It’s a skill, to look inside yourself, one you have mastered. The endless corridors and shifting thoughts are mapped so very carefully. This all takes time, of course. And those twisting hallways are so very difficult to map. It would be so easy to get lost. You know this space so well. Wouldn’t it be a lovely place to stay? So well-known and comforting. Why go back? How nice, how easy, to dissolve, to hide from the rest of the world and all the people in it. Why bother, when you are so good at looking inside yourself. Like enlightenment, the self. Retreating this far inwards is like retreating just as far out, into the vast ether. So comforting. The thing that was you looks at the thing that was the old woman. There is no you anymore. Goodbye.
The Bellworks Manufacturing Co. publicly extends an invitation to all Garlean nationals, citizens, and conscripts fleeing recent unrest. In exchange for Imperial knowledge, the Bellworks guarantees employment, asylum, and identity protection if desired.
Contact our agents in Ul’dah, Ala Mhigo, or Kugane.
A new, more peaceful home awaits you in Eorzea. Let’s work together to build a brighter future for all!
==============
OOC:
The Bellworks has harbored Garleans for a long time. It’s a policy that quietly began under Eliane Requingris and has since expanded significantly under Brave Horizon’s leadership. In light of Ul’dah shifting its refugee approach towards more work-oriented programs, and knowing it’s only a matter of time before its worst-kept secret came to light, the Bellworks has decided to simply come out and say it: we’ll take Garleans.
In exchange for whatever knowledge your character might bring from the Empire – be it scientific, mechanical, artistic, magical, artisanal, or otherwise – the Bellworks will do the hard work to ensure your character will have a new, safe home in Eorzea, (theoretically) free from anyone who might come looking for them. (But we all know that RP finds a way).
Interested? Read our FAQ beneath the cut for more info, or hop on our discord with any questions you might have!
Disclaimer: We do not, nor will we ever condone apologism when it comes to imperialism or colonialism OOC, nor does the Bellworks support the Empire IC.
It was a brisk La Noscean morning, the kind where the bitter chill winds coming off the seas wrestled with the warm sun reflecting off the mountain slopes. Most mornings the sun won out, but in the height of winter, the wind was such that it could slip under your clothes and shake hands with your bones. Hannah knew from experience (as most of her knowledge was prone to spring from these days) that it wasn’t as bad as the ongoing frosts of Ishgard, still one needed to bundle up against it, lest they found themselves making friends with a fever. She had just finished gathering up the last of the winter peas from the fields, and had set her basket aside to rub a little life back into her chilled knobbly fingers.
Age had been kind to her, she reflected as she sat her bony ass down on one of the smooth stones that marked the borders of her son’s fields. Most women who had seen as many seasons as she had needed the assistance of a cane to walk, and that was if they could leave their rocking chairs at all. However she was still able to bend at her waist, and carry a basket that was half her weight in stone. True, her joints ached terribly before the coming of a storm, and she’d no longer had a tooth in her mouth that wasn’t porcelain or silver, but to expect nothing from time but a head full of grey hair was folly if ever she heard it.
It was a subject of some debate back on her son Sigmund’s farm. His wife, a pretty little midlander named Sarah who didn’t have so much as two foul thoughts in her head to rub together for fire, was opposed to the idea of her aging mother-in-law working in the fields. She insisted that if Hannah kept it up, then one day they would find her out there, dead amongst the stones and weeds. The girl, and she was still a girl in Hannah’s eyes, never even contemplated the possibility that Hannah would have it no other way. After all it was probably the bull headed need for physical labor that kept her in such fine shape for her autumn years. During her years on the salt, Hannah had never met a job she didn’t prefer to do for herself. In fact, one of her hardest lessons aboard a ship had been to trust in the work of others.
Hannah shivered, and rose off the rock, tugging her basket to her shoulder. Near on twenty years had passed since she had set foot on a deck, and still every fourth thought out of her head was about her life on the waves. It was what every sailor meant when they said “The Siren’s Call.”, since most were too chickenshit to call it their own stupidity, blaming a pretty woman seemed the next best thing. Still they were right about one thing, there wasn’t any sense to be had in it. She had a good life now, Sigmund shared her own love of steady physical labor, and between the two of them they had made his farm one of the best producers on the coastline. Sigmund and his little wife hadn’t been coy in their marriage, and now they had a fifth grandchild on the way to swell the household even further. Hannah had made the offer a while back to have a cottage built for herself on the edge of the property, giving them the space every married couple needed. However they wouldn’t hear of it, bless their amorous little hearts, the pair insisted having their family under one roof, all of their family.
