Surprising herself, the thought of his tentative touch lingers through the remainder of the night and into the unguarded hours of morning. What stays with her most is not the touch itself, but the sequence of it: his hesitation, then his decision. As though he were uncertain whether he was permitted to take even that small liberty as a final punctuation mark at the end of their evening. She finds herself thinking about it with an inconvenient fondness, unaccustomed to gestures that don't arrive with some silent expectation on how she ought to respond.
Storms, she's still thinking about it as she stands at the council chamber windows the next day, a shallow cup of tea warming her palm. The memory has a curious persistence until Navani enters and reality returns. Correspondence from the Herdazian border. A dispute over grain tariffs. An escalation of patrols along a contested ridge between highprinces.
There is work to be done, so time passes. Not much — three days or four. But those days don't go without moments when their lives intersect. A conversation stolen between meetings, where she makes a calculated detour to intercept him under the pretense of picking at a fruit plate. On more than one occasion, she asks for his read on some visiting dignitary in the aftermath of a meeting — whether he thought their particular hesitation was fear or calculation; whether a joke was deflection or probe.
In the evenings, she still has an unspoken expectation that he'll join her while she works. Sometimes the hours dissolve into familiar chatter. Sometimes she does work straight through — annotating trade revisions, drafting language that tightens the crown's grip on Oathgate levies, revising a proposal that would bind two wavering princedoms closer through join infrastructure projects rather than marriage. Once or twice, she falls asleep at her desk despite herself, cheek propped against her fist.
And when they are not together? On at least one occasion, she attempts to execute her dancing 'homework' with academic rigor. Ivory, in a rare indulgence, assumes human scale to help It's a catastrophe. He fails to lead, he's stiffer than she is — and precise to the point of paralysis. Worse, he spends the entirety of the attempt insinuating that Jasnah is overstepping with Verso. He is, she informs him coolly, a dreadful partner and dismisses him back to smaller form. Jasnah continues alone, counting steps beneath her breath. Imagining the space where Verso would stand instead.
Every morning, she conducts her standard checks: can she breath in more Stormlight than before? Does she feel reinvigorated? Can she reach into the Cognitive Realm? And every morning, the results are consistent. Little to negligible change. Until one morning, it's anything but negligible.
Her first instinct it so spend the better part of an hour theorizing on why now? with Ivory. Her second instinct is to tell Verso. So, hours before he would ordinarily expect anything remotely like a summons, she scribbles some quick directive into the spanreed.
Be at my study earlier than usual tonight. I've got something to show you.
OK, Verso writes back, short and simple, anticipating that she'll have no time to hold a conversation over spanreed during the day. An acknowledgement that he's received her message, nothing more. A few minutes pass, though, and he begins to wonder if his reply might seem... uninterested. That's the last thing he is, so he sits back down at his desk and draws a little cartoon Verso (with a white streak in his hair that he no longer has; at least his drawn version of himself can look the way she favors), smiling and giving a thumbs up.
There we go. His enthusiasm will shine through in that.
He spends the better part of the day wondering exactly where the line is between 'early' and 'overeager'. Technically, he could stop by her quarters now, but clearly that would be ridiculous. Besides, he did have plans for the day—he'd hoped to go shopping for some nice, durable paper and ink so that he could start writing down his own sheet music. Despite his interest in whatever it is she has to show him, he resolves to do just that, spending the majority of the day out wandering the market in the hopes of finding what he's looking for. He does eventually, and he purchases some cardstock paper, too; they've been playing with that wonky Jack for long enough.
Still, it's at least an hour earlier than he might usually show up, even on his earliest nights. It's closer to late afternoon or early evening than nighttime, and he almost feels a little self-conscious about that fact, like maybe she only wants to see him once it's dark outside and all the better choices to spend time with are asleep. —A ridiculous thought, he tells himself, and stomps it down.
He rap-rap-raps on her door, and when she inevitably gives him leave to enter, he squints. "I expected it to be brighter in here," he admits, given the time of day. He'd expected it to be a whole different experience, coming here this early! "But I forgot that you'd chosen a room without any windows."
