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Her birth is an auspicious occasion.
So rarely does the gift of the divines grace these wastes, that her tribe is quick to honor this day. They shower this new mother and child with gifts of brilliant dyed cloths, dried meats, jewelry of bone and baked, clay beads. They throw a festival around a bonfire at sundown and spend the rest of night in celebration, welcoming this gods-given blessing to their fold.
And when this newborn is presented to the Matriarch, it is to great cheers and to unrestrained adulation. The council admires her mighty voice, her sharp eyes, the strength of her grip and the power in her lungs. But most of all, what they greet with awe and wonder, is the sight of her two fledgling wings, poking up past her shoulders, one a clear and shining white, the other almost, save for a small black stain running across the base of the feathers.
This child’s name is Yasha. She will bring prosperity to her people.
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Her birth was supposed to be an auspicious occasion.
Instead, as the nurses look up, as their eyes go wide, as the midwife starts to murmur and the mother starts to panic and the father begins to ask for his son, it turns out that, as it would seem, a few important predictions had gone very wrong.
She is washed and handed back to her parents, wrapped tightly in a warm bundle. She is held by her mother for all of three seconds before the nurse is told to put the infant in her crib. No one remarks on the soft color of her eyes. No one adores the gentle burble of her laugh. No one even dares mention the stain, dark against smooth, tan skin, blooming harshly across the side of this newborn’s face.
And, eventually, even the nurse leaves.
This child’s name is Beauregard. She will always be a disappointment.
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The Iathia Moorlands are a dangerous place to grow up, so learning to fight early on is essential. Yasha is not the most powerful, nor the most aggressive, nor even the most courageous, but most of the others have always been frightened by her stature and by her divinity. In the end, it is not rage, not cunning nor speed, that sees her through in every fight. Instead, it is a careful, methodical, confidence: Yasha knows that she will win; knows it so surely that her opponents have no chance.
But outside of their lessons, Yasha finds little success. None of the other children will approach her. They grew up hearing the whispers of their parents, hearing the murmurs of the elders and teachers. They only know Yasha as the angel-vessel. The gods-touched gift sent from high above. She is special, and she is strong, and she will bring good fortune to their tribe.
They never call her a child. They don’t know her as a little girl.
(Not even when her mother dies. Not even when the Sky-Spear herself takes her in.)
Because of this, Yasha grows up alone.
She learns to play tag with her shadow. She learns to draw little pictures in the mud. She chases clouds as they pass across the skies and she pretends the waving heather is like soft hair and a hug. One day, as she stands at the top of a boulder, and leaps down with certainty and stretches out her wings, for but a moment, she is free and alight. She is flying, soaring, to wherever she may go.
And when she inevitably crashes and knocks out a tooth, even that is okay, too. She tucks it into a pocket. She spits the blood out into the grass and looks back up at the boulder and wonders if, maybe, she should try it again.
There’s not much else to do.
Being alone is all that Yasha knows.
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Beauregard grows up alone.
This, though, had never been in any doubt. As the sole heir to the Lionnet fortune, Beau would always have been raised far from the public eye. She would have been quietly taught the proper skills for a lady of her birth, educated in etiquette, arithmetic, in embroidery and conversation, trained to keep the books for the family business.
It is purely coincidental, then, how her parents have another reason to keep her isolated.
Beau asks her mother about this, one day, early on into her childhood. During one of the many, many dress-fittings that plague her youth.
“Mommy?” she says softly, voice barely a timbre, as the tailor asks her to spin around and face the mirror. “Mommy, can I ask you something?”
Her mother gives a faint hum of acknowledgement. She is busy examining the trim of Beau’s skirt.
“Mommy, are you listening?”
Mrs. Lionnet glances at her for but a moment. Her eyebrows crease with irritated permission, but Beau has never known any other kind. She reaches up and puts a finger to her cheek.
“Mommy, what’s this on my face?”
The tailor’s eyes instantly go wide. She spins around and busies herself with some other fabrics, making a grand show of being perfectly distracted.
Beau stands there for a few seconds of silence. She nervously, patiently, watches the mirror for a reaction.
The storm raging in her mother’s eyes is unreadable. The expressions like lightning behind her pupils are beyond knowing. It is sad, how accustomed Beauregard has become to this.
Eventually, Mrs. Lionnet stirs. She gives a sharp inhale of breath, quickly returns to criticizing the skirt.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” she says. “It is just a soulmark. A silly leftover from the days of old magic. You are above that sort of thing, my sweet.”
Beauregard hates that name, hates its sound. It is not the honey-slicked tsk of the “sweet,” but rather the way her mother always says “my.”
She is asked to turn again, so the tailor can change the sash.
“Pink will bring out the blue in your eyes,” Mother says. “We want you to look pretty for your father’s dinner, don’t we? It’s a very important meeting, we can’t let him down.”
Beau is only early on into her childhood. And yet, somehow, she gets the idea she already has.
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Yasha sticks up almost half a foot taller than all the other children in the crowd as she sits cross-legged on the ground and anxiously waits to hear the night’s tale. The giant spiders that the hunters brought home have long been picked of everything but chitin, and now the evening bonfire roars with the fading scent of meat. Yasha’s share has settled well in her stomach, though some of the other children had less luck.
Still, they are determined to ignore their churning bellies. Nothing is more wonderful than when Wind-Singer speaks.
He is standing up in front of them now, his robes shining in the embers’ light. His eyes gleam with the carried knowledge of centuries, and his mouth is curved up in a playful grin.
He is always so happy, Yasha notices. She wishes that she could smile like that.
“Welcome, welcome, young ones!” he laughs. “I am delighted that you would join me, now. For tonight, I share with you a tale from the first days, from the years when wild magic swept through these lands and left a mark on all our living souls.”
He raises his arm, and on one hand is a splash of color. Not the solid, streaked lines of paint, nor the dripping, familiar tang of blood—no, this is something far greater, far stranger, dazzling and alive and almost moving across skin, a brilliant bloom of purple, swirling blues, brushed with the faintest hints of green. He gazes at this mark fondly, and lets the first row of children see.
“This, young ones, is called a ‘soulmark,’” he says. “It is leftover magic, the oldest kind, from the days when the gods created our world. And though, now, they have gone back to the stars, some of their gifts still lie with us today.”
He spreads his hands apart, and grins. “I’m sure, by now, that you’ve all already noticed, how there are little dark patches on your skin? Blank, areas—yes, Roa, that’s it, good!” He taps his nose like he’s telling a secret. “Those, children, are how your soulmates will find you. When they touch your skin for the first time in that spot, it will change color and bloom to life. You can see that mine already has, yes? Yours will too, one day. I am certain.”
A little hand thrusts up into the night. The stars part around tiny fingers.
“What’s a soulmate?” asks a high-pitched voice. “What does that mean?”
