Darkness fell over Windust’s plains as they made their way back.

Mora wouldn’t stop raving about the skysail, her childlike excitement detached from the enormity of what they’d witnessed. “It was just awesome! No one is going to believe I saw that. You have to tell them, Petyr! You have to tell them you saw it too!”

Petyr wasn’t even really listening. His eyes were out of focus, his thoughts turned inwards. He considered himself a rather detached person, but still… he may have just watched dozens of men die.

It was a strange feeling because there were no corpses to point to. Part of him wanted to believe that maybe it was just some strange thing they’d come upon without the right context to understand it. Maybe the ship had been empty.

Maybe…

Or, if not that, maybe he’d just been hit too hard in the head. Maybe he imagined the whole thing—not that it explained why Mora would’ve seen it all as well.

“Petyr, are you okay?” she said, tugging lightly at his sleeve again. Somewhere in the distance, a cotoye howled.

Petyr ran a hand through his lustrous hair and shook her hand off. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what you did.”

“I said I’m sorry, didn’t I?” Mora shot back.

“You could’ve killed me.”

“There’s no way! And besides, you know what this means, right? Because you had the bad luck to take that rock in the head, that means a lot of good luck will come your way soon.”

Petyr snorted derisively. If only it were that easy.

I shouldn’t have let Jayne go like that. Was she his dream girl? No. But she was a girl, one he had yet to fool around with—a quickly-depleting resource in this dusty wasteland.

Although that whole conversation with her and the way she’d brought up how long he’d been here left him with a bad taste in his mouth. It really had been a long time, hadn’t it? Petyr still vaguely remembered how his father had promised they’d only move away for a few months. But then they’d settled in, gotten comfortable, then Alis came to live with them and now…

Thirteen years of Windust. Had it really been that long? Weirdly enough, he rarely thought to count the years. It always seemed like he had only just left the capital to come here.

Another thirteen years and he’d be exactly thirty. Ancient.

But no, that was… that wasn’t possible. I won’t be here for much longer. Even if I have to leave by myself, I will.

Completely ignorant of the tumult in his mind, Mora searched for his eyes and said, “Do you think there’s going to be a war?”

“A war? What’re you talking about?”

“With those Soverni guys.”

“The Soverne Republic doesn’t do wars,” said Petyr, incredulous at her stupidity. “What they do is trade. And their island is far, far away to the south. Why the hell would they want Weston? Why would they want Windust? What you think they want all”—he spread out his arms to encompass the endless dry grass and distant wheat fields—”this nothing?”

Mora frowned. Her tongue flickered across her small bottom teeth. “But they destroyed that ship.”

“A pirate ship.”

“But they could’ve been from here!”

Petyr rolled his eyes. “Like that matters. A pirate is a pirate. They’re scum. It doesn’t matter who kills them or why. Anyone has a right to.”

By the look on her face, Mora didn’t seem entirely convinced by this take. Truth be told, he wasn’t entirely convinced himself. They were just pirates though, Petyr told himself. They had it coming.

He wondered if perhaps instead of going home he should’ve gone and told someone what happened. But who would he even tell? Windust had no governor. A few decades back, the farmers in the area had risen up against the officials and sent them packing, igniting a kind of rebellion. To their surprise, the disciplining forces from the capital never arrived.

To Weston’s ruling elites, Windust was already a hopeless region, an impoverished wasteland constantly afflicted by droughts, floods, and bandits. Given the desperation in the area, the place not only made for a safe haven for banditry, but created most of the criminals that ended up plaguing other regions and the streets of the capital.

Abandoning Windust to its fate was an expedience demanded by the opportunity the rebellion presented.

Nominally, Windust remained a part of Weston, at least according to the maps. In practice, however, the river that ran along Windust’s eastern edge divided it from the kingdom proper, and rotting bridges that ran over the river had all been torn down to be replaced by a new single stone bridge that functioned as a gatehouse, not allowing anyone in or out. The bandits still found their way, of course. But a Windust farmer would have greater luck building his own boat and sailing away than getting back into Weston proper without enough silver to buy a permit.

In all the years he’d been here, Petyr couldn’t think of one person that had ever moved away. That just didn’t happen.

I can think of many that died or got killed, though…

The lingering splinter of something unwanted pressed against his consciousness. Petyr remembered the last time death caught him by surprise.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

A few months ago, he was on his usual morning stroll towards town when he noticed a strange shape in the distance. The path to town climbed up a hill from where you could see the entirety of town, and on the top of that hill perched a small orchard where a lone tree overlooked the road.

Dangling from one of its branches was what appeared to be a man. Naturally, Petyr assume it to be some sort of scarecrow. If not, then another prank by the kids: some of the little shits that ran around the place could be worse than the bandits.

As he drew closer, Petyr realized his first visceral assumption had been the right one. It was a man. Or had been. Not just that, but a man he recognized, Blind Bill. They called him that because he was in the habit of getting so drunk when he visited town that he’d stumble around, groping for anything to latch onto, just like a blind man—sometimes people’s faces, sometimes ending up in their homes. Not exactly the most beloved figure in the area…

Petyr knew him better as Dayna’s father, one of the girls he’d crushed on hardest during his stay here in Windust, a tiny and feisty little blonde that he’d never gotten away with doing everything he wanted to. He remembered Blind Bill chasing him away from his daughter more than once, acting as if she were some princess to be guarded rather than the surprisingly decent spawn of such a crooked-nosed drunk. Petyr had been quite indignant about it at the time, even bringing up the injustice of his treatment to his father. But then the matter had been forgotten.

