A Reasonable Reaction

[bythegrace]

WHO: Johanna and Adhemmar, but also concurrent threads for anyone who is likely to visit her.
WHAT: She is not taking that public execution well.
WHEN: After the execution.
WHERE: Johanna's house, newly built, just outside town.
NOTES: None yet, will update.

Johanna's house is small and wide, built of heavy stones and cement, half atop a deck of hewn logs and a foundation of brick. The waterwheel attached to it moves sluggishly in the water and the quiet scraping knock it makes is a persistent sound. It is loud enough that, once one approaches her door, they might not hear through it. On any other day that would be true, but today she is very upset and she has decided to take that anger out on the furnishings in her home. There are crashes and clangs, shattering sounds and frustrated cursing and they, like the waterwheel, persist.

It is fortunate her home is not precisely inside town and, apart from a precious few folk, there are none who would travel to the river to bother her without good reason.

It is not quite sunset when she finally stops her tantrum (for what else could she call it but that?) and the building goes quiet.

Comments

[mysteriumtremendum]

He should not approach her like this.

The body has been carted away, the crowd of dumbstruck spectators dispersed. The bloodstains will remain; that much is by design, the vicar knows. The Shepherds leave them behind as a warning, and a reminder. Defy the gods, and the cost of repayment will be very dear--with interest. His flock have dispersed back into the village, stiffly picking up the threads of their daily work, or have retreated to the chapel to pray. He should be with them.

He is not a very good vicar.

Outside her door, he pauses with his lips pressed into a thin line, listening to the sounds of unmitigated destruction occurring on the other side of her walls. One breath, then two, before he knocks. "Johanna," he says, and nothing else. She should recognize his voice by now.

[bythegrace]

There is a sharp crash and then silence. It lingers too long to be accidental, then begins to border on suspicious, but she is there. Finally, after some long pause, the newly painted door swings inward and Johanna stands to the side of it.

She has wept, yes, but the color in her face is that of impotent fury. It is impossible to say if she has been drinking, the smell of strong spirits is very strong inside. She has broken one bottle at least in her anger.

Her expression is inconsistent as she looks at him, it fluctuates from a passable expression of pure anger to something more stricken and flighty, like an animal uncertain whether to flee or gore the creature before her. She comes to some conclusion and, within a moment of standing there, she sighs and steps aside, welcoming him into her house as she moves away from the door.

"You may as well come in. I hope you were not eager to sit."

The inside is a wreck. The chairs she had are all but splinters. There is broken ceramic all about and papers with running ink scattered across the floor. In this room, only the table and the still have survived her wrath and the former was not for lack of trying. Outside, the waterwheel drones on.

[mysteriumtremendum]

Her blood is up--that much is clear when the door opens and Adhemar confronts the roil of feeling emanating from her. Should she go for his throat, his options are limited... though she saves him the trouble of taking a thorough inventory of them, and instead steps back to invite him in.

"You may as well come in. I hope you were not eager to sit."

"Not overly eager, no," he replies, and steps into her home.

It is a wreck, of course, and reeks of alcohol, but beyond a slight watering at the corners of his eyes it doesn't trouble him much and is easily adjusted to. He surveys the damage before turning his peculiarly pale eyes back towards her; there is no point in mincing words, and so he doesn't bother.

"If, instead of me, a Shepherd had passed by your house," he begins, "you would be in shackles right now."

[bythegrace]

She doesn't reply to him right away, instead moving, with her back to him, to the shelf on the wall. She rests her hands on it and pauses a second--torn between the urge to rip it down and the knowledge that he is behind her. She lets out a long breath and takes a small box off the shelf.

She tests the weight of it in her hands, considers it, and then turns to look at him.

"No, I don't think I would," she says and steps back toward him, tossing the small box from hand to hand.

"And that is the problem, isn't it? " She looks at the box in her hands as she speaks and is, in that moment, deeply forlorn.

"I want so badly to be exhausted, too tired to move, because everything in me wants to follow those...Shepherds and teach them how little the gods care for any of us. How little protection they will grant.