The Wind-Singer laughs at that, a full, sound. “Right, right, of course!” he nods. “I should explain that too, eh? A soulmate is someone who is destined to find you. Someone who will be very important in your life. Though—” and here, he gives them all a knowing stare, “—remember, they won’t necessarily be your partner. Sometimes they are an important friend, and sometimes they are a member of your family. There will always be many people in your life, and just because one of them was put there by fate, it doesn’t mean you should ignore the others. We are a tribe,” he puts a fist over his heart. “We are all we have in these unforgiving moors, and we survive by working together.”
Then he chuckles again and leans over the fire so that his teeth glow orange in the light.
“Now, who wants to hear a ghost story?” he rumbles. “The tale of a creature so terrible the gods cursed it…”
And from where she sits, awed and silent in the crowd. Yasha takes a second to think. And then, slowly, very slowly, she shifts her shoulders and brings forth her wings. And even though she can’t see it, right now, in this moment, she knows exactly when her fingers brush her mark.
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Beau doesn’t even remember his name, which really should show how much he didn’t matter. But her face is still stinging, her eyes stinging more, her ears throbbing and pounding with the sound of her father shouting, yelling, screaming at her, demanding to know why she’d ever thought she could do that. He slams a hand down so hard onto the desk that his quills rattle and fall onto the carpet. The ledger he was examining thuds against its wooden surface.
And Beau is just standing there, frozen, stock-still, doing her best to control her lungs and forcing the shaking in her shoulders to stop. She is un-answering, unmoving, unwilling to tell her father that the boy had started it, that his friends were at fault, that she hadn’t done anything, that it was them—them, Father, them!—who had cornered her outside the biggest barn and laughed at the soulmark spread inky across her face and snickered, with all the cruelty of adolescence—hey, if I slap her and it changes, does that mean I’m her soulmate?!
It did change, in a way. Now there is a swollen redness on her cheek. Later on, Mother will teach her how to hide it.
But right now, in this moment, as her feet glue her to the carpet, all Beauregard can do is stay silent. All she can do is listen to the yelling, to her father screaming at her for attacking a big client’s son.
And all she can do, is make the silent promise:
Nobody will ever get close enough to her, to try again.
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Their tribe encounters another, one day. Yasha is barely sixteen years old. And yet, when the fighting suddenly begins, when they take up their arms and the warriors rise, somehow she quickly finds a sword in her grasp. She finds a rage in her belly, and a fury in her soul.
And later on, she’ll find, as she stands in a pool of seeping red, as her blade drips with what could’ve been rust, as her wings rustle with a metallic breeze and crimson stains her lowest feathers, she’ll find that maybe, maybe, just maybe, this is what she was always meant to be.
The Sky-Spear names her: Orphan-Maker.
She has proven herself on this day. And from that moment on, over the years to come, she will continue to prove herself, again and again. She has killed for her tribe, and this is not the first time. She will meet all expectations, fulfill all her duties.
All, except for one.
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Over the next years to come, to her parents’ complete surprise, Beauregard Lionnet makes herself useful. She shows a knack for keeping the books that surpasses even her father’s standards, and quiets down enough during tea parties to appease Mother. These developments are such that her parents lessen their viselike grip over her life, and even voluntarily mention her to their friends. At this point, Beau has also learned from her mother, and it has been almost a decade since anyone has seen her soulmark.
What her parents do not know, though, is what she is getting up to afterhours. What she doesn’t tell them is that she’d already poured through the library and searched for anything that could teach her about thievery. What she doesn’t tell them is how she’d fashioned herself a set of burglary tools. What she doesn’t tell them is the way she’s started to train her body to sneak out her window in the dead of night and scale down the side of their manor.
What she doesn’t tell them is how once, as she’d been wandering around the property, practicing lockpicking and doing pull-ups in the moonlight, she stumbled across a few thieves in the brewery, right in the middle of pulling a grand job,
What she doesn’t tell them is how she makes some brand-new friends. What they don’t know, is that those friends had stuck around.
What they don’t know won’t hurt them.
And what they don’t know, turns out to be their daughter.
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Once every twenty years, the wastes of Xhorhas are transformed.
As the sun sets on the first night of spring and the skies darken above crumbling earth, out across the barren moors, the heaps of bramble, and the heat-baked dirt, from out among the rock-tumbled hills and the brittle, drying, rustling grass, the moon lilies begin to bloom.
They stretch out, far out, beyond the eye can see, blanketing the wasteland with soft, round petals. They soak in the moonlight shining down from high above, and on this night, and this night alone, they glow with a gentle, pale, shimmering blue, and fill the air with the sweet promise of life.
This attracts all sorts of creatures, of mice, and voles, and little brown lizards. And then the owls and foxes that feed on them. And then the even-bigger creatures that feed on them.
The Night of the Moon Lilies is the night of tribe’s greatest hunt. The Sky-Spear leads an expedition with her warriors to set out off into the dusk and bring back the kind of game that would feed their people for months.
She chooses Yasha to come, too. This goes without saying.
But on this night, Yasha is nowhere to be found.
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Beau gets quite an education from these smugglers, and learns things like the right way to pick a lock, how to scout a house, or distract a target, or come up with fabulous lies on the spot. She even picks up some Thieves’ Cant—not enough to be fluent, just dangerous. In exchange, she proves a valuable asset to these people; not only does she have a house key, but she also controls the business’s books. She knows what’s coming in, what’s going out, where all the bottles go and who buys them, and, most of all, the greatest part of all, she is in control of everything that’s recorded. She can fudge any numbers that she wants, and tweak any figure or edit out any line.
The smugglers take advantage of this. And Beauregard takes advantage of their company, of the thrill, of the adrenaline of being able to rebel against her parents. And—on some, very special nights, when a certain tan elf feels up for some fun—well, Beau takes advantage of that, too.
The mark on her face never changes. But even if it had, she wouldn’t have noticed until the next morning, when the makeup came off and the night peeled away.
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Yasha is sitting under moonlight, watching the lilies sway in the breeze. It is silent in this lonely meadow, far, far away from the tribe’s planned hunt.
She can never be sure, not really, of why she decided to come here, tonight. She knows that Sky-Spear will be upset, but, for some reason, as she sits in this moment, as she takes a slow breath and listens to the crickets, she thinks that maybe, she has made the right choice.
The stars twinkle softly above.
And then there is a noise. A crunching of dry grass. Yasha whips around, her snowy hair like a moving cloud, and sees, just at the edge of the field, a figure emerging, silhouetted by the moon.
Yasha does not move. She stares at the shape and watches it approach. Her sword is lying at her side. She has never been anything but sure in her strength.
And then the figure is close enough to see.
Yasha realizes, now, that this is one of the other members of her tribe. Probably she is here because Sky-Spear sent her, to come find the Orphan-Maker and drag her home. Yasha sighs at the thought of this, reaches to her side to pick up her blade and strap it to her back and get ready to leave—
And then, at almost sixty feet away, the figure stops. It looks down. It sits in the grass.
