Outside, on the roof, as the clouds retreat into the horizon and the sky sheds its grays to don its dark blue frocks once more, the pitter-patter of leftover rain sings the children to sleep again. The droplets can be no more than the shedding of tears from the trees above, still weeping water from their wetted leaves after the storm, for outside the air is humid but bereft of rain showers. Somewhere in the distance, among the retreating clouds, thunder bellows at the highest crests of the Peaks where the stone dares to reach.Â
Iiwa is knelt beside the stream. The storm had woken the babes, and thus herâ though they now lay bundled and comfortable in their blankets in the warmth of their shared crib, she had not been able to fall once more to sleep. So she occupies herself instead with staring toward what remains of Baelsarâs Wall, or at least, where she knows it to be; memories of its visage barely linger from the turns of her youth when she ventured too far east despite the warning words of her mother like any child defiant of a path they did not choose. Now, all she remembers from the Wall in her womanhood is the crunch of metal underneath her foot, the cold brush of steel. The somber heaviness with which they walked, dragging their feet against the earth. Catching on vines that would swallow them if they so much as thought to take the wooden masks from their faces. Even now the very appearance of the trees themselves seem to whisk away from the edges of her mind's eye, and with it, all the joy she had found on the grooves of their branches.
âIt is not so bad,â comes the voice of a man to interrupt her sulking. Antoâraâs is a gruff and growling drawl befitting the wide, wiry stock of a man that he is. Iiwa inherited the shape of his nose and the furrow of his brow. âYou will come to like the cold of winter. And in the summer, the salmon jump upstream, and are the freshest you will ever have them.âÂ
âIt is not about the Peaks. I do not dislike the Peaks.â There is the furrow of her brow which mirrors his own. She turns her head to the hands at her lap. She has long since needed to avoid the look of someone when she cannot make note of its existence in the first placeâ but the weight of her fatherâs stare unnerves something inside of her that she cannot whisk away from her breast, blind or not. Her heart flutters like a little bird taken by the tide. There, it sinks. âAnd you would not understand. I do not wish to speak of it with you.âÂ
Antoâra does not answer her. If he were a different man, she would expect this silence to mark his departure. But he speaks as her mother spoke to her once more: with all the unshed burdens of his youth to drag his tongue out of his mouth still fresh with wounds. âYour children will grow. You will raise them well. You will find happiness in their happiness, and it will be enough.âÂ
Then, he leaves. He knows she will not answer. He is right. She will turn his words in her head and find nothing she wishes to keep.
Knelt beside the stream, Iiwa tries to remember the color of leaves during the spring.
The sound of summer-song came tumbling down the mountain to the warriors at the back of the pack. It was no performance: rather, Vedis would describe it as a tangle of syllables and notes that never quite matched. They had been climbing for nearly a sennight now, she mused to herself. Surely the chanting was no longer entirely for navigation, but served as some shy expression of relief. The thought of the rest at journeyâs end was a pleasant thing, and everyone would be dreaming of it by now. Soon, they would have fled far enough to settle for the warm season, tucked between grey peaks and blue skies.
Their winter homes in the foothills had been far too close to the cathedral boughs of the Golmore this time, and Vedis would be glad to no longer be bordering on trespassing. The ride north found her glancing behind at every bramble catching her skirts. A little voice nagged at the back of her mind: it might as well be an arrowhead sweeping past you-- a knife thrown by a fighter more skilled than your comrades-- a hand, reaching to pull you from your saddle and cut your witch-words from your throat. She swallowed, but that winter fear trailed after her like a pack mule, practical and ever-present. It needed little feeding to keep its place at her side.
But they had already traveled far too long for a confrontation with a hunting party, and Vedis rode barely a yalm from huntresses and warriors that she would trust to order her to her death, should it be required. Svartur rode in front of her, trailed by the two pack mules it took to carry her armor. She was too tall and she wore too muchâ she might overburden one of their little horses with the weight of the steel. Her two lovers rode two to the trail a few yalms ahead of her, leaning forward for the race that would begin as soon as they reached the top. Vedis could glance behind her to find Yrr, with her eyes trained on the back of her head and then averted too quickly. Behind her rode Aasveig, who gave her a grin and a nod. She could name every name down the trail and up. She was certain that villages who had met them in conflict could do the same. The thin air of the mountains around them promised that safety could be found in numbers, but it could also be found in solitude.
