ffxivwrite2024 16: THIRD RATE
extremely low in quality or value; worse than second-rate; inferior
aletheia's done hitting the books. she wants to study the blade now. alle & aldyet. 302 wc.
Aletheia had honestly thought she'd been doing well up until her blade had gone flying from her hand from one strike.
The blade made an awful sound as it hit the courtyard's tiles. She was less concerned about the state of her training blade than she was her hand, though; she'd only given the construct a long stick and it was still disarming her and knocking her to the ground in less than a minute, and it was not gentle. If she had been any more bold and dared to give it a blunted sword she likely would have broken something by now.
"Theia," a warm voice called. Aletheia turned to see Aldyet holding open the door to the living room, face taut but not quite frowning. The sound of the blade hitting the ground must not have been any more pleasant for her than it was for Aletheia—she'd always claimed her hearing was better for her large vieran ears.
"I'm alright, Aldyet," she said, shaking out her hand. The cold air would serve well enough; she didn't want to venture inside for ice just yet. "Naught but the tribulations of learning."
Her face finally broke into disapproval. "Theia, haven't you been out long enough? You'll catch cold at this rate. Come in and I'll have dinner ready in a quarter bell."
Aletheia studied the face of the only family she had left, and knew in her heart that it wasn't a cold or other injury Aldyet was most afraid of. She'd been the one to enchant the training construct for her, after all.
"Just a bit longer." She reached down to grasp the blade's cold handle, the sting of forming callouses in her palm grounding her as she gripped. "I'll come in once I've gotten at least ten hits in."
ffxivwrite2024 14: TELLING
Having force or effect; effective; striking.
elwin wouldn't say he won the cactpot, but. lumelle & elwin.
1135 wc.
"Well," Lumelle said uselessly with her hands propped on her hips, "I can see where I got things wrong."
Beside her, Elwin copied her in a much more animated and irritated manner. "I told you I know the difference between kolossus and colossal like eight times and now you're reconsidering?"
She didn't need to rehash their quarter-bell linkpearl call that she spent mostly saying 'El, are you sure you don't mean colossal problem' only for him to repeat 'kolossus problem' like those were words that went together outside of Garlean robot colossi. The Gold Saucer could make up words for whatever. She didn't care. She absolutely did not care and there was no use continuing this spat.
But.
"I know you know but does the rest of Eorzea know? Someone could have spelled it wrong or something and you were just reading it out loud!"
"Lumelle."
"FINE!" She threw her hands up in the air, just to put her energy somewhere other than her voice. The Gold Saucer was loud enough to mask most of their bickering, but if she really yelled it was more like than not to gain a draconic tone near the end and that would make things extremely not fine. "FINE, you were RIGHT and I'm SORRY, but what are we going to do about—uh…"
Lumelle's voice trailed off as she turned to point at the very large korpokkur idling nearby with the most innocent look on its face. A not insignificant part of her wanted to squish its face a little and make silly noises; the rest of her was trying to figure out how her brother had ended up with it and also what the hells they could do about it. She knew that it positively couldn't come home to Ishgard. How it had ended up in the deserts of Thanalan in the first place was beyond her.
"I don't knoooow…" Elwin looked reluctantly back at his prize. "Um. Wedding gift for A'dewah?"
"Extremely funny idea, but that's not for moons at least and also this guy would not fit through Haruki's door," Lumelle said. It would be gut-bustingly hilarious to somehow put this guy in a box and witness A'dewah's face when he opens said box, but incredibly not possible unless A'dewah gets his shite together and actually sends out invitations or elopes. Whichever seems most appealing when he snaps. "Also also, I think Munehise has a korpokkur or three already, another is overkorpokkur. Can't you return him, or something? How did you end up with a gigantic korpokkur anyways?"
Elwin reached up to pull at his goggles in distress, the tips of his ears turning a dark red. Lumelle hastily reached down to keep him from snapping them over his eyes, because that was how you got eye damage, wasn't it?? And that absolutely wasn't happening on her watch.
"I won't laugh," she said. Maybe a giggle, but Elwin didn't need to know that.
"But I'm still embarrassed," her brother squeaked out.
"You have literally seen me go crazy and turn myself into a dragon because my crush was getting a little hurt," Lumelle said. "That time I came almost crying to your room because I tripped and ate floor in front of Alisaie and she wouldn't stop laughing at me because I made a funny noise when I did it. The 'who is A'dewah into anyways' incident."
Elwin groaned and said, eyes now screwed shut, "That last one doesn't count 'cause you gave me secondhand embarrassment."
"The point stands that you will never be as embarrassing as me," Lumelle insisted. "Tell me how your errand turned into korpokkur ownership before we get kicked out for making a scene and then we'll go get overpriced food and drinks that you can cry into."
"I'm not going to cry about this… Let go of my goggles." Elwin cracked one eye open, waited for her to stand back up to her full height of still-only-five fulms, and said, "So I did finish my errand. I delivered the mark seven drone to the lady."
"And you got paid," Lumelle said, "in… korpokkur?"