Yasha realizes that the newcomer is not here for her. She remembers that most humans have bad night-vision. She has probably been near-invisible this whole time. Intrigued by this, she peers a little closer. She is able to make out long, dark hair and strong arms, tan and bare on this spring night. There are some beads woven into the woman’s dress, and her eyes, a warm, singing, amber-brown, shine with the gleam of the lilies all around.
Yasha feels her mouth go dry. She struggles to remember this newcomer’s name, and realizes with frustration just how much attention she’d never paid back home. Which is ridiculous, she thinks, since there aren’t that many others in the tribe.
She thinks it is an even greater crime that she could ever have seen this woman, and forgotten.
Unable to stop herself, Yasha leans closer. And then a little closer. And then her palm rolls in the dirt, and she falls face-first into some lilies.
When she picks herself up again, knocking glowing pollen all over the place, probably breaking a few stems as she goes, it is to her instant embarrassment and horror that the woman is now standing five feet away. Staring directly at her, with her arms crossed.
Yasha notices, in this moment, that the two of them are probably around the same age. She realizes almost instantly, afterwards, that this is not the pressing issue at hand.
The woman has an eyebrow raised. A smile of infinite amusement on her lips.
“Orphan-Maker?” she asks, eventually. “Should you not be out with the hunters?”
Yasha brushes some dead grass out of her hair. She tries to remember how to speak, then forgets.
Luckily, or maybe unluckily, the woman laughs. She pushes her dress back and sits down in the grass, and Yasha can see her face quite clearly now, bright under the moon, soft curves and a gentle mouth.
She says, very, very quietly:
“Er…whoops.”
The woman’s other eyebrow goes up. She leans in closer, enough to share her warmth.
And then she reaches up and puts a hand in Yasha’s hair.
She says:
“You missed a twig, there.”
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On one night in particular, as they’re lying together in bed, Beau’s companion taps her lightly on the shoulder. Beau turns, as much as she can in this position, and raises her eyebrow in a questioning stare.
“Yeah?” she whispers. “What’s up?”
Her companion grins, her eyes glitter. “Hey,” she murmurs, “I’m thinking of a plan. It’ll be a big take from your parents, I was wondering if you’d want in.”
In that moment, Beau would’ve said yes to anything.
“Fuck yeah,” she agrees. “Let’s do it.”
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Her name, Yasha learns, is Zuala. Born in the year before she was. One of the other hunters, from a different party. Yasha has always been aware of her isolation, but only now does she realize exactly how bad it was. She does, at least, remember hearing Zuala’s name, but she had never known much else, aside from that.
Zuala tells her all about their tribe-mates. On that night, she talks openly and freely, describes all sorts of gossip Yasha had never heard, tells all sorts of secrets that Yasha didn’t know existed. And as the evening goes on, she also divulges how she’d dreamed of being matriarch as a child, how she’d changed her mind when she got older and now enjoyed running the moors with her group. She talks about the beauty of the grasses and marvels at the way the sky touches the horizon. The flowers illuminate the kindness in her face, and she is nothing but animated, but alive, her mouth holds a smile that nobody couldn’t love.
And in the darkness, with eyes blessed and keen, Yasha can see that the tips of Zuala’s left fingers are black. Darkened and wispy, the tell-tale signs of a soulmark untouched.
And that feeling, that sudden realization, that delight in her heart and that sudden flood of hope, is well worth the shouting of Sky-Spear the next morning, after all the lilies had closed and gone away.
But it isn’t over, yet.
Not even by a long shot.
As soon as Yasha is dismissed from the main hall, Zuala immediately corners her outside. She grabs the hem of Yasha’s tunic, and without even waiting, takes off through the fields. Most of Iathia is just familiar, flat, moor, but somehow, Zuala manages to make it all wonderful. She points out patterns made on big rocks and tells Yasha the stories she’d made up about the clouds. She makes ruthless, limitlessly-dirty jokes, and laughs to her heart’s content when Yasha blushes. They act like children when they are together; Zuala ropes Yasha into pranks and Yasha in turn has the friend she never did. And one day, as they’re wandering across the wastes and they come across a massive, gnarled, old tree, standing all by itself in the heather, they decide to climb it, all the way to the top.
Yasha gets there before Zuala. This is expected, as she’d always been pretty strong.
And when Zuala finally catches up, slightly and endearingly out of breath, they sprawl out among the barren branches and listen to the breeze softly whistling by.
After almost an hour of quiet companionship, Zuala shoots up and gives a delighted laugh.
“I’ve just had an idea!” she declares, and points to the flat, broadness of Yasha’s back. “You should try to fly!” she says. “Can you bring your wings out? Have you ever flown, before?”
Yasha stretches a bit nervously. She scratches the side of her head, and shrugs.
“I…I can make them appear fully,” she responds, “but I’ve never been able to fly. I, uh, I’ve tried, though.”
“Boo,” says Zuala, sticking a tongue out. “You’re sure it doesn’t work? You won’t give it a try?”
Yasha looks down and considers the ground—a very, very, very long ways away. And then she looks up, and sees the excitement in Zuala’s eyes, and the eagerness that burns like a beacon on her face.
Yasha thinks carefully thinks this over. She settles on:
“…okay, okay, okay. I will try.”
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“Right,” says the leader, spreading a map onto the table. He looks up, and gives Beau a solid stare. “Are you sure you can handle this?” he asks. “It’s not going to be an easy mission. And you’ll have your work cut out for you, getting your folks to miss this batch.”
Beau rolls her eyes, and jabs a thumb at her face.
“Who do you think I am?” she demands. “I’ve been workin’ with you for ages, fuck off.”
“Once a rich kid, always a rich kid,” another one of the smugglers sneers. “You ain’t one of us, girl, you’ve gotta remember who you’re talkin’ to.”
Beau glares at him, and looks to—ahem—her usual nightly companion for support.
The elven woman is picking at her nails. She seems distracted, and wholly disinterested.
She never even catches Beau’s expression.
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“I am so sorry,” Zuala says again, hovering around Yasha as she rubs the feeling back into her arms. “I am…oh my gods, I should’ve listened to you when you said you couldn’t do it.”
“That is—ow, that is alright,” Yasha shrugs, and casually digs some gravel out of her skin. “Really, it could have been worse. I could have broken a limb. Or gotten cut.”
“You’re bleeding a little bit, though,” Zuala says, and it is amazing how she looks almost horrified. “Gods, your feathers are all crooked too, is that okay? Are you—do they hurt?”
Yasha shakes out one of her wings. She moves it around a little bit, brings it closer.
“I think it is fine?” She tries to get a good look from her angle. “If I am being truthful, I do not think these are actual wings, they are more cosmetic than any—”
She freezes.
In that second, Zuala had reached out. She had guided her fingers to touch Yasha’s feathers, to help put them back into place. But where her skin had connected, suddenly, inexplicably, something had appeared.
It is like a supernova in the snow. Brilliant crimson mixing with warm orange, humming a faint pink with flecks of shining gold. It is like the sunset had appeared on Yasha’s wing, blooming in the spot where Zuala’s fingers had trailed.
Fingers that now glowed, too, along the lines of Zuala’s own skin.
