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Dear Mr. Deschains,

I hope this isn't too forward a question to pose, but I am interested in learning to shoot. Do you offer lessons, perchance?

Very sincerely,
Evelyn Carnahan

Edited 2014-03-30 03:00 (UTC)

Not for pay. You may not like me much when we're through. If that suits, I'll teach what I can.

I might not like you much? And why is that?

The lessons I teach aren't easy. You'll only learn to shoot so maybe different. Any other weapons or only a gun?

I'm not afraid of hard work.

I think perhaps we should start with a gun and see how that goes.

We'll meet at the arena. Bring your gun if you have one. Bullets and blanks. Tell when you can meet and I'll tell if I can.

I'm available in the evenings starting two days from now. I do have a gun to bring.

First of those will do. Meet in the Arena's weapons room, six of the clock.

And there he is, six o'clock, the arena's store of weapons. It's interesting to be sure, impressive, But what's he's really looking for is bullets. He came a little early, wanting to get a little more familiar with the area and its supplies, and it would be fairly convenient if he didn't have to worry about using all sai Carnahan's ammunition before she even knows how to properly use it.

Convenience isn't something he counts on, though, not even in this place where the gods play patron and try to provide everything before travelers know they even need it. Finding such plentiful ammunition in New York was something of a miracle; finding such twice in two different worlds would be expecting far too much. But greed drives him to look anyway, and he lets it. It's too useful a thing not to know. Roland wonders that he hadn't thought to do it before.

So that's probably where she'll find him, squatting in front of a trunk, head bowed as he sorts carefully through it.

Soon after she first arrived, Evy acquired a firearm in the usual way--or the usual Asgardian way, anyway, by asking it of Odin--but in the time that's passed, she's had little reason or desire to learn to use it. First, it wasn't a pressing concern, and then she wasn't sure who to ask, and then the idea just seemed a bit distasteful all around.

But if dying has given her anything, it's the overwhelming desire not to be caught so vulnerable again. Even if the idea of shooting one's way out of a fire is ludicrous (except, perhaps, to Rick O'Connell), next time it might not be a fire.

Even now, she hasn't really found a convenient way to carry the gun. She's brought a handbag, and inside is a case, and inside the case is an unloaded Webley revolver. And that's how she arrives at the arena, feeling more than a little out of place.

"Good evening, Mr. Deschain." She looks over his shoulder at the trunk he's poking through, mildly curious. "What's that?"

"Nothing useful, unfortunately." He looks up from the various sharp metals and toward the woman behind him. Their meeting had made an impression, but it's been several weeks at least since then and he looks her over again, this time with the eye of a teacher. "I had hoped this place would provide some bullets, but we can do even without those. At least at first."

He stands and turns to face her, closing the lid of the trunk. "Well met again, sai Carnahan." Roland nods, then waves a hand toward the only place he sees to carry a weapon. "Would you mind if I looked in your gunna for the weapon? It'll be good to recognize what bullets you need, if I find any."

"My...? Oh--yes." Her bag, she supposes he means. And no, Mr. Deschain, you may not dig through it; she'll open it up and hand you the revolver case, and you can look at that. "It's a Webley & Scott. Same sort they use in the Army."

She did her research before she went asking for a gun, but they're swiftly coming to the end of what she learned. Hopefully he'll know a bit more from here about it. One gun can't be too different from another, can it? (Well, perhaps it can, but it seems like it's all essentially the same mechanism.)

"Do they?" The question's an absent one. He'll pay attention to any answer, but most of his attention goes to the case. Roland sits on the trunk he's just closed, setting the case on his lap so he can open it up. The gun within is similar to his own, at least compared to the others from other worlds that he's seen.

Unlike his, it breaks at the top to expose the cartridges and he does so, sliding one out and looking over every detail. "We'll have to see, but... powerful, I think." Placing the cartridge back inside, he closes the gun and hands it to her, keeping its case on his lap. "How familiar are you with it? Used it before, or cleaned it?"

"Yes." And since she doesn't know many details beyond that--and he doesn't seem particularly interested in the answer anyway--she falls quiet, watching him take a look at the gun.

Evy sits down next to him and takes the revolver when he hands it to her. "No--um." She shakes her head, wondering if cleaning it is something she should have attempted on her own prior to this point. "I never had reason to before now. I've only ever fired a gun once before now, actually--and it wasn't anything like this."

He nods, thinking and watching it in her hands. "Hold it a while. Keep your finger away from the trigger or keep it unloaded; best to get used to its weight before you actually fire." How to do this? From their first conversation, Roland thinks she serves the white as much as he does, in her way, but she's no gunslinger. If there's steel inside her, it's not the type to be pressed into a killing shape. How to teach just one part of that, and leave the rest? It's a question he's spent the last day thinking vaguely on.

