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Jester doesn’t speak Infernal.
At least, not often.
Oh, she whispers it under her breath for fun little jokes every now and then. Sometimes, when she was younger, she would lay on her mother’s bed with her head in her mother’s lap, and she would tell her something that was half Common, half Infernal, all motherly love. And Jester would rattle it back, bending the syllables back and forth in her mouth like another sing-song rhyme that caught her fancy.
She writes in Infernal in her sketchbook too. All those curls and the sharp ends of the characters look nice, especially when she scatters those notes around in her book beside her little drawings. Also, it’s handy to know that most people probably wouldn’t be able to read it without a spell or without being like her. And the Traveler knows what she’s writing, which is the most important thing, so it’s all fine to her.
She doesn’t speak Infernal much now. Barely at all, in fact. Jester doesn’t have a very good reason for that.
It’s not a very pretty language, is it? Maybe that’s her explanation of it. All those clicks and hisses and snarls and twists of the lip. Her mother makes it sound pretty and that’s because she’s the Ruby of the Sea and her mother and of course she makes everything sound pretty and wonderful. Or maybe it’s because she doesn’t have someone to speak Infernal with as often now. She’s been out on the road for a while now, and the Menagerie Coast is long behind her.
Jester’s tail flicks back and forth as she thinks about it, but then, she shrugs and rolls over to go back to sleep. Tomorrow will be another new day in Trostenwald.
The minute Mollymauk Tealeaf said that he told fortunes, Jester was in.
She remembers leaning forward, hands splayed flat against the table, as she gasped, “Oh, oh, I was going to ask if you could read fortunes! Can you do one now?”
She also remembers Molly’s cheeky little grin as he tapped the side of his head and said, “I knew you were going to ask that.”
The memory of it makes her lips twitch up into a small smile, and impulsively, she looks over to Molly and asks, “Hey, Molly, remember when you read my fortune?”
Molly blinks for a bit and ponders on the question for a bit. “In the tavern, right?” he says.
Jester nods vigorously. “Yeah, yeah, that’s the one. I just had a queeeestion,” she says, making the last word dip down and up with her tone. She cocks her head to the side and in a decidedly more sober — and surprising — tone, she asks, “Did you lie?”
Molly sighs and spreads his hands wide. “I’m a performer, Jester,” he says simply.
“Oh, that’s alright,” Jester says. She’s not quite sure if she’s disappointed or relieved, but she presses on. “And you’re a really good one, making the cards go whoooosh like that.” She moves her hands, imitating the same motions that Molly uses to shuffle his cards. “And all the pretty colors and drawings,” she continues on. “I could make you more cards too, but draw pastries on them or maybe the Traveler and then you could tell people about the Traveler when you perform again.”
By this point, Molly’s much more used to Jester’s steady stream of words in their conversations and takes it into stride much better than the others so far. “Would you like me to read your fortune again?” he offers.
“Oh really?” Jester asks. Her hands pause mid-gesture. “You would do that?”
“Of course,” Molly says as he reaches into the pocket of his many-colored coat. He draws out his deck of cards and fans them out with a deft twist of his hand. “What’s a fortune for a friend?”
Oh, Jester smiles broadly at the word. “And we’re good friends, aren’t we, Molly?” she prods.
Molly shuffles the cards and chuckles, “We’ve fought enough monsters and bandits and whatever else, I’d say we’d be good friends.”
Jester starts to dig through her bag, searching for something that’ll be equivalent to the fortune. She remembers paying two copper when she asked him the first time, the fake time. “Here, a pretty ribbon for your horns for a fortune,” she says when she finally settles on something. “Let me tie it on, and we can both match and be super cute.”
Molly bends his head down, and the piercings and beads hanging off his horns tinkle together with the motion. Jester ties the wide satin ribbon into a bow on one of Molly’s horns with ease, and she straightens out the sides so that the bow doesn’t go all wonky and lopsided. The first couple times she put ribbons on her horns, they always went all lopsided, and her mother had to straighten them out. Now, she’s good at it.
