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Hannah Southwick

Branded.

0 · 358 views · located in Fort Trinity

a character in “The Ballad of Fort Trinity”, as played by NorthernSoul

Description

Image


Name: Hannah Southwick

Age: Twenty-six

Physical Appearance: With gently-curling hair the colour of bitter chocolate and a pale heart-shaped face, everything about Hannah's features is soft and finely-drawn. Languid blue eyes, the colour of rainwater reflecting the desert sky, a neat slightly upturned nose and small rosebud lips make her looks saccharine and pretty, though not quite beautiful. She is relatively short with an elegant, hourglass figure that wears the fashions of the time as well as any variety-show actress. Her hands are losing their callouses now, and her skin its tan but the sole physical memento of her past is hard to miss; the midnight blue lines of a Comanche facial tattoo adorn her chin with their stark geometry. For this reason alone, she is unmissable amongst the townspeople of Fort Trinity.

History: Much of Hannah's history is well-known. In the autumn of 1870, her family were ambushed by a band of Kiowa in New Mexico whilst attempting to cross the border into Texas. Her mother and father, along with her older brother were killed. She and her sister, badly beaten but alive, were taken captive and kept as slaves, made to walk brutal distances and do unspeakable things between the raids they carried out on the edges of their territory. After fifteen months of this horror, her thirteen year-old sister dead from pneumonia, she was part-sold, part-gifted as a way of sealing a treaty, into the ownership of the neighbouring Comanche tribe. There she was treated as one of their own, integrated into the tribe's social structure, given the name Topsannah and willingly adorned with the facial tattoos that mark them, man and woman alike. For eight years she lived with them, until word of a white woman living with some of the remaining Comanche who had not yet retreated to the reservation in Oklahoma travelled back to her aunt and uncle in Fort Trinity. In return for a temporary ceasefire and a substantial ransom of horses and food, she allowed herself to be handed over to the town authorities.

She became a celebrity overnight, simultaneously attracting fascination, sympathy and mistrust for what had happened to her. Having turned down several offers to tour the state telling her story in variety-acts and side-shows, she lives a quiet life with her upper-middle class aunt, now widowed, in Fort Trinity. Although now a permanent feature of life in the town, she is still a relative outsider and treated with cautious delicacy and a degree of fear, as if she were a brittle glass object easily capable of shattering and injuring those in close proximity. Although the townspeople would be more than happy to superimpose a picture of an innocent white woman degraded and enslaved for a decade by brutal savages upon her past, her silence has so far denied them that delicious opportunity. Instead, rumours abound at the true events of those eight years.

So begins...

Hannah Southwick's Story

Setting

Characters Present

Character Portrait: Rebecca Keatley Character Portrait: Hannah Southwick
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From across the room, the crack between the shutters yielded only a sliver of the world, as if someone had painted a ribbon of bruised grey merging indistinctly into dusty brown and pinned it from floor to ceiling. But if Hannah pressed her face up against it so her lips brushed smooth weather-worn wood, the ribbon opened up into a vista. From up here on the ridge that rutted up behind Fort Trinity like a blanket caught by an errant foot she could see everything; the squat buildings of the town below huddled together in pathetic defiance against the expanse of wild that lay beyond its toothpick fortifications, the sea of grass and shrub from which rose the spine of the Guadalupe Mountains to the west.

But most of all she could see the sky. The sky, like an up-turned bowl boiling storm clouds under the concealed heat of a blotted-out summer sun. The sky, which leaned heavily on the air, making it thick and sluggish with humidity and static. The sky, hiding the beating wings of the thunderbird that would soon disturb the unbearable and send a torrent of rain down onto the parched soil or strike the dust into glass with the lightning that leapt from its beak.

If she could turn her mind inside out and focus all her attention onto what she could see with her left eye that she could forget about the corset that made her breath tight in her chest and the smell of varnish and even about the blue lines needled down her chin-

“Hannah? What on earth are you doing sitting up here in the dark?” The door swung open and her aunt appeared silhouetted in the doorway.

“Aunt Roslyn. I- I was reading. I must have fallen asleep.”

Roslyn frowned, her dark brows coming together above darker eyes that squinted into the dimness to make out the figure sitting by the shuttered window. There was something about Hannah’s voice that had changed too, she had come to realise. Although her brother and Hannah’s father, had kept the accent that she, married into the family of a wealthy railroad investor, had strove to lose, it wasn’t just that drawl that tinged the words of her niece. No, it was something heavier and far more alien, a careful rounding of the vowels that made her inwardly shiver. She sounded as if she was speaking a foreign language.

