Usually — usually — when Jasnah asks a question, she can follow the answer she's given. She's smart! Brilliant, even. When the topic is outside of her expertise, she finds a great deal of comprehension can still be cobbled together on context clues alone. Her brain is big and mighty enough to do so even in a handful of languages outside of Alethi.
But, storms, she has no idea what he just said. O-gauge? Tin? Seam locomotive? She understands hand-painted. Is this an artsy thing? All she knows for certain is that she likes the look in his eyes when he dives into the topic. It's...endearing. He's endearing as he rushes into a loose, gestured demonstration.
Jasnah sets down her cup. She pushes her work aside. Verso has her unbridled attention.
"I know what models are," she redirects his explanation. "But you'll have to explain what a train is."
"Oh, right," Verso says after a moment. He'd been so caught up in the euphoria of getting to talk about trains that for a moment he lived in a world where trains actually still exist. "I guess Roshar doesn't have any."
How to explain in a way that makes sense? He's silent for just a second, brow furrowed, chewing on his lip in thought. Then he inhales, preparing for the explanation: "They're a series of cars on a railroad— uh, vehicles you can ride on that drive down tracks laid into the ground—"
He grimaces. It's hard to explain.
Holding out a hand: "Can I borrow a pen? I'll show you."
Her attention doesn't waver. Not for a second. Even as he stands — silent — thinking through one explanation. And, when that explanation weaves him into a corner, he tries another. Jasnah does follow (loosely) but does wonder about how one lays tracks in the ground. Rosharan ground is so, well, hard.
For a moment, she worries he'll give up and wave his explanation off with something watered-down and unsatisfying. After all, it's his signature move. I don't know and I couldn't say and something like that. But, to her gratified surprise, he offers to show her.
This time, her smile stays longer than a flicker. Although her body language stays reserved as she reaches for the pen, sitting abandoned to her side, and then tips it into his hand. And if that didn't betray her eagerness, then perhaps it shows up instead in how readily she slides a scrap of paper over — flipped onto its back, so he doesn't have to share his canvas with some scratched-down arithmetic.
"Okay—" Verso takes a knee beside her so that he can draw without leaning over and irritating his already tense shoulder muscles, then sketches out a quick set of railroad tracks. Beside them, he draws a few blades of grass to indicate that they're laid into the ground.
"This is a railroad. Tracks of steel rails across the earth. And this—" He sketches out a locomotive, or at least the best approximation of one that he can do in a short time. "Is a locomotive. They burn coal to heat water, and the steam turns the wheels." His pen circles a few times around the locomotive wheels, as if showing how they turn.
Adding a couple basic cars: "The locomotive hauls the cars down the tracks. It could take you across the entire Continent in a day."
Bold of him to assume she associates grass with ground. Luckily, she's read enough travelogues — and absorbed enough secondhand accounts of Shinovar — to bridge the gap without comment. She understands what the sketch is gesturing toward well enough. In any case, how the track is laid in the ground isn't the true fulcrum of his explanation.
No, it's the locomotive that holds her fascination.
Something massive and mechanical constrained to a single, deliberate path. Her gaze tracks the line he's drawn, following the rails with quiet intensity. Like Urithiru's lifts, she thinks, writ large and horizontal. Trading freedom for momentum.
She leans in, chin settling into her palm, attention wholly his now. And remarkably not interrogative. Instead, she's absorbed.
"Remarkable."
And already her mind is racing ahead. Extrapolating. His world's Fracture would have rendered such infrastructure untenable, right? The way Roshar's Desolations would wipe out whole swathes of progress at a time. She looks back up at him. Eyes filled with a hunger reserved for good ideas.
"And these 'cars,' did they carry passengers? Goods? Military supplies?"
