recreatable | open post.

"It's not very sportsmanlike to change your wager once you've already won," he points out as he flips his cards over, a bit of a sore loser. His soreness is alleviated only by the fact that this is a game of chance, too, and that letting Jasnah win now (did he let her win?) means she'll want to play with him more in the future.

"But," he continues, "you've piqued my curiosity."

Which cuts through all accusations of poor sportsmanship, obviously. He's a little worried that now she's going to request he chop a limb off in front of her—he's not opposed, necessarily, but he doesn't really feel like bleeding all over Jochi's floor and then having to clean it up—but he shoves that down in favor of finding out what she wants.

"I'll hear you out."

She waves away his mild accusation of unsportsmanlike behaviour. Who does he think she is? A Windrunner? Her oaths have little to nothing to do with honor. Well. Aside from the First Ideal. She can already hear Dalinar lecturing her on journey before destination and the many ways this might obliquely violate it. Fortunately for Jasnah, Ivory was never such a stickler.

(He's fine. He'll be back. Just wait.)

"You and I can understand one another," she begins, framing her change of heart by pointing out the obvious. "I assume it's due to some quirk of Connection."

She does not linker here. Explaining Connection is a headache and a half. Tl;dr — outsiders can, intentionally or not, hijack Connection to a place they're visiting and effectively speedrun language acquisition. Jasnah assumes that's what happened to him.

"But your native tongue still surfaces from time to time," she continues. "Whether you notice or not." It's obvious to her; she's less certain it is to him. She lifts the seven of diamonds between two fingers. "For example, the characters in the corners are unintelligible to me. I infer the value only because I can count the shapes."

That is likely a sufficient preamble. Ultimately, her request is no more or less intrusive than the original. It's simply...different. Different, and longer-term. Although it's the kind of broader knowledge Wit would always deny her when she asked.

"I would amend my boon to learning your language." She lifts a hand before he can object. "I'm a confident autodidact. I would need only the alphabet and a few sample passages to begin."

A pause. A faint, intent look.

"Continued consultation, of course."

Verso's eyebrows raise, primarily at the idea that she doesn't even know the numbers he's written down. He's even more surprised that she didn't say anything up until this point. It seems like it would be intolerable to Jasnah not to know something for even a second longer than she has to.

"All right," he says, easy acceptance. It's probably more useful than having him read a chapter of some boring book aloud, albeit not by much. The only person she'll be able to converse in this language with is him, and he has no problem translating anything she might not understand for her.

But that's the whole problem, he assumes. She'd still have to depend on him to translate instead of just knowing. She'd have to admit that she doesn't understand something.

"You can start by calling me Professeur Dessendre."

"Professeur." She echoes in a tone that somehow automagically clarifies that she is not currently calling him by the word but is instead merely tasting it out on the tip of her tongue. Odd, round, soft sounds.

"A title of some sort?" She ventures. Because she knows his house name already. (And, yes, that's how she thinks of it. Having a second name necessitates it being a house name.)

Jasnah reaches out and pats the divan — the empty expanse of it next to her, wordlessly inviting him to get up off the floor if he'd prefer.

Verso gathers up his cards and hers, putting them back in the deck and placing it beside her on the divan before he settles down on the other side of it. "It's the word for teacher. You'd be la professeure."

He considers, for a second, making her call him something embarrassing instead. But she's trusting him with her education here, so he doesn't have it in him to pull the wool over her eyes. Not about this, anyway.

"Or, technically, I guess you'd be la reine. Queen."

Slow, steady, her eyes track him as he moves from floor to seat. Always on a knife's edge between fascination and indifference. Leaning a little nearer to fascination, clearly, when she repeats the words, mouth moving silently: professeur, again, deaf to the different ending; la reine, for the first time.

"You'll write those down for me, won't you?" At some point. Not now, but — soon. "The beginning of Roshar's first ever interplanetary dictionary."

A little too ambitious. She suspects such things already exist, but in that nebulous social circle of worldhoppers who so often keep to themselves and try not to 'spoil' the relative innocence of different planets. Like how you can get tinned food in Shadesmar, traded with distant other peoples, but those goods have yet to make it the Physical Realm.

"I'll give you a writing credit," she half-smiles.

Interplanetary, she says, and he sort of makes a face at that. He already has a frame of reference for different worlds; the Canvas is one in its own way. What he lacks an understanding of is different planets. The Dessendres had owned an armillary sphere, but more as an art piece than out of an interest in astronomy. Maybe if he'd looked a little closer, he would have noticed that the stars in the sky didn't match any star charts.

It all sounds a little far-fetched, but Jasnah is the expert here.