Jester fishes in her bag once more and pulls out a small hand mirror. Molly takes it and turns his side this way and that before he looks up at Jester and says, “Absolutely charming. Thank you, Jester.”
“No problem. I’ve got different colors, but pink is nicest,” Jester says. She squints at Molly for a little bit before she muses, “Red would be nice too, I think.”
Yes, she thinks a good red would be nice, maybe a little gold. The thing is, though, that Molly already has enough gold on his horns, and she doesn’t want to distract from that. Deep blue could work, and it could match the inner lining of his coat, or he could wear white to match his blouse. But in the end, Jester decides that Molly could look good in probably any ribbon in any color. He’s just that kind of person.
“Red does bring out my eyes,” Molly laughs. He proffers the cards to Jester and says, “Now then, your fortune. Pull a card, darling.”
Jester looks over at the cards with veritable excitement and runs her fingers over them. Her fingernail catches on the edge of one, and she pulls it out to reveal a golden moon hanging low in a star-splintered sky. “Ooh, this one is pretty,” she hums. “I like the moon in it.”
“The moon, hmm,” Molly murmurs as he considers the card. He taps the large moon and says, “It suits you.” He glances up at Jester, and with a soft hiss and clack of his teeth, he says in Infernal, “Intuition.”
“Intuition?” Jester repeats blankly. The word slips off her lips in Common instead of Infernal.
“Yes,” Molly says. He reveals the pointed tips of his teeth when he repeats in Infernal, “Intuition.” He gestures towards the card with a flick of his hand and continues, “It’s got a couple of other meanings along with that, but it suits you. One of my personal favorite cards to boot.”
“Why do you say it like that?” Jester asks. She rubs the pad of her finger over the golden moon and the edge of the card as she considers the thought of it.
“In Infernal? I don’t know, it felt more right,” Molly tells her. “Intuition works for you. You’re far smarter than you count yourself for, Jester.” He pauses. “You do understand Infernal, yes?”
Jester sighs, and with the last bit of escaping breath, she replies in Infernal, “Yes.”
“Oh, that’s lovely,” Molly says. “The language sounds—”
“Hissy,” Jester finishes. She leans back, away from the card, away from Molly, and her tail lashes a bit to the left.
“Yes, that, but it’s got its own uses and beauty everywhere else too,” Molly says as he tilts his head to regard Jester. His piercings swing from his horns, but the satin of the bow muffles any of the tinkling. At least, on his right horn, it does.
Jester wrinkles her nose a bit and asks, “Don’t you use it to yell at people?”
Molly shrugs. “Well, vicious mockery sounds lovely in the language, wouldn’t you say?” he tries. He absently shuffles the rest of the deck in his hands as he continues, “A good insult and a swear sounds delightful in Infernal along with jokes and other charming lines.”
“Shits,” Jester tries. She tries to wrap her tongue around the once-familiar syllables and lets each sound escape her in a sibilant breath or a quiet click of her tongue against her teeth. “Dick. Piss. Pastries. Paaaaaastries.”
“How’s it feel?”
Jester kinda has to admit that pastries sounds funny in Infernal, especially when you drag out the sounds and stretch out the syllables into one long, whisper-thin hiss. Still, she groans, “Molly, it’s not as funny or good if other people can’t understand me though.”
“But I will. Go right ahead and say jokes and whatever you’d like in the language. I’ll listen,” Molly tells her. He sets the cards down, face side up, and Jester cranes her head to take a look at the card. It looks like the Shadow, and the design seems like it complements the Moon perfectly. Jester looks down at her own card again and traces the detail with her eyes.
“Okaaaaaaay,” Jester says, making the word as long as she can. It doesn’t sound nice enough though, so she looks up at Molly and says softly, “Thanks, Molly. For that and the fortune.”
Molly merely flips the Moon card up with two fingers and watches it land back on the deck before he looks up and says in Infernal, “Always a pleasure, Jester.”
