The revolver came apart in his hands. He had begun his evening ritual of cleaning and oiling the weapon. Not that it needed it, hell it didn’t seem like it ever needed it, but it kept the illusion going in his mind that it was just bits of metal and ebony wood. Nothing more. That illusion was getting harder and harder to maintain. Each time he had sensed trouble, the urge to grab that grip was tremendous. Maybe it was just mental security, the way a child holds on to his favorite blanket. Maybe it was the gun reaching out to him to keep him safe like a mother holding that child, or maybe it was the revolver wanting to feed off the death that it brought. The latter seemed preposterous.
Still, he worked the rag into the chambers to clean what were already clean, to polish the bore that wasn’t dirty. The smell of the gun oil with its sweet metallic tang mixed with the smoke from the fire brought back images from the War. Campfires and soldiers cleaning weapons, those brief moments when no one was dying and the men could breathe. He’d thought that kind of peace would come back after the fighting ended. Seven years later, here he was cleaning a weapon by firelight, still preparing for the next fight.
He continued to work the rag around and began cleaning the inscription. Never any dirt lodged in the words. Words he couldn’t read. Words in a language he didn’t know. He suspected it was Latin, but wasn’t sure.
He grabbed the barrel and upturned the grips to begin cleaning them. Not a scratch, not a dent in the wood. Just black and gray grain running down the length of the ebony. He worked the rag and oil into them. The inscription seemed to glow a bit, as if the weapon liked the attention. He shoved that thought out of his mind. It’s just the reflection of the fire.