A day in the life...

[Nosuchthing]

Elynor clutched her arm, feeling the dangerous numbness spreading. It was bleeding heavily, and she could feel the bullet embedded deep in her muscle, shifting and sending splinters of pain stabbing through her at every movement. She winced as she shifted her weight, pushing her back up against the wall behind her. Cal had escaped injury so far, though mostly through luck rather than skill. She looked over to him and winced as the movement sent a shooting pain up through her arm. She grinned through the pain.

“Well, looks like we’ve landed ourselves in a right pickle this time Cal.”

She snapped open the revolver with one hand emptying the spent shells with a shake of her hand. She rested the heavy gun on her lap and dug in her pocket for shells, her hand coming out with only three. She cursed, but loaded them awkwardly into the gun. That done she pulled a rag from her other pocket and released the wound, letting Cal tie the rag around her bicep as a makeshift tourniquet until they could fashion something more permanent.

“Thanks.”

She leaned over and kissed him, then held the revolver up, “go again?”



-- 24 hours earlier --

The blackened pot steamed and the smells rising from it were mouth-wateringly appetising. It was the last of their fresh food; they’d been through a large town two days earlier, and they’d stocked up on jerky and hard biscuits, though they had taken the opportunity to buy some rare fresh food at the same time. There had been half a dozen oranges, and though they had eaten the last two this morning, they had still been heavenly despite their going soft in the heavy heat.

The other vegetables and meat they had bought were in the stew now, the vegetables were going brown, the meat dry and tough, but it would be their last even vaguely fresh food for a while. She lifted the ladle to her lips, blew to cool it, and gingerly tasted the stew. She gasped as it burned her mouth, then lifted the pot off the fire, the heat obvious even through her leather gloves. She smiled, and called out to Cal.

“Stew’s done. Come and get it.”

She ladled it out into two thin, battered tin bowls and pushed one off to the side for Cal as she sat down, her back against the dry branch broken from the dead tree by the track. She had extinguished the tiny smokeless fire, an old trick she had learnt a long time ago, a fire was often comforting, but it needed to be small and concealed in case someone unsavoury saw it from afar. At least in this case they weren’t actually looking for a gang like they had been when they had first met. Now, it was simply a routine patrol through the towns of their little area of the Roughs, keeping the peace. Like they always had, and like they always would.

[Two McMillion]

Cooking the stew was a tremendous time investment, but worth it when you wouldn't have gotten anything fresh otherwise, or when you needed to disguise the taste of food just past when it was good for eating. Both were true in their case. Cal swaggered over to the pot, grabbing his bowl and releasing it just as suddenly when he felt the heat.

“Ow! Hey, that stuff's hot,” he complained. “That's a right mean trick. I ought to throw you over my knee and spank your cute tush for not warning me first!” but his voice was lighthearted as he said it, and a few experimental touches later he picked up his bowl and started eating. Not that he could have done such a thing to El, anyway. As he sat down, he pulled the bag of bronze beads he'd taken from their saddlebags out of his pocket and dropped it by El's side.

“You have enough bronze?” he said, a bit of worry creeping into his tone. “Seems like you're looking a little pale.” Maybe she did look paler and maybe she didn't; changes in her skin tone always freaked Cal out, and deep in the roughs there wasn't any easy way to restock. Cal's problems with metal were a little different; mainly that Chromium was expensive, so he had to burn it carefully. Elynor needed to take her bronze regularly, or... Cal shuddered a little at the thought. They'd been out in the roughs, and the bag of bronze had broken and scattered the beads as they rode, and neither had noticed until it was nearly empty. She'd seemed so frail, so unlike her usual determined self. Elynor's two sexiest appearances, Cal thought, were when she was weak as a kitten as she filled her pewterminds, and when she had grown muscles bigger than any man's as she tapped it. Neither was like the weakness that had come on her those next several days, the paleness and the shivering that clung to her no matter how hard he tried to keep her warm. He feared a return of that event, and continually checked the amount of bronze they had.

Leaning against a rock next to Elynor, Cal commented, “Should be able to reach Hoitown before sundown. Ha! I'm a poet. You have anything you want to do there, or just the usual?” Lawkeepers did more than just hunt criminals; they brought news, such as the several Elendel Dailys Cal hoped to sell for a nice profit as they went on, delivered mail (there was a sack of it by his horse), and generally connected the diverse towns to the outside world. Not that anything prevented people in the roughs from traveling, but few chose to.

Cal had thought about settling down every so often, and had decided he'd never be able to bear it. As far as he was concerned, the two of them would die in the saddle.

[Nosuchthing]

Elynor had opened her mouth to warn Cal about the heat of the stew, but as usual, before she could say anything he had already tried to pick it up. She smiled at his threats, knowing that if she really wanted to she could put him across her knee without even testing herself. She raised a suggestive eyebrow. “Maybe you ought to. We don’t get much discipline out here in the Roughs.”

