For several weeks now Yasha had been fielding one rambling, cut-off Sending after another from Jester. That in and of itself wasn't so unusual except that lately all of the messages were part of one very concerted effort on Jester's part to get her to come out to Nicodranas for a visit.

-- totally come! Beau's going to be there too, and it's been forever since all of us got to hang out and oh my gosh there's --

Yasha nodded along with the magical projection of Jester's voice in her ear as she prepared the tea for the day, her face scrunched up into a long-suffering expression that was faltering by the second. Very few things, if any at all, could withstand the cheerful persistence of one excitable little blue tiefling, and Yasha was certainly not one of those few hypothetical things.

-- you on a tour of the city, and all the good pastry shops, 'cause I send you lots but you know it's really not the --

"Jester, Jester, okay," she finally blurted out. "I will go, all right? Just... give me a few days to make the arrangements." It was fine when all she had to do was provide a glowering, intimidating presence at the Portalocity office while Beau did the talking, but if she had to do the talking herself, too? Yeah, it was going to take a little more time.

The message she got in response was a very long one, because as it turned out a single drawn-out breathless squeal only counted against 1 word of the spell's 25-word limit, but at least it had Yasha almost smiling as she finished all her preparations and opened the shop for the day.

[OOC: Jester's Sending spell shenanigans are the cutest. Anyway, shop and post are open, even if I did only remember to do this right before I ship her off for some canon...]

Yasha had done her best to shake off as much of the oddly sweet and fluffy snow at the doorway when she arrived this morning, but there was just no getting around the fact that some of it was going to get stuck (more or less literally) in her hair.

She kept absently picking bits of it out of her hair and nibbling on it as she did her rounds tending to all the plants (yes, it was probably kind of gross, no, she absolutely did not care), making a mental note that the next time Jester sent one of her rambling and inevitably cut off magical messages, she was going to ask Jester's opinion of marshmallows, because they seemed exactly like a Jester thing. Oblivious of the possibility that someday Jester, after they knew each other better, might compare both her and Beau to marshmallows because they were "warm and gooey on the inside." To which Yasha might argue that she'd been left over the fire too long.

Other than the unexpected snack, it looked like it was going to be an absolutely normal day of work. Yup. Not noteworthy at all.

[OOC: Like I could pass up a reference to one of my favorite conversations when marshmallows were on the advent menu today. Open and all that!]

Yasha had gone on one of her walkabouts again, which only by complete and total coincidence happened to have lasted about as long as Steph's spur of the moment musical road trip, and gotten back just in time for the eggnog the other day -- which she wasn't complaining about, for the record. She'd spent a lot of time in the bathroom with a mug that day.

Today, so far, the plants hovering about overhead seemed fairly innocuous. So far. But if anyone showed up and the mistletoe tried to make her do anything, there might be some rage happening.

[OOC: Open, usual SP disclaimer applies.]

Yasha was splitting her time today between reading (she still had so much to catch up on) and trying her hand at jack o'lantern carving, wondering if Caduceus would have Opinions on this whole Halloween thing.

From the look of it the reading was going much better than the carving was, if only because the small safety knife that came with the pumpkin carving kit was tiny and dull -- and to be totally honest, looked ridiculous in her very large hands -- and the process of using it left her visibly frustrated. Not to would-like-to-rage levels, luckily, but unmistakably frustrated.

Maybe she could use her sword to do it? Sure, it was six feet long and very heavy, but she'd used it to give Caleb a very good shave once with no injuries to speak of! She could totally do a different kind of precision work with it! The craftspeople who'd made it back in the Age of Arcanum would probably cry knowing what kinds of use Magician's Judge got put to in Yasha's hands, but that was hundreds of years ago and they didn't need to know.

...but that was why, if you happened to glance inside the shop at the right times, you might be treated to the sight of a nearly six-foot-tall woman looking thoughtfully at a relatively small pumpkin while holding a considerably sizable greatsword in one hand and scratching thoughtfully at her chin with the other.

Nothing to worry about! (No, really, it would be fine, except for maybe the pumpkin.)

[OOC: Open with the usual SP disclaimer and advance apologies for it.]

Whenever Yasha returned here after one of her walkabouts it took her some effort to get settled back in again; not that she ever wanted to get too settled in, of course, but in all the places in Exandria or elsewhere that her wandering took her at least several battles of some sort seemed inevitable. Not that she minded the blankness of her battle rages giving her a break from her own thoughts, but fighting was what she'd been raised to do all her life. Coming back here and just being able to tend to flowers and read and lead a mostly quiet life was jarring -- almost like a luxury she felt that she hadn't really earned.

Still, it was very nice to feel like a normal person, someone who didn't have to kill things for a living, for a while.

Apparently today "being a normal person" entailed concentrating on making a rather large floral arrangement in fall colors while the small but very friendly and very talkative grey and white tabby who'd followed her in to work this morning circled around her legs and purred up a storm.

Yasha wasn't going to complain about that at all.

[[Daytime SP etc. but open!]]

A few days ago -- or maybe a couple of weeks, she wasn't really sure -- Yasha had dreamt of thunderstorms across the causeway, calling to her; taking that as a sign that she would be able to leave at least for a while, she'd gone to go test out that theory and discovered she was right.