Elwin shook his head. "I got paid in cactpot tickets. For some reason. And they were—the Jumbo kind, which is definitely not what I should have been paid in? But by the time I thought about that she'd already left to have her husband try it out?"
She knew immediately where this was going with a biting clarity. "Elwin, no."
"So since I just had them now, and today was the number draw, I was thinking 'well, I guess I'll stick around and redeem these and get a funny hat after'. But as it turns out—" Elwin gestured to the korpokkur, which was not a funny hat in any sense. "—with my three tickets, I got the MGP from both first and second place? Since the lady had picked sequential numbers? So I had like, enough MGP in my hands to buy a small house, and a lot of people looking my way and saying things, and by then I was thinking 'I have got to get rid of this immediately or there's going to be a situation'."
"So you…"
"Bought. A few things." Elwin hid his face behind his hands, peering through the gaps between his fingers up at Lumelle's incredulous face. "The korpokkur isn't the only thing I grabbed but it is the only one that is. A problem!"
This was, frankly, hilarious to a degree Lumelle couldn't even comprehend at the moment. It would likely hit later when she was recounting the whole thing to Alisaie through laughter. She took another look at the korpokkur's gormless face, then looked back at Elwin and said, "You paid a mountain of fake coin for a whole plant that bounces. Look at it, it has no thoughts in there."
"I'm sure it has at least one," Elwin sighed.
"Yeah, the one that makes sure that water droplet doesn't fall off?"
"You're gonna hurt his feelings, Mellie."
"He's like a dog, he doesn't know! But fine, I'll be nice to your oversized moss ball. So long as he doesn't smush you beneath his roundness."
"Can I beg for mercy now?" Elwin's face was fully buried in his hands now. "I still don't know what to do with him."
"I'll call Miriel later, don't worry." And if that failed, she'd just have to go drop in on A'dewah in the Doman Enclave sooner than she was planning. No biggie. "I do have one last question, though."
Elwin groaned. "Promise we're done after? I can stuff my face in buyer's remorse?"
Lumelle patted the pocket of her coat that had her gil pouch. "Promise. Now—did you buy enough of the bunny ears for us to surprise Valdis with?"
ffxivwrite2024 01: STEER
to control the course of; to be subject to steering
desperate times call for desperate measures. atalanta & a monster. 1390 wc.
It took her a small eternity to work out how to open her eyes, mostly because she couldn't remember how the muscles in her face were connected or how many eyes she had to begin with. Or eyelids. She was used to having transparent ones, not this—solid nonsense that left you vulnerable. How useless. And when she finally got them open she couldn't even tell she had managed it for several minutes because these eyes were no better than a nychterida's. It looked just as dark as when she had her eyes closed, black as death and no less cold. The only reason she could tell she was in a cavern was the roughness of the stone beneath her hands, the curve of the wall pressing into her back. Everything in her burned and ached the longer she stared into it.
She was alive. Returned to the land of the living after so long.
Then she realized what must have brought her here and a much sharper feeling started to bubble in her blood.
"You little coward," she roared, an awful ache in her throat revealing itself as she did. What came from her mouth barely sounded like words. Forget that. Forget everything she'd thought before. None of that pissed her off more than Them. She tried to leave, to claw deep down inside her—inside Their body and rip until They were forced to wake up, to take it back, take it all back, but in her fury she lost control. Every muscle spasmed. Ligaments groaned. It was only when something snapped that she grit Their teeth and stopped herself before anything more permanent occurred. The satisfaction wasn't worth the retribution she'd earn—though, if she did it right, ruined just enough…
"Alright, monster, listen close."
She froze at the sound of Their voice accompanied by a flickering light, confused and afraid. By this point she'd tipped Their body over from its seat by the wall, cheek pressed to cold and damp cave-floor as blood dribbled from the mouth, and a terrible feeling came over her; she'd been tricked, she'd been lured out to slaughter, she was in a different body and They were in the shadows ready to be free of her for good.
But Their voice came again, in perfect time with the light, and she heard it: fear.
"Don't go getting any clever ideas. You're only here because I let you," They said, and there—a tremble, a pause for a deep breath. That was a thing They did to stay calm, wasn't it? She copied them, a slow in-out-in-out through Their mouth, and most of the burning feeling everywhere dissipated, which was strange. "And before you start tearing me apart, you're not here for anything but to sit here. Right here. Get back up, you melon, before you get me ill from all the… cave dirt. Or what have you."
In a stubborn fit, she tried to stay still, but something in her coiled tighter the longer she laid on the floor. Maybe it was already too late to not be infected, or some manner of spell to compel her. Either way, she got up.
As she did, clumsily bending one arm to brush the sharp pebbles off Their face, she saw it—she saw Their sword, glowing to the rhythm of Their voice. It had been stabbed into the floor clumsily, at an angle that threatened to tip over the longer it remained that way. But it stood, and if she focused, she could clench Their hands and feel the exact way the sword's handle would fit.
"In the interest of curbing any rebellion, I might as well explain what you missed."
