recreatable | open post.

"—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)

The touch catches her off guard. Not unpleasantly. Just unexpected. A brief, involuntary stiffening passes through her shoulders, the reflex of someone unused to being adjusted like that by another person. For the barest fraction of a second she almost pulls away.

Almost.

Instead, she stills. Allows it. There is even (so fleeting it barely qualifies) a minute inclination of her head toward his fingers, as if her body has decided something before her mind can intervene. Then it's over. The hair is tucked back into order, and he's already retreating, decorum restored, distance reestablished. Jasnah does not comment. She never does, when speaking would overdetermine a moment.

She exhales slowly and shifts her weight, the movement economical but decisive. With care, she swings her legs fully onto the divan, arranging herself lengthwise instead of perched, blanket drawn higher with a practiced tug. Her posture loosens by degrees: shoulders easing, spine uncoiling, one hand settling palm-down against the cushion while the other rests lightly at her middle, protective without being tense.

She watches him read. Not covertly. Not self-consciously. Simply watches the quiet, reassuring rhythm of a person absorbed in text. It anchors her more effectively than she would like to admit. Sleep comes sideways, slipping past her usual barricades. She drifts, surfaces, drifts again.

At one point she murmurs, half-asleep, "Which chapter?" When he answers, she hums soft and thoughtful. "Mm. That one's a bit overwrought." Later, another wakeful flicker: "Wema's quips are quite good in that scene."

Each time, she sinks back down again, the questions less about the book than about confirming his continued presence. Each time, the paranoia loosens its grip a little more. Eventually, even that thread slackens. Her breathing evens out. Her eyes stay closed. This time, she does not wake again. At least not for a while.

The next few days pass in relatively similar fashion. Verso fetches food, entertains Jasnah for the hours that she's awake with conversation and card games and occasional guitar-strumming, and helps her with her activities of daily living as best he can. In the evening, when Jochi returns from downstairs, he'll sometimes take a walk through Thaylen City to stretch his legs. He keeps an eye out for the broad shoulders of Jasnah's would-be assassin, but he never sees him. He wonders if he should have chased after the assailant, but then Jasnah would have bled out in the street, alone and scared.

On one occasion, he removes the bandage from her wound and cleans it again before redressing. It looks— well, still not great, but better. It's no longer actively bleeding. He knows it'd be doing better if only Jasnah would have only let the physician look, but she at least doesn't seem to be in any danger of imminent death.

A few days after that—about a week post-stabbing, for those keeping track—he says, "Do you feel up to taking a walk?"

A week is a very long time when your world contracts to one apartment and two rooms.

The days blur together — not unpleasantly, exactly, but indistinctly. Conversation bleeds into conversation. Card games stretch and repeat. Guitar strings hum in the background, sometimes purposeful, sometimes absentminded. There are small, friendly wagers that mean nothing and therefore feel safe. Stripped of crown, council, and consequence — responsible only for sitting still and healing — Jasnah becomes a slightly different version of herself. Not softer, precisely. Just narrower in focus. Contained. Better, because her convalescence isn't a lonely one.

Ivory's absence is a constant ache at the back of her thoughts, a phantom limb she keeps reaching for. Still, she finds herself smiling, here and there, despite it. Once she's stable enough, she allows herself her notebooks. Not for long stretches but in careful increments. She worries away at a Dawnchant passage like a bone, translating a line or two before fatigue forces her to stop.

In the evenings, she finally gets to know Jochi as more than handwriting and arguments. She tells him about Urithiru: the gemstone library, the living architecture, the peculiar elegance of its fabrials. He listens like a man storing treasures.

At night, more wakeful than usual thanks to daytime dozing, she turns her attention back to Verso as she lays on the divan and him on the floor. She needles him on grammar. Subject-verb-object. Exceptions. Idioms. She pushes until he deflects or she drifts off mid-question, whichever comes first.

By the time her bandage needs redressing, it's striking how unremarkable his presence in her personal space has become. She sits without tension, lifting the hem of her blouse with one hand while he works. The act is perfunctory, efficient. And quietly intimate for its lack of ceremony. When he finishes, she offers him a soft, unguarded, "Thank you."

