That time my Warrior of Light hijacked my evening to create her own blog. All the better to share everything she’s learned with the world, right? Welcome to all things Alannah!
Name: Alannah Lydihamer (she will keep her own last name, thanks)
Origin: Celestralia Wood
Occupation: Warrior of Light, Bringer of Knowledge
Nameday: 12th Sun of the 6th Astral Moon
Race: viera
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Age: she would really rather not say. Age is but a number.
Height: somehow still not the tallest viera; life goals
Social status: post Dawntrail, married to Hien Rijin with two children
Fighting style: smash and protect, always. Best at fighting from a distance and prefers the bow
I wanted to take a break from Miqo'te -because I have enough ideas for like 5 pages hfdjfs - and play around with Viera a little! As always these are just general HCs I think are fun, so I hope you'll like them too ✨
(Inspired by ‘Scars to Your Beautiful’ by Alessia Cara
20 Years Prior to the Fall of Celestralia Wood
Alannah sat in the near darkness, her face long as she listened to the sobs of her eldest child through the wall. There was a pain in Saoirse now that Alannah didn’t know if she could fix. She had gone to the wood. To Char. But she wasn’t sure it had made a difference. She wasn’t sure she even wanted it to.
As a mother, Alannah had made so many mistakes. She had known the viera rules of gender, and yet she had ignored them while she made one of her children match the other. Or rather, while she tried to. And it had taken her daughter, or rather, her son, leaving for her to see how incorrect she had been—about everything.
Alannah hated being wrong. But she hated seeing her children in pain even more.
Y’shtola entered through the not quite shut door and sat on the floor across from Alannah, offering a foamy hot beverage across the gap between them.
Alannah accepted it with a grateful smile, even though she wasn’t sure what precisely a beverage was supposed to do in this moment. “Did you know?
The witch did not make an effort towards deceit and instead nodded. “I did.”
“I thought as much.” Alannah wasn’t sure what else to say. She wanted to be angry, she wanted to lash out, but she also knew that none of what had occurred was Y'shtola’s fault or responsibility. As a mother, Alannah should have known. “Y’shtola, how do I fix it?” The words felt empty even as they left her mouth.
“You know it isn’t possible to fix such things. Only time can heal the wounds made at this point.”
“I just….I wanted my children to have the best lives. I wanted to give them everything. I thought I was doing the best I could?” Her voice trailed up at the end almost as if in question. She thought back, to the beginning, to when she found out when she was pregnant. “You knew, even back in the beginning. You tried to tell me then, and I didn’t listen. I didn’t hear you.”
“There might be a way. To make even a small change.”
Alannah’s head snapped back up. “You have my attention.”
“It would be…risky.”
“I am not afraid.” She would do anything for her children. Anything.
“There is….” Y’shtola hesitated, “….a time mage.”
Alannah was familiar with the legends of the time mages. The few in existence were powerful magic users, capable of using nearly any weapon they desired. They could manipulate the flow of time, make themselves seem light years younger than their truth, and they could send people wherever they desired in the timeline. “Take me. Introduce us.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“What do you see?” Alannah countered.
The witch averted her gaze. It wasn’t ever that she couldn’t say, not with Y’shtola. Rather, it was that she wouldn’t say.
“What would you say? If you could have one chance to change things?”
Alannah closed her eyes. There were so many things she wanted to say, to Char. To Saoirse. She thought for a moment, and then whispered, “To Char? There's a hope that's waiting for you in the dark. You should know you're beautiful just the way you are. And you don't have to change a thing, the world could change its heart.” As the last words left her lips and Alannah opened her eyes, she was greeted by the sight of a small lalafell in a sparkling green cloak and a cone hat so tall it almost matched the height of its owner. Somehow, Alannah wasn’t surprised by any of it.
“You rang, Witch?” The Lala tapped his fingers against Alannah’s bedside table. That he was SITTING on.
Alannah tried not to think about how she sometimes set food there.
“Hello, Dolion.” Y’shtola stood up and instantly towered over the mage. “Thank you for coming.”
“How may I service you?” He hopped off the table, and, hat exempted, barely stood to Y’shtola’s waist.
Alannah rose too, and towered over them both. “Can I go to the past? Can you take me there? There is someone I need to talk to.”
Dolion raised an eyebrow and stared up at Y’shtola. “Who is this troll?”
“Excuse me???” Alannah took a step forward.
Y’shtola held up a hand to block Alannah’s path. “This troll,” she spat towards Dolion, “is a ruler of Doma. You would be wise to bow to her.”
“I bow to no one.” The Lala backed up, cocked his head to the side.
Alannah wondered vaguely how that hat stay on his head.
