Solanum Dulcamara

V: The Only Witness To It All

"You know, I always thought those stories about the upper class being legitimately insane were made up until I met you."

It was the Thursday after Brendon's first visit to Timemus, three Thursdays after his first encounter with Sarah. Brendon found that he had begun to measure his life in Thursdays (which he supposed was the same as measuring in weeks, but that didn't sound nearly as poetic). Friday through Wednesday, his life was just as it always had been- a reasonably pleasant series of events, comprised almost entirely of working in the garden, conversing with Ryan and Z in his leisure time, and listening politely to mealtime conversation in the presence of King George. Though he wouldn't go as far as to call it a monotonous existence, it certainly did follow a fairly simple pattern, which it hadn't often strayed from for a majority of his life. It was, in short, predictable.

Thursdays, though, were pages from a completely different story, suddenly sprinkled in with all those other days to mix it up. Thursday mornings, Brendon woke up with barely an inkling of what he might do that day, and was likely to continue not to know until whatever was in store was already happening. For instance, on this particular Thursday, though he was reasonably certain he would at least see Sarah making her weekly delivery, and was determined to get her to stop and talk to him, he had no way of knowing how she'd react to his request for another trip to Timemus, much less what that trip (if it did indeed happen) would hold.

As it turned out, Sarah had indeed agreed to take him, and luckily without all that much argument (in fact, Brendon thought idly that she might be warming up to him a bit, albeit at a gradual pace). Hence why Brendon was currently seated beside Sarah in the front of her wagon, preparing to launch himself into what certainly wasn't his first defense of the right to label himself as "working class" that day.

Though Sarah's words were sharp and probably meant to be scathing, her tone somehow still managed to sound pleasant to Brendon's ears, as if she were complementing the scenery instead of insulting him. Brendon supposed that was the magic of the plains- someone could probably run up at that moment and shoot an arrow into his chest, and it would feel like a beautiful thing.

Despite that pleasurability, however, Brendon was not about to give up on that argument so easily. "I'm not upper class!" he protested, not even bothering to turn and face Sarah as he replied to her statement; they'd had nearly this exact conversation so many times that response was practically compulsory, despite him being not as entirely sure of the claim as he had once been.

"Mm-hm. And when was the last time you cooked your own dinner?" This reply was also expected, or at least something similar, whether it be about Brendon's health, hygiene, clothes, education, or financial stability.

Regardless, Brendon didn't have a sufficient answer to the question, so he simply let out an indignant huff. "Well, I'm not insane," he said after a moment, because if he couldn't successfully disprove the "upper class" part of Sarah's statement, he could at least object to the rest of it.

"Last I checked, sane people don't willingly return to towns in which the inhabitants all want nothing more than to escape."

Brendon sighed, as this was also a conversation they'd had before. This time, though, he at least bothered to turn to look at Sarah when he spoke, because this statement he actually did believe in. "I just wanna understand what's going on."

Sarah held his gaze for a few moments, as if she were searching for something in his expression. Whatever it was, she apparently didn't find it, because, after a few moments, she tore her gaze away and returned it to the stretch of road in front of the wagon. "To each their own, I guess," she said, which Brendon supposed was a sort of surrender, but somehow didn't feel nearly as satisfying as he imagined it would. He watched her for a few moments, wondering if he should continue the argument in the hopes of gleaning an actual admission that he was right, but soon thought the better of it and instead resumed gazing out over the rolling hills in silence.