Uncharted

[Caira Ayryn]

Part six, third installment: Outlaws

"I'd have never thought to be a match for it! If it wasn't for her we'd both be dead..." Merik's muffled voice roused her from the black depths of unconsciousness and brought her right back to the pain in her arms and abdomen. Immovable. No matter which way she tried and attempted to squirm there was no movement without a burning agony as a result.

I can't be.. Paralyzed..? I can still feel the.. Fabric on my toes? With the excited and fearful mumble from her lips the soft murmurings from the other room ceased. 

As the noise and clatter of dishes dwindled slowly back into her ears, she sprung up from the sheets she had been laying in and hobbled to the door, it was open a crack. Within her line of sight, she could see Merik and two other figures he was talking to. She hobbled outward and stood half behind Merik, who was sitting in a wooden chair.

"Oh.. You're awake.." He said too slowly for her movements.

"What are we doing here.. With.." Her eyes fell over the dark hatted figure and the man with the white hat as her battle ready senses poised in defense and she hastily grabbed Merik's pistol from the holster around his belt and held it up to the dark hatted man. Their enemies. Her voice tasted with venom, "Them."

A clear shot, all she had to do was pull the trigger and a single bullet would drill itself through the cowboy's skull. 

Merik's eyes bulged with surprise as she placed his hand non aggressively over the wrist of her functional hand. She winced a bit but held her ground. Their eyes hinged together. Hers violent and wild, his were neutral, and threatened acute menace.  

"Ah, don't worry, it was merely a misunderstanding." His voice cooed, too softly for Merik's brash, logical taste, the sweetness could only be identified as manipulation.

Irrational still, from her ringing head injury, she retaliated, if only for a moment before she was able to get a grip."A misunderstanding?! He tried to kill you!"

Merik shook his head, "Sure, but that was before I told him we were looking for work." His cool red eyes paused on her as he waited for everything to sink in.

The danger passed with the calm of Merik's words and she allowed the pistol's aim to bow out of her sights and into his hand. Her cooperation was met with a smile. 

"You see," he explained to Caira with the two men as his audience, "They attacked us because we were outsiders, thought we were invading, rather than actually looking for work." 

"That's an easy mistake to make in a place like this." She agreed and leaned on the rim of Merik's chair feeling the threat still prickle her neck. 

"That's right. They saw two strong Primes and assumed the worst. They could only act as though their lives were on the line, they had no way of knowing that we were runnin' from the law ourselves." The lie that the Cowboys believed relieved her adrenaline-filled tension, so that the numbed pain came back in a new, heavy wave.

Merik continued, "Then, Clide here saw us evade the Tar Pits like no one else had and thought we were worth getting out of the heat and into somewhere safer to discuss our... Future together."

Caira simply nodded, though slightly suspicious at Merik's too convincing accent, and noticed a new weight on her left hand, the gleam of a golden ring in the licking lamplight. The fading light flickered but she couldn't quite see what it was about, Merik spoke once more, reading her face as though it were an open book. "Then I told them about the engagement and the baby. I had to, so they would know you were my fiancé rather than the strange whispers of a nuisance named Ayryn who they mistook you fer' at first. Yeah, I tol' them we came in contact with her and she attacked us to try and steal our supplies before we had a few shots at 'er before she ran off into the desert. Turns out she's nothin' more than a pilfering wench-" Caira elbowed him in the ribs, silencing his words but not wiping the amused smile from his face.

It was a good lie and recap of a story he had told their spectators. Now Caira wanted to know why Merik hadn't just killed them rather than create this elaborate lie. "Thank you dear for getting me up to speed, I think I'll sit down now..." She said before swooning for show into a chair as Merik acted the part of a worried lover and was so very relieved that the chair had caught her with the bullet-scarred arm he could not extend. The two brothers enjoyed the drama and savored a reason to be worried along with the reassurance of her vulnerabilities. "My that desert sun is hot on a girl..."

"This here is Bobbie and Clide, they are two brothers and have a ranch south of here. Bobbie, this here is Caira, my fiancé." Caira cringed as he said her actual name.

"How do you do? Pleasure to meet you." They nodded the pleasantries to one another. "So I hear you're havin' a baby together?"

"We sure are." 

Lie! Her eyes went to Merik hastily, whom smiled as though everything was under his control but Caira didn't like the sinister look gleaming in their eye. It spoke of greed and darkness. "So you have a ranch outside of here?"

"We do indeed." Another lie! Words were bait in this tangle of lures.

"Well, I'd love to ride with you some time. Ever sense I was a little girl, I've loved horses..." She made herself out to be much more feminine in demeanor, which might corral their minds rather than allow them to rise in skepticism to her concealed identity. She noticed now that the sword on her waist was gone.

"That would make me very happy." Bobbie chimed back and hung his white hat up so his softer features were revealed. "You remind me of my late wife, she always had a sparkle in her eye just like you."

Merik and Caira took the complement but before she could verbally move his mind onto another thing, they were trapped into a conversation about her death. "Yes'm she died during the last war, poor thing. I miss her every day."

"The last.. War?” Caira knew of only one war in the Omniverse, and it was a great one between two clashing factions.

Meanwhile, Merik confidently leaned back in his wooden chair with a look of complete satisfaction beaming in his eyes. It seemed as though it was all going according to plan.