Her laugh reminds him of the tinkling of piano keys. He has the brief wish that he could record it on a phonograph and play it back whenever he wanted. Right after, though, he has the realization that that's an incredibly fucking strange thing to think, so he kicks it under his mind palace's rug.
"I think you enjoy being surprised," he repeats, turning them as they move, small little pivots so that she can keep up, "and I think you enjoy arguing even more." It's not an unkind observation; he's smiling, expression fond.
"Don't worry." Another little pivot— "I promise only to surprise you with pleasant things, and to take your squabbling on the chin if you disagree."
Another promise. She feels it land just under her ribs — caught between pleasure and unease when recognizes how much even his playful assurances matter to her. So she keeps them framed that way: playful; harmless. Anything more would demand a reckoning she is not yet prepared make.
With each imagined measure of imagined music, her confidence settles a fraction further. She is not (may never be) the effortlessly graceful partner this dance was built for. But the self-consciousness thins, peels away, until she's no longer policing her own steps so much as responding to that quiet dialogue between their bodies. She stops anticipating what she ought to do and begins, instead, to fully anticipate him — the subtle pull, the guiding press, the direction of the turn.
It is unexpectedly pleasant. Just — being. Not unlike the meditative stillness of a held sword stance or the buoyant suspension of a warm bath. A small, startling reminder of how good it feels to forget the sharp outline of one's own body for a moment.
"Squabbling," she squabbles. "I don't squabble."
At some point, she realizes, the conversation has slipped into a whisper.
Jasnah's very lucky that he happens to find this sort of behavior cute instead of infuriating. (The infuriating behavior is when she starts accusing him of logical fallacies in these squabbles and refuses to step down off her pedestal to speak to him on the same level.) He looks around like he's wary of being overheard even in this room that's empty save for them—and Ivory somewhere, he can only assume—before leaning in, stage-whispering:
Ivory is definitely somewhere in the room. And while he's often no more than a dust-speck clinging to her collar or earring, tonight he's not on her person.
...Which may, in part, explain the whispering. Unlike some other varieties of Radiant spren, Ivory's kind cannot communicate by thought. He has to be able to hear her. A fact Jasnah knows well — and exploits now, continuing in a low whisper.
"It takes two. If I'm squabbling, so are you."
Some uncomfortably self-aware part of her understands that if he could hear, Ivory would not let her escape the aftermath of this little 'conversation' unscathed. It's a small, wicked act of cognitive dissonance. One she refuses to examine too closely.
As for the dance: the twirl seems to have marked the boundary between resistance and buy-in. Something about that grand, pleasant surprise shook loose her stiffness, allowing her to relax more fully into the movement. Not so fully as to sacrifice shape or posture — but she finds herself angled differently now, left side nearly brushing his, right turned gently away. No longer stock straight-on.
Their faces are probably closer than they've ever been, save for maybe when they'd traveled via Windrunner together; he can feel the heat radiating off her body, the way their ankles occasionally brush against each other by accident as he steps forward and she steps back. He knows exactly what he'd do here in literally any other situation: something stupid and impulsive that would make her never want to be around him again. He absolutely cannot do that, so—
He leans away, gently slowing their steps until they're no longer moving.
"Well, that's probably enough dancing for one day. You're still recovering, after all."
When was the last time she enjoyed anything like this? Something so kinetic with another person — movement shared for its own sake, unburdened by urgency or survival. Was it truly so long ago as that walk back toward civilization after returning from Shadesmar?
The thought is enough to spark a brief, instinctive protest. Who is he to decide when enough is enough? She's practically recovered. It’s not as though he's had eyes on the injury to assess how far it has (or hasn't) come. And for a flicker, that protest comes alive in her eyes.
Except...except she finds that she is simply satisfied. Dancing with him has answered something physical without awakening anything further. Blood humming pleasantly, not sharply. Heart rate present but unalarmed. Her muscles feel used in the most literal, uncharged sense — worked and exercised. So, with only the ghost of a smile, she allows her feet to come to an awkward, stilted halt.