Yes, he steps into something like an academic cave. Infused spheres glow from braziers and goblets placed with deliberate irregularity about the room, their light caught and fractured by the faint natural striations in the stone ceiling and floor. The rock itself seems to hum with a low, mineral shimmer. But there's no window. No natural light. By now, she scarcely registers the dimness except as a kind of cocooning safety. Even her bedroom — a smaller chamber just off the study, its door always closed — is windowless.
"—Do you find it too dark?"
With Jasnah, it's impossible to know whether the question will or won't have consequences. Whether she's prepared to alter the lighting if he says yes — or whether she simply wants to catalogue his preference.
Either way, she doesn't wait long for the answer before crossing back to her desk. Tonight, it's conspicuously bare of its usual fortress of books and stacked correspondence. Instead, the surface has been cleared. Room made for...oddities.
A piece of fruit rendered in crystal, its facets catching the sphere-light; a brick of stone shot through with visible knots and wood grain; a small burnished metal plate dusted with a pile of actual grain; a dark-but-small bloodstain, partially mopped, the rag still in her hand. Finally, three separate pitchers stand beside two cups.
She must have been in the midst of cleaning when he knocked, because she resumes that task now without preamble — mopping at the small smear of blood with methodical pressure.
Verso has walked into the very messy intersection of a humanities scholar conducting science experiments.
Dark, musty caves, he's about to say, but then he watches as she returns to her strange, arcane array of items. None of it is too concerning, save for the bloodstain; that's definitely concerning, as is the way she scrubs at it without so much as a comment on its origin. Verso follows quickly behind like a(n axe?)hound at her heels, brow furrowed.
"Are you okay? Did something happen?" Surely, this is not what she wanted to show him??
Belatedly, she registers how this must appear. The cleared desk. The bloody rag. The dark stain. Verso's obvious — human — concern. And Jasnah has to stifle a dry chuckle because, of course, this is exactly how Shallan had managed to trick her. Capitalizing on a moment just like this one. But instead of doubling down on a ridiculous lie, Jasnah simply lifts her bare hand — smeared faintly red — in a small, dismissive gesture meant to forestall alarm.
"It is not my blood."
A beat. A faint furrow touches her brow as she glances down at the stain on her palm.
"In fact — it's not anyone's blood."
She tilts her head slightly, reassessing her own statement. Now, there's an interesting brain teaser. The blood is real, possessing the correct viscosity and the correct faintly metallic scent. Whose Identity does this blood possess? Is it somehow blanked?
"On further thought — it may, in some Spiritual sense, be mine. Given that I'm the one who persuaded the paper that it used to be." This question clearly interests her more than it unsettles her. With a hum, she bends forward at once to make a quick notation in the margin of an already cluttered sheet — something about Identity in the wake of Soulcasting. Straightening, she gestures lightly toward the stain with the still-damp cloth.
"Blood just happens to be the simplest organic essence to Soulcast. Shall I demonstrate?"
Technically, this isn't what she summoned him to witness. She has something more...hopefully impressive prepared. But he's arrived in the middle of a rather grim interlude, and she's not inclined to waste a teaching opportunity simply because it's inelegant. Besides, there's a kind of kinetic joy underneath her composure — she's excited by this development. Soulcasting again!
"Oh," he says, relieved and a little embarrassed that he reacted like— an overprotective parent whose child just skinned their knee, or something equally ridiculous. It was a small amount of blood. Even if it was hers, would it have really been so bad?
No, it wouldn't have. She's a grown-up who doesn't need someone to fret over her. (But watch this space for when this grown-up decides to go to the border and Verso frets over her again.)
"Oh," he repeats a moment later, somewhere between grossed out and impressed. She made blood? That's nauseating and cool at the same time.
"—You're soulcasting again," he finally realizes, corner of his mouth turning up. "That's great." He'd enjoyed the time when she needed him, but it's been weeks since then with little improvement. Privately—always privately, never spoken aloud—he'd come to wonder if this might be permanent damage. He knows how much of Jasnah's identity is tied up in this Radiant thing, and he'd hate to see her contend with losing it.
