"Looks like some kids are looting the body," said Evelyn's brother, watching from the doorway.
Being carried in by Bonnie, and barely having stepped inside the house, Evelyn sighed.
"Let them. Someone probably already picked it clean before they got there. If they blow themselves up with the discs that bastard was carrying, that's not my problem."
"The discs… what exactly are they? Something the size of a coin shouldn't be able to explode like that," said Bonnie.
'At least, not in an era like this one.'
And she was right. Despite the significant technological advances this world had thanks to steam-powered machinery in the larger cities, the development of weapons for warfare wouldn't come until years down the line — assuming this world followed a timeline at all similar to Earth's in relation to the first world war, and everything after.
"I don't even know how those things work," Evelyn answered. "And I have no interest in getting involved with anything that dangerous. I'm too dumb for it — I'd probably blow my own face off by accident."
The boy who had closed the door behind them laughed.
"Shut up, Daniel. You're even dumber."
'So his name is Daniel.'
Bonnie barely had time to glance at Daniel before she helped Evelyn to the same room as the night before and let her lie back down.
"Should I call your grandmother? I didn't see her when we came in."
Evelyn shook her head.
"No need. She's right behind you."
'Wonderful… Thanks for saving me the heart attack,' Bonnie thought. She stepped aside and the old woman walked into the room.
The grandmother looked at Thieving Cat for a few seconds. This time, the fury on her face had almost completely faded. Though she still looked like she held a grudge against the entire world — and like the world held one right back.
"What did you think of the duel, Grandma? Did you enjoy it? That man walked straight into my trap."
The old woman shook her head. She moved to the bedside and pulled out the "sewing" tools again to treat her granddaughter's wounds.
"If everyone could summon a cat, anyone could do what you did. You still have a long way to go, you foolish brat."
"Yeah, yeah. You know more, I know less. I'm dumb, you're clever. Can you patch me up now?"
"What does it look like I'm about to do? Or are you going blind on top of everything else?"
"Guess we'll find out," Evelyn answered with a pained laugh.
Bonnie watched the two of them interact more carefully this time. Yesterday it had seemed like the old woman genuinely hated Evelyn — but maybe she had been reading it all too shallow. Beneath every insult and every cutting remark this old woman threw out, there was something else there — a strange, almost absurd kind of love for her family.
She wasn't sure if that reading was right, but Bonnie couldn't think of another explanation. Besides, the grandmother didn't hesitate for a second to treat her granddaughter's wounds, even while insulting her through the whole process.
'I think… I still have so much to learn about people.'
The treatment and the goodbyes that followed would take a little while longer.
━━━━━✧❃✧━━━━━
New clothes, new bandages — a fresh start. Two hours later, Evelyn was ready to go, though the wounds clearly still caused her a great deal of pain. She walked alongside Bonnie, gazing out at the street without appearing the least bit disturbed after having killed a man.
Bonnie couldn't help stealing short glances at her, trying to work out whether it was actually possible for a person with six bullet wounds to walk around like nothing had happened. What made even less sense was that this same woman intended to ride a horse in that condition.
'I don't understand. What is she made of? Steel?'
No matter how she turned it over in her mind, the only thing she could attribute this inhuman resilience to was the supernatural powers. She still needed to learn about them — but for now, Capella was waiting.
Evelyn looked over the resting horses. Hers was there — white and beautiful as winter snow. It looked perfectly healthy, though a few stains of its rider's blood clung to its fine coat.
"Oh, Storm. You have no idea how hard it was without you," said Thieving Cat, wrapping one arm around the horse's neck — the other being bandaged.
'She talks to her horse too…'
Bonnie wasn't the only one who did that anymore. Though if talking to an animal was a sign of losing your mind, then a good portion of Samuel's world would qualify.
On her end, Bonnie walked over to her own horse. Capella was waiting, her perfectly black eyes staring out at the empty distance.
Bonnie rested her hand on the mare and let a small smile cross her face.
"I'm back, girl. And I brought your food."
She pulled a carrot from the bag and held it out. Capella happily chewed it down to nothing.
"Is that your horse? She's beautiful," Evelyn said.
"She is. Her name is Capella. She's something like my best friend."
"That's really sweet. This troublemaker over here is Storm. He was a wild horse — took me a long time to break him in, but here we are. Don't get too close, though. He bites and kicks anyone he doesn't like."
'A real handful, huh…'
If that was true, Capella was like a gentle farm puppy compared to Storm.
"Anyway — no time to waste. Help me up? As long as you're with me, Storm won't try anything, so don't be scared."