So here Hannah was, with no need for coin, or a roof over her head, besieged on all sides by love from gangly grandchildren and moon-eyed betrothed. All of these things rested neatly in the palm of her hand...and there was still space for something else. It made her feel like shit, but there was no denying it, some part of her longed for the feel of the rolling deck beneath her feet and the anticipation of the great unknown. Rationally, she knew the reason she would never return to the waves, it was the same reason she’d fought so viciously with Sarah about planting the fig trees behind the house. Not because Hannah had any particular inclinations about figs as a fruit, but because of how the trees looked when they were denuded of their leaves in the winter. They looked like skeletal fingers clutching up through the sea water, always reaching for the sky.
It was staring at those trees that her son found her. She had walked the pebbled path home without realizing it, as mired in her thoughts as a cart stuck in the peat moors. It wasn’t until he rested a cautious hand on one of her shoulders that she realized where she was with a little start.
“Someone once told me staring at a tree won’t cause it t’grow fruit.” He rumbled through a chest now broader than hers had ever been, when had he grown taller than she? She smirked up at him, handing off her basket without needing to ask that he take it.
“Depends on what ye came out t’pick, not all fruit grows green.”
“Mmmm” he set off on a slow plod towards the front of the homestead. “Sounds like bitter fruit indeed.”
“Tis at that.” She said out the side of her mouth, following at his side..
“Ye know…” he said, plowing on into the conversation like an ox “Ye need not be the only one t’eat this fruit.”
She smiled up at him fondly. The trouble was he meant it too, he would patiently listen to everything she had to say about her past life, and forgive her for it to boot. Trouble was some things weren’t for him to forgive, and she wasn’t deserving of forgiveness anyhow.
“Some mistakes are jest that lad...bitter fruit only ye can eat in yer old age. Now hush, n’let me be an old woman in peace.”
“Salty old bitch.” he said, without a hint of malice.
“Green little shit.” she spat, with all a mother’s love. “Thought ye would be out still pickin stones in the western fields, not herding old goats.”
“I was headed that way, but someone claimin t’be a friend oh yourn showed up on our doorstep.”
Hannah stopped as soon as he said it, her foot on the first of the sensible stone steps leading up to the porch of their home. She eyed the door above them as though it was a serpent rearing to strike. “That makes them either an idiot or a liar...what’d ye make them t’be?”
Sigmund set down the basket of peas, and as he bent over Hannah noticed a cudgel was tucked into the back of his belt. It was a plain and heavy affair carved from one of the thick branches of the oaks that dotted the path to the house; Sigmund said he kept it around for wolves and men in need of manners. Hannah had only seen him use it twice, and that was all she needed to suspect he’d inherited more from her than a need for physical labor. Nodding towards the house, he gave his mother a knowing look. “He looked like someone who could be trouble iffin he wanted t’be, don’t think he wanted t’be though. Said he jest wanted t’talk to ye, so I left Sarah t’entertain whilst I fetched ye.”
Fetched me and that there cudgel, Hannah thought as she sucked on one of the silver teeth at the front of her mouth. She supposed she could have berated him for leaving his family alone with a strange man, but there was time enough for that after she dealt with this. She went to the wide stump near the front of the house, where they all took turns splitting firewood for chill evenings. There embedded in the stump was a well worn hatchet no longer than her forearm. It was hardly a weapon for most folks, but it was a tool she was intimately familiar with. With a quick yank she freed it, and it slid easily enough into the apron straps behind her back. Thusly armed, she stomped her way up the steps good and loud so whoever was in there heard her coming.
