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Pity’s a little… pitiful.
Bek leads her horse across the train tracks at the Sheriff’s inclination and into the centre of a town that definitely does not live up to the hype that she’s been hearing on the radio this week. The menfolk are braggadocious and boisterous as any she’s met before; the buildings don’t seem to have rooves; and quite frankly there’s almost no gold to speak of, despite what she was led to believe.
Even Ambush doesn’t seem to want to stay, pulling and whickering against the direction of her boots on the plain. She’s a clever girl, and mighty strong too - Bek’s often inclined to trust her judgement in matters like these. And Ambush thinks this place is trouble.
There is one lovely desert rose among the thorns, though.
“My name’s El, but you can call me darlin’,” says the pretty lady with the spiffy gray horse and the bandolier. “What’s yours?”
“Bek Yamon,” she responds, tipping her hat with all the respect that such a fine lady deserves.
“Mighty unique,” says El.
“I must say, I’ve been travellin’ across this prairie a long time, y’know? But I’ve gotta say that you’re the prettiest thing I’ve seen out here.”
El ducks her head, shies back into her horse, the flush across her cheeks radiating like the warmth of a campfire on a winter night. “Oh, my!”
“Don’t go blushin’ on me now!”
“I’m used to the boys usin’ these lines on me, but no one like you,” she smiles, head tilted at just the right angle that Bek can see her pretty green eyes sparkle in the golden sunlight. “And what can I call you, Bek Yamon?”
“Oh, you can just call me Bek, that’s fine -”
“What about somethin’ like sugar?”
“Anythin’ you like,” says Bek, and she knows she’s already long gone.
The horse’s name is Lola, and she seems to take a shine to Ambush right away. The two of them get cozy while Bek and El are looking for a place to rest, feeling one another out, scratching at each other’s necks like they’ve known each other for a good long while already. Ambush is a little tired - Bek can see it in the speed of her blinks - but she accepts an apple from El’s satchel placidly, and that’ll keep her going through the afternoon.
El came to Pity for much the same reasons Bek did, and they’re both a little underwhelmed by the offerings, as it turns out. One little dust storm don’t take a town to pieces like this one purports to have, she points out, and El is quick to agree. Still, they’re both brand new in town, so if they did decide to pick up sticks and keep moving it’d be easy enough to do.
As the evening sweeps in, the mayor guides the cohort of visitors inside the local sleeping quarters, and gives them all a little pep talk about looking on the bright side and making the most of their circumstances. Ambush settles amicably outside on the porch. El brings Lola in the doors, much to the rest of the group’s bemusement.
Bek can’t pass all that much judgement, though. She’d do the same with Ambush if she’d thought her mare could fit.
Her second day in Pity feels a little liminal, like she’s moving closer to some kind of point of no return, although she couldn’t tell you how if you’d paid her. She meets Missy and Bunny, Graecie and Sausage, Jack P. Scythe and False; the mayor tries to knock her off her feet with his giant hat, but she’s too steady in her boots for him to topple her. Like Ambush, she can take a lot of pressure.
Her third day in Pity brings her to the strange preacher, with his soft and somber tones, and then down to the mines with the sheriff, who seems a damn sight more familiar with the town than the mayor ever did. Through it all, El keeps reappearing, sidling up to her, making excuses to stay a little while. She bickers with Sausage about sharing her stew and she shows off a pig she’s wrangled, horrified at the idea that Bek might hunt it for food same as she’s always done.
It’s sweet, in a backward sorta way. Bek finds herself imagining a future where she’s providing for El, making sure she don’t starve out on the plains. Especially when three of those green critters corner her and Bek is left to play the dashing saviour.
(And, yeah, maybe she plays it up a little, telling stories about the time she took out a grizzly, but it’s not like it’s a lie or anything! She did! Technically!)
Panhandling sure doesn’t turn up much, though. Seems her suspicions were correct when she suspected there was not the swell of gold that she was promised in these waters. She takes her meagre spoils to El directly, offers up her rabbit, too; explains the gunshot that took out her hearing on her right side all those years ago, which El doesn’t seem much bothered by.
