1. What is your ethnicity?
Half-breed. I don’t know which half, or which tribe; but I’ve been told I was found in the Kansas Territories in 1863. I was three, possibly four. [PN: For the record, she’s Comanche.]
2. Describe your family, as it stands today.
Molly favours her left side, and Beshe keeps to the back.
3. What are the major highlights of your past, leading up to the present?
My earliest memory is travelling across open plains: first on horseback, then with a wagon full of children: into Wyoming. They were white, and I knew I did not belong with them; but they were nice to me, and fed me, and gave me an education. They treated me as one of their own, yet I could never embrace them as they embraced me – I would try, but the ghosts of my forebears would punish me for it. I would wake screaming in the night, covered in welts and scratches that would fade as you watched them.
Over time others in the community began to suspect me of being possessed by evil spirits, and when I was nine the clergy forced me into baptism. I pleaded with my adoptive parents to stop them, but they clutched their bibles and did nothing. The terror of being held underwater stopped my heart, and in those moments of death I saw clearly for the first time the world that lies beyond our own. A host of spirits welcomed me, embraced me as brethren, and I was at peace. But then the mists parted, and I vomited water onto the floor, and the church was alive with music and praise to the white man’s god. They wrapped me in a blanket and showered me with affection, but all I felt was betrayal.
That night, I woke from my sleep to see a Native man standing outside my window. He held up a finger to me to be silent, and beckoned me outside. As I followed him he told me of the evils of the white man: how he’d swept across our land as a sickness, slaughtered our people like cattle and left them to rot in the sun. He filled me with such hate and rage that it wasn’t until the heat of the flames scalded my face that I realized I’d set the church on fire, and that he was gone.
I was apprehended, and as a result of my age was sent to live in penance at Saint Nicholas Mission in North Platte, where I remained until 1876. Life at St. Nicholas was quiet: I received a finishing school level of education in arts and languages: and although mutual trust was never achieved the sisters and I did respect each other. Eventually the day came when I needed to make a choice between continuing my life with them or set off on my own. I (much to their unspoken relief) chose to leave.
I headed south into Kansas, falling in along the way with an old gambler from Arizona named Clay Wheeler who mistook me for Mexican and constantly called me “muy sombra”. He taught me how to play cards, how to shoot a pistol, how to call a bluff and pull my own. We made our way to Dodge City, where he showed me what to buy and how to dress, and which hotels ran the best faro and poker games. He’d sit to the side and sip sarsaparilla while I gambled, and it wasn’t until we’d been there a week that I realized he’d never been there at all: Like the Native man that had lured me to set fire to the church, my mentor had been a spectre.
After that, I became very wary of those I made company with. I gained a reputation for keeping people at a distance, and earned the name “Temper” Black.
The first time I made a deal with a Manitou was in the early spring of 1877. I’d gotten in deep with a group of railroad men during a game, and when time came to pay up I was unable to meet their satisfaction, at which point one of them threatened to take the balance out of my virtue. Guns were drawn, shots were fired, and I was dragged out back and struck several times before I broke free and ran off into the night. As I crouched with gun in hand behind a stack of crates in an alleyway, waiting for the world to stop spinning, a voice above me asked if I planned to stay there all night. When I looked up, I saw a young man – my age, if not a few years more – seated atop the crates shuffling a deck of cards. I motioned him to be quiet as the men looking for me paused at the end of the alley and split up in the darkness. The man on the crates asked if they were looking for me, to which I nodded my head but said nothing. He hummed thoughtfully, and then held the cards down to me.
“I’ll get rid of them,” he said, “if you can draw a face out of this deck.”
The men that’d started toward my hiding spot were drawing closer by the moment, kicking crates and upending barrels as they came. Since two guns in the situation were better than one, and I was groggy from the thrashing I’d taken already, I reached up without hesitation and split the deck, showing him the bottom card. He grinned in a feral sort of way, dropped the rest of the cards, and vanished off the other side of the crates. I looked at the queen of spades in my hand as, out of sight, the men shouted in terror. There was a flash of light, a heavy thud, and then darkness. I woke up several weeks later in a hotel in Golden City. Since then I have come to understand what I am capable of, although the details of how I moved from Kansas to the Colorado Territories remains a mystery. Thankfully, I have not experienced a similar blackout since.
4. How would you describe your personality?
I’m cautious and standoffish. Comes from not knowing half the time if the person sitting next to me is real or imagined.
5. How would your loved ones describe you?
Assuming they count: I suppose Molly would call me misunderstood, or something equally optimistic. Beshe probably thinks I’m cracked as a Christmas nut half the time. Can’t say as I argue with the assessment.
6. How would people you barely know describe you?
Mean, but smart. I haven’t come by the moniker “Temper” for nothing.
7. How would you like people to view you?
I know I bring a lot of it on myself (again, it’s hard to tell sometimes if the person talking to me is really there), but it’d be nice to have people look at me like I’m important to them, rather than keep an eye on me because I might do something insane.
8. What are your interests and hobbies, outside of work?
If you’re equating “gambling” and “hex slinging” to my job, then I would have to say my hobbies are writing and attending the theatre. I also enjoy smoking, drinking, and sex (not necessarily in that order).
9. Describe your family and best friends, outside of work.
Again, assuming cards and spells are my monetary trade, then my circle of acquaintances shrinks with very little crossover, and all of them have already been named.
10. Who do you consider your enemies? Be specific when possible.
There are several Manitou that would most certainly be considered enemies were I to lose a game to them, but at this time I the only one I have a name for is “Red Coyote”. He is the one I play against the most, and will skulk at the periphery of my vision as I cast, licking his teeth with lips pulled back. He’s waiting for the day I lose, so he can tear my throat out and drag me into the next life.
11. What is most important to you?
I’m not sure. Freedom, I suppose, and friends in the right places.
12. What do you think happens when you die?
“On the shores of the next life is where your family waits, the entirety of your ancestry spanning back through time. They will fold you to their bosom and welcome you home, and your hearts will merge as one again.”
13. What is your worst nightmare?
That #12 will be wrong, and that I’m actually insane to boot.