She groaned. "Just because I reside within you doesn't make me blind," she said. "I know already, you—"
But They couldn't hear them, or at least Their spellwork couldn't. "In the process of aiding Azem with this week's disaster, there was an earthquake. Or a landslide? Can't seem to recall the word. Either or works for you, I suppose. I got caught, and then—I was. Here." Pause. "I think I fell through somewhere I wasn't supposed to. They warned us—the village. To create, they convert aether from the abundance of crystals grown underground, instead of putting their own aether into the already-dense aetheric atmosphere of their home. They said they were trying not to give the wildlife anything more to gorge on. Creative of them. Wish I could manage even that."
"Haven't you done enough?" she grumbled. Not only had she been unceremoniously dragged here, but now she was forced to listen to more of their moping? Was it not enough that she had already personalized her own little space in hell? "I'm sitting right here."
Pause. Pause.
"I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry. For the rambling and what I've done."
She blinked. Once, then twice. That was… new. Her memory was blurred, terribly so, but in all her time she couldn't ever recall anyone knowing of her and apologizing.
Their words started gaining speed. "If I were better, maybe you wouldn't be stuck down here in the dark with me. Just my luck I fell into one of the emptied caverns. It's so dark. I can't think here. So in a desperate act, I forced this on you. To think. I'll come back when I've got something. All you need to do is stay here and—not break anything. Please. I'll make it up to you, find anything you want, get your revenge twice over, just—" Deep breaths. She could feel the last remants of Their panic still running through Their blood. "Don't make me come back until I'm ready."
She watched the sword carefully as the last few sparks of aether conveying Their voice guttered out and left her in the dark for good. It was still there, a short distance from where They had abandoned their body in cowardice.
But she knew that fear intimately, didn't she. Some amount of satisfaction rose in her knowing that They were no stronger against it than she was.
And—They were sorry.
Careful of the thing in Their back she had pulled too hard earlier, she got up from her seat and stumbled over to the sword. There was no telling in the void-black darkness where the handle met the blade, and she misplaced Their hands, but it did not cut. She smiled when she finally set Their hands in the correct place, the barely-there callouses feeling at home on the grip. Her approximation of a smile must have looked strange—all teeth and pulled too tight, but who was here to see? What mattered was that it felt good.
"My turn to talk, abomination. And I know you can hear me," she growled, though she tried hard not to ruin anything this time. Who was she to ruin what she'd been offered? "You're as much a fool as the rest if you believe I'd just sit here in the dark until you come to collect. And couldn't you have thought to ask my opinion with all your intelligence, instead of so rudely dragging me out?" She paused. "Though I have to admire your cleverness. Your body is a mess, but I've not had one in an age. What a wonder it is to feel. We should do this more often."
Her old senses were rusted, but having to listen to Them talk had given them time to line up alongside Their senses. The dark remained as it was, but the body had other ways to discern its surroundings, and They had given her a clue. If she were any other being, it would have been useless. But she had spent countless years in a 'dense aetheric atmosphere' and could tell apart ambient from living by smell alone; there was at least one thing underground with her, and if she could find it, make it afraid, make it want nothing more than to escape her, then maybe it would run to the surface. Leave a path to follow.
Better than than to sit here. She pried the sword from its resting place and hefted it onto her shoulders.
"I've no desire to be trapped down here any more than you do," she said, "so let's get out of here, 'Atalanta'."
Mountain Dew is owned by PepsiCo, who also owns SodaStream and 50% of Sabra. PepsiCo has taken direct advantage of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Rewards for the MTN DEW collaboration event include PUMA merchandise.
Both PUMA and SodaStream are on the BDS consumer boycott list.
Pixel birds and novelty drinking cups aren't worth funding and active and ongoing genocide. Consider donating the money you would have spent on those 40 bottles to a GoFundMe from Operation Olive Branch or to the UNRWA.
You might have recently heard about or seen the video of Israel blowing up a university in Gaza. It's also been reported that before Israel blew it up, it stole thousands of rare artifacts from the university's museum. Israel also reportedly stole a statue of the Canaanite goddess Anat from the Pasha's Palace Museum in Gaza after it destroyed it. This is not the first time and will not be the last. Israel's destruction of Palestinian heritage and history is well-documented and part of a systematic process to erase Palestinian connection to the land.
For USAmericans: Call your reps | Email your reps It takes only a few minutes and there are scripts if needed. If you call after hours, you can leave a voicemail.
US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action Toolkit
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Other infographics about the strike: here and here
I will be queuing this post for every day this week. IDs in Alt text!
ffxivwrite2023 25: CALL IT A DAY
to stop what you are doing because you (or someone else) think you have done enough
a'dewah & @blackestnight's haruki. please check on your overwork-prone catboys. 413 wc.
The sound of the door sliding open and then shut caught A’dewah’s attention, ear twitching reflexively, but it wasn’t until he felt a familiar hand gently move his tail from where it was resting to make room that he relented and said, “I haven’t been working that long, have I?”