"But I am not tired and I am running out of belongings to destroy."

[mysteriumtremendum]

"...But I am not tired and I am running out of belongings to destroy."

His pathological curiosity will not let his eyes wander far from the box she tosses between her hands, but he has more than enough instinct for self preservation to pay attention to her words. At length he looks from the box to her eyes, fixated and considering. If she gave chase, what would pose the greater risk: exposing his abilities to stop her before his near-complicity in her madness could draw the eye of the church to his doorstep--or aiding her?

It is far too late for him to turn his back on their acquaintance. Too many people have seen them. (And he doesn't want to, though that is beside the point.)

"And if you punish them, what then?" He takes care to gentle his voice as he lowers it, out of caution rather than kindness. He can't guarantee that they truly are alone in the wilderness, and if a passer-by must hear his voice, let them suppose he is ministering to a member of his parish rather than speaking heresy to a fellow heretic. He steps closer to her, endeavouring to meet and hold her gaze. "You are a foreigner alone in the gods' own country, and you will have the blood of holy men on your hands. Do you imagine they won't send others to track you down?"

[bythegrace]

He manages to catch her eyes and holds them effectively. She is uncomfortable, enough that her eyes start to dart, to look to the door behind him, but he steps in closer and her attention is drawn to him once more. She ceases toying with the box, her fingers gripping it tightly as she regards him. This is not the most heretical subject they have conversed about...but there is a component of danger to it that abstract discussions of the gods rarely hold.

She is seriously considering killing two people. Her fit of rage and despair, the gnawing sense of helplessness that coils inside her, they all drive her toward it...but what then? She could hide the bodies, of that she is certain--her thoughts falter and with them her expression.

What is she thinking?

She would stand before them, ready to strike, and she would falter. Just as she has always faltered. Sadness masks some of the bitterness in her face as she looks down between them. The breath she lets out is metered but shaky, her voice threatens to break as she answers him.

"I am certain they have already," she says and turns away. She tosses the box onto the table but the action has little force behind it. Finally, blessedly, she feels the exhaustion creep into her.

"What are the lives of two more, then? What do they matter..." she cannot even finish the thought, it disgusts her so. There is a fervor that builds as she speaks again and, despite herself, she is nearly shouting before the end. "They killed that man. I do not care about that man. I should not care about that man. Why, then, am I so invested? Why does this gall me so?"

[mysteriumtremendum]

Adhemar's eyes track the box where it lands, then return to Johanna. He listens with fixed attentiveness as she speaks, his congregation of one. She won't want a sermon.

Perhaps she needs one.

"It could have been your throat under the knife. Or mine. Or the baker boy's. In some other village on some other day, it undoubtedly was." No one slits a throat that cleanly and quickly without practice. He makes a vague gesture with one hand and goes on. "A Shepherd wears the mantle of judge and executioner both, and reality orients itself around their verdict, rather than the reverse. It is astounding hubris."

There--genuine resentment has crept into his voice without his permission, twisted his lips expression ever so subtly with his contempt. He takes a breath, schooling it away. "And they'd kill us both in an eyeblink if they overheard us speaking, or heard you--" pause, "--rearranging your furniture so assiduously after this execution."

[bythegrace]

He speaks, his own judgment and a bit of ire creeping into his tone, informative as it otherwise would be, and she cannot help but listen. She is less than eager to debate about how well they might do, about their odds or the desire to fight back, and instead drags a hand through her hair, straightening some of the mess it has become.

It should seem stranger, perhaps, that he is counseling her caution, that he fears for his own life as much as hers, but he does not know what she is. (Indeed, it does not seem to matter much to these Shepherds whether one is profane or not.) He does not know how she is given to power, that her resentment of the gods runs deeply enough that she would desecrate them all if she could.

Would he give her up, then? Or would he still incriminate himself in the process?

He has been so accommodating of her anger, of her sorrow, surely he lingers close enough to heresy that he cannot escape the charge.

