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The little group of weirdos or as they were now known, The Mighty Nein, were an odd bunch. And Molly would still stand by his assessment of them needing a good time. Beau was a certified asshole to a degree that was almost impressive, Nott was almost as Skittish as she was in love with the contents of that flask she carried with her and Caleb was a bundle of issues so big it could probably have filled up its own caravan and some.
Fjord seemed to be mostly well put together, but he had a feeling there was something going on under the surface with that one. And Jester was just pure unfiltered sugary chaos on a level that Molly found greatly endearing.
“Psst, Molly, Molly!”
Speaking of Jester. He looked up from the Tarot cards he’d been absently shuffling as he felt something poke against his cheek. Locking eyes with Jester, who was on her hands and knees looking intently at him, the paint brush poised to poke him again.
“Yes dear?” He tilted his head slightly grinning at the blue tiefling, who grinned right back.
“Keeping watch is boring.” The girl said, scanning the area around the cart where they were camped. “There’s like, nothing to do but watch, and watching is fun when you’re actually watching something, but this is just watching nothing and it’s boring.”
As she spoke she flopped down beside him. Leaning against the log where he had been sitting, her head lolled back as she finished her tangent with a sigh.
Molly laughed, absentmindedly spreading a few of the cards out on the ground in front of him. Jester’s impatience for some of the basic facts of life on the road was oddly endearing.
“When did you learn that you could read people's fortunes?” Jester asks, her attention caught away from complaining as soon as something more interesting was introduced.
“Well, I didn’t really learn per say, it was more the side effects of a strange series of coincidences and an interesting run in with a woman who may or may not have been a witch, it was her who gave me the cards you see.”
He picked up one of the cards, flipping it over to reveal an intricate design of the moon cycle, surrounding the silhouette of a figure standing in starlight. The Moon, how fitting.
As much as he knew that his card readings were at least 80 percent bullshit, there were always moments where the cards he pulled seemed to be almost uncannily suited to the situation.
Of course in actuality there had been no witch, he’d bought the set of blank cards himself one day in town. However the idea had been inspired by his growing interest in the Moonweaver and her domain. The moon card had been the first that he had created for that very reason.
“Ooh, really? That's so cool.” Jester seemed none the wiser of the little falsehoods in his story, entirely enraptured by the whole concept they way she had been when they had first met.
“She’s really pretty, oh! I bet the other cards are really cool too, can I see them? Please?”
Grinning Molly slid the moon card back in to the deck and tucked it away into the pocket inside his coat.
“Unfortunately I can’t reveal the secrets of the cards dear Jester, otherwise they may not work anymore.”
“Aww, you’re no fun.” Jester sighed, although she still had a faint grin on her face as she slid dramatically down until she was laying on the ground, her head against the log they had been leaning against.
For a few moments the camp was silent bar the sounds of the muffled sleeping sounds of the other members of the Nein sprawled across the ground.
Fjord and Beau were stretched out on either sides of the fire, the latter sprawled out across her bed roll with one hand still attached to her staff.
Nott and Caleb were curled up underneath the edge of the cart, squished up together in a way that had probably come from long periods of sleeping together in poor conditions on the road.
His mind jumped unwilling back to the Circus, of colder winter nights all bundled up in one tent sprawled over one another to keep warm. Or sometimes on less cold nights, him and Yasha curled up together in the tent they shared.
There was an odd squeezing sensation in his chest as he thought about them, Gustav and Bo, and the others, even Yasha, who he knew would reappear sooner or later.
Before he could start thinking too much about the implications of these feelings his trail of thought was cut of by Jester.
“Have you ever noticed that there’s more stars In the sky when you’re not in a city?” She waved a hand up at the sky as if to emphasize her point.
“I used to look out at the stars from my bedroom window all the time back in Nicodranis, but they’re so much more beautiful out here.”
He had to admit Jester had a point, he hadn’t been in many cities in his, admittedly rather short life time, but he had heard that the best places to see the stars were where other lights were dimmest.
“When I was little and I couldn’t sleep momma and I used to try and find shapes in the stars.”
Jester pointed up at the sky, at a seemingly random spot in the sky.
“That one looks like a hamster eating a giant lollipop, see?”
She must have noticed his confusion because she grabbed his hand, using it to guide his eyeline.
“Up there, see, those big ones are the nose, and the two little dots above it are the eyes.”
Now that she had pointed it out, he could see it.
