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A penultimate tick skips over its tock and stretches straight into a chime. Like an unguarded cat, the hour rolls over and Essek circles his shoulders and wrists.
It’s been… a quick handful of minutes since his last break.
No focus to lose. Back to it.
-
Some time later, though certainly less than an hour, a voice rumbles into his peace.
“Oh, hello.”
Tone gentle enough to prove patience, quillscratch silence wraps him once more.
Yes, he heard her, but- wait.
To the rabbit-paced, a second must linger for hours.
Remembering how it is to be a person, Essek blinks his surroundings into place—table, sheaves, salon, shelves, fireplace, what is that smell?—and turns with a small smile to his friend.
“Welcome back, Yasha.”
Head tipped enough for her hair to brush her shoulder, she wields a sword, the Judge this time, and what is, even from here and held closed with twine, quite a fragrant parcel.
… Judgment.
Essek tracks his eyes from the container to Yasha’s quite-pleased face.
“Ah- how, are you?”
“I made things.”
Her grin grows, glows, and he can practically feel the air buzzing.
While without a constitution as comprehensive as Yasha’s nor a stomach so strong as Beauregard’s, Essek’s tendency to hold Yasha’s independent creations is apparently admirable. So apologize, at least, Caleb’s kindly winces.
The mere thought of a snack does set a pang to his belly, though caution burbles aside; he should not have skipped his lunch- brushing off the cats when they bothered him for such.
Politeness reigns. Essek asks.
“What have you tried today?”
“Well-”
In a flash, Yasha is by his right side scooting into a seat and dropping the box with a plop.
“Okay, so. A few things. Um.”
She undoes the twine, fingers deft despite their tangle.
“So- also I think everything turned out really good. So there’s. There’s this”-
Withdrawing a smaller, insulated container, her face pinches in recollection.
“It’s, um, it’s got oil, raw onion, and raw garlic. And a little lemon juice. And some good moldy blue cheese.”
Ah. This is, for certain, the source of the stench. Hopefully nothing gone too rancid.
“And then these! They’re, you know, a little lumpy, but!”
Yasha tips the entire box to him, some sort of cracker clattering through the change in angle.
“Fresh-baked, yeah? And they kind of match, lumpy to lumpy.”
Essek presses a smile.
“Free reign today?”
Yasha’s eyes widen.
“Oh. No, no Elser was in and was showing me some knife stuff, all, um, finesse, for the chopping.”
All tension leaves Essek. Of any of the Archive’s cooks, experience reassures that this one knows how to neutralize the most daringly unconventional of Yasha’s experiments. At least Essek won’t have to remove the stains of dubiously botulent shellfish from the notes in his wristpocket this time.
Yasha continues on, cracking open the small container and thus releasing an eye-watering waft.
“Like you can see the little pieces here are really, um, good. Regular. Dice and mince. That’s- those are the words, for it. Specifically.”
Yasha pauses, mouth flat and cheeks round.
“For the onions and garlic, I mean.”
She thrusts her creation Essek’s way with a bright smile.
“Want some?”
Mn.
“I am, quite alright for the time being. Thank you, though.”
Far from Jester’s pouts, Yasha’s quieted hope still shines far too earnest. Oh, he can’t outright refuse.
“Maybe in a bit.”
“Okayyy….”
She intones as she seals up her items again, then sliding the parcel towards the center of the table and still well within Essek’s reach.
“I’m just going to put these right… here…. For no reason.”
Essek sighs amused as he shuffles his papers aside.
“What’s all this stuff?”
And he swiftly plucks the sheet Yasha is squinting at from her fingers.
“Translations.”
He taps it into his present stack and tidies the latter alongside the rest before taking up another bunch of sheets.
Yasha tips her head.
“I thought you were done for the day? Night, or. Oh, what time is it?”
She swivels around.
“I didn’t even notice coming back.”
She must be quite proud of her creation to have bypassed the sun entirely.
Essek points out the clock with ease, having spent his time here keeping idle track of the hours left until Beauregard and Caleb are scheduled to return.
“Evening, and no-, um. Yes, this is something different. A creative exercise, I suppose.”
“You’re writing a book?”
“Playing around with words, more like.”
“Oh- poems.”
“I… guess. Sort of.”
Yasha suddenly wears an odd look- somewhere on this side of inquisitive.
Essek has to ask.
“What is it?”
“Do you know Celestial?”
Celestial?
“Ah, bits and pieces- through repetition in study, but- nothing… fluently… conversational, necessarily?”
“Oh.”
“Why?”
Yasha shrugs.
“Caleb knows it kind of and there’s some poetry around here somewhere. It’s neat- always rhyming no matter how it translates.”
“I see.”
Isn’t that something- words magic enough to make sense regardless of how they are presented.
Essek stares at the psalms between his palms, the phrases he is currently picking at. Maybe Yasha can help after all.
“Yasha, you-.”
She raises her brows, curiosity blooming plain by the tilt of her head.
“You asked me…”
Preemptive regret and baseless fear both weigh down his tongue. Light, what is he doing.
Essek takes a breath, rushes anyway. No turning back.
“You asked me, a bit ago, if I love him.”
Inadequate and superfluous in the same breath, the phrase coats such an odd texture on his tongue.
“Caleb.”
That’s much, much more to his taste.
Yasha’s face lights up as she leans closer, looming with her chin on her hands.
“I did. I did I did. Why? Did you tell him?”
“Not, ah- not….”
Though her enthusiasm strikes a far field from overwhelming, retreat is surely still an option. Grubs shoveled haphazardly back into their shattered jars- who is Essek if not a coward.
But- Yasha’s demeanor softens some, simple inquisitiveness again wreathing her face as her shoulders ease.
Essek draws more air- deep, as if to appreciate the fact he’s able to do so in the first place. ‘As if’, sure. Not much an approximation.
Perhaps he can share this thought after all, though.
“How to put this….”
The inches between mild and marked affection are far surpassed by the gulf between reluctant tolerance and wry acceptance. Having struggled a flounder through the latter expanse, now Essek may as well be picking apart grains of sand by attempting to distinguish the former sliver.
To love- the Common feeling… it is not so grand a change from liking. Certainly not in comparison with beginning to like in the first place and especially after hatred, after deliberate indifference.
No- to claim such a shift, from like into love, as one of appreciable magnitude doesn’t make much sense at all. But the weight the nosiest of the Nein seem to give the concept, especially with regards to he and Caleb, gives the impression that, to them, love is both immense and definite. Uniformly defined. An intensifier.
But if love is an arbitrary marker of intensity, well. He loves them all, doesn’t he?
He’s misunderstood and misgauged them before; perhaps that is also the case here.
“When I said, before—that I can’t tell—I meant along the lines of, I am unsure how to discern, exactly.”
Essek sets his held pages to the table, smoothes them, sets them aside.
“But, ah. My main reason for bringing it up is that I-. Mm. I have- a curiosity, of sorts.”
“Ooh, that’s fun.”
“What I mean to say, is….”
Essek faces Yasha again.
“Do… you?”
“Do I have a curiosity?”
“No- that is not-.”
Light spare him- Essek rubs his face in hands and then takes yet another breath.
