C) wins.
She was want for a liquid. Standing, she left the table for the cupboards. She reached into one, pulled a glass down, and dunked it in the water chest. These thirst-driven actions simultaneously communicated her answer to the question posed, to which he replied, in a more conventional, conversational manner:
-Traveling by sea at this time of year? I think our roof influences you unfairly. We’re warm and dry indoors. The rain is non-threatening, offering only a friendly pitter-patter. But remember, he warned, our vessel has no cabin.
She sloshed her submerged glass back and forth in the chest, creating a turbulence on the water’s surface that emulated a torrential storm.
-That it’s raining , he continued, at the very moment when we’re considering how to approach Endinborough, might well be a cautionary weather event courtesy of divinity.
He lit his pipe and drew in several times, exhaling smoke at a casual pace, enjoying the gravitas that his statement took on as a function of the length of silence that followed it. And during what he guessed was roughly the period of maximum effect, before further silence risked letting the mind wander in other directions, forgetting what had come earlier, he closed with what he considered to be a particularly elegant summary of his view on the subject.
-Put another way, he said, everything we see here, illuminated by the fire or lamp, is probably casting a foreshadow.
At this she laughed out loud, but briefly, and with her back to him. The suggestion that she was unfairly influenced by the roof, while potentially true, was voided by the hypocrisy of his willingness to be irrationally influenced by the rain. Suspicion that he was innocently unaware of his hypocrisy was at the core of her reaction. She glanced back at him, smiling warmly, and finally drank some cold water. Then she said,
-You so often take things literarily.
-It’s a nice balance against all the time taking things literally, I find.
A)
A series of knocks on their door interrupted them sharply. He shifted his pipe to the other side of his mouth and answered her surprised expression with a face of puzzlement. As if striking preemptively against the possibility of speech, another short barrage of knocks came through before either of them could say a word regarding the unexpected visitor.
B)
She brought the now half-emptied glass to rest on the countertop and said,
-I’m quite sleepy…mind the fire before coming to bed.
-Yes, yes, he answered, with an absent-mindedness that betrayed how routinely she made the request.
She left him then, one hand clutching her shawl as the other peeled away an edge of the hanging quilt barrier that separated the rooms in a way that was gentle in its non-permanence. He was left with his thoughts, and with his smoldering tobacco, which warmed his hand through the wood.
C)
The chimney’s smoke rose into a sky that looked down and cried on the beauty of the country. From a height of several tree-lengths above the topsoil one could see the whole of the town, albeit obscured in places by intermittent fog. Street lamps were glowing, guiding beacons, as much for lonely street walkers as for brave, flying insects undeterred by falling water bullets.