They sit there for a moment in stunned, shocked silence.
Every word dies on their tongues.
And then slowly, very, very slowly, Zuala lifts her arm. Both their gazes affix to it, don’t look way, and watch as she carefully brings her hand to rest against a swath of vibrant feathers, letting their marks meet for a second time.
Her fingers shake, like she’s afraid the color will vanish.
It doesn’t.
And then, their eyes meet.
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After that, Zuala always calls Yasha her “angel.” Sometimes it’s a joke. Sometimes it’s not. But it’s always, always, every time, with a soft smile and a laugh on the breeze, with a gentle kiss pressed to color in the night. It’s a promise of their future spent together, at each other’s sides, with their souls and their destinies forever intertwined.
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When the very last crate is removed, the elven woman leans out of the storeroom and taps Beau on the shoulder, gives a nod.
“That’s it,” she says, voice trembling with excitement. “We did it. We’ll load them all up, now. You should go back and get some rest. I’ll come find you tomorrow night, and I can bring you your cut.”
And then her thumb strokes a small circle on Beau’s skin. Her fingers dance, tantalizing, down her collar.
“I’ll have the rest of your reward then too,” her voice is practically a honeyed purr. “You’ve earned it, after this.”
Beau’s smile glows with pride.
“Don’t keep me waiting too long,” she smirks.
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In one of their last moments together, Zuala apologizes.
“I’m sorry I never tried to get to know you,” she murmurs. Outside, they can hear the sounds of footsteps, from members of the night’s guard making their rounds. “When we were kids, I mean,” she explains. “I never tried to talk to you. I never tried to get closer. I can’t believe I missed out on so much time I could’ve been by your side.”
Yasha shakes her head, and gently strokes Zuala’s cheek.
“But it’s okay,” she says softly. “It’s okay. You’re here now.”
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When Zuala dies, there is no angel.
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She never comes.
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Not anymore.
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“—dare you?! We are your family! This is the family business! And yet you’re working with—with—with smugglers, who’ve been stealing from the stores for years?!”
Her father slams his fist into the desk, almost splintering the wood under his knuckles.
And Beau can only stand there frozen, stock-still, doing her best to squash the rage in her lungs, the shame burning across her face and the anger pouring from every inch of her body. She is shaking with the effort to not rise up, to scream, to fight and beg—they betrayed me, they betrayed me, they broke the deal and left me to take the blame—after all, what good would that have done? What at all would that have accomplished? There isn’t anything she’s ever been able to change, nothing she could do or say or plead that ever—ever—would have changed her parents’ minds.
“How dare you,” her father hisses. “How dare…get out. Get—get out of my sight.”
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Yasha’s eyes snap open.
The sun pierces her vision, harsh and bright over her burning skin. She can feel an old ache in her arms and legs, heavy with a weight she can hardly remember. There is agony in her bones and a grief in her heart, and her lungs immediately tremble when she remembers why.
Then she realizes that her back is cold. Is lying, flat, against some kind of slab.
She rises and glances all around.
And then she looks up.
There is a statue above her, rising thirty feet into the air, an enormous monument smooth and polished, depicting the massive stone-cut figure of a man, his muscles gleaming in the morning sun and his face, stern and stoic, gazing out into the west.
Yasha looks down.
She is lying on an altar. But there are no offerings, here, only moss and ivy have claimed this stone.
She has absolutely no idea where this is.
She has absolutely no idea how she got here.
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Later, when she is oriented enough to remember a bit more, she drops to her knees and wails a lone cry.
She feels her wings unfurling in the wind. She reaches back, grabs the left one, twists against her neck and her spine and almost wails again at what remains. Nothing but a skeleton of what she once had.
She squints and maybe, just maybe, she can still see the mark. Ghostly and translucent, the memory of what was.
And then, through the tears, she catches a glimpse of her right hand.
The palm is dark. Stained, and black.
The telltale sign of a match unfound.
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When Beau leaves home, she stops covering her mark. Now it is a sharp beacon across her face, a marred and ugly reminder of what she already knows:
That there is nobody who loves her. That there is nobody who cares.
Which is…fine. Really, it is. And honestly, having a mark like this, really is like a badge of honor. It’s almost good in a way, and makes her seem much cooler than those pansies with lips stained red or little splashes of color, traced lovingly across their arms. Nah, Beau is a badass. And her soulmate will be a badass too, especially since Beau is sure that they’ll meet when she decides to throw a punch at her cheek.
And when she moves into the small dormitory at the monastery, and snaps at her fellow initiates and sequesters herself into her bunk…
…well, that’s all part of the plan, too. It’s not like Beau wants to do anything else.
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Somehow, somehow, gods know how, between dreams of thunder and raging storms and brimstone and the tribe’s blood on her hands, Yasha ends up at a carnival, of all places.
She isn’t even sure what a carnival is, until one of the more colorful members explains it.
This conversation takes place after lunch, as the other members get back to rehearsing. This individual isn’t actually one of the performers, so he and Yasha are free to go and climb up onto one of the roofs of their wagons. They sit there in amicable peace, watching the clouds drift by. Her new friend tells her that, one day, when he’s sick of handing out flyers, he’ll convince Gustav to let him throw swords for attention, or something.
Yasha remarks that, yes, in her experience, throwing anything that sharp would do the trick.
He laughs and nudges her gently in the shoulder.
Molly is always so happy, she notices. She wishes that she could smile like that.
“I like you, dear!” His jewelry glitters in the sun. “This is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship!”
And, against all odds, it is.
Over the next few months, Yasha feels her heart start to thaw.
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To be perfectly honest, Beauregard takes to the monk life much better than she’d initially expected. For one thing, it turns out that her mind-numbingly dull library duties are only part of the picture. And being forced to meditate, to be mindful, being subjected to lectures on history and arcana, is only a small price to pay for the other lessons…
Hand-to-hand combat. Training in monk weapons. At the start of their very first session, Beau grabs a staff and knocks Zeenoth out before he can even start his speech on safety. Now that, that is a good day.
But, one morning, a few months into her studies, Beau receives a letter in the mail. In a plain white envelope, sealed with wax. She turns it over, and instantly groans.
It was sent by her parents, which is never a good sign. She rolls her eyes and leans back in her bunk and tears the thing open with the side of her thumb.
She finishes reading it.
She scans through it, again.
And then one last time, just in case.
That very same night, her bag is packed, and she’s gone.
---------------------------------
They meet in the year 835PD, in a sleepy trade stop just off the Amber Road. There is ale to be had and carnivals to be seen, devil-toads to battle, and trials to attend.
And then, there is a world to be seen.
---------------------------------
“You’d think a cart would go faster,” Molly groans, slumping his shoulders over the side of their wagon. “I mean, gods, we’ve been on the road for hours.”
“Actually, it has been thirty-nine minutes.” Caleb doesn’t even look up from his book. “In twenty-one minutes, it will have been an hour.”
Molly has rubbed Beau wrong ever since they’d met, but right now she can’t help but agree him. “Shut up, Caleb,” she says, waving her staff. “Nobody likes a downer.”