Fingertips pressed flat before him, he stitches the full question together, perfectly composed.
“Do you love Caleb, Yasha?”
Yasha stares, eyes flicking.
She sputters a laugh.
“I mean. Yes? More like how I love you than how I love Beau, but yeah I love him.”
“Ah- I-.”
A triplicate admission spoken easier than a breeze- what is Essek supposed to do with this? He wasn’t asking after himself.
Manners move him from pause.
“Alright-. Thank you, I suppose.”
Yasha breaks into a full beam of a grin.
“You’re funny when you’re flustered.”
His face certainly does not heat further.
“I am not making a joke.”
“Fun to talk to.”
“Glad to be amusing.”
As he deadpans, Yasha dims.
“Sorry.”
Light, why.
“That one was a joke.”
“Oh.”
But that makes some sense. Of course there is a variety to loves even among the Common-minded, of types and ways to. As if that helps narrowing anything down, though. No, no, maybe it does? The right avenue might be here, an intersection point of lines of thought held between their linguistic inequalities. Careful calculation should hopefully derive it correctly, somewhere in the mix.
Yasha smiles teasingly.
“You look stuck.”
Essek lets off a wry chuckle.
“You could say that.”
“I did.”
Yasha’s smile stays.
Alright. Instead of beginning from the top, Essek catches Yasha up to his ground zero.
“I wouldn’t say that I had a stringently insular upbringing, technically speaking and all considered, but. I am-. Ah, it feels, as though I’m- out of step… beyond my depth, with regards to conjecturing on personal norms and… conceptions, and especially so outside of the Dynasty’s immediate reach.”
“Well, have you ever been in love before?”
In love….
Maybe there’s the heart of the phrasing?
“That is exactly it. I don’t-.”
And Essek sighs.
“I don’t know what counts, for- or, or to you.”
He waves a hand to the exit of the niche they’re in.
“You all. For each of you, whatever sentiments, here, they are- indistinctly… blended, meshed- overlapping permutations. I thought I knew, before, but. The more I considered, the more… time… the more muddled it’s become.”
Yasha just watches him.
Perhaps he is being too vague.
“It is….”
As she does him while awaiting his words, Essek looks Yasha over. Considers her, in parts of her whole. Wildflower eyes made vibrant with life, lined by a sparkling kohl. Happenstance streaks of conflict since won, adorning her blue eye diagonal, forehead to her jaw’s strong hinge and across the sharp curve of her nose. The deliberate dark mark down her mouth and chin, stark only in contrast to her pale tint of skin. Her white hair, bobbed and half-braided back, its curls as loose and feathered as stirred-up cirrus.
Hm. Maybe that.
“Consider it like our hair, I suppose. Even us two, similar in shade but varying in texture and length let and shine. Still the same… stuff, though, best I can tell.”
“So it looks the same far away, but also it feels different up close?”
Light off a gem in the rough, a facet of Yasha’s tone flecks of something recognizable.
Essek, greedy, tries to grasp it.
“It’s different, yes. Every time.”
“Like how being a boy or a girl is a song? No- no that’s not how it went.”
Yasha furrows her brows before Essek can begin to figure her comparison.
When her face stays scrunched without further comment, Essek prompts.
“How are you meaning?”
“I mean like-. Okay.”
Yasha waggles her hands.
“Like- there’s being in love with lots of people all at once, right? Like Caleb is, but then there’s also being in love with nobody at all ever, like Caduceus. And then there’s middle amounts of in love too, or one at a time, you know? And then sometimes it’s a day-by-day thing.”
‘Lots’, hm, and said with such surety. She may as well be speaking another plane’s language entirely, each word underpinned with some inherent and linear understanding that he can’t tap into. That’s- immensely frustrating, but it is much to consider, regardless.
The day-by-day part though… that rhymes broad.
He must have been silent for a beat too long, as Yasha’s pale face quickly splotches red.
“Oh- oh are those. Secrets? I didn’t- I didn’t. Say, anything.”
Secrets? Ah. Well, privacy and surreptition are second nature.
“What was that?”
Essek feigns picking a disinterested nail.
“I’m not sure I heard you.”
“I said that-. Oh.”
Yasha mimes a zipper over her lips, followed by a deliberate lock and spirited toss of a key over her shoulder.
She then proceeds to unzip her lips despite the lock.
“Different tunes. A refrain you relearn every day.”
That. Really does ring familiar, actually. Maybe inverted? An amorphous gap, regularly shifting and resisting absolute definition. But even so, the space it uses must also have a Common name, no?
Alright, then- maybe he can see how she defines it, and work backwards from there?
“Caleb and I are different to you than Beauregard.”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“How are you different?”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know that you guys are different from Beau?”
Essek nods, and Yasha blows out a breath.
“I think… okay. It’s like, to me-. Huh. Okay, so with Beau…. She works so hard and is so strong. Not just, y’know,”-
She hooks a fist through the air.
But admiration, yes. Work ethic, sure. He can recognize that.
Surely that can’t be it- or. That can’t be everything? Yasha works hard as well, as does Caleb. Essek would like to think so too of himself.
Settling back in his chair, a hand pressed to his mouth, Essek nods for Yasha to continue.
“So okay, backdrop. Remember when we left your house to go see that hag.”
Ah, the transmogrification spell’s failure. Veth works hard. They all do.
“Veth’s curse.”
“Yes! Yes. We met Beau’s parents on the way there, and her dad sucks. Like really bad. She’s resilient, and I was just, so- so proud to see her as she is and also so upset at everything that put her where she is now. A big mess of feelings. And the being upset part is what really caught me off-guard, like ‘oh why am I so upset over this?’ and then it hit me. That was when I fell in love with her, seeing her have to be strong in her old home. It made sense.”
Well, if being in love is a measure of unexpected upset, then by that definition Essek is in love with not only each of the Nein, but with Mollymauk too by way of them. That doesn’t make sense; he’s never met Mollymauk, Kingsley notwithstanding, nor has Kingsley quite entered the realm of ‘friend’ for what little interaction they’ve had.
No, Essek voices the conclusion he’s been dreading for months.
“You just know.”
“Yeah, I mean. Kind of?”
Yasha’s mouth twists thoughtfully.
“Maybe not right away, but then once I started thinking about it- yeah.”
Essek has been thinking about this so much and has yet to reach any satisfactory conclusion, circling like a moorbounder with its lack of a tail.
“I don’t… know, how applicable this is.”
“Okay, well, um. It’s the feeling you mean, then?”
“I suppose? An emotion, yes?”
“I mean, yes but like. Physically, in your body?”
Essek refrains from wrinkling his nose and from slotting Yasha alongside those who perpetuate the frequent ‘joke’ of self-contained bodily sensation turning afflicted persons mindless in favor of chasing titillation. She has only been sincere with him here and has made no such implications thus far.
So he asks.
“How so?”
“Well-”
Yasha huffs an awkward smile.
“I guess, does your heart ever go just, crazy around him, where you’re excited but also kind of barfy, and also, jittery like, fluttery and fuzzy, and warm- maybe a little sweaty? Or- or maybe a lot, I don’t know. You wear layers.”
