recreatable | open post.

Verso's hand reaches up for the envelope, but annoyingly, he's shorter than everyone here. A tough pill to swallow for someone who used to do this exact thing to his sisters to irritate them with his natural height advantage. Now he understands why Clea would smack him for it.

"There's nothing to talk about," he says, lowering his hand and crossing his arms.

A beat—

"She's always like that?"

Verso, may you never learn that Hoid is in fact much shorter but Fakes It with magic just to look cool among all the Alethi giants.

"Always?" He repeats lightly. "No. Not Always."

Hoid backs up three steps and places the envelope gingerly atop the piano. Not giving it over, no, but it's enough to signal that this isn't a game any longer.

"Only most of the time. Terrible management style, really. Brilliant woman. Utter menace to morale."

Verso probably shouldn't shit-talk Jasnah with this random guy, even though it would maybe feel sort of good right now, so he just says, "Sounds about right," as he walks over to the piano and picks up the envelope. "It might be a few days before I can get it to her."

Depends on which of them folds first, and how fast.

Hoid lets the delay sit there for half a heartbeat. And then his smile tightens, almost imperceptibly.

"This isn't a dinner-party scandal. When groups like the Ghostbloods resurface, they don't warm up slowly. They test. They probe. Frankly, I'm shocked they haven't yet made a move."

He sighs, exaggerated. And then brightens again like a man remembering himself. "And — a few days? — what kind of Wit lets his queen drink her morning tea without entertainment?"

A disappointing one, probably. Verso would have gladly entertained her, but after feeling quite thoroughly personally rejected by her—and for such a small comment—he can't really find it in himself to act as a trained monkey for her amusement. At least, not until he's had some time to cool off.

"Silence is good for morning contemplation," he says, flippant as a defense, before crossing the room to tuck the letter into the drawer of his nightstand. "I'll try to slip it under her door tomorrow."

Hoid doesn't contradict him.

He watches Verso cross the room, watches the envelope disappear into the drawer, and when he speaks again it's quieter — not careful, exactly, but tuned to the frequency of what's actually being said.

"Silence can be useful," he murmurs as he glances at Verso's piano. "Especially when someone's trying to remember who they are without an audience."

A pause. You are not the one he wants tuned to his frequency, sorry, Hoid!!!

"—Fine, I'll take it to her tonight." If that'll make him go.

:c

And he wonders why he gets a reputation for being an annoying asshole. Well — actually, he doesn't wonder at all. He's well aware. Still.

Hoid raps his knuckles lightly against the piano's sidewall. It creates a funny, sonorous sound as the vibrations knock around the cavity.

"Can't I at least interest you in a story before you do? Free of charge. A once in a lifetime deal, really."

As Verso fishes out the letter from his drawer, he comments, "I thought you were eager for me to deliver your letter as soon as possible." But he does feel a little bad for the presumable struggle this man was previously put through by Jasnah, and he's not exactly in a rush to see her again so soon, so he says, "The floor is yours."

Hoid offers a shallow bow before settling back down on the piano bench. This time, he faces outwards to the room and his audience of one — leaning back with (frankly) a heinous level of manspreading that would get him jeered out of any subway car if there was any justice in any of the many, many worlds of the Cosmere.

"Once upon a time, there was a boy. This was before the storms, before memories, and before legends - but there was still a boy. He wore a long scarf to blow in the wind. The boy in the scarf played and danced, as children do today. In fact, most things were the same then as they are today. Except for two big differences. The wall, and the lack of light. Stop me if you've heard this one before."

He suddenly leans forward — elbows on his knees — at peers at Verso.

"Actually, don't stop me. You'll hurt my feelings and — besides — you've already agreed hear it. So to speak."

Verso still doesn't like this whole 'touching his piano' thing, bench included, but all he does is stare in displeasure. He gets the sense there isn't much he can do to stop this guy. (No wonder he was fired; he's kind of annoying.)

"I haven't heard it," he says, because this definitely doesn't sound like a Lumièran story. Instead of a scarf, it would be a little beret. Like the fading boy around the Continent. "...Although something tells me nothing would change if I had."