"And those spanreeds won't answer themselves," she glances over her shoulder at her desk.
Still, that lingering satisfaction translates into a light, affectionate tap of her sleeved hand at the nape of his neck as her arm slips free. Punctuation before her withdrawal.
"—No, I guess they won't," he concedes, eyes drifting over her shoulder too, feeling as if he'd been soaring through the air like a Windrunner and now he's plummeted back to earth. Maybe he shouldn't have done that. He's not sure. She had seemed to enjoy it, but surely it's a crossed boundary—as is, he supposes, letting her sleep in his bed when she was too paranoid to stay in her own room.
He doesn't snatch his hand away like he's been burned; he slips it away gently and politely, fingertips briefly brushing against hers before his hand settles back at his side.
They remain standing there after he drops her hand. Still within one another's orbit but no longer tethered by the waltz's order and logic. The structure is gone; the rules have dissolved. Jasnah clears her throat and folds her hands behind her back — posture reasserted, composure reclaimed — caught for a beat in a moment she doesn't quite know how to end. Never mind that he has, in every practical sense, already ended it for them.
"You were right," she says after a pause that drags on a beat too long. "You were an excellent teacher."
Only then does she step back. Perhaps he had already created distance of his own but these are the first inches she adds under her own power. A quarter turn carries her around the desk. She pauses there, fingers resting briefly against its edge.
"I'm already looking forward to the next lesson."
Easy enough to be kind (she supposes) when all it requires is speaking the truth.
Verso watches Jasnah at the desk, his left hand flexing as it acclimates to its own space again, adjusting to the feeling of having no one holding it anymore. It's a little cold without someone else's body heat warming it. "Me, too," he admits.
—Well, back to reality. He reaches out, dematerializing the guitar in a flash of shimmering light. The moment's over, the dream woken from. "I'll see you."
— But wait! That's not what she meant. Jasnah frowns, watching the guitar dematerialize. It's hard to believe she ever mistook it for an ability fueled by Stormlight, given how the shimmer is qualitatively so different to the way a shardblade condenses into existence and melts out of it.
She chews her lip for a moment — dangerously close to simply letting him leave — but just about managing to argue herself out of cool, distanced inaction.
"...Are you leaving because you want to leave?"
Or because you somehow think I've told you to leave.
Jasnah didn't dismiss him. Didn't mean to dismiss him. He'd been accompanying her work so well all evening. Couldn't they just...fall back into that paradigm? Unless it's boring to sit and play guitar while she works. Maybe he's simply been waiting for the right opportunity to break the pattern and leave.
Oh. Verso stops where he is, feeling like he's been caught doing something embarrassing.
"I thought—" That he'd outlived his usefulness here. But that's not quite right, is it? That's what he's told himself that he's thinking to give himself an excuse to do something that he was going to do for reasons he doesn't want to admit to himself. You'll never be a true artist if there's always a mask between you and the viewer, especially when the viewer is you. The truth is that he'd been leaving to avoid having to simmer in feelings that, while pleasant, he doesn't know how to deal with.
It'd been easy before. If he wasn't able to keep himself emotionally detached, then reality did it for him. Everyone he'd ever met had a ticking clock counting down to their removal from his life. Jasnah doesn't, which is wonderful, but also means that there's no ceiling for the way he feels about her. It can just keep growing, no matter how unwise it is.
He drops his previous sentence entirely. "Did you want me to go?"
Jasnah has yet to reclaim her seat. She remains standing — just there, at the edge of her desk — watching the mechanisms turn behind his expression, even if she can't yet name them.
(Oh, but the urge to pick them apart is keen. To learn the shape of his gears. The bite of their teeth.)
In the end, she gives a very slight shake of her head.
