elsecall: (014.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 12:59 am (UTC)(link)
Well. That's an unusual answer. Just as well he's facing away and can't see the faint crease of her frown. Jasnah loads the comb again with a generous sweep of dye and moves one layer higher, returning — methodically — to the roots. She works the paste in with slow, thorough strokes, fingers massaging until it threads between every strand. No shortcuts. No missed spots.

"Hm." She turns the thought over, on the verge of asking, "Did you have any—"

But then she notices his head drifting — almost imperceptibly. Lifting out if its tilt.

She stops mid-sentence. "Head down." Said softly, but still unmistakably a directive.

Her knuckles settle at the base of his skull. A light, assured pressure and she guides him back into place. And then Jasnah resumes without comment, her touch steady again as she continues her work.
elsecall: (021.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 01:21 am (UTC)(link)
Any injuries during the Fracture — on account of him mentioning not noticing his curse until then. But the interrogative heat of the moment seems to have passed, and she chews it over while moves onto another section.

"I was going to ask whether you had any other pursuits besides the piano, as a child. But I suppose secret talents will do."

She lies. At least it's not to herself, which is the true cardinal sin. And in this case, she gets the sense that perhaps she'd gotten away with more questions about his curse than she usually does in the run of a mini-interrogation. Besides, she's been learning how to stay on a decent enough card hand. Shifting questions now feels a little like that.
elsecall: (076.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 01:58 am (UTC)(link)
Jasnah understands each of these alone: captain, swim, team, and school. She does not — could not possibly — comprehend what they're trying to say altogether. A team? For swimming? Sounds frivolous, but okay. Sure. Good for you, Verso. Doesn't really sound like the kind of thing that needs a captain, really.

She moves her attention to the crown of his head. Almost done!

"I used to love mechanical puzzles. Are you familiar? All manner of pieces — wood or metal, maybe — and you either have to put them together a certain way or disassemble them instead. The order always matters."
elsecall: (071.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 02:24 am (UTC)(link)
It's STEAM now, Verso. Not just STEM! They opened the doors to creative and design thinking when they added the A-for-Arts. Perfect for logical humanities nerds like this gal.

And because he's offering up this speck of intel on his own, she's going to glide in with the obvious and inevitable question: "Is it also powered by chroma? Like the barrier around the Monolith?"

Well. Obvious and inevitable to her. Mention a shield, and she's going to imagine that it's somehow powered.

In the meantime, she at long last sets the pot of dye aside. But she's not done with him yet; Jasnah gives his hair a good, vigorous comb-through with her gloved fingers. Despite the — intimacy — of the action, it's oddly nice to put her left hand to use. When she'd said she used to love mechanical puzzles, she'd truly meant it in the past tense. The puzzles got harder to do after she started covering her hand at twelve.
Edited 2026-02-04 02:25 (UTC)
elsecall: (076.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 03:21 am (UTC)(link)
Urithiru is a marvel of engineering — even if they don't know whose engineering was so marvelous. The strange dug-out space under Kharbranth for its library? Also a marvel, also unexplained. But none of it quite can compare to the idea of a transparent dome. Transparent? Is it glass? Wouldn't that cook its inhabitants?

Jasnah finger-combs the hair back from his temple — organizing it all in one tidy direction. Then, once that's accomplished, she steps aside. She holds her safehand away from her body, hesitant to put it near anything it might smudge.

The deed is done — at least for now. The colour, she assumes, has to set before it can be washed out. But she tries to sneak one last question in before the spell possibly breaks.

"—We?"

She thinks she knows the answer. She wants him to say it, though.
elsecall: (037.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 11:54 am (UTC)(link)
And while Jasnah does catch how his spine straightens — she's more entangled in the minor revelation that she'd guessed correctly. Renoir and Verso. She nods, brief, like maybe she'd just felt out one of those incremental steps in one of her mechanical puzzles. It satisfies her for the time being.

Instead of taking the now-vacant chair, she busies herself with wiping what dye she can off her safehand glove. The leather is going to stain — but she at least wants the excess removed.

She snorts a laugh at only fair that you answer a few and pauses, thoughtful, as she tries to discern what is or isn't worth sharing about her day.

"I expect we're only days away from abolishing slavery. On paper." She sounds uncommonly hopeful as she says it, but is quick to add — "Getting the words down and signed is the easiest part of what's going to be an uphill cultural battle."
elsecall: (013.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 03:13 pm (UTC)(link)
"Alethkar has been an unfortunate outlier," she interjects on the topic of slavery. "And there are lessons to be learned from how the transition was handled in places like Azir..."

She trails off. There's a lot of academic discourse to be had on the subject. Jasnah has spent a great deal of time studying other examples across Roshar that might inform how Alethkar might successfully make this pivot without falling into the traps and pitfalls common to such sweeping, sudden change.

But he leap-hops to a different question and (with an internal release of tension) she switches smoothly to answering it instead of revealing just how much of a policy wonk she actually is.

"Hm? Oh." A raise of her brows, a firm shake of her head. "No. Storms, no. He wasn't inquiring for my sake."

