The gunslinger, Roland, leans back against the large mass of a fallen tree, rolling a cigarette as he contemplates the question. Some memories were too difficult, too painful, even centuries later. These raw young companions of Ka's will knew nothing and remembered not the faces of their fathers.
Roland sighed. Even the ka-mates of his youth, who were forged by the same training and fire as he, would not have asked about Susan. These newcomers to his world, drawn by the will of Ka, didn't have enough sense to know when silence was best. Still, it was his fault, after all, for singing a song to remind himself of days long relegated to the recesses of memory, a song about a pretty girl in the window.
"What you have to undearstand," the gunslinger began, looking his ka-tet in the eyes one by one around the fire, "is that the world had not yet moved on. I was young and the tower had not yet taken root in me. The seeds were not yet planted that would grow to define the will of Ka, fate if ye ken, in my life."
"It was my 14th Summer when my father sent me away from Gilead and the danger he sensed for me there. I had unexpectedly earned my guns years ahead of all expectation, even sooner than my own father before me, and so I was sent, a wet behind the ears gunslinger with my two best friends, yet apprentices, into Mejis to investigate whether talk of suppor there for The Good Man, John Farson, be true. Along the path into Hambry to introduce ourselves to the mayer, we happened upon the fairest young maiden I have ever seen, in the years before and in the long centuries since."
The gunslinger stops, memory taking hold of him for a few moments as the rest sit in silence, waiting for him to continue. He lights his hand rolled cigarette absently and stretches out, thinking on how to tell the tale.
"We were all instantly in love with her, of course. Despite the danger to our mission and the fact that she was the promised gilly to the mayor, we entered recklessly into an affair, throwing all sense and caution to the wind. It were wrong, and I knew it. Cuthbert and I nearly came to blows o'er it, but nothing could bring me to my sense. If it weren't for that wretched witch Rhea of the Coos and the cursed pink bend, Maerlyn's grapefruit, my Susan might accompany me yet."
Roland sighs, before muttering an expletive about Ka.
"The thing to ken is that the will of Ka is always served. In my bitter heart I have long considered how I might have kept it from happening, but despite all our plans and even the intervention of unexpected allies, Ka won out in th end. The deceitful witch and the despicable aunt of her's exposed our affair and in a frenzy the town declared me and my friends traitors, and Susan a traitor for helping us."
A look of agony passes across the gunslinger's face, as he seems to momentarily lose control of himself at the memory. "Hear me well, for Ka will be no kinder to you. Many days I spent trapped within the pink bend watching in horror as they burned her again and again as a Charyou Tree. A so-called traitor given up in sacrifice to gods who never existed to try and bring back prosperity that was passing out of a world already moving on. I loved her and she was killed for it, and Ka taught me the harshest lesson of all. Love must never come between me and the will of Ka. She is gone but I still remember her beautiful face in the window ... but more often I remember her screaming in agony as she burned, crying out that she loved me over and over until death took her."
As the gunslinger finished his tale, the silence of the night was broken only by the occasional crackle from the fire. Some questions are better left unasked, and some things better left unknown, say sorry.
Pyrotechnician has been killed. He was Susan Delgado. Affilliation: The White
[highlight]Day 1 has begun: With 21 players left alive it takes 11 votes to lynch and 12 votes to lock. Day 1 will end in 48 hours on Monday at 5pm Eastern[/highlight]
