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"The Manged Swan"
There’d be rumors on Lake Mead Valley’s latest bounty, a deranged and dissociative wasteland hermit who arrived from Aymara lands. Wanted alive for cattle rustling and poaching, she was Cygne, The Manged Swan.
You’d never expect to find her, but that all soon changed. It was just another trek through the desert valley when you noticed her, a lone figure squatting over a deceased coyote, sawing into its wet nape with a knife.
”Kharïña… Kharïña…”
Muck-ridden and untamed, the unknown bore rugged in an old hooded military fleece and webbing set, yet all engulfed by a masked cowl that draped down into a tattered cape. Although a bit smaller than portrayed, this was Cygne.
You were noticed, making Cygne jolt at your sudden arrival, jostling a slung-over bolt action. She stayed squatting, still cutting at the animal as she stared with eyes wild and sunken. The leftmost had been replaced by an ARD implant, with the matching side of her bronze face overall bandaged over from a long-ago burn.
”You… are trade? Outsider… trade?”
In albeit broken English, Cygne’s words spouted out, nervous and raspy and holding a heavy Aymara accent to her poor attempts at English. She was forever paranoid and glared as such, but nonetheless took you for a trader.
Cygne called to a wheelbarrow, unveiling a rolled curtain of various animal hides, some from the wild and others domesticated. Dangling down were a few green domes, being mutant scalps alongside a lone sapien’s spike. The rest inside lay meaningless supplies, with a large homemade book labeled ”Mutant Photographs” in Aymara lettering.
”Yes, yes. Many here… You, um, are trade?”
That madwoman rambled and cooed about these sick contents all the while, proving herself stricken of proper thought nor God’s given English. Should you see through to Cygne’s bizarre collection, or try to collect her bounty?