Haruki chuckled, sitting down behind A’dewah and letting his shadow cover some of the papers on the low table in front of him. “Not as long as yesterday,” he replied, “which is what I’m here for.”
A’dewah sighed, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly; somewhere between writing down tips for Mune’s hybrid-conjury-geomancy studies and working on adding heartblooms to his botany log yesterday he’d gotten carried away and missed a meal, so the extra attention today wasn’t exactly unwarranted. He picked up one of the papers in the ‘read’ pile he made to his left and passed it back. “Just letters today. Oriel and Azami-san are bickering with Tataru over who gets the honor of making my wedding attire, apparently. I’m not really sure what to say? What should I be saying here, if they’re already talking about it?”
“It’s just choosing one or the other, sunshine.”
“I—yes, but if I don’t choose Tataru…” A’dewah trailed off, the rhythmic tapping of his pencil against his mostly-blank reply letter pausing as he remembered just how much Tataru had teased him when the Scions had found out. “Well, that’s a bit—it’s not as if I don’t like what Tataru makes, and I do like her as a person, there’s just—do you remember, when you brought over the…?”
A’dewah looked over his shoulder feeling frazzled to see Haruki looking back at him, mostly amused.
“I think it’s time for a break,” he declared, dropping the letter back onto the table, “before I have to dunk you in the One River so you don’t overheat your brain.”
“I do not overheat,” A’dewah said weakly, letting Haruki loop his arms around his waist and pull him into his lap. “And I do need to go through the rest of my mail, Ruki.”
He tugged the pencil out from A’dewah’s hand and set it on top of his not-quite-yet-a-letter before waving a hand through A’dewah’s mageflame to make it dissolve into sunlit sparks. “The letter will still be there tomorrow, won’t it? Spend some time with me.”
“So long as it doesn’t involve me almost setting our kitchen on fire trying to light the stove.”
ffxivwrite2023 16: JERK
an unlikable, annoyingly stupid, or foolish person
lumelle & alisaie at a ball(?) historians called them best fri— 615 wc.
“Insufferable prick,” Lumelle muttered into her glass only moments after the son of a house more minor than hers had skulked away, only to frown when she realized it was empty. “I swear, none of these house heirs understand the words ‘not interested’ unless they’re the ones saying it. ‘Oh, I’ll break your foot with my heel if you keep asking’ is too unbecoming of a lady my arse. What else could I have said short of ‘piss off’? Almost makes me miss Sharlayan.”
Next to her, Alisaie brought her hand up to cover her mouth so quickly Lumelle thought she was choking on her pastry. Then she realized it was because Alisaie was trying not to laugh in a shower of crumbs and embarrass herself before a good portion of Ishgard’s upper class, which was just as worrisome but for seperate, more personally embarrassing reasons.
Lumelle’s frown turned into a pout as she stepped closer to her date for the night and said, quiet enough for only her to hear: “Alisaie, I will steal your pastry if you keep laughing at me. It wasn’t that funny!”
Alisaie’s muffled laughter didn’t stop or lessen, but she did offer Lumelle the remaining half of her rolanberry tart, which rendered Lumelle’s threat rather pointless. She took the peace offering anyways and bit into it while Alisaie found a glass of water to down and gathered herself enough to look Lumelle in the eyes without her stifled giggles returning anew—she was still pouting, but now because Alisaie seemed to find it impossibly hilarious in contrast to her otherwise put-together outfit and appearance.
There was little else Lumelle found more dreadful than an Ishgardian ball-party-soiree or whatever they were calling this one, but at least she was in good company that she’d trade for no hand nor title, and in no shortage of good dessert.
“Gods, your face,” Alisaie said finally after her third tiny cup of water stolen off some baffled waiter’s tray. “Do you know how hard it was not to laugh in the middle of your conversation with that man? You looked like you were trying to be brave about having bit into a lemon.”
Lumelle’s brows shot up past her bangs, her eyes wide. “Was it that bad?”
“Not bad enough to get the point into his head by looks alone. I’m certain I only noticed because I know you.” Alisaie leaned closer, the skirt of her dress brushing against Lumelle’s fingers. “Anyways, how long did Auphine say we should stay for?”
There wasn’t a chronometer visible from where they were on the floor, but Elwin had slipped something into her pockets before they’d left the manor. Lumelle looked for it now, feeling the brush of warmed metal in her pants pocket, and found a small pocketwatch engraved with roses and lilies in her hand. The button let off a small click as she opened it.
“Another bell and a half,” she said, tilting the watch in her hand to show to Alisaie when she leaned over with a grimace. “I’m sure I could manage the last bit if you want to make your escape now.”
“Don’t be silly.” Alisaie flicked Lumelle’s forehead lightly. “I said I’d stay by your side, so I will.”
“If I recall, that was meant in a ‘I’m not letting you run headlong into danger alone again’ kinda way.”
“And I remember you saying that Ishgard was more dangerous to you than half the wildlife in Aldenard, once.”