"A writing credit," he repeats, a little amused. "I was under the interpretation that men weren't allowed to write."

"—Not allowed isn't quite right," she concedes. "Discouraged. Shamed, if they do."

Jasnah shifts on the divan as she speaks, careful of the lingering ache in her side, the movement small but deliberate.

"It's only the Vorin nations who cling so fiercely to male illiteracy," she continues, gaze forward, voice even. "Elsewhere on Roshar, it's quite different. Azir. Shinovar. Herdaz...."

Her hand lifts, palm up, as if setting those cultures on an invisible scale. Then it lowers again, resting near her thigh, planted against the upholstery. She isn't interested in replacing one set of rigid norms with another, but she's interested in progress. Urithiru is uniquely positioned for that. Cultures mingling, assumptions rubbing raw. It creates opportunity. Friction is not inherently bad.

"The ruse we maintained aboard the ship need not follow us back to Urithiru," she concludes. "There, I encourage you to read and write openly. People will object. They will whisper. They may even be offended."

Her eyes sharpen, not unkindly.

"Storm them. You'll be in good company. My uncle is learning to read and write," she adds. "The church excommunicated him for it. Among other things."

Verso's not sure it's such a good idea to publicly get on the wrong side of— well, everyone. Jasnah seems to like the idea of causing objections and whispers and offense, though, so he's hesitant to argue. He's very dependent on her goodwill, after all.

"'Storm them'," he repeats, amused. It sounds so much milder to his ears than putain, merde, va te faire foutre. Almost childlike, although he doesn't dare say it. "That's charming." Especially coming from Jasnah's mouth.

"If you wanted to curse like that, you would say tempêtes." With a conceding cant of his head, he adds, "Although we usually use more... colorful words."

— Join her little social rebellion, Verso. Suffer the slings and arrows of public opinion, sure, but cement yourself as her right hand man. ~~Or left hand man, if you play your cards right~~.

"I'm listening."

You can't just promise more colourful words and not elaborate. There's plenty other oaths and profanities she could use, though most of them are similarly childish. They're just also incredibly religious.

Edited (the strikethrough didn't work!) 2025-12-22 23:26 (UTC)

Ooh, this feels a little wrong. He definitely shouldn't be teaching a monarch curse words. But it isn't like he hasn't said them in front of her before, isn't like she hasn't cursed herself. It's just that Lumièran curses feel so much more crass than Rosharan ones; it makes this all feel a bit. Inappropriate.

"They're... a bit more vulgar than yours," he says sheepishly, as if a disclaimer.

Which to teach her? He supposes he'll start with a favorite. "There's, ah, merde. It means..." Do they use words like 'fuck' and 'shit' on Roshar? That seems a little too coarse to ask. "It means you're very displeased. Or that something is poor quality, or that you're in trouble. La merde."

"Merde," she repeats. Easily, readily, with the same composure she brings to any borrowed term that's proven useful. Profanity, she's learned, is a kind of cultural magic; without the weight of lifelong taboo, it lands oddly light. "Merde?" She tries again, more carefully this time, hunting for the softened R that ghosts beneath his pronunciation. Harder to produce than to recognize, she notes. Merde, indeed.

Her thumb finds her chin as she considers it. Poor quality. Filth. Refuse. Something debased. It sounds, she thinks, not unlike crem — the muddy residue left behind by highstorms. Shut your cremhole. You cremsucking idiot. This tastes like crem. An entire linguistic genre. Not especially obscene, unless one finds mud itself offensive.

"Nale's nuts," she offers at last. "That one is considered fairly vulgar — though I try not to swear by the Heralds if I can help it."

Jasnah, honey. One, this is not a competition. Two — and more importantly! — if it were, you would lose.

Oh. He likes the shape of her voice around the word. Merde. It does feel a little inappropriate, but in an exciting way, a way that sends a little shiver up his—

"'Nale's nuts'?" Boner killer, but still very cute. He can't fight the amused grin forcing its way onto his face. Fairly vulgar. Hardly; it's adorable. "I'm scandalized."

A pause, and then— "There's also putain." Is he just telling her this now so that he can hear her say it? Maybe. "Or putain de merde, if you're really pissed."

Well. That's...not quite the reaction she was hoping to cultivate. Still, if the cost of her failed vulgarity is one of those grins — unfiltered, irrepressible, unguarded, breaking across his face like something he didn't bother to restrain? She'll consider it a tolerable exchange.

So be it. If anything, this only reinforces her working theory: profanity derives its force from lived context more than syllables. Without the sediment of experience, it's just sound.

She proves the point by repeating him again, lightly, almost experimentally: "Putain"

A beat, thoughtful rather than shy.