A little tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely insincere: "I'd be honored to bear witness to your demonstration."
Jasnah inclines her head, and doesn't quite succeed in disguising the flicker of self-satisfaction. She hasn't determined why her Soulcasting returned first. Of her two Surges, it is unquestionably the more demanding. It requires argument and precision. The strength of an Ideal held firmly enough to persuade a thing to become something else entirely. Whatever quirk lies in what transpired between her and Ivory, whatever subtle realignment of bond or self has occurred, the result is (as Verso said) great — even if it's incomplete.
"Here."
She lifts the small, round palafruit from the desk. It currently exists as a soft-blue crystal, faceted and cool. Zircon, to be precise. A favourite of hers. She extends her hand toward him, offering it without ceremony.
"Go on. Take it." There is a glint in her eyes now — anticipation edged with challenge. A positive anxiety, geared all at once towards a rare desire for showmanship.
"Don't worry — I'll choose something less messy than blood this time."
Verso wraps his fingers around the palafruit as he lifts it from her palm. He turns it over in his hand, watching the way the light reflects off of its crystalline surface. Huh. Did she do this? He's never thought of it before, but the implications for creating art are pretty vast.
"You should know," he warns, letting the palafruit rest in his hand, "I'll be very cross with you if you stain my sleeve."
She gives a short, confident shake of her head. As if to say I will not stain a thing. Then she inhales. A deliberate, meditative breath. The Stormlight in the nearest brazier gutters and dims. When she speaks, a fine, luminous mist escapes her lips: "Hold still."
It's worth noting she can't hold Stormlight as well she once did. Whatever has shifted between her and Ivory, the half-life of Stormlight stored in the body feels shortened. Beyond that, she also can no longer Soulcast at a distance. Contact is required. So she reaches forward and lays three fingers against the crystalline fruit.
One upon a time she would wheedle. Negotiate. Coax the axi into compliance like a diplomat softening a stubborn envoy. She was younger then. Newer to her power. Now she commands change. She presses past the crystal’s insistence on itself, granting it permission to undo its rigid bonds. Her will against the laws of nature.
Change, she thinks. Be lighter. Be less. Be dispersed. Her shoulders roll subtly as her fingertips press harder, as though she might reach into the very lattice and pry it apart. And then...!
A frown catches her expression. She withdraws her hand too too quickly. Stormlight gutters out of her, and she cracks one eye open. If there had been a flaw with the stone, she would have inspected it. Instead, her gaze snaps to Verso. Because, storms, she had been about to burst that crystal into smoke. Hot smoke. Smoke that carried the scent of burning wood and the idea of fire. Almost-too-late does she realize what a terrible trick that would be.
"—No," she murmurs, more to herself than to him.
So, she tries again. The braziers dim again as she draws more Stormlight. And this time she steps closer. Instead of merely touching the fruit with her fingers, she cradles one side — her own hand folding inside his so that the edge of her palm settles against his skin.
Change. Be lighter. Be less. Be FOG instead.
This time the command lands cleanly. At once, the crystal vanishes in a dense, contained burst of mist. A soft concussion as matter sheds its density. Fog pushes outward in a small, humid bloom before rolling down his hand in pale curls. In its wake, a network of fine dew collects along the lines of both their palms.
Unaware of the second-guessing going on internally, Verso assumes at first that she's struggling to soulcast. Her power must be diminished, weaker. He waits patiently, although there's a flicker of concern in his eyes; it'll be very disappointing for her if she fails now. So, when the crystal palafruit disperses into fog, blooming up and out across their cupped palms, he breathes a sigh of relief and smiles.
"Look at you, Knight Radiant," he teases. "You're going to make me jealous."
Not like there's a chance in hell a creature like Ivory would ever bond with him. If they're—understandably—concerned about treachery, surely his very existence must send spren running away, screaming.
Relief and pride mingle on her face. Maybe even more so than showing him, it matters just as much that she's managed it. Jasnah grips his hand — briefly, with a squeeze — before retreating to her desk.
