Fictober Day 29: At Least It Can’t Get Any Worse
A shorter drabble to make up for the previous, longer one. Poor Moissette. She may be the antagonist, but I love her dearly and hate seeing her suffer like this... :’(
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It had been eleven days since Moissette slept.
She’d stopped trying to conceal the circles under her bloodshot almond eyes, stopped trying to comb her hair back into anything other than a limp afro, hadn’t even changed tunics recently.
“What’s next?” she whispered to herself, tracing the chart she’d scribbled all over the paper on her tent’s center table in a fit of delirium. “What could possibly be next?”
Poisoned water. Locusts, frogs. Disease. Landslide. The cursed darkness.
Emilet.
Absently she picked at her face. Acne. Perks of being a twelve-year-old.
A movement caught her eye, and she turned in her seat to see who had entered her tent. Blearily she recognized Raimbaut, his once weasley little face now littered with pockmarks. He’d gotten hit bad with the disease, but was one of the lucky ones. “You...you haven’t had anything to, um, eat today,” he managed, looking at something in his hands.
Moissette turned back to her chart, trying to make sense of her own scribblings. “I’m not hungry,” she answered, her voice hoarse. “Leave me. Please.”
But Raimbaut didn’t leave. He brought over the thing he’d been holding and set it on the table next to her. It was a wooden cup of cold coffee. “You are doing the best you can,” he said hesitantly, trying for encouragement. “And our forces are still strong. Erm, I mean, at least it can’t get any worse—”
He leapt back in shock as Moissette hissed and swept the wooden cup off the table, dark brown liquid sloshing everywhere and sinking into the dirt floor. She never turned down coffee.
“Yes! It can!” she yelled at him, voice bordering on hysteria. “How many more, Raimbaut? How many more?!?”
All the energy visibly collapsed out of her, and a strangled sob tore its way out of her throat.
How many more? What would come next?
And would it break her at last?
