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[recreatable]

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[recreatable]

Verso can't help but laugh. Jasnah, he's quickly learning, is ridiculous. Endlessly difficult about giving up even the smallest amount of ground. He shouldn't find it as charming as he does, and yet.

"So, I'm just supposed to donate my currency out of the goodness of my heart," he notes, although not unkindly. Just pointing out a little hypocrisy there. "Luckily, I'm feeling generous."

There is a pause, though, just long enough to be obvious that he's considering what to say next. How much to share. "I used to get these nightmares," he finally decides on. "But now I don't even get those. Most of the time, I don't dream at all." And when he does, it's rarely pleasant. "It's just this... oppressive void."

Pure nothingness. Like being trapped in a smothering dark cave. Or in a coffin underground.

[elsecall]

Jasnah's charcoal gives off soft sounds. She works as she listens, as if one makes the other easier. Simpler.

"Void," she repeats, quietly.

The word lands in her ear with the wrong kind of resonance. Shades of a history she's studied, and a theology she disassembled, and a force she has seen — too closely — trying to devour the world from the inward out. There is an instinct, sharp and intellectual, to interrogate it. What kind of void? How literal? How dangerous?

But she resists. He is not Alethi. He is not invoking the Voidbringers. And she will not project her world's horrors onto his honesty. Her charcoal touches down again, resuming its meticulous path.

"That is... unpleasant. A mind accustomed to thought — even as a dream — does not easily tolerate nothingness." Another quiet beat, her eyes still on the parchment. "And I see why sleep doesn't come easily."

She finishes the line she was drawing, sets the charcoal aside, and finally turns her head just enough to regard him, eyes steady. Jasnah flicks her fingers together, like dismissing charcoal dust, before idly untying her makeshift headscarf. A slight inhale. She leans a hip against the worktable. A slight loosening of her posture. She rubs her gloved knuckles against the base of her ribs.

"Since you've shared your context..."

Context, and something honest. Whatever her test was, he passed it. Even if his answer stings of something both strange and familiar.

"My last journey by sea ended in an assassination attempt." A soft, critical hum. "I was abed at the time."

[recreatable]

Oh.

His own reasoning feels suddenly silly. Juvenile. Childish nightmares and then nothing at all. Unpleasant, as she'd said, but unpleasantness is simple enough to withstand. Her own barrier against sleep is much more real; it's paranoia, yes, but paranoia with basis in reality.

No wonder she'd been so irritated that their journey would be by sea.

The fear of death isn't one he can relate to, but it is one he understands. The Expeditioners would start out cheerful, but they'd always turn to melancholy and morosity before long. I don't want to die, they'd say. Don't let me die. He swallows down the bile in his throat.

"Want to talk about it?"

[elsecall]

"Not especially."

It's clipped, clean, almost polite in the way closing a book can be polite.

"It wasn't the first attempt. Nor the last, if I'm correct about the Oathgate 'malfunctioning' back in Kharbranth."

But the attempt on the ship had been closest. Steel in the dark. Blood on wet planks. The sickening calculation of how much stormlight she could afford to burn, and when to burn it, so as to trick her assailants into thinking they'd succeeded. Quite apart from Jasnah's personal experience, her brother had been assassinated. And her father, too, years prior. Storms! The night the assassin in white came for King Gavilar, Jasnah had been busy meeting with a hired killer of her own: ensuring Liss that she would pay double for her to turn down any contracts against her family...apart from the contract Jasnah herself contemplated against her sister-in-law. Perhaps the paranoia also stems from a guilty conscious.

Jasnah actually looks haunted for a moment. She rakes bare fingers through her long, loose hair. Nose wrinkling briefly at the disorder. As if somehow she's more bothered by losing some of her controlled appearance to the disguise. The honesty might be easier than the muss.

"Rest. There's no merit in reopening old wounds."

[recreatable]

Flatly: "Yeah. You know what they say about bottling up your feelings: you should definitely do it."

