One Day in a Small-Town Desert, chapter 5, page 5

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Vata Kılímí shuffled down the hallway as fast as she could, wringing her thin hands.

The blonde girl must be mixed up in the gun fighting that was out front. Vata hadn’t seen a weapon on her, but perhaps she was hiding it.

The one thing the girl did have showing, however, was dirt. If she hadn’t been covered head to toe with dirt from the back yard and the desert both, Vata would have let her walk through the house. As it was, the girl would just have to wait a little while for Vata to get to the chapel door. The carpet would have been impossible to clean.

The girl was not in immediate danger, after all. Pí‘oro was still unharmed, so therefore the situation in the front must be under control. Therefore the girl had nothing to worry about. There was no urgency. The girl was not in danger.

But if the girl was harmed in the back yard while waiting, how would it look for Vata to have refused her entrance to her home just because she was dirty?

Vata tried to speed up, but couldn’t move any faster. Her hip joints ached from this quick abuse. She breathed heavy, feeding oxygen to her old heart. She briefly lost her balance, flailing her arms, catching herself with a hand against the hallway wall, but hardly lost a second in her race toward the linen closet and its hidden door.

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