Oh. Verso waits for some sort of elaboration. Anything. It doesn't come. "Okay," he says, trying to find his footing here. How strange to be told in no uncertain terms that she actually wants his presence here. He barely knows what to do with himself.
"I don't want to go, either."
Not really. He wants to go because he doesn't want to go. It's complicated.
Finally regaining his composure, he settles back down in his chair. As good a sign as any that he's not leaving. "—We have so much in common."
Like two water droplets. Or peas in a pod. Or conjoined gems, as a Rosharan might say.
It's just that now she's trapped herself in a tidy little corner. Putting her foot down, making a minor scene about wanting him to stay — or, at any rate, not wanting him to leave — makes her feel as if she can't simply burrow back into work. Nor can she adequately bring him into the fold on that work, because she's certain it's far, far, far from riveting.
So he sits. And she stays standing. And suddenly (and quite uncharacteristically) she experiences a sudden, heated pressure to host. Nearer her desk, now, she could almost swear she hears Ivory snickering from a makeshift seat on an inkpot.
"Really?" Verso blinks a few times, head cocking involuntarily in surprise. It's true—Jasnah has never been the host. It's always been Verso jumping in to find something to entertain her with: conversation, games, music, dancing. A born performer in every sense of the word, still mentally that little boy in his parents' salon trying to amuse and delight their friends.
"Okay. Sure." It could be fun to be on the end of a Jasnah lesson. "I imagine it's quite a bit more involved than vingt-un. ...And that you don't wager on the matches."
As soon as the offer leaves her tongue, she regrets it. At least — she regrets offering Towers. Belatedly, she realizes it might not be the sort of quick-hit fun that felt endemic to the card games played with Verso's handmade deck. Still, she reaches into a drawer and produces a worn pack fastened by a length of blue ribbon. The edges are well-thumbed and some of the artwork has long since faded. It's her deck now, but it was gift. A hand-me-down, of sorts. Or a hand-me-up? Adolin is younger than her, after all.
"No, most versions do require some amount of betting. But we'll be starting with flatface."
And then — just ever so slightly cheeky, except she's also repeating a joke that someone else once told her: "Not because you have to keep from laughing, but because each card does exactly what the glyphs indicate."
He's not really sure what he's supposed to do here. Should he pull up his chair to the desk? Sit on the floor? Verso ends up staying where he is, hands politely in his lap.
Jasnah's desk is a miniature city of book-stacks and bound correspondence and a goblet or two of spheres. If they're going to play towers, a game that requires considerable space for its 'field,' then she'll have to undo all of her careful organization.
the deck against her thigh, she searches the room. Woefully, the best option is her nice Marati rug. The one done in Kholin blue. The one she'd told him about, a little too loose-lipped, when they'd flown over Marat. It'll have to do. It's not as though they haven't played cards on the floor before.
As she passes him in his chair, Jasnah gently knocks the deck's edge against his shoulder. A silent come on, then as she takes a seat on her knees.
"This," she reaches forward and presses her hand against the rug's pile, "will be our field of combat."
Jasnah passes him, and for a moment he thinks she's about to reach out and touch his shoulder again, the way she had when they'd been dancing— and then she walks by and presses the deck of cards against it instead. He follows her, sitting cross-legged on one end of her fancy rug and running a palm across it.
"We had some rugs like this," he comments idly, before frowning at how easily the thought had come to him even 67 years later.
Anyway. He straightens up. "You'll be surprised to learn that I'm actually quite the strategic mind. My Expedition considered me second-in-command."
"At this point, I am no longer convinced there exists some higher pinnacle of your talents capable of surprising me." The words are wry — warm at the edges, meant to prod rather than pierce. A playful suggestion that yes, yes, she's accepted that his resume is quite impressive.
With one hand, she draws the ribbon loose from around the deck. It slips free with a faint whisper and then she loops it neatly around itself before setting it aside with deliberate care. Then — accepting she will get no further without her other hand — she unbuttons her sleeve and rolls it to her elbow. It's becoming easier to choose to be merely gloved in his presence. In Thaylen City, it had been necessity. But now it's choice.