"In those days, a wall kept out the storms. You've experienced a Rosharan storm, haven't you? Yes, well — this wall had existed for so long, nobody knew how it had been built. That didn't bother them. Why wonder when the mountains began or why the sky was high? Like these things were, so the wall was. And light was not.

Of course, even without light, people still had to live, didn't they? That's what people do. I hasten to guess that's the first thing they learn how to do. So they lived in darkness, farmed in darkness, ate in darkness.

But the boy was curious. 'Why is there a wall?' He would ask the man selling fruit.

'To keep the bad things out,' he replied.

'What bad things?'

'Very bad things. There is a wall. Do not go beyond it, or you shall die' The fruit seller picked up his cart and moved away. And still, the boy looked up at the wall.

'Why is there a wall?' He asked the woman suckling her child.

'To protect us,' the woman said.

'To protect us from what?'

'Very bad things. There is a wall. Do not go beyond it, or you shall die.' The woman took her child and left. The boy climbed a tree, peeking out the top, his scarf streaming behind him.

'Why is there a wall?' He asked the girl sleeping lazily in the nook of a branch.

'What wall?' The girl asked.

The boy thrust her finger pointedly towards the wall, shrouded in darkness.

'That's not a wall, that's just the way the sky is over there.'

'It's a wall,' the boy replied. 'A giant wall.'

'It must be there on purpose,' the girl said. 'Yes, it is a wall. Don't go beyond it, you'll probably die.'

Well, these answers didn't satisfy the boy who looked up. He reasoned to himself, if the wall kept evil things out, then the space on this side of it should be safe. So, one night while the others of the village slept, he sneaked from his home with a bundle of supplies. He walked towards the wall, and indeed the land was safe. But it was still so dark. No sunlight, ever, directly reached the people."

As Hoid hits his stride in telling the story, the voices pitch and bend — a little too different from what must be his own natural voice. The little boy sounds like a little boy. The fruit seller, the woman, the sleepy girl in the tree. Each voice sounds distinct and real. Far more real than a mere actor putting it on.

As someone who does the voices himself, Verso can't help but be a bit impressed. And jealous. His voices are certainly not nearly as good.

As Hoid reaches a pause in his cadence, Verso cants his head. "Ah." He's already determined what this story must be about. Cynically, he says, "I see. The moral's going to be about not scaling over walls that you shouldn't, no?"

That there are some things people aren't meant to know. Yeah, that sounds about right to him.

Hoid stills.

Not dramatically — just enough that the air shifts. The cadence he'd been carrying loosens, the performative ease slipping away like a mask set carefully aside. When he looks at Verso now, there's something quieter there. Watchful. Almost...worried.

"Oh," he says, softly. "No. That's not the moral."

He takes a moment, like he's choosing his footing with care. And for one brief flash it's painfully easy to see why this creature would have found himself in Queen Jasnah's service. "That's the one people usually expect," he admits. "The tidy one. Don't climb the wall. Don't ask the question. Don’'t look behind the curtain."

A small shake of his head. "It's comforting, in a way. If there are lines you aren't meant to cross, then it's not your fault for stopping."

However. With a gentle hup and sweep of his hand, Hoid continues.

"The boy traveled far. The only wind was a pleasant one that played with his scarf. And the only creatures he saw were the cremlings that clicked at his side as he walked. Although, hmm, should I describe chittering squirrels for you instead? Whatever your small nuisance animal of choice — at long last, the boy stood before the wall. It was truly expansive, running as far as he could see in either direction. And it's height! It reached almost to the Tranquiline Halls! That's what they call the heavens, here on Roshar, if you haven't picked that bit up yet.

But, ah, where was I? The boy. He decided the only way he'd find answers would be to climb the wall himself. And this is ordinarily where I pause and ask my audience whether they believe our protagonist is either stupid or bold. But it does sound as though you've already made up your mind where this story ought to end."

"I didn't say ought," he argues. He'd... predicted the moral. Assumed that it would be a caution against learning things you aren't prepared for. But perhaps he's projecting his own experience onto the story—this fictional wall reminds him so much of the barrier around the Monolith, so it's easy to assume that whatever knowledge lies beyond it is horrible and dark.

