Yenna

A Fire

He yanks the puppet from the fire first, before it starts to really smoke and choke them both. Yenna has her arms tight across her chest and knees raised, looking she expects to be hit but with her expression determinedly unrepentant, which would maybe be an improvement on trembling terror if it wasn't for the whole context.

"Right," he says slowly. "I suppose I'm meant to ask you why you did that." Yenna continues to just glare at him. "Yenna, you can't burn things because you're mad," he says.

"You said you wanted-" she starts and ugh kids.

"This isn't how you play, Yenna. Nobody burns babies."

"Do in the winter," she retorts. "When the ground's hard. What - what would you know."

"Well, it's not winter."

"Well, you won't let me leave so I can't dig a hole."

Why is he arguing about the best way to dispose of dead baby effigies? How did this happen? "You don't need to do anything. I told you, the puppet's lack of a tiny cloth dick is fine for puppets. It would, in actual fact, be horrendously creepy if one was sewn on. Now, can we play the game properly, in a way where we don't immediately decide the baby is dead."

"So how long do I have to wait first?"

"You're doing this on purpose."

Yenna rolls her eyes, and Jaskier feels somewhat like she's called his bluff because yes, Yenna, apparently he doesn't know what to do if she's deliberately winding him up about insisting any imaginary adventures with a toy involve death and burial. Why would he! Is this something parents normally have to deal with? He was not this morbid as a child. He hopes his own parents know how lucky they apparently were.

He sighs and sits down next to her. He holds up the puppet. "Look. A nice, friendly, healthy -"

"Is not," Yenna says.

"Okay," he tries. "Why not?" He wiggles it. "Why, they've even got such a healthy glow to them."

"Fever."

"Maybe it could not be fever."

"If I have the baby then it's fever," Yenna declares.

"Well, right now I have the baby and I say it's not fever."

"Fine, it's yours."

"Lovely, happy, healthy Dacy," Jaskier says. He bobs the toy up and down. "Would you like to hold perfectly fine and happy Dacy now?"

Yenna's arms remain crossed and behind her legs. "I can't."

"Sure you can." He balances it on her raised knees.

Yenna says, "This is dumb," and shifts so it topples headfirst to the floor.

He picks it up again. "You shouldn't be mean to Dacy," he tells her. She turns to stare at the fire and keeps scowling. "I'm sure you can be nice," Jaskier tries. No response.

It's not that Jaskier doesn't know that sometimes the best way to get someone to talk is to be quiet and let the silence stretch. It's just that Jaskier is always the someone. "So, how about your real siblings? I was an only child myself, which was just dreadfully boring. How many do you have?"

"Four."

"You must miss them a lot," he says.

"Yes," Yenna mumbles.

"So... which ones were older and which ones were younger?"

"I'm the oldest."

He was kind of fishing for names or really any sort of traits but there is no statement so vague that Jaskier can't keep a conversation going. "Aw, so you're the big sister."

"Yes," she mumbles.

Oh, nice show Yenna, but Jaskier is experienced with people who don't even reliably give you a whole word as a response. "Who w- who is your favorite one?"

"Eike," she says.

When she doesn't elaborate, he asks, "And what do you like best about them?"

"Eike tries to get out of doing chores the most," Yenna says, which is not something Jaskier ever thought endeared you to siblings, but what would he know? "And never to go anywhere else, he's just lazy. So he'll stay with me because I'll say I don't know where he is when our father asks."

Jaskier idly bobs Dacy up and down. "Okay," he says, "so what if Dacy is like Eike was when he was little?" Instead of a corpse. Jaskier really wants to move away from cloth puppets being baby corpses. "Was he a little layabout even as a baby or did he have to grow into it?"

"You don't know anything," Yenna says to the fire, and her voice is starting to quaver. Of course! What won't she cry over!

"I don't," he agrees quickly, then tries, "That's one of things I like about traveling, you know, I can meet all sorts of people who do know things and listen to them."

"I don't want to have to tell you things to make you stop I just want you to stop!"

Alright, he...he may be out of his depth here. She'd said to stop so he tries, very valiantly, to do that, only then she starts to actually cry and - "I'm sorry. I - really, I didn't mean to upset you."

She sniffles and rubs at her face. "You don't know anything," she says again. "I'm c- it's bad luck. Me. Touching them or s-seeing them."

"You know that's not, it isn't catching -"

"I know!" she hisses at him, like she's only angrier he pointed it out. "How could I not know, I was born like this!"

After a moment, he tries to continue, "So..." and then trails off again. I'm sorry does not seem like it'll be well received.

Yenna buries her face in her knees. Muffled to the point she's barely audible, she says, "If one got real sick and had to be out of the house so nobody else got sick. Then I got them. I didn't take care of them or anything. I just. Waited."

That's...something, and likely to only get worse if he asks for more details. "Well, you'll have some of your own one day, though," Jaskier suggests.

"Won't."

"Oh, I'm sure there's someone who'll -"

"I'll drink stuff to kill it like my mother does," Yenna says into her knees. "Why should there be anybody more like me? I shouldn't have been born either."

"Did your mother say that to you?" he asks, horrified.

"She's a good liar," Yenna says, and she sounds almost proud of this awful woman.

For once, Jaskier really finds himself without any words. "Well," he says at last, "how about some breakfast. We'll need full bellies for all the walking we need to do." Though he's really starting to wonder why she's in such a hurry to get back.