A woman stood alone, in the room of her house, she was never free of her condemning thoughts, and she hated it.

"Jeremy," she whispered, "Jeremy, your mother misses you. Why did you leave me?" Her face twisted in an unseen pain as her mind began to slip into darkness. "Where has my light gone?" She asked in a small voice, "Jeremy, bring back my light."

An agonizing scream erupted from her throat as the floor beneath her opened, plummeting her into a pit of darkness.

My eyes snapped open with a start, breathing heavily I looked around my dim surroundings, where was I? "Mother," I whispered, straitening on the padded bench I had been sleeping on. Slowly the events of the day before came back, after I left my father's home I had wandered through the city, until I reached the end of it and bought myself passage on a stagecoach, what our destination was I did not know, nor did I care, I just wanted to get away. I moaned a little as I stretched stiff muscles.

Across from me sat, a young girl dressed in gray, leaning a dark, curly head on her father's shoulder, her eyes closed in sweet slumber. The man's head leaned back so that his chin and nose stuck out in the air, his mouth fell open, filling the coach with a quiet snore; I raised a brow at his black attire, He must be a minister, I thought, even though he didn't look much like one, with a gruff face and a scar running from the end of his chin down his neck and under his black suit.

I rubbed my aching eyes and leaned my head back on the stagecoach wall. "My life is a living disaster," I murmured, so quietly I barely heard myself over the pounding of horse hooves and the creak of wheels.

Somehow the minister must have heard me, for he opened his gray eyes and looked at me silently, his mouth turned up into a small smile of light, "I can't tell you how many times I have heard those very words, or how many times I have spoken them myself."

I looked at him accusingly, what right did he have to tell me what he thought. I did not need someone to preach to me! I needed someone to help me make sense of my life!

"I'm sorry," The minister said, giving me an apologetic smile, "I just over heard and well," He grinned sheepishly, "I'm a minister who still needs to work on his social skills." I stared at him, of all the coaches I chose, I had to choose the only one that had a dark haired minister with a scar running down his neck. I wasn't sure if I could trust a minister of any kind, yet alone one who had an appearance as gruff as his.

"Where did you get the," I waved a hand at his scar, not sure if I should be trespassing on his personal life, that and I was also trying to move the subject away from me.

"The scar?" The minister asked, rubbing his neck a little, he began to speak again at my nod, "A long time ago," My eyes widened, I knew the moment he said 'A long time ago' I was in for a story and I would hear all of it, the minister's eyes took on a far away look as he went on, "I wasn't the man I am today." His mouth turned down slightly, in remembrance if something he must have done. "I was a drunk with no life, no money and without a single reason to live.

"I was in debt, I owed a man over a thousand dollars," He smirked bitterly, "I did what any fool would have done, I ran." His eyes lit up, "But God can save a fool, even as big a one as I was. Needless to say I was chased, and chased me they did, all the way across a hot barren land. In search of their money or my corpus. The man I owed the money too did find me and attacked me, in self defense I fought back, the scar was made by his knife." He went silent for a moment, "I couldn't even tell you how long we fought, or even how we both ended up in the sand, all I can tell you is that he landed on his knife, took his last breath and died." He shrugged his shoulders, was that tears I saw brimming in his eyes?

I opened my mouth to ask what had happened next, thoroughly entranced, but just then the coach halted to a stop and I fell to the floor, the minister and his pretty daughter landing on top of me."

"What's going on?" She asked, sounding as one who had just woken from a deep slumber, her round, green eyes looked at the two of us in confusion.

"We don't know, Aileen," He said gently, "But we'll be sure to find out, perhaps one of the horses threw a shoe."

"I don't think that's the problem," I said, forgetting the minister's story and my own worries, all three of us had something much more crucial to deal with.

Aileen sat back on her end of the bench, her face going pale; the minister joined me at the tiny, stagecoach window.

Surrounding us was a score of masked bandits.

"Well this certainly is not a predicament I have been in before," The minister said quietly, almost mockingly. I looked at him, surprised; this was not the way ever I expected a minister to act! if the situation had not been so dangerous it would almost have been humorous.