Vedis knew the trail up, as did every one of her fellows. It would vary soon. Todayâs ride would cross the summit stream, and they would stop and pitch tents when they reached the lake that spawned it. She nudged the little pony forward, marveling as the beastâs round, little legs carried them up the mountainside. The view spanned malms. As she scanned the valley before her, each tall pine tree began to melt into one great, green beast, breathing in and out with the wind. Vedis inhaled with it, and found herself surprised by the first gasp for breath at altitude. She had been nurturing that ache under her sternum for some time as they climbed up, but the burning shock of too-thin air in a too-large piece leapt from vein to vein as fire does through a forest.
Vedis was heaving for breath as they reached the green hills that marked the coming summit. The sky might as well have kissed the spring-green grass here, and the clouds often did. Tomorrow she would wake in the fog, but under the afternoon sun she could see everything for malms. Many riders who could do so took to a gallop, chasing a reprieve from days on end of tight switchback turns and exhausting uphill treks.
The snowmelt had been early, and the stream in the distance was a pathetic little thing this year. It would be unable to fill their waterskins and unable to drown an oncoming enemy. The only thing it could offer was a moment of sheer, unadulterated joy. Horses who couldnât make the jump kicked up sprays of water, but Vedis took the crossing with eyes wide open. She did not cross the stream first, but she did cross it fastest.
cw: follows the immediate wake of the Bozjan Incident and may contain upsetting or triggering mentions. big cw for imperialism and apathy around imperialism as a result.
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She remembers what the nationalists forget: it's Garlemald that destroys Bozja, and Garlemald that comes to its aid.
She thinks to turn to her countrymen in the days following her mother's death, but sheâs fifteen years old and newly orphaned. She has no food, no shelter, and nothing to barter with save her body. The thought terrifies her and so do the lecherous stares of men much older than she is.
She decides to travel alone and keeps off the roads.
Her hunger yawns wide in the week to follow. At night, she dreams of warm bread and meat so fresh the blood runs down the plate. Sometimes she trails her fingers over her ribs to track how much they jut from her skin, and wonders dimly how many exposed bones equates to death.
Were her parents eating well in the afterlife? She pictures them at a table dressed with finery and every delicacy known to man.
She pictures an empty seat she will soon occupy.
By the grace of the dead, she makes it another day, and then another, and another. The fallen are everywhere, their bodies malformed by poisoned aether. Some carry half-rotten fruit and flatbread not yet swallowed by mold. She thanks them one-by-one at first, but as the days go on so, too, does the process of decay and soon she no longer wants to study their faces at all.
The first Garlean ship she sees is wider than a whale and crude to behold, but in that moment it feels like seeing Faramâs own face. It solicits within her an experience that can only be described as holy. Her body no longer feels strangled by pain and starvation but light so pure it warms her from head to toe. When it lands some malms away, she knows salvation has arrived.
It takes half-a-day to cross the treeless landscape and reach their base. The explosion has rendered the once soft ground into a bog, and her frail legs can only sift through the mud for so long without needing rest. But soon she arrives and finds a line of her people, all with haggard expressions and distant stares. She joins the stragglers in the back and listens as the camp intercoms blare message after message.
âThe Emperor offers food, shelter, and suitable employment to any Bozjan who swears allegiance to the throne,â a cold voice rings out. âPlease remain in an orderly fashion as we process you.â
âAnd what of the Emperorâs apology?â cries a man some fulms in front of her. âWhat of Garlemaldâs debt to us?â
Some stir in agreement, but the soldier only reiterates the message: swear allegiance to Garlemald if you wish to survive. A fight breaks out after that, and when the culprits are dragged away, Fadija shuffles silently forward to take their place in line. She would trade her own blood for one hot meal; allegiance is a meaningless word.
The woman at the processing table asks for her name and trade, and when she has no answer, the babushka behind her hisses, âCan you bake? Can you read? Quickly, girl!â
âI can dance,â Fadija whispers, her voice hoarse with disuse. âBallet, since I was a child.â
The Garlean taps her pen against her electronic book and says, âA performer? Let us see.â
Sheâs exhausted and weak, but the scent of hot food wafts out from the camp and if she is to sing for her supper, so be it. Fadija remembers the crack of her instructorâs voice ordering her to smile as she dances, so she beams so hard her face hurts. She has not the proper shoes and her clothes are stiff with dried mud, but she takes them through a simple routine and ignores the draw of attention it earns from nearby guards.
