Firstborn of the Frontier

Hugs ain’t enough to cheer Chrissy up, so we spend a bit of time sitting on the swing together.

With her head on my shoulder, my arm around her back, and me going on about how happy her music made the townies of Pleasant Dunes as we swing back and forth, that’s how Aunty Ray finds us in the backyard. Real sneaky like too, slinking right up behind us without so much as a peep until she good and ready to show herself. I said it before and I’ll say it again, but Rachel Walker-Bradshaw is the very picture of an all-American southern belle, a beauty by any definition. The hair is what stands out the most to me, what she calls a ‘a loose updo style ponytail’, though it look much fancier than it sounds. She takes her long blonde locks and twists it about in a big, fancy looking bun, then threads it through like tying a poofy knot with a tail long enough to reach her shoulders. In a town where most folk just cut their hair short to keep it neat, the extra bit of effort really stands out to lend an elegant look to Aunty Ray’s jibe. The teardrop sapphire and golden circlet combo also does wonders to help, an almost regal Brand which she highlights with her long bangs, kept parted down the middle and lifted on either side almost like golden curtains framing all her lovely features. Only a hint of Makeup can be seen, a touch of red for her lips and a thin, dark outline around her eyes, but it’s more than she needs, because at thirty-seven years of age, she’s as radiant as ever and has the confidence to back it up. Style too, because despite wearing a button up shirt and jeans like everybody else, she makes hers look as sharp as anyone else would in formal dress.

Not to mention that healthy, farm-girl build giving Aunty Ray all of Tina’s curves and then some.

Got a soft smile on too when she ambles on around, but not the knowing smile some folk who don’t know nothing get when they see me and Chrissy together. Nah, Aunty Ray’s got the same smile I remember from when we was kids and would all huddle up together for story time, the smile of a proud mama looking over her pups. Because in her eyes, that’s what I am, one of hers just like she birthed me herself, which makes all these hang ups I got real awkward. That’s a lot of love to give to a child who ain’t your own, and she’s never treated me like anything but, while I’ve never found it in me to call her Mama. “Warms my heart seeing y’all like this,” Aunty Ray says, one arm folded across her stomach and her other hand pressed over her chest as if to physically restrain her emotions. “Two of you both cute as a button. Feels like just yesterday when your daddy put this swing up and you and Tina was fighting to go first.”

“Ended up with all three of us sitting up here together,” I say as I get a start on slowing us down. “Must’ve been hours before we finally called it quits.”

“I wish. Wasn’t even thirty minutes before you was tearing up the yard again.” Seeing my disbelief, Aunty Ray rolls her eyes with a smile and knocks my hat down over my eyes as we pass by. “Don’t be giving me that look now. You were six, Howie. Could barely go five minutes without losing your head. What makes you think you could’ve played nice for hours?”

Without missing a beat, I reply, “Still don’t mean I got the A.D.H.D. All kids got short attention spans.”

“Then why were you such a handful when Tina and Chrissy were little angels?”

“Ah you know. Boys will be boys and all.” Soon as the swing comes to full stop, Chrissy gets up and shuffles into Aunty Ray’s arms, who hugs her daughter tight and raises an eye in silent question. “Queenie bee passed away this afternoon,” I say. “Gave her a real nice send off, we did.” Don’t come as much of a surprise when Aunty Ray’s lips go pouty and her eyes well up, as she’s every bit as emotional as her daughters. Time was I thought all women were this flighty and sentimental, but apparently Aunty Ray and her girls are a bit extra in this particular department. My daddy supposed it had something to do with their Brands and their blend of Enchantment magics, but he also told me never to mention it out loud. Women can be mighty peculiar when men get to commenting on their emotional states, and my daddy told me I ought to know better than to try. Fact is, my daddy only looked into it because he suspected Chrissy was so closed off because she was feeling too many emotions, and learned to deal with it by simply shutting down. There might’ve been something to it, but we can’t really be sure unless she tells us herself, and we ain’t reach that level of communications just yet.

Love to see it happen though, and also a day when Chrissy can laugh and pout and smirk and shout just like Tina. That day ever does come, then I might just cry a little bit.