“Hey!” says Nott, her shrill voice dulled by booze. She’d been drinking out of the sheer boredom of it all. “Don’t be mean! He’s right, you know.”
Molly raises one hand and repeatedly presses his fingertips to his thumb in the universal gesture of, blah, blah, blah.
Nott briefly weighs the pros and cons of just shooting him right there on the spot. Luckily, though, Jester intervenes, preventing an untimely end to their alliance.
“Hey, hey, let’s talk about some stuff!” she says, the sleeves of her dress flouncing in the breeze. “We’re all such interesting people, I bet we’ve got loads to share!”
“Er…like what?” Fjord calls back. He’s been relegated to the role of wagon-driver, and is currently sitting up front with the reins. He looks just about as comfortable as the horses do, which is to say: not very much.
Jester taps her chin thoughtfully. “Hmm….” she says, deliberating hard. “Hm…oh! Oh, I know! Let’s talk about soulmates.”
She waggles her eyebrows at her new friends.
“Well? What do you say?”
This is followed by an awkward few seconds as their cart continues to roll on. The gravel under the wheels crunch softly, the clouds drift lazily overhead.
And then, very slowly, very nervously, Nott just shakes her head.
“I don’t have one,” she informs them. “I don’t—er…yeah. I don’t.”
This results in another round of stares, and then an explosion, outright incredulity:
“What do you mean, you don’t—”
“Spatz, that cannot be r—”
“Everyone has—”
“Are you sure you’ve checked properly?”
Nott seems affronted by that last one. “Of course I have,” she says testily. “That didn’t change anything, though. Besides,” and here she shrugs, “it’s not like it really matters. I spent my entire life around goblins. I’d rather be matchless than be lumped in with one of them.”
This is followed by a final beat of silence. Their cart bounces against a rock, then continues down the winding road.
Then Jester, bless her, takes action. She throws herself forward and takes Nott into her arms.
“Well, then, don’t worry!” she declares. “You’re with all of us now! And that means we can all be your soulmates.”
“That’s right,” Caleb says immediately. He’s put his tome down, and is looking at her solemnly. “Forget those silly stories about destiny. It is foolish to get caught up in them, anyways.”
Jester releases Nott. She looks around curiously at the rest.
“Well, what about you, then? Got any stories you want to share?”
Most of them miss the way her gaze trails to Fjord. But his back is turned; he’s staring at the road.
Then Molly laughs, and nudges Yasha. “This seems like an excellent chance to change the subject!” He winks at her, and cocks his head to the rest. “What do you say, everyone?” The two of us have got some lovely tales from our days travelling with the carnival.”
“Count me in,” Fjord calls back immediately. “I’d love to know what kind of place raised you two.”
Molly chuckles, and there’s a humor there that only Yasha can recognize.
“Interesting choice of words,” he grins. “Alright, alight, let’s start…oh! How about the time that Gustav decided to pose as a foreign diplomat…”
---------------------------------
That evening, after they’ve arrived in a sleepy little farming village with a barely-passable tavern, and split up into their respective rooms, Beau and Jester find themselves awake in bed. The moon outside their window casts a soft light across the floor, and off in the distance they can hear the murmurs of other patrons moving slowly around the inn.
In the darkness, Beau touches a hand to her cheek. She thinks about the words that Nott had said, and turns to find Jester’s eyes fixed on hers.
They are lavender and glowing, and nearly give Beau a heart attack.
“Sorry, sorry!” Jester whispers frantically, trying and failing to not giggle at her friend’s expense. “I forget how startling that can be.”
“Gods above, Jes,” Beau breathes, “just…just warn me next time, alright? What, uh…what were you lookin’ at, anyways?”
Jester seems slightly embarrassed by this. The corners of her lip do a little wiggle when she’s nervous.
“Just, um…just at your soulmark,” she admits. “That—that is what that is, right? A soulmark?”
Beau gives a very slight nod. “Yeah, uh…yeah. It’s a pretty obvious one, right?”
Jester’s response is a tremble in the night.
“Can I touch it?” she asks.
The words freeze Beau right to her core.
She feels her eyes going wide, her heart skip, she feels like the world is spinning without her and before she can even realize what’s going on, she’s nodded, she’s said yes, her mind’s racing and she can’t stop—
If it were anyone, would I want it to be her?
Jester’s fingers are soft against her skin.
Beau can’t see her own face—though she wouldn’t have been able to, anyways, not in this darkness. She would never know until she saw, but in this moment, she is certain that she definitely should’ve felt something. Anything.
Instead, there is nothing. Just their breathing in the moonlight.
“Ah,” Jester says, pulling her hand back. “I…thanks. I, um, I think?”
Beau shuffles and returns to her back. She stares up at the ceiling, and contemplates.
“We’ve probably already brushed against each other by accident, before. This wouldn’t’ve been the first time we touched.”
Jester nods almost immediately. “I know,” she says, and her sureness startles Beau, until she hears the rest of the phrase:
“Besides, I’m already marked.”
Beau’s head instantly whips back around.
“What?” she whispers urgently. “Wait, what?”
“Yeah,” Jester gives a funny sigh. “It happened a couple days ago, actually, just after we set off to Zadash.”
“W—well…wait, wait, who is it?” Beau demands. “What the—Jester, what happened?”
Jester fidgets slightly in the bed, and look nearly as excited as she should be. Beau just barely has time to wonder if this is a bad sign, before sits up and holds out one of her hands.
It’s hard to make out in the low light, almost impossible with Beau’s human eyes. But now that Jester has pointed it out, she can just catch the edge of a splash of color, shimmering and green-blue, like the calm, quiet sea.
“It’s Fjord,” Jester whispers, tracing her other finger across her palm. “And it was…it was an accident. I took my gloves off because it was hot that day, while we were riding in the cart. And then when we stopped, and I was getting off from the side, I tripped and almost fell out. But Fjord was there, and he grabbed my hand, and caught me just in time. I think I actually almost killed him, right then, since he’s not really that strong, you know?”
Jester’s arms fall flat against the mattress.
“And then he helped me down. And we laughed, and I thanked him, and we didn’t even realize what had happened. But…as the rest of you were making camp, almost a minute later, when I went to put my gloves back on, I saw. Colors where there used to be none.”
She trails off, staring out into the darkness. Beau’s mind is racing. How could she have missed something like this? She must’ve been distracted, at the time. Some best friend she is—
Then her face goes slack, and she realizes.
“Jester, are you and—oh gods, have you two talked about it?”
The tiefling’s hand drops onto the mattress. She lets out a huge sigh, and flops back into her pillow.
“No,” she wails, muffled in the fabric. “No, we haven’t! And I don’t know why! After it happened, we only had a second to discuss it, and so we just decided not to say anything, yet! But…I needed to tell somebody. Which is why I brought up soulmates, earlier. I just…I don’t know what to do, Beau. I’ve…I’ve never been through something like this before…”
Beau feels a head drop into her lap, and suddenly her mind races for a different reason. She can feel the wetness of Jester’s tears, the shaking of her shoulders, the sob in her lungs, and it is much, much more, than she can fix.