One of them says, âThe Emperor would enjoy a Bozjan refugee in His theater,â and someone murmurs an agreement.
âAye,â states the woman before her. âThat He would. Your name?â
âFadija KapetanoviÄ.â
âA mouthful,â she tuts, penning through her glossy tablet. When theyâre finished, she is no longer Fadija but Fabia â Fabia aan Cytheris.
In the high cold sunlight of a spring morning the people from across the ridge came over, crossing two by two into the grey valley. Joha, eldest of her sisters, rose early and left the house even before she woke, and when at last the girl stepped out into the huge brightness of the morning she saw her walking out along the high path, keeping pace with the visitors and then rushing ahead, laughing. That path was old and narrow, nearly invisible, but she and all her sisters had walked it since they were children. They could have made their way up the ridge and down to the riverbank even in very deep night.Â
The people from across the ridge were much like herself, much like her mother; in fact many of them were sisters to her mother. They spoke sweetly to her, told her how tall she had come since last they saw her, how soon the summer would be here â at the riverbank the flowers were already near budding. Joha had come into her womanhood a few years before, though sheâd kept to the house to help with the goats in the last winters.
The best of the visitors was Myrt, tall and heavy, who had been at her motherâs side since before the girlâs birth, through passions that warmed and cooled and sometimes grew icy. In recent years she had left the valley to live in the east as a wanderer. âOur river widens down the way,â Myrt had said. âIâd like to learn to sail. Perhaps Iâll pass the learning on to you when I return.â That made her mother grimace strangely. Two years had passed now, and if Myrt learned anything from her kinfolk down the river, she said nothing of it to the girl â but when she came back over the ridge she brought a set of beautifully carven dolls. The girl was by now too old for these things, but they might be passed down to Pjel, the youngest, and anyway they were fine to admire at least for a whileâŠ
âIt might be a late summer,â said the girl, speaking into the noontide air.Â
Myrt sat behind her, braiding her hair so tight it tingled. âIt might, sweet thing. Why do you wish for that?âÂ
âIt makes no difference to me.âÂ
People often spoke about the springtime in terms of leaping, running, waking from sleep. Each year as the heat rose and the flies began to bite a scattered few children in the valley woke into womanhood or into manhood â so her mother had told it to her.
Myrt only made a slight deep hum. In the darkness of the house she had heard that hum a thousand times, her mother and Myrt speaking quick and low to each other by the hearth, in the half light. Her mother who wanted to bare her whole spirit to someone, and Myrt who only wanted to hum.Â
âItâll be a long walk,â said the girl, after a while.
âYour father and all his fathers made it.â
Now the girl hummed, slight and reedy, feeling the braid pull at her scalp.
Shtaareh crossed the threshold to Ul'dah. He looked up at his father and saw the glimmer of hope in his eyes, a smile strained under its own weight. He shone the light back with his own as they reflected the flickering lanterns and luminous windows that lined the streets. There would be hearty meals behind their moth bitten curtains; the family çaydanlık would always steam against peeling yellowed wallpaper. Shtaareh tapped the dried moon daisies his mother hung from every rotting rafter, humming in circles. He sought the city's secrets and kept his own close.
X'shtaareh crossed pluto and blackroot roseâwisdom from the guild. He took in the acrid smoke and took in vigour from it. He crossed somnus and milkroot, even touches of coffee and tea just to see what would happen. He stirred in foam from cactus, ground talons as he learnt from his father. He let the beakers sit under the moon and nourish from it as he learnt from his mother. They cast Menphina's glow at him and he smiled at the rippling liquid.
Moui crossed the strip into Pearl Lane and soon he was known there. He leant on pockmarked walls with arms crossed, surveying so that he would not be surveyed. He learnt to blank his eyes so he could see into others and they couldn't see into him. He found how to narrow them so the manufactured wrinkles painted him stronger than he was. He brought home paltry bags that still rattled with coin; his father nodded and never asked.
Shtaareh crossed the hanging daisies into his room and slammed the door without touching them. He screamed and screamed and hurled colourful bottles to shatter against the wounded walls. They wept in myriad hues and shed scraps of paper. His father knocked and told him it would be okay. His mother knocked and told him they did not blame him. He only buried his head in his arms to wail. He looked down at them and saw his truths etched there.