"I wish I knew. Ivory and I have our theories — but it's not as though can draw solid conclusions just yet," she chats openly, eagerly, as she adds another scribbled note to her journal.
"It's only partial, yet. I can't do anything much bigger than," she makes a vague shape with one hand, turning her palm around an invisible spherical shape, suggesting something around the size of a boot or a helm or a book. And there are other deficits, besides, but it's remarkable that she's sharing this much with someone else. In the past, she's guarded her limits (or lack thereof) quite jealously.
"But that particular bit of Soulcasting isn't why I asked you 'round early."
(And, for what it's worth, not ever spren is as wary as Ivory's kind.)
"No?" he asks, trailing behind her to her desk before turning around so that he can look at her while he leans against it. "I thought maybe you just missed me that much."
Mid-scribble, she turns her head to deliver a look. Like maybe she wants to tell him that she doesn't need to fabricate excuses to see him when — if! — she misses him. But that would be a lie, wouldn't it? And while she's quite adept at fooling herself on many a level, she does earnestly try not to lie to herself too too obviously.
So Jasnah's attention shifts to some middle-distance on the desk — and, hey, if Verso cares to peers close enough in the low light of the room, he might catch a familiar oil-like sheen sitting on the edge of a metal plate.
"And I thought," she responds, standing again, "you could try describing to me — in detail — the qualities of a good Bordeaux."
Because you definitely wanna chance drinking made from the same process as that roil of fog and the suspicious bloodstain, right?
"You remembered," he points out, pleased. Then again— "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Your mind is a steel trap." He'd say she probably has a memory like an elephant, but then he might have to explain what an elephant is, and then they'd be here all night before he ever got to try any wine.
"A good Bordeaux—"
Hmm. He closes his eyes, tries to put himself back in those old, worn-out boots of his Expedition uniform. Drinking out of boredom or unhappiness, mostly. Mon ami, sweet Esquie would scold, I told you to stop drinking alone.
"It's dry." Do they use those terms for wine here? "Not too sweet," he clarifies. "Full-bodied. A little astringent, but in a good way." He opens his eyes. "Have you ever had blackcurrant? Tastes like that."
She remembered, yes. Not least of all because she takes the time to pour every new word out of her memory and into a slim notebook. Different, actually, to the one she's presumably been making Soulcasting observations — because she switches to it, now, and jots down his description in shorthand.
"Hm," she shakes her head, "no blackcurrants."
Jasnah pours him a cup from one of the three pitchers that have sat untouched on the desk before now. It's an auburn — very similar to what he drank when they visited the Shattered Plains. She offers it now with what she hopes is a very simply command:
"Drink, and then tell me what you would change about it to get it closer to what one of your Bordeauxs."
Jasnah is truly engaging all of his special interests recently! Music, trains, wine. Carefully, fingers around the rim so as not to warm the drink with his body heat, he takes a sip. Not a large one. Verso doesn't really drink in moderation when he's alone, but he's loath to be a glutton (or worse, a drunkard) in front of Jasnah, so he takes a small, classy, elegant sip instead.
"Hm." Okay, one more sip. Just to get a good baseline to start with.
The auburn's close to real wine, or at least closer than most of the drinks he's tried since arriving on Roshar. It's adjacent to wine, as if wine was shifted a few degrees to the left and turned upside down. Or as if someone tried to recreate wine when only knowing of the concept of it.
What's earthy? Her expression screws into a minor beat of confusion as she tries to guess at its meaning. And simultaneously, just to make well and certain she doesn't accidentally land somewhere musty and rotten, Jasnah pours herself a cup from the same pitcher.
A sip; a frown; an attempt to marry the adjectives he's added with what the wine must become. She doesn't have high expectations for her first try — nor her second, third, or fourth. Jasnah is open to the possibility that this might be a long slog and she may not succeed tonight. But as Zenaz says in Proverbs for Tower and War: it is often said that the best teacher is failure.