Verso is right there with her in the 'avoidance of uncomfortable emotions' camp, but he strongly believes that other people should talk about their feelings. He'd always been there for Alicia when the other girls at the academy were being cruel and exclusionary, and she'd sobbed soft, sweet tears into his shirt. I think there's something wrong with me, she'd cried, and everyone knows it. He'd even comforted Clea on occasion, in his own 'younger sibling' way, stomping his feet in protest when she'd practiced ballet until her feet bled in the pursuit of perfection.

But he doesn't push, just rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling again. He doesn't close his eyes, doubtful rest will come.

"What if we took turns?" In the bed. "I could keep watch for... would-be-assassins while you slept."

[elsecall]

Jasnahs pauses just long enough to acknowledge that she heard him. Not long enough to be mistaken for actual hesitation.

"No."

The refusal is gentler this time — measured rather than cutting. She sets down the headscarf, aligning it with unnecessary precision before she speaks again.

"But," she adds, pinning his supine figure with a gaze from where she still stands, "offer again tomorrow night."

A faint lift of her brow — dry amused.

"After we see whether your stomach can survive standing upright for more than five minutes."

Slowly, almost reluctantly, dhe returns to her notes, but her voice stays thawed at the edges, just a touch.

"I appreciate the intent. Truly. But tonight, you need the bed far more than I do. Even if you do not sleep you might as well rest."

Another beat. Quieter.

"And I prefer my guards steady on their feet."

[recreatable]

It's a no, but it's not a no forever, and with Jasnah one has to consider that a win. So, with an almost imperceptible upward tilt of his lips: "All right." A beat. "But you should know I'm a really good bodyguard."

Check out his resume. He's got decades of experience being a meat shield.

But he doesn't bother Jasnah after that, having gotten the hint by now that she prefers not to be interrupted during work. (Giving a real 'Versos are to be seen and not heard' vibe, but that's okay.) He probably irritates her in the way he tosses and turns in the bed for what is quite literally hours before he eventually manages to drift off into a very light sleep.

There's no mirror for him to spend thirty minutes in front of—quelle horreur!—so he has no choice but to report to the mess deck for breakfast with bedhead. He sits at the rickety, nailed-to-the-floor table and picks at his hardtack biscuit, appetite always diminished from poor mood but particularly nonexistent now; he's still a little queasy.

Torreth settles down in front of them, dropping another biscuit in front of Jasnah—"You're eating for two!" he says with a wink—before trapping Verso in a conversation he'd be happy to have if he weren't still vaguely ill. It turns out that Torreth is a family man after all, with two grown children and a sadly deceased wife.

"Speaking of wives— yours looks so familiar," Torreth notes.

"Just one of those faces, I guess," he says in return.

"No, I could swear." To Jasnah: "What did you say your name was again?"

[elsecall]

Jasnah had worked deep into the night.

Not steadily — no, even she isn't immune to the ship's ceaseless rocking. At some point, forehead resting on the crook of her arm, she'd slipped into a brief, unwilling doze. The kind where the charcoal smudges her palm and then her cheek. And her shoulder twitches once in surprise when gravity shifts. She'd woken immediately, of course — annoyed, posture snapping back into precision, as if sleep were a lapse in discipline rather than a human need. Before leaving the cabin, she secures her loose, sea-salted hair into a single plait.

When she sits now at the bolted-down table in the mess, she is composed, alert... and faintly irritated by Torreth's enthusiasm. Her eyes flick to the extra biscuit like it's an insult to mathematics. Eating for two. Storms, she should never have let Verso name that imaginary child.

And speaking of irritants — she catches sight of Verso's hair, unruly and stubborn from a restless night. It tugs at the corner of her mouth, a small treacherous twitch she smothers instantly. She will not comment on his bedhead. She will not reach out and smooth an errant piece with two stern, commanding fingertips.

And Jasnah doesn't even blink when asked for her name. She's already folding the lie into place. Funny how the truth matters less with some than with others.

