Speak with Pinja in Tolstad North:

The first thing that gets pointed out by Wisdom is that Pinja is mourning... there is a lot that this can mean........ mourning herself? Her life was cut short before she got the chance to right her countless wrongs, by the actions of an incredibly misguided man and broad societal structures that are far, far bigger than her.

But in the spirit of this being my pinjalisa masterpost, I wonder if the main thing she's mourning here is her lost friendship with Lisa.....

"She is searching for something. But her SOUL remains in place."

They say souls linger when there is unfinished business, and with her death being as abrupt as it is, she never got to apologize to Lisa. Who knows how that meeting would've gone had Lisa not been late... what would've happened when Gorm showed up and Pinja is now confronted with having to pick between self preservation and the friend she's wronged... but those are all what-ifs, Frays that never came to be...

And so, she grieves. She fears the things that may happen to the only person tying her SOUL to this plane of existence still. She waits, forever, for an opportunity to make amends that she knows she'll never have.

This fragment of Pinja's soul is fiercely protective of Lisa, too. This version of Pinja recognizes that Ragn isn't outwardly hostile (especially when he Insists upon helping her) but still... he is a member of the Urthguard, and it was another member of his cadre that led her to her death.... She can't be sure what Ragn's motivations are after this fleeting interaction.

At the same time though, she is dead and can no longer directly influence the outcome of things—maybe her protectiveness is misguided and telling Ragn would be the best way to ensure Lisa is protected. Perhaps there is a bit of selfishness in this decision to withhold her information. What would happen to her if she were to give up the thing that's tethering her here?

After all, Pinja serves her heart, then herself, and then Illym.

Ragn can no longer help Pinja. But you know who he can help?

Speak with Lisa in her hut:

It's only in talking to Lisa that we learn the nature of their falling out... despite everything, Lisa speaks fondly of Pinja. She's clearly crushed to hear that Pinja didn't survive the tea shop explosion. It's rather cruel then, for Ragn to immediately ask if they were close not long after breaking the news of her passing....

Anyways, Lisa doesn't seem to be the most reclusive (hard to be, when your livelihood depends on making your services known to the right people), but Pinja definitely sounds like the more outgoing of the two. Pinja was even the first to reach out! She saves Lisa from the boredom of protecting some blonde brat and their friendship is cemented from that point on :) and nothing bad ever happens to them and—

She was a friend. A good friend. Just a good person in general. At least at first.

Lisa is clearly very aware of just how loved Pinja was by her community... she knows she isn't special in that regard. That said, Lisa's phrasing here is intriguing to me:

She became an information broker, essentially. Meaning, she sold out friends left and right.

This makes it sound like Lisa had reason to believe that Pinja wouldn't sell her out despite being fully aware of just how many enemies Pinja was making. The more time that passed without Pinja targeting her too, the more Lisa trusted that maybe, just maybe, they could make it out with their friendship still intact. Skilled as she may be in divination magic, she is still mortal, one that can make incorrect readings and misinterpret what's in the Strings. The betrayal may have been written there, plain as can be, but why would she choose to believe it over the tangible presence of Pinja in her life?

...she sold out her friends left and right. Including me.

Still, despite all of her anger and the conflicting way Lisa refers to Pinja as both a friend and an enemy in this conversation, she had hoped that Pinja got away. I think above else, Lisa just wanted to know why.

First, we can't forget the fact that Pinja still serves—served the Illym. Her unsavoury actions and frequent backstabbing betray her nature as a good person (in Lisa's words), but orders are orders. Second, Lisa is an incredibly valuable asset to the Freestriders (one of many, to quote Viira, but still). Third, we know from Gorm that Pinja was tasked with destabilizing the Freestrider hold in Askan in the hopes that it'd weaken the Urthguard.

Given Lisa's connection to the Freestriders, it would make sense that the Illym would want her to be brought to ruin. Why did it take so long for Pinja to finally target Lisa? Perhaps Pinja was able to conceal Lisa from the Illym's scrutiny for a while, deflecting their priorities towards other hags employed by the Freestriders. Nothing escapes the Illym's attention for long though, and Pinja is but one soul trying to resist an entire empire. And so, they send their agent to contact the Azgals and have them print a smear campaign on hags in the Reeds. Snitches are bad for business, especially one capable of divining secrets like Lisa.

In the two conversations we're able to have with Pinja, she shows nothing but remorse and guilt (as we'll see later) for what she's done, especially to Lisa. Whatever hold they had over her must've been incredibly powerful, because she didn't see a way out of it until she gets leverage in the form of a Coast-War Era artifact. But the moment she finds a way out of her servitude to the Illym, who does she contact?

Lisa.

The meeting would've served two purposes: first, to secure her ticket out of the ghosts that haunt her, and second, to apologize to Lisa.

It's a shame, then, that their meeting never came to be.

Fascism chose the path. I chose the end.

Cast Speak with Dead on Pinja's corpse...

So much of Pinja's dialogue when you cast this spell is relevant to their relationship (and if you're wearing your pinjalisa hat like me, even the ones that are seemingly unrelated can be about Them). I do dearly love applying Pinja's favourite colour, yellow, to that of Lisa's eyes and hair.

Anyways, when you ask Pinja's soul whether she would like something, it immediately jumps to the last priority on her mind: Protect Lisa. It's here too that we get explicit confirmation of her feelings of guilt (thanks, Constitution) towards betraying Lisa. She views her inability to escape the Illym's hold as a failure, but it's made even worse because this failure may put Lisa in harm's way.

She was unable to stop Gorm, who's to say he isn't going to chase Lisa down, next? And what of all the other people she betrayed? Will they go after Lisa, her last friend, now that she isn't around for them to get revenge on? Her soul wants Lisa to be safe, both in the esoteric event and here, with what remains of her body in this realm.

And now, for the lines that motivated me to make this post in the first place:

They were good friends.

LOVERS.

Oh. Yes, perhaps that is true as well.

I'm inclined to believe Constitution's words here because its high passive checks reveal the truth. It's even capable of remembering things from alternate Frays, so I think Ragn's gut feeling here is entirely genuine. Maybe they were indeed lovers, or perhaps they were friends that never got to reap the sown seeds of their love before Pinja's passing.

Love comes up in many of Pinja's dialogue here, in fact. Not only does she refer to Lisa as the lovely hag, she also says that love is the meaning of life, and that everyone loved her and she loved them too. One particular love stands above the rest though.

Unquestioning, irrational love.

Sound familiar? Dare I say it perfectly describes the conflicting emotions we see in Lisa?

Unquestioning, in that she always hoped that Pinja wouldn't sell her out right until the very moment it finally happened.

Irrational, in that she should be irrevocably upset with Pinja for her betrayal but instead she chooses to accept a meeting with her, and mourns her death.

At the end of it all, Lisa recognizes there is more to life than her success as a hag. Perhaps she could've overcome the collapse of it all if she had Pinja at her side.

There is no closure to be had, however.

Pinja is gone, leaving Lisa behind to mourn everything that could have been—their reunion, an apology, the mending of their once broken friendship and the promise of something more.

All she can do is wonder.