Once Aunty Ray and Chrissy are both properly consoled, I step away to unload the wagon and wash up before dinner. Baby Cowie has long since made himself scarce to go say hello to his herd, a right proper harem of three lady cows. Don’t know how they know, but them regular cows seem to understand that Cowie is Cowie regardless if he baby or bull, though I can’t say the same for the woolly wallabies who are as dense as they are cute. My daddy and I had a long talk about what to do with Cowie’s calves, and decided selling them to the Rangers was the best decision. They’re the only ones we can really trust to raise an army of Transmutating cows, and hold true to their word not to sell them. Not to mention sustain the cost of supporting them, considering how much they eat every day, but Cowie’s got a right proper bloodline trotting all about the Frontier, with magical calves ranging from Prosperity Hills all the way down to New Sonora. Most don’t got as much magic as he does, and can typically only do one or two Spells, but time will tell if they develop anymore and what that might entail.

It’s good money, and far as I can tell, Cowie don’t seem to mind me selling all his babies. Fact is, once they get to the age where they can be weaned off, he gets slightly jealous of the attention they get, from me and from his lady cows both. No, Cowie ain’t much of a daddy, and acts pretty much like a baby himself, but he does seem real happy every time we meet one of his kin, provided they ain’t crowding up his paddock.

He don’t care much for baths either, but after I finish unloading all our things, he suffers through one for my sake. Makes it real easy when he goes baby sized and I sit him in the tub, because he’s much too polite to go stomping around indoors. When he first started shrinking and growing on a whim, I wasn’t sure if the cleanliness would transfer over to when he got big again, like he’d have patches of dirty skin because they plum weren’t there when he was tiny. Worked out fine in the end, but I couldn’t figure out why, so I ended up asking Uncle Teddy. He’s a learned man after all, with a university degree, but he ain’t real good at explaining things he only sorta understands. The answer he gave me was that the law of conservation of mass states that matter cannot be created or destroyed, meaning Cowie isn’t actually shrinking in the way we typically envision shrinking. Instead, what he does is convert part of his mass into Ectoplasm, which then gets stored in the Immaterium, where Ectoplasm ain’t as temporary as it is here. As for the Immaterium, it’s a place that isn’t a place, and isn’t in this universe, but also simultaneously existing in the same lateral space as the universe, or something to that effect. A fourth dimension as it were, a direction we can’t really perceive, as we lack the ability to.

Still don’t really get it, but I mostly treat it as a fancy word for the place where Aether comes from and time acts funny.

Anyway, what all that means is that Cowie isn’t actually changing anything besides his physical measurements, and he still the same object in our reality regardless of his size. Sorta like how a bag seems smaller when it’s empty and balled up, but bigger when it’s full, and when you wash the bag in either state, you still have access to the whole surface area. That don’t really track on account of how Cowie ain’t hollow and never has excess skin, but it’s the best analogy Uncle Teddy could come up with. The discrepancies got something to do with how we working with more than four dimensions, while the human mind already struggles with linear distances, much less 3-D space and changes over time. Personally, I don’t find it that difficult, tracking and syncing with a universal metronome using only mathematics so my memorized Spell Structures are timed right, but apparently it’s the single biggest hurdle to becoming an orthodox Spellcaster. Fact is, Sir Issac Newton pioneered the development of Cantrips because most people found it too difficult to track the movement of Spell Structures over time through his mathematical equations. Said three dimensions should be more than enough to create working Spell Structures, and then proved it with the Light Cantrip.

Now there was a great man, Sir Issac Newton, the father of modern magic. Church don’t like him much, on account of how God said, ‘Let there be light’ on the seventh day, and somehow that makes the Light Cantrip heresy. Makes less sense than the Immaterium, but most church folk don’t take kindly to questions, which is why I don’t put much stock in religion of any denomination. The important thing is that washing Cowie when he baby sized helps save on warm water, and also makes drying him easier. This ain’t the Coral Desert, as we got all of Last Chance Lake to pull water from, hilly forests full of wood and a mountain full of coal to fuel water boilers for indoor plumbing, so I ain’t gonna wash Cowie in cold Water Spheres if I don’t have to.

Once he’s all clean and mostly dry, I carry him out to his paddock and head back inside for a much-needed shower. The sheer amount of sand that sloughs off into the drain proves I got even more nooks and crannies than I knew about, and I allow myself an extra minute or two under the stream of hot water just to be sure I got it all. Still boggles my mind how we gotta use plain old fire to heat our water instead of magic, least not until I get a big enough Aetheric Dynamo hooked up to the house. Ain’t worth it just yet. As it stands, it would take two hundred Bolts worth of Aether to heat one litre of water to boiling, a horrendously inefficient process if I ever seen one, but it makes sense if you think about it. Magic ain’t great at directly affecting the physical world in even semi-permanent fashion. Destruction is easy enough, but gradual change is a much harder sell for magic alone. Fact is, destruction pretty much the only permanent thing magic can do, though I’m sure there are theoretical arcanists out there fixing to change that.

