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Like the first breath of summer or the smell of spring, it faded with time. Isharnai was not accustomed to the warm glow of friendship and so, when Jester’s warmth began to die, she gripped it tight. That might have been the end of it, were Isharnai not fey. But, of course, she was, and so her love for Jester did not die so much as curdle.
The days after Jester’s visit were haloed in Isharnai’s memory. She turned away each traveller that came to her door because how could she suck the marrow from their misery when she had none herself? A half-elf woman who wanted a child and couldn’t conceive, a human who wanted to live under the sea, a baker who missed his dead wife, they all came to seek her help and she turned them away. She tried to listen to them, but their anguish was bitter. Isharnai craved sweetness.
“You’re turning away a good meal!” Viracheios screamed from her basket.
“Missing the perfect opportunity for delicious trickery!” protested Erythiona from hers.
Isharnai scoffed. She was ravenous, but her coven-sisters were wrong. Her usual fare could no longer sustain her, not when she knew such deliciousness as Jester’s love was out in the world. Her sisters would see. Her new friend would return, and she would feast on love that smelled like fresh-baked cookies and caramel syrup once more.
Until then, she occupied herself. She dug out her best tea set from where it had been stored behind some books and gave it a place of prominence. She organized her hanging cages, finally alphabetizing their contents like she had long contemplated. There were not many flowers in her part of the swamp, but she hung some around her door. Jester would like them, maybe even comment on them, when she returned.
Friends exchanged gifts, Isharnai knew this much, and so she set aside trinkets given to her by the travelers she had turned away. There was an ornate ring the half-elf woman had given her in gratitude when Isharnai referred her to a fertility witch of good repute, even some jewels from the baker when she called a fey spirit to keep him company. She had thought originally of resurrecting the zombie of his wife, but Jester would have thought the spirit was cuter. Jester had good taste in such things, of this Isharnai was sure. These would be good stories to tell Jester over tea when she returned. Her sisters screamed at her from their baskets, but Isharnai collected her gift trinkets and her tea set and waited.
After weeks of no word, Isharnai’s confidence that Jester would return began to fade. She saw no guests, but continued her chores as normal. She summoned fey spirits to haul her firewood or captured some woods-wanderer to do it for her. She fed her sisters their sallow slop and did not even mind when they threw it at her. She journeyed to and from the Feywild to gather her favorite mushrooms, a bright blueberry-blue fungus that matched Jester’s coloration perfectly. A thread of unease tainted it all. She’d had no word from Jester.
Isharnai stirred her cauldron listlessly.
“That girl tricked you. Oooooh, what a thing to do!” Viracheios chortled. Her body was trapped in its basket, her powers restrained, but Isharnai could almost feel the shadow of her sister leaning over her, face twisting in condescension as it had when they were a young coven.
Isharnai flipped closed the lid on the basket and screeched: “Enough from you!”
There was a high pitched giggle from her other side. Greasy hair shifted like a curtain of snakes to reveal her other sister’s face, split with a grin like an overripe tomato.
The hair swayed as Erythiona sang: “No sisters, no—not even friends! That’s how it’ll be until Isharnai ends!”
Isharnai growled. “Quiet!” She flipped the wicker basket closed. A muffled giggle hung in the air.
The blue girl had not laughed like that—no, her laugh had been friendly, loving—the kind of laugh you share with someone when you’re both in on a joke. It had felt exclusive, a bubblegum bubble blown around them in time. Isharnai had been in on the joke, or so she thought. Now she wasn’t so sure.
One day, out of nowhere, she felt a ripple in her wards. The bone-chimes rattled a warning. She opened her door and stalked outside. Something was different, something was changed in her swamp—something sugar-sweet, not swamp-rot sweet.
By the brambles, something was wrong. A box of cupcakes. The bushes rustled again, and though the bog ground bounced back quickly, the imprints of a hasty retreat were still clear in the mud. Someone had delivered them by hand and run. She snatched up the box and brought it inside.
