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[recreatable]

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[elsecall]

(It's okay. They have spoons. Occasionally, you might see a skewer instead of a fork. Beware!)

Had he realized that had been her intention? Getting him to taste first — waiting a beat to see how he felt in the aftermath — and only then considering digging in for herself. Maybe their conversation during the walk had stuck with him. Maybe she's just that transparent.

Maybe it, too, is a joke she's supposed to play along with but can't quite find the requisite levity to rise and meet it.

"Here," she mirrors his movements and slides the milder, nuttier curry to his side of the table. "I hope it's more to your taste."

[recreatable]

He takes the bowl, sliding it the rest of the way to its place in front of him. Eating is a good excuse not to say anything—he needs to chew it over with Twix—so he's quick to take a bite; it's still quite different from anything he's ever eaten before, but not nearly as overwhelming to the senses. More palatable. Of course Jasnah prefers the thing that sort of hurts his mouth to eat over this.

After long enough has passed that he doesn't feel he can get away without saying something, he comments, "Tastes far better than the foot in my mouth."

He's still not sure what he did, exactly, but it seems better to take the blame for it and move on.

"Clearly, I've spent too long in the company of sentient paintbrushes."

[elsecall]

She dips her spoon in the bowl — stirring the meat and lavis grain, kicking up a plume of aroma that almost-but-not-quite reminds her of sipping in Stormlight. For her, the brief silence is fine. Maybe not comfortable but absolutely fine.

The first mouthful sends a cascade through her nervous system. One of the few times where the biological imperative to avoid danger is genuinely pleasant. A thoughtful chew; a second bite.

But then he speaks and she — almost indignant that he'd raise the specter of their friction instead of just compartmentalizing it — has to confront the way in which he's shouldered the blame.

"It's not your fault."

Well. Not entirely.

[recreatable]

That's— frustratingly vague. This whole thing wouldn't be so awkward if he'd at least known what he did to offend her; he could apologize, avoid doing it again, move on. 'It's not your fault' sort of makes it sound like it's some inherent quality of his that he simply couldn't circumvent, though, and he frowns for a split second, almost unnoticeably short but not quite.

Despite being the mopiest person known to man, Verso is an expert at lightening situations. Some misplaced responsibility, perhaps, for other people's feelings. He raises his brows, questioning.

"Is my sexy voice that bad?"

[elsecall]

"Bad?" She echoes, confused. "No. Not at all."

But then she's left holding the loose, complex threads of an explanation she doesn't really want to give. It hardly seems dignified for a grown woman (a world leader) to blurt out that she's so far removed and unaccustomed to even such harmless, friendly flirtation that it likely can't land as it's intended. Warm and fun and unserious.

It makes her feel like some unsocialized axehound. So very far away from the queen who presides over a council chamber with easy, unfettered control. At some point she has to acknowledge that she's managed to curate an existence ringed almost exclusively by relatives or by colleagues. Most of whom would never dare to speak to her as he speaks to her.

(And the one who did? Well. He was better built for shrugging off her prickly ways, it seems.)

Jasnah stirs her spoon once again in her bowl. Counter clockwise. Ultimately, she lands on a confession:

"I'm not very good at this."

[recreatable]

Wow. That's even more frustratingly vague. This is all so pedestrian that he wouldn't know where to begin picking out what she means by 'this'. "At... pity-laughing at someone's bad jokes?" It's obviously facetious, but he hasn't any idea what else to say. "You'll get better."

[elsecall]

Well. Yes — he's correct. Pity-laughing at someone's bad jokes is a splinter skill within the larger this that she's trying to verbally tiptoe her way around. But tiptoeing doesn't suit her much. And, yes, when she senses it she hates to recognize the prevarication in herself too.

Frustration bubbles over. Speaking so plainly it almost sounds childish, she counters:

"At making friends."

Adolin always made it seem so easy, didn't he? Fluttering about, winning everyone over — easily gaining the confidence and love of his men. Jasnah has always relied on respect (and a little bit of fear) instead.

NITPICKS FOREVER

[recreatable]

Oh.