"Hesina," she says smoothly, borrowing the name of Urithiru's surgeon's wife. A fine light-eyed name, even if it lacked near-symmetry. A perfectly provincial name. Respectable. Mild. Leagues away from the heretic Jasnah Kholin.

She lifts the biscuit — mostly to avoid looking at Torreth's knowing wink — and breaks it cleanly in half.

"Tell us of your children, Captain." She aims to distract him. Hopeful that he'll take the bait. Mildly concerned that he'll continue to press. "Do they also sail like their father? I know Theylenah is famous for their naval culture."

[recreatable]

Verso files away Hesina somewhere in his mind; inevitably, he's going to need to know the fake-name of his fake-wife. Or maybe he can just get away with calling her chouchou forever. Renoir had called Maman a great many things, but very scarcely Aline. It had always been some poetic epithet or another. My stars, my sky, my world. Verso had frequently rolled his eyes.

"My son, yes," Torreth says, happy to talk about his children. "A very accomplished sailor, at that. My daughter, though— my wife was a more traditional sort. Believed women were more suited for gentler things."

"I think our daughter could be a sailor," Verso pipes up. "If she wanted."

[elsecall]

Jasnah feels the warning bell before the words have even fully left his mouth.

Our daughter could be a sailor. Damnation. On a Theylan ship. Spoken to a good Vorin man raised in a culture where progressive is a polite word for treasonously strange.

Her response is immediate. She lowera gloved hand beneath the table and settles confidently on Verso's knee. She squeezes. Not harsh. Not panicked. Just firm enough to say stop talking.

Outward, she smiles — warm, demure, perfectly conventional.

"Gemheart," she murmurs, tone honeyed with too much domestic fondness, "you do spoil our children with possibilities."

A second, harder squeeze of his knee — a reinforcement of her displeasure — as she turns that same smile to Torreth.

"But he only means she should be encouraged to find an art suited to her talents. Whether that is the scribe's desk or the artefabrian's workshop or any of the dozens of respectable pursuits she might choose."

Torreth harrumphs approvingly into his biscuit. "Hmph. Respectable pursuits. Not all this nonsense about women with Shardblades." Another grunt, as if the very idea pains him. "What's next — women captains? Women duelists?"

Jasnah doesn't blink. She simply pours all three of them another cup of weak tea with the serene poise of a woman who has definitely not soulcast men like him into pillars of smoked quartz.

"Almighty willing, Captain," she says smoothly, "our daughter will grow into a bright and capable woman."

Jasnah doesn't remove her hand. It's as if she's waiting for confirmation that he'll behave before she dares withdraw.

[recreatable]

Ah. He'd thought Jasnah would approve of him eschewing the inefficient gender divide, but not so. Her hand lands on his knee, a warning pressure; he raises an eyebrow, surprised by just how tense the conversation was made by a simple 'my fictional daughter can do whatever she wants'. Jasnah has told him several times of their cultural standards, yes, but it's one thing to hear and another thing to actually witness it.

Verso pauses. Looks at the hand on his knee. Tries not to enjoy it, fails a little. Look, it's been a really, really long time.

"...Right," he says after a protracted moment passes. "Guess I misspoke. Being at sea has me rather out of sorts."

He covers her hand with his, piano-callused fingers wrapping around to gently separate her palm from his knee. I'll behave, essentially. He places her hand on the wood of the bench between them before withdrawing and taking a sip of shitty tea. Mmm.

[elsecall]

Jasnah allows him to lift her hand because to resist would draw attention. And because she knows she committed the first physical infraction. But the moment his fingers curve around the leather contour of her glove, something in her stills.

Most people (regardless of gender) would avoid touching a woman's safehand entirely. She knows academically that her safehand hand means little or less to him, but she can't help the curious thrill when he handles it with that much nonchalance. The touch is startling in its normalcy.

She lets him place her hand back on the bench, but her fingertips curl slightly. Folding under her palm.