“Well…well…” she tries desperately, “I mean, well—hey! Hey, he’s probably just as confused as you are, right?” She gives a halfway encouraging smile. “I mean, this is something that only happens once, right? Maybe he just needs time to think it over. Do you, um…what’s it like, when you’re together? Is it…is it like…fate, or whatever?”
Jester falls still as she considers this. After a few beats of moonlit silence, she sighs and pulls back, and the bed dips a bit.
“I don’t know,” she mumbles, covering her eyes. “I don’t…Beau, I don’t know what fate’s like.”
“Well then, uh…well, just describe how you feel.”
Jester’s fingers droop slightly. Her freckles peek out.
“Well…” she murmurs, “well…it’s…I dunno. I guess…yeah, I guess it’s nice. It’s…it’s really soft, Beau. And he’s always kind to me. And I always want to protect him, and it’s nice when tries to protect me too.”
In spite of everything that Beau’s ever been, even she can crack a smile at that.
“Good,” she nods. “That’s…that sounds amazing, Jes.”
Jester is back to lying on her back. Staring up at the ceiling, Beau seated at her side.
It is warm on this night. Everything is soft.
Beau can feel her stomach churning, even though she isn’t entirely sure why.
“His is also blue,” Jester whispers, after a few seconds of silence. “It’s got some green too, but mostly it’s blue.”
“Whose fault is that, I wonder?” Beau grins. Jester can’t see, but the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “And hey, you know, whatever happens next, for the record, I think it’s pretty cool that you’ve found each other. There’s so many people in the world, Jes, but you know for sure that your match is right there.”
Jester manages a soft giggle at that. She rolls over in the bed, and meets her friend’s eyes.
“Thanks, Beau. That’s really sweet. I appreciate it, you know?”
Beau gives a nod, and feels her mouth harden.
“Of course, Jes,” she says. “Anything for you.”
---------------------------------
At some point, while they’re on the road, as Caleb is trying to force a campfire to life and Nott is scanning the perimeter for danger, as Molly takes to setting up the tents and Jester flounces over to help him, Fjord struggles to unload the cart and frantically waves at Beau for assistance.
“Mind giving me a hand?!” he calls. “If I move, I think all this stuff is gonna fall on me!”
In spite of everything that Beau’s ever said, she doesn’t hesitate for a second to help him out.
“Thanks,” he breathes, relieved at not being crushed. “I can always count on you, eh?”
Beau rolls her eyes. She nudges him in the side.
“Shut up,” she says. “If I want sap, I’ll punch a tree.”
---------------------------------
A few weeks later, farther into their travels, Jester catches Nott kneeling by the river. She is staring intently into the water, studying her expression and holding something small in her hands.
Jester decides that this is a wonderful chance to sneak up on her friend.
She pulls her hood up above her head, hides her face in gleeful shadow and creeps up through the grass. She avoids a smattering of scattered gravel, circles around a dry, fallen leaf, and side-steps some loose twigs. It is only when she is about a foot away, preparing to grab Nott and lift her into the air, does the little goblin suddenly whip around, pupils thin and teeth gnashed, crossbow locked and loaded and tense, screaming at the top of her lungs:
“Hands where I can see—”
They both freeze.
They both go still.
Jester finds herself unable to turn away from what she sees. Nott currently is mask-less; it hangs limp around her neck. Her sharp features are framed with tangled hair, and streaks of wetness trail down from wide eyes.
Her mouth is a messy smear of cherry-red.
It’s lipstick, Jester realizes. Nott was putting on lipstick.
They remain there in silence for much, much too long.
And then, eventually, Nott looks away. She ruefully rubs the makeup off with her sleeve, and refuses to meet Jester, or her reflection.
Her voice is thin. It wavers, and breaks.
“Sometimes our soulmates leave us,” she mutters. “Sometimes no matter how hard you try, what you do just isn’t enough. And sometimes not even the marks stay behind.”
They are quiet for one final beat.
Then Jester stirs. She doesn’t ask for any details. All she does is kneel down and pull Nott in for another hug.
They stay that way, for a little while. The river runs slowly behind them.
And after a while, Jester says:
“Actually, red looks really good on you. It’s really sexy, you know?”
Despite herself, Nott starts to laugh.
---------------------------------
Every night that she is there, Beau volunteers to join Yasha on watch.
They sit there together, in the dark. At first, Beau tries to make small talk about grass. Then, after a brief snatch of quiet, Yasha praises the wonders of her newest discovery: cats. And all of it is a little awkward, a little forced, but to be fair, they haven’t known each other that long. Something like this is to be expected. Really, it probably could have been worse.
For the rest of the watch, they lapse into a tranquil silence.
Though, at some point, the wind whistles through. Beau draws her cloak back around her shoulders.
“Gods, it’s cold ou—”
And then there’s a pressure soft at her side. Through the thick fabric, just a breath away, Yasha has decided to lend her heat to Beau.
Their shoulders are nearly touching. Yasha’s hair tickles Beau’s cheek.
She looks up in surprise, and their eyes meet.
In that second, there is only one question she wants to ask.
But before she can even start to find the courage, Yasha just gives her a little nod. Then she turns away, gazes back at the stars above.
Beau lets the burning need leave her tongue. She goes back to staring at the grass.
Best not to get her hopes up, really. She knows, she’s seen, the black splash on Yasha’s hand, but someone like her is much too good for Beau.
Nah. She’s learned to live with what she has. And right now, this darkness, this quiet moment, is enough.
---------------------------------
Beau only catches Fjord and Jester together once. It’s nothing too big, nothing too noticeable, they’re just quietly talking by the bar. Fjord looks apologetic, one hand rubbing his neck. But he’s wearing a smile, and Jester is too.
And for now, for both of them, it’s a start.
Beau wonders is if it is bad, the way she learns to look away. The way she’s learned to look at someone else.
Is it genuine? Is it just a replacement? Is it only moving on, to another sinking ship?
Has she ever known a different kind?
---------------------------------
They are attacked by ogres and goblins during one of their first nights past Zadash. And as tree branches splinter all around their heads, as eldritch bolts go flying through the air, as fire scorches the rain-slick grass and a massive spectral lollipop whirls through the leaves, there’s a second, when everyone hears a sound, a roaring, awful, primal scream, and everyone—Nein and ogre alike—turn around just in time to see Yasha swinging down her sword, a rage burning behind her eyes, her eyes, hate-filled and inky black, two pools of absolute fury—but then there’s the wings, exploding from her spine, skeletal and decaying, glowing with dark rot, turning the rain that hits them to acid. Both are pure darkness, unsettling and necrotic, but in that very second, Beau can’t help but see that just along the edge of one broken feather is a strange, ghostly shimmer of color: almost like the sunset of years long ago, a fading eulogy to something long past, something beyond reaching and gone from her now.