Jasnah continues scrubbing at her glove. The way it buffs the dye into the leather makes her think she should just follow-up in the next few days by dying it outright.

"If I had to guess, he's considering his own betrothal."
elsecall: (024.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 04:09 pm (UTC)(link)
A marriage (even a political one) is absolutely the very last thing Jasnah cares to think about just now. In fact, she doesn't even let the prospect sink into her thoughts as she glides easily through this topic. (Although she would agree with Verso that settling for someone who won't read would simply never be an option. At the very least, any prospective match would need to be open to learning.)

She relents and drops into an easy seat on the desk chair.

"Complex? Not especially, no. It follows the usual Vorin precepts: upholding oaths. But there are a handful of obscure points of political tension surrounding his would-be betrothed should he want to take that step."

Having continues to work the question in the background of her thoughts ever since Renarin stopped her in the hall, she concludes: "I suspect he asked because he was worried I wouldn't give my blessing."

She is (awkwardly) his Queen too. After all.
elsecall: (210)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Her cheeks puff with a sigh. There's a lot of meat on these particular bones. Some of which has long since turned rotten. It's tricky to explain why she might disapprove of Rlain without also recounting the six years of war with Rlain's people. Without explaining why the Listeners had her father killed. Without explaining how the Listeners are, in fact, different to the Singers. And how it used to be horrifically common for any average Rosharan household to keep Singers with he spiritual equivalent of a lobotomy as slaves. Which, sure enough, loops right back around to the legal reforms she's been so eager to enact.

Luckily (?!) Jasnah doesn't disapprove of Rlain, so she tries to elide over the gnarliest of the details with a very simple:

"He," she corrects the pronoun, "used to be a spy. Planted in our warcamps by the enemy. Renarin rightly wondered whether or not there's some archaic law around whether someone who is ostensibly a member of our royal family could engage in any kind of legal union with an enemy ex-operative. It's good that he approached me with the question."

She can only help untangle the problems she knows about.
elsecall: (076.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 08:32 pm (UTC)(link)
She does wrinkle her nose at his word choice. Torrid. Hard to say whether she disagrees or whether she'd rather not imagine her baby cousin being torrid about anything.

"I told him I'd look into it. And that if there are any legal impediments, we'd remove them."

Jasnah finally seems satisfied with the state of her glove. It's still tacky to the dye, however, so she sits with her arm slung over the back of the chair. Mostly so she can keep the stained glove quarantined from touching anything else that might suffer a stain.

"I would see him happy. And, besides, he's not so directly in the line of succession that an heir will be required of him."

And if there is, there's always legal recourse. Like how Dalinar adopted Kaladin into his line of succession. Not to mention other plans concerning monarchies and highprincedoms. No, legally it ought to be clean and tidy. Politically, however?

"The highprinces won't like it. But that'll be my battle to fight. Not his."
Edited 2026-02-04 20:37 (UTC)
elsecall: (008.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)
"I haven't got a favourite."

She protests. Sitting up a little straighter. Rolling her eyes at the idea. However, it's hard to outright deny the soft spot she carried for Renarin in particular. Like her, he'd always had a challenging time fitting in with broader Alethi society. He was never going to be an exemplary soldier like his older brother. And how that little boy had cried on her shoulder with shuddering sobs asking why his father didn't love him as much as he loved Adolin. And how (she knows) he would always be the first to break and give Dalinar a bottle of something when the rest of the family were staunchly attempting to dry the miserable drunk out.

Renarin, looking up at Jasnah and her sword, prepared to accept a fate his odd powers had insisted to him was immutable. Storms, she's grateful she went against her logic on that particular night.

"But. Yes." She admits. "He is."
Edited 2026-02-04 20:58 (UTC)
elsecall: (050.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-04 09:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh — she nearly tells him. Nearly spills it all like dye over her safehand glove. She hadn't always looked out for him. Not like she wants to now. Not like she used to when they were children. Nearly spills how sometimes the greater good demands sacrifices of even your favourites.

Except she hadn't done it. And to this day, Jasnah isn't entirely certain whether it was the right choice. She just knows she's grateful to have made it. And, subsequently, every slip of eye contact between her and her cousin feels a little weightier.

She appears conflicted for a moment longer. Two heartbeats. Three. Something spooks her away from the truth.

"—Did the merchant say how long you ought to leave it?"

The dye. She gestures to his hair.
elsecall: (025.)

[personal profile] elsecall 2026-02-05 12:06 am (UTC)(link)
While he's rinsing out his dye, Jasnah takes the brief opportunity when she's not being perceived to peel off the dye-stained glove. Balling it up inside out, she secrets it into her safehand pouch before buttoning the sleeve itself back over her hand. And when he returns to claim his desk chair, she migrates to the piano bench — sitting perched on the edge, turned in his direction.

He lobs the conversational ball none-too-gently into her custody. Any other flattery? Storms, she didn't think calling the white sections of his hair striking was flattery so much as it was truth. An observation.

Instead of paying him any direct compliments, she simply asks: "Are you simply trimming away the last few weeks' growth?"

Or is he making a more significant change? Admittedly, she doesn't know whether he arrived with his platonic ideal of a haircut or not.

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