“I believe, where I am from, that is often called anxiety.”
Besides, any of the Nein are capable of inciting such feelings for one reason or another; nerves and excitement are hardly a distinction.
“Oh-, I-. Hm.”
Yasha tips her head, this way, that.
She squints.
“Do… you… like… his eyes?”
Confusion tightens Essek’s own for him.
“I… suppose? But-.”
Again, what is the difference?
“I, like… yours, too?”
Yasha’s pretty eyes widen.
“Are you in love with me?”
Essek is sure his do the same as he shakes his head in bafflement.
“I don’t… know?”
Yasha slouches back in her seat, brows together and mouth pressed deep.
“Hmn.”
Dual sparks suddenly light as she straightens; triumph shines in her mismatched eyes.
“Do you want to kiss him really really bad, just so bad, and then you feel really really bad about thinking about kissing him because kissing him would make things complicated?”
“Not particularly.”
Heat consuming his ears as he leans from her fervor, Essek’s words escape his mouth thoughtlessly, reflexively. They’re not wrong, but as with all else, they fit like a shirt to a table: though perhaps sufficient cover when stretched, they are not made for such in the slightest.
If anything, being kissed by Caleb is simple enough- merely a continuation of Caleb’s innate tactility with wheres expanded as Essek has found himself permitting. Forehead, cheeks, knuckles- generally pleasant. The top of his head- childish but alright. Even his mouth, on occasion, is fine.
Regardless, therein lies part of the issue: given the simplicity of action and an evident language barrier, where can the nuance between them thrive? There are times he doesn’t mind Caleb’s touch so much, times he most certainly does. Consistency clearly isn’t much a factor of hard truth, if one even exists within him to find.
Essek takes his pride between teeth, holding it back before it bites.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
Yasha sighs a shrug, as if resigning.
“I don't know. It’s tangly I guess.”
There it is again, an echo on the brink of manifestation, a figment of something he comprehends.
“How did you untangle it?”
“Me?”
“In general.”
“I don’t know. It just kind of snapped into place, I think.”
Of course, as she’d said.
Essek lets out a level breath, and Yasha speaks up.
“Well- well, okay-. How about…. How do you think about it, then? Or- or, or I guess, how does it- how do feelings go where you’re from? I-. My tribe- we… we tried to keep to ourselves, so we probably did things pretty um, pretty differently.”
At least he has dissected this particular baseline already. Were everyone proficient in his tongue, this would be a non-issue to the point of laughability.
“Feelings are… not- irrelevant, exactly, but. Dynamics are framed mainly by their… intentions, I guess? Those by chance, by circumstance, and by choice. Translated roughly.”
“Oh!”
Essek’s heart catches hope as Yasha rushes on.
“Oh we did that! Sort of. It-. Mm.”
She immediately dims.
“Well, we-. I didn’t get to choose. Or, I did, technically choose. But. Never mind. It’s not the same actually, I think.”
Compelled by the line burrowing between Yasha’s brows, Essek holds out a hand.
Yasha stares at it a moment.
She smiles. She takes his hand in hers. He gives her a squeeze, and she squeezes back.
Content he has supplied Yasha comfort, Essek lets go and lightly goes on.
“The right of naming conventions is by definition vested in the individuals, not external observers. So whether a relationship is with oneself, another, several others, it is up to those involved to frame.”
“Do you have to, though?”
“Declare it?”
“I guess?”
“I gave my word.”
Yasha blinks her surprise and Essek can’t help but scoff a laugh.
“I have told you. He and I are not twiddling our thumbs, as it were.”
Yasha chuckles back.
“Okay, then- what were the things again? The three things.”
“By chance, circumstance, and choice?”
“Yeah, those. So… like a situationship, and an associationship—say that five times fast woof—and-. Oh, um, gosh, what’s the word, uh uh uh. Starts with a b. Or a v? V, I think, um.”
Yasha looks to Essek then in question, and he has to wonder if this is the setup of a joke. He errs on the side of ignorance, just in case.
“I have nothing to offer.”
“I thought you read dictionaries.”
“How am I supposed to work through Beauregard’s translations if I don’t know what words mean.”
“Mnn-.”
Eyes narrowed, Yasha chews on her lip.
She seems stuck earnest enough, though Essek lets her work through her thought anyway.
“Sounds like flying but it means choice- it ends in a shun.”
She shifts to a mutter, glaring low like the table’s insulted her cooking.
“This is going to bug me all day….”
Pausing to squint back at Essek, Yasha suddenly sits up.
“Okay! Okay. You know the, the the- the level! The disk, in Uthodurn.”
Oh.
“Volition?”
“Yes! That one!”
Yasha’s excitement is just as amusing as her humor; Essek can’t help but smile.
Yasha sighs with plain relief.
“A volitionship.”
Essek leans to the table.
“And, those are, um. Preestablished, terms- concepts, here?”
Entirely too enthusiastic, Yasha shakes her head.
“Definitely not. I made them up, one hundred percent.”
There’s a twitch to Yasha’s lips, like a smile threatening to show, and Essek is left unconvinced. Best not to use them at all, then.
“I see. Well. Thank you for that. But those three…. They…. Hm.”
Essek clears his throat and builds out his path as he goes.
“Each one is considered a step of… not legitimacy- I’m not even sure why that was the first word to come to mind. No, um. Each is an aspect of ah, of formality, what is or is not declared by the individuals inhabiting the dynamic. Whatever pieces though- to be named is to be acknowledged, to name is to know. So they are jointly decided, and thus by definition they can’t be formed or built upon by assumption.”
Understanding this is not the structure Common lends itself to expressing, Essek expands for Yasha’s benefit.
“It’s not… mm. Not, ah- not hierarchical, though. Differing channels, rather than tiers, as even these distinctions are deeply intermixed and fluid in most cases. Notarized Den ties can be any and all, in example.”
Essek considers trawling down his sprawl of tangents on the definitions of bloodkin, hearthkin, pledgekin, soulkin, or any of the various others as he’s no dearth of channels to draw concepts from, but that’s… probably too in the weeds to be useful to her comprehension.
“And of course, further subdivisions can be made pertaining to the emotions and actions within, or familiarity or nature of, and commitment to, the bond, but- that all tends to be, ah… personalized, rather than prescriptive, to the point where external speculation ends up rather pointless.”
“So…. Okay, back up just a little.”
Was that really too much?
Essek nods Yasha on.
“Mhmm?”
Yasha holds up her two forefingers, wagging them in sync like slow metronomes.
“For a completely random and totally unrelated example, if two people spend a lot of time with each other, and are really happy together, and they spend nights together in the same room really really often, you wouldn’t guess they’re”-
And she taps her fingertips as if to emphasize her point.
“Sleeping together?”
Yasha is quite good at being obvious.
She and Beauregard are frequently attached at the hip and elsewhere and tend to disappear in the evenings, so Caleb is often the only one around when Essek prefers a quiet presence rather than a continuation of the day’s usual silent solitude. Besides, there are only so many hours in a day and both he and Caleb need to rest at some point within them. With moderately aligned schedules, of course overlap will happen. Though- the thought of Essek himself sleeping fits about as comfortably as bits of a layette.
