genna didn't feel like Charlie was a stupid person.

A bit naive, maybe, but not dumb.

"The Mayor's son, Bill Padick, wanted me for a wife but I refused him once too often and he went to his father and accused me of being a witch. It was all the Mayor needed to hear, and soon all the people I'd loved and helped were rallying up against me." Charlie didn't shed another tear but she didn't need to for Genna to hear how much it all angered and saddened her, understandably enough.

Genna imagined that happening to her but she didn't have enough of a constant social circle to fall victim to such betrayals, she thought. For better or worse, she was alone.