But maybe it isn't. Maybe this is supposed to be a happy story. It is, after all, fiction.

"I guess that depends on what's beyond the wall."

A scrape of laughter; a wagging finger.

"It's cheating to hold off on answering until after you know the ending. But then again," with a tilt of one shoulder, "perhaps I'm cheating too when I say I believe he was both stupid and bold. If nobody asks questions, then we never learn. However, what of the wisdom of his elders? But then again, it's hard to feel the difference between listening to your elders, and your elders simply being just as frightened as everyone else."

He sighs, cracks his knuckles, and looks all the world like he's tired of this backstage chatter. He needs must get back to the story.

"Our protagonist didn't turn back. He climbed. There were outcroppings on the wall — things like spikes or hunched, ugly statues. He didn't know what they were, but he climbed the highest trees all through his youth! He could do this. The climb took days. At night, he would tie herself a hammock out of his scarf and sleep there. Mid-way up the wall, he could even pick out his village at one point. Thinking to himself how small it seemed, now that he was so so high."

Hoid steps his hands up, up, up an invisible space to demonstrate, well, highness.

"As he neared the top, he finally began to fear what he might find on the other side. This fear did not stop him. He was young — and questions bothered him more than fear. So it was that he finally struggled to the very top and stood to see the other side. The hidden side..."

He pauses for dramatic emphasis.

"...And on that side of the wall, the world burst alight in a sudden explosion: a brilliant and powerful brightness that lit the landscape beyond the wall. The boy gasped and saw the world in all its colors for the first time. Green trees, blue sky, red rocks, fields of golden grain all dazzling to behold. But on the backside of the wall, he also saw how it was crisscrossed with enormous sets of steps leading down to the ground. He stared at those steps and suddenly the gruesome nature of the statues on his side of the wall made sense. The spikes were spears. And, oh, the way everything on his side of the wall was cast into shadow—? The wall did indeed hide something terrible. Something frightening. It kept the danger in."

Idle, casual, like he can't help himself — Hoid spins on the bench and turns back to the piano. He picks and plinks at a few keys. Disjointed and barely-almost-kinda frenetic as the pace picks up.

"So he climbed down. Hid among the creatures who lived on this side. And resolved to steal some of their light and bring it back to the other side. To the land of shadows."

"Hm."

Begrudgingly, he admits that this strange man is a good storyteller. Better than him. It makes sense why Jasnah would have kept him around; she seems to enjoy this sort of thing. Stories. History. He then feels a little pathetic for still thinking about her, even now—because the story hits a little too close to home.

"So he didn't mind taking from everyone else if it meant that he could be happy." He thinks of his mother, her body slowly dying outside the Canvas. He thinks of Alicia, traumatized and in pain with no caregiver. And he thinks of the Lumièrans, living in the shadow of the Monolith. "Yeah, I think he's stupid."

A flourish of piano notes. And, as if Verso hadn't interjected at all:

"So the boy brought light for the first time in the village. Followed immediately by storms boiling over the wall. A price to be paid, maybe. The people within the walls suffered from the storms and their destruction. But each storm brought fresh light, for it could never be put back now that it had been taken. And the people, for all their hardship, would never choose to go back into the shadows. Not now that they could see."

Hoid ends the story with a sigh. As if, yes indeed, maybe the boy was stupid. Stupid and bold and brazen. Gently, he drops the lid on Verso's piano before holding out a hand — fingers curling in a pantomime of how he'd earlier asked for the envelope.

Now he wants it back.

"Just a moment, I've changed my mind about something," he muses.

And if Verso complies, Hoid pulls out the folded missive and — producing a bizarrely modern pen from inside his jacket pocket — he scratches one thing out and scribbles in another. Refolding the paper, he stuffs it back into the envelope and leaves it sitting on the piano lid.

Hoid stands. And offers a little, clownish bow.