“Well, such a conclusion might make sense, though sleep is not so… common, amongst grown drow. Regardless, at best it would be rather… invasive- rude? Presumptuous, to make assumptions of matters kept private, and more so to openly air them. A faux pas, if you will. For all you may know, they could be planning upheaval, or conversing over the day, or any number of things.”
Any such supposition is best dealt secretly, sourcelessly, untraceably, of course, and oh, what reputations rumor has tried to ruin. As if propriety matters all too much to the Mighty Nein, though; he can readily imagine them making a ruckus over kisses and hooting over held hands.
Yasha purses her lips in her thoughtful way.
“You call it trancing.”
“That is the elven practice, yes.”
Wide-eyed and intent, she lowers her voice to a stage whisper.
“Do you trance with Caleb?”
Again, it really isn’t as though that’s much a secret. Besides…
“I have tranced with all of you?”
It’s simply yet another indistinguishable marker.
Though the trust required to rest in proximity is not something he has taken for granted in the slightest, neither has he assumed it means all too much to them.
The Nein themselves have all rested tucked close with one another, taking reprieve from the trials of their days in shared presence, and well before Essek even knew of their existence in the first place. Well before they knew of each other, for some.
Maybe that’s enough of a point for clarity on his part.
“You slept alongside Mollymauk, no?”
“Oh- that’s not-.”
Yasha’s eyes widen further.
“Oh, right. Sure, sure sure, okay.”
“Have I misunderstood?”
“Noo, no no, I get it.”
Essek is left unconvinced.
Yasha’s mouth slants.
“I just. Wasn’t… expecting that, I guess.”
“Oh-.”
Blundering fool, he’s jammed a thumb into a bruise.
“My apologies.”
“You-. It’s fine. You’re fine.”
She then tacks on:
“We’re fine.”
Essek offers a peace treaty of inquiry.
“It is, um, notably significant, then? Sleeping together?”
Yasha shrugs with her entire torso.
“I mean, when you’re asleep you’re easier to kidnap or stabstabstab.”
And she says the latter while miming sure thrusts of a knife through his chest at multiple angles.
“So it can be, I guess. You know we stick close during watches when out and about.”
“No, yes. That makes sense, I suppose.”
As Essek is well aware, the Nein do so to look after each other in uncertain circumstances. Sleeping concurrently to them, then, must convey a tacit consensus of mutual security, which also lends credence to his understanding of the Nein as an atypically intimate knit group of once-strangers when compared to Empiric standards. Despite resembling a Den in many ways, they’re quite clearly replicating such practices indeliberately, so he must discount Dynastic sensibilities as a consideration. For Yasha in particular, this all does make sense though- her being of an independent band of the moors. And… well. None of this is really much a surprise.
Still, navigating the channels between the Mighty Nein at large may prove even more challenging than anticipated.
Yasha resumes her beaky leaning.
“So you do trance with Caleb?”
“I feel I’ve answered you twice already?”
“You really haven't.”
“Keep your guesses, then. There’s plenty of noses in my business as it is.”
Yasha frowns.
“You know we care about you, right?”
“Perhaps that is not a care I care for.”
His tone far sharper than intended, Essek immediately recoils.
“I’m, sorry. That was rude.”
Yasha shrugs, seemingly unscathed.
“You talk to me at least.”
Essek tries a tease.
“Do I, now?”
Yasha crinkles her nose with a squashed smile.
“Sneaky.”
“Part of the job title.”
Yasha chuckles.
“What, the honorary part or the archivist part?”
That is. Right.
Like his armor and garments for such in his hidden chest, Essek shoves away the thought of his abandoned role before it can catch and bleed him.
None the wiser, Yasha sets her hands up.
“So-. Okay, so? I don’t understand why you don’t just tell him all this, though? So you’re on the same page. This is”-
She waves her hands vaguely over Essek’s work.
“A lot.”
She says it as though this is an obvious oversight.
“This is-.”
It’s not a matter of procrastination or pride, necessarily, though Essek is no stranger to nerves nor conceit.
“It seems… impersonal, to do so- or, to phrase- to present everything, like this. It’s- not… not enough. The terms and sentiments are entirely flattened, even as I’ve described them to you now.”
“Oh.”
“Hm?”
“No, I get it. I wrote Beau a poem”
“Was it any good? Oh that-.”
Essek briefly considers casting Gravity Sinkhole centered directly on himself.
The impulse passes, and he sits up while offering an overly genuine wince of a smile as an apology.
“I am sorry, that did not come out right at all. How did that go, is more of what I meant.”
Yasha simply chuckles.
“I scribbled it all out”
“Ah, well, it-. Seems, to have worked?”
“Yeah, I figured it wasn’t, um- wasn’t me, enough, so I wrote her a letter instead.”
“I see. A fruitful endeavor.”
“Yes yes, lots of grapes in the wine.”
“I am glad to hear it. But- how…? Hm.”
“Hm?”
To take action is to have some idea of consequence. Be them so refined as goals or so vague as spontaneity inclines, causes have effects.
Essek, stuck and blundering through missed steps and fog, finds himself once again unequipped for whichever routes he and Caleb may decide to take. The road: obscured from imagination every time he tries to look.
“The moment was ripe for the picking.”
Yasha stares, pleasantly blank-faced.
Essek tries asking again.
“You were prepared. Ready.”
“Mmm… ‘ready’, I don’t know….”
Yasha’s mouth flattens aside.
“It just, felt like time to- to say something. Anything. Before it was too late. And then it just- bleugh, came out a huge mess but it was fine and very weird and ended up pretty good. Which- that is for me, you know? So it’s not-. You don’t-.”
She huffs half a chuckle.
“I don’t know. If you aren’t ready, then you’re not ready, I guess?”
She then shrugs.
“It’s not like you have to be, anyway.”
Essek tips his head.
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know, same thing. It just seemed like the thing to say. Taking stuff at your own pace, or something? Doing it scared. I don’t know. You do your wizard magic. What about a spell or- or something? Isn’t there that one for words?”
“Tongues?”
“Sure.”
“It is too literal in its translations.”
“Gotcha. Okay. Well.”
Yasha pokes at Essek’s papers.
“Are you translating poems for him, then?”
Essek nearly chokes on a sudden laugh at the notion.
“Ah-. No.”
Yasha waggles her brows quite like Jester.
“Ooh, writing poems for him?”
Right, a limerick on limerence, precisely what he needs.
“Were I to present him something like that, it seems it would be- what is. Mm. The word Beauregard used, for when something is particularly, ah- cheesy? Pokey?”
“Hokey?”
“Yes, that.”
“Okey dokey.”
“Now you’re just making Jester noises.”
A soft rumble into a crash, Yasha’s laughter could make thunder feel envy.
Pleased with his unintended success, Essek reroutes to the topic at hand.
“Your suggestion is appreciated, but this is all more… in an attempt to organize my own thoughts, I suppose. And, you are wondering how that is going.”
Fingers now laced under her chin, Yasha shrugs with a toothy smile caught on her lower lip.
With a generous sigh, Essek scans the poems and prayer before him.
