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Can't you ask Beau instead? (She's so reluctant to get out of bed and leave the comforting safety of Mollymauk's truly dismal attempt to spoon her, but she can't ignore what may be desperation in Jester's whisper either...

Another short sigh.)

Give me a minute... (and, true to her word, she's letting herself quietly into Jester's room not long after, closing the door gently behind her. She doesn't want to wake up the rest of the house. She's going to come and sit on the end of Jester's bed, knuckling her eye slowly.)

What's wrong. Where's the emergency?

[Jester, as she usually does just before she tucks herself in for the night, has a pen in her hand and her sketchbook open to a blank page next to where she's sat cross-legged on her bed.

The value of being the holder of the handy haversack is: your junk is waterproof As Fuck.

But, while she's dressed down for the night, she looks wide awake. There are a few scribbles in the sketchbook, where she may have started to draw or write something, but given up and scratched it out in frustration.

She gives Yasha the biggest kicked puppy face in existence.]

Yasha... I can't sleep. I need a story.

(She's such a little shit. Yasha stares at her for a long moment, then kinda throws her arms up in the air in a 'this might as well happen' gesture, slowly pulling her legs up so she's sitting criss-cross applesauce on the end of Jester's bed.)

Fine. Alright. What do you need to hear a story about, Jester.

[Jester brightens immediately.]

Well! There were all those books that came in, and there's a full library and everything, but... none of the books looked all that interesting! I checked so many.

So, since you're the only one I know for sure has experience... I'm sure you could tell a really good story. Like, you can skip all the steamy bits, but like, I bet your first kiss was really good, like, the first time Guinevere kissed Oskar, and her legs gave out because she felt so much love that she almost fainted, and Oskar caught her in his strong arms and told her,

[Her voice drops a couple octaves.]

"I told you I'd always be there to catch you when you fall!"

(Yasha probably should have expected something like this might happen but it's still surprising and... embarrassing? She'd come in here with the intent to help Jester out with something and now she's being asked to recount the story of her first kiss with somebody she hasn't told Jester about yet. That part still confuses her.

She blinks, struggling to maintain an impassive expression.) Um...

(She finger combs her hair a little, or at least she tries. It's tangled from sleep.) It's... not a very interesting story. And I wouldn't be able to describe it like a romantic book would, you know.

But you know all the feelings you were feeling and stuff like, maybe she smelled really good, and um...

[Considering Jester's own first kiss was a little... unique, she may also be partly looking for a way to prove it didn't really count. Because, well, it didn't, and that's fine, and really anything to focus on other than trying to write her prayers to a god that she isn't sure is really listening anymore would be great.

So first kisses it is.]

You know, maybe she didn't think it was a big deal, but you thought it was, but then she realized how much she really loved you actually, because she couldn't stop thinking about you, and she came back on a white horse, and carried you across a field...

... Look, (Yasha says, holding up her hands to try and stop Jester before she gets even more carried away,) it really wasn't like that at all, it was... um, it was just normal, I think.

(Oh boy, now she's thinking about it. She hasn't thought about the first time Zuala ever kissed her in... a very long time. Yasha falls silent, lost in thought, but one of her elbows has propped up on her knee and her fingers are at her mouth, thumb idly tracing over her lower lip.)

[It's very good that Yasha doesn't notice how hard Jester is trying to project right now.

Jester watches Yasha as she grows quiet, touching her thumb to her lip as if remembering how it felt. If Yasha glances back her way, she'll see that Jester has shifted closer on the bed, eyeing her with a knowing look.]

Are you imagining it right now? Where were you?

No, (Yasha says, glancing over and dropping her hand immediately upon the realisation that Jester has scooted up pretty close on the bed,) my... mouth is itchy, I have wind burn.

(She itches her chin for good measure. Yasha is a terrible liar.)

We... were just in the fields, we used to go hunting together all the time before I... (she clears her throat.) Um, before I was pledged.

[Jester casts a Knowing Glance, because Yasha absolutely is a terrible liar, and Jester thinks she knows everything.

