Dust Settling
The past day has been... difficult, to say the least. Crevecoeur spent her night and a good deal of her day with her head in her hands in the corner of her room, elbows on her knees and silently counting the space between the breaths of the woman on her bed - they’re always one moment too shallow for her peace of mind but too even to panic. She tries to busy herself - she draws a bath, glaring at every person who even tries to speak to her like a mistrustful cat on her way back up with the water.
It goes cold because everyone who would is too asleep or two stubborn to use it first. Crev uses it later when she concedes that being covered in grave dirt isn’t helping anyone.
Everything feels a little like wasting time and increasingly like watching someone die. Every heartbeat a little more like hopelessness and futility, an itch to do anything but watch someone die again, be productive somehow. There’s no danger in going out, there hasn’t been since the Abbey’s monsters were slain and Randal came home drenched in scarlet and Crev’s own fury mirrored back at her.
So she goes out. It’s eight o’ clock, and if she doesn’t wash her clothes she’s never going to wash them. Crev takes Toustain’s robes with her without thinking, realizing almost too late that she needs to be careful with it. The monotony of getting everything clean a welcome relief from worrying all the time. Once the clothes are dry enough, she folds them up and carries them back with her, up the stairs and toward the small room she now called home.
And there is a voice - not all that strong, but audible, and... gods, that’s Toast.
Crev sprints down the hall, almost dropping her basket and then nearly dropping it again as she trips over the edge of the doorframe.
“Toast, I’m here. I’m back, I was just washing clothes... What do you need?”