His eyes catch on ta’ecelle as if by rote, and, sunlight far too bright, he immediately considers elsewhere.
What’s something else he can use as an example, innocuous enough to keep himself out of the depths of embarrassment but plenty detailed to make his point….
Ah, that should do.
“Take this, our word for ‘sunrise’.”
On a fresh sheet and in his cleanest script, he writes out its characters in both Wiles’olath and Wilessu’ri, laying them side by side. Yasha leans closer as if straining to see, so Essek shifts the paper aside to give her a better view.
Lips pressed and eyes squinty, she then gives a hum.
“Is that one word or two?”
“Ah, good eye. Two independent representations of the same word with the same pronunciation, ‘sussu’ri’.”
“Sussu’ri.”
Oh, what a pleasant surprise. Essek can’t help but angle a smile Yasha’s way.
“Perhaps you should practice pronunciation with Beauregard- she could take some notes.”
But Yasha narrows her eyes at him with her brows together, mouth now pursed almost as if with a pout.
“Aw, don’t be mean.”
Mean?
He didn’t intend the thought to be unkind.
“Not… mean. She has a difficult time maintaining the proper strength of softer sounds and you pronounced them fine immediately.”
“Well have you ever told her that?”
Despite the crinkling of Yasha’s gaze, this still upsets Essek’s stomach far too much like a chide.
“It seems… needlessly pedantic, to offer unsolicited accent corrections.”
She grins in full.
“I think she’d like the help if it’s from a friend.”
Ah, well, that’s….
Face warm, Essek speaks behind his quill, looks at his paper instead.
“I’ll see what I can do if she asks then, I suppose. Anyway. Sussu’ri. Here is what you would call Drowish Wynandir Undercommon.”
He taps the Wilesolath.
“And here is Kryn Undercommon.”
He taps the Wilessu’ri.
Yasha thins her eyes.
“So if they mean the same and sound the same, why are they written different?”
“Ah, that’s the very thing. They don’t mean the same. Much like how ‘sunrise’ is a combination of two words in Common, ‘sun’ and ‘rise’, so too is ‘sussu’ri’.”
Yasha grunts two nods.
Now, how to explain….
“Imagine for me that you have lived your entire life in shade and darkness.”
Yasha screws her eyes shut tight.
“Darkness, okay. Okay. I am… imagining. It.”
Essek chuckles, indulging his scene further by lowering his voice suspenseful.
“You have never known sunlight to be anything but agony to your eyes, your skin. You escape from it entirely beneath the ground. Then, one day, still underground, you suddenly see the sun rise. How do you think that would seem to you?”
Yasha blinks at him.
“Uh oh.”
Essek grins.
“This…”
He draws two arrows pointing below the Wynandir variant and writes the first component character.
“Is ‘ssussun’, ‘light’.”
He writes the second component character.
“And this is ‘ra’ri’, mm- a world of- well, for surface dwellers I suppose it would be nightmare. Regardless- you could say that ra’ri is akin to ‘apocalypse’.”
“Oh. Huh.”
“Huh indeed.”
Essek indicates the Kryn variant.
“As for this other, following the Dynasty’s surfacing and establishment, the dawning light of the sun took on a different role in our society.”
He draws two arrows beneath.
“One of further guidance and safety from under both ground and the Spider Queen’s influence, despite how it is very much still a physical discomfort when without suitable protections-.”
He pauses, qualifies.
“And mind, I am several decades removed from my last formal history and etymon classes, so all of this is loose recollection.”
Yasha shrugs.
Essek goes on, writing the character for ssussun.
Yasha speaks up before he can finish.
„Light.”
Essek can’t fight a smile.
“Yes, very good. So, to express this, again we have ‘light’, but this second part…”
He writes it.
“This is ‘conamori’, or ‘comfort’, which once upon was constructed from ‘contri’, ‘access’, and ‘mora’, ‘act’. Act within access, it’s- there’s, quite a bit that can be untangled with that as well, but regardless.”
He taps the Wilesolath.
“Light and apocalypse,”-
And taps the Wilessu’ri.
-“versus light and comfort.”
And then he indicates to both.
“All nuance is lost, directly translating sussu’ri to ‘sunrise’.”
“Sounds like it could be an insult or a compliment.”
Essek bumps a laugh.
“‘Sussu’namori’ is how you could distinguish it while speaking, to remove ambiguity if you truly were intending to use it as a term of flattery or something.”
“Seems complicated.”
With a hum, Essek sets his quill to its holder and leans back in his seat.
“You see my difficulty.”
Yasha eyes him for a moment then.
Not piercing, best he can tell. Only ordering her thoughts.
“You’re really trying to figure out how to do this.”
Essek shrugs.
“Keeps me occupied at the very least. Seems a worthwhile use of downtime.”
“What about your wizard stuff?”
What about his wizard stuff….
Essek lets off a sigh as he slouches.
“All together, I have spent so much of my life with singular focus. It has been… nice? An interesting change of pace, I think, trying other things. I would love nearly nothing more than to reclaim full access to my own research, and resources, but. Hm, well.”
He lets the wry twist of his mouth stay.
“I’m on my way to being a dead man regardless. I am sure Beauregard would say this keeps me from trouble.”
“You said nearly.”
Oh Yasha’s very sharp today actually, a teasing squint to her mismatched eyes.
Essek sighs.
He holds out a hand.
Yasha takes it.
Her touch is warm, comfortably so. Her palm fits against his quite well.
“There are a few newer things I’ve grown loath to give up.”
Like bright stratus blanketing scrutinizing sun, a softness settles over Yasha’s face.
“Is it any easier?”
Essek’s brow grows tighter. He observes their held hands.
Still, warm. That is all.
“Some.”
“You said love.”
Now Essek squints Yasha’s way.
“I do have a colloquial understanding. To like, but more. This”-
He squeezes her hand, gentle.
“This does not seem like it, to me. Something else, not something more.”
Yasha squeezes him back.
“You sound sure.”
Hasn’t he already said this?
“I was. And then I wasn’t, and now I’m not. We- I- we do not… mn.”
Essek takes his hand back to dig through his discards.
“Love, defined as an emotion, a noun, does not have quite an analog if it is to mean romantic afflictions, whatever idealization or sheen ‘romantic’ entails. Words mean things, but I can’t-.”
He huffs half-heartedly as he finally finds his pages.
“‘Saph’ does not have comparable strength, a passive or minor enjoyment directed at the inanimate. I have considered ‘che’ for its connotation of belonging, but it is more a sense of pride and camaraderie, one towards a community at large and generally on the scale of a city, province, nation. ‘Meldrin’, a feeling that another is worth dueling on behalf of. ‘Ssinssrigg’ is- mn. Not, really so much an applicable focus. ‘Pralia’ is quite honestly how I would call the feeling, the name I know- that I understand and is applicable, but trying to contort its specific breadth into the Common shape of ‘love’ feels so… unfairly… disingenuous. I may as well be lying entirely.”
His throat catches up to him as his face stews in its flames, constricting him to the point of a whisper.
“Nothing fits, and you all deserve far better.”
Yasha hums, flat-mouthed and wrinkle-nosed the way one may skim scum from a tub.