Hannah had to admit, with the one exception seated at the kitchen table, she had walked into the picture of farmer’s hospitality. Sarah had been an inn keeper’s daughter before Sigmund had offered her a life on his homestead, and thusly she had kept his hearth with the same inflexible sensibility that had commanded the line of innkeepers before her. Everything was where it should be; from the fragrant cooking herbs hung to dry along one wall; to the color coordinated rows of jams and preserves they had sealed in the spring. Every pot, every pan, every humble clay cup was precisely in the location it needed to be to convey a sense of welcome and warmth to those who were either returning home, or simply temporarily visiting. It was this way, not because Hannah, or Sigmund, or any of his multitudinous get were particularly neat, but because Sarah Commanded It Be So. The family bore it with good natured cheer, partly because they loved the small woman, and partly because they enjoyed their home being so. Even crusty old Hannah enjoyed it; Which was why, when Hannah saw one of Tseng’s things seated at the table amidst everything she considered home, her blood ran colder than any Ishgard winter.
It didn’t help that Juniper, the eldest of her grandchildren, was seated next to the lean salt haired outline of a man. Juniper’s innocent grey green eyes were as wide as the tea saucers her mother was setting out, as the little girl of eight tapped one of the many ostentatious gold and silver rings on the thing’s spidery sea worn fingers. “What about...that one?”
It opened its mouth, showing very white teeth in a wolfish grin, and a raucous laugh tailored to titillate rolled around the kitchen. “I got that one from a princess of the Ananta, she dared me t’try dancin on one foot afore all her clan, as her people do. I fell flat on my arse, but she claimed I should have aught t’show fer it anyhow.”
Juniper’s eyes narrowed, and her tiny mouth puckered in the inherent shrewdness of all eight year olds “Wot’s an..Antnata?”
“Oh they’re a sight t’be seen..” It winked (...or was it blinked?) to her and laid a finger along the side of it’s slightly crooked nose, as though the two of them in this bit of information had a precious secret to share. “Serpent women whose beauty tis beyond compare, they live in the outer Fringes outside Gyr Abania.”
“Liar.” Shot back Juniper with no hesitation whatsoever. “No one’s prettier than Mum.”
This spurred a fierce blush from Sarah’s pale cheeks, and a second, even louder round of laughter from the thing. “How fool oh me t’ferget her” it said between guffaws. “Yer daughter does ye credit madam, she’ll have her pick oh the crews when she comes oh age.”
Hannah saw the spark in Juniper’s eyes as soon as the thing said it, and she knew, she KNEW somewhere in that little sprat’s mind, a life at sea was already painting itself. It was that stupid, disregarding, need for adventure that still called to her as an old woman, and she would be damned it she let it claim one of hers.
“She’ll have her pick oh the fields till then.” Hannah said archly from the doorway. Before she had a chance to seat herself at the table, she was nearly bowled over by her granddaughter who flung herself into Hannah’s stained apron to hug her waist and then tug on the same strings that held the hatchet behind her back.
“Nana! Nana! Guess what??” With all the energy of a hummingbird in its prime, Juniper bounced up and down before her. Hannah couldn’t help but run a gnarled hand through those curling brown locks and ask the expected question.
“What, my cherub?”
Sparing a suspicious glance behind her at their guest, Juniper went to her tiptoes and whispered in a voice that all present could hear. “He’s a pirate.”
Hannah smiled at that, how could she do anything but? Still the important thing was to get Juniper as far away from the trouble at their table as fast as she could, if she had to lie to the child to do so, so be it. “Taint nice t’call someone a pirate, even iffin they do look like one. Asides, there’s no such things as pirates any more, the Admiral’s sweepin em all back out t’sea. Now yer father’s out on the porch about t’start shellin peas, why don’t ye go help him?”
“But Nan..”
“Now child.” Hannah cut the babe off with a clipped tone that brooked no backtalk, a tone she hated using, but nonetheless had the desired effect. With a bit of a wounded look, Juniper shot around her, and out the front door. Hannah looked to Sarah, and for a moment, she thought she would have to ask the woman to leave as well. However Sarah seemed to pick up from the look that this was neither a conversation for her or tea, and with a sigh set the pot off the stove. Turning to leave for the door, Hannah’s prim and proper daughter-in-law paused to eye them both and then spoke. “If you two are planning to kill one another, please do it outside. If I come back and find anything in here broken, we’ll be digging two graves instead of just the one.” That said, she turned on a heel and followed her daughter out.