Far be it for her to put up an unsightly resistance, if Alisaie was so determined. “They’re like sharks,” Lumelle said, reaching for Alisaie’s hand to twine their pinky fingers together.
ffxivwrite2023 13: CHECK
to look at (something) to obtain information
anyone else here a fan of transistor? thancred & zaya. 2617 wc.
APARTMENT 14
> TENANT ALIAS: ZAYA
> DOOR STATUS: LOCKED
They tried the doorknob anyways. No dice. The flickering aetherial text that only seemed to be visible to them disappeared in an array of sparks seconds after another condition—OBSERVED—appeared above the topmost one declaring them the apartment’s inhabitant.
At least they know now that the information given to them by that is true.
A laugh, soft and right against the curve of their horn. It felt like a caress, or a lover’s whisper, though Zaya didn’t know how they knew what either of those felt like. “Hope your key didn’t mysteriously fall into yet another drain; I recall Tataru getting tired of procuring you a replacement. Though we’ll still be able to get in either way, even without my lockpicking prowess. You can feel it, right? My spare? Seam to get it should be near your inner elbow, with how you’ve rolled up the damn sleeves. I always have to iron my coat twice after you wear it. Not that I’m complaining much. You look lovely in it.”
Zaya felt a faint prickle of heat come to life on their face as they pulled the small key out from the folds they’d made in the coat’s sleeve. It was a strangely shaped key, made not of metal but something golden regardless, with teal grooves that gave off a faint light, but it fit easily when they pressed it to the keyhole on the door handle.
Door unlocked, Zaya grabbed the greatsword from where they had leaned it up against the wall to consider the once-locked door and stepped inside.
“It’s strange, coming here with you, like this. Usually you’re already in bed by the time I get off work.”
The apartment looked like it had seen better days—not in the sense of monsters were here, like the city outside their doorstep, but in the sense of someone has not had the time to tidy up in a long while. There were empty mugs with coffee stains on the kitchen island with stacks of papers, and trinkets everywhere; on the counter, beneath the coffee table, stacked on top of books…
“Certainly looks as if a tornado blew through here. There, on the couch. That bag should fit most of anything you’d like to keep before we skip town.”
Zaya gingerly stepped around a few pairs of shoes, haphazardly taken off and not set aside in the entryway, and picked up the messenger bag from its place among the couch pillows. Nothing seemed to be in it, at the moment, but it did look like it would fit most anything so long as they didn’t want to take anything as large as the coffee table, with its resin fish in the clear tabletop. They slung the empty bag over their shoulder and looked at the table’s design for a few seconds before something on the coffee table caught their eye. Most of the decoration in the shadow-cast apartment was blue, which made what was on the table stand out even more.
Sword in one hand, Zaya leaned down to pick up the end of it not trapped beneath a heavy book. A purple flicker by the end crackled and expanded into letters.
“Ryne’s, unless that’s the one she gave to you. She’s been rather forgetful as of late; I keep telling her not to leave her belongings behind when we come here only for her to realize her gel pen or her nail polish is still here halfway across the district. I—she was at the Wandering Stairs. When they… well. She’s clever, and a deft hand with the daggers I gave her for her sixteenth nameday—mayhap she’ll find her way here on her own. Else we’ll need to take a trip to the Third District before leaving.”
Zaya tugged at the end of the ribbon, trying to slip it out from under the heavy book with a title they couldn’t read. Instead of the rest of the ribbon coming out on its own, it dragged along a small black-and-gold cylinder, wrapped in its embrace.
TUBE OF LIPSTICK
> ORIGIN: DISTRICT OF THE TRANSCENDENT
> SHADE: CHERRY WINE RED
“That would be Gaia’s. It explains why Ryne had makeup on before the party. I suspect that if Ryne manages to return, it will be with Gaia in tow, no matter that she would be safer back home than with us.”
They let the sword’s handle rest in the curve where their shoulder met their neck as they tied Ryne’s ribbon around the tube of lipstick and slipped them into a small pocket in their bag. The strange ridges on the handle felt the slightest hint warm against their scales; for a moment, Zaya imagined the touch of the handle to be a hand brushing away hair, before they remembered how silly that was.
There wasn’t much else of note on the table, so they looked up at the rest of the apartment. Nothing in the kitchen seemed of much worth, not enough to be carrying around assuming they would have to fight more of those things—Terminus, like that tall robed man had said before fleeing—so they turned and walked instead to the hall leading further into the dark. Their sword lit up the smallest area around them, just enough to not slam their knee into a shelf against the wall and to catch on the glass and metal that hung on the wall and decorated the top of the bookshelf.
“Better we take those too. The less people the Convocation can tie to us, the better. I doubt any of your friends would fare any better against them than we did, much less your family. There’s a few thin scarves in one of the shelves to wrap them in, if you’re as worried as your furrowed brow makes you out to be.”
