recreatable | open post.

"Francs, in Lumière." It's been ages since he's held a coin or banknote in his hand, though. Back before the population dwindled enough as to make an unfamiliar face notable, he'd occasionally paid a visit to a favored cafe or boulangerie during his returns to Lumière. The visits to the mainland became more and more infrequent, though, as his presence became more out of the ordinary—everyone in Lumière knows everyone now. The thriving, bustling city where he could disappear into the crowds is gone, and so are his days of spending time in fancy little cafes.

"Chroma, on the Continent." It's the currency all the Gestral merchants use. What use the Gestrals have for Chroma is as much a wonder to the omniscient narrator here as it is to you!

But he's mostly played this game with Monoco, so Chroma has been a rare bet. Neither of them have as much use for it as— "Or embarrassing dares."

Two different currencies. Not so surprising, she supposes, although the one thing all of Roshar can agree upon is the value of Stormlight and spheres. Doubly so, now that in conjunction they can fuel Radiant abilities. Warfare itself has changed with the refounding of the Orders.

She tries not to let herself get too distracted by that garden path. There's nothing she can do or say about it right now, caught on a ship. Unable to own her own name and rank. For now, she files away both words: Francs and Chroma.

"...How embarrassing? An example, please."

Preferably from real life.

Jasnah, if she's observant enough, might notice that Verso is a little impatient—just like he'd been to return to the cabin and play. It hadn't just been merely excitement to show off his work, although that was part of it; it's also, apparently, a character trait. Or personality flaw, depending on how you want to see it. He taps his fingers against his own cards, expelling restless energy.

"You know, like—" He pulls a memory out of thin air. "Loser has to go streaking through the Station." A pause. "Obviously, we won't do that one."

Of course Jasnah is observant enough. But — just like over dinner — she has this devilish little urge to prolong his impatience. To test and tease and make him wait it out a moment more. To test his restraint, perhaps. His self-control.

For once, she doesn't go for the obvious Jasnah-bait (what's a Station? and asks instead:

"You've done that dare?"

Ugh, maybe he shouldn't have shared that particular one. Probably a little too embarrassing. He hadn't cared at the time, though, considering it had only been Gestrals and Grandis there. He might have shown a bit more restraint if actual humans had to see him.

"You just assume I lost?" he gripes.

A beat.

"—I did, but only because Monoco cheated."

"It's a game based partially on chance," she intones, "I have to assume you lose on occasion."

Still! She now has to digest the idea of him, losing a bet, and running naked through a Station. A station for what? Again, she pushes the thought aside. And the thought of him streaking too.

"I need time to think of a suitable dare," she at long last decides. "Next round."

In the meantime? She asks for another card with a crooked come-hither gesture.

He's delighted that she has any interest in this sort of bet at all, honestly. It seems like something she might consider juvenile and foolish; Verso can't imagine Jasnah streaking in the snow, to say the least. Whatever bet she chooses to make, he doubts it'll be anything like the playful and boyish ones he made with Monoco.

Loser writes a 10,000 word essay on a topic of their choice, to be graded by the winner, probably.

Verso slides another card her way, and takes one himself. He glances at it for a brief moment, then sets it face-down.

"When you decide not to take another card, it's called standing," he explains. "And when you do take another card, it's hitting." He raises an eyebrow. "Want to stand or hit?"

— She enjoys feeling out the edges of what's deemed probable or possible. She enjoys finding limits. She wonders what she might find embarrassing. More so, she wonders what he'd find embarrassing. Not to mention the fact that embarrassment is context-dependent. Jasnah thinks there's a lot she could endure in the name of winning. We'll see.

She lifts her third card. Eyes it, chewing briefly on her bottom lip. She remembers an anecdote Wit once told her about cheating at cards. Was it a game like this?

"I'll stand."

She's sitting at seventeen, right now. It's a terribly safe place to be. But safe is as good as risky when there's nothing yet on the line.

There's nothing to lose except his pride, although that is admittedly exceedingly fragile. Verso takes another look at his cards, contemplative. It's not a great hand, but it's not an awful one, either. He could hit and still be relatively safe, assuming he didn't land on one of the higher worth cards.

But he let Alicia win when they played pétanque for the first time, and she'd been so proud that she'd played with him all day. "I'll stand, too," he says, before turning his cards over. Two threes and a nine.