“Some men rescue the damsel from the dragon…” It said, watching Sarah’s flouncing departure. “Other’s jest marry the dragon.”
She stared at the man-like thing for a moment, carefully considering her words, diplomacy after all was the bedrock of civilization. “Shut the feck up.”
The one yellow eye narrowed to a slit as she said it, and for a moment she thought they really would just kill one another in her family’s cozy little kitchen. Instead the thing that looked like a man eased back into it’s chair, and with a lazy hand motion, admitted the floor was hers. So she licked her lips and pressed on. “No jokes, no fables, no amusing anecdotes...jest plain speech. I know ye get somat from that other stuff...yer like her in that respect, but whatever that tis ye ent gettin it from this house, not from these people. Not while I’m still alive and kickin.”
It looked slightly affronted by that, keeping its eye on her as it reached for the bowl in the middle of the table, and selecting one of the pears that sat there. She blinked and there was a knife in its hand, cutting off the rind of the fruit into a neat little curl off to the side. A small rueful smile curled its way across that face, not unlike the peel. “Ye sit there, talkin about me like I’m some terror from the deeps come t’visit horror upon ye and yer family.” it said.
Hannah kept her eyes steady and forward, not daring to look away. She’d warned Argus Stormwater another lifetime ago never to take his eyes off this one, he’d ignored her advice, and had paid for it with his life. With the same steady calm as her stare, she pulled out a chair at the table, and then rested her bones upon it. “Convince me that yer otherwise Kail.”
“Oh come now.” Kail said as it continued undressing the pear. “M’a lawful citizen oh Limsa Lominsa just as yerself, aught that not warrant me a little faith?”
Hannah didn’t let her expression alter one jot. “I was there the night ye gave Jehige a second grin then tossed him off the docks, I’m well familiar with what ye are cutter.”
There followed a silence thick enough to spread on toast after she laid that out between them, Kail’s knife paused in mid slice, and that yellow eye eased up to lock on with her gaze. “Look me in the eye and tell me he didn’t have that comin.” It said, and there wasn’t a hint of regret in that voice.
It had been as if the act had been cut wood, drawn water, or any one of a dozen chores that Kail had needed to do that day, and it would probably never see the murder as anything else. Oh it was true that Jehige would have sold his mother to the slaving guilds for spare change, but the utter casual nature that Kail had discarded him was a stark reminder to Hannah. It was a reminder that if Kail was ever doing figures in it’s head, and reached the answer of one dead Hannah, then that is what her grandchildren would find in her bed.
“I don’t think either oh us are in any position t’sit in judgement.” She said, and even as she said it, she realized it was true. With an effort of will she drew her finger tips from the handle of the hatchet, where they had unconsciously come to rest as her mind had wound her up even further during the conversation. She set her hands upon the table, and left them there. “What is it ye want Kail?”
It grinned wide and white, not unlike a shark ready to take a bite. “As it so happens, I want t’do ye a favor.” It said, and then it did bite, right into the peeled pear with no shortage of vigor and relish. As it chewed with juice dribbling down it’s chin, Hannah sat there staring, unsure as how to respond to that. She found her voice after it took yet another bite of the fruit, seemingly content to wait and watch for her reaction. “Ye say that, but somehow I’m convinced this ‘favor’ oh yourn tis goin t’look more like barter.”
Kail favored her with a deceptively casual shrug, she had seen it used more than a few times when this thing was a younger boy. It meant simply that the can of worms went deeper than you thought, Kail was only showing you the surface. Still she found herself listening to what it had to say. “Tis an opportunity, and we elder salts know there ent no pay without a little pain.” It said, then it leaned in close. “But what pain wouldn’t be worth bein able t’have a night’s kip without havin nightmares oh Tseng?”
Hannah had known this would concern the old man, had prepared herself for it when she had seen Kail sitting at her family’s table. Yet still when she heard his name spoken aloud, she felt the small hairs on her arm try to crawl skyward. She wasn’t as superstitious as the rest of her peers, but she was almost certain that was one of those names that echoed back to the ears of its owner. “Twenty years tis a long time t’hold a grudge boy, what makes ye even think he’s still about?”
