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]

"...and that boy drew my own knife on me and called me Profane."

This story does much to explain her initial hostility towards him, though even under the best circumstances the Profane rarely have cause to celebrate encounters with the clergy. Still, the gall of that unknown priest--to threaten and vilify the woman who had just saved his wretched hide from a truly miserable end.

In her shoes, Adhemar would have left him to die. Or dispose of him more ruthlessly when he became a risk.

(Maybe it shows a little in the coldness of his eyes.)

He considers Johanna in silence for a moment or two once she has finished speaking, weighing his words before giving voice to them. Slowly, he says, "I won't ask if you killed him. But know that, if you did," and here he pauses again to meet her eyes, "I would not blame you for it."

[bythegrace]

Somehow, despite the contents of that reassurance, Johanna relaxes when he says it. Her expression has a note of gratitude mixed in with the lingering sadness. She shakes her head before speaking, answering the question ahead of herself.

"No," she replies and sounds more than a touch disappointed in herself. "I couldn't bring myself to kill him. I had known him too long--he was the only one left that I had known."

She sighs, then and sits back, rests her hands on her knees and looks at him. The bed creaks beneath her.

"I ran instead. I do not know what happened to him, whether he was killed for breaking the quarantine, or if he fled himself, but I know he knows me and hates me.

"If anyone lives who remembers me, it is him, and so...if he does...I am hunted."