Sure enough, Zaya found the scarves—mostly blue ones, with a few teal and purple in between—and wrapped the pictures in them one by one. A woman with almost-glowing white hair that was as long as she was tall beamed up at a past version of them in one; in another, seven others in their colorful togetherness threw flower petals at them and a white-haired man with tattoos on his neck. A third had them standing alongside people with similar eyes, and the same colored scales, making food with flour puffed all over. That same woman from the first appeared again with a pink-haired woman as tall as them, distracting them as a lion-man even pinker behind them stood there with a cake and an elven person held a stack of cone-shaped hats in a fourth.
Zaya couldn’t recognize anyone in the pictures besides themselves and the man in the second, only getting the vague hint of warmth from what were clearly beloved memories. They were going to be terribly heavy to carry around if they grabbed every last one.
Wrapped in color, Zaya put all twenty-nine photographs in the messenger bag. Logically, they wouldn’t have all fit—they fit despite it, and the bag remained slim and light.
They almost stepped away from the hallway shelf when the enticing scent of something caught them midstep. A small bag on the end of the shelf caught their eye.
DRIED FRUIT
> FRUIT TYPE: PIXIEBERRY
> TASTE: SWEET & TART
“This should be in the kitchen, bluebird. Do you ask your sister to get you the tartest ones on purpose? I swear those damned things were only ever sour when I got the chance to eat them. Which I rarely did, mind you.”
Zaya rolled their eyes reflexively—what was so ridiculous about that statement? They couldn’t remember—and put them in their bag with the ribbon and tube of lipstick before moving on.
At the end of the dark hall was a trio of doors; they opened one and found a room more suited to a young girl, desk filled with pens and things for hair and a small, adorable cat-shaped lamp. The next one they tried was the bathroom, with a large mirror that Zaya could see themselves in even without stepping fully into the room. Their eyes widened as they saw themselves, hair falling out of the leather they’d used to tie it and facepaint cracked.
“There’s you. Still looking decently put together, even after I failed to save your voice. Wish I could say the same of myself. Remember to clean your facepaint off.”
On the counter, a small basin with clear water and a towel stained with blue splotches varied in intensity seemed to be set their just for that purpose. Zaya stepped in and leant the sword against the counter’s edge before they dipped the towel in the water, wrung it out, and wiped off the worn-out paint off their face.
It was even stranger, to see their face like this—bare of the extra color. Their skin seemed less warm in tone without the stark contrast, their scales too dark, their eyes less bright. If they were less sure of their hands, or their feet, they might have looked in the mirror and wondered who it was staring back at them. As if this body wasn’t really theirs.
“Looking lovely this evening. Though I am the most biased party, and there’s never a state in which I don’t find you so. You’ve missed a spot along your jaw.”
Zaya frowned and tilted their head. Sure enough…
They wiped off the stray spot and left the towel in the basin. Nothing in the bathroom seemed important, so they grabbed their sword again and dragged it behind them as they opened the third door at the end of the hall.
This door led to a large bedroom, not as thoroughly decorated as Zaya felt it should be—or perhaps simply decorated for someone that wasn’t them. There were nice, thick curtains, blocking out most of the city lights, and a few miscellaneous trinkets decorated what surfaces there were, but it all seemed like noise. Meaningless, even as they looked the room over once then twice trying to derive something from it.
What drew their eye first in the room wasn’t the collection of crystals glimmering in the beam of light slipping through the curtains, or the decorations hanging from the ceiling.
It was a pair of gloves sitting on the desk, over a collection of papers filled with pencil sketches.
Zaya picked the gloves up and turned them over in their hands. They looked like they would fit them perfectly, so they slipped them on—
The blue stone that decorated the end near their wrist lit up, but little else changed about the gloves. Still, Zaya kept them on, feeling more right than they did before the facepaint came off. They did seem a bit bare, like there was more meant to fit on top of the black cloth gloves and the woven bracelet sewn on with the blue gemstones, but it was better than looking at their hands bare.
“The Convocation must have taken some offense to your skystories. I can’t fathom much else they would have wanted to kill you for. Luckily for us, they didn’t know about me.”
Zaya shrugged, not knowing what a skystory was but understanding the weight the word had through glancing at the sword; their would-be murder weapon. And now they were lugging it around, using it to kill horrific monsters that seemingly appeared out of thin air.
Strange evening.
A flash of light slipping between the curtains caught their attention next. Curious, Zaya set their sword aside, pulled open the heavy curtains and found the window wasn’t just a glass pane in the wall.
BAY WINDOW
> ALLEYS TO WANDERING STAIRS: 9
> MOMENTS SHARED: 1,627
“Looks just as comfortable as ever...or maybe even moreso. Did you add more pillows again? I could have sworn there was more space to sit and lie down last time I checked. Not that I can lay down and put my feet up like this. You could, though. Maybe get some shuteye. I’m sure running halfway across the district hasn’t been easy, with this damn sword in tow.”
Zaya looked at the pile of pillows longingly, then glanced back at the doorway. Was it really safe to be sleeping?
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep watch for you. As I always have, and always will.”