Jester’s skirt is spattered with blood, and oh, she’ll have to wash it out as soon as they arrive back in town or camp for the night. Maybe she’ll be able to scrub it out with some water from her flask, but right now, she has to focus on the battle. She barely manages to leap back to avoid a set of claws from raking her chest open, but she still lets out a startled yelp.
Molly jerks his head over at the sound, and his red eyes open wide. He’s got his scimitars in his hand and another monster in front of him, but he spares enough time to snarl out in Infernal, “May the bowels of your ancestors pour over your head as you die.” The clicks of his tongue and the twist of his syllables sound like pure acid, and the sheer vitriol of them makes the monster in front of Jester quake.
Jester can’t help but laugh at the sound of it though. The spell is simple enough, but Molly’s already used nearly the same insult twice for the same spell. She calls out in Infernal, “Again?”
She darts over to get closer to Molly and stretches her hand out to crash her giant spiritual lollipop down on the monster’s head. She gets a good whack in and cheers as it returns to hover closer to her.
“You say it like I never cast it,” Molly tells her, still in Infernal. His voice is still charged with leftover magic from the spell, and the sound of his voice make the Infernal words curl up like smoke or a small breeze.
Jester widens her stance and stretches her hand out, ready to perform another somatic component of a spell, but she spares enough time to reply, “But twice?”
“Be the chaos you want to see in the world,” Molly winks. He makes a quick tap of his tail against Jester’s before he dives back into combat. His scimitars shine bright despite the dark blood of both his own and his enemies covering the metal, and he moves dart-quick to slice the monster’s throat.
“What are y’all even saying?” Fjord mutters as he ducks out of the way. He slams his falchion right into a monster’s foreleg before he steps over to the side and helps Nott engage another beast.
Jester raises her hand and curls her fingers inward before bringing her entire hand down in a single, vicious motion that launches a spell from her outstretched hand. Let Fjord wonder. She has a funnier idea. A corner of her lips twitch up as she calls out in Infernal, “Hey, hey, Molly, I have an idea, for next time, you know.” Her mouth stretches out the vowels as wide as they can go within the span of the language, and her tail curls up with delight.
“By all means, give me the most ostentatious one you can think of,” Molly says. His Infernal is punctuated with a few soft pants of breath, and he rests for a fraction of a second, hunched over and one hand braced against his knee for support. Jester stops just long enough to check on him, but the blood dripping down his forearms seems to be the usual amount, nothing too dangerous to the point where she has to worry a lot about it.
Mischief sparks alight in Jester’s eyes as she sings out in Infernal, “May the bowels of your ancestors flood with shit and then the rest, you know, doo dah, all that. Maybe add in something about having to eat bad pastries for the rest of your life too because that is a very real and scary thing to do.”
Molly guffaws now, and the sound of his laughter is loud enough to make Beau shout out, “You alright there?”
“I’m good, I’m good,” Molly calls back in Common. He straightens up and hefts his blades again. “Please use that the next time you need to use Hellish Rebuke on someone,” he says in Infernal.
The giant shimmering lollipop hovers by Jester’s head, and she prances forward with her skirt flaring out with the precursors to another spell. “I’ll think of something funnier, ” she promises in Infernal before she lets radiance pour out of her outstretched hands in a flurry of green sparks.
The monsters never see the hamster unicorns coming. They never do.
When Jester raps on the door, there’s no response. There’s barely any light here in the hallway save for a single lantern hanging from a hook at the entryway of the hallway. She can hear the ruckus of the bar below her, but here, it’s quiet. Or at least, as quiet as it’s going to get in a tavern.
She raps again — three short, staccato bursts against the thin door that she knows he can hear — and says, “Hey Molly, I just wanted to check up on you and see if you were doing okay.” She pauses for a while and finally says, “If you don’t want to talk, that’s okay. I can come back later and we can draw hamster unicorns together or eat cupcakes together.”
She waits, but when there’s no response, she gathers her skirts up and turns on her heel to leave. Behind her, the door creaks open, and she glances back to see Molly leaning against the doorframe. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his red eyes seem redder than before. Molly lets out a long and heavy sigh as he runs a hand through his hair. “I genuinely thought I would have more bullshit together by now,” he exhales out.