But then Yasha starts to give her a little piece of the story, and she is all ears. She rests her chin on her palms and, well, she would lean in closer, but she's already quite close and she knows Yasha can sometimes be a bit shy. So she tries, bless her heart, to restrain herself.]

You mean before...

[Ah, wait, that's the tragic part of this. We don't want tragedy right now. We want beautiful, blissful romance! And we want it now!]

Sooo... Who kissed who first? Did you already know you liked each other? Did she surprise you? Was it like... you had both been waiting for the other to do it for so long, and then when it finally happened, you forgot how to breathe?

(Jester might be trying but Yasha still feels a little overwhelmed by all of this. She dutifully tucks her arms in close to her sides as Jester gets comfortable.)

Well... (At least it's easy to answer a barrage of questions? That at least gives her a good starting point for the elaboration that Jester craves.) I kissed her first, even though I wasn't sure if she liked me the same way or not. I thought that I would take a chance.

I think it... surprised her. (Her expression softens a little, her gaze at her knees. She's picturing it now, the loveliness of that astonishment unfolding across her face. Yasha thinks about it often, it's not something that she ever wants to forget. Zuala, surprised by her for once, and not the other way around.)

[Jester's playful attitude starts to sober a bit, as Yasha starts to lose herself in the memory. She knows that this is actually... still something that Yasha thinks about, given what she knows. The wound of lost love is a little fresh.

But, well. Looking back on good times isn't such a bad thing. She does that with Molly's memory sometimes. Or did, before he came back? Shrug.]

...I don't know why, but I always imagined you'd be the shy one. You know, 'cause you're so quiet I think.

What did she say? Or did she just kiss you back? Was she... unsure, but then thought about it, and then realized she was super madly in love with you and couldn't be without you?

[This hypothetical sort of situation is definitely not something Jester spends a lot of time thinking about!!!!! Nope!!!!]

Well, I was a bit different back then. I wasn't always quiet.

(She says it easily enough, shrugging a shoulder. Yasha hasn't exactly come to terms with it yet but... well, it's just the truth, so she doesn't find it especially difficult to talk about.

Jester's embellishments only end up making her laugh, her expression scrunching in amusement.)

Okay, okay. Um... I don't really know if she felt all of that, but she did kiss me back. She said 'finally' actually, and she... kissed me back, it was nice. And after that we were very close, all the time. As much as we could be, anyway.

[Jester pauses to wonder what a more outgoing Yasha would be like. It's odd, since she's so ruthless in battle, but when you talk to her she's so reserved and has trouble talking openly about herself.

Basically... not the type to confess her love for someone with a sudden kiss. But also, Jester hasn't seen Yasha in love... probably. But she got Yasha to laugh, so she grins again, hands coming up to her face in excitement.]

She was waiting forever and ever for you to make the first move! That is so... so romantic.

[Her excitement fades a little.]

Do you like Molly?

[...Well, obviously, but that's not what Jester means.]

I suppose.

(Yasha hadn't thought of it as especially romantic at the time, just... a conclusion of something that had been building for a while. The start of something new. Finally kissing Zuala that day had felt so natural.

She's still thinking about her, her expression unfathomable, when Jester asks her next question. It's not where Yasha expected her to go; she blinks, chin popping up off of her hand.)

... Of course I like Molly. Why?

No, no, I mean, do you like him? Like do you want to kiss him?

[Wait, Yasha and Molly already kiss all the time??? This is proving difficult for Jester to specify. Molly kind of breaks boundaries with a type of casualness that is very Molly, in ways even Jester sometimes has a hard time conceiving of for herself.

She loves that about him, but she's also a person who is sort of... caught up in how Relationships Should Be when it comes to romance. She knows the difference between sex and love, obviously, but she's still sort of grappling with what love is supposed to look like.

Thus, this conversation.]

But, like, romantically, I mean, like making out and stuff.

(Yasha, who had her mouth open to add in a 'I kiss Molly sometimes' to the conversation, promptly closes her mouth again. Oh, that's what she means. Yasha's expression changes; not to anything disgusted, or entertained. Just to confused. Her brow furrows, and she stares at a point on Jester's bedroom wall while she thinks.)