Her eyes are steady on him, and Verso feels his entire body fill with giddy warmth. It feels wonderful to be the sole recipient of her attention, even if it's only as a conduit for what's really holding her attention: trains. It's rare that Jasnah doesn't seem like she has five hundred other things on her mind, plans and concepts and ideas rattling around in her brain at all times. Even when she seems interested in what he has to say, he usually still has to share her mindspace, and as previously noted, he doesn't enjoy sharing. To be the only occupant of it, even for this little while, is thrilling.
He would do anything to keep it going. So, the words tumble out of his mouth as he attempts to keep her interest: "We didn't really have a military," he explains; war had never been a thought in Lumièrans' minds until the war on the Paintress. "But passengers or freight, yes. Back then, there were people living all over the Continent. More places to go."
It ought to raise alarm bells: we didn't really have a military. And, to be fair, it sorta does. Jasnah's expression crinkles and contracts with brief disbelief. What place doesn't have a military? Conflict is one of the few constants that can be relied upon in this (and any) world. Surely. Even if there were no near neighbours to war with (or to keep from warring with) then at least Lumière required some form of internal armed force. Did it not?
Those questions are quickly banished by his continued explanation. And she asks a few more pointed questions about how the trains work. How the routes were planned. But she does inevitably circle back to the initial spark:
"And you had — models. Of these trains." She taps the current drawing. "Is this one the...O-gauge?"
Don't worry about it, Jasnah. There is simply no conflict in Lumière! :-)
"O-gauge, yes," he says, brightening a second time now that he gets to talk about not only trains, but model trains. (Some might call them 'toy trains'. They'd be wrong. It's a very mature, adult collection.) "That's the scale. 1:48, I think."
He taps the drawing, too, with his pen. Draws a little puff of steam coming out the top of the locomotive. "'Live steam' means that it was actually powered by steam, just like a real locomotive. Most of them are wind-up, spring-powered—they call it 'clockwork'. But this one was more fancy, expensive."
Renarin had kept models. Less sophisticated, perhaps, than the sort Verso is describing — her cousin's collection had mostly been wooden carvings of creatures and knights. Painstakingly painted. On more than one occasion, she'd taken credit for the painting — if only to spare Renarin from anyone else's disappointment.
Turning away that thought, she returns to Verso's explanation.
"From whom?"
She thinks this might be a less annoying question than what's Christmas.
There's no point in monopolizing her desk space (and pen) like this anymore, but Verso stays kneeling, eyes on his quick train sketch. Focusing on adding little details that she doesn't need and will likely not even look at. The rods across the wheels. The steam chest. The smoke stack. Nice little distractions from having to think too much about the way things used to be.
"My mother," is of course the answer. He realizes now that she must have Painted it herself so that he could have the best, most advanced model.
"It's a winter holiday where you give gifts to your family and friends," he adds, knowing that's the real question on her mind.
Incredulous. You see, Roshar lacks an axial tilt. This makes their seasons short and unpredictable. Honestly, a two-weel cold snap after a highstorm is a winter. Winter can jump straight into summer, no particular order required. So, yes, she's surprised to hear about a holiday where you give gifts every storming winter. Sounds emotionally exhausting.
On second thought, thinking about Verso a moment longer, maybe it's not that surprising.
She sounds mildly horrified, but Verso isn't certain if it's because the thought of annual gift-giving repulses her—very possible—or if it's because the seasons on Roshar are different. He hedges his bets by saying, "Once a year, at the end of the year."
He adds some cross-hatching to the sketch, then says, "Technically, the gifts are from Père Noël."
Already knowing what she'll ask: "He's an old man who breaks into your house and leaves presents for all the good boys and girls."
Twice in a row, he's anticipated her follow-up questions. Jasnah chews it over and decides — silently — that it's rather nice. Oh, not the part where he's presuming to know what claws deepest at her curiosity (although he's been correct thus far) but more the effort made. Like knowing when to fill a cup or hold a door.
She thinks about how uncomfortable his current posture must be — but also feels disinclined to prod him out of it. Content to watch him continue detailing the train; content to let him keep talking about Christmas and holidays and presents. Maybe, Jasnah theorizes, it's something like Lightday. She'd never been one for celebrating Lightday.
