Her ears are ringing, punctuated by only by crackling of their meager campfire that feels all too loud, and sounds too much like a house burning down. Her armor is still splattered with rotten, diseased blood. Vaguely, she remembers she needs to be eating, or bandaging wounds, or checking her weapons. But her hands are shaking, and her thoughts are shaking, and it feels almost like the earth is shaking with the steady flow of death and decay of this awful place–
She’s jarred suddenly. Nesdin is next to her, an old text open in his lap.
He’d been reading to her to calm her down. Right. Right.
“Sorry,” she mutters, roughly rubbing the meat of her palms over her tired eyes. “Can you say that last part again? Stuck…in my head.”
the injuries of the mind always flared up before that of the body. time and tonics could relieve the pain of battle, but the breaks in ones mental fortitude a different beast altogether. treatment had to be more... involved but fairly roundabout. direct administration risked resistance, after all, no one could deny an open wound, but pointing out shortcomings in ones resolve only acted counterproductive towards improving it.
no, it was best to try ones hand at more discrete means. quncey and chester played their instruments softer, dismas had his dark humor, audrey would share her snuff box, even reynauld’s fiery speech worked to calm the nerves.
nesdin could read. something that surprisingly drew in the attention of more than a few of their company: alhazred enjoyed discussing writings of several different genres, ymira wanted to... learn, and now missandei, who looked like she needed a steady rhythm of words to still her own frantic heartbeat.
“R-right... right.” he offered her a small smile and turned his attention back to his book, a treatise on the Light and its Church. naturally her attention would rear up at one of the more controversial bits.
“Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that the Light founded anything like what we churchmen, the Flame, understand by the Church. I maintain that the Church is an expression of faith, but only one of many.”