It was just before dawn when she returned to the island; she didn't have any more answers about the gap in her memory than she'd had when she left, but she was still drawn back here by some force or impulse she couldn't quite put a finger on. Maybe it was the Stormlord's guidance, maybe she was starting to develop a bit of a fondness for this place and even some of the people in it despite her best efforts to the contrary, maybe it was because she knew she could get back to Exandria from here to meet up with the Mighty Nein, if they needed her. Whatever the reason, and she didn't care much to dig too deeply into it, here she was. Again.

She had no interest yet in going back to the little hotel cabin she refused to think of as home. Besides, the sun would be coming up any moment now... and she could hardly pass up the opportunity to watch as it did. The colors of the sunrise hadn't yet stopped amazing her, at least not here or in the Empire, or on the Menagerie Coast, or out on the Lucidian Ocean. Anywhere that wasn't the dull, muted, lifeless wastes of Xhorhas, really, the sunrise was beautiful and full of color, and as tended to be the case with beautiful things Yasha really just couldn't get enough of it. (Even if the colors did sometimes remind her a little too vividly of Mollymauk.)

So she made her way to the park, pausing just long enough to pluck a handful of blossoms from a cluster of forget-me-nots near the pond, then sat down on a bench, looking toward the horizon with a wistful expression on her face as she half-absently braided the flowers into her hair.

Several stray cats clustered around her feet, purring. They probably sensed that she was not the type to withhold pets and scritches, and they were correct about that.

[OOC: Gasp. I'm trying to do a thing. Sorry about the Extra in this post, but I'm coping with my feelings about the fucking heartbreaking cover art for this girl's upcoming backstory graphic novel. Anyway, expecting someone, but also open. When I wake up.]

Yasha... really did not want to be at work today. Not this close to a holiday that she -- well, she didn't hate it exactly. Maybe saying she resented it on principle was a better description, but that wasn't entirely accurate, and either way it was one more thing to bottle up and keep to herself until the next time she needed to rage in a fight. (Definitely not an ideal way to cope, but see if she cared.)

But... the flowers were beautiful, she couldn't deny that, and every time she came across a new kind that she hadn't seen before she would either take one and press it between the pages of her book if she could or (if, for instance, there weren't any to spare once an arrangement was done) at the very least finding out what they were so she could try and get a hold of some for her own purposes later.

It wasn't that she didn't have a loved one who ought to get flowers from her, it was just... there were a lot of factors making that complicated.

Not that the air of melancholy around Yasha ever seemed to dissipate, but it was a little more potent than usual today. No, she wouldn't be talking about it.

[OOC: I'm very sorry about my poor emo barbarian. Open... after I wake up, of course. *crawls off to bed to recover from being repeatedly bludgeoned in the face by feels for both the Sentinel Babes tonight, aughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*]

One of the perks of this job (beside the obvious flowers), Yasha had decided, was the books that Lucille kept loaning her. Every now and then, as a break from her other duties, she'd take a few minutes to herself and read a chapter or so. And these last few books... they were dark, yet somehow still beautiful, and she was fascinated by that.

(That seemed to appeal to her. For some reason.)

She'd worn the black flower crown that Liam had left outside her door a couple of weeks ago, sort of worked into her braids a bit along with a few small, delicate blue flowers that she'd just discovered were called "Storm Clouds."

That was appropriate, she felt.

Anyhow, as she usually did on Fridays, she got very engrossed in the arrangements she was making, which didn't make the phone calls that occasionally jolted her out of her creative haze and interrupted her work any more appealing to her socially-averse self. Phone calls were still the worst.


[OOC: Having real Feelings about a bit of a quote from this girl last night. Anyway, open.]

Yasha had very mixed feelings about this week. On the one hand, having things to fight, trying to keep some of the more defenseless people on the island safe, was familiar and comforting and gave her a sense of purpose, if only temporarily.

On the other hand, she'd had to chop up several strings of lights, gotten a few cuts from falling candy icicles, and had a few new bruises that stood out well on her extremely pale skin thanks to the snow angels she'd tangled with yesterday. (That one kind of felt a little bit insulting, to be honest.)

And then on top of that, she was half a block away from the flower shop when she saw an 8-foot inflatable gingerbread man that seemed to be chewing on something -- something that turned out to be Beau, once she got close enough to see.

Of course it was. Yasha wasn't even going to pretend to be surprised about it. "Drop it," she told the gingerbread man, holding the point of her sword against the back of its knee. Turned out, it was not as easily punctured as it looked, but she did manage to distract it enough for Beau to wriggle free and help her deal with the thing.

("It was so cute, too," said Beau as they picked over the now deflated cookie creature in an ultimately futile search for loot. "I feel like Jester would be super insulted by that.")

Yasha huffed a soft dry laugh and started to unlock the front door -- only to discover that the very large, very dense-looking fruitcake on the steps was impossible to move, so while she set about making the tea and getting everything set up for the day Beau was making and putting up a "WATCH YOUR STEP" sign on the door, complete with an arrow pointing downward.

At least she'd be able to go out and fight off any more of these things while keeping an eye on the shop, so that was a plus.

"Stop getting swallowed by things," she said to the door just after Beau decided to head elsewhere for more things to fight.

Right. Like that was going to work.

[OOC: Shop/post open, though bear with me since work is going to be a bit hectic.

Also if anybody needs me I will be screaming for the next month, okay.]