She's silent for a breath. Two. Then breaks off a piece of the biscuit and continues to eat. It's dry and mediocre and faintly stale, but politeness is a kind of armour, and she wears it effortlessly. She chews, swallows, and wonders whether she should feign morning sickness to avoid finishing the meal

"Captain," she asks lightly, "does your route keep us within sight of the coastline or will we be in open sea for long stretches?"

A perfect, harmless question.

One that prompts Torreth to launch into a long, proud explanation of his sailing tactics — effectively burying the moment, smoothing the social water. Or so she hopes.

[recreatable]

By the time Torreth finishes his somewhat braggadocious lecture on sailing, Verso still has the majority of his biscuit left on his plate. It feels selfish to waste it, so he assures Torreth that he's saving it for tomorrow's breakfast, effectively condemning himself to slowly eating this fucking biscuit over the course of 5 days. Whatever—he'll live. He always does.

Once most of the crew has disappeared up onto the main deck, he glances Jasnah's way.

"Sorry. You told me, but I didn't realize just how strongly people felt." He'd just thought of sweet Alicia being told that there was anything in the world that she couldn't do, and it had irritated him. He leaves it at that, though, figuring that she's probably eager to move on from it. "So— more work to do?"

It's almost instinctive, the way he infuses his voice with just a little bit of hope that she'll say 'no' in order to encourage her to do just that. Unconscious manipulation.

[elsecall]

Jasnah brushes the crumbs from her fingertips with a precision that borders on dismissive grace. When she looks at him, there's no irritation — only the cool steadiness of someone who has already refiled the entire encounter under Lessons: Cultural, Bears Repetition.

"Yes, I told you already." She says quietly. A whisper for Verso alone. "But you simply hadn't yet witnessed the depth of conviction found outside Urithiru. Difficult though it may be to believe, the tower is progressive compared to the other Vorin nations."

Not an accusation. Just fact, delivered with the calm of someone who's lived under those convictions her entire life. But who also believes they can be dismantled, albeit thoughtfully.

She rises from the bench, smoothing the shapeless vest as though it were embroidered silk.

"And yes. There is more to do — just not at the desk."

Her gaze shifts toward the narrow stairs leading up to the main deck. There's a flicker of something like anticipation beneath her composed surface.

"I want to speak with the sailors. Men who traverse the seas hear things — rumors of strange storms, sightings of spren, patterns in trade and weather. Sometimes truths slip through in the spaces between superstition."

She lets that settle, then adds, more pointedly: "And I would like to get a sense of Torreth's temperament. Whether this vessel is as safe as it appears."

Her eyes return to him — assessing.

"You're welcome to join me," she says, then adds with a faint tilt of her head, "if you believe your stomach won't betray you again."

The implication is gentle teasing But there's also genuine allowance. He asked if she had more work. She's giving him the chance to be part of it. Otherwise, she'll cut him loose for the day.

tosses u a midnight before bed tag.......

[recreatable]

He's absolutely not confident that his stomach won't betray him again considering that he's felt vaguely queasy the whole time they've been sitting here, but Verso doesn't dare share that.

Wry: "I was more hoping for a rousing game of cards, or maybe tic-tac-toe." There's humor in his tone, but there's a kernel of truth in that joke, and his disappointment that there's more work ahead is mostly but not entirely imperceptible. There's been a lot of darkness in his life, yes, but there's also been a lot of boredom, and some of his most pleasant memories were made trying to stave that boredom off. Giving Monoco an experimental haircut (a success in his eyes, at least) or trying to teach Esquie to play chess (doomed to fail from the beginning; his giant hands were too big to properly move the pieces). It would have been nice to pass the time the way that he used to.

But he can also understand her paranoia—better than ever now that she's shared the assassination attempt at sea with him—and sympathize with her desire to do something about it. It's the pragmatic thing to do, chatting sailors up and seeing what they reveal. He'd offer to do it alone, but as has been made abundantly clear by the conversation of this morning, he lacks a nuanced view of Rosharan culture. It stands to reason that he might miss one of those truths slipping in, overlook something of importance.