And then the ogre uproots an oak tree, and this is something to worry about later.
---------------------------------
Weeks later, there is a different sort of eulogy. Held on the night that one of them falls.
They bury him wrapped in a tapestry of silver. They stick a post in the earth above, hope beyond hope that one day, he may rise.
And then they go find someone else. They break into a fortress. They save their friends. And then they are—almost all of them—reunited.
Yasha disappears for a while, after that.
She is sick of losing soulmates.
---------------------------------
The Mighty Nein go back to Zadash with a brand-new friend in tow. He has hair like cotton candy and a breastplate like a beetle. His sleeves are long and silky-smooth, his voice sounds like mist rolling through the forest floor.
His name is Caduceus Clay. He’s got a dark smudge smeared across his elbow.
They spend a few days in the city to recover. Then they load up again, and head east.
---------------------------------
Yasha comes back, eventually. She re-encounters this ragtag bunch once again in a loud dockside bar, buried deep in the city of Nicodranas. Far, far, far away from any of the homes that she’d ever known.
She sees Beau walk in through the doorway first, loud and yelling and grinning wide, instantly challenging everyone to a fight and telling her friends that she’ll buy them drinks with the prize money.
Upon seeing this, a part of Yasha, a very, very, very small part, remembers what it’s like to fall in love with someone’s smile.
---------------------------------
And then she is back, again, with the Nein. They take to sea. They tear through a jungle. They almost destroy an entire island, and then disappear and say they fought a dragon, and then they’re fleeing pirate island and they’re back in the Empire and they’re digging underground and suddenly they’re heroes and then they end a war—
—and somewhere along the way, Fjord stops hiding his hands. Jester stops wearing gloves. Caleb removes the bandages on his arms and one day, one day, on that day in Felderwin, Nott demands to be reunited with her son and turns into a halfling woman with scarlet lips, promises her boy that his father will come home—
—they find her soulmate, they bring him home—
And through that, through all of that, Yasha never once runs away. She never disappears. She remains at their side. She has a lightning, storm-lifted dream, and finds her strength, and decides that this is where she belongs, after all.
Beau notices this, eventually. She can’t help but wonder about the sudden change, and frequently finds her gaze drifting to her friend.
They’ve come a long way, this last year. All of them have. It’s to be expected. Family—real family—will do weird things to your brain.
But Beau still remembers those first, early days, when her advances were quickly pushed aside. She remembers every encounter that she’s had, and remembers acutely that each one had always ended.
Not that she thinks of Yasha that way. Not anymore. Not for a long time. This is something different, something strange, something that Beau often wonders about in the night and hopes and prays and wishes and dreams—
But they’ve been travelling together for so long. They must’ve accidentally brushed against each other a thousand times, a million, by now. Yet the mark across her face is still empty, and she’s seen that Yasha’s palm is still dark.
Some things just aren’t meant to be. There’s a lesson that Beau has learned, again, and again, and again.
---------------------------------
And then, one day, they’re in some kind of dungeon. It’s an old cave system, practically riddled with ancient ruins, and Caleb has a field day running around, identifying everything he can. Caduceus is poking around at some of the flora, some of the long, hanging moss that drips down from old columns and the strange pink lilies that seem to favor the underground. Jester has taken to graffiti-ing pretty much everything with a flat surface, and Nott and Fjord are both busy looking for loot. Unfortunately, they also neglect to check for traps, which means that at some point, just a few hours into this, Fjord just presses his foot into a certain tile, and before any of them can even react, they’ve been dropped into a massive, wide pit, walls dank and covered in moss and the air wet with the smell of mold, and then there’s a sound, a horrible, grinding sound, a shifting of gears and a tremor of stone and then from out behind one of the walls, an enormous, massive, hulking construct bursts through the earth and groans at them, enraged and berserk—
“Fuck!” screams Nott. “Why does this always happen to us?!”
---------------------------------
The battle goes…well, probably just about as well as it could have. They are fighting some sort of clay war golem, an ancient construct that looms fifteen feet into the air, made entirely of hard, baked earth, its eyes cold sockets with tiny points of red light. Most attacks seem to slide off its towering hide, and their weapons cut through clay—but just barely. There isn’t much they can do but pray and hope that they will be able to wear it down. But trapped here, here in this tiny hole, there is barely any room for them to run, to hide or duck away from its huge fists that whoosh through the air like a hammer through dust.
Fjord and Caleb have pressed themselves into a corner, and Nott is desperately squeezed behind some loose rock. Jester holds onto her shield like a lifeline, and Caduceus has completely vanished from sight. It is just Yasha now, and just Beau, the only ones who even have a chance against this monster at such a close range. It is their job, their duty, to distract the golem and keep their friends alive, as the rest wear it down from afar with blasts of magic and holy fire.
And then Beau takes a running leap and launches herself off a stalagmite, flying past Yasha’s shoulder with her staff out, her teeth grit, the blood dripping down her knuckles and the determination burning in her eyes, she rears her shoulders back to attack and doesn’t see the clay fist swinging towards her—
---------------------------------
And then she wakes up.
Her mind is bleary. She’s in pain, every inch of her hurts, agony courses through her veins. But—and this is the important part—she’s alive, she must be alive, death probably wouldn’t hurt this much. And then she is groaning, moaning, moving her arms, trying to sit and open her eyes and—
—through the grime and sweat and dripping blood, there’s a figure kneeling over her. Large, and fuzzy, frantic with concern—is that Caduceus? Did he bring her back?
And then she realizes that she’s being held. That she’s being cradled, gently, desperately, by two arms.
There’s a hand on her face, too. One that, just now, had suddenly stopped glowing.
The warmth of healing magic fades as the spell comes to an end.
Beau groans one last time, rubs her face, opens her mouth to thank—
Yasha’s face swims into view.
The first thing that Beau notices are the tears.
The first thing that she realizes, is that the hand is Yasha’s.
Her eyes go wide, she flinches with surprise, and this is enough to make Yasha recoil, enough to make her pull her arms back and apologize, there’s a flurry of sound and words and movement, and then the rest of her friends are there too, crying and sniffling and shaking with relief.
Fjord comes in closer, starts to say, “Yasha brought you ba—”
And then he stops.
And then they all stop.
In the stunned silence that follows, Beau raises one of her eyebrows. She manages to sit up, still in Yasha’s grasp.
“What is it?” she asks, tilting her head. “Is it something on my face? Well, aside from that usual thing.”
Yasha’s arms feel like a sheet of steel. Beau turns towards her, meets disbelieving eyes—
“Um…Beau?” Jester says, very softly. She’s pulling something out of the haversack, and soon they can see that it is a small compact.
She hands Beau the mirror. The rest wait, and watch.
Beauregard stares at the reflection cupped in her hands. It is a sight that she has seen all her life, but right now, right here, in this second, something’s changed.
Across her face is a simple mark. Where it always used to be.
But now it is a rich and deep, shining blue, interspersed with little stars and wisps of lavender like the echoes of mist.