"How many are in an Expedition, generally?"
Tonight, the question is more than an interrogation. She wants scale. She wants to understand what being second-in-command has required of him. What weight he has carried, and how.
While he answers (whatever answer he chooses to give) she divides the deck into two smaller stacks: one red, one blue. The red she slides toward him. Because, of course, she keeps blue for herself.
Each card bears a single glyph — precise, inked cleanly at one time if a little faded now. He has likely noticed the glyphs scattered throughout the tower by now. A loophole, of sorts, for illiterate Alethi men. Reading words composed of letters is frowned upon; however, a single symbol standing in for Tavern or Cobbler or Quartermaster is entirely permissible. Just constrained enough to pretend it is not literacy at all. Even under their knees and feet, the rug boasts the House Kholin glyph-pair.
Jasnah offers him the red deck, and Verso picks it up, examining the glyphs. They don't mean much to him, honestly; he's seen them around, but he hasn't been here long enough to have to memorize their meanings.
"That depends," he says, setting the deck back down in front of him. "That first one was smaller. Just a search-and-rescue, or so we thought."
So, he'd been 'second-in-command' of a rescue party. Which, of course, just meant doing whatever Renoir said.
"After we came back from the Monolith, the Expeditions got bigger. More organized. I was a... consultant for those, too." So don't count him out!! "Recently, though, they've been getting smaller and smaller." A frown. "Guess people gave up."
It doesn't go unnoticed that he never actually supplied her with a number. Just smaller and then bigger and then smaller again. So she fills in the gaps with her best guesses. No more than twenty? Her head sort of bobs back and forth as she thinks it through. Tempted to squabble — sounds more like tactics than strategy — but she sets the instinct aside. He'll figure out the difference soon enough once their game gets underway. Mass warfare is its own beast.
"We'll run through the glyphs in a moment," she promises, "but the broadest premise when playing is this: you'll deploy your cards as armies onto the field; maneuver your troops; change their capacities according to other armies deployed beside them. You can choose to attack or choose to retreat a card back into your hand. The winner is whoever eliminates all opposing cards — or who forces their opponent to give up."
She does hesitate during her explanation. Brief blips of uncertainty, as if asking herself whether this is or isn't the best order to introduce the concepts.
If it isn't the best order, then Verso doesn't notice. He's obviously paying close attention to the explanation, brow furrowed as he takes it in. He wants to do well at the game, obviously; not just to impress Jasnah—although of course to impress Jasnah—but because he's highly competitive and a sore loser. Jasnah is at an advantage because she already knows how to play, so he'd better keep up.
A slight quirk of her brow. She doubts he is truly prepared to plunge straight in — but she respects the audacity. It is, after all, precisely the sort of bold decision she herself would make when faced with a learning curve and negligible stakes.
Still, she can't quite relinquish the lesson. Before they begin in earnest, she offers a handful of clarifications she would feel faintly guilty withholding: in Towers, one plays for best of three. Cards lost in early skirmishes can be lost permanently.
Then they tuck in. Cards are placed, drawn, shifted — rearranged with the deliberate choreography of generals maneuvering thousands across a battlefield. She watches closely, prepared to correct, to redirect — and instead finds herself impressed. He grasps the mechanics quickly. Not only the flow of play, but the glyphs themselves. It's imperfect — but it's notable. She makes a point to tell him so. Simple, precise acknowledgment where it is due.
Round one goes to her. Round two goes to her. By the third, her posture has shifted to better span the broad sweep of rug that has become their board. One leg folds neatly beneath her; the other bends at the knee, giving her elbow a resting place as she leans in. The closing maneuvers approach. On his side, thousands of fictional casualties have already been swept away. She's well on her way to claiming this round as well.
While he deliberates over his final placements, she intervenes — firm but gentle: "Those are archers," she reminds him quietly, indicating the glyph with a light tap of her finger. She doubts he intended to field archers so close to her spearmen.