"But it'd be a poor husband who let you talk to handsome sailors all alone, I think."

delightful.

[elsecall]

Jasnah opens her mouth to correct him — handsome? — then closes it again. A flicker crosses her face, subtle as a ripple in still water: not defensiveness — simply mild, private confusion at the idea that any of the crew qualifies as aesthetically remarkable. She glances, just once, toward a knot of sailors tightening rigging on the far deck.

Objectively? Strong, weathered, broadly built men, some with striking features. But Jasnah’s mind sorts them with the same pragmatic efficiency she applies to ledgers. Competent, likely; handsome, irrelevant.

She lets the matter pass. "Then you'd better come along," she says simply.

The next hours are spent drifting from one end of the deck to the other, speaking to sailors coming off watch or stowing equipment. Jasnah organizes them the way she organizes sources in an archive: a Thaylen man with a scar across his jaw, who swears he saw a santhid breach once and calls it a sign of good luck; a young darkeyed swabbie frightened of unusual spren that appeared during the last storm; an older helmsman who recounts rumors of strange tides and ships that vanished into fog without ever returning. Jasnah listens patiently, gently sifting superstition from pattern... ultimately, there isn't anything too odd about a woman behaving scholarly.

By noon, she's pieced together a compass of oddities: sightings of deepwater spren, shifts in migration patterns, and a rumbling undercurrent of something that feels...off. Not proof. But enough to murmur to Ivory about later.

Near the top of the afternoon, when the sun has climbed enough to warm the deck but not yet force them into shade, Jasnah finds herself standing alone with Verso at a quiet stretch of railing near the stern. The sea stretches wide and glittering behind them; most of the crew is gathered forward, repairing a torn sail.

Jasnah leans an elbow lightly against the rail. The wind tugs the edge of her scarf. The ship hums beneath their feet. When she speaks, her voice is quieter. Contemplative, edged with a rare curiosity because it seems to exist without agenda.

"What is your honest opinion of my planet?"

She keeps her eyes on the horizon. The faintest line of tension at the corner of her mouth. So often, that's how she talks about the topic. Not simply other worlds, but planets.

"There are so many others. Whole other societies. I know that now. So I want to hear how mine seems...to someone with the vantage to compare."

Wit was always ever-so-withholding.

[recreatable]

Verso is leaning over the railing, too, when she asks her question. Facing the sea rather than the ship, eyes on the horizon to quell any lingering nausea. It works, sort of. He hasn't thrown up yet, anyway.

"You want my opinion?" he asks, a little surprised. He'd expected her to consider his opinion on Roshar to be uneducated at best. Ignorant. There's clearly so much he doesn't yet understand about this place.

But she's asking, so he considers it. "I think—"

It's strange. Foreign. Difficult to understand, at times. He'd always felt a background buzz of wrongness in Lumière, but this is different. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he doesn't belong here. Despite that, it's wonderful. He's felt a sense of unburdenedness here that he's never felt before, ever. Admittedly, any other world would have done that for him, but he finds himself somewhat relieved that it was this one.

"I think I'm lucky to have landed in your lap." Metaphorically, dieu merci.

[elsecall]

Jasnah doesn't look at him when she answers. She keeps her gaze pinned to the horizon, its hard, merciless line.

"Verso."

A single word. Soft but unmistakably corrective.

"That was not an opinion of my world.That was an opinion of your circumstance within it."

She speaks with an exacting and sharp clarity. The kind she uses when a junior scholar answers the question they wished had been asked, not the one that was. Only then does she shift her attention to him, her expression clouded but undeniably intent.

"I asked because I want to know how Roshar appears to someone who does not take its highs and lows for granted." A pause, barely longer than a breath. "Someone unattached."

Her gloved fingers trace the railing absently, as though drawing constellations on the iron.

"I have heard stories," she admits, voice quiet enough that the wind nearly swallows it. "Not just the ones you've told me about Lumière. But other planets. Other societies. Scadrial. Nalthis. Sel."

