Twenty-Six
Feb. 19th, 2013 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theonecalledwanderIt’s possible that her water would have served, but in case the results of my test turn out the way I hope they will, I want absolutely no doubt as to what had made the difference.
“Is this a thing that will sound silly if I ask you to explain it?” she asks me.
“Slightly, maybe,” I say. I know she’s up on the idea of boiling water to kill disease, but such knowledge might only make her even more skeptical of my notion that it might cure a bad feeling.
“Alright, then,” she says. She empties a teapot sitting on a metal plate on the corner of her oven into a pair of mugs, pours my water in, and puts it on to boil. “It will be ready in a bit.”
“Thank you,” I say.
She gives me one of the mugs while we wait. It’s loose-leaf tea, a rather excellent herbal blend with just the slightest taste of anise. She prepares a long, tough loaf of bread as a trencher and ladles some stew on it when the kettle begins to rattle.
“Let it go for a bit, just to be sure,” I say.
When I judge the water should properly have had the hell or hell equivalent boiled out of it, I ask Bel to pour it back into the bucket. Once it’s cooled a bit, I carry it out into the sunlight for a proper look.
No change.
I still see nothing but the bottom of the bucket, and feel nothing but the mindless, clutching dread.
“Is this a thing that will sound silly if I ask you to explain it?” she asks me.
“Slightly, maybe,” I say. I know she’s up on the idea of boiling water to kill disease, but such knowledge might only make her even more skeptical of my notion that it might cure a bad feeling.
“Alright, then,” she says. She empties a teapot sitting on a metal plate on the corner of her oven into a pair of mugs, pours my water in, and puts it on to boil. “It will be ready in a bit.”
“Thank you,” I say.
She gives me one of the mugs while we wait. It’s loose-leaf tea, a rather excellent herbal blend with just the slightest taste of anise. She prepares a long, tough loaf of bread as a trencher and ladles some stew on it when the kettle begins to rattle.
“Let it go for a bit, just to be sure,” I say.
When I judge the water should properly have had the hell or hell equivalent boiled out of it, I ask Bel to pour it back into the bucket. Once it’s cooled a bit, I carry it out into the sunlight for a proper look.
No change.
I still see nothing but the bottom of the bucket, and feel nothing but the mindless, clutching dread.