A shame we can’t just conjure up food whenever we get hungry, or at least not edible food. Best we can do is cast Spells to help speed up the growth of crops, but not by much. Time was, food was in short supply even here in New Hope, with access to freshwater fish and plenty of wild vegetables just waiting to be harvested and eaten. Nowadays we doing much better with plenty of farms to feed us, but I’m still mighty grateful when I walk over to Aunty Ray’s and find her cooking up a whole feast. “First bread we breaking together in two weeks,” she says, looking over from the stove where she still hard at work, “And you can’t be bothered to put on something nice?”

Rather than argue, I grin, turn around, and head back home to change. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with a t-shirt and loose pants, but if Aunty Ray wants me looking nice for dinner, then ain’t no harm in dressing proper. The thought of throwing on my Sunday best as a joke crosses my mind, but putting on a three-piece suit and tie is too much effort just for a cheap laugh, and doubly so if I get some food on it. Instead, I settle for a Métis Tuxedo, which is just a fancy name for a denim jacket over a nice blue collared shirt and a pair of comfortable jeans to complete the set. I even button my shirt all the way up and throw on a new bolo tie to really fancy things up, because it’s sure to put a smile on Aunty Ray’s face.

…Okay, so Tina’s right. I am a bapple-polishing butter-up, but only for my Aunty Ray.

“Looking sharp, Firstborn!” Walking home with a skip in her step and looking pleased as punch, Tina gives a little wolf whistle as she catches me on my way out. Capering over for a closer look, she gives my bolo tie a discerning glance. “That another bull you sporting there? When’d you get that?”

“Just this trip, Songbird.” Giving the oval ornamental clasp a light buff with my sleeve, I smirk and say, “Almost pure silver. Got it in barter for a bottle of mead and the carving I bought off that fella from Ketchafeesh.” Technically, it’s ‘catch a fish’, as in Lake Catch a Fish, but folks up north like to put a spin on the intonation so it don’t sound so silly. Or more silly, as it were, and I can’t say I hate it. “You remember that carving right? The scrimshaw eagle you said wouldn’t sell for pennies? Called me a fool for paying $20 American, but turned it right around for a profit, I did.”

“That don’t look like much more than $20 American in silver, even accounting for workmanship.”

Tina’s got a keen eye for baubles, but I ain’t about to admit defeat. “The real prize was learning why he wanted the carving in the first place,” I say, before leaning in for a conspiratorial whisper. “That eagle was lifelike as can be, a perfect base for a Summoning Spell Totem.” Hard to judge myself considering I ain’t ever seen no real eagle, meaning whoever carved that scrimshaw was selling themselves short.

“Really?” Eyes wide with interest, Tina asks, “How does Summoning work anyways? I been fixing to summon me a horse. Make it safer to ride into battle if I don’t gotta worry about old Tux gettin’ got.”

Old Tux was my daddy’s horse, and he getting up there in years. Ain’t actually a horse like those from the old world, as they a bit thicker and wider with a set of short fangs, but they similar enough that most folks find it easier to just call them horses. Same with mundane cows, with only a difference in colouring, as well as a how slew of other animals that supposedly real similar to what you’d find on the old world. Ain’t no one know why the animals so similar on two separate worlds, but it’s a question best left to others besides myself. “Best get to work then,” I say, “Because Summoning ain’t easy.” I don’t know all the details myself if I’m being honest, so be better if an expert explained it to both of us, and I got just the person in mind. “Isn’t one of your fellow boots a Summoner? Some hotshot Scout wannabe, runs around with a bow and beastie? Why not ask her?” Wish I knew her name, but Mr. Morrison’s Scottish, meaning his accent is difficult to parse even when he sober, which he wasn’t when he pointed out Cute Bow Girl as my biggest competition.

“We, uh, don’t get along all that good.”

That don’t really track, since Tina gets along with everyone, and with so few women in the Rangers, they ought to all stick together. More to the point, she acting all evasive, avoiding my questioning stare and making a beeline for the porch when she was just happy to chat a moment more. “What you mean you don’t get along?” I ask, forestalling her escape. “She got something against you?” Hope not, because I was counting on Tina to make an introduction.

“Not me.” Tina gives me a pointed look, and it dawns on me why she was being evasive. “You kinda beat the tar out of her little brother last winter.”

Ah fudge nuggets. “Which one was her brother?” Please don’t say –

“The fourteen-year-old one.”