The words land gently — but carries weight. She watches whether they mean anything to him. They are planets she thinks might be stronger than hers. Or hungrier. She lets out a slow exhale, a controlled release of breath that doesn't quite mask the tension beneath it.

In the end, can she even trust the source of those stories? After all, Hoid had once openly confessed that he would let Roshar burn if it meant sparing the rest of the Cosmere. And Jasnah can't actually blame him. Hasn't that been her philosophy, too? Always act in light of the greatest good. No matter what (or who) you have to sacrifice to do so.

[recreatable]

"Oh, well, you should have told me there was a wrong way to share my opinion."

It's sarcastic, but not actually irritated. It's just a little silly— she'd asked for his opinion, and then got annoyed when he didn't give it in the exact way that she wanted. He turns to shoot her a Look™, eyebrows raised and head slightly tilted.

"If you're looking for an unbiased assessment, I'm afraid you'll have to look further. My opinion of your world is inherently linked to my circumstances in it."

He's foreign, yes, and has a different perspective, but that doesn't make him any more impartial. If he'd come to this place and had nothing, if Jasnah weren't interested enough in him to befriend—or whatever she might call it—him on the basis of gaining more information, his opinion would be quite different. But obviously, personal preferences aren't what she's looking for. He thinks about the names she just rattled off, then furrows his brow.

"Are you worried Roshar doesn't measure up?"

[elsecall]

Jasnah's fingers go still on the railing — only for a moment, but enough to reveal that his question struck nearer the bone than she'd intended to show.

"Worried?" she echoes, tasting the word. Then her gaze returns to the horizon, where sea and sky meet in a clean, pitiless seam.

"I suppose I am. Roshar has been...reset. Again and again. Every time our nations advance, a Desolation sweeps across the world and whatever remains must rebuild itself on scorched stone."

Her gloved hand taps the railing once. There is so much more to the story, but she doesn't want to distract from her main thrust.

"Other planets have not endured this cycle. You may not yet understand the scale of that."

Her voice lowers.

"The Cosmere is shaped by powers far older than any kingdom. Shards — so called because they are fragments of something that might once have been a god. They rule planets. Shape them. Empower them."

It still feels strange, speaking of divinity with an atheist's composure. Stranger still knowing her only source is a trickster who calls himself a storyteller more readily than a prophet. Wit called it a god. Wit claimed he and sixteen others killed that god. What does an atheist do with a story like that?

"There were three Shards on Roshar," she continues. "Their conflict — petty or profound, who can say — sparked the Desolations that shattered our progress each time we began to climb."

Her jaw sets, soft but resolute.

"When you hear a Rosharan speak of the Almighty, they mean one of those three: Honor. But there is also Cultivation. And Odium."

Jasnah meets his eyes directly.

"Your Paintress, I suspect, is another. The Shard that claims your world. Treats it like a plaything, as all Shards seem to do."

[recreatable]

"—Maybe," Verso says with a shrug. Noncommittal. "But I don't think so. I think she's... something else."

Aline is a god, but not in the way that Jasnah imagines. Out in the real world, there's still so much that she can't do. It's only in her playground, on her Canvas, that she has real power. Whatever a Shard is, it sounds like something infinitely more threatening.

Or maybe this is all just someone else's Canvas, the Shards someone else's family, destroying lives over their own personal squabbles. Who can say?

"It's not perfect," he admits. "But I think it's admirable that you've rebuilt time and time again, after all of that destruction." He worries at his lower lip, eyes on the sparkling blue horizon once more. "It would be easy to give up. To just lie down and... wait for it to all be over." He would. "But you persist."

So, that's his opinion on Roshar. Still not unbiased. Take it or leave it.

"...Well. You asked me, and turnabout is fair play. What do you think about where I come from?"

[elsecall]

Jasnah doesn't answer immediately. She lets the sea wind pull at the loose ends of her scarf, lets the horizon steady itself back into a clean, rational line before she speaks. There's a hint of hesitation to her words.