Starting with her own cup, she dips a finger into the auburn and — inhale; pause; command — directs the constituent parts of this wine to think of itself as something different. Less sweet, tangier, darker. All the (very subjective) things she's heard him say. And after, she tastes the wine on her finger with a thoughtful pause. A stoic expression.
"It can't be that bad." It's kind of weird to drink something that her finger has been in (thanks, Jasnah), but admittedly, his mouth has been many more questionable places than this, so. He takes a sip.
And turns a strange, pale color. Oh, no, this isn't right at all. It's disgusting. He doesn't want to swallow, but obviously he absolutely cannot do that in front of Jasnah. With great effort, he swallows, looking a little ill.
"...What did you think I meant by earthy, exactly?"
She raises a hand to stop him — honestly, she hadn't intended to inflict it on him until at least the third or fourth iteration! — but there he goes. Taking her cup and drinking from it. Bold, really.
She's well aware that can be exactly that bad — and takes almost a perverse delight in seeing his boldness punished by what she knows is an awful mouthful. Jasnah nearly tells him he doesn't need to spare her feelings, but gets caught up in the question in that follows.
"Earth is soil, yes?" (Thanks, Hoid.) "And most of the soil in Alethkar, if you can call it that, is quite chalky. Bitter."
She holds out her hand — c'mon, give the cup of the experimental stuff back.
Yeah, she can have it back. He still tastes soil on his tongue. With a grimace, he corrects, "Earthy. Like— the way mushrooms taste. Savory. Like wood and pine." Not dirt.
Be a little horrified when she — yep — takes another experimental sip. Familiarizing herself with her failure. Then, instead of trying again on the same cup, she pours the contents into one of the other present pitchers. Empty, purpose-provided for getting rid of bad not-wine. She'd prepared for hardship, it seems.
Jasnah pours a second, control cup of auburn for the next round of experimentation.
"Hm," she tilts the cup, swirling what she's got, and closes her eyes. For focus. "Talk me through it again — from the beginning. Dry, you said. Astringent."
An expectant pause as she listens for her parameters once again.
He gets the sense that he needs to be far more specific. He's been talking about wine using terms that everyone in Lumière would understand, but they're clearly foreign to her. Holding up a hand, as if to stop her from doing any sudden soulcasting:
"It's still sweet. Bittersweet, maybe. Like a particularly tart fruit." Like a blackcurrant, if only he could compare it to that! "It's an intense flavor. Warm and a little smoky. Sort of like if you soaked wood shavings in fruit juice."
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Surprising herself, the thought of his tentative touch lingers through the remainder of the night and into the unguarded hours of morning. What stays with her most is not the touch itself, but the sequence of it: his hesitation, then his decision. As though he were uncertain whether he was permitted to take even that small liberty as a final punctuation mark at the end of their evening. She finds herself thinking about it with an inconvenient fondness, unaccustomed to gestures that don't arrive with some silent expectation on how she ought to respond.
Storms, she's still thinking about it as she stands at the council chamber windows the next day, a shallow cup of tea warming her palm. The memory has a curious persistence until Navani enters and reality returns. Correspondence from the Herdazian border. A dispute over grain tariffs. An escalation of patrols along a contested ridge between highprinces.
There is work to be done, so time passes. Not much — three days or four. But those days don't go without moments when their lives intersect. A conversation stolen between meetings, where she makes a calculated detour to intercept him under the pretense of picking at a fruit plate. On more than one occasion, she asks for his read on some visiting dignitary in the aftermath of a meeting — whether he thought their particular hesitation was fear or calculation; whether a joke was deflection or probe.
In the evenings, she still has an unspoken expectation that he'll join her while she works. Sometimes the hours dissolve into familiar chatter. Sometimes she does work straight through — annotating trade revisions, drafting language that tightens the crown's grip on Oathgate levies, revising a proposal that would bind two wavering princedoms closer through join infrastructure projects rather than marriage. Once or twice, she falls asleep at her desk despite herself, cheek propped against her fist.
