Shot Story

The earmuffs, a fine pale green, are tilted slightly to the left, threatening to quash her in their magnitude. Her eyes, sharp sparkling blue, focus for a flash, looking for applause or assurance, or perhaps just approval. Safe, behind clear white safety glasses, protruding from the sides of her temples, resting on the bridge of her slightly freckled nose. 

The winter jacket loose on her thin frame, worn, torn jeans, thick furry boots, and wool cap; all subdued, in no way threatening to outdo the bigleaf maple, Japanese ash, and huckleberry bushes. The flora, resplendent in its autumnal garb of orange and brown, slight tinges of red surrounds the clearing and forms undulating waves, rising up the hills, flattening to a brownish blend on the horizon. 

Her ponytail hangs down a slender, taught back, spilling from the cap; fine, straight, blonde hair, alive in the wind. The hair and body are of a much younger woman than the deep, broad, parallel lines carved between her brows, furrows on chin, splatter of fine lines from the outer corner of each eye, thinness of eyebrows, and fine imprint left behind from years of lips pursed around a joint betray. 

One mittened hand clasped over the other holds the revolver, the arm uncertain of where to go, after the fact, swinging from the target to straight ahead, into the camera, where he must be standing, filming, then swinging to the right, to settle in an uncomfortable, mildly triumphant pose. A giggle, eyes dropping, no longer looking into the camera, left foot shifting, loosening the firm power stance that had rooted her to the spot. 

The thick furry boots, European cut of the jacket appear foreign in the Pacific Northwest, making her even thinner than she is, older and younger at the same time, lost among the foliage in the clearing. Pistol held in right hand, right arm held straight out to the right, locking her body in an uncannily vulnerable, beckoning yet armed and threatening stance, with left arm hanging, swinging slightly, hair still blowing in the wind.