Waiting

Lucrezia Iunia Bruta; Somewhere; Certainly around the tenth month, a few days before Saturnalia; Resting after training

Mayhaps I had been overzealous with my own training, but the feeling of the gods’blessings returning, renewing themselves with power and, above all, with their usual heat had made me…somewhat less attentive to my own well-being.

Not that I had been reduced nearly to the same situation I was after I found myself here, but the medici reaction may have been somewhat understandable.

Not agreeable, but understandable.

The huntress had gone and brought the old nano back to their house, and I could see the fear in his own eyes, which was why he was able to beg his granddaughter to not bring him herself.

He wanted to die free or something like that. Somewhat extreme as a reaction towards a spouse, above all when the nana wasn’t that terrifying but, mayhaps, I was biased due to having met her on not so many occasions.

Or mayhaps it was simply the effect a matriarch had on the family, I had felt that same thing after all.

In any case, I was with the diminutive huntress, who had taken one of the plain books that the medicus had written and was distractedly reading it, her gun beside her, unloaded from what I could see.

For me, they were far too much about the negotium to be worthwhile, and the lack of any kind of philosophy didn’t aid for my own otium, along with making the writing itself…rather tedious.

In less words, I was bored, and could not do much.

The diminutive huntress was punishing me in her own way, by not saying anything and simply reading, and waiting, until the medicus came back, and the sounds of the firepit being the only thing breaking the monotony of winter.

I could go out, I do not think the huntress would stop me, but I also do not think she would aid me, above all by lying to her friend, which would also lead me to not being able to train at all, at pain of not being healed.

All these words were to say that the waiting, the rest, was giving me a lot of pain, and I would have preferred to not feel so.

Which was why when I started to hear three sets of footsteps coming, I tensed, slowly getting up to not show that I had waited for this.

Idleness was a silent killer, after all, and when the medicus would give me the leave to return training outside, I would take it.

It was not just the preparation itself, it was also the feeling of the distant altar that made me…

Made me rather like a child, if it could be an apt comparison, full of energy but also somewhat bashful in front of their mistakes.

Along with being completely willing to repeat them, above all if they helped with the monotony of the situation.

The sounds of the steps stopped suddenly, in front of the door, and I could hear some words behind the door, about bringing the horse inside for a look or something like that.

Damn the bleeding medicus heart, it would mean I would have to remain here after all.

Annoying but, again, understandable, due to his own oaths.

The door opened at last, and when I looked I did tense, for alongside the medicus there was only someone who could be called a villain.

Deep reddened eyes, a smile that was more a long cut that divided the face, his skin pale like the moon, hidden under a ruined hood, caked with dirt and mud.

He looked at me for a moment, and my blessings flared, knowingly or unknowingly, and his smile widened, impossibly, even more.

Ingrid herself did tense when she looked towards the man, and her hand inched towards the gun, but, for some reason, Victor stepped forward and pointed towards a bed, his voice…more tired than the usual, strained even, cutting through the tense atmosphere: “Go rest there, stranger. I will take a look after your horse, which will rest here. I do not think I can bring it to Erik with how she is, above all with this weather you made her march in.”

Victor then grasped his head, pain flaring in it, and I could see the smile in the evil, and I knew in my hearts of heart he was evil, man’s face downturn for a but a moment, but then the stranger went for the bed and, with a dramatic flourish, he took it off.

Uh.

He was the son of what I would call a citizen and a peregrino, it seems, if the shorter than mine, but longer than a viro, ears were of any indication.

And if what Ingrid, and her family, said was true, it meant that he could be a maegus. whose horse went inside and simply lied down, dead tired and even unable to have the strength to eat..

“I will do as you ask, healer. After all, I do not wish for my mission to be ruined due to my own…impatience. May I rest now?” He spoke, his voice the same as the Tyrant, if far less charismatic and sweet and caring, but similar enough to make me want to charge him.

He did not wait for an answer, the villain, and he simply lied on the bed and started to sleep.

Victor, still grasping his head, turned towards Ingrid and asked, his tone almost begging: “Ingrid, could you go call Erik? I know I just talked about the mare, but I am not sure about her condition.”

Ingrid sharply turned towards him, a brow risen, but then she nodded slowly and took her gun.

I, instead, watched with a risen guard while she went outside, feeling like the blessings would be under use very soon.

This suspicion would reveal itself to be right in more than one way but, at that moment, I simply waited while Victor went for the cabinet with the potions and instruments and prepared the necessary to analyse the cad.

The door closed in that moment and, with Victor’s back turned, I almost swore I saw the shadows dance for a but a moment.

As I just said, the suspicion would reveal itself right.