“As I recall,” Y’shtola continued, “you owe me a favor. Do you not?”
“From that night in the bar when we—-“
Y’shtola cut him off. “And you would be wise to not finish that sentence.”
“Yes, Witch.” Dolion toed the ground with his pointy green shoe. “You may redeem your favor, if you wish.” He turned to Alannah. “Where would you like to be? Who are looking to see?”
“My son. Many years ago? With enough time to…..”
“It works much like the aether powers of your people, my magic. Except you move back and forth in time, not just locale. You need to picture a moment. Be very specific.”
Alannah cycled through her memories. She wasn’t sure what specific moment might make a difference, though she tried as hard as she could to settle on one. And the it came to her. “The dresses. The pink dresses. With the bows. Take me there.” Suddenly she had never wanted anything more in her entire life.
“First, there are rules.” Dolion hopped from one foot to the other. “You cannot take anything physical from the past. You cannot leave anything physical behind. And. The most important. You must not see yourself. Do you understand?”
Alannah nodded.
“Use your words, please.”
With a glance sideways to Y’shtola and a sigh, Alannah said, “I understand.”
“Well off we go then.” With a snap of his fingers, Dolion sent them into the light for the briefest of moments. And then, Alannah was somewhere else entirely. In front of two tiny viera.
“H-hello, children,” she stammered.
“Mommy!” A much younger Saoirse bounded away from her sister and leapt into Alannah’s arms. “Look at my dress!! Look at my dress!!”
Alannah remembered this time vividly. She had chosen the dresses for the girls to match in their family photo. They were maybe 4 or 5 years old. It was the first time they really possessed the autonomy to make their own clothing choices for the photo, but Alannah had taken that from them. And what she hadn’t noticed, in the moment, was Char in the corner, angrily picking at the bow on the back of her dress. Patting Saoirse gently on the head, Alannah crossed the room to where Char stood in a cloud of emotion.
“Do you like it?” It was obvious the young bun did not appreciate the dress, but all of the words Alannah had wanted to say flew out the window in the face of her babies.
Char looked at her mother. “I hate it,” she whispered, not wanting her sister to hear.
“How can we fix it?”
The child pulled at the bow again.
“The bow?”
Char nodded, giving it another tug.
Alannah reached behind the girl and freed the bow from the back of the dress. “There. Is that better?”
Char did a slow spin, her neck craned to try and see her butt. “I think so?”
Saoirse bounced over and took in the altered dress, her face crumbling. “We don’t match anymore….” Her eyes brimmed with tears.
“It’s okay. To not match. You aren’t the same.” Alannah shoved the bow into her pocket and took one hand of each of the girls—suddenly the moment was perfect. It was exactly the thing she wished she had known to say, way back when. “It’s okay to be whoever you want to be girls. And it’s important that you remember that.”
There was a noise in the hallway, and the voice of other-Alannah drifted towards them, summoning the girls for the capturing of their photo. From the corner behind the girls, Dolion reappeared and frantically snapped his fingers. The message was clear—come. Now. But Alannah had one more thing to do.
She bent to embrace both children in a hug. “I love you, no matter who you are.”
Dolion’s hand latched onto the back of her garment, but it was too late. The door opened, and other-Alannah appeared. Alannah looked up, and met the eyes of herself. In that moment, the timeline shattered. She found herself back on the floor of her bedroom, at the feet of Y’shtola, to face the wrath of a very angry Lala.
“THERE WERE SO FEW RULES!!!” Dolion stomped up and down as he screamed at a volume it seemed his tiny body should not be able to produce. “SO FEW RULES AND YOU BROKE EVERY SINGLE ONE!! EVERY. ONE!!! Do you have ANY idea the trouble I will be in for the abuse of magics???”
“I—I didn’t…”
He snapped his fingers and the bow rose out of Alannah’s pocket. Y’shtola snatched it from the air, her face a blank acceptance of that which shouldn’t be.
“You have RUINED the timeline!” The Lala continued to shriek as he ripped off his cone hat and smashed it into the floor. “You RUINED it!” To Y’shtola he said, “I hope this favor was what you wished, Witch.”
“We will find out, I suppose.” Y’shtola fingered the bow gently. “We will find out.”
Begrudgingly, Dolion retrieved his hat. “You will suffer for your destructive choices. Just wait and see.”
Alannah stared at Y’shtola as the Lala vanished. “It-can’t be that bad. The future.”
Y’shtola simply held the bow in contemplative silence.
The room was cloaked in pitch black darkness as Y’shtola sat up, tangled in her bedding. The darkness didn’t matter though, for the witch, as the children liked to refer to her, saw in different ways. And oh Hydaelyn, what she had just seen….