Double fudge nuggets. The scorn in Tina’s tone cuts to the quick, and I feel bad about it too, but it ain’t entirely my fault. “Look, I didn’t know that Nip boy was only fourteen.” Her features twist into a scowl, reminding me I ain’t supposed to say Nip. “Sorry, the Nipponese boy. The very tall and fit one with a chin full of stubble, I might add. Head taller than I am and looking twenty if he was a day, and that was months ago.”

“Even if that is true,” she retorts, knowing full well that it is, “You still shouldn’t have roughed him up like that. He didn’t do nothing to deserve it.”

“He was mad dogging me from across the park all afternoon!” Which ain’t enough to convince Tina that my actions were justified, so I continue explaining. “Then I went over to ask what’s what, all real polite and everything, and he told me to turn my ‘slant-eyed stare’ away before he ‘teach me a lesson’.” Allowing myself a grin, I add, “So I smiled real wide, leaned in real close, and stared real hard until he took a swing.”

Unamused, Tina shakes her head and says, “You could’ve just ignored him, Howie. Don’t gotta go starting something every time some fool looks at you wrong.” Storming off in a huff, she heads inside without me, and I can’t say I blame her. I do tend to get in a lot of fights, meaning I’ve tussled with a good number of her fellow boots, so she’s had more than her fair share of frustrations dealing with the fallout. Can see why the Marshal wasn’t too keen on throwing me in with them, especially as a late-comer getting a special treatment. Not saying I agree with the decision, because it ain’t entirely my fault, as most them fights started because them fools came at me, all fixing to one up the Firstborn. I ain’t big or mean, and I look younger than my years, which means I gotta work extra hard to prove my reputation is earned and not a load of crock.

Okay, so maybe the fourteen-year-old kid wasn’t looking for a fight, but with eyes like his, he really shouldn’t be calling others slant-eyed, not when he squinting all the time and looking right barking mad. Wasn’t like I hurt him bad either. Gave him a few bruises is all, and two black eyes. A good life lesson, I’d say, because if he ever talks to a real Qin like that, they’re liable to string him up and chop his feet off. Then again, they don’t need much encouragement to turn things ugly. Lot of bad blood between the two nations, most of which is due to the Nipponese Immortal Monarch playing a major role in killing the Qin Immortal Monarch. I don’t care much about old world nationalities either way, though I do find it mighty curious how the Nipponese love Americans so much. Sure, they’re allies now, but the Americans dropped two Aetheric bombs on Nippon back in 1945, shortly after the Qin Monarch’s death. Those were the only two times those weapons of massed destruction have ever been used in all of human history, I might add, with a death toll of over two-hundred thousand people, most of whom were civilians, as well as taking out the Nipponese Immortal Monarch himself.

Makes no sense why the Nipponese get along so well with Americans, while relations with the Qinese are strained on both sides.

Mourning my failed relationship with Cute Bow Girl before I even got a chance to talk to her, I head in without my customary smile, which don’t escape Aunty Ray’s notice once she look past my new threads. I shake it off and grin best I can, which ain’t difficult considering what I see, my three best girls and a table stacked to the gills with all manner of delectable dishes. Muskari pot roast, hoggydilla chops, buttermilk biscuits, and roasted red sneezeweed to name a few of my favourites, and we all tuck in with smiles and chatter aplenty. I tell tales of what I was up to without any prompting, but I leave out the more dangerous bits, and Aunty Ray seems happy to leave it at that for now. There’ll be a reckoning though, this I know, so after soon as dinner is finished, I volunteer to do the dishes and suggest an evening stroll to Miss Dawson’s store for an ice cream treat.

It’s only delaying the inevitable, but I’ll take what I can get.

The long, leisurely walk and cool night’s air does much to soothe my frayed nerves, the result of getting shot and the hurried pace I set to get home after Pleasant Dunes. It wasn’t so bad in the moment, but things rarely are when you got the adrenaline pumping. It’s the aftermath which is tricky to deal with, the quiet moments when you go over every moment and decision and marvel at how you still in once piece. Getting chewed out by the Marshal didn’t help, but those thoughts all go quiet as I take in all the familiar sights with Chrissy clinging on my arm. She’s still feeling a mite melancholy from queenie’s passing, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her, which is why all those knowing smiles irk me so much. I tolerate it best I can, as most folk don’t mean nothing by it, and it’s better than the worried stares from those ignorant types who only see a Qin or an Innate. Least word about my bandit bounties ain’t spread too far just yet, so I play the part of quiet bystander while the older folk flock to Aunty Ray and the teens circle around Tina. They popular with most, being the unofficial town mayor and de-facto class representative respectively, with folk of all ages coming by to greet them. Aunty Ray has had her role as long as I can remember, but Tina’s is new on account of her being top boot in her group. Not surprising, as most folk have long since forgotten Aunty Ray was a Ranger too before she stepped back to raise her daughters, and my daddy taught Tina enough to stand out.