“Close the shutters; there’s a storm brewing,” said Roslyn as Hannah carefully pushed the shutter to and walked across the room out into the light on the landing. “Dana’s gone home for the afternoon- some trouble with her grandmother again- but she’s left a cold spread for supper. It’s a pity I didn’t get her to pick up our order from the store before but I hadn’t the heart to ask her after she got the note-“

“I’ll go,” said Hannah, beginning to walk downstairs.

“Nonsense. It’s about to rain; you’ll get soaked through.” Her frown deepened and she hurried after her niece down the narrow stairway. The house was finely decorated (but not as large as some in Fort Trinity) and, though she could only afford to keep a cook as their sole servant, Roslyn Caplin had never felt wanting. Not even after her husband had died and she had been left with Hannah.

“I don’t mind. What is a little rain?” She already had her coat on and her ungloved hand (really, would she have to remind her again about going out without gloves) on the handle of the front door.

“Well, for God’s sake don’t forget your umbr-“

But Hannah was already gone and the door closed across her words.




The streets outside were almost empty, no doubt because of the storm clouds that gathered overhead, and as such there were few people to look at her in the way Hannah had grown so used to. It had been over a year since she had arrived in Fort Trinity and though she was no longer the novelty she had once been in the town, that didn’t stop people’s gaze drifting down to her chin when they spoke to her or prevent them from standing just a few inches further away from her than they would anyone else. This afternoon she was free to walk down the hill towards the centre of town, her skirts disturbing the dust that would soon be quenched by rain. And, though the air was thick and restless with the promise of the storm, it felt glorious to be outside and turn her face to the sky.

The rain was just beginning when the bell above the door to the General Store rang as Hannah pushed it open and stepped inside, shutting away the fat raindrops that spotted the wooden sidewalk. The shopgirl, whose first name escaped her (she was not very good with names these days) but whose surname she knew to be Keatley, was behind the counter.

“The Caplin order, please,” she said softly, not really turning to face the younger woman; a glint of gold had caught her eye and she reached up, unthinking, to take a tin of syrup from a nearby shelf and examine it. “For Caplin House on Indigo Street.”

Setting

Characters Present

Character Portrait: Rebecca Keatley Character Portrait: Hannah Southwick
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#, as written by Celedia
Slender fingers tried to coax a bag of cornmeal from the top shelf without sending it hurtling down towards her face, or the ground. Either way, it would bust open leaving her with a mess to clean and a bit of explaining to do. One hand clutched to the skirt of her chocolate brown linen dress, trying to keep her feet from stumbling upon it as she made her way back down the ladder.

Bolt of muslin, twine, hammer, pack of sewing needles, cornmeal, sugar….

The bell chimed, signaling a new customer and Rebecca turned to face the counter, her eyes widening momentarily at the sight of Hannah. The woman had turned into a full blown Fort Trinity legend since she had come into town and this was the first chance that Rebecca had to actually cast a glance upon her in person and she had to admit that Hannah Southwick didn’t seem to match the tales. Then again, Becca didn’t place much stock in rumors anyway so after the brief shock, the clerk eased right back into her work.

“Caplin order? You must be Missus Roslyn’s niece.” The statement lacked judgment and Rebecca turned to the shelf behind her where she had filed away some of the finished orders, flipping through until she found the Caplin basket. One of her better customers, the Caplin house had prepaid the account so that there was a credit, even after today’s purchases and Rebecca spun around to set the filled basket upon the counter with a smile. “I half expected Dana to come pick up the order but I assume her grandma took sick again. Poor thing. Like my mama, never seems a day goes by without something happening with their health.”

It was then that she noticed the tin of syrup in Hannah’s hand and she smiled, nodding her head towards the product. “Best stuff this far south as you can get. You want me to be adding that to your order too?”

As with so many people, the Keatley girl caught her gaze dropping to the markings upon the other woman’s chin before lifting once more to meet her gaze. “Anyways, it’s good to finally meet ya. Name’s Rebecca Keatley. I work here for Mr. and Mrs. Edwards.” Her hands busied, tucking in a tea towel around the contents of the Caplin basket so that the contents wouldn’t get soaked out in the rain.