She snapped her fingers to light the candle beside her bed as she rapidly redressed, the light not needed but rather a habit from when she was young. Images flooded in behind her eyes, the vision a skill she had long ago learned to contain but not necessarily control.
The girl she saw was a viera. Tall, but with short ears. One was chopped nearly in half but still hung. The girls hair was fire, and tumbled freely down her back as she stood atop a rock in the woods.
“The earth hungers for blood! One moment in time, to carve our names in fire!” The girl hoisted a sword to the sky. “This is a revolution!” she screamed.
“We’re rising up!” someone in the crowd hollered back.
Reidun. Her name was Reidun. And she did not belong there, in that place. Everything about the moment was wrong, bur yet, it would happen. And SOON.
Y’shtola plunged out the door, visualized where she wanted to be, and disappeared. She rematerialized outside the door where Alannah and Hien slept, knocking even before all her bits and pieces were back together. When there was no immediate answer, she let herself right in and yanked the blanket off their sleeping forms. “Dear lord in Hydaelyn, must you both sleep like the dead?”
Hien groaned as he rolled over and shook Alannah awake. “Lanne,” he slurred groggily, “Lanne, the witch is here.”
Ah, so he called her that too. She found she didn’t hate the title, truthfully. It was fine if they feared her, just a little.
Alannah peered at Y’shtola through the haze of sleep. “Y’shtola? What has happened?”
Instead of an answer, Y’shtola offered her hand and The Echo.
“The earth hungers for blood!” Reidun screamed again. “There’s a riot in us! Fate thickens the air, our time is near!”
Celestralia Wood, Alannah’s home, was ablaze.
The sword glistened in the light of the flame. It was a familiar sword, the engravings on the hilt were—
Alannah pulled back. “That is Hien’s sword. In. Celestralia Wood?”
Of the three of them, only Y’shtola knew how the sword would come to be there. How one day, many years from then, Hien would fall. The sword would be passed to his daughter, Saoirse, who would pass it to her twin brother, Char, who she felt more suited to carry it. And Char would pass it to his daughter, Reidun. But none of these things would come to pass for many, many years. Yet, somehow, it was happening now. Reidun was here. Y’shtola could not begin to explain the wrongness of it all.
Out loud, Y’shtola said, “The timeline is damaged. Something has gone very wrong.”
Alannah snatched Y’shtola’s hand again.
There was something else, something else about the girl on the rock. Her deep red hair cascaded against a cloak that sparkled by the light of the flame. The cloak was every color imaginable, depending on which way you approached. The girl, Reidun, wore a countenance inscribed with the deepest pain as she screamed, thrusting the sword to sky once more.
Alannah knew that cloak. “The time mage?”
Y’shtola nodded grimly. “Somehow, yes.”
Hien pulled on a shirt that had been discarded the night before on the floor beside the bed. “Pray explain?”
“We once made….an enemy.” That in itself was nothing new; it happened all the time by the very nature of who they were. Alannah donned her bow as she continued, “A very powerful enemy.”
“Who will stop at nothing to get back at you,” Y’shtola added, offering Alannah the cloak from the back of the door. “The tribe is in immediate danger. We must go to them, now.”
“Can we stop this?” Alannah reached for Hien’s hand, even as she knew he could not see what she saw.
“We must try.” To Hien, Y’shtola said, “You must remain behind. Be ready.” For if they failed, the witch knew that Doma would be next on the list of conquests.
Hien nodded, uncharacteristically solemn as he closed a hand around the hilt of the same sword the women had seen in the vision. To his wife, Hien said, “I love you.”
Hien and Alannah kissed until the moment of transfer, when Y’shtola pulled Alannah along the livestream to enter Celestralia Wood. The women were too late. The world was on fire. And before them, as they fully materialized, was Reidun.
“Grandmother.” The girl nodded, and then with zero hesitation, swung her sword in a cutting arc at Alannah’s neck as all around them the trees sang in flame.
FFXIV Write 2024, Day 30: Two Heads Are Better Than One
“But. Why do I have to learn this? This is dumb!” Saoirse flung her pencil across the room so it pinged into their fancy china cabinet.
Char didn’t really have an answer to that question. Why DID they have to learn math? What did math have to do with the forest, with hunting, with running—oh. “I guess you need it to run the kingdom someday. For budgets and stuff.” Char crossed the room to retrieve Saoirse’s pencil and place it back next to her homework sheet.
“You mean when WE run the kingdom,” she corrected as she picked her pencil back up. “Two heads are better than one, you know.”
In some cases, yeah. But not all of them. And honestly, Char sometimes felt like they were one head instead of two anyway. Not that she could ever say that. Char had other dreams, other plans. Things she couldn’t say or share because she wasn’t even certain yet what they were.
