Of men and marines
A young gypsy woman steps up to the sign and looks around. A golden yellow shawl looped over her shoulders does little to hide the scarlet of her outfit. "Well it's about bloody time I found my way here. I've been hearing about this place forever and I need, if not answers, maybe advice." She fidgets with the end of her shawl trying to think how best to phrase her question.
"So there's this marine that I've been involved with for over a year now. For the most part, it's a casual relationship with a lot of good times. However we've always been someone that the other could turn to when they needed to talk things out, shared bits of our past not shared with anyone else, been there when the other was going through some pretty hard times. Usually Lady Fate has been kind and only put one of us through the wringer at a time, until recently. We and a few others were in a bad situation. He was supposed to be leading the task that we were on when a crisis fell and a hard choice had to be made and had to be made quickly. He wanted to spend a lot of time avoiding making the decision, while two others suffered. So I made the decision. Everyone else agreed that it was the right thing to do, especially the ones that it affected most. Even after we knew what course was left to us, the Captain had split off from us with another, searching through a poisonus maze for another way into an area that we knew to be a dead end. More bad stuff happened and out paths were split apart forcing us to return to our town by different roads."
She stops to gather her thoughts, trying to keep the worst of the details out of the story, but unable to keep them from her mind. "The decision that had to be made is one that I have had to make before, and from prior discussions, he knew how hard that had to be on me. I arrived in town before him, waiting anxiously to see that he arrived back and hopefully to talk with him as I greatly needed it, if for nothing else to hear a kind voice. I sat near the edge of town, outside the local inn and near the road I knew he would have to be approaching by. I had to give an account to the local athorities....a debrifing of sorts while I waited for him. And that's when he came back, and he saw me.....and he turned his back to me and walked away. It hurt. It hurt enough that I decided that perhaps I would be better heading home to speak with my family there. That was four months past. Now he has shown up in the capital city where my father lives...and he wants to pretend that nothing has changed between us.
So this is what I ask: If you were in a similar situation, and someone knew that you needed council and still they turned away from you, would you be willing to trust them again? Would you be willing to council them in the same way they had not done for you? or would you turn away as they had done and take your life in a different course?"