— Unfortunately for Verso, he's playing cards with more of a Big Sister type. She reacts to his hand with a slight pursing of her lips and furrowing of her brow. Not...disappointment, per se. More like confusion. Would she have stuck on a fifteen? Should she stick on a fifteen, if she achieves one in future? Maybe Verso is more cautious than she first assumed.

Card by card, she reveals her hand: six, four, seven.

"What a waste of a win," she exhales — confusion giving way to a mild smile. Implying, perhaps, that she wished she'd devised a dare for him if she was going to win the and anyway.

Ah, maybe it was too easy of a win for her. Maybe, he thinks, Jasnah enjoys things more when they're hard-won. (Maybe he should have been playing a lot more hard-to-get this whole time.) He considers her cards, then leans forward to collect them and slide them back on the deck.

He shuffles again as he talks, as flashy as he can manage when the makeshift cards lack the structure of typical cardstock. Maybe he can get his hands on some when they return to Urithuru, and some paint. Verso has always preferred for his artistic talents to be in service of fun and games first and foremost.

"You're right," he says lightly. "You could've had me streaking down the main deck."

Her mild smile persists. As if, maybe, she might have been just cutthroat enough to make good on that dare — except she'd never risk the blow back of how it might escalate against her.

She taps the floorboard. Another insistent, eager sign to deal her back in.

"This time," she announces, "if you lose I expect to see your best Torreth impression."

Verso enjoys the evident eagerness—a reflection of his own impatience—but he likes the ridiculousness of her 'dare' even more. He's half-inclined to ask if she doesn't want something more academic and pragmatic, like a lecture on Gestral physiology or an explanation of the seasons in Lumière and on the Continent, but he's reluctant to look a gift horse in the mouth. So, he finishes shuffling with a little flourish (he's getting better at shuffling these cards now) and deftly flicks two cards her way.

"All right," he says, picking two cards for himself and peering at them. "But turnabout is fair play." That is: he expects to see hers if she loses. Much more surprising coming from her. Hell, he'd do a Torreth impression for free.

He places an ace face-up. "The ace," he explains, "counts as eleven, unless it would cause you to go bust." To go over 21, he assumes she'll understand from context clues. "In which case it counts as one."

"Bit uninspired," she complains. "Can't think up a dare of your own?"

It takes two tries to pick the cards off the floor, this time. A crinkled expression of frustration. Then, after a beat, she replaces them with the top card visible: eight, unfortunately. Of the two, that's the one she would have preferred to keep to herself.

Verso's mouth twitches almost imperceptibly. "I'll hit," he says as he grabs another card from the top of the deck. His mouth twitches again. "What about you?"

— That's what she was waiting for. Some...indication, she supposed, on whether they traded back and forth who would make their decision first. She likes this position, going second, eking out a bit more information with which to choose what to do next.

She scrutinizes him a second longer.

"Hit," she says simply. Annunciating whatever Alethi consonant that is with a hard tap of her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

And when he gives it to her, she drops her scrutiny from his face to her new card. Hmm.

It's sort of fun being the recipient of her scrutiny, when it's not scrutiny over his incorrect actions or his immortality. Verso likes having all of her attention like this, on (relatively) his own merit instead of her interest in some nugget of information that he has to share, and he's already scheming how to get her to play with him at least one more time before they disembark.

"Stand," he says, echoing her crisp intonation.

She assumes he likes what he has. Or — of course — the other option: it's simply high enough that he can't risk...what was it? Busting. Jasnah, on the other hand, finds herself in the miserable mindset of having a result too low to stand if he's standing. And just high enough to remind her of how easily she'd gone over in the first round.

Staring at him, with her dignity on the line, she once again crooks her finger in that same slight give it over gesture.

"I'll take a fourth."

She's not happy about it.

Verso raises an eyebrow, but says nothing as he slides her another card. "Stand?" he asks, and I'm just gonna godmode that she doesn't get yet another card because otherwise we'll be here all day. When he flips his cards over, it's with a sense of smug self-satisfaction: the ace, a two, and a six. 19 altogether.

"Your turn," he says, pleased.

Never fear! She was doomed to bust, because fate and the narrative are cruel like that. So before they get any further in the round, upon eyeing her fourth card, she lightly tosses all four onto the floor beside her knee.

"Storms," she curses, "storming...storms."