It looked incongruent on her table, a bright white, clean box surrounded by a butchery of messy potions ingredients and tomes magnificent and maleficent in equal measure. She lifted the lid carefully. A perfect set of six Black Moss cupcakes sat nestled within.
Only one person would send her cupcakes. She was giddy with relief. She did a little twirl and swung one of her baskets in a wide arc; she had not been forgotten. Jester remembered her. Jester sent her cupcakes. Jester was still her friend. Sure, she had expected more communication, maybe even a visit, but what did she know of friendship? Was she expected to reciprocate? The thought seized her suddenly and provoked a fit of panic so great that she had to sit down.
She would need to do research. That would help, just as it helped with every strange problem people brought to her and she solved. Jester seemed to find friendship so natural, but Isharnai felt that she was already wrong-footed.
Her bones cracked as she stood. She moved decisively, packing some gold in her basket and casting a disguise. Then, for the first time in many years, she headed to the traveling merchant’s cart. His selection was usually not what she was looking for—in her line of work, there were rarely instruction manuals—but friendship was so common, surely he would have a guide or some helpful text.
“Friendship” was not something easily learned from a single book, the merchant told her, and so each week, she returned to pick up more. She bought every new book that might have some fragment of insight. Perched in her best swampweed-woven chair, she read them cover-to-cover, but she could find no instructions for how to feed a friendship. There was nothing in 13 Creative Projects to do with Corpses nor in Material Plane Substitutions for Fey Flora and Fauna, not even in Baking with Children (a mistaken purchase—she’d assumed children were the main ingredient, not an accomplice in the cooking).
Then, one day, a sending arrived from Jester: “Hey, it's Jester, I sent you some cupcakes. Did you get them? Oh my gosh, they are black moss just like I promised you! Are you thinking about…”
Isharnai panicked. She had not found an appropriate reference tome yet; she did not know what to say.
As the spell slipped from her grasp, she managed: “I did, they were tasty.”
She breathed heavily. She should have said more, encouraged Jester to visit—or perhaps that would have been too presumptuous—should she have complemented her? The spell fizzled in her grasp as she panicked. Too late, too late, she was too late to respond and she still didn’t know what to say. She had to figure out how friendship worked before she attempted additional communication. It was too difficult to figure out what to say without seeing Jester’s face. Faces were maps, faces were keys, yes, she would wait to see Jester’s face again. Jester would come for tea, and Isharnai would make her smile again, and it would show Isharnai the path to friendship.
Time crept, then skittered along. Jester did not visit, did not message, and did not send more gifts. Every morning, Isharnai scried on her, growing more and more agitated.
Jester on a strange volcanic island. That irritating, fly-swat of a fey Artagan.
Jester was with friends. Their smiling faces filled Isharnai with rage. In her anger, she began to take visitors again. A Kamordah man made the trip to her hut, begging for a leg up on a rival. She sucked the marrow from the bones of his love and it was not enough. A bit burnt, a bit wrong, it wasn’t like Jester’s.
Jester in the north, tromping through endless snow. Her eyes watching a purple tiefling full of the love that should have been Isharnai’s.
Isharnai fed but was not satisfied. She was…sad? Misery had sustained her, misery had nourished her, misery had been all she knew for so long. Now, it did not satisfy her. Uncertainty, cracked and bent her equilibrium out of shape, just like the fondant in Baking with Children.
Jester in Nicodranas. A red tiefling and love so strong it radiated from them like a furnace.
She opened her coven-sisters’ baskets and demanded: “Love me.”
“We did,” they laughed, “and now we hate. Love was never, ever your fate.”
She screamed and flipped the baskets shut.
Nothingness.
Jester was gone. Not dead, but beyond her sight. Her enraged screech blackened the sky with birds. They took flight from all around, cawing their alarm and echoing her scream in their cacophony.