"Okay…"
With some hesitation, she helped Evelyn into the saddle. Once Thieving Cat had the reins in one hand and glanced over at Capella, Bonnie understood and didn't take long to climb up herself.
"So — my gang should be waiting for me in the mountains near the Guinevere River. That's where I last saw them, close to the Ashwood railroad line. Do you know where that is?"
Bonnie frowned with suspicion. The question had come out of nowhere.
"More or less, even though I've never been there. Why do you ask? Don't you know where it is?"
Evelyn smiled pleasantly and said:
"I have absolutely no idea. I'm terrible with directions. And you know what the worst part is? I ended up here completely by luck. You have no idea how relieved I was when I recognized the mesas near this town. If I hadn't found somewhere to hide, that very dead man back there would've found me first and finished the job."
Thieving Cat's smile was enough to make Bonnie feel sorry for her. Even so, it was hard to believe that an outlaw had no sense of direction. Outlaws were people who traveled constantly — there was a big difference between knowing how to move through the world and leaving everything up to chance.
"But don't worry, Bonnie. We'll find our way there somehow. It might just take a little while."
Sighing with exhaustion, Bonnie opened one of her saddlebags and pulled out her maps along with her measuring tools.
"That won't be necessary. I'll handle the route."
"What? You can read maps! Oh…" Evelyn winced, pressing a hand to her abdomen.
"It's something my tutor taught me. I won't say I'm an expert, but I'm not terrible either."
"A tutor? Aren't tutors the private teachers that wealthy men hire for their children? Bonnie — who exactly are you? I'm starting to get very curious."
Thieving Cat smiled with a knowing look.
Tracing the path with a pencil, Bonnie answered:
"Well… my father is Nicolás Jones. If you know who that is, then you already know that I'm Bonnie Jones."
Silence…
Evelyn stared at Bonnie with wide eyes, as though she couldn't quite believe it.
This made Bonnie uncomfortable enough to pull her shoulders in with embarrassment.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Evelyn shook her head.
"It's nothing. It's just… Wow…" said Thieving Cat, turning her gaze back to the road. "A wealthy girl, daughter of a mining magnate, turned outlaw… You have no idea what the newspapers are going to say about you."
"Maybe they've already started. I don't know, and I don't care."
She finished tracing the route. She looked toward the exit of the town through a gap between two buildings and pointed in that direction. Evelyn looked at the gesture, confused.
"We head north first," said Bonnie.
"Huh? What?"
"Then we take a detour west through the flatlands near the Red Canyon, and from there we loop around the mountains near the Hellbells plain to reach the railroad tracks by the Guinevere River. All in all, it should take us about two or three days on horseback."
"Wow… That's exactly what Lady said…" she murmured.
"Lady?"
"Yeah. Her. You're going to get along with her — she knows all about maps, math, poetry, stars, all that rich-kid stuff. I barely got to go to school as a girl, so all I can really do is read, write, and count money. Most of the time I have no idea what she's talking about — but I'm sure you will."
"I can't wait to meet her…" said Bonnie — though she already had something else entirely in mind.
'I need to ask her about the powers now. If I can learn to use them, this whole journey will go a lot smoother.'
━━━━━✧❃✧━━━━━
It was nearly midday, and a woman was cleaning a bullet wound on her arm with water from the bank of a wide river. On her side of the river, the trees were green, the soil was rich, and small birds sang feverishly overhead.
Her expression was somewhat stern on a face that suggested she was in her early thirties or beyond — though her brown eyes held a faint, quiet glimmer of calm beneath it all.
After a while, she tied the bandage around her arm and looked up at the blue sky.
Behind her, a young woman was busy tying a pair of corpses to a wooden log. They were two men dressed much like the late Wild Dog.
The girl wore a focused smile as she worked through the knots with the precision of a seasoned scout.
"All done, Vicky," she said, patting one of the bodies. Her tone was composed and vaguely serious. Her expression matched — a calculating look behind a pair of rectangular glasses.
The woman sighed.
"Roll them into the river. If anyone finds them, they won't trace it back to us. They're fugitives too. We'd practically be doing the sheriff a favor."
"That's exactly what I was thinking."
The girl rolled the log into the river, and it plunged into the water, carried swiftly downstream by the current. It shrank into the horizon and disappeared.
"Hey — do you have any idea when we'll run into Evelyn? She's completely hopeless with directions. I wouldn't be shocked if she never finds her way back to us."
The woman rose from the rock where she had been sitting and pulled her shirt sleeve back down.
"She'll turn up. We keep heading toward Hellbells. With any luck, we'll run into her on the way."
"Right — because an outlaw's luck runs deeper than most people's," the girl said dryly.
Both of them gathered their things and stepped into the forest, disappearing into the green