“Budgets are dumb,” Saoirse concluded after a few more minutes of studying.
“You’ll never be our leader. Not like this. Not the way you….are.”
Kaya’s words stung, more than Alannah was willing to admit. Her mother was having what they referred to as a good day, a fact made readily apparent by the ease with which she chastised her daughter. “Mother…”
“Do not Mother me, child.” Kaya paced to the window to stare in the direction of the tribal fire. “You know that we do not deviate from the way things are.”
“Have you SEEN it out there, Mother? Really seen it? When was the last time you actually left this house?” Alannah didn’t intend to be so rough, but dear goddess Hydaelyn was her mother the most stubborn of creatures.
Kaya picked at her coat, snapping at one of the buttons as she pulled it closed. “This very morning, if you must know.”
“Did you see it? The fields? The rivers?”
Her mother’s expression remained stoic.
“The tribe is DYING, Mother. We have to change or all of us will STARVE.”
Kaya’s slap happened without warning, and so quickly Alannah may have missed it were it not for the rapidly growing sting that spread across her cheek. “We must NOT change who we are.”
“Mother, it’s not…..” Alannah’s voice trailed off as she held a hand to her cheek that was on fire. “Not changing…change isn’t….” Alannah suddenly felt like much younger than her teenage years.
“This tribe does not change. This wood. Does not change. We. Do not change.” Kaya slapped against her thigh with each word as her rage grew along with the swelling in Alannah’s cheeks.
“The fields are barren, Mother.” Alannah controlled her tone with the grace of a viera three times her teenage years. “The river is almost dry. The traps are empty because the game has fled.” It occurred to Alannah then that the survival of their tribe did not matter to Kaya. Kaya, after all, wouldn’t be around long to see it. And maybe, perhaps, she wanted to bring the tribe with her. She said as much out loud: “You may be ready to die, but this tribe is not.” Alannah cringed, waiting for a slap on the other cheek that never came. Kaya was quiet, her gaze still out the window. “This tribe is not,” Alannah repeated.
“And what precisely, child, would you have me do?”
“I don’t have the answers. But I know that they’re out there.” Alannah waved in the direction of the outside. “There must be other ways to do things, ways to learn and to grow, and we just have to seek those things out. We CAN persevere.”
“We won’t,” was all Kaya offered by way of reply.
“I won’t be silenced.”
“If there is nothing else I know of you, THAT I know to be true. But if you go, you cannot return. You know this, and yet you protest. You reach for the outside world, the world we shun, and claim it will save us. You spread these….LIES.”
“You can’t keep me quiet. I’ll breathe, when they try to suffocate me. Don’t you underestimate me,” Alannah growled, “because I know that I won’t go speechless. And you know too.”
Kaya turned back from the window, finally, to take in her eldest daughter. “You’d have made a fine leader.”
Alannah took a step back, certain that that backhanded phrase was as much of a compliment as her mother would ever afford her.
“You do what you need to do, child. As will I.” With that Kaya departed, descending the path from their house towards the bonfire.
And Alannah made plans to depart for the greater Eorzea that very night. Whether they knew or not, whether they appreciated it or not, she WOULD save her tribe. Kaya had been right about that-Alannah would have made a fine leader.
Alannah sat on her rock in the Doman forest, the same place she always sat when she wanted to think. Or observe, as was the case in that present moment. Hien and Yugiri sat in the dirt just a few yards away, but they could not see her that she knew of. They were playing a game of some sort, with tiles that had pictures on them. Alannah didn’t quite understand—they didn’t play many games back home. Unless one counted that game with the sticks, but Alannah was not good at that and thus did not count it. She liked to be good at things. People liked her when she was good at things.
Her mother, Kaya, especially liked when she was good at things.
“Your turn, silly.” Yugiri giggled at Hien’s super serious expression as he studied the game mat. “Just try and beat me.”
Alannah wasn’t sure she knew how to be a kid. Not like these two. She was too analytical, too quiet. Too uncertain of her words. Alannah watched Hien make his move. It seemed that you matched the symbols on the pieces to like symbols to earn points and clear the board. That seemed easy enough. “Alannah, do you want to play?” He didn’t even look up as he asked it.
Of course Hien knew she was there. He always knew. Alannah slid off the rock and emerged from her hiding spot to stand over their game.
“What would you do here?” He trusted her, trusted her judgement. And he was trying to draw her in and make sure she was included. Again.
Alannah wanted to duck back into the cover of trees. It was odd, the being seen. And her social skills definitely left some things to be desired much of the time, to the point of being borderline deleterious to her budding relationships. But Alannah could see the winning move, the moment that would cause the whole board to crumble on Yugiri, and she was not about to walk away from that. “Take this one.”