Verso stirs his curry, wondering how that could possibly be— Jasnah is clever, powerful, a good conversationalist. Yes, she has a rebellious streak, but he finds it hard to believe that there aren't people beating down her door to be the queen's friend. Even putting her personal qualities aside, being royalty seems like it should be enough to earn her most people's favor.

"Well," he says, "we've already established that you're my friend." Careful wording here: you're and my. He isn't presumptuous enough to say that we're friends after she so summarily rejected that idea. "So, the making is already done."

[elsecall]

Jasnah does have one true friend. One person who she can rely upon the understand her — entertain her meandering thoughts; scold her when she wanders too far off the metaphorical path. Someone in whom she confides and confides in her in turn. Someone who chose her. Who chooses her every day. And whose partnership she values more than a perfectly cut gemstone.

And that one friend is unconscious. Tucked into a spice tin. Nestled in her pocket. And she's never been called upon to pity-laugh at his bad jokes. Mostly because Ivory doesn't make bad jokes.

"Not so good at staying friends, then," she amends her statement based on his feedback. Yes. Even once she says so, it feels more honest.

Silently, she wonders if it's deeply human to want something so much — a bond, a relationship, a connection — while also simultaneously frightening yourself out of the possibility. Social ostracism has added too many knots and twists to her outlook.

[recreatable]

Mmm. Verso frowns. He can relate, in a way. He's excellent at making friends—even with all of the cards against him, he's been able to manipulate and wheedle his way into alliances. The actual friendship part, though, the part that involves getting close to someone, letting them in... even the times that he's opened himself up to it, it ended violently and abruptly before he could ever finish the transition.

"Neither am I," he admits, voice low and almost conspiratorial, like he's sharing a secret with her.

Playfully: "We have so much in common. We should be friends."

[elsecall]

She also finds it hard to believe that someone so persistent and so needlessly friendly might have a hard time keeping friends. Unless. Except. A brief flicker of a frown. There are other circumstances afoot for Verso. Of course. A too long life and a Continent filled with death.

Ordinarily she might ask and needle and pry. Today, in this moment, she chooses not to crack the fragile ground they've managed to climb back onto after their sullen silence.

"Feels unethical," she counters. But the humour is there if he looks hard enough. Wry and funny in a way that only makes sense to her. "Considering you're my Wit."

Says the woman who'd been sleeping with the last one.

[recreatable]

Verso's mouth twitches, the movement minute but obvious all the same. It does feel good to be something to somebody. No, not just something. He's been something to somebody a million times over, sometimes too much of a something, but he's rarely been something... unique. There's so few experiences he's had that didn't belong to somebody else first. This—Roshar, Jasnah, the Wit—is all his. Something he doesn't have to share with someone who came first.

"Should've thought about that before we got married," he teases, taking a bite.

[elsecall]

And so the cycle begins again. High highs and medium lows — distraction to delight to dismay to distance to distraction once more. They tumble through them so quickly, so easily, that one really should stop to ask why neither of them stay in an emotion long enough to process it.

"Indeed," she answers — more hesitant in her response than she has any right to be. She's bantered with Verso before. Easily, comfortably. But the current context makes her a little too self-aware. Self-reflective. "The highprinces will be after your head for that."

[recreatable]

Fuck!!! Why is it awkward again? He fixed things. This is the worst not-date ever.

"I'd just stick it back on," he says, trying very hard to keep the conversational tone light. He's even smiling a little, pleasant, although there's not a lot to smile about in the present moment.

"—Hey," is abrupt. Maybe a little desperate to solve this problem once and for all. "Want to watch me cut off my pinky finger when we get back?"

[elsecall]

Wow. Where's the pity-laughter for her bad joke, huh? No need to panic. This is simply a failure of Jasnah's ability to calibrate humour to the moment.

But — it's worth it (maybe) for the resulting offer. She catches her bottom lip under her teeth and has at least as much decency to pretend like she has to think it over. Like it's not an immediate, obvious, enthusiastic yes.

Eventually, Jasnah hums a curt uh-huh. Adding: "Would you mind if I took notes?"

[recreatable]

Ah, that's good. That's more what he's used to.

