The front point of the short crown on Shepard’s wide brim hat shined like a copper coin in the midday sun. It hung low covering his face and the fact that he was asleep at his desk. Despite his vest remaining buttoned Shepard’s cotton button down long sleeve was comfortable enough for him to hunch over in his chair and remain sleeping, even with his arms crossed. Normally he wouldn’t have let himself drift into slumber but the jailhouse was empty today, and he didn’t think he would be sleeping much that night.
Suddenly the poorly constructed wooden door burst open, allowing more sunlight to flood in, briefly. A man’s shadow cast itself over the wooden floor and up the metal bars that created the walls of the jail cells. A pair of dark brown embroidered roper boots clacked their way towards Shepard’s desk.
“Sheriff!” The man flicked Shepard’s hat.
Shepard, the light sleeper that he was, jolted awake with a quick snarl, “what the? Deputy? What’d ya do that for, boy?” Shifting in his chair, Shepard’s golden star caught a stray ray of light and reflected it into the deputy’s eyes.
Quickly, he tipped the curved brim of his burgundy hat to mimic what Shepard had just been doing. “I need you up,” he said as he stepped out of the blinding sun.
Shepard scratched his stubble, “is there trouble in town?”
“Not this one,” the deputy said.
“Ya can’t deal with it?”
The deputy pointed to a silver star pinned to his burgundy vest under his long coat, “this says deputy, not sheriff.”
“If this takes all day-”
“It’s gonna to take the rest of the day to get there,” the deputy said.
A deep sigh escaped Shepard’s mouth, “does it gotta be today? Tonight’s one of the only times I get to eat.”
“Get to?”
“Have to, ya know what I meant,” Shepard snapped.
“I know,” he responded,” which is why those people need you there tonight.”
The brightness of the late afternoon sun caused the desert sand around Shepard to glow with an orange tint. His black outfit caused him to look like a hostless shadow drifting through the dunes. In the distance, all around him, Shepard could see the sporadically spaced hills that were common within The Untamed Flats.
He continued to walk as he made a case to no one for his home. Was it flat? Maybe. Shepard had seen small scratches on his sheriff’s star that he couldn’t feel when he would run his finger over it. So if the continent was smaller, then yes. Untamed though? Shepard could see how the continent he called home could be seen as such. The people couldn’t muster the civility to come together and name their patch of land so the Aurelians across the ocean gave them a place holder name.
The Aurelians. Thinking about them made him think about the Blacksmiths, which then caused him to think about the Gunsmiths, thus reminding him why he was walking towards the town of Jolan.
The Gunsmiths. Shepard scoffed at his second thought of them. A heretical divergence of the Blacksmiths, the Gunsmiths had been banished from Aurelia near the end of the joint campaign against the Perverse Bliss. They, along with other detractors of the Blacksmiths and Weavers, crossed the ocean to settle the land. To this day most of them continue to cause trouble.
Jolan came into view over the horizon. A small developing town of a handful of buildings and even fewer people, Jolan was nowhere near a cultural hotspot. When Shepard was a 15 minute walk from the wooden archway to Jolan, he stopped. He found a rock about waist height sitting next to a cactus. Shepard sat upon the rock and began to remove his boots, leaving them by it as he continued to undress. In a neatly folded fashion Shepard placed his clothing on top of the rock. His hat was placed with great care as well which would have left him nude if not for a black metallic rectangle that hung from a silver necklace. He reached for the clasp, the sting of the metal burning his finger as Shepard undid it. Where it once was, the pendant and necklace left burned skin.
Normally, Blacksmiths would be unable to remove their jewelry but he wasn’t a Blacksmith. They had made that much clear.
The sun had nearly set so Shepard used a few of his remaining minutes with the light to hang his pendant from the cactus and then turned his attention to Jolan.
Lamps had been lit in a few of the buildings, the bank, saloon, and jailhouse were of note. The others, Shepard thought, must be where some of the Gunsmiths were posted. He didn’t have a plan, but watching these men patrol and lying to himself that he was formulating made him feel like less of a monster.
With the sun now gone, the moon quickly rose above the horizon. With the sun now gone, so was what remained of Shepard’s humanity.