I don't know...

(She has thought about this a few times before, but she hasn't said much of it out loud before.)

I... think that in other circumstances it could have been like that. Maybe. But it isn't, and I'm fine with that too. (She made room for him in her heart, in the same way that she did with Zuala, and that isn't an insignificant gesture to Yasha. Her and Molly didn't connect quite like that, that's all. It's a different kind of love. But sometimes, privately, Yasha thinks that it came close, once or twice.)

Like, what circumstances? Is it just that Molly doesn't want to date you, or like maybe you misinterpreted something as romantic when it really wasn't, and he maybe didn't know that, and now you don't know what to think really, or maybe like... you're not really sure who he is anymore because every time you look at him he seems like a different person, and maybe that's what you liked about him at first but now you're worried he doesn't need you anymore, and...

[Okay, Jester is only just self-aware enough to realize she's literally just talking about herself and Fjord under different names right now. She dials it back to recover from whatever trainwreck she was methodically adding more train cars to with every word.]

Um. No, I know you and Molly aren't really like that, but I also don't get it. Kind of? Like how do you tell something isn't... meant to be?

What would you have done if you kissed Zuala and she pretended it never happened?

(Yasha opens her mouth to say something and then closes it because it seems like Jester is really inches away from figuring out something about herself, and that this stopped being about Yasha's experiences quite some time ago. And that's okay. Because she doesn't really want to talk about this any more, actually, and she's embarrassed.

Eventually Jester provides enough of a natural pause for her to re-enter the conversation, and even then she has to think for a while about an answer to her question. Singular. The one Jester asked most recently. The other questions are being left for dead, and please don't call her out on it.)

Well...

I suppose I would have been pretty sad. But I would have got over it, eventually.

(A pause.) ... Maybe.

[Jester both is and isn't inches from figuring something out. She's had some time, it's been at least a month since the kiss, it's just... she still isn't sure what Fjord's side of the equation is, and that means she keeps hitting a brick wall figuring out her side.

She frowns and considers Yasha's answer for a while. It doesn't... really translate, since that's not what happened to Yasha, so she can only guess. And Jester never met Zuala to begin to imagine how exactly this hypothetical would even play out.

It's not as helpful as Jester might have hoped. Maybe... from another angle.]

Um. So how did you figure out your crush on her was real? How do you tell it from just, you know... really liking her and wanting to be her friend you maybe kiss sometimes, like Molly?

(These are all very philosophical questions. Too much for Yasha, who is knuckling one of her eyes while she thinks of how to answer this, and still half-heartedly yearning to crawl back into her own bed and wrap herself around a snoring Mollymauk.)

I suppose I thought about a future with her. Once or twice. And when we started... um, sneaking around together, it... felt different, to just having a crush, or wanting to kiss a friend.

I'm sorry, (she adds, after a beat,) I don't really know... how to describe it, I think. It's hard to explain.

(She's never talked about her relationship with Zuala so extensively to somebody who isn't Molly before.)

So... you could tell it was real because you thought about marrying her?

[That is a little different than what Jester's experienced. Or really anything she thought she knew about romance in general. She fiddles with the edge of her nightshirt a little, trying to ponder it.]

Well, I guess they say, um, true love is hard to define.

[Or that's close enough to what reggae said.]

What do you... think I should do?

Not all the time. Not when I first met her, that came... um, later, I guess.

(It's hard to space out her time with Zuala, it felt like it went by in a rush. It felt like she couldn't ever spend enough time with Zuala, and then she was gone. Jester is right. It is hard to define.

Yasha frowns, thinking.)

Well... actually, I'm not sure I understand what you're asking about. What should you do about what?

[It's too hard!!! Jester looks pensive for a moment, trying to figure out something apparently, and she's quiet for a bit.

And then she answers.]

Well, you know... about... getting more really good books?

[...Yep.]

(Yasha just looks at her.)

If you're going to make me visit you when I could be sleeping, you should tell the truth.

(Just a Friendly Suggestion uwu)

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