“What?” Yugiri practically snorted. “Hien, no, don’t listen to her.”
But Alannah could SEE it, how that one move would open a multitude of others and thus win the game. It was not the obvious choice, but it was the best choice.
“Are you certain?” Hien peered up at her. His beard had just begun to sprout in the prior weeks and was struggling to fill in fully, but Alannah found that she cared for him anyway in ways that she could not begin to explain. She loved him for his innocence, his childlike tendencies mixed with his grown up ones, his ability to withstand even the certainty of the coming war.
She loved him.
Gods, that was gross. What even did that mean?
She stuffed the feelings down, for it wasn’t appropriate to express them. “I am certain.”
When the boy won, as Alannah had known he would, he stood up and hugged her. “You were right!”
Alannah hugged him back, thinking all the while because her brain did not possess an off function. Did she like hugs? Did she want this?
Yes. To both.
Alannah tried not to think of Kaya then, of what Kaya would say to this dalliance from Alannah’s original plan on the Doman voyage. But the more she was out in the world, the more she realized how harmful some of her mother’s teachings had been. You couldn’t learn about the world without seeing all the little parts of it. Like this game. Everything in their universe had a place and purpose. Including the tiles.
Including her.
“Might we play again?” Alannah sat down next to the two friends. “Can we play with three?”
“We can figure it out,” Hien smiled. He reached out a hand and scattered the tiles with a broad shuffle before stacking and resetting the game.
Alannah was trying. She was learning. And for now, that was enough.
Not just any dress. It was red and yellow and had an enormous bow that took up most of her backside. Saoirse stood in the middle of their bedroom and spun in a giant circle, excited for the family photos that were to come, while Char stood in the corner and picked at the bow and dared to dream it might fall off. Char hated bows.
Char hated dresses.
Char hated photographs.
“Charlotte, spin with me!” Saoirse reached out her tiny hand.
Char took it, and she twirled, but it wasn’t freeing. It was stifling. She closed her eyes. She wanted the stupid dress to DIE. She didn’t want to see anymore.
Lord, Char hated looking at herself. And by association, she hated looking at Saoirse. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her sister, rather, when she looked she saw only herself and how WRONG it felt to just…exist. Char WANTED to be happy like her sister. She wanted to twirl and dance and be happy posing with her family in a photo that would live on the wall for the rest of their existence. But instead, she would walk by the photo every day, and the photos before it, and the photos after, and she would stop and stare and bask in the utter wrongness of it all.
Char wasn’t smiling in a single one of the photos; not one from across the many moons. But that one, in particular, when they were four, Char was crying. Because that damned bow refused to part ways with the ugliest of garments.
Char closed the photo album in present day.
“You were a beautiful child,” his wife, Bloom, whispered. “I know that we do not know gender until we age but…”
“I was not myself.” Char never knew the right way to address this. “I was a blank slate; I was who everyone else wanted.”
“You were her. Your sister.”
He had never spoken about this before. “Nobody saw ME. We were just…we were the same. A unit. Cursed just for being twins. Everyone lumped us together because it was CUTE that we were the same, but I never thought it was cute. And I couldn’t say that, Bloom. I couldn’t say it. It would have hurt her.”
“Your sister?” Bloom reached across the table to squeeze his hand.
“I couldn’t hurt her,” Char nodded.
Bloom stood and crossed around the table to stand behind Char and embrace him. “I know. I would quite like to meet her, someday soon, perhaps?”
“Soon,” he whispered, “because we CAN go home again.”
Alannah held her breath as Y’shtola gently zipped her dress. It was very much an Alannah dress. There was some white, sure, because it was a wedding dress, but it was mostly red and black and covered with feathers that ran all the way down to floor on a skirt short in the front and long in the back.
Y’shtola placed a hand on her shoulder and took a step back. “You look beautiful.”
“Will he think so? Hien?”
“He would find you beautiful hoisting the grubbiest of warrior axes.”
When Alannah closed her eyes, she could see the future. Her and Hien, together, hand in hand. Ruling Doma. Two babies, or maybe three or four. She would finally get a break once she had a forever partner who could carry the load with her. She had never had that before Hien. Never had someone who understood what it was like to carry the weight of a tribe. The weight of the world.
She wanted things to be perfect.
“He got chocolate covered bugs, you know.” She smiled at Y’shtola as she pictured how excited he’d been about it. “He thought I would appreciate a taste of home in our tour of the world buffet.”
“That is very sweet.” Y’shtola reached out and straightened Alannah’s hair piece.
