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

[bythegrace]

Just there, as he describes a town being barricaded, the fear of illness traveling, a pained look comes over her face. She takes a drink to hide it and hisses a bit as it hits the back of her throat. She is distracted when he assures her, enough that she misses the name of his master, but catches the tone in his voice.

He is confident.

She could not stop herself from looking pained and she cannot prevent the fond, almost patronizing look she levels at him then. She had heard that confidence before--many times, in fact, and all those people were dead.

"Fortunate then that there is no plague here," she says and does not dispute his claim that he would solve it. "I will hope that you and your...apothecary master? Do not need to deal with such things."

[pestler]

"I hope so too." He looks down at his tea, then meets Johanna's eyes again, sensing that the topic is quite a sensitive one.
"...you don't have to talk about it," he says quietly, "but you can. If you like."

[bythegrace]

"No, not today I think," Johanna declines but it is a gentle refusal, gentler than she has been with him thus far. She sets her cup aside and swipes a hand across her forehead. Her headache is ever-present and more than enough excuse to stop pondering.

"But you have my thanks," she adds, as almost an afterthought. "And my thanks again if you will fetch that remedy for this splitting pain in my head."

It is a dismissal, asking him to leave, but she is not cross. Hopefully Maireglenne is not so removed from normal politesse that they don't have this sort of interaction. Apologizing to him later will be terribly awkward, if that is the case.

[pestler]

"Of course."

The smile twitches back onto Finian's face, and, after taking one final sip of his tea, he rises. "I'll be back in a bit. Try to put something cold on it in the meantime, yeah?"

Someday, perhaps, he'll try to glean more information about this plague, about what measures, if any, can be taken. But in the meantime, someone just died, they all want their lives to move forward, and he has an errand to run.
"Take care," he calls from the door, mindful to keep his voice down.