You shifted your attention away from the imprints in the sand, to the meandering haze, scrutinising it for any minute wavers or deeper shades within.

“What are you doing?” Lyrebird scoffed, pushing you with her shoulder as she walked past.

You gathered and spat. “Keeping an eye out for Papoose. She might be lurking out there, lining up a shot at me,” you said, leading the barrel and the sights a complete circle.

Kneeling beside the axe, Lyrebired paused with her hand hovering inches above the steel. “I’ve done told you that ain’t what she’s after. If it were, she’d have dropped you when you were knocked out.”

“Likely are the chances that she can trail the bracelet, not me. And you’re the one who had it on.”

You took aim and fired a warning shot towards the vague horizon, the mist echoing the gunshot.

“You hiding in there, Papoose?!” you yelled. “Eyeballing me this very moment? Show yourself if so!”

Goodwin startled, retreating a step as he looked down your revolver. Lyrebird flinched, too, looking at you over her shoulder.

“Don’t give me such a start again, ‘Only Dead’ Aug. Leastways, holler a warning first” she said. “You are just being paranoid.”

“You ain’t being paranoid enough,” you said. “One deadly shot’s all it takes to damn me, and be her ticket out of here. You can’t put faith in her nor her words with those odds.”

Lyrebired picked up the axe, shaking her head and then lifting it off. “You’d still be worth something as a Judged, still got some use left in you after”, she said. “So, you see her?”

You narrowed your eyes, scanning the mist again. “Nah. I don’t. If she’s in yonder, she’s hiding it well.”

“There’s some scribbling here,” she said, as if ignoring you. She lifted it closer. “It reads, and I quote:

‘Stout is the truth; deceit's all hollow. Round up the tinder, stack it higher, To find the answer in the pale fire.’”

You scrubbed your beard with the cylinder, pondering. A moment after, you spoke, “I ain’t wise to no ‘pale fires’, but it looks like we’re being nudged to speak honest.”

“Speak honest?” Lyrebired echoed. “What kind of truth does it want?” She rose to her feet, cracking a knee bone. “I reckon, a truth that ain’t meant for either of you to know?”

Goodwin looked at her, a mixture of confusion and loss in his eyes; you shrugged.

Lyrebired turned to the axe. “Goodwin, we ain’t wed, not afore or since.” She locked eyes—her blue fires—with him. “I scarce knew you before coming here, and I came here after. I never minded you calling me your wife, still don’t. You words were how you enjoyed life here, like the saloon’s luckiest crapshooter, said you found the Down Below more entertaining than the living world. You agreed to help me track down my daughters, and if they were to forgive me, ever, we’d settle here together, the four of us.”