"That sounds..." She pauses. An old man breaking into your house? "Horrible. Who decides whether the boys and girls are good? Him, the trespasser?"
Horrible. —He laughs. It does sound sort of horrible, he supposes. It's just one of those things he'd never thought to question. Like how come nobody ever visits from other countries and why don't we have a military, actually? An old man keeps track of his good and bad deeds all year, then shimmies down the chimney and leaves him presents or punishment. Sure. Why not?
"Père Noël," he corrects, and begins to add a jolly old man riding atop the train, bag of presents slung over his shoulder. Teasing: "Keep disrespecting him like that, and you might only receive coal."
...
"Before you ask, I'm not certain which ethical framework he uses to make his determinations." Still teasing. "But I've been informed that 'fighting with your sister' is a grave offense in his eyes."
A roll of her eyes. Okay, yes, it's all just a story to keep children in line. Like warning them about how Voidbringers will come and eat them up if they don't wash behind their ears. Except the Voidbringers turned out to be real. Not just real, but...
Jasnah takes issue with this sort of moralizing. Like telling someone they'll never be allowed into the Tranquiline Halls. Jokes on them — Jasnah had been correct all along, and there's no such thing. Not how the Vorin Church imagined them, at any rate.
Rising to his tease, she taps a fingertip just outside Père Noël's bag of presents.
Wryly: "Coal is acceptable. Given what you've told me about the trainlines, it sounds like a smart investment."
Oh!! Verso very much enjoys when Jasnah plays along with something rather than dismissing it as foolish or juvenile. He would have expected something along the lines of I don't care what some trespassing old man thinks, but this is better. A grin spreads across his face, lopsided.
"You're exactly right. That's why I was always extra bad every year, so that I could swindle him out of all of that coal."
Obviously, he's bullshitting. Getting on the naughty list would have made him cry.
Well. It's true: she doesn't care what some trespassing old man thinks. But if the trespassing old man is going to lay some unwanted verdict on her, she may as well make this twisted judgmental Christmas gift economy work for her. Y'know. Hypothetically.
"Naturally. You had trains you had to keep running."
Did the very special, very expensive 'live steam' edition of this model train use real coal? Who knows. Not Jasnah. But she's decided that, yes, it must. At least for the fiction of the aforementioned twisted judgmental Christmas gift economy.
Absolutely not dedicated enough to do 'bad' things, though. Or, more accurately, not dedicated enough to let anyone know he had done bad things. Sure, he might steal from the cookie jar before dinner or accidentally snap a string on Clea's harp, but he would have done anything to avoid someone finding out that he had.
"I had these tracks laid out all across my study." Because he'd had a study and a room back then. Infinitely spoiled. "So I could look at them while I practiced piano. That's what I miss."
Or at least it's the safest thing to admit to missing.
Big whoop! Jasnah has a study and a room — and nevertheless finds herself appropriating his two out of any given five nights. But she does try and imagine it: a child's study, chock full with little trains and tracks and a piano.
Hmm. Jasnah pins the page down with a fingertip and drags it across the table. Towards herself.
"Oh." His eyebrows quirk up. It's not like him to deny her anything, and he doesn't want to deny her anything, exactly, but it's just that it's...
He glances at the sketch, a quick dart of his eyes to and away from it. It's not very good. At least, not by his standards. Sure, it got the job done so that he could explain the concept of trains to her, but there's so many things he could do to improve it. All of the little details he'd added had been primarily for fun, not for perfection. He can see a million tiny mistakes that he suddenly wishes he could scrub out.
"If you want art, I could make you something better."
She has sat through enough wardship applicants to recognize the familiar shapes of self-effacement and self-doubt when they surface. Shallan's had suffered from an especially acute strain of it — never quite grasping that progress requires beginning somewhere, imperfectly.
