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“Here.”
The single word from Yasha is accompanied by a small book being shoved roughly into Beauregard’s hands, so without warning that she nearly drops it. It doesn’t take long for her to recognize the thing in her hands as the bound pages she’s seen Yasha pull out numerous times on their travels, sometimes to jot notes down into but more often to press and store flowers from various lands they travel to.
“What’s this?” Beau asks, despite knowing (more or less) what it is, because ‘what’ isn’t really the question she’s asking. More, ‘what am I supposed to do with it’, or ‘what did you give it to me for’, unspoken in her gaze.
“Just open it,” Yasha prompts.
Beau hesitates despite the directly given permission because this is Yasha’s journal. Journals are private things - Beau knows that intimately. She would hate for anyone to get their hands on her own, even Yasha.
Opening to the first pages, Beau isn’t surprised to see a flower pressed between the pages. What does surprise her is what Yasha’s written onto the pages on either side of it. There are lines of what reads like poetry, flowing and lyrical, accompanied by a few notes about where the flower was taken from, and finally notes about Beau. What she did there, or what she wore, or something she said.
The pages that follow are the same - flowers and notes and lines of prose, all directly relating to where they were, and all directly relating to Beauregard. But not just her - her through Yasha’s eyes, dating much farther back than their trip to Kamorda where Yasha claims she fell in love with Beau. In fact, the dates go back weeks, months before that point.
Weeks and months during which Yasha was watching Beau. Wees and months during which Yasha was falling for her, slowly and steadily, all preserved in pages and flowers.
“I took one from every place we were where you did something that made me like you - love you - even more,” Yasha says, filling the silence that falls between them as Beau turns page after page, reading the words and trying to process the weight of them. “And wrote about it, so I wouldn’t forget… and so I could show you later. In case you ever doubted that I mean it.”
Beau smiles at that, a slight upturn at the corners of her lips that’s barely noticeable.
“I’ve never doubted you before, Yasha,” Beau says. “I’m not about to start now.”
She’s still looking through the pages, fighting the urge to promptly ignore the woman in front of her to read every single word on the pages in her hands. Instead, she forces herself to shut the book for the time being and look back up, eyes locking with Yasha’s.
“Thank you.”
Yasha smiles back. “You’re welcome. You can keep it when you’re done reading it, if you wanted to. I filled that one so I’ve started a new one. Just don’t lose it, alright?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Beau promises. It’s an easy promise to make. She’s been in possession of the small notebook for no more than a handful of minutes and it’s already the most important thing she owns.
Not that she’s surprised to realize that, since it’s from the most important person she has the honor of knowing.