For the first time, Hannah saw the cheer on Kail’s face roll back like the tides, leaving behind a very naked and raw anger still as fresh as that night so long ago. It’s words were clipped and under control, but only clearly from a small lifetime of tempering them to be so. “This tisn’t about a grudge, this tis about finishin what we started. N’iffin yer old bones ent tellin ye that he’s still out there, then yer a better liar than I am.”
She couldn’t help but snort at the hypocrisy, and made to rise from the table. “There ye are callin me a liar, but yer about t’split down the middle fer a chance t’get at him. Not about a grudge my arse. Yer about t’get a whole bunch oh folk killed chasin a ghost, n”I fer one ain’t…”
Something landed on the table between the two of them, dropping with a strange permanence that suggested nothing but someone picking it up would ever move it from that spot. Kail had fished it out a pocket and tossed it on the table, Hannah stared as the world seemed to twist about the small thing. At first glance it was a gemstone, a tear drop of a strange opalescence, without a single facet to suggest a jeweler’s tools had ever touched it. It was in her hand before she told herself to pick it up, and she was drawing it closer for her old eyes to see. She had to be sure. She dimly heard Kail’s slow growl of a voice somewhere in the distance, but she simply didn’t have the room in her head to listen as she slowly became lost in the folds of light beneath the gem’s surface. There it was...that oily sheen was as sure a signature of Tseng’s hand as any lord’s seal. Steeling herself, she tore the gem from her gaze and set it back on the table. She turned her weary eyes upon Kail, and asked it...asked him, she would have to get used to that idea now if they would be working together. “Where?”
He took a flask out one of those many pockets and passed it across the table to her, she gratefully took it and availed herself of the burning contents. “I took it from a gunship I had t’scuttle back in Ala Mhigo.” He said “ Twas with a bit oh correspondence that suggests the captain was one oh Tseng’s.”
Hannah froze in mid sip, a horrible thought occurring to her. “He ent workin with the Imperials is he?”
To her relief, Kail shook his head. “He eats and breathes hate fer them, he’d slit his own throat afore it came to that. Slipping a few pawns in their ranks and absconding with some of their resources though?”
She nodded in reply, it was a move that was just as much a signature of the old man as the sheen in the stone. Kail was right, Tseng wasn’t just alive, he had a hand in the world stage. Despite all the time that had passed, all the good she had done in the years between, she had helped him do so. There was only one reply to that. “What do ye need from me?”
Kail removed the gem from the table, reaching for it with all the care one handles a snake. “I know how t’get Tseng’s attention. To do that though...I’ll need t’sail into the Teeth.”
Hannah winced at the thought. Far out to the east in the Sea of Glass were a set of islands known to sailors as the Seven Maws. As sailors were both poetic and original, they called the barrier of razor sharp obsidian glass that surrounded the islands the Teeth. It was inaccessible from the air as the obsidian apparently carried trace amounts of aether, this aether caused a perpetual lightning storm to crackle over the islands. Any airship that tried to pass through it was ripped apart by enough bolts to give even Raiden the Storm Father pause. On the flip side however, to try and sail through the Teeth by way of the water was no task for the faint of heart. Hannah could count on one hand the number of Captains who had told her they had sailed through the Teeth and that she believed. Kail wasn’t one of them.
“So what are ye talkin t’me fer? Ye need the best navigator ye can lay hands on. That ent me.”
“Well..” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ve a navigator already in mind, but I think he’s not of the mind t’accept iffin I’m the one doin the offerin.”
Hannah felt her mouth set into a grimace, here it came. “Why?”
“I sort of ...broke his leg and killed half his crew.”
In the swollen, pregnant, and morning sick silence that followed; Hannah wondered if she could break one of Sarah’s clay jars over Kail’s head without giving her daughter-in-law cause to carry out her earlier threat. In the end she eschewed the fantasy to continue the conversation. “So yer the bastard Toumgara is swearing up and down the docks he’s going to murder at his earliest opportunity.”
“T’be fair, he started it, and I ent the only one t’thank fer given him a black eye.” If Hannah didn’t know any better, there was a fond tone in his voice as he said it.
