Chapter Text
They are in a bar, laughing and drinking and fighting the night away. Caleb has long given up on truly concentrating on his spellbook, mostly keeping it open because to close it would be to admit defeat. Molly is trying to convince Beau to let him tell her fortune while teaching Nott shuffling tricks, and Jester is next to him, looking on. She can’t quite see the moment the card comes out of the sleeve no matter how closely she watches, and Molly slows down to demonstrate.
“It’s not about being subtle,” he explains. “Subtle people are sneaky and sneaky people get caught. It’s about making something else more important than your hands.”
A card flips out of the deck mid-shuffle and when Jester glances at it, Molly turns up the top card of the deck. It’s the man in a cloak that he said he’d pull out, upside-down.
“Ooh! You did it! What’s it mean?” Jester asks, tail flicking curiously. “We are all going to sleep upside down like bats?”
“I was trying to show you—ah, never mind. The magician, reversed. Illusions, trickery, sleight of hand. In this case, the two of you learning card tricks, hopefully. Maybe I should have gone for justice,” he muses. Jester points to the card he’d slipped out as a distraction.
“What about that one? With the lady?” This one is upside down, too—it actually landed neatly in front of Molly, perfectly in line for a reading. Molly shrugs.
“Ah, that one always comes out like that. Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Now, you think you can give it a try? Either of you? You don’t have sleeves to hide in, but getting it out of the deck and back in is a good place to start. Better if I can see what you’re doing, anyway.”
Nott reaches for the cards and gives them a good shuffle or two. “Which one am I trying to pull?”
Molly leans back into Jester, who leans in to see. “How about strength, upright? See if you can get it to face you.”
“Do I have to do the thing where I drop one?” she asks. “There are a lot of sticky spots on the table and I don’t want you to stab me for getting your cards in them.”
Caleb does glance up at that, briefing over the three of them to make sure they aren’t actually going to stab Nott, and Jester waves.
Caleb doesn’t quite wave back, but his hand moves a little bit. He was totally going to.
“These cards have been through a lot more than some bad beer,” Molly says. “Tell you what, though, I bet you can think of your own way. You don’t even have to distract us, as long as you can convince us to look somewhere other than the cards. Give it a whirl!”
Jester feels the slight vibration in her chair as Molly’s happily waving tail hits one of the legs. She’s barely paying attention as her own curls through the air, too busy watching Nott look at the cards and turn one up.
“Wrong way,” Nott says, showing the strength card upside up. “What was the thing you did to make sure the direction was right?”
“Right, so it’s like this,” Molly says, taking the cards and starting an easy shuffle. “You see how the backs look the same upside up as upside down? Well, that’s—”
His tail hits her chair again and without really thinking about it, she twines hers with it—halfway a quick embrace and halfway a neat guide to keep it from getting tangled with her feet when she prepares to get up and get another drink.
Mollymauk freezes, and cards explode across the table as he fumbles the shuffle.
Caleb looks up, and even Fjord and Yasha and Beau stop their conversation when a couple cards make it across the table.
“I—I—I mean um, that’s uh, that’s—I was—” Molly’s tail curls tighter around hers, hooking the tips together, or she’d think he was upset.
Let’s take a step back.
Tieflings, as a race, were created by humans, from humans. Specifically, created by foolish or arrogant or evil or fallible mages dabbling in things they didn’t—or did—understand, and cursing their bloodlines for generations to face violence and fear from the ‘standard’ races, especially humans, with an instinctive understanding that they are facing the evils that already live inside of them made visible.
Jester sometimes thinks, in her very worst moments that she likes to pretend don’t happen, that tieflings have all their evils facing outwards so they can be good inside, and that humans have all their good facing outwards so that…
But Caleb and Beau are very good people, and kind, and there are other humans that are very good people, and kind, and Jester doesn’t think that way often. She hasn’t asked Mollymauk if he ever does.
Regardless. Tieflings have all the mistakes of their distant ancestors available for anyone to target. Some paint their skin to be of a more palatable tone, some wear heavy hoods over their horns or cut them off entirely (the Hornless are to be pitied), some wear illusions or glass contraptions to make their eyes white and black and green in concentric circles and not fiendish at all, and nearly all have learned to still their tails in public. Jester has seen people who wrap their tails tight around one leg all day and only let them free in the privacy of their own homes, with doors shut tight.
No one is going to mistake a tiefling for not a tiefling. But to be less tiefling is to be safe. So anything that hides even a single trait is custom, for many.
Not for Jester. Not for Molly. But for many.
And according to this custom, a tail doesn’t touch another person. No reminders, as if anyone will forget. A tiefling’s tail will naturally wave or lash or curl, but to draw attention to it is to threaten its owner, or to express great trust.
Accordingly, what Jester has just said is brother.
And Mollymauk, recovering, squeezes her elbow and plants a kiss on her forehead and flicks the tip of her tail with his. Sister.
“Uh,” says Nott, “did someone shoot you for a second there? Jester?”
The rest of the party keeps a wary eye out, but Molly laughs and starts collecting cards, flipping one as he goes.
“What did I tell you? It’s all about misdirection. See? I’ve got your card,” he says, flicking over the strength card and gesturing grandly. “Made you look, didn’t I?”