Her correction is offered with the unmistakable tone of someone who trusts her pupil to learn quickly.
Verso's hand stills. "I know," he replies, and it's somehow the same petulant tone he'd used in response to her saying that she doesn't find him a nuisance. The sort of tone one uses when they absolutely don't know, but they're embarrassed about that fact.
"I was testing your teaching ability." Now this tone has a hint of bullshit to it, like he's aware they both know it isn't true but plans to double down on it regardless. "You passed with flying colors, by the way."
A moment's pause. He stares at the playing field, then slides the archers further away.
"Yeah, we're definitely playing chess next time." He hates playing games he isn't good at yet!!!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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"I think you enjoy being surprised," he repeats, turning them as they move, small little pivots so that she can keep up, "and I think you enjoy arguing even more." It's not an unkind observation; he's smiling, expression fond.
"Don't worry." Another little pivot— "I promise only to surprise you with pleasant things, and to take your squabbling on the chin if you disagree."
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With each imagined measure of imagined music, her confidence settles a fraction further. She is not (may never be) the effortlessly graceful partner this dance was built for. But the self-consciousness thins, peels away, until she's no longer policing her own steps so much as responding to that quiet dialogue between their bodies. She stops anticipating what she ought to do and begins, instead, to fully anticipate him — the subtle pull, the guiding press, the direction of the turn.
It is unexpectedly pleasant. Just — being. Not unlike the meditative stillness of a held sword stance or the buoyant suspension of a warm bath. A small, startling reminder of how good it feels to forget the sharp outline of one's own body for a moment.
"Squabbling," she squabbles. "I don't squabble."
At some point, she realizes, the conversation has slipped into a whisper.
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"I think you're squabbling right now."
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...Which may, in part, explain the whispering. Unlike some other varieties of Radiant spren, Ivory's kind cannot communicate by thought. He has to be able to hear her. A fact Jasnah knows well — and exploits now, continuing in a low whisper.
"It takes two. If I'm squabbling, so are you."
Some uncomfortably self-aware part of her understands that if he could hear, Ivory would not let her escape the aftermath of this little 'conversation' unscathed. It's a small, wicked act of cognitive dissonance. One she refuses to examine too closely.
As for the dance: the twirl seems to have marked the boundary between resistance and buy-in. Something about that grand, pleasant surprise shook loose her stiffness, allowing her to relax more fully into the movement. Not so fully as to sacrifice shape or posture — but she finds herself angled differently now, left side nearly brushing his, right turned gently away. No longer stock straight-on.
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He leans away, gently slowing their steps until they're no longer moving.
"Well, that's probably enough dancing for one day. You're still recovering, after all."
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The thought is enough to spark a brief, instinctive protest. Who is he to decide when enough is enough? She's practically recovered. It’s not as though he's had eyes on the injury to assess how far it has (or hasn't) come. And for a flicker, that protest comes alive in her eyes.
Except...except she finds that she is simply satisfied. Dancing with him has answered something physical without awakening anything further. Blood humming pleasantly, not sharply. Heart rate present but unalarmed. Her muscles feel used in the most literal, uncharged sense — worked and exercised. So, with only the ghost of a smile, she allows her feet to come to an awkward, stilted halt.
"And those spanreeds won't answer themselves," she glances over her shoulder at her desk.
Still, that lingering satisfaction translates into a light, affectionate tap of her sleeved hand at the nape of his neck as her arm slips free. Punctuation before her withdrawal.
But she's still holding his hand.
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He doesn't snatch his hand away like he's been burned; he slips it away gently and politely, fingertips briefly brushing against hers before his hand settles back at his side.
"Well, another time."
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They remain standing there after he drops her hand. Still within one another's orbit but no longer tethered by the waltz's order and logic. The structure is gone; the rules have dissolved. Jasnah clears her throat and folds her hands behind her back — posture reasserted, composure reclaimed — caught for a beat in a moment she doesn't quite know how to end. Never mind that he has, in every practical sense, already ended it for them.