Isharnai would have her revenge.
The next years passed in a blur of scrying attempts and visits to the Feywild—some clients accepted, some turned away. She didn’t lose her taste for sweetness, nor for revenge. The flowers pinned on her door rotted and the house descended into disorder once more. The tea set was repurposed for potion brewing. She looked in on Jester sometimes and watched her love for her friends and boyfriend grow. Isharnai was in no rush; it was good to let one’s meal marinate.
Then, one morning she scried on Jester and heard the word wedding.
She’d heard about weddings. The sorry souls that knocked on her door wouldn’t shut up about them. It was always: “My true love is getting married, please Isharnai, stop it” or “My daughter didn’t invite me, can you believe that? Make it go wrong, horribly wrong, so she apologizes” or “That man isn’t good enough for my darling, couldn’t he just fall out of love?”
Oh yes, a wedding was perfect. Isharnai would let Jester grow succulent with love, let her gather her friends and family around her until she was brimming with love and joy. Then, Isharnai would tenderize Jester with fear; she’d make a meal of her memories, love and misery both, because the tastiest morsels had both. Then, when only Isharnai remained, she would take all of Jester’s love for herself. She’d salt it with misery and devour it whole. The meal would last her decades. She’d be full. She’d be powerful. Oh, her sisters wouldn’t laugh then, no, they’d quake in fear like when she had basketed them.
But first, she needed to get close. She needed to learn the ways of weddings so she could choose the perfect moment to strike. With a heaving sigh, she once again filled her basket with gold, cast her disguise, and went to the merchant’s cart. Perhaps he would be more helpful on the subject of weddings than he had been on friendships.
The first book was not helpful. It showed pastries, decoration colors, floral arrangements, all the things involved in a wedding, but nothing about how weddings were conducted.
The second book was all about how a wedding should be performed according to various religious traditions and it practically steamed with divine indignation when she flipped its pages. She held it aloft by a single claw and deposited it in a book holder, flipping each page with a stick while cringing back.
The third book was all about etiquette, and this she threw across the room. It bounced off a cage hanging from the ceiling with a clatter. If she had her way, they would never even get to the dessert course, so what did it matter how a cake cutting was to be conducted?
No, she wanted Jester at peak ripeness, and that would require choosing the correct moment of the ceremony to strike. Isharnai needed more practical experience for that. Better yet, she needed to know how Jester’s wedding would be conducted so she could choose the right moment. She would need to take a role. She would need to become a…wedding planner.
It took three days at the agency for Isharnai to be promoted. She had a talent, it turned out, for driving wedges between people—not big enough to call the wedding off, certainly not—but enough to buy the deluxe package. Left and right, she created their misery and then sold them the solution. Fancier invitations, to console the family and friends that wouldn’t be able to attend. Special place settings for the bride and groom’s families so they felt so very important. More seatings, more food, more alcohol to distract the relatives that hated each other. Bachelor and bachelorette party packages to create tension between the couple, tension that could only be solved by more money. Isharnai became a top seller. She took the clients nobody wanted and helped them plan their expensive weddings full of misery.
Still, Jester and Fjord eluded her. They were a happy couple—demanding at times, and with intimidating friends—but full of love. Isharnai had to resort to stealing their plans from the office desk one night. She combed through it by lamplight, her two sisters peeking behind her from their baskets.
“You must do it at the altar, and don’t you dare even think to falter,” Viracheios whispered.
“Ooooooh, she’s going to taste so sweet! Maybe you’ll even let your sisters have a little treat,” Erythiona cooed.
“No!” Isharnai snapped, latching the baskets. “She’s for me—only for me!”
She copied the schedule and the address of the rival planner, Depherad, into her notes. Her sisters wailed at her, but she ignored them. They had nothing useful to say and their misery had grown flavorless as water. No, she would wait and let her hunger grow.
In a few days, she would have her revenge.
In a few days, she would be loved.