Musing Way Prompt 64: Survival

Mizz Travis is going to write this for me. I can read better now, but writing's still pretty hard for me.

Survival. Out here, survival is about just two things. Keeping your eyes open and your gun loaded. I've had to learn to read nature, see things that other people can't see, if I want to survive. Avoiding the goddamn (sorry Mizz Travis) bounty hunters that are after a pound of my flesh has been hard, but if I keep my wits about me, as Josiah would say, I can make it through. I never go anywhere without a gun. It would be near-suicide if I did.

I guess nowadays, the other thing that keeps me alive are the men I work with. For the first time in my life I know I have people who will watch my back for me, and that's something that don't come often in the wilds around here. Most times you're on your own. It's a strange feeling, but I think I'm growing to like it...

Musing Way Prompt 34: Blackout

I dont always wear black. For moths people in town referred to me as the "Man in Black" probably helped by Miz. Travis's not-so flattering description of me in her newspaper, but it's not true.

Josiah gave me a poncho that has more colours than a rainbow; I have shirts that used to be white, although they are more a faded, dirty grey colour now; and I have several pairs of britches that are biege, or brown, or whatever colour they're called.

I just prefer to wear black sometimes. It gives me an air of danger, or so Buck tells me. It serves a slightly different purpose in my mind. It scares people away. Keeps them from wanting to get too close.

And in a job like ours, you dont want people to get too close to you. It's dangerous.

Musing Way Prompt 4: Daddy Issues

I shouted at Buck yesterday. Hell, I screamed at him like a little girl. Told him that he would never be my father and to stop acting like it.

I didn't mean it though. Buck has been more of a father to me than my own worthless one ever could have been. Buck's been there for me when I needed him time and time again. Buck would never have left my mother when I was a year old. Buck would never have ignored her letters when she found out she was dying. Buck would have come back for me when she finally died.

I don't know why I shouted at him, why I said so many hurtful things. I was upset, I guess. Casey said she never wanted to see me again (and I still have no idea what that one was all about. Women!) and I overheard a couple of guys in town saying that I should be sent of to school rather than work with the others, and I must have just lost it. When Buck came up to me and tried to give me his ever-so-useful avice on how to win Casey back (which I will *not* be following, I hasten to add) and just lost it.

I never meant it. Buck is the closest thing I have to family now. I just wish I could take back the words.

I'm sorry.