"The Expeditions. Leaving knowing you will not return?" Jasnah shakes her head. "I am certain they started out sensible enough. And perhaps it's also a means to a dignified death. But after so many years, it seems a waste to continue chasing an answer that hasn't worked."

Her voice grows flint-hard. Even knowing those of a certain age are doomed, she sees it as a waste.

"A Gommage may not look like a Desolation. But the pattern is the same. Entire societies arranging itself around predictable death."

Although the current Desolation on Roshar doesn't quite fit the pattern. For once, this time, they'd had 4,000 years of unimpeded progress. Jasnah can only access the earlier, quicker Desolations in an academic fashion - indeed, uncovering the truth of those stories had been a throughline of her research. Honor and Odium used the peoples of this planet like game pieces. Granting powers in an ever-escalating arms race. Setting Human against Singer in a neverending cycle. Her own Knight Radiant abilities are part of that arms race. Verso might disagree, but silently she still imagines the Paintress as a Shard.

She inhales, slow, steady.

“A world trying to buy time with its people. Its Expeditions a slow, continuous tragedy."

There's a grief in that, quiet but unmistakable. He can't know it, but her mind is on the Heralds. The men and women who return to Damnation after every cycle and who bind the enemy with their whole selves until one of them breaks under the torture again. Starting the cycle anew.

"And I find it..." Her jaw works once, almost imperceptibly. “...intolerable.”

Another beat. She lets the horizon swallow whatever emotion flickered across her face.

"Yes" she adds, tone leveling, "your people are resilient. Adaptable. As Roshar has been. But sometimes adaptation isn't enough. Sometimes, the change must be bigger than simply surviving."

[recreatable]

Predictable death. Yes, maybe that's the point. The Paintress lost her child in a violent, unexpected way. The painted numbers on the Monolith, the warnings, they're a kindness. Death in Lumière is gentle and foreseen.

All the same: "You're right. It is intolerable." Fuck, is it intolerable. He lets a hand dangle over the railing, musing darkly, "And you're right that— sometimes you need to burn the whole thing down to start anew."

Is that what she said? Well, it's what he took from it. Sometimes, the mistakes made with thoughtless flicks of a paintbrush can't be easily undone. Sometimes, you need to pour turpentine on the canvas and scrub until it's blank and pure again. He's fantasized about that a hundred, a thousand times.

Silence stretches, and then he laughs.

"I thought you were going to comment on our art and culture." Instead, she chose Lumière's most depressing—although admittedly also its most defining—feature to focus on: the Gommage. Maybe, he thinks, because she finds it relatable to her own circumstances in some way. "Maybe its propensity to produce dreamy musicians with stomachs of iron."

He still hasn't thrown up. That's worth bragging about.

[elsecall]

Jasnah's lips press together — not disapproving, just thinking. Deeply. When she answers, it's with that unsettling blend of precision and softness she sometimes slips into when his darkness brushes too close to hers. Moments like these, considering the undercurrent of his words, she suspects Lumière breeds fortitude as much as it does musicianship.

"Art and culture are the surface." Her voice is quiet, level. "Beautiful. Necessary. But they often flourish only because something beneath them is... cracked."

Jasnah thinks about the stories she's been told and angles her head, studying him — not his bravado, not the quip, but the line he crossed without noticing.

"Burning the whole thing down,” she echoes, tone neither alarmed nor impressed. Mostly sounding tired. "Most people don't reach for that metaphor so easily."

She watches his hand dangling over the sea. Fascinated, somehow. Or maybe it's merely a focal point while she thinks. If she has her way, she'll be the last Alethi monarch. It isn't quite like burning the whole system down, but... it's close.

She lets the wind fill the silence for a heartbeat before continuing:

"Does Lumière have a king? A queen?"

[recreatable]

Haha, yeah. Metaphor.

Realizing that perhaps that was a little bit of a crazy thing to say (and feeling no less belief in it for that), Verso crosses his arms, staring out at the watery expanse. "No. They"—they, not we—"have a Council. Elected by the people."