Jester quickly returns to the door and sways back and forth on the balls of her feet as she says quickly, “We don’t have to talk about it. I know I cast Zone of Truth on you earlier which might have been a shitty thing to do.” She pauses and taps her index finger against her lips. “Actually, it was sort of a shitty thing to do, but I wanted to play truth or dare but without the dare.”
Molly’s other hand taps nervously against his thigh before he pushes himself off the doorframe and returns to his room. He leaves the door open behind him, so Jester follows after him and shuts the door behind her. Molly doesn’t sit down anywhere in the dark room, and as Jester’s eyes adjust, she watches him pace back and forth. His lips are pursed together in the thinnest line Jester’s ever seen them, and suddenly, he says, “I woke up one day. No name, no past, nothing to my name, buried in the ground, dirt in my nose.” His voice grows stronger, and the words slip out faster past his lips as he continues, “But you know what? Some asshole got buried in the ground, and that’s got nothing to do with me. Lucien? Fuck that guy. I’m happy to ditch whatever happened in that bastard’s life.”
Molly’s chest is heaving, and his breath leaves him shorter and shorter with each other. “Hey, hey,” Jester now says. “Listen to me for a little bit.” At the sound of Jester’s voice, he stills. The sound of his breathing fills the space between them, and Molly slowly lifts his hand and presses it against his chest.
Jester folds her hands behind her back and says, “You’re Molly.” She pours as much conviction into her voice as she can. “You’re Molly right here, right now, and I think that’s super super important. Like, you’re Molly.” She rolls his name with an Infernal hiss and click before she continues in Infernal, “As your friend, as someone who cares a whole lot about you, Molly, I want you to be you, to be happy, and you don’t have to be that Lucien dude, okay?” She offers him a wry smile now. “Beau was right. He does sound kinda like a dick. Be you, Molly, be happy.”
Molly stares at her in the shadows, and the limited light from the window is just enough to make his red eyes gleam bright despite the darkness. Jester only waits, and as moments drip by, Molly begins to laugh an empty, hollow kind of laughter. But then, his laughter dies out, and steadily, a slow smile curls the corners of his lips up.
In Infernal, Jester asks him, “What is your name?”
A click of the tongue, eyelids fluttering shut over red eyes, and a flash of teeth later, Jester gets her reply.
“Mollymauk Tealeaf.”
Molly whistles merrily with his hands shoved into the pockets of his multicolored coat as Jester skips along beside him. Fjord and Yasha keep up with them as well. Granted, it’s not hard for them to keep up. One of their steps is about the size of two of Jester’s small steps, but Jester’s in fine spirits as she prances ahead with her larger skips.
Jester sings a few nonsense words along with Molly’s little tune and tilts her head back to take in all the sights. The Pentamarket of Zadash is veritably transformed for the Harvest Close festival, and she loves it. There are large silk banners and streamers hung on lampposts and rooftops and wherever else people could hang them, and they flap gently in the wind. Jester thinks that they almost look like they’re dancing along to her and Molly’s tune and if not that, to the music of the bards and musicians that fill the streets. Her own feet tap in time to the sound of flutes, drums, and ocarinas that others are playing.
She shuts her eyes and inhales the scent of spices and incense washing over the air. It’s not a perfect substitute, but this is what one of the things she misses about Nicodranas. There’s always the smell of spices — cinnamon, cardamon, nutmeg, everything sweet and fragrant and nice — accompanied by the salt tang of the nearby sea. Zadash is nothing like the Menagerie Coast, but this is good enough.
Jester glances back at the others and realizes that she’s far ahead of them now. She dashes back over and almost collides into Fjord, but Yasha reaches out a hand to steady her. “Isn’t this exciting?” she asks with wide eyes. “So many people, so many games, so many pastries on sale!”
“Yeah, this is… Nice,” Yasha murmurs.
“Partying is always good for the soul, I say,” Molly says. He looks perfectly at ease among the festivities, and Jester gets an idea.