She rested her own bowl on her lap, smelling the steaming vapours rising from the stew. It smelled delicious, certainly more delicious than it really had any right to considering the state of some of the ingredients, but then she had always been a good cook, one learned to make the most of ingredients in the Rough’s, and they still had a few small pinches of spices left, which had helped disguise the effects of the heat on what had once been fresh food.

She stirred a half dozen of the tiny metal spheres into her stew, smiling gratefully, “thanks, I’m lucky to always have you mothering me.”

She did appreciate it though, she was what is known as a Savant, an addict. She could burn bronze, it was a useful ability, especially in the Roughs, when being able to detect the use of allomantic abilities could make the difference between life and death. It was simply too useful to not burn it all the time, she practised with it, flared it to increase her range, to detect exactly what metal allomancers were burning. And then something new had developed, she could pierce copperclouds, she had heard of others being able to do it, and she realised then that there was no going back. She was hooked.

She couldn’t live without it now, it was like living without water, it was vital. Cal had been there for her, he had saved her, she would have died out in the Roughs if she had been alone. He had fed her, tied her to his horse every day, cradled her close every night, something else she owed him for. It had lasted until he was able to get them both into a town and find her some bronze. It had made him worry about her bronze supplies, but he always worried about her, in the same way she worried about him, though he seemed much harder to protect. Constantly throwing himself into danger, she could not imagine a worse thing than not being able to protect him any longer.

She nodded, “mmmm, maybe you should write a book, then you could read it to me every night. I don’t know, we can stay a little longer there if you want, Hoitown have a stayhouse don’t they?”

Elynor was born and bred in the Roughs, not like Cal, she had grown up here. He had struggled in his early life, but not in the way she had been forced to. She had become a lawkeeper because it was needed. Now though, she just wanted to stay with Cal, this was his world, but he was hers.

[Two McMillion]

“Stayhouse? Reckon they have one,” said Cal. He ate quickly- too quickly, really, and stored his speed to make it last just a bit longer. His words came out more slowly when he spoke again, making him sound less like a city person and more like someone with a Roughs drawl.

“Might be nice to have a bed to sleep with you in for a bit... just get so twitchy in those places...”

He did. For some reason those places always made him nervous, made him feel like he should be looking over his shoulder every second and keep his hand on his gun. Still, they'd never had a problem when they'd stayed in one. Except that one time. And that other time.

“Me? Write a book?” he said a second later, knowing it was out of place but not correcting it. “I hear that's pretty hard. 'Sides, wouldn't want you to get bored.” How much money did they have left? Could they afford another precious book of stories?

Cleaning up after the meal consisted mostly of rubbing sand onto the dishes until the shined, then wrapping them in cloth and tying them to the saddle. City folk would have thought it strange, but then again, city dirty wasn't clean like the sand here in the Roughs was. The same sand covered the fire, erasing most of the evidence they had been here. Cleaning up after yourself could be a matter of life and death in the Roughs. Cal carried a broom head, not because cleaning was so important but because wiping your tracks out of the ground could be.

He helped Elynor up into her saddle and made sure she was sturdily attached (she might roll her eyes when he did this, but he couldn't help it, and he would always do it), then checked his own guns and spurs, put on his hat (a fine leather one, or at least it had been fine when he got it), and jumped onto Hopper. “Git!” he said as he tapped with his heels. “Don't keep the lady waiting...”

[Nosuchthing]

Cal’s first words were fast, almost too fast to keep track of, and he was wolfing down the stew, but before long he had begun to store his speed and his words emerged at a more reasonable pace, as well as giving him the appearance of savouring the food. She nodded, truth be told she wasn’t entirely comfortable spending extended periods of time in a room, she was so used now to sleeping under the stars that to be enclosed for more than a day or two had her jumping at shadows. Still, it was a rare and pleasant luxury to sleep in a proper bed with Cal.

“Yeah, I think you’d be good at it, you can read and write, why not put it to more use?”

They had enough money for a book she knew, but they didn’t have much left, and it would bring their funds dangerously low. Theirs was a strange relationship, particularly for the Roughs, in this day and age there was still a patriarchy, and though everyone had to pull their weight to survive out here there was still a definite culture of men protecting the women. With Elynor and Cal it was more equal, and almost, in a strange way, reversed.

Cal, as usual, helped her up into her saddle, and as usual she rolled her eyes as he fussed over making sure she was secure. She was a good rider, had to be, to survive in the roughs, but he still insisted that he check her over each time. She reached down and patted Wind’s flank, then squeezed gently with her legs, persuading her mare to begin to trot.

She glanced back as Cal mounted himself, sticking her tongue out, “come on then, hurry up, you’re supposed to be the fast one here.”