As for me and Chrissy, we mostly popular with children and animals, so we stick to petting stray marties that come up to us on the street. Squatting down to greet our latest little friend, I watch with a smile as Chrissy strokes the fat, spotted fur noodle’s chest, and the little guy responds by arching his back, lifting his arms, and squeaking in delight. Rhyzomarten is the official name Aunty Ray settled on for these lap-sized critters, with their cute, narrow faces and big old digging paws which give them a real wobbly, side to side gait. They spend most their days underground chasing after rodents and roots, so while they ain’t exactly domesticated, they make for good pest control. Terrible pets though, as they got a mean streak in them, and will cause structural damage to the foundation of your home just for laughs. Still, if you willing to risk a bite or three, the friendlier ones’ll tolerate the odd pet or pat, and maybe even give you a ‘wahoo’ if you find the right spot to scratch ‘em.

“This friend got a name, Chrissy?” I ask, and she nods in the affirmative. Unable to resist, I stretch out to give his round belly a little poke. “Well, let’s hear it.” My finger barely brushes the marty’s fur before his happy smile turns into a feral snarl, and I snatch my hand back just in time as he chomps down hard on the space my finger just vacated.

“Bitey,” Chrissy unhelpfully supplies, as all them marties be bitey. Or Chompy, or Nibbles, or some other variation. Unless you Chrissy of course, who goes right on stroking Bitey’s soft fur while he waddles sideways to put her between us. Never got the stink eye from no marty before, but there’s a first for everything.

Much as I’d like our little night on the town to last forever, there comes a time when there’s nothing left to do but face the music. Once our ice cream is eaten and the hour grown late, we head back home where Aunty Ray sends Tina and Chrissy inside to wash up while me and her have a chat out on the porch. Was a time when she’d hoist a glass with my daddy out here most nights, and I remember trying to sneak out to join them. Now that I’m out here in the hotseat though, I’d much rather be young again and tucked into bed, but Aunty Ray ain’t having none of it. “Give’r here,” she says, glass of wine in one hand and the other held out in demand as she sits on the bench Uncle Raleigh built. Lifting the strap and medallion both off my hat, I hand it over and lean back against the porch railing to wait in silence as she watches the whole recording from start to finish.

Takes two Spell Cores to make a proper recording, namely Record Audio and Record Video. That’s the working name of those Second Order Divination Spells, which typically transcribe said recordings from the caster’s point of view into memory. They’re fairly common Spell Cores, as it’s how Proggies view events from the eyes of their Abby spawn. Let’s them rip the memories right out of their heads with little more than a thought, which is easier than making an Abby smart enough to investigate and communicate.

Using the Spell Cores is a mite trickier, as they ain’t attached to a brain that can store or view the recordings. With a Bolt Spell Core, it’s simple, as the Bolt emerges from the pointed end of the Core and travels in a straight line, but not all Cores at that simple to make use of. Some require a bit of arcana tech to act as an interface, like Record Audio and Record Video, which needs to know what to record and where to store it, and other such specifics. That’s why the back of my bull’s head medallion is all wired up like it is, connecting the two tiny Spell Cores nestled in the hollow interior to the doodads which facilitate their combined operation laying flat on the back surface. There are proper names for those doodads, but long story short, they let me start recording with a simple touch of the medallion, and ends it the same way. It records everything from the medallion’s point of view, and can pick up any nearby audio with about as much range as the average human ear, all of which is transcribed onto the attached memory crystal, which can hold up to twenty-four hours of recordings and be hot-swapped once full.

Had it rolling for most of my stay in Pleasant Dunes, as a precautionary measure should the shooting start. When I got back in town earlier today, Marshal Ellis made a copy and watched the recording using a video player device, some piece of arcana tech similar to the Silent Image projector on my wagon, only with a Major Illusion Spell Core instead. That’s a Third Order Spell Core, which is a rare find here on the Frontier, and will remain so until after the Watershed. That makes it expensive, and while televisions are pure arcana-tech that can do the job without any need for Spell Cores, they’re too delicate, complex, and quite frankly, impractical to produce in any large numbers without factory automation. Means it’s difficult to watch recordings made by my bull’s head medallion, or at least that’s how it is for most.

