For the first time in well over a year she looked whole, her pallor healthy and the circles under her eyes vanished, a testament to a more peaceful sleep. She had eaten and while far from plump, her clothes fit rather than hung from her. The door might creak, but she moved quietly, with a sort of reverence in this place. It was not that the office in the meeting house was particularly quiet or holy, but for Genny, it was sacred and had been so long abandoned by Glenn it seemed the slightest noise might break the fragile reality of his return. Still, her fingers wrapped around the ledge of the door firmly, her stance square in the frame as she looked for Glenn, with only a hint of her former timidity, as if to apologize for so bold an intrusion, even as she stood there.
“It was cruel, what you said to Zilliah,” cruel because Glenn staked an ownership over her that he must have known the fae misunderstood. “Not untrue,” she followed quickly to call down any defense he might offer. The admission escaping plainly, factual. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, stepping inside the doorway and turning to gently push the door shut.
Her affections towards Glenn had never been spoken, but were no real secret between them, even Rhaena knew from being within her head. Genny had been untrained then, every emotion flowed freely and without restraint. Even if he was dense enough to have never picked up on it in person, perhaps because her teacher knew, he did too. But this wasn’t the time, nor the place to address the frivolous fancies of a bygone childhood. What good would come of labeling and giving voice to the sentiment; what would be accomplished in merely saying it aloud? Nothing.
This was the very idea Genny had tried in vain to explain to Gloria when the seamstress plainly accused Glenn of lies. All of the words mattered so little if they said nothing, but as fodder to accomplish a goal, to aid a cause. Lies or truth, words with a purpose could sway a people, it could band them together or break them apart. Even if she couldn’t recall the speech and the ensuing chaos of the crowd and certain individuals, she understood this piece.
“None-the-less,” her voice came like the buds of spring, it was a natural progression from the cool silence, a sudden, delicate, but entirely expected small burst of resignation. As a sound, it was, perhaps, not as lovely as a spring bloom, even so, it held a gentle sympathy for Zilliah and the subtle, chiding intonation of one friend to another.
Still she stepped inside, small steps purposefully at a distance and upon the desk she slid a box, the size, dimensions, and smell of a pie. The bow of twine atop was strained, pinning down a bulky letter with a broken seal. It was Gloria’s letter of official inquest. A first draft, he might discover upon reading, based on the notes that were returned, herein scrawled beside the sections in a hand very clearly belonging to Genny.