But this isn't that. Verso is no beginner, self-conscious of their ceiling. Rather, he's adept — and nervous about being measured incorrectly. Surely.
Jasnah knows him well enough now to read the tension differently: a backed-into-a-corner discomfort, poorly masked. The quiet panic that something done casually might be taken seriously. That an idle sketch might suddenly become a Piece.
Really, it's fascinating to watch. It also changes nothing. She shakes her head once. Decisively.
"You can make me something better," she says, calm and certain, "even if I keep this one."
Because she is keeping it. That much is settled. How else is she meant to pass it along to Rushu — or one of the other artifabrians — and see whether the sketch can be coaxed into a proper model?
There's a long pause, wherein he considers if he can tolerate Jasnah possessing a piece of him that is so obviously imperfect. What will she do with it? What will she think when she looks at it? How awful to think of someone having eternal access to something he created without trying.
Finally, he says, "Twist my arm, why don't you?" A sigh. "All right."
He can't snatch it away and rip it up into a million pieces. Or he could, but doing so would be even more humiliating than the alternative.
"But you should know," he says, haphazardly signing the corner of the paper before setting the pen down and standing again, "that's hardly my best work."
This, too, is a part of history. If Jasnah can accept entering caricatures of Highprince Sebarial picking his nose into posterity, then Verso can accept that even an imperfect work might get canonized. This railroad runs both ways.
She laughs, lightly, as he signs it.
"I'm not certain it's up to us to judge our own best works. Besides," she places the page carefully and precisely next to her personal notebook. Père Noël, comically straddling a locomotive. She presses her lips tight together before she risks smiling too wide once more. "I don't like it because it's best."
"Well, that's obvious," he says, jerking his head toward the drawing. It's definitely not best. He can imagine Renoir's feedback: why do you never create anything that means anything? Pointless and whimsical.
Verso leans his hip against the desk once more, tapping a meandering little tune on the desk before he says, "You're invited to share why you do like it. A true artist welcomes feedback of all kinds."
She does wonder (briefly) whether he truly believes the all kinds part.
"It's you," she explains — answering a direct call to action without any hesitation, "using the means at your disposable to explain something that matters. To you."
Does he not recognize how appealing that is? Like when an argument's very format feeds into its substance. Or when architecture finds a way to celebrate its supporting structures rather than hide them. His sketch, the train, the little trespassing man atop it all — they met the moment.
"When I see it again, I'll remember the layers of your explanation. One shape at a time. Like the extra circles around the wheels, describing their movement."
Her turn to look away — hesitant, suddenly? — like she's worried what she likes and what he wants her to like — what he's fishing for — won't align.
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But, storms, she has no idea what he just said. O-gauge? Tin? Seam locomotive? She understands hand-painted. Is this an artsy thing? All she knows for certain is that she likes the look in his eyes when he dives into the topic. It's...endearing. He's endearing as he rushes into a loose, gestured demonstration.
Jasnah sets down her cup. She pushes her work aside. Verso has her unbridled attention.
"I know what models are," she redirects his explanation. "But you'll have to explain what a train is."
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How to explain in a way that makes sense? He's silent for just a second, brow furrowed, chewing on his lip in thought. Then he inhales, preparing for the explanation: "They're a series of cars on a railroad— uh, vehicles you can ride on that drive down tracks laid into the ground—"
He grimaces. It's hard to explain.
Holding out a hand: "Can I borrow a pen? I'll show you."
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For a moment, she worries he'll give up and wave his explanation off with something watered-down and unsatisfying. After all, it's his signature move. I don't know and I couldn't say and something like that. But, to her gratified surprise, he offers to show her.
This time, her smile stays longer than a flicker. Although her body language stays reserved as she reaches for the pen, sitting abandoned to her side, and then tips it into his hand. And if that didn't betray her eagerness, then perhaps it shows up instead in how readily she slides a scrap of paper over — flipped onto its back, so he doesn't have to share his canvas with some scratched-down arithmetic.