A four and an eight — her first two cards — followed by a two and (finally) an accursed jack. She went from fourteen to twenty-four in one hit, and clearly feels a bit sour about it. Not, like, bitter-sour. More like petulant-sour. She was really hoping to avoid the forfeit on this one.

Smoothly: "I'm learning a lot about Rosharan curses today."

Because he can figure out from context clues what storms, storming storms is supposed to be. The corner of his mouth turns up. Maybe, if he ever allows her to get on the subject of linguistics, they can compare swears.

He gathers their cards up, setting them back on the stack yet again.

"...At your leisure." You know, whenever.

For a moment Jasnah simply stares at the cards. As if they have betrayed her. Personally. Philosophically. "...So be it," she murmurs. A wager is a wager, and she did agree to the terms. She is honourable about it.

She straightens her spine. Lifts her chin. Folds her safehand behind her back with exaggerated propriety, already slipping into character even as she clearly hates every second of it. And then, she imitates Torreth.

Imperfectly. Awkwardly. Jasnah may be a professional at performing her own authority and presence, but clearly has never spent much time inhabiting anyone else's. Nevertheless, she does try. Earnestly. She has observed this man. She has studied him. She knows his mannerisms, even if she is stiff and strange and bad at performing them. She shifts posture. A puff of the chest, shoulders squared like a man who has never once in his life questioned whether he had the right to take up space. Her expression holds that vaguely constipated concentration Torreth gets whenever he believes everything is someone else's fault. All of it over-acted.

Jasnah drops her voice into a gravelly rumble entirely unbefitting a queen of Alethkar: "Punctuality! These dullards wouldn't know punctuality if it hit them on the head — pick up the pace, boys!"

And then, with the exact cadence he used yesterday while lecturing a sailor who merely coughed: "If one of you dunces so much as sneezes near my rigging today, I swear by the Ten Fools I'll have you swabbing the hull with your storming eyelashes."

She even gestures with her whole arm, Torreth-style. Aggressive and sweeping. But the moment the last word leaves her mouth, she stops. Every line of her body reverts back to Jasnah Kholin, scholar-queen, dignity reassembled axon by axon. And she's grimacing.

Verso practically beams. Or, well, something close to it; 'beaming' implies that there's some sort of inner light shining out, the likes of which he's never had. He's certainly smiling though, grinning wide from ear to ear, as his shoulders shake a little from silent laughter. It was—

Very un-Jasnah. And very cute, although he doesn't dare say that. He has the feeling that she might not appreciate such descriptions.

"Wow," he says, voice trembling a little in amusement. "You're a natural actress." Hardly. She was a bit stiff and awkward, and despite the surprisingly observant imitation of even Torreth's most imperceptible mannerisms, there'd been something just slightly off about it. However, it had been charming as hell.

"I'm beginning to think I should quit while I'm ahead." Clearly the bets won't get any better than this.

Her posture briefly collapses in on herself — not defeated, not dejected, but perhaps just a little bit exhausted from stretching these figurative muscles. Jasnah is self-aware enough, possessing of enough rigorous insight, that she knows what she's good at. And she knows what she's not good at. Intellectually, there's no shame in failing at something that was never in your wheelhouse; realistically, however, there's a flicker of it fighting in the pit of her stomach. It manifests as a brief burst of colour in her cheeks.

Gone, as quickly as it arrived.

Grousing, complaining: "That would be unsportsmanlike, I think."

Quitting while he's ahead. Without giving her an opportunity to avenge herself.

Poor sportsmanship, so says the woman who pouted like a child upon losing. He smirks, an irritatingly pleased-with-himself expression on his face, but he relents nonetheless. Another round, then another, then another until he's so tired he can't count properly anymore, and then it's off to bed. The rest of their days on the sea continue with a similar bent: attending mess, playing a few rounds, switching off who gets to sleep.

It was her turn to sleep the night before they disembark, so he's especially sluggish as they make their way onto Thaylen land, lugging their belongings like he pack mule he's apparently become. It's still early morning, sun not yet risen, and the streets of Thaylen City are all a little fuzzy without the light.

It's a bit creepy, alone out here. He glances behind them at the sound of movement, reluctant to jump at shadows, but— maybe it's just an alley cat (or crab) digging through trash. Nothing there.

"Where did you say we were going, again?"

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look i couldn't find a way to make him taking another card more interesting

FAIR.

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