Alannah shuddered. “Except, I hate bugs. I ate nothing BUT bugs for a long time when I was younger.”
“The thought is sweet though. He truly cares for you. And I am glad. That you have that.”
“Me too.” Alannah stared at her reflection in the mirror, a viera on fire in a beautiful dress at the crest of the rest of her life. “He can never know. About the bugs.”
“It is forgotten.” Y’shtola put a hand on the doorknob. “Are you ready?”
Saoirse landed her bird on the top of the highest point of the great red gate, a place that had a view of the sea, and dismounted not ungracefully. At 40 years young, she was still down in years from the few viera leaders she had known. She had not yet married, had no viable romantic interest, and thus no heirs of her own. She had not yet seen much of the world outside of the East, nor had she thought she needed to. She regretted that choice now, aa everything she surveyed from the top of the kingdom was hers now. Hien was gone.
Her father was dead.
It had been sudden, his loss. There one moment, gone the next. Her mother, Alannah, was devastated. Unable to run their kingdom. But the kingdom wasn’t hers. Doma passed down to the heir. That was Saoirse.
Okay, well, technically, that was Char, the male child. But Saoirse was the one who remained, and Saoirse had been born to lead—though she hadn’t expected to do so for many, many more years. She wished she had paid more attention to the intricacies of, well, everything. But it was too late now.
Conceptually, Saoirse understood death. She understood that the viera lived a great deal longer than the Hyur. She pondered as she stared across the gray sky which she would be, when her eternity would come to be. Would she be more Hyur, or more viera? She had her mother’s ears, after all.
A viera. Running Doma, leading the people into the future.
Alone.
There was a scuffle, a light footfall, and then her brother appeared over the lip of the gate and settled in beside her. Not alone after all.
“You came.”
“I knew I’d find you here. We always did have our favorite spots.” Char had grown into a fine man. Broad and strong from many years of hunting—the wood had been kind to him. He had recently gotten married and spoke in his letters of starting a family. Somehow, he was so much farther along in his life than , or so it felt. She did not know when they had swapped positions.
“Father is gone.” It was the only thing she could think to say.
“I know. I knew immediately, I think. I felt you.”
Their twin sense was eternal, no matter how far apart they were or how long it had been since they spoke. “The rite of succession is today. They cannot leave the kingdom unmoored.”
Char nodded. He had known this too.
“Thank you. For coming.”
Char patted her on the knee. “As if I’d miss my big sister getting her crown.”
Big sister by mere minutes. “Well maybe it would be better suited for my little brother.” She had never said anything like that out loud, never hinted that she could be anything but the best leader. But there it was, her words and greatest fear hanging in the air.
“This kingdom was born to be yours, Saoirse. They will be safe in your hands.”
“I have never led anything before. Not really. Not like this.”
“Well….” Char thought for a moment before replying. “Leadership is….You don’t need a heavy hand. You need a willing spirit, a good heart. Your people will follow.”
Saoirse had known this, in theory. She had watched her father for many years. But they’d all thought they would have more time. Time itself had felt like eternity. He had taught everything about their kingdom but also taught her nothing at all. “I miss him.” She was Alannah’s daughter. The idea of grappling with her emotions was a challenge.
Char, however, cried freely. “I miss him too.” And then-“I didn’t get to say goodbye. I wish….I wish I’d had that. I loved him so much.”
Saoirse nodded, unsure what to say, where to go from here. “I am certain he knew your love. Our love.”
They sat together and watched as the sun moved across the Doman sea and cast sparkling golden waves in every possible direction. Saoirse let herself cry too, let herself feel the loss of the greatest man she had ever and would ever know. In such a short time, she would have to move forward and take the reins. The kingdom would not drive itself.
Char took her hand. “Perhaps,” he speculated, “the crown will sparkle.” He always knew exactly what she needed to feel better.
“But can I wear the sparkles all the time?” Saoirse quipped through her tears.
“You are the leader now. You can make it so. If you want to wear that crown every single day, you do that.”
They held hands, Saoirse’s right in Char’s left. Saoirse’s brain filled with so many things, sadness and budgets and who was assigned to the kingdom stables and how and where was her mother, but with her twin at her side it felt more….quiet in her brain.
“Father would be proud.”
Char turned to looked at her and stroked his beard—which had grown similar to their fathers. “Of both of us.”
That night, Saoirse would take the kingdom. And the next, they would say goodbye to their father. Together.
“Have you ever considered it? Going back?” Hien’s words were cautious, as if he already sensed the answer.
“Considered? Sure, I suppose.” Alannah wrung her hands together and crossed the length of the kitchen to stare out the window.