She elbows him in the side, and when he looks over at her, she wickedly grins and says in quiet Infernal, “Knock knock.” There aren’t a lot of knock knock jokes to be told in Infernal, and the format doesn’t work quite as well as it does in Common, but Jester makes it work.
Molly raises a brow but humors her by replying, “Who’s there?”
“Cow.”
“Cow who?"
“Cow says moooooooo,” Jester cackles. It’s not a very good knock knock joke. In fact, some could consider the joke to cross the line from mediocre to terrible, but it always makes her laugh.
Molly reaches over to bop her on her head and clicks his tongue before he says, “Try again.”
Fjord only looks at Molly and then to Jester and then back to Molly. “What are you two talking about?” he asks blankly.
Jester links her arm with Fjord’s as she croons, “Do you wanna knoooooow?” She sings out the last word so that it goes up and down in pitch. It’s the same voice that she uses to read Tusk Love out loud to Fjord with, and Fjord grimaces.
“Actually no, nevermind,” he mutters. “Considering what y’all usually talk about and do, not really.”
“He has nooooo idea,” Jester mock-whispers in Infernal to Molly.
Molly winks at Jester and Fjord as he says, “That’s the entertaining part.”
They continue walking down the street, and Fjord decides to play a game that they call “Trebuchet.” Fjord steps up and hefts the sandbag in his hand, and Jester eyes the basket that he’s supposed to get it into. It’s far, but she doesn’t think it would be that bad. It’s far enough to pose a challenge, but it’s not far enough to where it’s impossible to get it in.
Fjord makes it impossible.
Jester starts cackling as she watches Fjord miss and miss and miss, and the third time he misses, he somehow catches a corner of his sandbag against his breastplate. The fabric tears, and sand starts to pour out of the bag. Jester’s laughing so hard that tears are starting to well up in her eyes, and she can hear Molly and Yasha’s laughter too.
“We should pick you up, Fjord,” she manages to get out. “Like that man did with the little child to help with the throwing.” She doesn’t think it’ll help at all, but she thinks it’ll be absolutely hilarious.
Yasha helps her heft up Fjord, but just when he’s ready to throw, both she and Yash accidentally lurch Fjord forward too much. They somehow launch Fjord like a shotput, and he crashes into the ground. Jester laughs again — a deep, hearty thing that bubbles up from her belly — and as she wipes the tears from her eyes, she glances back at Molly and says with a click of her teeth, “Molly, you should try!”
“Really now?” Molly returns in the same Infernal. He saunters over with a careless walk, and the man running the Trebuchet game hands him the sandbag. Molly tosses the sandbag up and down to test the weight, and then, with a heave, he hurls the sandbag through the air. It arcs up and lands perfectly in the basket.
Jester and Yasha cheer, and Fjord flashes Molly a thumbs-up after he gingerly rubs a new bruise on his arm from the fall. Molly winks at them and drawls, “Do I get anything for this?”
“Of course, sir,” the man says. “You win a strawberry!”
Molly takes the strawberry, and when he steps back over to the rest of the group, he drops the strawberry in Jester’s hand. “Your turn, Jester,” he tells her in Infernal. The words only comprise of sibilant hisses and short vowels, so it comes out quiet. Jester’s about to give the strawberry back to Molly, to say that she won’t take his prize, but Molly closes her hand around the berry and winks as he says, “Give it a whirl.”
“I’ll try,” Jester says. She pops the berry in the mouth and goes over to heft the sandbag. It’s heavier than she thought, but she squats down to give herself a little more oomph and momentum. The sandbag goes flying in the air, and Jester squints at the target. She can’t see the sandbag plummeting towards it like it should, and then, she hears Molly’s voice cry out and looks up.
Oh. There’s the sandbag.
It lands squarely on her head, and the impact startles her. It feels so much heavier now that it’s hit her, but then, she realizes that a corner of the bag is now caught on her horns. Yasha’s the first one there by her side, but Molly and Fjord get there almost immediately afterwards. Yasha and Molly carefully work the burlap off her horns, but Jester looks up at Molly with a glint in her eye. “Hey Molly,” she whispers in Infernal. “Knock knock.” She doesn’t even wait for him and says, “Needle.”