Essek’s restraint, a plug scooped from the drain.
“Did you know the word ‘love’ as used in present Common has its origin in Proto-Zemnian? That is, ‘Zemnian’ well before Zemniaz isolated itself to the skies. Further back, a root traced to an early Draco-Elvish fusion meaning ‘to admire’, ‘to covet’, and ‘to peel’, like carving away at a piece of a prized tree to find its bleeding heartwood. Drawn to now, we get ‘Liebe’ and ‘belief’ and ‘Laub’ and ‘libel’ from what one day grew into ‘love’.”
“I did not know.”
“What good it all does, knowing.”
Essek slips into an inborn hiss, an underpinning growl curling comfortably at the back of his tongue.
„I was the firstborn bloodchild to the fourth life of the Fablemaker, Denmother and third Soul of a Staying Path stellified under the shine of the Luxon, and not once in my years have I ever before been presented such a narrow-bandedly vague definition of affections.”
Far too revealing if anyone in this godsforsaken land could understand him, spite carries Essek past the point of caring.
„Had I my way, I would choose your soul to aid in every manner and life I am granted.”
Yasha stares at him blank-faced. Oddly, disappointment nips. Essek bites it back.
“See? Nothing. Wilessu’ri is so simple. From origin comes connotation, from connotation, communion. Everything else-. No. You know-? I could even say ‘Ich liebe dich’ and have both Jester and my brother laughing me dead despite all distance and though Caleb may understand the weight of each word I wouldn’t and--”
Forehead flat, Essek heaves a groan into the table.
Sighs.
He turns his head aside.
Gaze met with Yasha’s elbow, he follows the intricate shimmer of greenery runes up her arm as far as he can.
“I’m sorry for being short with you. I just-. I do realize I’m not going to find any answers in a book. His… emotions….”
He’s not quite able to meet her eyes.
“They are his own business, and while I obviously would prefer not to hurt his feelings, his motivations and subsequent decisions are more my concern, besides.”
He sets his cheek back to the table with a mumble.
“I am making a monument with no map.”
Quietly, Yasha sinks to the table too. She rests her head on her arms, eyes squinted into crescents.
“You know what I think?”
“Mn.”
“I think you’re thinking too hard.”
Essek puffs a flat chuckle.
“What else am I to do?”
Yasha’s grin and voice deepen, her tone a tease.
“Are you having fun?”
Fun? Well. As with any complex puzzle, there’s an enticing satisfaction in his frustration, teeth sunk into the seduction of possibility, even if a definite solution is still out of reach. Best not get carried away now, though; he needs something to play with to settle into trance later.
Essek chuckles in full, releasing the bit some.
“I suppose.”
“So what’s this part, then?”
Cheek still to her arm, Yasha taps the pages before Essek.
While no formal sommelier nor wordsmith, he again weighs his considerations of color, flavor, and texture on his tongue.
“The closest I’ve come to encapsulating the severity of feeling as I understand love to entail as meant in Common is this- here. Though- it is a verb, an action or- or a decision. A thing that is done.”
Yasha still looks confused.
“The imparting of will, enacting intent to reach towards, and high, and out, selecting a route through troubles, whether alone or together. In all the few dual dictionaries I’ve been able to pull so far, it is most often spun into Common as ‘to choose’.”
“To choose.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Having already worn the circle of them into his mind, Essek doesn’t bother searching for the rest of his notes on this.
“There is a noted conception within the Dynasty that things such as flirtation cannot be done without intent for such. Whether mutually understood or not is another matter, certainly made simpler with a shared baseline of etiquette and social standards and whatnot, but. So too of ‘love’. It is as it does, I think? Some- something along those lines. Something one decides to do, a choice. If you really would like to dive back, again we supposedly have the whole ‘picking one’s own fate’ aspect of Luxon worship as its likely point of origin. But that’s- beside the point. I don’t know.”
“Hey, so.”
He meets Yasha’s gaze and there’s a strange angle to her mouth, as though she’s got a thought stuck in her teeth.
“Hm?”
“So Essek.”
“Present.”
Yasha’s smile stretches stiffly, a bit lopsided.
“If you had the chance, with good circumstances- or, I guess- I guess in bad circumstances too- or, um. Would you be my friend? Yeah.”
She nods exactly once, and then remains silent.
Strange. Through all chance and circumstance thus far, spinning the rotary from betrayal to voluntary detention, are they not already friends?
Roused, doubt growls. Essek shushes it.
“I’m not sure I’m understanding your question…?”
“Would you choose to be, um, friends? With- with me. Friends with me, um.”
Yasha’s pinched eyes follow Essek as he sits up, though he tries not to withdraw too fast.
Kind-intended as she may be, Yasha clearly does not know what it is she’s truly asking of him.
He pulls a clean page.
Draws out ‘detholar’, transliterated aside and subtitled ‘to choose’.
Adds three arrows, one for each component character.
First, ‘degahr’.
Below, ‘trouble’.
“This encompasses anything from minor mischief to immense danger.”
Second, ‘dortho’.
‘Aid’.
“Relief as much as assistance.”
Third- his hand falters.
No, Yasha should know if she is going to ask these things of him. It is only fair.
Third, Essek writes ‘rytho’le’.
But…
“This is… not an inherent quality, or something earned, necessarily- but a notion given, gifted.”
He writes: ‘Deserve’.
“Or- ‘deserve well of’, more like, I think. Phrase I came across in my reading that seems to fit a little better than just the word if I understand its context correctly, a consideration of treatment, connotated kind. I’m… unsure, how else to express it, um.”
A roughly localized breakdown, but maybe it will suffice.
He takes a breath.
“So, that is, ah- all that said, I. Mm. Given chance, given circumstance…”
Essek slides the paper over to Yasha, now upright in the corner of his vision, before he can second guess himself, focus set on keeping his face from burning further.
“I would like to. Very much, in fact.”
Quiet curls like a millipede.
“Hey.”
Yasha wants his attention.
Coward he is, Essek is unsure if he can give it.
“Essek, come on.”
Yasha pokes at his hand.
“Don’t be a scaredy cat.”
Stilling her, Essek looks.
Yasha simply smiles at him kind.
“I choose you, too.”
The dumbfounded table stares at Essek blankly. He can feel his brows furrow on their own.
Even knowing, still she says it.
Essek rubs his thumb along Yasha’s knuckles.
“Thank you, Yasha. I-.”
He meets her eyes. She watches him back.
He has to give her a way out. He can’t deny her that.
“This is not binding.”
Yasha’s nose wrinkles with a smile.
“I think we’d all choose you. Kind of already have.”
Ah, so he misunderstood her; she is meaning communally, not personally. Even so, his heart holds him by the throat. This reframes many interactions with Jester, Veth, Beauregard, Caleb…. Even without this context, they have all said as much.
On impulse, Essek squeezes Yasha’s hand.
“Thank you.”
Yasha squeezes him back.
“What do you call it?”
“Mm?”
“For like- this.”
Another squeeze.
“All of this. You and me, or you and Caleb, all of us, you know. It sounds like you probably have words for it.”
“Ah, ha. Well. It is- um.”
Essek indicates by raising their hands a bit.