Her eyes fall to the woman at her side. They reach a face, still frozen in shock. They trail down, and find Yasha’s hand.
Her palm is aglow with turquoise, and light.
---------------------------------
Their ride back to the nearest town is short and silent as a trip to the grave.
Caduceus takes point in the wagon, driving the horses on with Nott’s help. Fjord and Jester are both sitting at the back, “keeping watch” but mostly just trying to keep busy. Caleb’s nose is buried in a book, and he seems like he’s forcing himself to be distracted.
Beau and Yasha have the middle of the cart. Facing one another, but saying nothing.
Yasha’s hand is tucked out of sight. Beau’s face is turned, hiding her cheek.
All of them sway with the wheels of the wagon. The air is sweet and the dusk is soft.
Everything is awkward. Everything is strange. Nobody seems to know what to say.
Eventually, Caduceus breaks the silence. He rumbles:
“Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I am just dying for some food.”
---------------------------------
That evening, as Yasha nurses a mug at the bar and begs any gods listening for answers, she feels a light hand brush against her shoulder. Part of her hopes for the world that it’s Beau’s, part of her dreads the conversation she knows is coming.
But, instead, to her surprise, the face she finds instead is Caleb’s. His brow is creased with hesitation, though still he pulls back and gives her a nod.
“I have something to show you,” he murmurs. “Will you come upstairs with me?”
She considers this for a moment.
She downs the rest of her drink, and follows.
---------------------------------
Caleb guides her to the edge of his bed. He himself is in a wooden chair, face to face with her puzzled eyes. He bites at his lip, as if he is unsure of how to start, but then he takes a deep breath and says:
“You, ah…you know that we all saw what happened, down there, ja? And you know that…now you know that you and Beauregard…are soulmates?”
Yasha doesn’t agree immediately, because part of her still isn’t sure. But she gives him a shrug, and finds her response.
“It…seems like that is the case, yes.”
Caleb accepts this as an answer, and continues. “However…I have noticed,” he says, “and maybe some of the others have too, that, er…that you already have a soulmark. On your wing. So that means, in the past, that you had someone else who you loved.”
Yasha nods. They have been together long enough that she can admit this freely.
“Is it the same kind of love?”
Yasha nods again. Then she adds. “I think so, at least.”
Caleb fidgets with his sleeves.
“Yasha?” he asks. “Yasha…what are you going to do, now?”
Her eyes drop to the ground. She shakes her head.
“I am sorry if that was inappropriate,” he begins—
“It is fine,” she sighs, then glances back up. “I am just not sure what to say. This is…I did not even know this could happen. I almost did not believe it was real, until now.”
Caleb actually cracks a grin at that. It is faint, but unmistakable. Then he leans back, and tugs on his gloves.
“That is…actually, that is why I wanted to speak to you,” he murmurs. “I…Yasha, I wanted to show you something. To let you know that…that no matter how strange and confusing this all seems, that at least you are not alone in this.”
She raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean? How could you…”
She trails off, as she watches the first glove leave Caleb’s hand. Then, slowly, he removes the other.
What Yasha sees, is this:
Caleb’s left palm is a dazzling burst of blue, of gentle greens and a glimmer of gold, of the fading sigh of silver. It is a soulmark. There is no doubt, there.
But on his other hand, on his right palm, there is also another mark—a stain, dark and empty, the telltale sign of a match unfound.
She looks up in shock. She meets his calm eyes.
“This one belongs to a girl I once loved,” he explains, murmuring to the galaxy splashed across his skin. “Her name was Astrid. She meant the world to me.”
Then he raises his right hand, and gives Yasha a faint smile.
“I do not know who owns this one.” He offers his palm to her. “Sometimes, I think I have an idea. But, in the end, I can never be sure.”
Yasha compares the supernova across her own skin, to the darkened void in his.
“When did this happen?” she murmurs.
Caleb shrugs. His eyes are soft.
“Honestly, I have to say I cannot remember. As you might remember, I was not myself, for a while. And when I woke up, this was here.”
Yasha feels the corner of her lip twitch.
“I see,” she murmurs, “that’s…I see.”
Eventually, she gives his hand back. She meets Caleb’s gaze again, and nods.
“Thank you for sharing this with me.”
He picks up the gloves and gazes thoughtfully at his own palm.
“I still haven’t found out why we have these. When I was a boy, it was one of life’s greatest mysteries.”
He examines his right hand in the candlelight.
“Now?” He sighs. “Now, I think…I think that maybe, they are supposed to give you hope. I think they are supposed to show that, in the end, no matter how afraid or different or alone you feel, there is still someone who will be on your side.”
He puts the gloves back on.
“I am not much,” he says simply. “I hope that whoever finds me is not disappointed. I hope whoever they are, they are prepared for the worst.”
Yasha quickly shakes her head. She reaches out and touches his shoulder.
“Do not say that,” she looks him straight in the eye. “Never think of yourself that way.”
Caleb reluctantly nods at that. It’s faint, but unmistakable.
“Go to yours,” he says, instead. “Let her know that she is not alone. I know for a fact that she will not be disappointed.”
Yasha holds his gaze for a while. Then she leans back and nods.
“I will,” she whispers. “But first, promise me, that you will not say those things again.”
He chuckles ruefully. “Yasha, please, it is enough already that I entertain hope—”
He stops when he catches her expression.
“If, by today, I have learned anything,” Yasha murmurs, “it is that we all deserve a second chance.”
There is a moment’s pause. Then:
“…okay,” he agrees. “Ja, okay, maybe so.”
---------------------------------
Yasha brushes the wooden door back. She steps into the room.
Beau is awake. Her eyes are soft in the moonlight.
Not once, not for a second, not for a single shred of time, does Yasha ever compare her to someone else. After everything, after all these months, after every moment they’d spent together and everything they’d come to share, Beauregard has never been any more or less than who she already was, all along.
Yasha sits down on the bed.
They don’t say anything. Not right away.
And then slowly, ever so slowly, without speaking, Beau takes Yasha by the hand. She gently carries her fingers to her face, and lays her palm against her cheek.
Her skin is warm. Her hands are soft.
Their eyes meet, and Beau’s voice is a tremble in the night.
“So…what does this mean, exactly?”
Yasha hums faintly in response. For a moment, she is lost in the curves of Beau’s face.
“I am…I am not sure,” she admits eventually. “And…I think that there are some things we need to talk about. There is a lot that you do not know about me, just as, I think, there are things I do not know about you. But, ah…I hope, if you want…I hope that now, now that we know, we can figure this out together. Whatever it is. Whatever it means. Whatever…whatever you want, if you want it to be.”
The moon shines in through the window by their heads.
Beau runs her thumb across the back of Yasha’s hand.
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Yeah, I…I do. I think that’s everything that I’ve ever wanted.”
Yasha chuckles. She says:
“Me too.”
Beau’s smile grows ever-wider.
“Then hell yeah,” she whispers. “Alright. Together.”
Their marks are touching.
Their souls intertwine in the quiet of night.