“Needle who,” Molly sighs.
Jester cocks her head, making the burlap shift over to the other side of her head, and replies, “Needle little help getting this off me.”
Molly cracks up completely, laughing so hard that Yasha’s left to take the sandbag off her horns. As the weight of the sandbag eases off her head, Jester merely smiles a smug, self-satisfied smile and says in Common, “Now there’s a good knock knock joke.”
Yasha and Fjord exchange confused looks, but Jester and Molly know better.
It’s amazing how they manage to end up in these kinds of situations, but considering the amount of times that they’ve been in life-threatening situations, Molly supposes it makes sense.
It doesn’t meant that he can’t be angry about it.
The monsters are all dead. Their blood is cooling and coagulating in thick puddles by their bodies, but his own blood still slowly trickles out of the lacerations on his own arms, made by his own doing. It’s more than what he would’ve like to have done, but his blood is a worthy price to pay if it means that Jester will live.
He cradles her close, trying to check her pulse, and he whispers in Infernal, “Gods, Jester, stay with us, stay with us.” He looks up and cries out in Common, “Someone, does anyone have a medicine kit, something, anything!”
Beau shoulders her way over and starts rummaging through her pack. “I’m going to try,” she says grimly.
“Godspeed,” Molly murmurs. His tongue slips into Infernal as he quietly asks, “Come on, Jester, come on.”
Beau kneels down by Jester’s side and starts grinding a few herbs in a mortar and pestle. Fjord tears some fabric to make bandages and lays them down by Beau as she works. Molly only clutches Jester’s hand with a white-knuckled grip and watches them work. He doesn’t know how to heal; he only knows how to cut and bleed.
He didn’t know she was hurt. None of them knew she was hurt. Her cloak and her skirts hid most of the bleeding until she lost enough blood for it to soak through the layers, and instead of grimacing with pain, she gritted her teeth and smiled through it all. She even cracked jokes and cast spell after spell after spell. And instead of using a healing spell on herself, she cast it on Beau and Caleb instead, insisting that they needed it far more than herself. Molly wishes that he had been closer to her in the battle to notice rather than fighting back to back with Fjord.
Beau does her work though, and Jester’s eyes flutter. Her hand squeezes his, and after what seems like an eternity, she finally musters up enough energy to sigh out in Infernal, “Hi, Molly.”
“Hey, Jester,” Molly manages to say.
“You look,” Jester stops to cough, and her entire body shakes with the force of it. Beau bends over her to apply more of the makeshift poultice she ground up, and Jester manages to gain enough breath to finish, “Real worried. Smile a bit, Molly. You look better when you smile.”
Her eyes are half-lidded, but her gaze drifts over to Beau. A corner of her lip twitches up, and she says in Common, “Oh, is that Beau?” She tries to pull herself into an upright position, but she grows pale and winces with pain. “Ow, that hurts, shit-balls, that really hurts.” Fjord puts a hand to her back to steady her, and Jester looks around at all of them. “Are they all gone?”
“Yes, Jester, they’re dead,” Molly answers, now in Common.
“We did good?” She asks. Her voice sounds so small and weak now. It’s a shell of what it normally is: bright and exuberant.
“Yes, you did,” Beau tells her.
Jester flashes them a brief grin and says, “Great.” Then, she passes out.
Beau and Caleb move her to a bedroll and watch over her status while the rest of them set up a makeshift camp. Molly can’t help but drift over every now and then to check on Jester. When she finally wakes up for good, she muzzily rubs some magic into her skin and tries to cast Cure Wounds on herself. There’s not much strength to it, but some of her graver wounds reknit themselves together.
