Picking up the pieces

Syanna was acutely aware of Laeta's eyes boring into her, even when she wasn't looking at the dark-furred woman. She could feel the other woman's stare, feel it burning into her while she tried to focus on mixing her tinctures to perfection. They had to be perfect. No one else could be allowed to suffer the same fate she had if she could help it. Laeta thanked her for her concern, then related that she was indeed doing much better. That brought a more genuine smile to the healer's lips. "Good, I'm so glad we're able to help you. I'll admit, your recovery still baffles me sometimes, but I won't question a miracle when it happens." Dainty paws picked up each bottle and gave it a swirl, watching the floating herbs steeping in the alcohol as it slowly tinted the liquid a distinct color to match the plants that were used in them. As each one set and she was satisfied with what she saw, Syanna would carefully place them one by one in their appropriate spot within the medicine cabinet.

Laeta spoke again while Syanna was facing away from her, and the vixen-like wolf was glad her company couldn't see her expression—couldn't see the way her question had twisted a grimace of pain and humiliation on her usually measured countenance. Syanna's paws hesitated with a bottle in her grasp, seeming frozen in place by the question for a beat before she returned to life and stowed the medicine away. She cast a forced smile back over her shoulder to Lae, placing the last of the tinctures away and closing the cabinet doors. "Oh, I don't think you want to hear about it," she mumbled in nonchalant dismissal, acting more like the Scholar had asked her how her day had been and not about the rape she had endured. "It's... Nothing can be done about it anyway, so please, don't trouble yourself over me. I'll be fine."

Still trying to avoid eye contact, Syanna moved away from the cabinet and over to Gwynevere's desk to organize some of the notes and tchotchkes that littered its surface. All the while she worked, Syanna did her best not to look up at the shelves on the wall—specifically not at the wolf skull that sat on one of the shelves in particular. She didn't want to look at it and be reminded of what had happened.

"Syanna"