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Lili woke to an odd buzzing in her head.
The fact that she woke at all did not surprise her. Since she had died (a knife to the gut when she refused to give a man what he wanted) her luck had soured considerably She had broken her neck twice, once falling down a well, and once running from an insane woman with a sword (she had fled into a cemetary where she had promptly tripped over a headstone in the dark) and had broken three other bones besides, which would have spelled death for her before. There had been a frankly ridiculous number of insane people with swords in her life recently.
What she did not expect was to wake up in a bed, a soft bed with clean sheets in what appeared to be a rather cozy little house. Her headache only abated when she met the eyes of a man. He was fairly short with blond hair, and he wore both a pistol and a sword at his waste as well as a rifle slung over his back, in what appeared to be his own house . A house which, she saw, contained a veritable arsenal of weaponry.
Clearly, she had not escaped from madmen.
“Tea,” he said, nodding toward a small bedside table. On it was an incongruously delicate, floral patterned tea cup that did in fact contain tea, and beside it a small cake on a little plate that was equally delicate and floral. She sat up to sip the tea and eat the cake. Food was food, after all.
“So,” she said, when she had finished the cake, considered all routes from the bed to the door and had concluded that making a dash for it was impossible, “How did you find me?” It was the politest way she could think of of asking “why the hell am I here?”.
“I shot you,” he said. Which unfortunately did not answer her question, but opened up a lot of new ones.
“Ah,” she said. Well, she’d give him points for honesty at least. “Are you going to do it again?”
He shrugged, “Only in self-defense,” he said.
She wondered why on earth he’d need to shoot her in self-defense. He wasn’t a tall man, true, but he was still much bigger than she was, and certainly far stronger.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Fourteen,” she said, seeing no reason not to tell him.
“Now, or when you died?”
So he knew about that, then. Well, of course he did. He had brought her home and tucked her into bed after shooting her through the neck.
“Both,” she said, “I died the first time about a month ago. Does that… happen often?”
“People die all the time,” he said “I don’t know how many of us there are who don’t stay dead. Do you have any family?”
She blinked at the sudden change of subject.
“No,” she said, “My parents died when I was young and I’ve been on my own for close to a year now.”
“Good,” he said, “That makes things simpler. You’ll need a new set of clothes and shoes. Do you want to come with me to get them, or should I guess your sizes?”
“You’re buying me clothes? And shoes?” she asked, feeling very lost.
“Yes,” he said, “And then I’ll train you if you like. Us Immortals have a tendency to try to kill each other, you might have noticed. But either way I’ll buy your things for you, as an apology for shooting you. Just don’t buy anything too expensive.”
She stared at him. Things like this didn’t really happen. The real world didn’t have people who swooped in and gave people new clothes and shoes, no strings attached. But then again, the real world wasn’t supposed to have people who covered themselves in weaponry at all times and shot strangers through hedges either, so maybe it evened out. Regardless, it wouldn’t be too hard to give him the slip on their shopping trip, and she might even get a good pair of shoes out of it.
“Alright,” she said, “I’ll come with you.”