Dace is a kind of small fish, a relative of roach.
Yenna, for all the trouble she's been, turns out to be good at living up to the ideal that children should be seen and not heard. Too good, honestly, as without hearing her it's pretty easy not to see her either and he keeps suddenly realizing that yeah, there's a kid sitting on the floor staring at him.
What do kids...do.
Well, he ran all over loud as a tomcat, to the frustration of the adults around him. Yenna can't move around well and isn't interested in opening her mouth again now that she's finished stuffing food into it. He also screwed around with whatever musical instruments he could get his little hands on, also not an option here given she thinks his lute is cursed by evil elves. He doubts she was even capable of learning letters, so books are out. He could try dropping her off in the kitchen, but what if she cuts a finger off?
"How are you at cooking?" he asks Yenna. "What kind of things did you help your mother with?"
"I didn't," Yenna says flatly.
Alright, so letting her near lunch ingredients will lead to everything getting seasoned with kid blood. Not his favorite flavoring.
Erm. Sewing…? If she can't be trusted chopping food with a knife she must be a disaster with a sewing needle, but even the worst sewer can't actually maim themselves with it. And while Jaskier sticks to repairs - a stitch in time to save nine, and all that, you have to pick up some basics if you want to keep your clothing from getting far beyond help while you're traipsing all across the land - there's also embroidery, which is a nigh-infinite time sink. You can always fit in another flower.
And girls love flowers.
"Right," he decides, pushing himself away from the table. "You know what's fun?"
Yenna looks decidedly put out, probably because she hates fun. Well. Jaskier has never let that stop him.
"What's your favorite flower?" he continues. He considers if he should add that this is a normal conversation and not some sort of trap like her expression suggests or if she'll just be contrary and take that to mean it absolutely is a trap.
"Linden," she says finally.
Those are just some tiny, messy white ones. Really, he wouldn't even know what they looked like if it wasn't for having them in tea…ah.
He chuckles. "I didn't mean to eat."
And that just makes her curl up a little.
"You must have ones you like to look at," he presses. "They're flowers."
"I don't want flowers," she tells the floorboards.
"Everyone likes flowers," he points out. "Even people who don't like flowers like some flower. There's roses, obviously, the lovely tulips, carnations, daisies…"
"I don't!"
Kids! "Well, I suppose it wouldn't have to be any real flower anyway," he decides. "Come over here."
She just glowers at him from her dark corner.
He points to where the sunlight coming through the window has puddled on the floor. "This needs light. Over here."
She hesitates. He waits. Eventually, she wriggles a few feet so she's somewhat near where he pointed.
He grabs her cloak and sits down on the floor as well. "I think it would be nice to have some flowers on this," he tells Yenna. "Do you know how to do that?" He pauses, then decides to take her silence as an answer. "Well! So, first…" Linden flowers are white, and if she's not going to give him a different answer, he'll start with that. He grabs the thread and needle.
He hasn't technically done this himself. But he's certainly seen plenty of the finished product, including how they looked unraveling when his clothing was torn in just the unluckiest spots, so he has some idea. And it's flowers. As long as it's roundish you can call it a flower. "So...so let's start by outlining a petal," he decides. "So here's a line, and then stitch back up, and we go across here in another line, and then back down, so it's a triangle."
"Petals aren't triangles."
"Shush. Now if I keep making these lines back and forth...see, the petal's filling in. Now you try."
She takes the needle as gingerly as if she's never touched one before but at least doesn't stab herself on it immediately. That takes until she's actually doing her first stitch. And at least she doesn't whine. She just pops her finger into her mouth. After a moment, she gets back to it.
He has successfully occupied the kid! Relieved, he stands and goes back to working on his lyrics.
When he glances back down he finds Yenna staring at the needle in one hand and thread in the other like she has no idea what to do now. She must not have the coordination to get the thread through the eye again. "Here," he says, holding out his hand. "I'll do it. Tell me if it comes loose again, alright? It's no problem."
She nods.