"What does that one mean, then?"

"Uh—"

Well, this one's harder to explain. It's easier to say how it should be used, rather than its literal meaning.

"It's similar to your 'storms', I think." Except way less cute. "Versatile. Like... punctuation." Certainly used very frequently by Lumièrans!

"Literally, I suppose it's an— impolite word for someone who... sells companionship." Which he is trying very hard to politely describe. "But it's really just a word that means you're displeased."

"Oh," she says calmly. "You mean whore."

The word lands without ceremony. Confident, comfortable, not in the least bit bothered to say it. It is, after all, just a word. And one she's heard often.

"Yes. I'm familiar. It's a popular choice. Usually deployed as 'godless whore.' Say, perhaps, when someone's losing an argument."

She doesn't bother adding with me. The implication is obvious enough. Privately, the pattern arranges itself with the same weary clarity it always does. The insult is never about behaviour; it's about containment. Categorization. A word meant to punish women for visibility, for autonomy, for existing outside someone else's comfort. At least, in her experience.

Aloud, she adds almost conversationally: "Interesting how your language and mine arrived at the same destination."

Then, after a beat, as if she can't resist a bit of her own commentary:

"I prefer storms."

Yes. He means whore. Verso grimaces at Jasnah's reaction, even as unbothered as it is. Clearly, Lumière is far different from Alethkar. Why wouldn't it be? It's an idealistic fantasy of what life should be like; a world where women like Jasnah are celebrated rather than denigrated. It's easy to forget that isn't her experience here.

"I think I prefer it, too."

If only because it won't offend her. Putain is so far removed from its original meaning that he hardly relates the two, but he still makes a mental note to try to avoid saying it around her. Probably the polite thing to do, anyway. She is royalty.

"...Well, that's probably enough language lessons for one day."

For a moment, she considers pushing back. Pressing past his easy dismissal and steering the conversation somewhere safer. His language, but more of it. Not the profanity, but the structure of it. Its alphabet. The way meaning nested inside sound. There were any number of scholarly avenues she could take, neat little paths she knew how to walk without stumbling.

And with a precision she almost resents, she recognizes the impulse for what it is: avoidance. Another detour, carefully chosen, leading away from the truth she has been skirting since yesterday morning.

So she stops.

She leans her shoulder into the divan, turning just enough to face him more directly without tugging at the wound. It's an awkward angle, half-committed, but she holds it. Her hand drifts between them, and she taps a fingernail once, twice against the deck of cards. A small, grounding sound.

"Ivory's gone."

The words leave her all at once, like air forced from a bellows. Final. Draining.

"Or—" she swallows, the correction catching slightly, "it's like our bond is gone. I can't hear him. I can't find him. I can't hold stormlight." Her jaw tightens. "And without him, I can't even look into Shadesmar to check."

She stills, fingers resting on the cards.

"Oh," Verso says.

He's at a loss. His understanding of what Ivory is is lacking at best, and it's difficult to know exactly what this all means. Is Ivory physically gone? Or perhaps it's merely a splintering of their spiritual link—?

"I didn't know." Obviously, he would have been more concerned if he realized Ivory had been gone this entire time. Usually, he just assumes Ivory is secretly hiding in her collar, listening to all of their conversations. He hasn't been wrong yet. Until now, that is.

"...Maybe he got scared and fled," he says, even though that sounds sort of stupid. Also sounding stupid, he asks, "Do you want me to go look for him?"

A strange, unfamiliar gratitude tightens in her chest. Verso's offer is useless — but kind. Offered, it seems, without hesitation or calculation. It's difficult not to feel...moved by that. Loyalty, she knows, is a road meant to run both ways, and for a fleeting moment she feels the tug of it here. Or perhaps she simply wants to.

Jasnah shakes her head.

"It's unlikely he's still in the Physical Realm at all. Our bond is what allows him to be here while retaining his mind — so if something happened to the bond itself..."

A small, miserable shrug finishes the thought. She has read the field reports. Weapons wielded by the enemy that can harm spren directly. Permanently. The possibility coils in her stomach. Was it coordinated? An attack on her and Ivory together? Storms, she hopes not. The idea of Ivory reduced to a deadeye — alive, but hollow, his eyes scratched away — turns her faintly nauseous. He trusted her to safeguard his life. And though she's certain she didn't break any of them break any of her oaths, the responsibility still settles heavily on her shoulders.

"Maybe you're right," she allows, though conviction never quite finds her voice. Maybe he fled. But if he went more than a few miles, he'd lose his sense of self. Awareness fades quickly for a spren away from their Radiant."