So when the day finally comes that she's invited to do more than pace the room — when he asks if she feels up to a walk — it feels almost natural for her to reach for him. Her fingers curl around his elbow, eager for leverage as she rises, testing her balance.

She doesn't hesitate. "—Will we go back to the alley?"

And though she doesn’t say it aloud, the rest of the sentence hums between them. And look for Ivory.

All right. He'll admit it. It feels good to be leaned on. Physically, if not emotionally. He smiles as her fingers graze his elbow, although he already finds himself grieving for a time when she no longer needs him for basic activities like this. It's probably morally wrong to take pleasure in her convalescence this way, but it wouldn't be the first morally wrong thing that he's done. At least this one doesn't hurt anybody.

The implication in her question is obvious. "If you want," he says, uncertain if she feels confident in making it that far. Uncertain if she'll be able to handle it emotionally, too. It was a harrowing experience for him, and certainly worse for her. He wouldn't judge if she felt some level of anxiety over returning to the scene of the crime.

"Let's just focus on making it outside first."

She doesn't argue. That alone is a small concession, deliberate and noticed even by herself.

Instead, she adjusts her grip on him. Subtly at first. Fingers firming where they rest against the crook of his elbow, thumb finding purchase against the weave of his sleeve. Testing. Measuring. Her weight shifts, not dumped on him, not yet. Just enough to remind herself that he's solid, that he will hold if she asks him to. The knowledge settles somewhere low in her chest, grounding.

"All right," she agrees, quietly. They rise together. Slowly. She times her breath to the movement, jaw set as her body protests in muted, lingering echoes of pain. The first step is cautious. The second is steadier. By the third, she realizes that she is not shaking. Or not much.

The stairs give her pause.

Weeks ago, they had squeezed past one another on narrow storm-shelter steps, all sharp proximity and deliberate distance. Careful not to touch. Careful not to acknowledge how little space there truly was. Now, she angles herself into him without ceremony, shoulder brushing his chest, forearm braced lightly across his back as they face the descent. So much distance so erased.

"Noticeably stronger," she cheers herself on quietly. Step by careful step, letting herself lean just enough to borrow his balance while reclaiming her own. "Storms, it'll be good to see something other than Jochi's walls."

"You're doing well," he says softly, encouragingly, the way he'd motivated Alicia when she was still recovering from her burn injuries. She'd found it difficult to even get out of bed, although he wonders now if that wasn't more due to an emotional scarring than a physical one. Regardless, he'd been there every step of the way, brushing her hair and reading to her and bringing her food and water. Not so different from what he's done with Jasnah, honestly.

One step, then another. When they make it down to the first floor, he feels a little fatigued, too. The stress of worrying she's going to fall and reopen her wound is tiring, but admittedly a small price to pay for getting her up and moving. A minuscule price to pay for searching out Ivory.

"Good job." He reaches out to steady her with a hand against her arm, no pressure in his grip but there in case she needs something to lean against. "Do you need to rest?"

Does she need to rest? Almost certainly. Will she? Not yet.

Jasnah shakes her head, but she does at the very least close her gloved fingers around the hand he's using to steady her. Not to pull it away but to fix it in place. To claim the assistance rather than merely accept it. She braces herself more fully as they step through the small back door that bypasses Jochi's bakery altogether, out into the open street.

Thaylen fashion does her a quiet mercy: practical layers, muted colors. Her hair is simply braided — Verso's work, as always — with no ornamental pins, no gemstones, nothing that might catch the light or invite recognition. She looks, for once, profoundly unroyal. Anonymous.

She draws in a deep breath and the city hits her all at once. Salt and fish and hot stone. Footsteps, voices, the creak of rigging somewhere nearby. After days confined indoors, the sensory onslaught is almost dizzying. She squints against the sun, blinking until the brightness resolves into something manageable. Feels its warmth on mostly-bare shoulders, another thing to which she must acclimatize.

"You're more patient than I would have expected of you a week or two ago," she observes, tone quiet, measured and academic. As though she's recording data. A fact first. A compliment, perhaps, later.

Edited 2025-12-25 16:56 (UTC)

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

throwing a party!!

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