It took exactly seven minutes, two sugars, and a very healthy pour of Sahan whiskey for Marianne Lancaster to remember she was not, in fact, a battlefield casualty.
Chris watched the transformation with reluctant admiration.
At first she simply sat there, hands wrapped around the steaming mug like someone clinging to the last rope dangling from a collapsing airship. Her shoulders were stiff, jaw set, and eyes distant in the uncanny way soldiers sometimes stared at every disaster behind them layered over each other like ghosts.
Then the whiskey took effect, and her spine relaxed. Her jaw loosened. Color returned to her face, and her expression shifted from "fundamentally haunted" to "functioning human being with a lingering desire to stab someone, but perhaps later, and politely."
She took one last swallow, set the mug aside with a decisive motion, and exhaled.
There she was.