And when they are not together? On at least one occasion, she attempts to execute her dancing 'homework' with academic rigor. Ivory, in a rare indulgence, assumes human scale to help It's a catastrophe. He fails to lead, he's stiffer than she is — and precise to the point of paralysis. Worse, he spends the entirety of the attempt insinuating that Jasnah is overstepping with Verso. He is, she informs him coolly, a dreadful partner and dismisses him back to smaller form. Jasnah continues alone, counting steps beneath her breath. Imagining the space where Verso would stand instead.
Every morning, she conducts her standard checks: can she breath in more Stormlight than before? Does she feel reinvigorated? Can she reach into the Cognitive Realm? And every morning, the results are consistent. Little to negligible change. Until one morning, it's anything but negligible.
Her first instinct it so spend the better part of an hour theorizing on why now? with Ivory. Her second instinct is to tell Verso. So, hours before he would ordinarily expect anything remotely like a summons, she scribbles some quick directive into the spanreed.
Be at my study earlier than usual tonight. I've got something to show you.
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There we go. His enthusiasm will shine through in that.
He spends the better part of the day wondering exactly where the line is between 'early' and 'overeager'. Technically, he could stop by her quarters now, but clearly that would be ridiculous. Besides, he did have plans for the day—he'd hoped to go shopping for some nice, durable paper and ink so that he could start writing down his own sheet music. Despite his interest in whatever it is she has to show him, he resolves to do just that, spending the majority of the day out wandering the market in the hopes of finding what he's looking for. He does eventually, and he purchases some cardstock paper, too; they've been playing with that wonky Jack for long enough.
Still, it's at least an hour earlier than he might usually show up, even on his earliest nights. It's closer to late afternoon or early evening than nighttime, and he almost feels a little self-conscious about that fact, like maybe she only wants to see him once it's dark outside and all the better choices to spend time with are asleep. —A ridiculous thought, he tells himself, and stomps it down.
He rap-rap-raps on her door, and when she inevitably gives him leave to enter, he squints. "I expected it to be brighter in here," he admits, given the time of day. He'd expected it to be a whole different experience, coming here this early! "But I forgot that you'd chosen a room without any windows."
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"—Do you find it too dark?"
With Jasnah, it's impossible to know whether the question will or won't have consequences. Whether she's prepared to alter the lighting if he says yes — or whether she simply wants to catalogue his preference.
Either way, she doesn't wait long for the answer before crossing back to her desk. Tonight, it's conspicuously bare of its usual fortress of books and stacked correspondence. Instead, the surface has been cleared. Room made for...oddities.
A piece of fruit rendered in crystal, its facets catching the sphere-light; a brick of stone shot through with visible knots and wood grain; a small burnished metal plate dusted with a pile of actual grain; a dark-but-small bloodstain, partially mopped, the rag still in her hand. Finally, three separate pitchers stand beside two cups.
She must have been in the midst of cleaning when he knocked, because she resumes that task now without preamble — mopping at the small smear of blood with methodical pressure.
Verso has walked into the very messy intersection of a humanities scholar conducting science experiments.
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Dark, musty caves, he's about to say, but then he watches as she returns to her strange, arcane array of items. None of it is too concerning, save for the bloodstain; that's definitely concerning, as is the way she scrubs at it without so much as a comment on its origin. Verso follows quickly behind like a(n axe?)hound at her heels, brow furrowed.
"Are you okay? Did something happen?" Surely, this is not what she wanted to show him??
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"It is not my blood."
A beat. A faint furrow touches her brow as she glances down at the stain on her palm.
"In fact — it's not anyone's blood."
She tilts her head slightly, reassessing her own statement. Now, there's an interesting brain teaser. The blood is real, possessing the correct viscosity and the correct faintly metallic scent. Whose Identity does this blood possess? Is it somehow blanked?
"On further thought — it may, in some Spiritual sense, be mine. Given that I'm the one who persuaded the paper that it used to be." This question clearly interests her more than it unsettles her. With a hum, she bends forward at once to make a quick notation in the margin of an already cluttered sheet — something about Identity in the wake of Soulcasting. Straightening, she gestures lightly toward the stain with the still-damp cloth.