“So how do you hunt?”
“I keep my wits about me, and my eyes on the horizon,” she explains proudly, “I got sharp eyes.”
“Well, I don’t think I’d be any good.”
“Oh, I’m sure you would be! You got poise about you, darlin’.”
“I couldn’t take a life, though,” El’s lips pull together on the end of the word, almost pouting, “not me.”
“Not even a little critter?”
“It don’t seem right, y’know?”
“So how’ve you got this far? I need to do this to survive,” says Bek. Truthfully, she can’t quite imagine a world where you can pick and choose your meals.
“I have other people do my bidding, don’t you worry.”
“Oh, right,” she nods, as a pang of jealousy splits through her like a lightning strike. “How d’you manage that?”
“Well, you just speak all sweet-like,” El explains.
She lets out another quiet “Oh, right,” instead of saying what she really means, which is I don’t wanna hear you talkin’ sweet to any other man or woman in this godforsaken town no more, y’hear me? “If you need me to do anythin’ for ya, then…”
Instead, El digs around in her bag and offers up a good few bolts for her crossbow. “Don’t worry about it,” she beams, when thanked, “it’s nothin’.”
It ain’t much, but to Bek, it feels like a promise.
So when El says, right after, “I feel like I wanna claim a home,” her head shoots up like a called dog.
“You’re settlin’ down?”
“For now,” says El, “why not?”
“Well, there’s no buildings with rooves, that’s why not,” she argues. You’re too good for this dump. Let’s get back on the road. We’ll find somewhere better, just the two of us, no menfolk gettin’ in our way like they love to do.
“... You’re not wrong.” Come with me. There’s open skies on every prairie. You don’t wanna see it from inside a Pity townhouse when you can see it in the glory of the wilderness instead.
“Usually I’d make shelters, y’know? In caves, and tents. Haven’t turned my hands to buildin’ much.”
“I like the finer things in life, see?”
“Nothin’ wrong with a li’l ambition,” Bek mutters, finding an excuse to distract herself from her desires. Missy and Bunny and Graecie and Jack, on a porch nearby, seem fine to let her launch herself into their little group for a time, discussing places to put down roots as well. Who’s even to say that El’d want to run off with her, anyway? Who’d want to give up their cushy indoor life for nothin’ but a horse and bag?
She’s never settled down before, though. The thought of it feels wrong, uneven under her skin, worming up against her bones. The itch to set off and find herself somewhere unfamiliar. She’s not made for a town like this, as much as she’d wanted to use it to her advantage when she came.
Damn blasted pretty women making this so difficult. If it weren’t for El, Bek’s sure she would’ve been miles away by now. Instead, the lovely lady got her hooks into the nooks of Bek’s heart, and now she’s torn between her first love of the road, and her new love of those gorgeous green eyes and a pink-flushed smiling face.
She finds a wreck that might pass fine for a house, if she put a little work into it. Perhaps she’ll make a shopkeep of herself yet. Ambush needs the rest, anyway.
That night, another one of those awful creatures gets the jump on her. She’s lucky Ambush was right out the way, already settled down to sleep, but first she’s hit with an acrid acid-burning blast of poison, and then that green critter sets off like a firecracker under her feet (like a gunshot right next to her face). Startled and terrified, she stumbles across the street to the nearest building, and makes the rare decision to ask for help before she keels over right in front of - her vision’s blurring, she’s losing her sight, she needs that - a man she doesn’t think she’s met.
And El, somehow.
El, who catches her when she ricochets off the stairwell; El, who takes her by the shoulders and guides her back towards the beds, the beds where Graecie’d hunkered down right next to El, and Bek had sat there glaring stubbornly all night to make sure they didn’t get up to anything untoward. El, who tosses her food while her ears are still ringing from the explosion and she can’t hear a damn thing El is saying. But she knows what a hunk of meat looks like, and she’s glad to take it, to recover some of her strength, while El is still nursing more of that rabbit’s food stew she seems so fond of.
They sit together through the night. At the crack of dawn, El finally leaves her be, to check on Lola. Bek feels a little bad for having left Ambush like that, alone against the elements.