Suddenly, she wants to argue, wants to tell him that she is not so weak, that she is not a creature to be caged and set aflame...but the exhaustion has settle in and she moves to lean against her table, propping herself by her hip as she stands there. The carpenters are very good, it was very difficult to destroy the items she had. She could not break the table without using water and he had arrived before she could try.

"I am a poor fit for this place, I expect," she tells him, her tone swung reasonable bordering on calm. She is quieter, then, just speaking in a normal voice, such that she would be drown out by the waterwheel.

"My temper is quick and consuming...and I am not pious anymore." She looks at him, then, and meets his eye. Holds his gaze. And then she gambles.

"I would have drown them where they stood, like they drown that man, but I have never been good with knives."

[mysteriumtremendum]

She gives him fair warning that she is about to play her hand--as fair as warning of this kind can get, at any rate. She looks him in the eye, intensity gathering in her like a wild animal before it leaps, and then--

"I would have drown them where they stood, like they drown that man, but I have never been good with knives."

He recalls that sudden cold on the forest path during their solitary walk towards the Deep Forest, the faint scent of ozone and frost--

"Johanna," he begins slowly, and though he doesn't smile, there's a brief glimmer of something almost like satisfaction in his eyes, because he was right. "You would not have needed the knife."

the next morning

[pestler]

He was there, of course. Finian had stood toward the back, guided there not-so-subtly by his father, whose premonition of terrible things had come true with a vengeance. Finian hadn't seen the man die-- not over the heads of everyone else, and because his own had been ducked, afraid of the truth-- but he had heard it.

He's seen people die before, it comes with the territory of working with the infirm. But not like that. Never like that.

It's early after a night of sleeplessness that he begins to make rounds of the village, a basket under his arm with one of his favorite herbal teas and the bold intention of not stopping until everyone has received a packet.
He knocks politely on Johanna's door, and waits.

[bythegrace]

Johanna is not an early riser, nor has she ever been. The knock on her door resounds through her skull like thunder and she lets out a quiet curse as she rises. She has drank too much, far too much, but it let her sleep without that man's face haunting her.

She moves automatically, stumbling loudly over some of the furnishings broken about the room. She all but collides with the door when she reaches it and, with no preamble or greeting, all but throws it open. The bright morning sun shines cheerfully upon them and she winces as she is forced to squint away from it.

"What?" she asks, her tone the least friendly and echoing more than a touch of her hangover.

"I mean, yes? What is it?" She corrects, but the correction for politesse is sloppily done.

[pestler]

Finian smiles brightly when the door opens, and it fades only a little with the brusque introduction. "I," he stammers, determined to persevere through any unpleasantness, "brought by some tea, to... to help soothe the spirits." He thrusts the basket toward her, inviting her to take a packet.
"...we all had a hard day yesterday."

[bythegrace]

Johanna peers at the boy for a few moments and, despite her grimness, her expression softens with a sort of resignation. She has a terrible hangover, she is still stewing in anger and bitterness and the trauma of what they all witnessed...but this boy had danced with her so happily when she was so very sad. He is a sweet sort and looks it and lashing out at him will do no good.

"What kind of tea is it?" She asks, even as she takes a package. Her door opens further and she gestures for him to follow.

"Come inside already, it is too bright to talk out here."

[pestler]

"Rose and chamomile," the boy replies, coming in when invited. He's able to get a better look at Johanna now, and notices the redness of her eyes, the puffiness: a hangover, though it's not always safe to identify them as such in women.

"If... you like, you can swing by the apothecary for some ginger tea later," he says innocently, "or I can go get it for you."

[bythegrace]

The inside of her home is clean, very recently done, and very spartan. There are no chairs around her table and a low bench sits on the wall. It looks like it must go with a different table, but it is hard to say. There are precious few small curios about.

She moves to the fireplace, where a low flame is burning, and pushes an iron kettle over it. She tosses the small bag of tea in without thought.

"I can give you the coin if you're willing to run the errand for me," she says, not eager to step outside into the sunlight herself.

"Would you like some tea or bread?"

[pestler]

"Oh, I don't need the coin," Finny assures her, coming over to park himself on the bench, his pointy knees sticking out. "And the tea's for you, ma'am, I've got more than enough to myself. In fact, I ought to keep passing it out, but I just wanted to make sure first that you're getting on all right."