Molly watches her thank Beau and stop by to chat with almost every person in camp. Yasha is next, and Jester pokes her on the cheek and whispers something that makes Yasha chuckle. Molly smiles at that. Jester’s been good to Yasha, and above all else, Molly’s glad to see Yasha happy. He still doesn’t know everything about her, and neither does she, but after traveling together and going through what they have, Molly’s proud to call her a close friend.
Jester moves onto Fjord who ruffles her hair and then to Nott who crushes her into a hug as hard as she can without tearing open Jester’s wounds again. Caleb gives her a wan smile, and Molly sees Jester offer up her hand for a pinky swear. Beau gets a hug and a pat on the back, and then Jester comes to Molly.
“Jester,” Molly says in lieu of a greeting.
“Molly,” Jester begins, but Molly holds up a hand to cut her off.
He tiredly says, “I know I’m just a carnival man that regularly cuts himself open on the regular, but do me a favor, will you?”
“What is it?”
Molly looks at Jester straight in the eye, and in Infernal, he says, “Don’t hide.”
“What?” Jester repeats again, still in Common.
Molly keeps his eyes on Jester as he continues, “Don’t hide it when you’re hurt. Hell, not when you’re sad or when you’re angry. Don’t cover that shit up. Let one of us know.” He tries to keep his voice even, but his tail lashes from side to side. It feels like some great, grand irony that he, the liar, the performer, the circus carny out of all of them, is the one preaching about this, but Jester almost died out there. They're both excellent liars, possibly the best liars in the entire group save for Fjord perhaps, but this is less of an issue with the truth. Molly could care less about the truth. Truth is vicious, sharp, cruel-edged. This was a matter of life hanging in the balance when it didn't need to be. He won’t admit it right now, but he was worried for her. He’s not a healer; she is.
“Oh whaaaat,” Jester groans. “I was fine, I was doing great! You saw that big flash spell. I made it look pink and everything too.” She taps her chest and says, “And I’m here now too. All’s well that ends well, and everything turned out great.”
“You know what I mean, Jester Lavorre,” Molly says, flat and blank and as direct as he can make it. The already short, sharp sounds of the language sound even sharper with the tone, and some of the words that he chooses to use make it sound curt and direct.
Jester sobers at the sound of it, and she twiddles her fingers with the fabric of her skirts. She looks down at her shoes as she lets out a quiet sigh. Then, she looks up and offers Molly a small, lopsided smile. “I do,” she replies in Infernal. Another moment passes and she finally says, “I’ll try.”
“Good,” Molly now says, as warmly as he can make it. Infernal is not necessarily the kindest of languages, but the language is flexible and bends with the right hiss or twist of tongue. He shoves his hands in his pockets and leans forward to lightly tap his horns against Jester’s own, and he murmurs, “Stay safe, alright?”
“You too, Molly.”
"Where's Molly?" Jester asks. She looks around, waiting for him to pop out. Maybe with a scimitar in his hand, a clever card between two nimble fingers, maybe another laugh or a wry smile.
The new person — Caduceus, his name was — cocks his head to the side and asks, "Who?"
Jester ignores it in favor of turning to Beau now and she asks again, "Where's Molly?" Her voice is more insistent now, and there's a quiet pulse of dread deep in the bottom of her heart. "Is he waiting upstairs?" Her voice wavers on the last word.
Beau looks down at her feet, and shadow crosses over her face in a way that makes the dread clamber up Jester's heart to the base of her throat, cold-fingered and terrible. "He didn't make it," Beau says ever so quietly.
"To..." Jester begins. Oh, the dread, the dread. She forces herself to continue. “This dungeon? Because he’s waiting upstairs?” she asks.
“He didn’t survive the trip,” Beau says. Her voice is still quiet but grim, and she doesn’t raise her head to meet Jester’s gaze.
Jester’s lips quiver, her tongue struggling to form words, and by now, the dread has her in its terrible claws. She can barely hear Beau say, “I’m really sorry.” Her mind races, trying to piece together the few things she managed to hear when she was trapped. The clangs, the shouts, a familiar voice that she didn’t know she would never hear again.
“Is that when we heard you guys?” she asks. Beau lifts her head up slowly, and her eyes are round and wide with a growing look of horror.