“Regardless how the feck do ye expect me t’smooth things oer?” She asked “Toum’s young enough t’still be floatin on his pride, he wouldn’t sail fer ye without a good reason.”
Kail took a sip from his flask, which she never remembered handing back to him. “He also loves the old stories, and by extension the old crews that helped make them. I don’t think ye could smooth things oer, but I think Hatchet Hannah could.” He said, giving her a significant glance that seemed to pierce straight through what she had been building the past twenty years, and to the solid steel tool thrust through the strings of her apron. She had to put effort into not flinching away from that. With a smirk sharp enough to cut oneself on he added. “Iffin that doesn’t work, tell him there’s treasure involved, that allus works.”
Hannah blinked as he started to rise from her table, not even waiting for her answer. She didn’t want to ask...but there was still that small part of her that roared for rolling waves, and sheets full of the southern winds, so she did. “Is there?”
Kail’s face didn’t shift an iota beyond that smirk as he rose, when he stood straight however...he winked at her...or was it a blink? He left without another word. She sat there staring at the bowl of pears in the middle of the table, not really sure what she would do now. After a few moments Sigmund came into the kitchen, herding Juniper and telling her that no she couldn’t have a fox of her own, he didn’t care how cute the other one had been. Hannah watched them, and knew, sure as spring was coming, that if she didn’t fix this, Sigmund would find out...and he would take it upon himself to do what she couldn’t. So when her son sat down in the seat that her past had been warming, and asked her what had happened. She didn’t answer, she just grabbed a pear from the bowl, and took a bite.
"Self-Reflection on My Self's Reflection or, Do Foxes Tire of Time-Worn Tropes?"
“Pink…everything is…pink. By. The. Twelve. Has all the world….gone pink!?”
Aly flipped her hair out of her face, laughing in her normal voice instead of the overly-theatrical faux-masculine one she had used a moment before. Glancing in the mirror and seeing her attempts at styling were already mussed beyond easy repair, she scrabbled at her hair with both hands, to tease it up into further heights of disordered fluffitude. Pink strands tinged with light blue now stood out in all directions from her head, the points of her long, furry ears barely visible above the mass.
“Okay, Fetch.” She crouched down to address the fox sitting primly on the floor of the small, slightly ramshackle airship, The Four Winds, beside her. “Remember to make a wish, before you blow the seeds off this unusual but strangely alluring pink dandelion, and scatter its seeds alllll across Eorzea.” She pointed at her recently-enfloofened hair, and gestured broadly with an open palm to indicate, no, really, ALL across Eorzea.
“Just imagine, little me’s sprouting up in every city-state. It’ll be the cutest AND most combat-ready invasive species!” She laughed again, imagining the potential mayhem. “Unless you somehow managed to like. Send out fox-spores or whatever. Then that one wins, hands-down. No one will suspect the lethality and sheer cunning of the adorable fox-weeds until it’s toooo late! All of Eorzea will be within the grasp of your many slender snoots!”
Fetch lifted aforementioned snoot slightly, perhaps to watch a moth fluttering past the hanging lantern, or perhaps to affect a more majestic air befitting a conqueror. Whatever the motivation, the effect was achieved nevertheless.
if im not stood at the helm of a 19th century pirate ship with the furious wind whipping at my billowing white shirt and the waves beating at the starboard side and my dark hair unraveling from its braid and my crew singing a shanty like a religious chant trying to make god hear them over the sound of the creaking of the mast and the screaming of the sea then whats the point
EORZEAN PUNKIN CHUNKIN COMPETITION AND ALL SAINTS WAKE FESTIVAL!
The Bellworks Design and Manufacturing Company would like to thank everyone who came to our event! It was full of explosive fun, dripping apples, and hilarious shenanigans!
We would like to thank @erstwhile25 and Crosswinds & Curios for helping us with our gourd launch exhibition! We’ll all tip one out for Maurice, for his enthusiastic participation.
We also want to send our greetings to the love community of The Lazy Paissa, some of whom showed up and enjoyed the festivities with us!
The Bellworks would like to wish everyone a safe and happy All Saints Wake. Be sure to practice safe engineering and wear your helmets, everyone!