More than anything, though, she knows she can’t stay any longer. And she can’t let El fend for herself against dangers like that. If so much as a mosquito bites her, there’s gonna be hell to pay; she don’t trust the folk round here as far as she can throw ‘em, and whatever’s out there lurking in the night, it’s a product of Pity to be sure.
“I wonder where I might find some of that red wood,” El is musing, as Bek leads Ambush back towards her.
“Do you trust me?”
She looks over, caught off guard. “Well, sure.”
“I wanna hit the road again.”
El’s face falls. “... Ya do?”
“There’s no place for me here. I’ve been on the move too long, I got no roots to plant.”
“Where are you gonna go?”
“We’ll find out when we get there.” She feels Ambush pulling at her lead again, lets her grip on the rope slacken. “That is, if you’ll have me.”
“I’m not quite sure I catch your meanin’,” El says, turning as she does to watch as Ambush makes her way to Lola, and the two start getting friendly with each other again.
Very friendly, actually. “Looks like those two do,” Bek grins.
“You want me to come along?”
It feels at once all-encompassingly dramatic, like she should be kneeling down and pulling out a ring, and like it’s just another summer morning. “El, darlin’, I’m… Look, I know it’s only been a couple days, but I never met a woman quite like you, y’know? I’ve been travellin’ alone for all this time, I forgot what it was like to -” it’s hard to put it into words, but “- to have somebody that you wanna come home to.”
El’s hands come up to cover her mouth. “Bek…”
“And I can’t stick around here. I don’t wanna have another night like last night.” She chuckles. “Except the part where you were there, takin’ care of me.”
“I don’t -” El steps forward, leaving the horses behind her “- I’m… used to the boys makin’ these kinds of offers to me. Never a gal like you.”
“Well,” says Bek, “you came to Pity lookin’ for a change, didn’t you?”
Her eyes flash with recognition, and she nods sharply, humming her agreement. “Long as you make sure I’m not sleepin’ on the dirty ground, Miss Yamon. I told you, I’m made for finer things.”
“I’d put my own britches down underneath you before I let the mud lay one finger on your pretty hair, Just El,” she promises. “The open road ain’t gonna do you no harm if I got anything to say about it. And I’ll learn to forage for your rabbit food if you’re really so scared of killin’ a little critter or two.”
That pretty little blush spreads firm across her face again. Those eyes, such a gorgeous muddy green. That smile. “You did say you’d do anythin’ for me, didn’tcha?”
“Anythin’ at all.”
Ambush huffs hot and pleased against her face while she’s adjusting her tack. Seems she’s happy to be setting off with Lola just as well.
They leave Pity behind that day, not looking behind them, not waiting to see what becomes of the mayor and the “gold rush” and the folk they knew for so little time. They drink from the creek and they eat from the trees and they sleep in a camp-out that’s a mite fancier than anything Bek might have picked for herself, but when it’s El she’s providing for, her standards get a whole lot higher, who’d have thunk?
Above them, the stars are bright and beautiful. The Milky Way cracks the sky in two, but El’s eyes shine far sweeter than any of that.
“Look, Bek!” she cries, all of a sudden, and grabs her hand, “a shooting star!”
Sure enough, something streaks across the sky, a ball of flame and mystery, hurtling in the vague direction of the way they’ve been coming from.
“Make a wish!”
She shuts her eyes tight, against the real desire to keep looking at El until the end of time, and squeezes her hand against El’s. I wish you’ll never belong to anybody else but me.
Cheesy, maybe, but it’s the only thing she can honestly say that she wants with all of her heart right now. Beside her, El is tensing too, making a wish of her own that she can only hope sounds exactly the same.
(It’s not actually a shooting star. It’s a spacecraft, 98% damage to the hull, emergency shields enabled that trap the people of Pity in a box for god only knows how long. The two of them got out of dodge just in time to miss the start of something very strange indeed.
But what Bek and El will never know can’t hurt them. And besides, they’re already miles away from Pity, starting out on a new adventure all their own.)