🎵 Soundtrack to this memory: "Enemy" – Imagine Dragons
Not even a breath later, I heard more shouting — this time not meant for me. Just down the trail, another mess was unraveling. A man yelling for help. Not staged. Not fake. His voice was cracked with real fear. I don’t know if I was guided by instinct or guilt, but I rode fast. Found him cornered by men with rifles, tucked behind a wagon like a dying prayer. Didn’t speak. Just nocked an arrow and started picking them off. One. Two. Three. By the fourth, they saw me. And then hell broke open. Gunfire tore through the trees, but I didn’t stop. Neither did they. Not until it was blood and smoke and silence all over again.
The man — shaken, pale — couldn’t say much. Said he didn’t understand why they attacked him. Said he thought it was his last day on earth. Maybe it was, if not for a white horse and a woman with a blade still dripping. I rode him to the Rhodes Sheriff. Didn’t stay long. Didn’t want to hear the thanks. Didn’t want to explain why my hands were red again.
Sometimes I wonder how many folk walk the earth thinking they’ve seen death. But there’s a difference between hearing about wolves and standing still while they circle. I don’t take pride in the blood, but I don’t regret surviving it either. The Dutchess walked on after — white as silence still. And I followed. -LD.
