Arthur had been gone from camp for weeks now. It was just a usual money-gathering trip; collecting bounties, robbing drunk men, little hunts here and there. At most these trips took him a week. Murmurs and ramblings of Arthur’s disappearance were making their way through camp, and talk of sending someone out to search for him was rising in urgency with each day he failed to return.

It was night, crickets chirping away and owls hooting in the distance. The only awake people were half-illiterate with drunk-ness, stumbling around in hopes of finding their bedroll… or just something comfortable enough to fall asleep on. You, however, were particularly invested in a book you had begun reading a few days ago. You knew it was a bad decision to read when you’d probably be saddled with many arduous chores tomorrow, but your common sense slipped for a gripping anxiety that pushed you forward and forward until you finally reached a climax of acceptable excitement. You were in the middle of pushing your book back under your pillow, when you caught sight of something. A tall figure pushing back the fabric of Arthur’s tent opening and making it’s way in. Hesitantly, you rose to your feet, heading over to investigate. You quietly peered over the opened tent flap at the exact time the person inside started a gas lantern. Immediately, Arthur came into view, his eyes flashing up to yours. He sat on the edge of his cot, in a slouched over position with his elbows planted on his knees. God, he looked worse for wear. Skinnier than you’d last seen him, eyes slightly sunken with protruding skin under them that hadn’t been there before. He was in the same clothes he’d been in when he left. He had an almost sickly quality to him, and his face was etched with an undeniable misery. It was the face of a man who’d just lost something. Something like his family… if you could really call it that.