#luciane's feelings of malcontent

[furymint]

FFXIV Write 2022 | header | wc: 605

With a raised hand, Josseloux paused Elliot's conversation with the exuberant shop proprietor. He made a show of not counting gil when he set it into the trilling woman's palm, then tossed up an umbrella into his grip by the hook. As Elliot watched with suspicion, Josseloux marched away with the laced parasol through the crowd, beyond the heart of the Crozier, and to the side of Luciane Feran as she fussed with the stiff latch of her coin purse.

Elliot thought he would perish on the spot. He excused himself, needlessly adjusted his collar, and wandered closer to hear.

"Pardon me," Josseloux was saying, and gave his name. "Mayhap I am mistaken, but I believe you forgot this in the cathedral foyer."

Luciane flushed at being spoken to. She closed her fist protectively about her purse, stamped her heels to face him, and pulled her dress free from where it wrapped, lacking a petticoat, around her ankle. "Oh, Father, a thousand thanks," she recovered.

Josseloux dipped his head as she accepted the umbrella; Elliot rolled his eyes when he spotted that her gloves were several inches out of style in length. He wanted this to be over, to not have to see this torment of a woman a second longer, but Josseloux opened his hell-bound mouth to suggest, "The grapefruit crop is unusually fine this season. I should be certain any family would sing their appreciation for a small basket of them."

"Yes," Luciane said, unable to help herself: "Life so often is about those at home."

Josseloux nodded calmly. "You have children, then, that you must think of?"

Elliot felt his lungs twist. For some reason, he despised his father for entering this nonsense—Luciane and her bitter cruelties were Elliot's to weather, not Josseloux's to mock. Family was a web but that didn't mean it was necessary to walk each of its ropes. Josseloux had the smile of a man who liked to threaten god; this danger was out of boredom, not victory. Where Elliot sought to prove what vales Nolanel's friendship brought him to, Josseloux simply picked up a glass and looked into the dark.

He examined Luciane with noble appraisal. Her lipstick made the twitch of her frown more violent. Affecting a casual air, she popped open the umbrella and set it gently to her shoulder. "Oh no, no."

With the delicacy of a liar, Josseloux sympathetically concluded, "Ah, not at home, but the war. You must share their bravery."

"'Tis not bravery," she hurried to contradict. "Not at all."

With each short, defensive answer, she granted Josseloux the power to infer. "Responsibility, then."

"Towards the self," she clarified.

Josseloux pretended to think, using the silence to give her the chance to wish that he was gone afore he granted it. He clicked his tongue, looked over the parasol, and said in the same equal tone the word, "Selfishness."

Luciane didn't respond except to clench her hands. She had the same expression so many had given Josseloux, Elliot thought. Disbelief, and with insult so accurate it could only be accepted with wonder. Who was this man—to say this or that—this priest who should, at his core, be like every other man of the cloth—but was not. They had to look at Josseloux for the first time now that they had realized he could not be understood at a glance—despite that, somehow, he had read them truly as soon as he had introduced himself. It made one feel naked, and Elliot gloated with pride as Luciane squinted in desperate confusion, saying "Yes," as Josseloux bowed in goodbye.