Well. It can wait a little longer. "First I'd make certain you know how to take care of it. Without that, you can shoot bull's eyes until the river runs dry but it's still like to blow half your hand off or jam at the worst moment."

He sighs, quietly. "I'd show you with my own tools, if I had them. But I've been looking through Asgard's shops, and I think something can be adapted, if you decide you want it." Pity the poor gunslinger who hasn't even been able to relieve a little stress cleaning his gun properly.

Evy's eyebrows shoot up at the thought of blowing off a few fingers--you must understand, Mr. Deschain, she uses those. Learning to clean a gun it is, then. She holds it gingerly, considering its shape and size, and keeps her fingers well away from the trigger.

"I think we'll have to adapt," she says, after some thought. She glances up at him, trying to keep her expression placid, as though she dies and returns with a desire to learn firearms every day. With luck, she won't look as out of her depth as she feels. "Even if you had your, er, tools, I'd have to acquire my own eventually."

She's reminded of Rick again, and of sitting aboard the Sudan with him, watching him clean those monstrous guns of his. This, she takes for a good sign. She might not know Mr. Deschain's own abilities in any detail, but Rick was no slouch when it came to weaponry, and his habits would suggest that this is a necessary first step.

So did Roland, once upon a time. Of course his own missing fingers are symptom of a very different mistake, but. No sympathy here.

"True enough." He notes with approval how carefully she keeps her fingers in a safe area. She'd not seemed the type to treat the weapon lightly, certainly not once he'd warned about it. But it's still satisfying to see he's judged her well. And if a little of that hidden expression did show through, Roland would neither point it out nor see any shame in it. For one who's handled books her whole life instead of weapons, it's only right. That she's taking it seriously speaks well enough.

"Let's find a table." One hand holds her case to his side, and the other presses against a knee as he stands. "What we can do now is begin to show you how to break it down. I'd not do that on the floor, especially not with an unfamiliar weapon."

He starts out, heading toward one of the groups of rooms he'd noted earlier. "When we've time, we can collect some things with which to make your tools." It's possible he seems a little more than casually invested in this whole process. That may be because he is. Limited as the scope of this is and as frustrating the lack of supplies may be, it does feel good to teach again.

Evy stands after him, wondering how exactly one goes about carrying a gun while walking around, and quickly decides "pointed down" is likely good enough for the moment. Fingers away from the trigger, keeping its heft and feel in mind--she'll keep all his lessons in the front of her mind, an easy task at this point. There haven't been many so far.

Roland is right about her. She's not made for killing, and she'd rather not do anything of the sort; she regrets enough indirect deaths at her hands, never mind the possibility of being directly responsible. But maiming isn't beyond the pale--not when it's in self-defense, anyway--and one needs to be able to aim if one is going to hit a kneecap.

"What sort of tools do I need?" And here she'd thought a gun was enough.

Roland turns to look at her as he crosses the doorway of another room, this one with a few old tables and chairs and a small metal box sitting in one corner. She's got enough common sense to hold it properly, and that too is a good sign.

"For now, nothing more than some of these." He lifts the metal box onto one table and opens it. The things within are familiar enough to him; screwdrivers mostly, a mallet, loose screws and pins and similar things. "Do you remember how I opened your gun to check its bullets?" He sits in one of the chairs, waving a hand toward the other. "That's the first step. They need to be well out of the way before you start anything else."

It may be clear that he's not planning on demonstrating it again. It's hers to manage or fumble as she will, though as long as it's loaded he'll keep his hands close enough to take over if he needs to.

Edited (icon) 2014-04-01 16:42 (UTC)

They aren't unfamiliar items; they've simply been placed in a new context. That's a comforting realization, even if she rarely picks up a screwdriver normally anyway. She looks at them with some interest, trying to guess what each one's meant for and tempted to dig through the box for a closer look, until he speaks again.

This is a test, she knows, and a fair one. Prove you've been paying attention. Prove you can manage your own weapon--your primary tool--before you move on to more interesting bits. It's the sort of patience her own father instilled in her when she was far younger, presented with an array of tools meant for cleaning rather more delicate artifacts. Roland Deschain is nothing like Howard Carnahan, but there's something in the way he waits, watchful and expectant, that reminds her.

All that to say that she does as (indirectly) asked, and while her hands are hardly certain, she at least doesn't make too great a fool of herself. After she's set the bullets on the table, well out of the way, she looks up at him again, awaiting his next instruction.