"Please do."
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"This is a railroad. Tracks of steel rails across the earth. And this—" He sketches out a locomotive, or at least the best approximation of one that he can do in a short time. "Is a locomotive. They burn coal to heat water, and the steam turns the wheels." His pen circles a few times around the locomotive wheels, as if showing how they turn.
Adding a couple basic cars: "The locomotive hauls the cars down the tracks. It could take you across the entire Continent in a day."
no subject
No, it's the locomotive that holds her fascination.
Something massive and mechanical constrained to a single, deliberate path. Her gaze tracks the line he's drawn, following the rails with quiet intensity. Like Urithiru's lifts, she thinks, writ large and horizontal. Trading freedom for momentum.
She leans in, chin settling into her palm, attention wholly his now. And remarkably not interrogative. Instead, she's absorbed.
"Remarkable."
And already her mind is racing ahead. Extrapolating. His world's Fracture would have rendered such infrastructure untenable, right? The way Roshar's Desolations would wipe out whole swathes of progress at a time. She looks back up at him. Eyes filled with a hunger reserved for good ideas.
"And these 'cars,' did they carry passengers? Goods? Military supplies?"
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He would do anything to keep it going. So, the words tumble out of his mouth as he attempts to keep her interest: "We didn't really have a military," he explains; war had never been a thought in Lumièrans' minds until the war on the Paintress. "But passengers or freight, yes. Back then, there were people living all over the Continent. More places to go."
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Those questions are quickly banished by his continued explanation. And she asks a few more pointed questions about how the trains work. How the routes were planned. But she does inevitably circle back to the initial spark:
"And you had — models. Of these trains." She taps the current drawing. "Is this one the...O-gauge?"
She listens! She learns.
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"O-gauge, yes," he says, brightening a second time now that he gets to talk about not only trains, but model trains. (Some might call them 'toy trains'. They'd be wrong. It's a very mature, adult collection.) "That's the scale. 1:48, I think."
He taps the drawing, too, with his pen. Draws a little puff of steam coming out the top of the locomotive. "'Live steam' means that it was actually powered by steam, just like a real locomotive. Most of them are wind-up, spring-powered—they call it 'clockwork'. But this one was more fancy, expensive."
Hm.
"It was a Christmas present."
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Turning away that thought, she returns to Verso's explanation.
"From whom?"
She thinks this might be a less annoying question than what's Christmas.
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"My mother," is of course the answer. He realizes now that she must have Painted it herself so that he could have the best, most advanced model.
"It's a winter holiday where you give gifts to your family and friends," he adds, knowing that's the real question on her mind.
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Incredulous. You see, Roshar lacks an axial tilt. This makes their seasons short and unpredictable. Honestly, a two-weel cold snap after a highstorm is a winter. Winter can jump straight into summer, no particular order required. So, yes, she's surprised to hear about a holiday where you give gifts every storming winter. Sounds emotionally exhausting.
On second thought, thinking about Verso a moment longer, maybe it's not that surprising.
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He adds some cross-hatching to the sketch, then says, "Technically, the gifts are from Père Noël."
Already knowing what she'll ask: "He's an old man who breaks into your house and leaves presents for all the good boys and girls."
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She thinks about how uncomfortable his current posture must be — but also feels disinclined to prod him out of it. Content to watch him continue detailing the train; content to let him keep talking about Christmas and holidays and presents. Maybe, Jasnah theorizes, it's something like Lightday. She'd never been one for celebrating Lightday.
"That sounds..." She pauses. An old man breaking into your house? "Horrible. Who decides whether the boys and girls are good? Him, the trespasser?"
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"Père Noël," he corrects, and begins to add a jolly old man riding atop the train, bag of presents slung over his shoulder. Teasing: "Keep disrespecting him like that, and you might only receive coal."
...
"Before you ask, I'm not certain which ethical framework he uses to make his determinations." Still teasing. "But I've been informed that 'fighting with your sister' is a grave offense in his eyes."
