Ahem.
In the wild west, the cities are made up out of dust. In vistas plundered by sand age and rocks older than your great great grandfathers' grandfathers' grandfather. In crevices and nooks and crannys that gather more dust than the pants of a titan in a sandstorm.
The coyotes, scorpions, snakes and vultures call this place their home. It's an unforgiving place already, and that's without the humans to consider.
This is not earth as we know it, you know, but some events are so significant they occur all across the wheels of existence: The Gold Rush. As you know it, it was around 1848 till 1855. Hundreds of thousands of people came flocking into the place from all over. And I mean from all over. From overseas and within the region. Google it and believe.
They of course all agreed to work together to make a fortune together because humans live in communities... Not.
Where there is gold, there is blood.
Whether the gold is yellow or black, lead will fly and people die.
It's just the way it is.
But that's too simple an explanation sometimes.
Sometimes it goes beyond the riches and gains, beyond the skill of a gunslinger and the well said one-liner.
Sometimes, it's all about love.
It's always about love you tell me? Optimistic fool.
What, you agree with me to an extent? Then why were you questioning me in the first place?
It doesn't matter. Let me just get along with the story.
You'll owe me quite a bit for this one, because no one talks about it anymore.
You may very well be the last one to ever hear it.
So here's how it goes
Chapter One: Coryn Sken Rides on His Horse Down a Dune and Suddenly He Realizes He Is Finally Where He Needs to Be.
He controls the horse perfectly, gets down the slope without any issues. It's not so great at scaling hills like a camel is, so the rider really has to know what their doing. Coryn clearly does.
He stops at a flat and looks out in the distance. After three mad weeks of riding and Uberman power naps even on the saddle, the town is in sight. Uberman power naps are where you sleep in intervals during a day rather than waiting for night to fall. It's what the likes of Tesla, Da Vinci, Dali, Fuller, Bonaparte, Edison and Churchill used. Or odd sleep cycles, at the very least. You want to be a badass protagonist to your own Western Sci-Fi Fantasy story? Have idiosyncracies like a polyphasic sleep cycle.
Or be really good with a gun. I mean really good.
I mean 6 shots in half a second good.
You don't believe me do you? Tell him about this story later down the line down a dark alley and see for yourself.
Anyways, Coryn was headed to Old Bramble. This was a town that was dying out for sure: Everyone in there was completely old. The Sheriff Greenhorn May had been such a legend in his time during the wilder years that he made sure the town stayed safe. He was an immigrant from somewhere way too far, and had a story way too interesting, but unfortunately he's but a placeholder here. Trust me though, Sheriff May was a legend.
Anyhow, the peaceful town of Old Bramble met a tragic end at the hands of young fools looking for gold. They settled like locusts, and feast upon the charming city did they do. Everything has its ups and dowsn, but this particular wave of the gold rush did not bring anything more than heartbreak violence and the other baser natures of man. When the sheriff finally died, leaving his poor loyal but kind wife Polly May as the town elder, the situation only got worse.
We'll talk about that business in full later, but understand that Old Bramble was prosperous. It had water, and it had gold. And to quote myself, where there is gold, there is blood.
Though it was no fault of Old Bramble's hardy but nice residents, a huge flow of people from the other towns were coming in to trade, to talk, to mingle and to stay. Shady deals were closed and trade routes were made. Old Bramble became a rotten heart that pumped corrupt poison in the rest of the Westlands.
And blessed, because Old Bramble not only sat over a vein of water. It also sat over a pool of oil, and of course, was near a mountain full of gold ore.
It's a wonder that the very desert itself didn't try to get its hands in this jackpot.
---
"They're doing pretty well for themselves." Coryn says.
The town looks good from the outside, and that's rare. It's all made of wood, but the wood looks grandiose, artistic. It's always interesting how worked wood can look artificial and beautiful at the same time. The same as worked stone. The artist did not just bleed ink on soft paper, they throttled nature by the throat, took a chunk out of it, and made something beautiful. Even with all the dust that had blown through here, Coryn could appreciate how the buildings look.
In any case, they are pretty big. Even more surprising, there's a large amount of people walking between the buildings, talking, chatting, arguing. There's so many people that some of them are talking outside of town - they don't even need the shade of nearby buildings to be able to talk. It's truly an odd sight to see in a desert.
Coryn sets off towards the town at a trot. He whispers to himself, "What in the world are you doing out here, Doodler?"
- Flashback -
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***CENSORED BY THE MR SCIENCE DIVISION . THIS STORY ITS NONSENCE. DC.***
He falls in love with a pianoist girl who also has an old grandmother who's dying but epicly skilled.
They talk in poetic silences. They truly fill kinship through silence.
They talk about how puberty and life will creep up to them eventually, and how it wouldn't be so bad if they
were both there when it happened.
***NAME REDACTED. IM SERIOUS STOP. DC.*** is dissapointed and feels like he'd be giving up and becoming a common folk by just falling in love with a girl and settling down. It's stupid, isn't it? You can't be serious about that sort of thing. He loved guns, and if there was anything he was good at, it was shooting the bottles his pa left all over outside of the shed, and sometimes he scared himself, because his hands moved like they were not made of bone and tendon, but air, and the air pulled the trigger and cocked the rounds and the bottles vanished in grand crashing sound.
And said pianoist girl is not really impressed by this at all. Because she can do it better, and she finds it boring.
Coryn walks into town, and he expects some sort of nastiness from the people not used to strangers, but he can see from the faces all around that almost everyone is a stranger here. And while a lot of them look nasty and seem to be judging him based on wether they can rob him blind or not, there are others appraising him on his value to them personally, and some even awed by his super cliche but accurate wild west cowboy outfit.
He stops outside of the Sheriffs' office and alights from his horse, wondering if someone will greet him. Wondering if he should go ask in the local pub. After all, there's no one who knows everything better than a good bartender. Especially in a lively town like this.
A water boy walked up to him with his hands clasped,
"Sir, do you need water and sugar for your horse? Very cheap by us." He was clearly trying to talk in an accent but failing miserably. The experience was so discomforting that Coryn decided to go along with it.
"Er... Yes."
He flips a silver coin to him and tips his hat, "Take care of him, he's borrowed."
His horse McCob blew a raspberry at him as the water boy took him away,
"That's what they all say sir! That's what they all say!"
They don't though. Coryn says, and he turns around with his hands on his hips, hoping to get a good look of the place before going to ask around.
Instead he sees a red haired gal glaring at him. And boy does she looked pissed. She has a sheriffs badge on her shoulder and smiles at him, even though her brows are furrowed.
"What part of 'Don't look for me' didn't you understand?"
Coryn can't seem to talk, his voice cuts in his throat, but even if he was going to say something, it's too late because the pissed off red haired gal punches him in the face and he goes down like a sack of rice. A nearby woman gasps out in surprise and some old man exclaims in indigination.
AnimeDoodler spits in the side of the dirt and walks off. Her boots chuf chuffing in the dirt.
Coryn eventually sits up and feels his sore face. It throbs but nothing is broken.
"Well, to happy reunions then." He says, before gathering his hat, standing up and walking after her.