"Start with the grip." He touches a screw about halfway up the side of that grip, then picks a couple screwdrivers out of the toolbox and studies them as he continues. "My own teacher never cared much about the order in which we broke the machine down, so long as we could put it back together after."

The corners of his eyes crinkle with a faint, amused smile as he hands her the right sized screwdriver. "Which isn't how he put it, exactly, but I don't think you need the same sort of encouragement. Study everything before you remove it. Remember. Until you know without thinking where each part goes, set it on the table in as close to the position from which it was removed as possible. There'll be a spring under either side the of grip, inside the frame; I'll show you how to push it out after you study how it fits inside."

Edited 2014-04-01 18:06 (UTC)

Evy takes the screwdriver, looking it over before she starts to use it, and smiles back at him. After a moment or two, she sets the screwdriver down, fishes out her glasses, and puts them on. Close work has never been her friend, despite how much of it she does in a day, and she'd like to be sure she's seeing all of this as clearly as possible.

As requested, she looks over every bit she removes, and she places everything neatly on the table. The thought of ending up with a gun-shaped silhouette is mildly interesting--and the idea of messy pile of pieces whose places she can't possibly guess is positively nightmarish. She glances up over the horn rim of her glasses at Mr. Deschain. "All right. So--the spring."

As before, Roland watches her, gaze resting a little more closely on the glasses than her for a few moments after she takes them out. "It's not very complex. You only have to find the right angle." He leans forward, gesturing toward the top of the spring and placing his fingers for a moment at its bottom. "Press here. Work your tool in at the top, until it slips out of the notch it's resting on."

While she does that, he'll dig a little through the toolbox and once she's done, one way or another, he'll set out a pin punch. "Then slip the cylinder off. That," he points to the punch, "goes through there. Then unscrew it, and take all three pieces out."

Something occurs to him then. It would go without saying, were she a gunslinger, but she isn't. Less reason to go hard with her, where it's not necessary. "Remember all of this. Afterward we'll be doing it again, and I'll not be giving instructions."

Unless she needs them, of course. But she doesn't have to know that part. Better she think - if she'll believe it - that he'll let her sit hours if necessary before she remembers each step on her own.

Edited 2014-04-03 11:31 (UTC)

"I feel like I ought to be writing all this down," she says, laughing a little, as she takes the pin punch from him.

Who knew the innards of a gun were so complex? There are more little bits and pieces than she expected; even laying everything out doesn't leave her feeling assured she'll know how to put it back. One screw looks about the same as the next to her. Perhaps this is what it feels like when others look at hieroglyphics and hieratic, a lot of all-too-similar parts making up an incomprehensible whole.

She does believe him when he says she'll be on her own next time. Mr. Deschain is a serious man, from what she's seen; his word, so far as she can tell, is good. And what better way to teach a person than to make her learn it for herself? It's something Evy suspects she ought to be dreading, but she respects the reasoning behind it.

Her fingers slip as she takes the three pieces out, and they all end up on the floor. "Oh, blast it," she mutters, setting the partially dissembled revolver down and sliding out of her chair to figure out where they've gone. "I'm sorry, I should've warned you. Sometimes I'm a bit...clumsy."

Roland slides the chair back and hunkers next to her, picking up one of the pieces and holding it out. "No harm done. All's still here. But that reminds me; if you were an apprentice I'd train that out of you 'till you could do this in your sleep. I think Eddie actually did, once." His lips twitch a moment, and he looks a little sad. It's good, probably, that he still thinks of them. Still, no point in dwelling now. "But that should be your choice."

Roland rises, sitting back on the chair and looking over the arrangement of the gun's parts. "Once we're done you'll know this, and without instruction. But anything beyond that's up to you. If you'd really like to write it down, by the way..." He shrugs with a smile that would almost be embarrassed, if he embarrassed so easily. "I don't see a reason you shouldn't. I'm afraid I still think of it as I would in my world. It didn't occur to me." It's that which almost gets to him; a gunslinger is supposed to adapt. Even in this small way, he knows now that he hasn't. Not completely.

Edited 2014-04-04 00:18 (UTC)

Evy takes it from him with a little nod of thanks and scoots back up onto her chair. The pieces go with the others, and she returns to puzzling over the revolver.

"You might try to train it out of me, and I'd be grateful." Evy gives him a teasing little grin. "But no one's succeeded yet. Anyway, I think I'll try this your way first." He is the expert here, after all, and she's already partway through taking the gun apart. If she does terribly when she's on her own, then she'll try writing out the steps.

After a quiet moment, she asks, "Who is Eddie?"

[text; day 423]

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