The Legend of Bryana

Inspired by a drawing from Cloinkydink. Shared with permission.

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There Once Was a Girl Named Bryana

who lived in the town of Pony Buttes. The sky was wide, and blue, and had a way of making you feel small and maybe even a little lost. Still, you could always find your way by looking for the red mesas on the horizon. Like ancient sentinels pointing the way home. Most nights, the wind howled across the plains like a pack of wolves.

Bryana was the middle daughter of the third greatest blacksmith in The Painted Lands. She had wide shoulders, steady hands, and a heart like a furnace. Everyone in Pony Buttes knew her. Not just that they knew of her, but that she was a part of their lives. She’d been in their homes, at their tables. Helping shell beans or carry in firewood. Sharing in their triumphs and troubles alike. She could wrestle a stallion into a paddock, or end a neighborly dispute with a laugh that cracked tension like a crowbar on a crate. People would bring her cactus blooms, broken hinges, and sometimes restless teenagers who needed to learn how to lose a fight with grace. She loved them all, truly. But, sometimes, they wore her raw.

One Day

when the windmill broke, 

and the water line cracked, 

and a donkey got loose in the crossroads and no one knew who it belonged to, 

and Miss Galentine was hollering that someone had stolen her wagon wheel—even though everyone knew her wagon hadn’t had a wheel since last spring,

and Mr. Calle’s dog was barking like Judgment Day had been moved up, 

and people were arguing in the street, 

and someone was crying, 

and someone was swearing, 

and someone was bleeding just a little bit, but wouldn’t sit down,

and someone was asking where Briana was, 

and someone else was already pointing at her,

and everyone just sort of looked—

like of course she would fix it, 

like of course she had the answers, 

like of course it was her job to hold the whole damn world together with her bare hands— 

And. 

It was too much. 

And she screamed into a barrel for a full minute. 

And then she left. 

Picked up her axe. 

Tied on her best boots. 

Wandered into the drylands.

Bryana never went too far though.

She made camp at Cripple Creek, just on the far side of the Butte. Named a broad, flat rock “Couch,” and settled beside it.  She learned to shout. Not just into barrels anymore, but at the sky, and the wolves, and the wide world. She took up as much space as she needed and never apologized for it. 

But she’d still come back when it mattered.

When the bandits crept close, she wielded her rage like a thunderclap. 

When a dust storm threatened the grain stores she stood like a stone giant. As weathered and unmoving as the land.  

One time, the mayor’s daughter got lost in Dead Man’s Canyon, and it was Bryana who brought her home. A towering figure with skin like cracked leather but eyes as soft as wet clay, and a smile so big it made people forget they’d been worried at all.

Even though folks were nice to her and the mayor made up a room in the big house with clean sheets and a stove, she didn’t stay long. The town was small and she’d grown too big. The streets felt narrow. The buildings too close. So, she left again. No goodbyes, just a single nod on her way out. 

Off to bigger and wilder places. 

But if you stand on the far side of the Butte, and you know how to listen,

you can still hear her.

Laughing.