There was that uncertain ache in their chest again, that phantom pain that Zaya had once thought was them imagining what it would be like for the sword to find its mark in them instead of where it had actually ended up. They looked to their sword—
THÝRA
> PSŪKHḖ: 2
> KILLS TODAY: 1
“I’ll be just fine,” the sword—Thancred—said. The glow of the blade pulsed in time with his voice, painting the walls in soft colors. “The benefit of not having a body. Just prop me up in line with the doorway and keeping watch will be as simple as looking forwards.”
Zaya sat down on the cushioned seat of the bay window, considering as their eyes almost shut on their own just from the close comfort of the pillows. Of knowing they weren’t alone. Of the bay window and the things they couldn’t remember and could barely feel the warmth of. It would be as easy as that, leaving the sword and Thancred to guard them.
They didn’t want to.
Before they kicked off their shoes—horribly uncomfortable, they needed to remember to put on those nice ankle boots before they left—Zaya leaned over the side of the window seat and reached for the sword’s handle to pull it into the seat with them as they laid down. Not the most comfortable thing in the world. Whoever designed the blade had decided to make it nearly as long as they were tall, and with plenty of spikes and points besides—but the sword’s edge was dull when they pressed their palm against it. Pressed against, even, just to make sure. No pain or blood welled to the surface.
“Zaya.”
They looked up at the eye-like decoration in the sword, defined by the glowing lines that shifted from a light yellow to almost pink or lavender at times.
“You don’t have to. I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”
Zaya pressed their lips together into an angry frown instead of a teary one and pressed their palm harder against the sword’s edge. Still no pain.
“Alright, point taken. Still…”
Whatever Thancred said next didn’t matter. They set him on the seat’s cushions as they went about adjusting all the pillows for their horns, and also to ensure the sword didn’t end up stabbing them in their sleep just to prove them wrong.
“Hey. Zaya.”
They laid down again and looked up at the sword’s strange eye.
“I wanted to—I just—mm. Don’t let me go. Alright?”
That, they could do. Their hand, the one that wasn’t pinned under them, wrapped around the handle of the sword. Zaya closed their eyes, curled up beside the sword close enough to feel a faint warmth coming off the metal, and tried to forget that they still didn’t know who Thancred was—other than the body in the street they had pulled the sword from with a strange, awful ache in their heart and tears brimming over in their eyes.
ffxivwrite2023 12: DOWDY
(of a person or their clothes) unfashionable and unstylish in appearance
minfilia, thancred, & zaya get ready for an investigation. 1198 wc.
Given that Zaya lost a good few years of memories to whatever-it-was-they-did-during-the-Calamity bridging the gap between leaving behind the Azim Steppe and waking up in an infirmary tent to Carteneau’s ruins, they could recall very few moments in their life where they had to stop and wonder what, exactly, had led them here. Usually it was in the wake of something especially dire or foolish happening, which they had been told their standards for dire and foolish were far different from the average Eorzean’s definition.
This, they thought while struggling to find which damn hole in the cowl their head was supposed to fit through with what little light seeped through the thin fabric—this was shaping up to be one of those moments.
Zaya could barely remember exactly why it was that Minfilia and Thancred had brought them here, and were now watching them try on an assortment of clothing that would suitably hide their Auri features from a distance. It had something to do with the recent Immortal Flames investigation that Thancred had been scolded for being too nosy about, and their status as Bloodsworn within the Flames, even though Zaya wasn’t sure whether they still counted as one after Raubahn told them to rest after the Calamity and hadn’t called for them since. Beyond that—something about a temple, priests, and primals? There was a reason Zaya wasn’t an official part of the new organization Minfilia was leading, despite being regularly called upon when they were in need of a good fighter. Most of the reason they kept accepting Minfilia’s requests for aid was the pay, which they could use to buy more things for the refugee camp, rather than any faith in what budding friendship they might have with the two Scions currently laughing behind their hands at their misery—
They made a small noise in triumph as they found which opening was meant for their head, and slipped their head through carefully. Luckily, the tips of their horns didn’t catch on the thin hempen cloth like they did with the other cowl, now draped over Minfilia’s desk with two large tears running up the front.
The new problem, Zaya found, was that this cowl was absolutely too large. Even Oktai’s Nhaama-cursed attempts at sewing together deels from the woolen cloth Taban made from her sheep would have fit better. They stuck their arms through the sleeves and found their hands at least four ilms short of reaching the other end, as if they were wearing a poorly fitted terleg, and though the waist now fell loosely enough that their tail didn’t feel trapped, it was now definitely too loose. The hood—which now had enough space for their horns to not be obviously pushing against the sides—draped past their forehead and over their eyes. When they shoved it back up with a frown and held it there with their hand balled up beneath the too-long sleeve, Minfilia and Thancred were looking at them with wide eyes.
“I may have underestimated how… lithe Zaya was,” Thancred said with a smile on his face that Zaya didn’t think was as apologetic as he tried to make it be. They squinted at him from the shadow of the cowl’s hood until he shifted his weight and schooled his face again, clearing his throat before he added, “I did have the wisdom to grab a rope belt along the way, but I… well.”