“The caravan,” Fjord supplies.
Jester takes a step forward and says, “We were in the caravan.” She turns on her heel, looking towards Caleb, towards Nott, towards anyone else who might have answers. “We heard you guys fighting.”
“You were in there?” Nott asks. Alarm makes the edge of her voice rattle. Her hand stretches out, reaching out for Jester, but Jester’s already turned back to Beau.
“We heard people shouting,” Jester says, voice shaking and quivering at every single syllable and edge. “I heard you call for Molly.”
“Yeah,” Nott whispers, voice cut sliver-thin.
Jester clutches her hands together and knots her fingers into a fist, white-knuckled and tight. It’s a poor facsimile of a prayer, but she knows that no amount of praying would bring someone back from the dead. At least, not now. Not like this. Not when this much time has passed between Molly’s death and where she stands now.
“Not like this,” Jester mouths out in Infernal. Barely a sound slips past her lips, but the syllables and the sibilant hiss still feel like they are knife-sharp. Sharp like the blades he used to carry.
The others say words, words that slip past her in a torrent, and she watches as all of them crumble together. Caleb leans forward, Beau and Fjord angle their bodies towards her, and Nott reaches out for Jester’s hand. Caduceus bends his head down, eyes fluttering shut, despite not knowing anything about this.
“Where did you leave him?” Jester finally says when there’s a wide-enough lull in the conversation.
Beau shuts her eyes tightly as she says, “We can take you there.”
Jester has to let the words sink into her ears for one moment longer before she nods once and says, “Okay.”
Nott squeezes her hand twice, and Jester lifts up her head now, eyes bright and blazing.
Later, much, much later, Jester watches the sun shines down on the Glory Run Road. All she can think about in the carriage is that somewhere on the side of this road, Molly is lying underneath the earth. Beau and Nott keep checking out of the window for the right place. Jester scans the horizon as well. The other night, Beau told her that the place was marked with two mounds.
When they arrive, Caleb and Nott ask Miss Ophelia to stop the cart for a few moments, and soon, the carriages roll to a slow stop. The horses nicker and swing their heads a little bit at the sudden stop, but they settle down eventually. Jester swings herself out and kicks up a little bit of dust from the road with her heels as she walks forward. Her gaze is resolutely forward, and her hands curl into fists against the fabric of her skirt.
There’s a single wooden cross embedded in the earth, and Jester’s voice catches in her throat. Molly’s coat is hanging from the cross, still there despite the weather and other travelers and bandits on the road, still there.
Beau reaches out to hold Jester’s hand, and Jester lets her lead her over to the cross. They stand there in front of it, and Jester still grapples with the thought of Molly being dead. The man was so vibrant and full of life, full enough to the point where he once rose from the dead again.
She hangs her head, searching for the right words to say to Molly, but she doesn’t know if she can muster the right ones up. So instead, she looks up at Beau and admits, “I’ve never actually been to a grave before.”
“Right,” Beau says softly. “That makes sense.”
Jester presses her lips together in a thin line and gets down on her knees. She folds her hands together in her lap and as she continues to gaze at Molly’s multicolored coat, she murmurs, “I think he’s still here with us.”
Her throat feels raw with too much grief, but she thinks of something that she could tell Molly right here, right now. Infernal is not a gentle language, but with a hiss and click of her teeth, she says in the softest, gentlest Infernal she can muster up, “Thank you, Molly.”
Jester doesn't speak much Infernal anymore.
Oh, she still uses it to write some notes down if she wants to be the only one to read it, but other than that, she finds that she doesn't have as much reason to speak it. Hellish Rebuke doesn't need words; a scream will suffice just the same. No one is there to listen and laugh at her jokes in Infernal anyways. Even if Caleb decides to cast a spell to let him comprehend the language, there are some nuances to the language that don't quite slip through.
But no matter. She carries on, as the rest of the Mighty Nein all do. They carry on, and the hiss of Infernal lays dormant and quiet at the base of her throat, just like it had been before.