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Arthur Morgan, and the Rings of Paradise

Arthur was confused.

His mind reeled and his stomach ached like he’d been drowning his insides in putrid liquor. Doubled over, coughing, half laughing at his predicament he remembered lengthy drinking binges with Lenny or John or Javier. He wiped spittle from his chin as the daze began to be replaced by a painfully everpresent dull ache. The outlaw scratched unkempt hair from under his hat, looking this way and that, looking for his horse. Arthur was alone, too, on a familiar lookin grassy plane surrounded by sparse woodland islands. Birds’ egg blue skies embraced him. A gentle breeze whispered here and there.

He whistled in vain, sputtering out into a coughing fit. “Rachael! Oh, goddamn creature, run off again... What the hell did we drink last night..?” Arthur wiped his eyes and very suddenly, something caught his uncertain gaze.

Foggy disorientation vanished from his thoughts in an instant.

The sky above him arched upward into an elegant, impossible Ring growing increasingly thin and tiny against a dreamlike blue-black sky. Before and behind him stretched landscape and horizon as it reached into the air. He saw gorgeous oceans, crimson deserts, steaming jungles, glacially entombed mountains, hissing badlands: all in endless glory above him.

Arthur Morgan fell to his knees in silence, staring upward in disbelief. Thoughts of fireside roars by Dutch about paradise echoed in his mind, stories of rich eternity in an untamed and uninhabited frontier. Arthur Morgan felt tears prickle at his eyes. The weight of his rifle and repeating shotgun and revolvers, his aged knapsack, the weight of running from the law, the weight of fear that had grown in him as dreams of paradise slipped away into unreality: all seemed to evaporate into nothingness. Another life.

Then: a scream in the skies above him. Arthur threw himself to the ground and drew his ornate revolvers, turning upward just in time to watch bulbous, unnatural shapes wrought in organic purplish-black racing overhead. The flying machines were larger than any carriage or steamboat he’d ever seen, and they flew like horrendous angels!

More strange craft like howling demons passed overhead and away from him, thrumming with predatory energy. Suddenly the Outlaw felt very, very small.

When Arthur noticed he was not alone, and when Arthur saw the hulking giant metal man carrying a rifle unlike any he’d ever seen, a singular thought grew in his thoughts.

What the in the goddamn hell did I get myself into?