"You were right," she says after a pause that drags on a beat too long. "You were an excellent teacher."
Only then does she step back. Perhaps he had already created distance of his own but these are the first inches she adds under her own power. A quarter turn carries her around the desk. She pauses there, fingers resting briefly against its edge.
"I'm already looking forward to the next lesson."
Easy enough to be kind (she supposes) when all it requires is speaking the truth.
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—Well, back to reality. He reaches out, dematerializing the guitar in a flash of shimmering light. The moment's over, the dream woken from. "I'll see you."
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She chews her lip for a moment — dangerously close to simply letting him leave — but just about managing to argue herself out of cool, distanced inaction.
"...Are you leaving because you want to leave?"
Or because you somehow think I've told you to leave.
Jasnah didn't dismiss him. Didn't mean to dismiss him. He'd been accompanying her work so well all evening. Couldn't they just...fall back into that paradigm? Unless it's boring to sit and play guitar while she works. Maybe he's simply been waiting for the right opportunity to break the pattern and leave.
So she asks.
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"I thought—" That he'd outlived his usefulness here. But that's not quite right, is it? That's what he's told himself that he's thinking to give himself an excuse to do something that he was going to do for reasons he doesn't want to admit to himself. You'll never be a true artist if there's always a mask between you and the viewer, especially when the viewer is you. The truth is that he'd been leaving to avoid having to simmer in feelings that, while pleasant, he doesn't know how to deal with.
It'd been easy before. If he wasn't able to keep himself emotionally detached, then reality did it for him. Everyone he'd ever met had a ticking clock counting down to their removal from his life. Jasnah doesn't, which is wonderful, but also means that there's no ceiling for the way he feels about her. It can just keep growing, no matter how unwise it is.
He drops his previous sentence entirely. "Did you want me to go?"
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(Oh, but the urge to pick them apart is keen. To learn the shape of his gears. The bite of their teeth.)
In the end, she gives a very slight shake of her head.
"No."
Nothing else follows.
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"I don't want to go, either."
Not really. He wants to go because he doesn't want to go. It's complicated.
Finally regaining his composure, he settles back down in his chair. As good a sign as any that he's not leaving. "—We have so much in common."
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It's just that now she's trapped herself in a tidy little corner. Putting her foot down, making a minor scene about wanting him to stay — or, at any rate, not wanting him to leave — makes her feel as if she can't simply burrow back into work. Nor can she adequately bring him into the fold on that work, because she's certain it's far, far, far from riveting.
So he sits. And she stays standing. And suddenly (and quite uncharacteristically) she experiences a sudden, heated pressure to host. Nearer her desk, now, she could almost swear she hears Ivory snickering from a makeshift seat on an inkpot.
"...Shall I teach you how to play Towers?"
Quid pro quo. A lesson for a lesson.
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"Okay. Sure." It could be fun to be on the end of a Jasnah lesson. "I imagine it's quite a bit more involved than vingt-un. ...And that you don't wager on the matches."
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"No, most versions do require some amount of betting. But we'll be starting with flatface."
And then — just ever so slightly cheeky, except she's also repeating a joke that someone else once told her: "Not because you have to keep from laughing, but because each card does exactly what the glyphs indicate."
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"Ah, so laughter is permitted, then."
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the deck against her thigh, she searches the room. Woefully, the best option is her nice Marati rug. The one done in Kholin blue. The one she'd told him about, a little too loose-lipped, when they'd flown over Marat. It'll have to do. It's not as though they haven't played cards on the floor before.
As she passes him in his chair, Jasnah gently knocks the deck's edge against his shoulder. A silent come on, then as she takes a seat on her knees.
"This," she reaches forward and presses her hand against the rug's pile, "will be our field of combat."
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"We had some rugs like this," he comments idly, before frowning at how easily the thought had come to him even 67 years later.