"Blood just happens to be the simplest organic essence to Soulcast. Shall I demonstrate?"
Technically, this isn't what she summoned him to witness. She has something more...hopefully impressive prepared. But he's arrived in the middle of a rather grim interlude, and she's not inclined to waste a teaching opportunity simply because it's inelegant. Besides, there's a kind of kinetic joy underneath her composure — she's excited by this development. Soulcasting again!
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No, it wouldn't have. She's a grown-up who doesn't need someone to fret over her. (But watch this space for when this grown-up decides to go to the border and Verso frets over her again.)
"Oh," he repeats a moment later, somewhere between grossed out and impressed. She made blood? That's nauseating and cool at the same time.
"—You're soulcasting again," he finally realizes, corner of his mouth turning up. "That's great." He'd enjoyed the time when she needed him, but it's been weeks since then with little improvement. Privately—always privately, never spoken aloud—he'd come to wonder if this might be permanent damage. He knows how much of Jasnah's identity is tied up in this Radiant thing, and he'd hate to see her contend with losing it.
A little tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely insincere: "I'd be honored to bear witness to your demonstration."
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"Here."
She lifts the small, round palafruit from the desk. It currently exists as a soft-blue crystal, faceted and cool. Zircon, to be precise. A favourite of hers. She extends her hand toward him, offering it without ceremony.
"Go on. Take it." There is a glint in her eyes now — anticipation edged with challenge. A positive anxiety, geared all at once towards a rare desire for showmanship.
"Don't worry — I'll choose something less messy than blood this time."
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"You should know," he warns, letting the palafruit rest in his hand, "I'll be very cross with you if you stain my sleeve."
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It's worth noting she can't hold Stormlight as well she once did. Whatever has shifted between her and Ivory, the half-life of Stormlight stored in the body feels shortened. Beyond that, she also can no longer Soulcast at a distance. Contact is required. So she reaches forward and lays three fingers against the crystalline fruit.
One upon a time she would wheedle. Negotiate. Coax the axi into compliance like a diplomat softening a stubborn envoy. She was younger then. Newer to her power. Now she commands change. She presses past the crystal’s insistence on itself, granting it permission to undo its rigid bonds. Her will against the laws of nature.
Change, she thinks. Be lighter. Be less. Be dispersed. Her shoulders roll subtly as her fingertips press harder, as though she might reach into the very lattice and pry it apart. And then...!
A frown catches her expression. She withdraws her hand too too quickly. Stormlight gutters out of her, and she cracks one eye open. If there had been a flaw with the stone, she would have inspected it. Instead, her gaze snaps to Verso. Because, storms, she had been about to burst that crystal into smoke. Hot smoke. Smoke that carried the scent of burning wood and the idea of fire. Almost-too-late does she realize what a terrible trick that would be.
"—No," she murmurs, more to herself than to him.
So, she tries again. The braziers dim again as she draws more Stormlight. And this time she steps closer. Instead of merely touching the fruit with her fingers, she cradles one side — her own hand folding inside his so that the edge of her palm settles against his skin.
Change. Be lighter. Be less. Be FOG instead.
This time the command lands cleanly. At once, the crystal vanishes in a dense, contained burst of mist. A soft concussion as matter sheds its density. Fog pushes outward in a small, humid bloom before rolling down his hand in pale curls. In its wake, a network of fine dew collects along the lines of both their palms.
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"Look at you, Knight Radiant," he teases. "You're going to make me jealous."
Not like there's a chance in hell a creature like Ivory would ever bond with him. If they're—understandably—concerned about treachery, surely his very existence must send spren running away, screaming.
"—What changed?"
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"I wish I knew. Ivory and I have our theories — but it's not as though can draw solid conclusions just yet," she chats openly, eagerly, as she adds another scribbled note to her journal.
"It's only partial, yet. I can't do anything much bigger than," she makes a vague shape with one hand, turning her palm around an invisible spherical shape, suggesting something around the size of a boot or a helm or a book. And there are other deficits, besides, but it's remarkable that she's sharing this much with someone else. In the past, she's guarded her limits (or lack thereof) quite jealously.
