"You may go," Mila said to the petitioner, a young man who needed an updated deed in his own name for the business he had just inherited.
Mila sat back and sighed, massaging her temples against a building headache. Listening to petitions was not typically Mila's job, but most of the other Council members had fallen ill, so she had taken over. It was... more tiring than she had expected it to be.
"Lady Mila, are you all right?" asked the servant who was supposed to be letting her next petitioner in. "You look pale."
"I'm fine," Mila said automatically. "Bring the next one in." She turned to another servant. "Could you please bring me a shawl?"
"Of course," that servant said, scurrying off and returning with one of Mila's favorites. Soft wool with a subtle pattern of leaves woven directly into the fabric. Mila wrapped it around herself and sighed, her shivering easing. Probably there was a draft.
Next petition. A divorce needed to be approved. The reason for the divorce was obvious enough: the spouses had hardly spent a minute in the same room before they were yelling long-practiced invectives at each other about who was correct about something, whose fault something else was, who owned what, who got to keep their house. She had to shout over them several times, but eventually they all signed the paper, provisionally approving the divorce provided that they went to a mediator to get this resource split business sorted out, and dismissed them too.
She reached for the pot of tea that she always kept nearby and poured herself another cup. It was nearing empty. She sighed and placed it aside, lid left open, a cue for it to be refilled. The sweet tea helped chase the chill away, along with soothing her throat, which had dried out from having to raise her voice to get the divorcees' attention several times.
A third case. Something about a breach of contract when one person sold the other a specific horse and then tried to give them a different one? The details of the case were too complicated for her to deal with. She sent them to a mediator as well.
The headache had only gotten worse. Her throat was still scratchy. She figured she'd need to rest her voice tomorrow, poured herself more tea, and continued.
Someone gave her a large sheaf of legal language and said she needed to sign it. She asked why, and the explanation she received was incomprehensible. She rubbed her forehead again. "You're going to have to wait for one of the others," Mila said. "I'm not allowed to sign this kind of thing."
She felt bad for making their excursion pointless, but Rin had told Mila in no uncertain terms to not do anything she didn't understand. So she just dismissed the petitioner, despite their grumbling.
"Lady Mila. That's all the petitioners you can handle today," the one at the door said, closing it gently behind them.
"Are you sure?" Mila asked.
"You need focus and judgement, and that was not focus and judgement I just saw right there."
Mila closed her eyes, struggling against an increasing level of fatigue. "No, it's fine. Just send the next one in, please."
"I already told the rest of the line we were closed for the day. There isn't anyone there to send in."
"...Fine." Mila tried to get up. Her head spun, and she had to clutch the table and wait for the vertigo to subside.
All right, so maybe she was a little bit ill, but she was still less so than the others, and they were so very behind...
So what work could she do in this state? Opening letters seemed like a good one. She just needed to separate the ones that required a response from the ones that didn't. That was easy enough to do.
She leaned heavily on the wall as she made her way towards her study. Once inside she pulled another shawl around herself for warmth, found the mail, sat at the desk, and began opening it.
Right. Someone needed financial help. Someone wrote a letter of thanks. She made two piles and began to stack envelopes on each.
In a moment of inattention she cut her finger open with the knife she was using to open the letters. She healed it, but it was just long enough of a pause from her work to make her realize how terrible she was feeling. Why hadn't she had someone bring the tea? Her throat was aching. Really, her everything was aching. She was somehow simultaneously too hot and too cold. Her nose was beginning to run in earnest, too, which wasn't helping. But she just found a handkerchief to wipe her nose with and kept going.
Needed answering, needed answering, didn't, needed answering, didn't...
There was so much to deal with, but it had to be done and she was the only one doing it. The others were busy tending to the sick or else being tended to, after all. It had already been a difficult two weeks for everyone. The more she did for them now, the less of a mountain the rest of them would have to catch up to later. So she sorted, and she sorted, and she sorted, and the words were beginning to blur together and morning was turning into afternoon and surely she could put down her aching head for a moment, right? Just for a moment...
Something was shaking her awake. Fingers that were cold and hard and -
"Gaster?"
"You've taken ill too, haven't you?"
"I didn't -" Mila's attempt to claim she was fine was immediately interrupted by coughing.
"Yeah, I thought so." Gaster handed her a cup of something more honey than tea. "You need to go to bed. If you rest now your recovery will be faster than if you push yourself unnecessarily."
She drank the tea and sniffled. She had to admit that he had a point, but she still didn't like it. "I hate you," Mila said, half-joking.
"Me too, thanks," Gaster said with a completely straight face.
Mila tried to get up, only for her legs to collapse underneath her and spill her to the floor. She struggled weakly to coordinate herself well enough to get up, but the pounding in her head and the shivering and the aching were all arrayed against her, and so she gave up. "Ughhhhhh..."
"Do you need to be carried?"
"...if it's not too much trouble?"
"I've got plenty of hands free," Gaster said, carefully scooping her off the floor and carrying her away. He seemed to be saying something to her, but she had already dozed off, and only woke again when she found herself being placed on a bed and covered with blankets.
The movement jostled a coughing fit out of her. "Sorry," she said. "I should be the one doing this."
"How are you feeling?"
She sniffled unsuccessfully again and again. She didn't want to whine. "You already know the normal symptoms by now."
"Can you answer the question?"
The request didn't quite make it through her fevered mind. "...what question?"
"How are you, yourself, feeling right now?"
"Feverish. Sore. Tired." She stopped to think and only ended up coughing even more. "...Miserable."
"Well," he said, pressing a cool wet cloth to her forehead, "I can try to help with that."
