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tunedtostatic · 9 months

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For my work for @critter-genfic-events Day 5 Prompt: Hurt/Comfort (also belated) I'm doing what the kids call "borderline cheating" and writing a director's commentary for a prompt-related scene in an existing fic. It's one I technically could have reserved for Gen Week if it fit the prompts a little better and I didn't have the delayed gratification of a gnat - it's about Eadwulf and Yasha running around the Marrow Valley together post-canon.

Dust is a bigger problem than mud in the summer, and experienced travelers wear kerchiefs against billowing dust and the scorching of the sun. The brown fields of spring turn to rows of sun-soaked green leaves, and Wulf and Yasha take more often to the shade of the forests, running along narrow paths and stopping to dangle their legs in the brooks. The enchanted waterskin Astrid gave Wulf for his birthday the second year after Ikithon sees more use than ever in high summer, especially the fourth summer after Ikithon, when the dirt road cracks in the heat and Yasha and Wulf spend the hottest days answering every traveler's hail and asking if they have enough water summarily.

👟 I dicked around and tried a couple experimental things when I was writing the fic, and I was just telling a friend I'm not sure how well they Worked (or, to get away from a success/failure model, to what degree they did or didn't have the effects I wanted them to have) and I might just have to come back to this fic later to take another look at it and decide then. One of the things was using some long paragraphs and the other was having no section breaks in a fic with multiple scenes over multiple years. The fic starts with several long paragraphs, and this is the last of those before the the first dialogue scene starts.

It's on one of the early days of the fourth summer, when they're danging their feet in their favorite brook, that Yasha says, "Kai is asking more about our adventures. You know, the time of the Mighty Nein. Veth has told Luc all kinds of stories and Luc has been passing them on to him." It might be the greatest number of consecutive words either of them have spoken on their runs in well over a calendar year, not counting emergencies on the Zadash road. Wulf says, "I'm sure there's lots of stories to be told."

👟 One of the reasons I did the long paragraphs at the beginning is because I wanted the reading experience to echo the experience of a lot of running before the talking. Prior to this the reader doesn't technically know Wulf and Yasha don't talk much on their runs, though, and I wanted to make that explicit at the beginning of this scene.

"Yes." Yasha swirls her feet under the surface of the water. "One time, Veth shot Beau in the ass with the one bullet in her gun. On purpose. There was a tree. They were competing to climb it." "Haven't heard that story yet." It isn't a surprising story to hear, though.

👟 Wulf has been exposed to the Mighty Nein enough to be unfazed by the story itself. He's coming up with bland, neutral responses to keep his half of the conversation going; he's an observant dude and he knows that if Yasha is using the greatest number of consecutive words either of them have spoken on their runs in well over a calendar year to start a conversation about Beau and their kid, it probably isn't because she just felt like making conversation.

Yasha nods. "She shot Caleb in a library, too. In Uthodurn. It was one of their scams; crossbow bolt to a book. They'd done it before, but she actually hit him that time, they said." Wulf glances at her.

👟 The reveal, or at least the beginning of the reveal. Out of context, the "they said" isn't particularly telling, and I feel like I at least wouldn't realize what was up just from this, which is why I have Wulf pick up on it immediately - to show that he's observant, that he's accustomed to conversations with a lot of inference from his time as a scourger, and that he knows Yasha well.

"I wasn't there. It was when I was with Obann. They all got kicked out of the library, they said." Wulf nods. "I've never been to Uthodurn. But I guess most libraries in most cities wouldn't take a liking to patrons shooting each other with crossbows."

👟 Wulf is still going with neutral responses - this is basically a longer version of "mmhm." Yasha is working out how to put a complicated point into finite verbal words, and this is Wulf's way of giving her time to do that. She's also, to borrow a Tumblr favorite Siken quote, doing a little bit of "I want to tell you this story without having to be in it," and Wulf is also recognizing that and replying to the extraneous library details instead of diving straight for the Obann part as a way to give her space as well as time.

"No." Yasha splashes her feet halfheartedly. "Beau will have to tell that story, since I wasn't there for it. That day was the first time she used her surname, they said. I wasn't there for that either." Wulf nods.

👟 With "Beau will have to tell that story," Yasha is working her way further into articulating a point that can't be summed up in a straightforward way.

"Beau is so clever. I mean, you know that she is. She's so clever and so strong, but she's had to be clever and strong so many times already. Why does she have to help tell Kai where his mumma was when his mama and the others were getting kicked out of the Uthodurn library for a crossbow scam?" Wulf thinks about Beauregard, and Beauregard with Yasha. "I don't think it's so great a burden. Like you said, she's very strong."

👟 Wulf is being a little platitudey here, but he's correctly parsed that the fear that has come up for Yasha in the fourth year after Obann and second year of being a parent is essentially about burdens and being burdened and the ways in which her past might make her a burden in the present. Wulf's response is the "incorrect" way to reply by many standards, in that the "correct" response would probably be to echo Yasha's words instead of immediately offering a rejoinder, and I'm actually curious if some readers will find this line more annoying or dismissive than I do. But Wulf's read of the situation is that Yasha is talking to him about this because she wants a response from him, so, now that she's gotten to her point, he doesn't hesitate to think through her question and formulate a response.

Yasha splashes dubiously. "Like you are strong." "I suppose." Yasha hands Wulf back the enchanted waterskin and pushes her way up off a tree root, and he follows, tucking the waterskin into his belt again as they leave the stream. It feels a little odd, even after all this time he's had the enchanted waterskin, to be at a stream and not have to worry about taking water with them.

👟 Another line in the category of "sounds like a platitude but it's better to make sure you say it at some point than assume it 'goes without saying.'" So far it's established that Wulf and Yasha haven't talked much period. Wulf is a tough guy, and their shared activity is stoically doing a physically taxing activity together! "I'm not going to judge you and think you're weak because of your past" is worth him saying explicitly. There's also a bit of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" here since the rest of the fic also digs into Wulf's personal worries about being weak himself.

Yasha is a little more opaque here since she's not the POV character, but she ends the conversation here and stands up because she's basically on the same wavelength as Wulf; she had something painful to try to express to him, she succeeded in expressing it in a way that he understood, and he replied. Since she's not prone to wizard hubris or any other kind of hubris, she knows she isn't about to figure out the entire situation today, and talking about it isn't pleasant, so she's ready for the conversation to be done now that Wulf has replied. She's dubious about Wulf's basic points (your past is not too much of a burden for Beau to handle; you're not weak because of what happened to you), but in a "yeah those are the things it would be NICE to believe" kind of way; the fact that Wulf would say those things and mean it is comforting.

#cr2 #fic #this is inspired by critterfloozy's fic commentaries #i know you're not the originator of the director's commentary equivalent but i really enjoy yours and it made me want to try one #tennis shoe emojis are here because tumblr indents bullet points which unsolves the formatting problem i was trying to solve with them

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