Not for Aunty Ray though. She don’t need nothing besides the crystal to watch the recordings on them. Her Innate bloodline favours Enchantment and Illusion Spells, and her familiarity with both allow her to access the recordings directly through sheer force of arcana. Don’t know the specifics of how she does it, but as I stand here twiddling my thumbs, she accesses the recordings inside the storage crystal directly with her mind and watches five hours of footage at the speed of thought. Same way Proggies view Abby memories I suspect, which is much more convenient than letting it play out in real time like the Marshal did. Course, he skipped through all the boring bits, which means he missed some things, but not Aunty Ray. No, she takes it all in, every awkward glance, nervous chuckle, and everything else in between. Makes me real glad that the recordings don’t store thoughts or emotions, else I’d really be in a pickle, one of my own devising. Last thing I need is for her to know what I’m feeling while watching miss Laura walk away, or worse, when we was having our little heart to heart afterwards.

Or any of the other inappropriate thoughts I may have had during the whole recording session. Don’t know how many there were, but most certainly a lot.

“Alright, let’s start from the top,” Aunty Ray says, after all of ten seconds later. Holding the medallion out in the palm of her hand, she waggles her fingers, mutters a chant, and projects an Illusion from the recording crystal in the air above the palm of her hand. Major Illusion, same Third Order Spell as what the Major’s video player device uses, except Aunty Ray casts it manually instead of relying on a Spell Core and arcana-tech. All of a sudden, I’m looking at an image of the door to the Sherrif’s office in Pleasant Dunes, except rather than being a life-sized recreation, it’s more like I’m looking through a window into my own past.

You wouldn’t know it from how casually Aunty Ray does it, but this here is a mind-boggling feat of magical mastery. She’s not simply projecting what’s on the recordings, she is watching it and using an Illusion Spell to recreate everything she sees in real time. It’s like speed painting a video as it plays out, with images so realistic it’s like I’m really there. My meagre attempt at Illusions never look quite right, with eyes unevenly spaced or shadows too uniformly shaded, but Aunty Ray is a master of her craft and makes this look easy. The Illusion shifts and I watch myself open the door to the Sherrif’s office, as Aunty Ray wants us to walk through the fight together. “No readied Spell?” she asks, her eyes fixated on the illusion and tone distant. Almost distracted even, which is understandable considering what she’s doing requires a fair bit of concentration.

“No,” I reply. “Had to prep and dismiss two Big Spells already. Add in my regular suite of prep Spells, and I was running low on juice.”

“Gotta manage your resources better, Howie.” There’s no heat in the reprimand, only disappointment, because she knows my daddy taught me better. “Wasn’t no pressing need to wash up the moment you was in town, especially not with magic.” Yea, that’s on me. I should’ve held my first Big Spell instead of squandering it and re-casting it just so I could be free of sand. I don’t make no excuses though, and she continues, “You clocked the bars over the front windows. Why didn’t you check the sides? There’s an open window on the right. Could’ve sent a Mage Hand with a dubsie over and lined the barrels up through the bars for an easy shot once you were inside.”

Darn it. I missed that, but I can’t keep quiet no more. “Well,” I drawl, trying to come up with a better excuse and failing miserably. “I uh, didn’t know the Sherrif and his boys were my targets going in.”

That earns me her full attention, those big blues going wide with surprise and consternation. “Oh Howie,” she says, and that’s all it takes to fill me with shame, because the tone says it all. Distress and dissatisfaction, because she thought better of me. Shaking her head with a sigh, she abandons the rest of what she was going to say and lets the scene play out until I drop the papers next to the Sherrif’s desk. “Right here,” she says, holding it up to show me bent over and facing the ground. “You could’ve stalled a few seconds longer to cast a Spell. You carrying Fog Cloud?”

Ain’t a good feeling when you given answers you should’ve figured out for yourself. “Aw darn. Yea. Yea I was. Still am. Just didn’t think to use it. Could’ve dropped one in front of the Sherrif’s desk, isolate me and him from the rest.”