She also doesn't. He glances down and finds her having used up the first length of thread and trying to get more on from the spool. She's not making particular progress lining up needle with thread, just sort of mushing them together, but, he reflects, the real point is giving her something to do. At this rate occupying her all day won't even use up his supplies.
And if she doesn't need - or want, at least - his help… "I'm going to go out for a bit. Remember: stay put, and don't fall out the window. Got that?"
"Okay," Yenna says.
Once again, the people downstairs eating and drinking are actually happy to see him because he is actually a very wonderful person to see. He entertains them for a while, keeping half an eye for anyone trying to sneak down the stairs and half an ear for the thump-and-screaming he assumes would go with Yenna breaking all her bones jumping out the window. Neither happen.
So she's stayed put! Possibly because she's now crippled herself further but that certainly didn't stop her moving about yesterday, so Jaskier thinks what he's said actually sank in at last.
Which is excellent. And besides, everyone loves Jaskier, he's sure she's warmed up to him.
She is, however, still absurdly skittish, and might be startled into bolting by, well, apparently absolutely anything as far as Jaskier can tell. So: further bribery and distraction couldn't hurt.
He feels terribly validated when he returns late to find that yes, she's still there. Still on the floor, but she's lit a candle (All by herself! Good job, little Yenna!) and is picking away at the cloak by its light.
He smiles widely at her and drops the cloth puppet in her lap. She looks between him and the puppet. "A gift for you," he says, which only moves her expression from confused to something more stormy.
She touches it gingerly, much like she had the needle. "Why?"
"Does there really need to be a reason?" he tries to joke. She stares at him. Okay, apparently there very much does. "I thought you could use a friend."
After a moment she says, utterly deadpan, "Aren't you my friend."
"Yenna, I am hurt. Of course I am. And now so is this little baby...I suppose her name is up to you? His name?"
Yenna makes a point of pulling up the doll's shift as if she expects to find genitalia on a children's toy. "It's an it," she tells him, then continues, "That's fatal, you know." Which, she said something about a farm? Was that something that happened with calves? Ugh, farming is terrible. Then again, veal is delicious and would certainly make for one tasty silver lining.
"I don't think it's supposed to be that literal," he tells her. She doesn't seem particularly thrown by this and it occurs to him that she may just be being annoying, though he can't imagine why anyone would be difficult over this. "Look, cloth puppets are like, fish, alright, they live happy cloth lives without needing those parts. And he or she is going to need a name for that long and happy life."
Yenna picks it up and considers it. "Dacy."
"What a lovely, lovely name," he assures her. Is that a girl's name or a boy's? Is she going to be upset if he asks?
She looks between Dacy and him. "What else do I have to do?"
"You just...play with it?" Jaskier says, feeling more than a little helpless. "Er, you can pretend it's a baby? Sort of practice, for when you end up having real ones?"
"I'm not going to," Yenna hisses, suddenly all teeth.
"I mean, no, of course, you're a kid, you're what, twelve…?" She now looks both angry and insulted. "Not twelve?" Not like it particularly matters in her case.
"Fourteen."
So he more or less guessed it. "Right, so not anytime soon." One of life's little mercies for the commoners, at least they weren't getting married off at first blood. "It's like, um, you've held babies before, right?"
"Yes."
"So you pretend the puppet is the baby and you take care of them the same way."
"I didn't take care of them," Yenna says stubbornly. Which he supposes he should've seen coming as he too would not want to leave an actual live baby in Yenna's dubious grasp for very long.
"Just do what you did with the baby, okay?"
Yenna is now quite over that early aversion to eye contact and gives him a sustained stare in a very, very creepy way. Then she crooks one arm and nestles the puppet there, exactly like she's holding an infant. Okay! So she does know something about babies, at least. "Like I did with the babies," Yenna says slowly. "I should do that. That's what you want."
"Yes," he says, and goes to sleep foolishly thinking he's gotten through the whole affair.
He's woken in the morning by smoke and opens his eyes to find Yenna staring into the fire as the puppet smolders.