Anyway. He straightens up. "You'll be surprised to learn that I'm actually quite the strategic mind. My Expedition considered me second-in-command."
For nepo baby reasons, but shh.
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With one hand, she draws the ribbon loose from around the deck. It slips free with a faint whisper and then she loops it neatly around itself before setting it aside with deliberate care. Then — accepting she will get no further without her other hand — she unbuttons her sleeve and rolls it to her elbow. It's becoming easier to choose to be merely gloved in his presence. In Thaylen City, it had been necessity. But now it's choice.
"How many are in an Expedition, generally?"
Tonight, the question is more than an interrogation. She wants scale. She wants to understand what being second-in-command has required of him. What weight he has carried, and how.
While he answers (whatever answer he chooses to give) she divides the deck into two smaller stacks: one red, one blue. The red she slides toward him. Because, of course, she keeps blue for herself.
Each card bears a single glyph — precise, inked cleanly at one time if a little faded now. He has likely noticed the glyphs scattered throughout the tower by now. A loophole, of sorts, for illiterate Alethi men. Reading words composed of letters is frowned upon; however, a single symbol standing in for Tavern or Cobbler or Quartermaster is entirely permissible. Just constrained enough to pretend it is not literacy at all. Even under their knees and feet, the rug boasts the House Kholin glyph-pair.
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"That depends," he says, setting the deck back down in front of him. "That first one was smaller. Just a search-and-rescue, or so we thought."
So, he'd been 'second-in-command' of a rescue party. Which, of course, just meant doing whatever Renoir said.
"After we came back from the Monolith, the Expeditions got bigger. More organized. I was a... consultant for those, too." So don't count him out!! "Recently, though, they've been getting smaller and smaller." A frown. "Guess people gave up."
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"We'll run through the glyphs in a moment," she promises, "but the broadest premise when playing is this: you'll deploy your cards as armies onto the field; maneuver your troops; change their capacities according to other armies deployed beside them. You can choose to attack or choose to retreat a card back into your hand. The winner is whoever eliminates all opposing cards — or who forces their opponent to give up."
She does hesitate during her explanation. Brief blips of uncertainty, as if asking herself whether this is or isn't the best order to introduce the concepts.
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"All right," he says, "sounds simple enough."
Maybe.
"I learn best by doing. Let's play a round."
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Still, she can't quite relinquish the lesson. Before they begin in earnest, she offers a handful of clarifications she would feel faintly guilty withholding: in Towers, one plays for best of three. Cards lost in early skirmishes can be lost permanently.
Then they tuck in. Cards are placed, drawn, shifted — rearranged with the deliberate choreography of generals maneuvering thousands across a battlefield. She watches closely, prepared to correct, to redirect — and instead finds herself impressed. He grasps the mechanics quickly. Not only the flow of play, but the glyphs themselves. It's imperfect — but it's notable. She makes a point to tell him so. Simple, precise acknowledgment where it is due.
Round one goes to her. Round two goes to her. By the third, her posture has shifted to better span the broad sweep of rug that has become their board. One leg folds neatly beneath her; the other bends at the knee, giving her elbow a resting place as she leans in. The closing maneuvers approach. On his side, thousands of fictional casualties have already been swept away. She's well on her way to claiming this round as well.
While he deliberates over his final placements, she intervenes — firm but gentle: "Those are archers," she reminds him quietly, indicating the glyph with a light tap of her finger. She doubts he intended to field archers so close to her spearmen.
Her correction is offered with the unmistakable tone of someone who trusts her pupil to learn quickly.
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"I was testing your teaching ability." Now this tone has a hint of bullshit to it, like he's aware they both know it isn't true but plans to double down on it regardless. "You passed with flying colors, by the way."
A moment's pause. He stares at the playing field, then slides the archers further away.
"Yeah, we're definitely playing chess next time." He hates playing games he isn't good at yet!!!
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