"You didn't really mean it

When you said you could handle it,

Did you?

Every time you do

It ends like that again,

Doesn't it?"

Gallow's eyes snapped open, his breath quick and heavy in the dark. His eyes adjusted to the low light as he peered down at the foot of his bed, feeling his chest heave in and out. He put one hand to his pounding heart, slowly steadying his labored breath. Within minutes he had calmed himself, picking his hand up off his chest to gaze at the symbol on its back.

“Some sigil you are…” he mumbled tiredly. His head tipped back to knock against the headboard and he stared into the blackness above him. Gallow never really liked looking up into the dark, so he placed his hand over his eyes to obscure it with a darkness of his own. He wiped the sweat off of his forehead.

“Gee,” he thought, “I should go get some water, I must be dehydrated by now.”

With movements careful and slow, he rose to his feet from the bed, trying his best not to upset his wounds. The hallway outside was pitch black, and he had to test each step on his way down just to get to the bar of the saloon, where he was presented with another challenge.

“Does the old man even sell water here?”

In the search for some kind of lamp, he ran his hands over the counter, careful of splinters. His arm bumped into something solid, knocking it over onto the ground with the sound of squeaking joints and rattling metal. The noise sent him tumbling back into a table, displacing a chair. A sharp pain shot through his body, and he broke out into incoherent swearing and flailing grunts.

“What the hell is going on here?!”

A voice bore down from the steps. “I'll deal with one troublemaker today, but I'll be damned if I meet two!” This threat was followed by the clacking of a shotgun pump through the dusty moonlight.

---

The candle light illuminated the old man's face as he poured a glass of water from a barrel on the far end of the tavern. He wore an amiable expression, one less work-worn than the local farmers, but his gray beard and mustache betrayed the years he'd spent running his business.

“If ya’ ever want something, just come ask me, sonny. Waking me up fer’ water is better than waking me up to a robbery.”

“Sorry, pops, my old man used to smack me if I woke him up in the night,” Gallow chuckled in an attempt to shake off his rattled nerves, but this only led to grasping his ribcage in pain.

“I guess I'm just thirsty as hell from this injury," he elaborated before taking a sip of the drink. “Need to rest a lot, body takes a lot of water.”

“Everybody seems ta’ want the water around here," the saloon owner said with a hint of cynicism.

“Oh yeah, is there some kinda’ spring in this town?” Gallow recalled what had started the altercation earlier that day.

Sighing from his heart, the bartender began with an exhausted voice: “There was an old story in these parts about a magic Spring which would never deplete, and where fairies and spirits would appear. Every now and then we get some fool in town asking about where he could find it, none of them have ever been so violent about it before, though.”

Gallow studied the old man’s face. “I've never heard that story, is it so popular?”

“It’s more of a local legend,” the bartender explained. “Most children hear it growin’ up around here.”

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“Well, figures, I'm not from these parts,” Gallow confessed, a strange, light smile sneaking onto his face; it was almost a grimace.

“Thought so, your accent doesn't sound like a Southerner's.”

“I'm Mid-Central, actually.” Gallow twiddled his thumbs, averting his eyes as he said it; it had been a long time since he’d talked about his background.

The man's eyes perked up. “You don't say?”

“Born and raised,” Gallow gleamed with a bit more confidence, not expecting a positive reception..

"We don't get too many people moving West,” the bartender explained. “Most people go North, where the grass is greener I suppose.”

They both leaned back and watched the candle flicker in the dark, its oil now considerably cheaper after the cattle industry had moved closer, making fat byproduct more abundant. In the long silence, thoughts swirled and ruminated, germinating in the mind.

“Do you think a place like that could exist?” Gallow broke the silence.

“What, the North?” The bartender responded with a straight face, despite his sarcasm.

Gallow looked into his glass. “No, the Spring.”

“I know I've never seen it.” When one has been around for a while and considered questions like this with a sense of humor, they usually have some kind of response like this stored in their back pocket.

A second of silence followed which was as heavy as the previous minutes combined.

“Alrighty…” Gallow took another small sip of his drink, ready to turn back in. “Hey,” he added. “Did I ever ask you your name?”

“Gabriel,” the bartender replied with a succinct readiness.

Gallow sipped once more and stuck out his hand. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gabriel.”

Gabriel took his hand and held it for a moment, staring at the glass of water. “Hey, are you trying to drag out that glass?”

A confused look crossed Gallow's face, and he glanced at his drink, still almost half full despite having been nursing it for the better part of the minutes they’d been chatting. “No? Why do you ask?”

“Most people just gulp down water when they're thirsty.”

Gallow grinned knowingly and shook the glass. “If you sip it slowly you absorb more of it into your system.”

“Huh, where’d ya’ learn that?” Gabriel wondered.

“Oh, it’s just…” Gallow paused for a split second, looking away while he formed the rest of his sentence. “A couple things they teach you in the army.”

“The army?!” Gabriel exclaimed, nearly throwing his hands up in the air.

Gallow shifted in his seat. “Oh, yeah, maybe it didn't look like it from my clothing,” he said in just over a mumble. “Yeah, I was army.”

“Are ya’ some kind of deserter, kid?” Gabriel wondered with a sudden graveness in his tone.

Gallow pondered the question for a second, his face going blank, and then, instead of averting his gaze, peered keenly into the older man's eyes, as if challenging him to believe what he was about to say.

“I shouldn't have been there in the first place.”

His tone cut to the marrow.

“Look here,” Gabriel laid his hands on the table. “If you're some kinda deserter, I don’t care how many villains you shoot out here, the military is gonna come out here lookin’ for you and we’re all gonna’ be in big trouble!” He was almost scolding, but betrayed the fact that he was really concerned for both of them with the shakiness of his voice.

Gallow leaned back into the air. “Trust me, the army didn't want me either.”

“Those military bastards go around razing towns for harborin’ deserters like you, and we’re the ones who actually have to worry about foreigners comin’ in to invade us! Those bastards just get fat because it's peacetime in the nation, they don't care whether or not their own citizens get hurt!”

Gallow watched the old man rant for some time with amusement. Eventually, the only water left in his glass was a thin broken ring at the bottom.

“Well, I've got to go turn in, I really need my rest.”

Gabriel paused his righteous fury to look about the room.

“I suppose it is pretty late,” he admitted as Gallow got up from his seat and headed to the stairwell, leaving him alone at the bar.

---

That night Gallow's dreams were filled with a sense of dread for the coming days, a routine nightmare. Repeatedly he saw visions of burning homes and his own charred body hanging onto the edge of the Earth. As the first rays of light washed through his window, he awoke, having been trained to pull himself out of the embrace of sleep at the crack of dawn. With tired eyes, he looked at the sun rising over the horizon, recalling his wicked dreams.

He rubbed the sleep out of his tear ducts and pulled back his right hand, examining the engraving left on it.

“Some sigil you are…”