immortal to immortal

I was stumbling like a drunkard down an empty dirt path in the middle of nowhere when I spotted him, leaning on a bird-shit stained fence. He was abnormally tall, eight feet if I had to guess, and was dressed like a second-hand steampunker. Leather enveloped his body, a cracked brown trench coat on his back, black leather boots stained by use on his feet. Not leather were his pants, a light khaki from their looks, his undershirt, a clean red tee, and the outlier, his ribbon-tied sunhat propped on his head.

He looked exactly like I read he would.

I rushed up to him as if I was a fan trying to get an autograph, anxiously inserting myself on the fence parallel to him. No matter how many lives I went through, I never lost my anxiety. In a weird way, it was comforting to have a constant I could count on.

After a minute of awkwardly shooting glances at one another, I grew enough balls to speak. "Hey..." creaked out of my mouth, though sounding more like "h-E-y" due to my disgusting voice crack. Embarrassed, tired, and screaming in my mind, I wanted to leave right there. Call it quits, throw in the towel, and walk to god knows where, questions unsolved. I didn't though; I kept standing there with my pissful attempt of an icebreaker waiting for any sign of response. He, however, gave zero shits to what I had to say, still staring out into that fiery star.

To be honest, I was kind of hurt.

Looking back in all the books I read though, I should've expected this sort of response. Most testimonies say he was standoffish, keeping to himself as much as possible. He liked to stay silent, unnoticed by the population, completely understandable with his special "condition".

Still hurt though.

I came to the conclusion that to get his attention I would have to say something he'd be interested in. Luckily, anything he'd be interested in I'd be interested in as well. So, unlike myself, I brashfully him his eye-popper.

"You're Milo Tram, right?"

Without wasting a second, he whirled around to look me in the face, reached into his leather jacket, and whipped out a shiny revolver pointed straight between my eyes. I practically pissed myself right then and there.

"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice that of a chronic smoker, "What the hell do you want?"

With a yellow leak down my pant leg and the face of a spooked toddler, I stammered for a while, my words not coming out in any shape I wanted them to.