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Jester spends the ride home on the moorbounders counting to twenty five.
One two three – Yasha please know we’re coming back for you we didn’t want to leave you we – fifteen – we are going to find a way to rescue you – twenty five –
One two – Yasha we’re going – three – Yasha we’re going to find a way to come – nine –
Yasha I know that wasn’t really – six –
Yasha I know you weren’t really you back there I know that wasn’t really you – fifteen – and I don’t want you to think that we don’t care and please Yasha keep fighting okay because – thirty three – okay I’ll start over –
It doesn’t matter how many times she starts over, recrafts the message in her head, because she can feel the Traveller’s hands softly covering her own, helping her guide the moorbounder back to safety. She can feel how weak her body is, and how gently the Traveller whispers to her not now, Jester, you need to rest . And so instead, all of the words that she means to send spill over into tears streaming down her face.
She doesn’t try to hide her tear-soaked cheeks from the others as they try to get a full night’s rest after what has just transpired. She registers Beau leaving in the middle of the night, and coming back, and then leaving, and coming back. She wants to ask if she’s looking for the moon, approaching stormclouds, Yasha, or all three, but she doesn’t. Instead she tries to rest, fitfully.
In the morning the others’ suspicions raise their vicious heads.
“Maybe that was always her.”
“We didn’t really know her all that well, after all.”
And Beau doesn’t say anything.
Over the next couple days, at the end of the night, when she feels a hint of magic still lingering in her finger tips, she finds a quiet place to sit and look at the moon. She quietly wishes for clouds heavy with storm. She takes a deep breath, and – So, hi, Yasha, it’s Jester, and I hope you’re okay, if you can, please tell me if you can hear this or if it’s really –
One day she scries on her, and the vision of Yasha’s cold dead eyes hits her in her chest more than the horrible thing Yasha’s doing. She draws them over and over in her sketchbook, how they seem to lack any light, how they seem hard. She always liked to imagine Yasha’s eyes were the color of spring flowers, but here the colors feel sharp, unfriendly, poisonous.
She turns the page, leans back into the mural wall, and thinks of Yasha smiling at her. She thinks of Yasha’s eyes and the way they glittered when she saw the mural for the first time, the deep sorrow and pain when she spoke of her wife, and the warmth, when she talked about the love they had shared. She draws those instead.
She whispers – I’m going to have faith in you, Yasha. I hope the Stormlord can bring you back and to who you really want to be and –
It’s foggy, somewhere. Is it foggy outside, or just hard to know, to see – sudden glimpses of clarity and then back again. Everything feels fuzzy, all of her joints feel sore. She aches. Yasha aches. Sees Obann, sees her own hands, as if they aren’t her own. She watches her feet walk but barely feels movement. She tries to make her feet stop, straining against something invisible, but no, they keep walking, keep marching, without her. It all feels foggy, headache isn’t the right word, but lord, her head aches, and then – I’m going to have faith in you Yasha – what? Jester is that – I hope the Stormlord can bring you back to who you really want to be and – Yasha tries to speak, tries to scream. There’s a kind voice in her mind and nothing she can do. As if there’s a glass wall between her and everything else, and she can’t break it. Her feet continue marching on.
Miles away, worlds away, Jester sinks into the silence. What she would give for a response, just one word. More than anything, she just wants to talk to Yasha.
She tries to feign normalcy, she tries to act as if the nights of silent responses aren’t eating away at her. She hasn’t scried in days now. Maybe Yasha is gone. Gone gone. Or maybe she’s choosing not to respond, gone in another way. Each thought is more painful than the last.
Finally Jester knows she has to spend her magic elsewhere, she can’t send whispers into the night, so she sends one last one – Yasha I think I might not be able to cast sending for a while, but I – she falters – I love you, Yasha, I know that wasn't you –
From behind the wall of glass, Yasha hears – I know that wasn’t you – and the body that she watches do terrible things, that she’s started to think, well, maybe that is her, she now remembers differently. A different her. A her that is softer, one that picks flowers, one who loved Zuala, not just ran from her. The Yasha who someone would paint a mural of flowers for, the Yasha that Jester would take in her arms and say – she hears it again, pounding through the glass this time – I know that wasn’t you – and so she repeats it, barely over a whisper. It wasn’t me .
Jester gasps, and cries now, for a Yasha she knows for certain is out there. If she had been scrying then, she would have seen Yasha’s eyes soften momentarily, and the beginnings of a tear, before they hardened once more.