"Are you okay, Hera?" Mariam asked for the umpteenth time when she noticed that Hera had been washing a particular dish for more than ten minutes now. This had never happened before, so when she saw her doing so, it took her by complete surprise.
Hera nodded in response to her question.
"I don't think you are," Mariam argued visibly. Come to think of it, when she had come to take her grocery shopping earlier, she wasn't looking as excited as she always was. And when she came out of Bryce's office, she looked sad and her facial features were harder to read than earlier.
Did something happen in the office that she wasn't aware of? And why is Hera keeping it away from her in the first place? Why isn't she saying anything about it? She's not good at pretending to be fine when clearly she wasn't.
"Hera!" Mariam tapped her shoulder lightly, causing her to flinch. The bowl slipped off her hands and came crashing to the ground, breaking into a million pieces.
Hera crouched down to pick it up and accidentally cut her finger, causing it to bleed.
"Don't do that! Just look, you've cut yourself!" Mariam shrieked in a high-pitched voice and pulled her away from the broken glass. "What were you even thinking? That stuff is dangerous, Hera." She cried out to the little woman whose eyes now burned with tears.
"Are you—" Mariam stopped talking when she noticed how teary her eyes had become. Heavens!