"What's that you say, you fidgety outsider?"
"I didn't say anything, ma'am," Balyn protested.
The mobcapped old lady peered up at the former hunter, squinting as if to draw him more into focus.
"Don't I know you from somewhere?"
"I can't think of where," he said, suddenly grateful for the mask he'd worn throughout his hunting duties. "Maybe it was something you dreamed?"
"I have been having troubled sleep lately. Went to bed on the night of the hunt and woke up in Oedon Chapel," she murmured to herself. "And found myself out of sedatives besides. Kept thinking I gave them to my son. Even had to go out and fetch another one once." She shook her head, then looked sharply back up at Balyn. "Still! I don't know what they're thinking at Iosefka's, letting some offcomer near our blood! It's your ilk that made it go wrong! I remember before all those so-called scholars from Byrgenwerth came prowling around, calling themselves doctors and setting up a church. I remember, don't think I don't!"
She shook a long, spindly finger in his face. He had to admit that she kind of had a point, but he'd have been a little more appreciative if she hadn't also had another point at the tip of the claw-like fingernail that almost gouged the tip of his nose on one of her more vigorous gestures.
I bet that suspicious beggar in the woods would have been envious of those claws!
"Look, ma'am, I don't know anything about that. If you were dreaming about giving away sedatives, I'm sure that it was for a good reason and totally not because some hunter kept forgetting that there are words of the Great Ones that can help keep them safe and sane in the face of eldritch monstrosities that otherwise drive them into a state of frenzy. And I've got your order of replacement sedatives from the clinic right here."
He held up a small, open-topped wooden crate, containing a dozen bottles packed tightly with straw to prevent them from breaking if their deliveryman happened to accidentally stumble off a sewer ledge running away from giant rats while trying to take a shortcut or some other completely understandable and absolutely not anyone's fault incident.
"They even threw in a couple of blood vials free of charge for ordering the ten-pack!"
The old woman's eyebrows quirked upwards in surprise.
"They did? Well, now, that's unexpectedly generous of them."
"The way I hear it, ever since the night of the hunt, Doctor Iosefka's been showing a more…celestially-oriented perspective on things? You might even say she's a totally changed person!"