Kaya’s rules were forever engrained in her brain. Once you go, once you leave the tribe, you can’t come back. Alannah to this day wasn’t sure if this was a viera custom or just the way of her mother, or maybe a little of both. It hadn’t mattered that the tribe was starving, their major food source lost, or that the river through the wood that existed as their water supply was dwindling. Kaya had believed nature would provide. Alannah had believed there was another way, that they could assist nature and help things to grow. Moon after moon, Alannah sent things back to the wood. Sans her name, of course. Books. Samples of flora and fauna from around Eorzea. Scribbled notes on encouraging the woodland creatures to reproduce. Whatever she could do, whatever she could learn, she sent it back.
However, Alannah herself did not go back. Could not go back. She had left everyone behind in order to help, and it was too late to go back on that.
“I would quite like to meet your sister. Really meet her. Minus that small moment when the twins were younger, I have never known her. It could be nice, to bridge that gap.” Hien had crossed the kitchen to stand behind her, his arms wrapping around her middle.
Celestiah had never understood why Alannah had to go and had been deeply hurt at being left behind. But a young child could never understand the drive Alannah had felt, and still felt, to help her people. Never mind that only a handful of years existed between them, that Alannah had still been a child herself. Alannah was the heir. They would be her people, and it was her job to help.
Even if it barred her from ever seeing them again. Alannah would always follow the rules, even to her own detriment.
“Perhaps we could just go there. To see Char at least. And to just…” his voice trailed off.
Alannah laughed as her hand automatically drifted to her still flat stomach. “I am sure sure.”
Even the aether couldn’t mask the sparkle that stole Hien’s gaze. “We’re having a BABY.”
“Indeed.”
“A boy? A girl?”
Alannah smiled. “We cannot know yet. It’s too early to say. Perhaps Y’shtola might have an idea, when I return.”
“You will be coming home then?”
She frowned, as she hadn’t considered that. Home to Doma, so close to the end of the Rite? No, she had to finish what she’d started. “Hien, we are near the end now,” she told him gently. “It won’t be more than a few days, and then Wuk Lamat will complete the Rite and I will return to you.”
“But….I want to see….”
“There’s nothing to see yet.” She giggled and took a step back, even knowing the aether wouldn’t give him the clearest picture. Her top was perfect though, precisely framing where her baby belly would begin to appear in just a few short weeks. “See?”
“I enjoy that top,” he informed her. And then after a beat, “I might like to remove that. To touch you.”
“Hien!” Alannah swatted in the direction of the aether but was smiling as she did so. She had missed him, very much.
From the walkway outside, Wuk Lamat called to her through the door.
“Just a minute!” To Hien she said, “I must go, love. But in just a few short days, I will be home to you.”
“A few short days, or I’m coming to get you.”
They ended the call with no idea what was to come for Tural.
The person who came to the window was not Saoirse’s brother, Char. It was instead her Aunt Celestiah. “Well,” the older viera whispered as Saoirse crouched outside the now open window, “this certainly reminds me of the olden days.”
Saoirse frowned and sank back further on her haunches, as far away from the window as she could get without falling. “I…I’m sorry?”
Celestiah had a gentle laugh that lit up her entire face. Just like Alannah. And Saoirse. Saoirse tried to remember if Char smiled like that ever, but she found she couldn’t recall. Was she already forgetting her brother, even after such a short time? Or had he never been happy with her? She had, after all, forced him to be something he wasn’t, albeit unintentionally. Celestiah broke into her thought tangent with, “You remind me of your mother.”
Saoirse took that as the highest of compliments, for her mother was one of the most amazing people she had ever known. Though perhaps everyone thought that of their mother? “Thank you.”
“She did this very thing, in this very window, so very many moons ago. When she came to say goodbye to me before she left our tribe.” The hurt was still deeply apparent in every piece of Celestiah, even after so many years.
Saoirse supposed in a way she was also saying goodbye to someone. But she hoped that paired along with that goodbye would be a hello, a new start. She held up her brother’s plant journal by way of explanation. “I…I came to bring this to Char. He wouldn’t want to be without it, I know it.”
Celestiah eyed the bulging notebook. “I can give it to him.”
Saoirse yanked the book away. “No. I want, no, I need to see him.”
“But does he want to see you?”
The words stung more than anything else her aunt could have said. “I—“
“It’s okay, Aunt Celestiah.” The voice came from above them, on the roof of the dwelling, and was followed by a rope ladder unfurling to the ledge where they stood. “She can come up.”
Saoirse imagined that Char wouldn’t need a ladder to climb the house, as strong as he had become. But she definitely appreciated one even though it was creaky and felt like it might give at any moment as she began her ascent.