"But that particular bit of Soulcasting isn't why I asked you 'round early."
(And, for what it's worth, not ever spren is as wary as Ivory's kind.)
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He smiles. Annoying.
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So Jasnah's attention shifts to some middle-distance on the desk — and, hey, if Verso cares to peers close enough in the low light of the room, he might catch a familiar oil-like sheen sitting on the edge of a metal plate.
"And I thought," she responds, standing again, "you could try describing to me — in detail — the qualities of a good Bordeaux."
Because you definitely wanna chance drinking made from the same process as that roil of fog and the suspicious bloodstain, right?
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"A good Bordeaux—"
Hmm. He closes his eyes, tries to put himself back in those old, worn-out boots of his Expedition uniform. Drinking out of boredom or unhappiness, mostly. Mon ami, sweet Esquie would scold, I told you to stop drinking alone.
"It's dry." Do they use those terms for wine here? "Not too sweet," he clarifies. "Full-bodied. A little astringent, but in a good way." He opens his eyes. "Have you ever had blackcurrant? Tastes like that."
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"Hm," she shakes her head, "no blackcurrants."
Jasnah pours him a cup from one of the three pitchers that have sat untouched on the desk before now. It's an auburn — very similar to what he drank when they visited the Shattered Plains. She offers it now with what she hopes is a very simply command:
"Drink, and then tell me what you would change about it to get it closer to what one of your Bordeauxs."
no subject
"Hm." Okay, one more sip. Just to get a good baseline to start with.
The auburn's close to real wine, or at least closer than most of the drinks he's tried since arriving on Roshar. It's adjacent to wine, as if wine was shifted a few degrees to the left and turned upside down. Or as if someone tried to recreate wine when only knowing of the concept of it.
"It should be tangier. Darker. A bit earthy."
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A sip; a frown; an attempt to marry the adjectives he's added with what the wine must become. She doesn't have high expectations for her first try — nor her second, third, or fourth. Jasnah is open to the possibility that this might be a long slog and she may not succeed tonight. But as Zenaz says in Proverbs for Tower and War: it is often said that the best teacher is failure.
Starting with her own cup, she dips a finger into the auburn and — inhale; pause; command — directs the constituent parts of this wine to think of itself as something different. Less sweet, tangier, darker. All the (very subjective) things she's heard him say. And after, she tastes the wine on her finger with a thoughtful pause. A stoic expression.
And then quickly shakes her head.
"Storms, that can't be right. It's awful."
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And turns a strange, pale color. Oh, no, this isn't right at all. It's disgusting. He doesn't want to swallow, but obviously he absolutely cannot do that in front of Jasnah. With great effort, he swallows, looking a little ill.
"...What did you think I meant by earthy, exactly?"
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She's well aware that can be exactly that bad — and takes almost a perverse delight in seeing his boldness punished by what she knows is an awful mouthful. Jasnah nearly tells him he doesn't need to spare her feelings, but gets caught up in the question in that follows.
"Earth is soil, yes?" (Thanks, Hoid.) "And most of the soil in Alethkar, if you can call it that, is quite chalky. Bitter."
She holds out her hand — c'mon, give the cup of the experimental stuff back.
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Jasnah pours a second, control cup of auburn for the next round of experimentation.
"Hm," she tilts the cup, swirling what she's got, and closes her eyes. For focus. "Talk me through it again — from the beginning. Dry, you said. Astringent."
An expectant pause as she listens for her parameters once again.
no subject
He gets the sense that he needs to be far more specific. He's been talking about wine using terms that everyone in Lumière would understand, but they're clearly foreign to her. Holding up a hand, as if to stop her from doing any sudden soulcasting:
"It's still sweet. Bittersweet, maybe. Like a particularly tart fruit." Like a blackcurrant, if only he could compare it to that! "It's an intense flavor. Warm and a little smoky. Sort of like if you soaked wood shavings in fruit juice."
... "But not literally like that."