“It is ‘ferede’.”
“Friend?”
“Yes, you see. The pronunciation is not in my favor.”
“Fred.”
“Sure. Would you believe it is better than the old form?”
“Huh?”
“Pretty much a homophone with ‘feared’.”
“Oh no. Friendship, so scary.”
“Petrifying, truly.”
Yasha speaks through her chuckle.
“What’s it actually mean, though?”
With a light sigh, Essek shuffles through his oldest notes.
He points out the term’s first character.
“‘Fere’ as in ‘waves’, the verb. Referring to one’s hands but here conjugated in formal, individually plural second person. As in- ‘your’ hands beckoning, departing, shaking in excitement, or worry, all manner of motion and purpose that can, and likely will, change between forms given time. An opposite of static, but also a stasis in irregularity.”
“So. Okay.”
Essek raises a brow and folds his hands patiently.
“Okay so like waving hi, and bye, and come here and things?”
“Thereabouts. Shorter or colloquially, often it means something like speaking or casting with one’s hands.”
“Okay.”
Essek indicates the second portion.
“And then--”
“Deatholer.”
“Close- detholar.”
“Oh! You said that.”
Essek freezes.
Heat creeps up his neck and ears.
“Hm?”
“Like five minutes ago. You were like ‘dust apparel dethol--’”
“-You are mistaken.”
“Oh.”
Essek silently beseeches every force in the universe that has thus far granted him mercy that she not repeat his words near Beauregard and plows on.
“But detholar. As you now know, yes.”
Essek clears his throat and diverges from his notes, instead picking at his and Yasha’s current considerations.
“Then, to match with Common’s tendencies of construction, I suppose these connections could be translated to… ‘waverships’, perhaps?”
Yasha blinks her pretty eyes.
“It is what it needs to be.”
Essek rubs his eyes with a groan.
“Don’t get me started on need- that’s yet another jar of grubs. Too inflexible.”
“I mean, needs can change too.”
“If you insist.”
“Okay so how about this.”
“Hm?”
“Does it feel like home?”
For all prior teases, how fanciful a belief that is, bright enough to burn the throat- sunlight refined potable.
He hasn’t had somewhere to call home in…. It has been some time, in truth.
Perhaps this tower does count, in some ways and at some times, but… it’s….
It is beautiful, and real, and warm, but it will not last.
“I don’t know if I have one. Can, have one.”
Yasha beetles her brows, a heavy line between.
“Safe.”
Essek mirrors her expression. Tips his head.
“You let me leave, that night upon your ship.”
“We… did, yeah?”
“You did. I was safe to, at least by your hand.”
Yasha nods a faint shrug.
Maybe the safety of mercy is not her meaning of love here.
“I don’t understand.”
“Just-. Just comfortable, you know? But in a good- a real good way. Like he’s got your back.”
Oh.
Essek can only barely think it, a term now flashing and fringing at the periphery of his mind’s allowance nearly in the shape of Caleb’s name. An intrepidly trusted friend; one he would let not be his end; a knife of support to his spine.
So-. Maybe this is indeed a love she and he can both recognize, within this particular framing- to lay one's vulnerabilities in the ruinous hands of others, and to trust them to take care.
Then, with such a baseline shared, perhaps he actually does understand her other posited loves.
To rest together, to cohabitate- to respect one another’s space.
To care about and care for, and to protect- to safekeep.
To love someone as a home, hm.
Surely she must know those are not some exclusive matters and manners, though. She loves him, she’s said. She’s shown.
Does she know he loves her, as he knows how?
“I have, a request.”
Where this resolve comes from, Essek will need to plumb unexamined depths to find its source, but for now, he can be brave without defaulting to diffidence. It is far easier in Yasha’s presence.
Yasha simply nods.
“Okay.”
Essek extends a pinkie to her.
“Please promise me you will not laugh, nor say anything to anyone. I mean this as earnestly as I can.”
Warranting his faith, she links her little finger with his.
“Yeah, okay.”
Awkwardness burns in his ears and tugs at his arms as he stands and opens the latter aside.
Luckily, Yasha understands, following suit still seated. She leans in.
Tucking around Yasha’s neck, Essek hugs her ear to his sternum.
Takes a breath.
Concentrates.
Waits.
A muscle he’s long forgotten how to purposefully flex, he’s unable to summon his infantile purr, but his effort does shove aside embarrassment and scrape up some glimmer of security; it’s not as far a dig as he thought. Curiosity peeks from its hide.
“Yasha.”
“Yeah?”
“Is this home, to you?”
“Yeah. Well-. Yeah that’s…”
Yasha’s sigh is slow and warm, her cheek pillowed against Essek’s heart.
“I guess… one thing, growing up, and then the circus, even, you know, us Mighty Nein… we all moved a lot. We-. We were home. We took it with us.”
“You left.”
Essek keeps his voice soft, truly not meaning to sound accusatory.
Thankfully, Yasha doesn’t seem to take it as such.
“I still do, sometimes. Sometimes needs change faster than home can.”
She shrugs as if his arms are a quilt.
“I like this home. It feels like it will change with me. And me with it, too.”
Essek’s mouth begins to move before he thinks better of it, and think better he does.
He is not as fast as Yasha, though.
“What’s that?”
Essek shakes his head, retreating.
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
No, maybe….
No- no ‘maybe’. He can ask.
“I lied.”
“Okay?”
“May I-? Ah.”
“What, you want me to guess?”
“No, it’s…”
Light, what are the words.
“This is home.”
“Mhmm?”
“Am… I?”
“Home?”
“Mhm.”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“Not… myself. To you.”
“Me?”
“Mm.”
Like dawn and down, Yasha’s laughter fills Essek’s chest. It feels very good.
“Well, it’s nice of you to ask.”
She adjusts her hold of him slightly, then presses him closer.
“Yeah, you’re a part of it now too, big guy.”
Essek squeezes his stinging eyes and frigid hands tight, hardly daring to breathe.
Concern softens Yasha’s voice further.
“Does this hurt?”
It’s interesting- he can readily imagine that, were he to leave the tower and Archive for once, even marketplace bumps and brushes would scald at best. What he can’t picture is the same with Yasha; his imagination only extends so far as antsy discomfort, not quite akin to his fiery cousin of pain.
Essek, honestly, shakes his head.
“Oh. Okay.”
She does not let him go.
Yasha nudges the quiet again.
“Not a cleric, but I think your heart’s working like it should for you. Sounds strong- all ba-bump, ba-bump.”
She taps his back with the rhythm.
Again, Essek tries to reciprocate.
Silence sits and stays.
Well, even if his purr doesn’t start, this is hardly a waste.
Snugly cinched, Yasha’s arms around his waist are incredibly sturdy, but gentle- so deliberately gentle, Essek knows, has learned well; he could break the circle of her arms with only a lean if he ever desires to.
He nestles her to his collar and rests his cheek upon the top of her head instead.
Her hair carries the scents of wax-seal lavender, familiar ozone. The last is difficult to bottle just the same as lightning, so perhaps it’s innate, what with her penchant for storms, the superlunary glow of her. What a rarity, a treasure, moonlight beheld so bright.
