Sub Rosa Hotel, The Stacks
She didn’t want to cry and she didn’t want to panic, but both sensations warred within her as the desire to vomit struggled within her. Actually both emotional responses were entirely as a result of that nausea because she was scared, really quite scared and she didn’t want to be throwing up right now in a strange place with no one to support her, no one to provide comfort while she felt certain that she was going to die.
Drezda had felt the brief tangle of their fields but hadn’t registered the significance of that, or anticipated that Tom would follow her. Obviously she sensed him before he caught her elbow but she couldn’t turn to confront him, couldn’t do much of anything to react to him honestly without risking redecorating her surroundings, probably the raen’s shoes as well. There might have been a tiny bit of puzzlement, even in her discombobulated state, about the field that approached before he caught her elbow but the Hoxian wouldn’t have been able to place the cause of her confusion. It was just Tom with his broken field, same as it had been for months except that it felt different somehow.
She shrugged off the tingle of intuition, as she had so often done when her passive servants unsettled her on some level. The young woman was good at ignoring things that didn’t make logical sense at the best of time, but she had other concerns right now.
“Tom! Mm...” she managed weakly, not able to keep talking for fear that that would be the undoing of her.
It was so hot, a furnace heat within her body that made her want to faint. If it hadn’t been Roalis then she would have known for certain that it went hand in hand with her physical condition, a further indicator of what was coming, whereas now she couldn’t be sure. She wanted to strip off the thin layers that she was wearing, to take off her skin if it would let that heat dissipate and give her some relief from how faint she was feeling, how dizzy, how sick.
Her pride was nowhere to be found and decorum was the last thing from her mind as well as she allowed the man to lead her to the door of the water closet, only detaching him once they were there so that he wouldn’t inadvertently hamper her movements. The door she left open, more concerned with running cool water, turning the faucet and allowing the stream to flow for a few seconds before dipping her hands in it. Weak, almost boneless fingers pressed together to form a less porous receptacle as she brought the liquid up and splashed it in her face, panting as she waited for the heat and the nausea to recede.
“D-D-Don’t leave m-m-me!” she pleaded, her voice small and high, the young woman on the edge of sobbing as she gripped the edge of the wash basin. She had no plans of getting sick there but then she had no plans to get sick anywhere if she could avoid it.
Deep breath in, deep breath out. Try to do everything slowly, focus more on the slowness than the depth of the breath, that’s what she had to do. The diplomat had to not panic. She couldn’t start panicking. Honestly, there were so many things that she didn’t want to do right now and it was a struggle to keep them all from happening. She didn’t want to moan or weep or whimper as her body shook like an aspen in the wind, shoulders hunched forward.
Drezda shut her eyes, praying silently but fervently to the Circle, especially to Bash whose aspect she wished to embody. The mountain was strong, firm, grounded; it didn’t fall apart at the slightest thing. She made no movement to shut the door, never indicated that she wanted it shut in fact, especially given that she wanted Tom’s presence to persist. If he wanted to he could cram in here with her, although it would neither be comfortable nor seemly. In truth, it was what she wanted, not wanting any space between them, not when he could be rubbing her back and telling her that everything would be all right. In this moment, she would accept such a touch from anyone be they galdor or human, stranger or friend, so long as she wasn’t alone.
“I’m s-sorry,” she whined, feeling something shift inside her. The poor woman didn’t know what she was apologising for precisely. She staggered from the basin to the lavatory, falling to her knees before she released a sound between a croak and a retching. Her body heaved briefly and then her shoulders slumped as nothing more happened, the young woman exhaling in relief. She was clammy now, still trembling but now her skin seemed icy to her as she passed a hand over her damp forehead. Drezda rose slowly.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, the reason seeming more apparent to her this time. What a fool she must seem, how pathetic. She’d almost fallen to pieces at the prospect of throwing up, had fallen to pieces in the first place because of her mother’s words.
“It’s not you. It’s not what you are, not-” she waved a hand as if that would do all the talking for her. “Just the way she- I th-th-think I like them less the m-m-more I hear. The Hexxos, I mean. It just sounds so… so…”
The diplomat shuddered and it had nothing to do with her clammy state.