Her gaze drops, unfocused.

"That's the bargain," she continues quietly. "The oaths go both ways. He gives me access to certain skills. I give him an anchor in the Physical Realm."

It's rare to hear uncertainty worm its way into Jasnah's voice. It makes something unpleasant squirm in his gut, like the discomfort of watching something unnatural.

"It'll be okay," he says, resting a hand on her shoulder. The contact is brief and light, a touch of warm fingers to her bare skin, and then it's gone. He'd linger for longer, but the Alethi sense of propriety is so different than his, and it feels dangerously easy to cross a line that he doesn't mean to. Better safe than sorry.

"I'm sure we'll find him before long." Said with confidence that he doesn't necessarily feel, because someone has to pretend that things are all right.

"If he isn't in the Physical Realm"—it feels silly to say, but—"then is there a way to contact him in the, uh..." A wave of his hand. Whatever it's called. "Spiritual Realm?"

Her posture straightens, just barely, beneath his hand. A near-stiffening of her spine, the reflexive response of someone caught off-guard by a kind of contact she doesn't often experience. Skin to skin, warm, brief, fitting the slope of her shoulder as if it belonged there.

It's over before she can acclimate. His hand withdraws mere moments before unfamiliarity can tip into comfort, and she's left acutely aware of its absence. A faint echo of sensation lingering where his hand had been.

I must be more vulnerable than I think, she notes, coolly, filing the feeling away rather than interrogating it. But at least she's not so vulnerable as to mistake his optimism for a valid strategy. Jasnah shakes her head once, precise.

"No. Not the Spiritual Realm. The Cognitive."

There is a collective mercy in the fact that she does not expand on this distinction.

"If we had access to another spren, they might be able to help," she continues, then exhales. All the Radiants she knows are in Urithiru. So is every other useful contingency she'd rather be deploying right now. A pause, she gathers herself, no more dithering.

"No. Our best option is for me to recover enough to return to the site of the attack." Her voice firms, conviction settling back into place where it belongs. "If he's nearby, but diminished — less than sapient — my proximity may help reestablish the bond. That's where we begin."

"Okay," is an easy acceptance of her plan. While Verso is used to being the one coming up with plans given that he's been the most knowledgeable person on the Continent for decades, he can acknowledge that Jasnah knows much more than he does when it comes to things like spren. If this is what she thinks the best course of action is, then he trusts her. From everything she's told him, there isn't a chance in hell that she'd risk Ivory's wellbeing unnecessarily.

"Then I guess you should rest." He gathers up the deck of cards, holds them in his lap. Playtime over. "Don't worry," he says, infusing his voice with as much lightness as he can, "there's still hundreds of pages before Wema and Sterling get their acts together."

He won't require her entertainment, is what he means.

Verso pauses, then, just for a split-second of hesitation. He realizes that he'd never really said much on the stabbing itself, so he adds, "Hey, I'm glad you're all right."

~~What about HER entertainment?!~~

I'm glad you're all right. Jasnah wonders, briefly, why he bothers saying it at all. Of course he's glad. It would take something monstrous to be indifferent to another person's survival, absent enmity or opposing aims. Gratitude for her continued existence hardly feels remarkable.

But. She lets the words sit with her a moment longer than that instinct allows. She recognizes the offering for what it is. Not information, but reassurance. A small, careful reaching-out.

Does reassurance require reciprocation?

She worries her lower lip, watching him as he gathers the cards, as he makes himself smaller, unobtrusive. She won't offer platitudes simply to satisfy social symmetry. Instead, she backtracks methodically to the earlier thread she'd left dangling: his apology. The implication that he'd failed her. That he should have done more.

"Yes," she says, then stops herself. Starts again, posture straight, tone faintly prim. "Yes, well. I'm glad not to be recovering alone."

That isn't quite right. She exhales, corrects course.

"I'm grateful you're here."

There. Accurate. Sufficient. Human. Surely, she has earned an (uneasy) nap.

It's uncommon that Jasnah offers something complimentary freely, and he takes the pat on the back with all of the enthusiasm that such a rarity deserves. It isn't obvious, but there's a subtle brightening to his expression, and he sits a little taller. Pleased to hear that his presence has improved things for once, instead of what it usually does, which is corrode everything around him like a toxin.

He doesn't say anything, but his mouth twitches. Very carefully, he reaches out with two fingers to grasp a wisp of stray hair that's escaped the braid he plaited for her yesterday, tucking it back where it belongs.

"Sleep well," he says, before absconding back to the table to continue his reading.

Edited 2025-12-24 19:55 (UTC)

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congrats on receiving my 1,000th comment in this post

throwing a party!!

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