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Jasnah takes issue with this sort of moralizing. Like telling someone they'll never be allowed into the Tranquiline Halls. Jokes on them — Jasnah had been correct all along, and there's no such thing. Not how the Vorin Church imagined them, at any rate.
Rising to his tease, she taps a fingertip just outside Père Noël's bag of presents.
Wryly: "Coal is acceptable. Given what you've told me about the trainlines, it sounds like a smart investment."
See? She was paying attention.
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"You're exactly right. That's why I was always extra bad every year, so that I could swindle him out of all of that coal."
Obviously, he's bullshitting. Getting on the naughty list would have made him cry.
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"Naturally. You had trains you had to keep running."
Did the very special, very expensive 'live steam' edition of this model train use real coal? Who knows. Not Jasnah. But she's decided that, yes, it must. At least for the fiction of the aforementioned twisted judgmental Christmas gift economy.
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Absolutely not dedicated enough to do 'bad' things, though. Or, more accurately, not dedicated enough to let anyone know he had done bad things. Sure, he might steal from the cookie jar before dinner or accidentally snap a string on Clea's harp, but he would have done anything to avoid someone finding out that he had.
"I had these tracks laid out all across my study." Because he'd had a study and a room back then. Infinitely spoiled. "So I could look at them while I practiced piano. That's what I miss."
Or at least it's the safest thing to admit to missing.
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Hmm. Jasnah pins the page down with a fingertip and drags it across the table. Towards herself.
"May I?"
Keep it, she means.
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He glances at the sketch, a quick dart of his eyes to and away from it. It's not very good. At least, not by his standards. Sure, it got the job done so that he could explain the concept of trains to her, but there's so many things he could do to improve it. All of the little details he'd added had been primarily for fun, not for perfection. He can see a million tiny mistakes that he suddenly wishes he could scrub out.
"If you want art, I could make you something better."
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But this isn't that. Verso is no beginner, self-conscious of their ceiling. Rather, he's adept — and nervous about being measured incorrectly. Surely.
Jasnah knows him well enough now to read the tension differently: a backed-into-a-corner discomfort, poorly masked. The quiet panic that something done casually might be taken seriously. That an idle sketch might suddenly become a Piece.
Really, it's fascinating to watch. It also changes nothing. She shakes her head once. Decisively.
"You can make me something better," she says, calm and certain, "even if I keep this one."
Because she is keeping it. That much is settled. How else is she meant to pass it along to Rushu — or one of the other artifabrians — and see whether the sketch can be coaxed into a proper model?
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Finally, he says, "Twist my arm, why don't you?" A sigh. "All right."
He can't snatch it away and rip it up into a million pieces. Or he could, but doing so would be even more humiliating than the alternative.
"But you should know," he says, haphazardly signing the corner of the paper before setting the pen down and standing again, "that's hardly my best work."
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She laughs, lightly, as he signs it.
"I'm not certain it's up to us to judge our own best works. Besides," she places the page carefully and precisely next to her personal notebook. Père Noël, comically straddling a locomotive. She presses her lips tight together before she risks smiling too wide once more. "I don't like it because it's best."
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Verso leans his hip against the desk once more, tapping a meandering little tune on the desk before he says, "You're invited to share why you do like it. A true artist welcomes feedback of all kinds."
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"It's you," she explains — answering a direct call to action without any hesitation, "using the means at your disposable to explain something that matters. To you."
Does he not recognize how appealing that is? Like when an argument's very format feeds into its substance. Or when architecture finds a way to celebrate its supporting structures rather than hide them. His sketch, the train, the little trespassing man atop it all — they met the moment.
"When I see it again, I'll remember the layers of your explanation. One shape at a time. Like the extra circles around the wheels, describing their movement."
Her turn to look away — hesitant, suddenly? — like she's worried what she likes and what he wants her to like — what he's fishing for — won't align.
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