“Better option is dropping it on the far side of the room, covering the two deputies and Vicente. Then they’d all be looking the wrong direction when you come back up with the Rattlesnake.” Even with all the answers handed to me, I still manage to mess things up, but Aunty Ray don’t make things hard on me as she continues, “That’s good shooting with the Sheriff and the first two bodies. Cover the other two with fog, and they either shoot blind, hunker down, or come out guns blazing. Leaves you with the upper hand instead of getting shot while hiding behind a flimsy desk and needing Cowie to come save your bacon. Keeps the front door intact too, in case any townies were feeling brave, not to mention how a closed door can deny line of sight for Spellslingin’.” Heaving another small sigh, she dismisses her Illusion, takes a sip of her wine, and studies me with her big blue eyes a moment more before deciding to say just a little more. “Remember, it ain’t always about slingin’ big Spells. Proper information and battlefield control wins more fights with less blood spilled.”

Something my daddy used to tell me all the time, albeit paraphrased to sound better. ‘Have plan to win fight before drawing gun.’ He said it a lot better in Qin. ‘Victorious warriors win first and then go to war. Defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.’

Got me feeling lower than a snake’s belly, and probably look like it too, because Aunty Ray tries to cheer me up. “You did good for your first bounty.” Not first kills, because we both know they wasn’t, but this was the first time I walked into a room meaning to kill a man, much less five. “How you feeling about it?”

“Justified,” I reply, and the answer only makes her sadder, because she can feel the truth in my tone and the anger burning hot in my chest. “They was monsters Aunty Ray. You clock the girl coming out of the office? Ain’t no dead haunting me, but her eyes…”

Didn’t have a chance to see her again before I left. Hope she doing better now, but somehow, I doubt it.

“You ain’t wrong.” Patting the bench beside her, Aunty Ray waits as I reluctantly sit down beside her. Hate feeling so awkward around her, both embarrassed and afraid, but she keeps her hands to herself, one on her glass and the other wrapped around her torso tight. Warding against the night’s chill maybe, or just reminding herself to give me my space. “Thing is,” she says, turning her concerned gaze towards me and driving my eyes down towards my knees, “I’m worried about what all this is doing to you. It ain’t hardly been two years since you started riding out on your own, and look at you Howie. You all twisted up with anger and hate and Lord knows what else. Don’t deny it. You went into that office spoiling for a fight, and just so happened to find outlaws instead of proper lawmen. That ain’t all either. You’ve gone from a sweet, smiling boy to a man who struggles to even pretend he’s happy.” Her arm twitches before settling back down as Aunty Ray fights the urge to wrap me in a hug. “It’s plain as day that something bad happened somewhere along the way, something you don’t wanna talk about.” Before I can deny it, she forges on by giving me a gentle nudge of her shoulder before drawing back. “I ain’t gonna push you, but I do think you should talk about it. With someone, anyone, and you should know we’re all here for you no matter what.”

“I know.” It shouldn’t be so difficult just to lean over and ask for a hug, but I can’t do it. She’s right. I’m all twisted up inside and can figure out what’s what, or even find the words to describe it. “Always knew the Frontier could be real ugly,” I say, staring at the two moons sitting up in the starry night’s sky. “Just… I dunno. Felt better and safer when my daddy was around.”

That does it. There’s no holding Aunty Ray back no more as she wraps me in a big, warm hug, and I hate how I go tense and pull away before I get my mind right and hug her back. “Sorry,” I croak, but she just shakes her head and hugs me tighter.

When she finally pulls away, Aunty Ray wipes away her tears and takes a deep breath. “That’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about.” Turning so she can look me head on, she chews her lip a moment before saying, “I talked to Marshal Ellis, and I agree with what he saying. I don’t think you should head out again.” Holding up a hand to keep me from arguing, she gives me a pleading look. “Not because you can’t handle yourself, though you gotta admit you got some rough edges which need smoothing.” True, but ain’t nothing gonna get fix by sitting around. “I just think you could use a break,” she says, reaching up to smooth my hair before thinking better of it, and I hate how I’ve made her second guess her every move around me. “A little R&R after a tough fight and a big win.”

“Just spent all winter sitting around.” The words slip out as soon as I get a chance, before I’ve had time to think. “Now’s the best time for earning. I’m dead set on headin’ north to hit up the Metis forts along the Muskari Steppes. Proper trade caravans won’t be underway for another week just yet, and I can make bank at every settlement I reach before they do. Won’t be another six large, probably not even one, but I could turn a tidy profit for sure.”

Giving me a look that says she ain’t picking up what I’m putting down, Aunty Ray gives me a mischievous smile. “Right. Lemme guess. You was thinking that after you hit up them forts, you’d ‘coincidentally’ drop by Pleasant Dunes on your way home, even though it ain’t along the way at all.”