It was strange to think that the corpse, swaying gently from the tree with a soft creak of the branches, was the same person he saw so clearly in his mind.

What surprised him, too, was the light fury that took hold of him at the sight of it. Yes, Blind Bill was a worthless son of a bitch. But surely he hadn't done anything to deserve such treatment. What crime supposedly justified this?

As much as Petyr heard of bad things happening to strangers, this was a person he'd known, even if barely. It made it personal.

Later, he heard that Blind Bill had assaulted one of the working girls at the bar, or maybe threatened one of the bandits there. The exact reason seemed elusive, if not entirely inexistent...

Though city boy of means, Petyr had enough street smarts to know not to ask much else about it. Asking the wrong questions wouldn't bring anyone back from the dead, but it could definitely help you join them.

Next thing he knew, Dayna became a part of working girls at the tavern, her body now for sale.

Strangely, Petyr had never spoken to her since. If they accidentally made eye contact when he stopped by the tavern, they pretended not to know each other. And what was there to say, really? Their fling petered out. Her father was dead. Now she was a whore. What more was there to it?

That's life for you.

A coyote howled somewhere in the dark, snapping Petyr back to the present.

He blinked and glanced sideways at Mora. “…never stop anywhere, just fly wherever I want…” Her face was blissfully unaware of where his mind had gone.

As he kicked up light dust with his steps, path lighted by the starlit sky, Petyr thought about the way Blind Bill hung from that tree branch, and he thought about the men that were probably under that wreckage.

The thought that his life might end as bleakly sent a surge of dread through him.

No. He cut the thought away, like a great weight dangling from a fraying rope.

That couldn’t happen to him. He just wasn’t that kind of person. Whether he was the delight of the gods or just too special for such an ending, Petyr knew it could never happen.

On a deep and fundamental level, he always trusted that he’d been born to do great things, and life had never given him any impression that went against that.

These sorts of forgettable characters no one cared about could go out that way. But not Petyr.

Of course, he wasn’t insensitive. It was regrettable that others died in such senseless ways. It wasn’t even for anyone’s entertainment—one second they were there, annoying and fully alive, the next their cold corpse was twisting from a tree branch.

But what exactly could Petyr do to change that?

Nothing. I couldn’t have done anything. Why am I even thinking about this? It’s all so pointless.

None of it personally concerned him.

If there was anything he’d learned from wooing girls in the last few years, it was that feelings could be detrimental. If not for today’s mess, he could’ve fucked Jayne and added her to the list of conquered targets. He could have gone home feeling triumphant. Instead, he’d been hit in the head, nearly killed, then was made to bear witness to a skysail obliterating a galleon on a whim.

Why the hell am I getting emotional over other people? No one’s getting emotional for me. And my day was thoroughly ruined. I could have been killed!

He glanced at Mora, this time with an indignant feeling passing through him. How could she just walk so nonchalantly at his side? Didn’t she realize the gravity of what she’d done earlier?

Petyr knew they were only a short walk from the river that skirted town, the one they’d have to cross to get home.

He would wait to reach it.

“Do you think they’d let an oni ride on a skysail?” Mora said, her dark eyes glancing up towards the stars.

“I assume so. After all, many men of means like to have their oni servants at their back and call wherever they go. Why would a skysail be any different?”

The remark was meant to wound, and he could see from her reaction that it did. The stupid brat didn’t even realize he had done it on purpose. Hah! “Well, I don’t mean as a servant…” Mora grumbled. She cast her eyes to the dirt road and hugged her arms against her chest.

“Then I’m afraid you’re out of luck. The Soverni are a very respectable people. I don’t think they’d let a free oni ride on their skysail as a lone passenger, no matter the price.”

“Respectable? You just saw them wipe out those pirates!”

“And? Weren’t you just saying how cool it was not that long ago?”

Mora breathed in sharply. “I guess… But I was trying not to think about anyone who might’ve died…”

“Well, they did all die, and good riddance. There’s undesirable elements in this world we’re just better off without.”

“You don’t mean that…” she said, giving him a long look. “You’re making me feel less bad about hitting you in the head.”

Is that right? Petyr eagerly awaited reaching the bridge.

As it happened, he did not have to wait too long.

As they made their way down a sloping portion of the road, they finally came upon the rotting wooden bridge. The whole thing groaned in the light breeze and was so old that one day it probably would kill someone when it went down.

Below it ran the Little Snake, a slow-moving piss stream of a river of little interest during most times, though in the spring it tended to flood become quite the big snake indeed.

Petyr waited until they were halfway along the bridge, when he suddenly scooped Mora up. It was funny, because she offered no resistance at first, not fully understanding what was going on. What do you think I’m doing, hmm?

Only when he stepped towards the railing did she wince and gasp. “Petyr, don’t!”

“Now you can really feel less bad about hitting me in the head, huh?”

He tossed her out and gleefully listened for her terrified shriek. She fell in with a loud splash, disappearing for a few seconds before she emerged breathlessly. “I hate you!” she sputtered, kicking wildly in the water. “I hate you!”

Petyr stepped back from the railing, teasingly pointing to her as he shouted, “You wish you did!”

A smirk spread along his face. He ran a hand through his magnificent hair and sighed wistfully. The bump left behind by Mora’s rock would shrink. Those pirates weren’t his problem, just like Bill hadn’t been. Terrible things happened all the time. If the gods didn’t care, why should he?

I just gotta look out for number one, he told himself, sliding his hands into his pockets.

Today just hadn’t been his day.

Tomorrow would be.

And the day after that…

Life is beautiful. You just have to want to see the beauty in it.