(Just a heads up, the Rothlyt people are NOT canon for the FFXIV series, they’re a people I made up when writing for the crew of the Ashen Rook, specifically tailored for my mad cap nonsense.)
Syf was mad, and she knew it. Oh sure, there were surgeons of the mind who could argue back and forth for centuries as to whether conscious knowledge of one's own madness annulled said madness entirely. However Syf wasn’t just sure of her madness, she had crystal-clear, incontrovertible, tangible evidence that her nut was cracked. She was mad, because there were no whales in the Rothlyt Sound.
This wasn’t some snap-conclusion she had reached on the crap-line either, rather it was the result of nearly a decade's worth of dedicated untangling. Years of picking through the scraps of thought whirling about her head, like some patient vulture waiting for choice morsels to be exposed by the efforts of its companions. She had done this for many years, because the options when she was alone in the dark with nothing to kill, were to either sift through her madness...or to talk to the Crone. Syf overall found her madness to be less abrasive.
Regardless she had first become aware of her madness sometime before the burning of the Sin. Certainly around the time that Tseng had begun to tighten his fist around the crew, did she feel the outlines of a chrysalis in her head, pulsing with a terrible, and wonderful light. Then the crew paid for their freedom, and paid was the only word for it. The cost had been in blood, tears, and lives, a cost that they had all shouldered willingly with no heed of the consequences.
On that night, she had stumbled her way across the deck, still warming to the notion of having no eyes. All about her were the sounds of death and dying, the crash of steel, and the ever present rushing swells of the sea. She was marveling at how this cacophony was truly a symphony, when she had felt the slippery scalding blood running across the deck with her bare feet, and the chrysalis in her head bloomed. It had spread its bright, glorious wings in the once dark annals of her mind. It brought her back to another sea, another deck, another wash of claret across her feet. She hadn’t felt the causality it signified then, for her eyes had still been a distraction, and yet the connection was as clear and as strong as if the events had been happening simultaneously.
It had been on one of the many outings to the Sea of Ash with her father, on the pitiful little dinghy he had spent the last of their coin purchasing, and converting into a sailing vessel. He had ignored the laughs of the other sailors when he took his daughter and a few fishing spears out onto the salt waves. Everyone knew that the appetites of Ul’dah had long since depleted the surface of the ocean of aught but the smallest bait fish and chum. Everyone knew that without a net to dredge the depths, that one had about as much chance of catching fish as they did dredging diamonds. Everyone knew this, save for Rast Askerfelt and his stubborn pride.
It was a pride passed down to him from his people, who had been all born as hunters on the tips of their spears. So proficient they had been with barbed spear, longboat and flensing knife, that they had as a small tribe, driven the whales away from the Rothlyt sound. They didn’t bother to learn the tending of crops, they didn’t bother to take up trade with Ala’Mhigo or Gridania. In stubborn silence they had watched as the whales left them behind, and the tribe had slowly died or wandered off, wasting away as a sick seal on the rocks.
Syf had seen that the same thing was happening to her father, he didn’t...or simply couldn’t see futility when it was right in front of him. No matter that there were no whales in the Sea of Ash, he would simply continue to backhand her until either she broke...or successfully speared one. It never occurred to him that there was a third option. The flensing knife, used for sawing through blubber and whale skin as thick as a house brick, had no difficulty at all finding purchase between the fourth and fifth rib of her father’s back. She twisted up and back as he had shown her, allowing her to tear through the heart, and spill its blood into his lungs all in the same painless motion. He was dead before it was even a possibility in his mind.
After the many years, Syf now felt the blood that pooled about her feet then, as clearly as she had felt it on the Howling Sin. She was certain it was the same blood, the same consuming expansive ocean beneath her toes that spread from her to generations back. All of them: Her father, the Rothlyt people, and Tseng, had been consumed by this thirst, this madness. Sanity had never been an option for her, she’d simply never known it.
“Yer jokin.” Mazie muttered around a mouthful of redfish and cream. Laloquer watched the slightly marvelous engineering feat of her jaw working up and down, while her very pink tongue maneuvered the bite about her mouth. This allowed for only a minimal amount of fishbits and sour cream to dribble onto her shirt as she expelled vernacular.