She got me, but to be fair, I ain’t great at being sneaky. Lowering my voice to a bare whisper, I say, “You know it ain’t right for the Marshal to cut me out. I brought word of the Proggie, so I should at least get a shot at tracking it down.” That’s how it’s supposed to work. Ain’t right taking a man’s information and not giving him a chance to earn a share of the profits.

Aunty Ray already shaking her head though, clearly not in agreement. “You ain’t even close to ready to venture down into no Abby burrow,” she says, and there’s a steel there that ain’t often used. “Don’t you even think about trying it. First time your daddy went down under dark, he had a full squad of experienced close-quarter specialists to watch his back, and he still almost didn’t make it back in one piece.” I never knew that, and Aunty Ray knows she slipped up, but she don’t let that slow her none. “I’m serious Howie. I know you in a rush to fill your daddy’s shoes, but he didn’t learn everything overnight, and he certainly didn’t go at it alone. He had the Rangers backing him every step of the way.”

“Yea, well the Rangers left him high and dry at the end, didn’t they?” There’s something wrong with me today, saying all these things to hurt the people I care about, but the words just spill out in an eruption of anger and frustration. Meeting Aunty Ray’s tear-filled eyes with mine, I fight back tears of my own and say, “Ain’t no two ways about it, and you know that’s true.”

“I know, Howie.” Aunty Ray reaches out for another hug, but I can’t, so I stand up and stalk away before turning right back around, unable to just leave like this. Instead, I just pace about, keeping my steps quiet as can be even though I’d like nothing more than to stomp all my anger out as Aunty Ray tries to soothe my temper. “But you know just as well as I do that there was nothing Marshal Ellis could’ve done, and it tore him up inside.”

“Yea, but them Feds didn’t just do nothing, did they?” Turning to glare daggers towards the east, I grit my teeth and try to keep myself from shouting. “I get it. I understand why their hands were tied. Qin Vanguards gunned my daddy down in cold blood, and I killed the ones who done it.” Not quick enough to matter, or slow enough to satisfy, but dead is dead. “All neat and tidy, except you know them Vanguards was acting on orders, and the person who gave those orders is still out there. I got a good inkling who it is too, except the Rangers can’t investigate no Qin official on charges of murder. Got no jurisdiction, and trying to strong-arm their way into a Qin settlement would’ve opened up a whole can of worms, maybe even started a war that no one wants. The repercussions were bigger than one man, even my daddy, and I see that, but didn’t no one come out and say that, did they?!”

Gripping the railing tight, I force myself to breathe out before continuing. “Some Federation suit living large on the west coast writes me a letter instead. Says he’s real sorry about what happened to my daddy, but it ain’t a problem for the Rangers or the United Federation of American States. Why not? Well because my daddy’s not American, which means he never was and never could be an American Ranger. That’s what the letter said. That he wasn’t a Ranger, just a Qin national working as an auxiliary, meaning his murder was a matter for the Qin to investigate.”

Aunty Ray stays real quiet, and I know she crying too, because she don’t think it was fair either. My daddy might not’ve been American, but he bled for America, fought and killed for the safety of Federation citizens and settlements on the Frontier. My earliest memories ain’t of spending time with him. They’re of standing up on the walls of New Hope, waiting for him to come home. Fourteen years, he rode with the Rangers, running point in every Abby burrow along a three-hundred kilometre stretch of land. For nothing besides base Ranger pay and the honour of wearing that star on his chest, mind you. Could’ve made bank as a freelancer, taken a cut of the spoils in Aether, Aberrtin, and Spell Cores, but he didn’t, because he believed in the work they was doing, in the vision Marshal Ellis and the Rangers presented as the future of the Frontier. My daddy was a Ranger through and through, right up until the day he died and some suit who never met him decided it wasn’t convenient to call him a Ranger no more.

It'd always been my dream to be a Ranger, but after my daddy died and I got that letter, I took a good look at my papers. Turns out, I ain’t American neither. Under nationality, my papers say ‘Frontier born’, unlike Tina’s which say ‘American’. Marshal Ellis’ way of keeping me free and clear of Qin citizenship, which comes with more restrictions and obligations than anything else, but that’s all he could do. Aunty Ray could’ve adopted me after my daddy died, offered to even, except by then, I didn’t want to be American any more. Why would I? I’ll fight and bleed for New Hope and the Frontier just like my daddy did, but not for the Federation, and never as an American Ranger.

Because I ain’t American, but I ain’t Qinese either. Nah, I’m Frontier born and proud of it.