And to think, she’s granted him deserving.
Of course, she can revoke her choice at any point. But for now?
He will drink deep of the meltwater her kindness distills.
“Do you think you’re in love with him, Essek?”
Has she misunderstood him, what he is trying to say in this gesture?
This…. It is not….
Essek sighs, flipping through considered terms, denotations, connotations. He can try to answer her question, at least.
In love, the prepositional phrase, eludes him, slippery as kelp in an ever-receding tide.
Triangulating between Jester, Yasha, and Caleb…. There must be some shared thread.
Adoration implies a certain degree of fawning which-. That doesn’t seem so applicable.
Love alone and unclassified, in the colloquial Common sense? Sure, why not, nonspecific as it may be.
Fascination- well, so much of the world is fascinating in the right light.
Then, what about-
“I am fond, I think.”
The words fit well and fine as Essek says them. He holds Yasha tighter and she matches him. Essek absorbs courage with her pressure.
What’s the use of qualifying certainty.
“I am fond.”
“I can tell.”
The smile in her voice prickles at his eyes, warms his ears.
“Are you getting what you want, you think?”
What he wants? What does he want.
To not be killed in the streets, or worse? That isn’t much an issue while spending all his hours in this tower.
To stay in the lives of his friends? They’ve yet to toss him aside.
To research at his choice and leisure? Well.
Two of three isn’t so terrible.
“I believe so.”
“I think… maybe that’s what matters, then, really. The good kind of comfortable, like this.”
And she pats his back again. Gentle though each pat may be, Beauregard could be slugging his ribs for how the wind is knocked out of him.
“Yasha.”
“Mhmm?”
“You understand this is agony.”
These accursed growing pains, as she calls them.
“Yeah.”
Yasha sighs and nods against him.
Essek adds.
“The good kind of uncomfortable.”
Yasha chuckles low.
“Yeah, it is. Deserved, huh?”
Essek chuckles back and holds Yasha like a tree to cliffside rock, affection stuck in his ribs like roots.
It takes very little effort to tilt his head a degree or two, and what else is he to do but give a press of his lips to her crown. It’s not so much just a kiss as it is a barefaced nestle, a landing after long flight.
Experience dictates that split scar tissue should issue a twinge as it tears.
Instead, this time stuttering free without so much as a wince, the purr does not.
“Ohh.”
A croon an octave up, Yasha’s surprise is plenty evident as she loosens her arms.
She then draws back.
There’s a shimmer to her two-hued eyes, their unshed rims suddenly redder, and Essek’s heart sinks like lead.
He retracts his arms from around her shoulders, feeling quite like a mantis as horror grinds silence in his chest.
“I’ve upset you.”
“Nonono, I’m fine, I- I’m fine, really.”
Some fleck of reflection in her laugh leaves doubt and guilt unassuaged. What can he do to fix this?
“I’m sorry.”
An apology seems as good a first step as any, but Yasha shakes her head with another laugh.
“I just remembered nice memories, is all. I'm not upset, I promise.”
She sticks her pinkie out- that’s not for assurances, but instead vows of action. Still, her intent couldn’t be clearer. Essek pats the back of her hand, sighing what slim amount of relief he can.
“I believe you.”
“Okay.”
Yasha clasps Essek’s hands between both hers, enveloping them entirely. He’s unable to begrudge how small he must be to her. It’s a big world around them tiny two.
She gives him a taut, weathered grin.
“I think it’s wonderful. I know… connections, and people, and connections with people, are really hard- finding them, and- and keeping them. I’m really, very, very happy for you.”
She says it like she isn’t a part of it, said connections and people.
How is that fair at all?
So he repeats her.
“I am happy for you.”
And she smiles. She laughs once again, a rainbow in a sunshower.
“We’re happy for the both of us.”
Maybe that’s been her point all along.
“And, so- so yeah. I think company’s a really good skin for you.”
That… a thought clicks.
“Seems like you wear it pretty snug. Like a- one of those uh- those- those weasel fur jackets, but if it was a tiny one made with just one.”
Company, of course. How unimaginative he has been.
Maybe there is something to the notion of companionship as an encompassing term.
Essek draws himself out of his mind; Yasha deserves his attention.
“Dwendalian ermine, or mink, are you thinking?”
“Sure.”
“I will keep that in mind, then.”
Yasha mutters out the side of her mouth, her voice a muted trumpet as she leans to him behind her hand.
“He also probably likes you. You know, if I’m guessing right.”
“Mm, perhaps. I’ll need to conduct a little more research to be certain, though.”
“If you need a study buddy, I’m very good. Like an expert, pretty much. Got love stuff listed on my resumé and everything.”
“The Empire makes use of those as well? Here I thought they were specific to Rosohna.”
“Beau told me all about them. So I’m super qualified, for sure.”
“Well, if you ever need assistance polishing yours, mine have always been stellar.”
“Ooo, Essek?”
Yasha peers.
Oh no.
“Oh- I- no. Light-.”
He did mean literally.
“I’m just teasing.”
“I don’t enjoy being misinterpreted.”
“Good to know. Oh-.”
“Hm?”
Yasha looks away from the clock.
“I should go.”
Oh.
She takes up her parcel. Its smell present long enough to ignore, it now wriggles its way back into Essek’s awareness.
“I was going to go to the pit before dinner after dropping this off.”
Another inviting jostle- muffled crackers crackle.
“Want a try?”
The kitchens are two part-levels higher; Essek is well out of the way if they were her goal.
She must have been looking for him.
Essek can try something new for Yasha.
“Very well.”
Yasha doles him out a cracker with a generous, gloopy dollop and an equally gooey look of concentration.
Without any illusion, Essek tries a tidbit of Yasha’s concoction and it’s….
Not bad.
Pungent, sharp, strangely both spiced and floral despite the lack of seasoning, cool to the tongue and a pleasant enough contrast between cream and crisp and crunch- it’s quite good, actually, but Essek is sure he’ll need a thorough rinse or several to keep it from lingering. Well, if that gets him out of his seat.
He finishes his sample to Yasha’s immense grin.
“Sooo what do you think?”
“Enjoyable.”
He cleans off his fingertips and brushes away what few crumbs fell to his lap.
“I wouldn’t mind it again.”
“Oh yay. Okay.”
Essek offers a reach to the box, a palm up.
“I can take this to the kitchens for you, if you’d like. Keep it in an ice box.”
His taunted stomach then rebels, growling after more. Yasha bursts into a laugh as she hands it over.
“Save some for everyone though.”
Essek schools the warmth from his face.
“Of course.”
Yasha takes her leave and Essek takes her food to the savory-side kitchen, retrieving a drink while he’s there.
A parade of cats form a beeping barricade when he tries to leave, helmed by a particularly insistent Gretchen. Essek concedes to scrounging up a snack as well.
Nibbles acquired and felines appeased, appetites whetted and himself pleased, he eventually returns to his comfortable niche all alone.
It’s odd.
The space seems… larger. Louder in its quiet as if it has taken a breath and opened itself to the possibility of not only hosting life, but housing it as well.
Essek settles into his seat and continues whittling away at his words, waiting for his friends to come home.