[bythegrace]

"Nonsense," she says offhandedly and looks back at the fire. After a second of consideration she plucks up a small bit of wood, heavy kindling really, and wedges it beneath the kettle.

"You'll take the coin to pay and keep the extra, because I am not a rude old hag who mistreats messengers, and you will have tea and bread with me before you go--" she looks back over her shoulder at him. "How old are you?"

She would offer him ale or something stronger but she has no idea how young people in Maireglenne conduct themselves.

[pestler]

"You're not--" he begins to argue, but stops with a sheepish smile when she asks him his age. "Twenty," he replies, "and I'm not so much a messenger, ma'am, I run the apothecary. Really, it's my treat."

later, whenever she's in town again

[infinitewatch]

Lance looking tired is redundant: he never doesn't look tired, but somehow he has managed to look even more tired since the execution, and there is, no doubt, a certain level of shame that comes from his entire protected populace being forced to watch an extrajudicial execution.

He could use a walk in the woods, but who has the time for that?

The sun hasn't quite set yet as he makes his way around on the first patrol, stretching out one of his arms to pop his wrist with a wince. Strangely, the extended hand is missing the fourth and fifth fingers.

who watches the watchman???????

[bythegrace]

Johanna spies the watchman as she leaves the dried goods store. She knows there must be more than one of them but, somehow, he is the only one she has ever encountered, however briefly. Rather than walk to him and drag her heavy bag toward him, she waits in place until he moves near enough to speak to.

"The young apothecary boy is yours, yes?"

It is a direct question, without a greeting, but not said with anything near the same frustration of exhaustion of their last meeting. She actually looks curious and, it might be a trick of the light, but happy even as she watches him.

the other watchman usually

[infinitewatch]

He stops when addressed, one arm still awkwardly extended, with a look of mild surprise that unmistakably begat Finian's; it takes him a moment for all the immediate horrors to flash through his mind, then he lowers his arm with a little nod.

"Is he all right?"

[bythegrace]

Johanna wants to complain about Finian, however halfheartedly, but the brief series of expressions that jumped onto his face are familiar. She had a daughter at one point.

"He's fine," she assures him quickly and perhaps even a bit gently. Her tone reverts as she continues. She lowers her bag from her shoulder and starts to dig through it as she speaks.

"But he is too polite for his own good," she says and manages to inject a bit of motherly irritation into it, overall though she sounds terribly fond. "You should teach that boy to take good pay when someone offers it. Doing cumbersome errands out of the generosity of his heart is a bad habit to get in to."

[infinitewatch]

Many fathers would likely chortle along with her, perhaps agree that yes, the boy is too soft-willed and selfless, he needs to learn to take the world for himself.
In theory, Lance knows this. But these are qualities he can't even begin to reprimand, because... well, look at him, himself. Rather than taking it as the compliment it is, he seems unnerved by it.

"I'll, um," he stammers-- what, give him a talking to? "...did he upset you?"

[bythegrace]

Johanna, as she retrieves her purse, actually stops dead. She looks up at him from her place bent over her bag and her expression is somewhere between disbelief and a wary sort of horror. She had expected a certain kind of reaction from a watchman, fond or bristling. This? Stammering and asking a question as though she had announced he had taken flight...that was...unexpected

In his unease, unfortunately, she can see the source of Finian's...not meekness, but politesse.

"Mon dieu," she exhales and stands back up straight, her eyes just scanning him over as though it cannot be true. "No, no he did not."

She hefts her purse in one hand and considers this man.

"If I give you money to force him to take, will you do it?"

[infinitewatch]

At this, the Captain seems to grow a little more comfortable: he's used to how most people in town joke around, and can react accordingly, but Johanna is new and he hasn't yet come to read her mannerisms. But she's offering coin, saying Finian did an errand for her, and that at least is simple enough to comprehend.

So he nods, coming forward to hold out his hand. "He's a good boy," he says quietly, a bit of pride penetrating the sheepishness.