(Untitled)

[accusedjonah]

DATE: December 1st, night [backdated]
CHARACTER(S): Jonathan Hollom and OPEN
SUMMARY: The wagons are circled, watches are being kept, and one man is greatly disturbed.
LOCATION: Around the campfire.
WARNINGS: Sad, sad little mouse inside.
FORMAT: Whichever.

Comments

[practiced]

With the wagon train beset with ailment and injury and misfortune there was much worry about. Sansa could sense it in the way people stooped low over their meals and moved back and forth between one wagon and the next, bringing water to the sick and salve to the wounded. Bears and bees and venomous snakes; fever; ill-tidings were all around and Sansa did not know what to do save watch with a secret worry and pray that whatever shadow had befallen the group had no mind to grace any of her siblings

[practiced]

Sansa did not understand, not in the way that Hollom intended. He was a man so beset by guilt and inadequacy that there were times when she had to remind herself that he was not half as guilty as he made himself out to be. Blame clung to him in his mind's eye and that perception of himself threatened to color the gaze of those around him, though Sansa fought succumbing to such thoughts. Her brow pinched in confusion again and when she believed she had devised his meaning she held a hand to her mouth to hold back a tiny gasp.

"-was it you, shipman Hollom?" she asked. Sansa felt afraid because if the answer were 'yes', she would have no choice but to tell her brothers and then reprimand would possibly follow. "The one who fired the first shot and set the snakes to anger and the others to panic?"

He was such a fearful man - Sansa could believe the possibility.

[accusedjonah]

"No." He could claim few skills, but he was a steady hand with a gun. He knew what ought to be shot at and what to leave alone and what to wait for to be in just the right spot and what that spot was. "No, I was on watch, well away from where the shooting began."

But he would have to explain, and he braced himself against it.

"Wh--where I'm from... We... There's a kind of man. He's called a Jonah." The word stung to say, but he knew that was because it was true. "A Jonah... is bad luck. They cause it, wherever they go, whatever they do. If... If a ship suffers badly... You can be sure that a Jonah is on board."

He sighed and finished, "And as long as a Jonah is around, misfortune will continue to strike."