It's still weird, for the record. But a familiar weird, so he says with a laugh, "I wouldn't dream of impeding your research." Also, he's certain that if he disallowed it, she'd just take mental notes and run to write them down the moment he looked away.

[elsecall]

Two more bites of curry. And — in macabre fashion — she's already thinking about the columns and headers she might jot down. Time frames. Visual notes. This little plan-ahead does for her thoughts what a good reshelving does for a library. Clears it out. Sets it to order.

"If only Ivory were awake," she murmurs into her curry. "It would be worth witnessing from the Cognitive side, too."

[recreatable]

Although he's sure that this is partly exactly what it seems on the face—an academic desire to see Verso's condition on another plane—there's also an undercurrent of worry, he thinks, of wishing Ivory were awake for another reason entirely. Not so good at staying friends echoes in his mind. She'd had Ivory, if no one else.

"We'll do it again when he wakes," Verso promises. "Once he's feeling up to it."

[elsecall]

She ought to feel more conflicted about this than she likely does. Easy, interested plotting in how best to measure a man's ability to recover from bodily harm. Not just once — but, now, a second time. Before she's even witnessed and recorded the first.

Idle nodding. Yes, once he's awake. Yes, once he's feeling up to it — although she's quite certain once he is awake all the effort will actually be on her part.

But, rather than dwelling too long on Ivory because Verso is right to wonder if her wistfulness was more than just curiosity...

"People appear like little flames from the other side," she explains. A little out of the blue. But the Cognitive Realm is on her mind. "I could be this far away from you on the other side and all I wold see is a small light. Flickering over a sea of beads."

Presumably. Jasnah has no idea whether Verso's soul would look like everyone else's.

[recreatable]

Verso takes another bite as he listens to her talk. The curry is unfamiliar and strange, but there's something nice about that, too. He likes new things. Until recently, there'd been so few opportunities for 'new'.

"That sounds beautiful," he says, because it does. "Can only people who've bonded with spren go there?"

[elsecall]

She shakes her head.

"No — technically, you've already been. The Oathgates leveraged the Cognitive Realm when they transported us to Kharbranth. It's simply so near-instantaneous that you wouldn't see a thing."

Ah, she must be feeling better. There's distance in her voice again but it's the kind of distance employed by an academic at a lectern.

"But outside of an Oathgate—? Only a Radiant with access to the Surge of Transportation can initiate a gate of her own. Either to look into the Cognitive or — yes — travel there. Alone or otherwise. Getting back is far more difficult."

[recreatable]

Hm. Verso cocks his head. There's no more interesting way for me to write this, so you'll just have to tolerate him commenting, "You make it sound harrowing."

[elsecall]

...Harrowing? Yes. She can understand why it might sound so. But in the interest of being precise:

"It's not the travel itself that's harrowing. Difficult? Absolutely. Impossible for an Elsecaller of the First Ideal, for example. But it gets easier as one progresses in their oaths. And crossing over is easier in places where the realms are more approximated. A junction, it's called."

— She discusses it all so clinically. So intellectually. Not impossible for me when I was at the First Ideal. Not I'm an Elsecaller. Not I've progressed far enough in my oaths that it's easier now.

"But if a person travels to the Cognitive Realm without a firm plan for returning?" She sets her spoon down for a moment with a brief shrug. "That's the bit that's harrowing."

[recreatable]

Verso stares back across their bowls of curry, trying to figure out how to say okay, but why in a way that doesn't make him sound like an absolute idiot. Again: he has a lot of reading to do when they get back. Maybe then he won't seem like such an ignoramus.

"Indescribably harrowing, it seems," he quips, because she didn't see fit to explain it at all.

[elsecall]

Jasnah holds up her bare hand and counts off a list of possible topics.

"No stormlight apart from what you take with you. The same can be said for anything edible. There are the aggressive non-sapient spren along with the aggressive sapient spren. And a sea of beads."

Her voice softens, catches, frays a little on that last one. Her first (unintentional) descent into Shadesmar (the colloquial name for the Cognitive Realm) had been met with a near-drowning, beads filling her mouth and weighing her down and dragging her under.

"And very few people. More now than there used to be."