“Hello, Brother.” Saoirse again held out the notebook in explanation. “You left this. In our room.”
Char took the book and flashed a slight smile. “I appreciate you coming all this way to return it.”
“I thought perhaps you could add to it with flora from this new land?” Saorise crawled over to sit closer to her brother. “And I also wanted to say….”
“What is there to say?” Char asked after several moments of silence.
“I miss you.” Saoirse didn’t have the right words to say anything else.
“I’m not coming back.”
“I know.”
They sat together in silence as the sun began to rise, and then Char said, “I come here every morning to see this,” and waved his arms at the expanse of trees and lights before them. “It is so different from Doma.”
It truly was. In Doma, there was light over the water, and some trees. But nothing like this. Saoirse hadn’t known such color existed. “It’s beautiful.” With a burst of courage, she added, “I’m so sorry, Char.”
“For what?”
“Everything. All of it. Trying to force you to be something you weren’t. Someone you weren’t.”
Char leaned his head on her shoulder in the same way they had done when they were back home. “You did no such thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It….it was easier to be who YOU are than it was to admit who I was. It wasn’t as scary, at least not until it hurt too much to hide anymore.”
Saiorse struggled not to release her tears. This was not her pain, it was his, but she felt it all the same. Once a twin, always a twin. But when she chanced a glance over, Char too held back tears.
“I don’t know how or when,” Char whispered, “but somehow I learned to see that no matter what the world might say, this heart is the best part of me. Just like yours is of you. And they are separate. We are separate.”
“When did you get so much smarter than me?” Saoirse dragged her shoe through the dirt surrounding them on the roof.
“Not smarter. Just….I won’t stay hidden anymore. I’m who I am, and I think that’s worth fighting for. And nobody out there, ever again, gets to define the life I’m meant to lead with this unruly heart of mine.” Char rested his chin on his now upturned knees. The confidence he showed now was like nothing she had seen in him before.
“I wish I was as strong as you.” Saoirse stood, prepared to leave the roof. Leave her brother.
“You think I’m strong?” He smiled for real then, and it was deeply magnificent. “I think YOU are the strong one.”
She knelt back down, and accepted the embrace of her brother as they cried together. The sun had long ago risen by the time they pulled apart.
“You’re going to lead, someday. Doma better prepare itself.” He got to his feet.
Saoirse followed, stopping to cup a hand on her hip and raise an eyebrow. “If your heart is unruly, does this mean mine is as well?” She was still uncertain who she was apart from her twin, her other half. She suddenly understood what Char meant when he said that it was hard to know when they were together.
“This is a thing we can share, yes.”
“I’m who I am,” Saoirse repeated Char’s words from earlier, “and that’s worth fighting for.”
Char nodded gently. “Yes. You’ve got this. We both do.”
The time apart would be good for them both. This was not goodbye, nor was it hello. It was, “Until we meet again.” She embraced her brother and that watched as he jumped off the roof and seemingly flew to the ground. That is not a feat she would be replicating, thank you very much. “I’ll just take the ladder, then!” she called down after him.
Char waved and then vanished into the woods clutching his notebook. Saoirse climbed down the ladder slowly. It was time to go their separate ways.
Alannah sat in a tree high above Fanow, higher than she could recall being in the recent past but still not outside the bounds of their enormous tree cover. The sun could not reach where she sat, but she felt its warm embrace anyway despite the shade.
This was the first true Viera settlement she had seen in many years. She admired the women, the strong leaders. The land both reminded Alannah of home and was everything home was not. A bonfire was neatly contained in the center, surrounded by racks where the days kill waited to greet the flames. That was normal. But the welcoming atmosphere was decidedly not, at least for her. That was not the Viera she remembered. Her tribe had not been cold, per se, but it had not been loving. They had been together, and their group had thrived—they were told that was all that mattered.
Alannah had always known there was more though. It was, after all, why she had left.
As she watched the tiny scraps of buns below, going about their daily activities, it stuck Alannah precisely the thing that was different. Laughter. She could hear the joyful tones that trickled all the way up through the branches. They were together all right, but they were happy to be so.
Had Alannah been happy, in her tribe? A creased changed her entire countenance as buried her face in surrounding leaves. The question felt to complicated to tackle. Alannah had cared for her tribe in Celestralia Wood. Still did. And they had cared for her, in the way that their tribe did.
But had she been HAPPY?
Alannah realized had not known what that meant, not truly, until she met Hien. Despite everything he had been through, he maintained an air of joy. Alannah wanted to be THAT.
She wished then, in the shade of Fanow’s many trees, that she could be something even more. That she too could allow herself to have joy despite the circumstance. And she made a promise to return to Fanow after their fight was done.
