My own self-fulfilled prophecy

[baldrshand]

Who: Ethlyn and Claude
Where: The apothecary
What: Ethlyn tries to serve her sentence.
Warnings: Content warnings should be here. If there's explicit content in your log, it should be locked.


Reflect on whether you must bear the responsibilities for a whole nation.

That was, more or less, what the sentence had been. It sounded too good to be true--all she had to do was go home and think for a while? Confide in a friend? She'd given Altena worse punishments than that for sneaking out of bed... still, it couldn't hurt. And if it got her a step closer back home, a step closer to saving her children from a grueling upbringing, she would take it. The next steps would be worse, she was sure... the labyrinth had shown that there was little this place couldn't do to them. She would rather have had the plant colossus return than face that terrible maze again.


She hadn't broached this as the reason for visiting Claude in his newly-claimed apothecary, though. No, this visit had a dual purpose: reflection, and also reassurance that he hadn't yet managed to fatally poison himself. Oh, and to see about trying to extract their own antibiotics in case of an emergency.

Ethlyn had made sure to bring some fresh snacks with her, along with her little containers of bread with mostly-green fuzz, and pushed the door open. "Claude? Is this a good time?"

Comments

[feintofhart]

It's beginning to make sense.

It makes sense for Ethlyn, especially. She's a kind woman. She's been kind from the very first moment that they had met, when she had told him all about the healers brigade she had founded, steadfast on her goal of helping the people here whether they wanted it or not. It's much the same back home, only that sort of nobility when it comes to political situations like that... they have long-reaching consequences. Getting involved isn't always the wisest thing. There's a reason why he hasn't been able to get involved with the Kingdom, no matter how much his heart aches for his old classmates.

But they were just classmates. If it were Hilda that were taken, or Marianne, or Lorenz, would he not do the very same thing?

"So you went on an effort to save your friends - fellow royals - but in doing so, got caught in an international incident," Claude summarizes. His tea, stronger than Ethlyn's scents the room; a pleasant earthy pine, of damp soil and growing branches. "The lords you were protecting his sister from. They're the ones who started a war? Over the land you were protecting?"

[baldrshand]

Ethlyn nodded. "Eldigan's old rival attacked. And then another lord to the north took the chance to raid the surrounding villages, so... we had to put a stop to that too, of course. And then by that point we were so deep in the country that the third lord decided that we must be there to invade..." She took a sip of her tea. It had cooled as she had related the convoluted tale. It had seemed absurd to her at the time--paranoid, on Lord Clement's part.

But she recalled how Lewyn had rebuked her brother--a simple bard, she thought with a trace of a smile, who just happened to have very strong opinions on the responsibilities of royalty and nobility. "...We were warned. By an incognito prince, in fact. He had a lot to say about how our efforts in Agustria was hurting the ordinary folk who lived there."

[feintofhart]

Claude can't help but sigh, hearing Ethlyn's tale of woe. "That's the hardest part about leadership, isn't it?" He says sympathetically. "You could do everything right, but as long as the other people in charge are bound and determined to see nothing but the worst in you and your people, even as a flimsy excuse for further bloodshed... well, there's not a lot you can do about that."

He laces his fingers together atop the table between them, watching as Ethlyn's expression shifts, her stoicism a clear front for how difficult this must be to speak of. "So... this incognito Prince. On what grounds did he think you were hurting the townsfolk?"