Inspired he began to scan the sky.
“Yeah, he’s adorable. And look, that one looks like a tiger.”
He shifted there hands over towards it, hearing Jester gasp.
“Oh oh I see it, and look, those stars just next to it look like a giant cupcake! Maybe he’s hunting treats.”
Molly laughs. “Sweet tooth star tiger.” he glances around the sky for another creature. “and his friend the prancing show pony.”
“Ooh yes, you are very good at this game Molly.”
“Well of course I am, I’m good at many things, miss Jester.”
At some point during their stargazing Molly had ended up laying beside the smaller tiefling, who was now pointing up at the sky and listing off every strange little creature she saw.
His mind jumped unbidden to a memory of him and Yasha a few weeks after they had picked her up. the two of them had been sprawled out on the grass, Molly using her stomach as a head rest as he rambled on about some head butting he’d done with Orna earlier that day, the sounds of Gustav and Bo clearing up the last of there things before the moved out to the next town in the background. The clouds had been thickening overhead for the last few days. And Yasha had said that there was a storm coming. how she always knew that he would never quite understand. But she was always right, and he remembered knowing that it probably meant she would be leaving soon. However in that moment she had been absentmindedly twisting his hair into little braids, and thinking about her departure had seemed entirely foolish.
He wished she was with them now, the others were fine but it wasn’t the same. And also he really wanted to talk to her about Alfield, about the light on his swords and the instinctual feeling that whatever new magic he now possessed was supposed to be there that made his skin crawl.
“Hey look, that one kinda looks like a circus tent.” Jester nudged him with her elbow, pointing up at one of the larger star shapes in the sky.
“Isn’t that funny?”
Molly shook his head, trying to shake out yet another train of thoughts that he didn’t want to focus on and looked back at Jester who seemed to be watching him intently.
Jester was right, the constellation did look like a giant star covered circus tent.
And the squeezing sensation was back again, oh joy.
Molly sat up grabbing up one of his blades and absentmindedly began to rub it with a cloth from his coat pocket, wiping off some of the grime he knew wasn’t there.
He didn’t realise that he hadn’t actually replied to Jester’s pointing out of the constellation, or the fact that the blue tiefling was now looking up at him from the floor with a curious look on her face.
He did however notice when he felt something lean against his shoulder.
“You know, this whole travelling thing is totally crazy, and making a bunch of new friends is amazing!”
He glanced over at her, but she wasn’t looking at him, she was staring into the slowly dying flames of the campfire.
“And it’s maybe kind of silly because I’ve seen the most incredible things and I always wanted to go outside and see the world, and now I’m actually doing it but..”
She sighed. “Well I only ever really new Nicodranis and the Chateau, and I sometimes I kinda miss when it was just me and Momma and the Traveler you know?”
Molly ran the cloth down the blade of his scimitar, considering the girl's words. He did know, he realised. In fact he understood where she was coming from far more than he wanted to admit in the moment, even to himself.
He was also pretty sure that Jester had no idea about that fact, which made the situation almost funny. However instead of laughing he found himself unconsciously leaned into the other tiefling, the side of his head leaning against the top of hers.
Jester didn’t look at him, however he saw the corner of her mouth twitch up into a slight smile and felt her tail curl around behind him.
“If the lollipop hamster, the treat hunting tiger and The prancing pony were in a circus, what do you think they would do?” Jester asked, diverting the subject back to their previous start conversation.
“Maybe the hamster would ride the pony while balancing his lollipop on his nose, and the tiger would be trying to steal it off him?”
“When you say giant Lollipop… how big are we talking?”
Jester held out her hands, almost to their full length. “Like, the size of my spiritual one, also bright pink, and covered in ribbons.”
The rest of the watch was spent discussing fanciful animals, giant sweets and made up circus performances, and the occasional real one as Molly cut in with stories of his own, both of acts he’d been playing around with, and ones that some of the others used to do. Eventually The two woke up Beau and Fjord for the next watch, who were very confused about why the two tieflings were giggling about Hamsters and ‘giant lollipops.’
And somehow, without it ever actually coming up in conversation the two tieflings found themselves sprawled out back by the log, Jester using Molly as a pillow and babbling on about constellations and the Traveler before slowly drifting off to sleep.
Perhaps this wasn’t exactly the Circus, Molly thought as he drifted off to sleep, but perhaps it could be in time.
And he found he was kind of looking forward to that.