Shish crossed the bridge to Radz-at-Han, alone. Vivid stone paved his way and bright walls lit it. Pleasant aromas followed him through the baazaar and the bustle opened its arms to him. There was the meyhane, bidding him welcome; there were pleasant faces that offered solace. Shish looked at all this, took it all in with his eyes deep as moonless night, and there was no glimmer in them.
The tenth sun of the Fourth Astral Moon was bright as pain when Yantaa slipped out of Ala Gannha with her fellow traitors-in-arms, searing her eyes whenever she was weak enough to look back to the mountain she had called home. It was a weakness she succumbed to just once; Yantaa was ever a quick learner, no matter what the Fist of Rhalgr would have the others believe.
When Yantaa ventured through the Last Forest, there were no fewer than one hundred in her company; by the time they had reached the Velodyna, the sun had set in Gyr Abania â and on twenty exiles. Weeping Cough from the Bloodgliders, felling even the most robust knuckledancers among them; a gaganaâs razor sharp talons, permanently silencing a handful of mages; heatstroke, snuffing out the oldest Mole among them. As each of them fell, one by one, Yantaa had looked upon their faces with dry eyes and commanded the others to salvage what they could â and burn what they couldnât.
There was no shrine built to honor the memory of people who had believed in the king - who now believe in the Corpse Brigade - but the group carved a path through the sarcosuchuses until they reached the Pall of Clarity and stood beneath it. There the spray of the waterfall wiped away their tears and the roar muffled their anguished sobs until wordlessly they moved as a unit to make camp for the night.
Silence settled on the group as a stone, stifling idle chatter even from the youths that had darted between their legs and chased after each other with sticks in their hands at the start of their journey. It was as if they could all sense it: the first step out of Gyr Abanian soil. The first of many borders they would cross until they would reach Gridania â then Ulâdah â then the southernmost part of Thanalan that was not already claimed by the Amaljâaa or the Drakes, until eventually the newer wave of refugees would oust them from Little Ala Mhigo and force them to draw up borders of their own in the Sepulchre.
But many sennights stood upon the border of reality and possibility, and in that moment all the exiles linked their arms together and left Gyr Abania as one.
It isnât much: a stretch of dirt and rock, bricks, graves, trees. Restless spirits, fire sprites; a handful of shadows, drawn out by the early sun. When she woke up, the darkness was so disorienting she thought she was in the Goblet, Forestay in the room overâbut daylight takes time to hit the streets of Ala Mhigo, so it took her longer than it shouldâve for her to place where she was at: in the city, the apartment, two floors up.
Thereâs no telling what went wrongâwho she saw, where it wasâbut she canât get away from what needs done, so she had gotten up. She put on a necklace with a loose chain, fastened the tunic with a looser scarf, and spared herself the trouble of earrings, bracelets, an anklet. Going out to Abalathiaâs Skull meant that she wouldnât be seen, and if she wouldnât be seen, there wasnât a point in wasting time on jewelry.
She wastes time on wandering through the city. The kohl from yesterday must be smudged; her skin is sore around her neck and shoulder. Whenever she shows up in Ala Mhigo, someone else does too, but it must be too early for even them: she makes it through the city unbothered, makes it through Loch Seld unhindered, and comes up to Aenadem Ol. There it is: the stretch of dirt and rock, bricks, graves, trees. Restless spirits, fire sprites.
There are no fresh graves; itâs the same as it was, or the graves are old enough since she last made it to Bloodhowe that she canât tell the difference. She doesnât see a single kaluk between the bhoots; she doesnât spend a long time looking.
When she leaves, she will cross through the Peaks. She will stop in Gridania to see her kids, spend a night on their couch, and then sheâll get back to business. Coming up hereâRissa can admit that there wasnât a point to it, that she isnât even stopping to see her sire, but the sightâthe sight was all she wanted.
âItâs dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though youâre feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those daysâŠLightly, lightly â itâs the best advice ever given meâŠto throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. Thatâs why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darlingâŠâ
Source : Nothing But The Girl ; The Blatant Lesbian Image ; A Portfolio and Exploration of Lesbian Erotic Photography - Edited by Susie Bright and Jill Posener
