Chapter 19:
My first life was a bore, so now I got another 7?!
After this conversation had ended, we turned our attention again towards topics that were less far in the future than space travel or airplanes. The starlight seemed to get more intense with every minute we were looking up and I felt a strange feeling of accomplishment by just sitting there and talking with her.
There were some moments of active conversations, sometimes even discussions about different topics, then again moments of silence.
During one of these silent moments, she suddenly pointed at the sky with her finger.
“Oh look!”, she exclaimed.
“What?”, I asked.
“A shooting-star. But its already gone.”
“Did you wish for something?”
“If I told you, it wouldn’t come true.”
With these words, she stood up again.
“It’s getting late, and we still have to walk back.”
She was right. Originally, I had been the one who told everybody to get a good night’s rest and now I was likely to be the last to go to bed.
We started our descend from the hill and walked back on the way we had taken before.
“So, what do you, when you spend your days alone, if you allow me the question?”
“I usually read a lot.”
“Which type of books do you prefer?”
“You can’t be picky out here. Usually, I can call myself lucky if I find a book somewhere which I haven’t read yet. By now I have read almost everything I could get my hands on. Novels, scientific essays, once even a dictionary. Can’t recommend. Starting with ‘a’ you could still find some new interesting words. After arriving at ‘b’ it gets monotone and as soon as you reach ‘c’ you feel like the whole idea was ridiculous to begin with.”
“How bored does one have to be to read a dictionary?”, I laughed.
“On some days, so much that it is almost unbearable.”, she replied.
Casey lowered her gaze and seemed to sink into her thoughts, before she continued to speak.
“Sometimes the people around here all sound the same, like they are trapped in a maze of the thoughts that the people who came before them had already thought. Like they don’t want to change or improve anything, even if everybody would profit from it. If you then try to bring up new ideas, then they seem to listen, but you can see it in their eyes. Actually they don’t even think about it.”
Her tone had completely changed all of a sudden.
“Is this your own experience in our town?”, I asked.
“It was my mothers back then, before we came here. I don’t need any company, if the company I get consists of people like this.”
“Sounds like a lonely way of living.”
“You get used to it.”
“That’s what I tried to tell myself as well. ‘You get used to it.’, ‘it’s better like this.’, but that’s not how we humans work. Everybody needs somebody in order to not drown in ones own thoughts.”
Casey looked at me for a moment while we continued our way.
“Experience?”
“More a conclusion of mine, which I accepted as a fact some time ago.”, I replied. Calling it an experience I had made, sounded to me like I had experienced it and then decided to change something. The decision hadn’t been mine.
“You really think like this?”
“Just a random thought that appeared after making it until ‘E’.”
This time she didn’t even try to hide her laughter. It was a heartfelt short laughter. One of the kind that didn’t last long, but lifted ones mood for a significantly longer amount of time.
We continued our way in silence until we arrived at the place where our walk had started.
“It has been a pleasure to walk with you.”, she said in an untypical courteous way.
“It’s my job to protect people who want to go for a walk in the middle of night without any reason.”, I replied with the same mischief I thought to see in her eyes.
Casey walked towards the front door of her house, before turning around one last time.
“Maybe you are right with what you said. I hope we can repeat this one day.”
“You know where to find me.”
Having said that I turned around and left.
The Saloon was covered in complete darkness by now. Even the strongest drinkers had already returned to their homes and only Casey and I had been awake for who knows how long already.
I carefully climbed up the stairs towards my room, trying not to make too much noise in order to not wake up Gav.
My room seemed almost awfully calm after the long walk. There had been noises all the time. Insects, nocturnal birds and whatever. Now I was alone with my thoughts once more and for some reason they only seemed to dwell on the conversation I just had.
How long had it been since the last time I had a somewhat deep conversation with anybody? I couldn’t remember. Maybe I never even had one to begin with.
I prepared myself for going to sleep, and soon after laid down in my bed. But my thoughts still swirled around in my head, searching for a place to stay, connect with other thoughts and finally making some sense in one way or another.
Waking up by dawn would be quite impossible if the night proceeded like this.
When I finally fell into a restless sleep, it was filled with different dreams. Maybe it was the same dream, but I just forgot how one thing led to another.
I remember taking a walk with Casey. On the moon. The ground had a grey shade and we were less walking than jumping on our way to the next crater.
“When I came here our town was still a frontier town. Now the railroad arrives. Things have changed a lot, haven’t they?”
The next thing I remember is that I stand in the middle of old branch town, in front of me three men. Two point their guns at me and the third in the middle looking awfully happy about himself.
“Let’s finally end this.”, he said and with a move of his hand he ordered the other two to shoot.
I fell. My Vision grew dark.
“Shota!”, said a voice I couldn’t recognize anymore. My ears felt as if they were under water.
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