“Jokes.” he commented as dryly as a Thanlan wind “are comprised of a lead in, a body, and a punchline. Everyone laughs, sometimes they throw rotten detritus.”
“I KNOW that.” She swallowed and growled at him. All in all, she had a very impressive growl, it came from her belly and reverberated in her chest. It was a growl you could feel while sitting across from her at a table, which Laloquer was at the moment. Ser Rosen however had been growled at by kings, by barbarous Bludhowlers, and by very small dogs with the barest streaks of sanity. He showed her what he thought of her contribution by blinking over the edge of his reading spectacles, licking his finger, and turning a page in his leatherbound copy of The Economy of Alchemy: Literally Boom or Bust.
It had the desired effect of reminding her To Whom she was talking, Mazie was the first to break eye contact. She hid the threat of a blush on her cheeks by wiping the mess from her mouth onto her sleeve, Laloquer tried his level best to keep from wincing. Sighing, he laid his book aside, and stood up on his chair to offer her his own napkin. “Then know that when I offered to teach you manners, I wasn’t making a joke at your expense. I was offering you my services.” Mazie looked at the piece of silken cloth with the same love and appreciation one might offer a leech on their groin.
“The feck would I do with manners?”
Pursing his lips and bristling his mustache, Laloquer reached into the depths of his person for patience. “Well, and stop me if I lose you on this particularly rickety track of thought...you could use them.”
“What the feck fer?”
Laloquer reached deeper. He left the napkin down by her plate, hoping that it’s proximity might actually at least give RISE to some concept of table manners in her subconscious. “Well...for one, so that you might be able share a dinner table with someone other than a pack of wild boars.”
She paused, but whether it was simply to consider his words or to tear off a hunk of bread with her teeth was a matter between her and the gods. The young woman did however look thoughtful behind another round of impressive mastication. She waggled what was left of the loaf in her hand at him. “Seriously though, who’s goin t’invite me t’some high falutin dinner party? I ent no-one, jest some deckhand on a ship.”
“As good an excuse as any I suppose.” snorted the lalafell and sat back in his seat, opening his book back up and diving back into his reading.
“Oy now, that ent fair!” at least she swallowed first this time so her protest could be heard.
He snapped the book shut and glared at her. “Fair has nothing to do with it. There are plenty who cower behind what they can’t do, or what they’ll never have, I just never took you for one of them.” If anger had been heat, Laloquer suspected her glare would have flash fried him in his seat right there. Instead, with the forcefulness one would expect of taking an axe to wood, she grabbed the napkin at her plate side, and stuffed it into neck of her shirt, staring daggers at Ser Rosen all the while. With an effort of will, he kept back his smile and set his book aside. “Actually...that goes in your lap.”
It was the last leg of their journey to Kugane. And Norhi had been telling every story she could think of. One in her dreams each night, and one more during the day. Thankfully, she wasn’t low on stories just yet. If the crew found it odd that she would sit and tell a story to the ship, they never showed it. Not a blinked eye or a cocked head. If anything, Norhi suspected no few of them would sit just out of her line of sight, and eavesdrop. She didn’t mind.
Norhi settled in the safe spot in the hold, that’d she’d taken to using for story time. It was a spot where some of the cargo was securely lashed in place, with bags stowed between. She now had a sort of ritual she went through for all this. She had found a sea-worthy lantern that no one minded her borrowing for an hour. She’d light it with her magic, set it on the floor, and then pull out some little object from her bag. Some personal key to the story. Today, it was a jar of sand.
“[I]t is actually more expensive to be poor than not poor. If you can’t afford the first month’s rent and security deposit you need in order to rent an apartment, you may get stuck in an overpriced residential motel. If you don’t have a kitchen or even a refrigerator and microwave, you will find yourself falling back on convenience store food, which — in addition to its nutritional deficits — is also alarmingly overpriced. If you need a loan, as most poor people eventually do, you will end up paying an interest rate many times more than what a more affluent borrower would be charged. To be poor — especially with children to support and care for — is a perpetual high-wire act.”
pixelskylines
yousharknotpass
gummygunk
romaincrisis
andulkaphoto
izzy806
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
blakekathryn