A depressing story. One Renoir would like. He's always been obsessed with parables, cloaking meaning in symbolism. He'd twist it to be a positive: see, even though the storms come, it's still better this way. Verso feels vaguely annoyed even at this hypothetical, fictional version of his father.

"If it's all the same to you," he says, plucking up the envelope, "I'm hoping to sleep when I get back."

So, you know. Please don't be here still playing his piano.

"Bonne nuit," he adds, mostly to be polite, before—if Hoid has no further business—making the trek back to Jasnah's to knock on her door.

"Bonne chance," Hoid counters — speaking Verso's language lightly and easily for reasons we'll never know. But at least he's got absolutely no intentions of being around much longer. In fact, he intends to be out of the tower well before Jasnah ever finds out he was here. A bit of an over-inflated sense of his own importance, really, to think the queen would somehow give chase.

———

But back in her study, Jasnah is diligently at her desk. She's wrestling with the wording on a particularly delicate spanreed conversation with one of the higher-ranked ardents back in Kharbranth. Smoothing over tousled egos, given how quietly and quickly the queen had quit the city. She's fussing over a careful non-apology when there's a knock on her door.

"Enter," she calls out — tired but nevertheless alert. She's expecting a carafe of tea, and so doesn't even glance up from the page when the door opens.

He should just walk in, drop the envelope on her desk, and leave. Don't make a big deal of it. Maintain some dignity. Yes, that's what he's going to do, he tells himself as he enters Jasnah's space once more.

No lingering in the doorway, wishing that she would reach out and give him an excuse to stay and talk with her for a little longer. No purposefully forgetting something of his so that he has a reason to come back later. He still has a modicum of self-respect somewhere inside him, if only he can reach deep down and find it.

"Hey," he says, fingers nervously tracing the edges of the envelope.

She doesn't look up. Not yet. Chewing her bottom lip — caught up in the problem she's trying to untangle — and seemingly far, far, far less on edge in these quarters than anywhere else they'd been together. There's a smaller thin-skinned bubble of safety in Urithiru. Not perfect and not trusted, but it allows her a bit more breathing room.

It's not until she realizes there hasn't actually been movement from the doorway (no one has entered and dropped off a well-deserved steaming hot beverage!) that her concentration twists into scowl and she raises her eyes, prepared to chew out some gawking attendant who's perhaps on her first errand to the queen's———

Oh. It's small, it's minor, but there's tug at the corner of her mouth. The scowl evaporates into curiosity. Jasnah sets the pen down and sits back, attention roving over him. Checking for...for whether there's something wrong?

Her head tilts.

"You're back."

Carefully neutral.

What was he hoping for? That she'd be excited to see him? Obviously not—she'd been so displeased with him when he left. She'd all but ordered him to go, and now here he is, intruding on her space. And it does feel like intruding; standing ten feet away from her feels somehow more of a transgression than it had to sit next to her on the divan and braid her hair or work out the knots in her shoulders.

"Yeah," he says, glancing down at the envelope in his hands. "I—"

Ran into your ex-employee, and he gave me a message for you.

He looks back up. "I'm sorry," he blurts out, because he actually doesn't have a modicum of self-respect left. "You're right, it was stupid. I just wanted your mother to like me."

...Oh, again. Some of the unplaced, nebulous not-quite-emotion on her face choses a direction. She had been (in her own less than expressive way) pleased to see him return. Naively, maybe, she'd expected to avoid revisiting the topic. Can't they just shut it away in a little box and put it on a shelf and let it collect dust?

Jasnah nearly bites out a very abrupt, ballista-style ...but why? before she manages to swallow it at the last possible moment.

"If you want Navani to like you," she offers, a little disappointed, "you're better off asking for a tour of her fabrial labs."

Like mother, like daughter.

"Okay," he replies readily. "I'll do that."

Whatever a fabrial lab is. He's not totally sure. Something beyond his understanding, surely, but— having gathered up a little more courage, he takes another step in, closing the door behind him just as softly as he had when he'd left.

"I'll wear goggles and a lab coat and talk about hypotheses and variables, if it pleases you."

Don't be mad at him, Jasnah. 🥺

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