Little shards danced and clattered across the ground at the behest of a sweeping palm. Cooling tea left streaks of wetness along the floorboards, soaking into the knots.
Enough, Gloria. Leave it be, don't cut yourself on the pieces.
She had broken it. She did not remember flinching, her whole body having snapped to attention with enough force to eject the cup from the desk with an elbow. And when the door opened, she took in a breath. A younger student coming to retrieve her books, perhaps, or the next lesson before Rhaena took her dinner. Her brain was in crumbled pieces. She felt lethargic. Her left ring finger kept jerking out and snapping back again her palm -- a synapse in her brain misfiring, the evidence of tampering, the residual evidence of something being touched, drained out, tapped like a wooden barrel that its contents might run free.
And then we have our young bella...
When she looked up and saw Giuseppe, her whole body became like that of a keep-side gargoyle, a shock of stone and rigidity.
Sounds whistled through her ears as if funneled from a repository leagues away. The noises trickled down into her, eventually becoming words. Rhaena was saying something, something, rife with its usual kindness. With a fistful of shattered mug, little teeth of white sprouting out from between her gloved fingers, she clambered to her feet and knocked her hip and backside against the desk.
Giuseppe. What a pleasure to see you again.
"He -- he should not be here," the girl said, though Rhaena's kind hand was denied. The seamstress never let her eyes away from Giuseppe, even as he leaned in the corner and seemed to flicker like a shadow put against the test of a lantern's weak light. He was gaunt, a skeleton without a tomb.
You are dropping things and making a mess, yes?
"I don't want him here," she said, all but ignoring the Black Man's cryptic greeting, her gaze finally flicking toward the governor's lady. "I can pick up the pieces just fine. There is -- is no reason he should be here, Menna Olwak. I have seen how he treats children. I -- I imagine he will not treat ladies any differently."
The bravery and courage in her words were the products of weak fabrication. Porcelain edges scraped together under the clutch of her palm. The hem of her skirt danced in a shuddering sway around her ankles as she tried to still her knees.
"Helpful," the seamstress said. "Yes. But we will clean it up just fine. We do not need his help, Menna Olwak."