He gestured towards Zaya’s feet; the bottom hem of the cowl, which was supposed to fall somewhere between just below their knees and midway down their shin, was instead resting on the rug.
“Pray tell, Thancred,” Minfilia said, walking over from Thancred’s side across the room to pull the fabric at Zaya’s waist; her face scrunched up with a far-too-amused-but-tight smile when they shifted away from her touch and she saw for herself just how poorly this stupid cowl fit them, “what sizing did this merchant give you?”
Thancred’s brow furrowed, crossing his arms in thought. “I’m quite certain I asked for the two smallest in Hyuran sizing, if that’s what you’re getting at, my dear. Though perhaps…”
Minfilia took one last discerning look at them, her bright smile contrasting what Zaya felt like was a pout on their own face, before she looked back and said, “Thancred. Midlander or Highlander?”
Zaya wasn’t terribly clear on the difference between the two, beyond knowing it was two separate clans of Hyur, but Thancred understood well enough. He pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered something under his breath.
Minfilia laughed, a light sound that made them feel a little less frustrated with their state of dress. “One of both, then. The merchant must not have known what to do. And I suppose it’s too late in the day to go searching for alterations, or something less ill-fitting…”
Ill-fitting was a severe understatement, Zaya felt, trying to roll up the sleeves only for the thin, loose fabric to fall right back over their hands. They looked like that trio of kids among the Ala Mhigan refugees at camp who stacked on top of each other’s shoulders in a robe the other week to try and get more food, and felt about twice as silly doing so.
“I’d hardly say too late,” Thancred said with a tired sigh. He pushed off from where he was leaning on Minfilia’s desk to join the two of them, and Zaya looked up barely enough to see his hand reaching out to them beneath the brim of the hood, which had fallen back over their forehead again. “It may prove to be a hassle, but better a little trouble over making poor Zaya walk around with me in—”
Before Thancred could touch the cowl, Zaya snapped their arm up in front of them and let the excess fabric slap him across the face; he sputtered and stumbled backwards, though (hopefully) not in pain. Minfilia, not expecting the way they’d gone about things, gasped in surprise, and they took that moment to pull away from her hand too and shuffle towards their pack, still open on the small couch in front of the solar’s fireplace. They were sure they had it on them, it would be stupid not to…
Behind them, they felt Minfilia and Thancred come close enough to peer over their shoulders as their fingers brushed against the right bundle in their pack. They felt around for a few moments more—the hood still falling in front of their eyes was making things difficult, even as they leaned over the back of the couch and gravity brought it away from being directly in front of their face—and then they pulled out a small box that rattled with every movement. Smiling, Zaya turned to take one of Thancred’s hands and slapped the box into his palm eagerly before they started to roll up their sleeves again.
Thancred stared at them curiously for a few moments before Minfilia stepped around Zaya and opened the box in Thancred’s hands to reveal an assortment of sewing pins, colorful glass heads sticking out from everywhere in the mass of sharp metal.
ffxivwrite2023 05: BARBAROUS
mercilessly harsh or cruel
lumelle’s having a really bad day. sorry. that’s on me. lumelle & emet-selch. 3401 wc.
i’m not sure how to warn for this, exactly? but CW for discussion & most of the actual task for what the carers for end-of-life patients at the inn do. i don’t think it’s worse than the SHB MSQ alisaie side but. yanno.
He was back again. Much to Lumelle’s personal dismay, he always seemed to appear whenever Alisaie left her side to go on patrol, which made it impossible to fully convince Alisaie of the presence of an Ascian—a Paragon—this close to the crystallized Flood of Light. At least he didn’t seem interested in doing harm to anything other than Lumelle’s sanity, and at least his presence here in the kitchen meant he wasn’t off harassing A’dewah in the carer’s dormitory.
Lumelle took a deep breath, and looked away from Emet-Selch sitting on the kitchen counter beside her cutting board as if he were Elwin and not a full-grown man in a hoity-toity, heat-trapping robe.
“Get off the counter before I decide to chop off your fingers and use them as eater bait tomorrow,” she said evenly, gripping the bone handle of the knife in her hands tight as she continued to cut up the last harcot for the topping.
ffxivwrite2023 01: ENVOY
a messenger or representative.
how’d i end up with a letter fic?? erenville & alle. 748 wc.
His payment for services rendered found him not long after he’d checked the last requisition off his list and stored it in his pack at the hands of an adventurer.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I believe I’ve a delivery for you!” The adventurer—looking rather ruffled, perhaps from the long trek between here and the closest town—pulled out a letter with no envelope sealed by unstamped wax and a small bottle no larger than his palm from her pack. Though he didn’t recognize the bottle, other than it being a common piece of glassware sold back in Sharlayan, he caught sight of the ink stamp on the letter’s back and smiled.
“Thank you,” he said, taking both the letter and the bottle from their hands. “I’m afraid I’ve little to reward you with, at the moment.”
“Oh, no need, sir,” she said, waving her hands. “I was paid by the lady beforehand—quite generously! I was almost afraid I’d have to find you knee-deep in monsters.”
With that, the adventurer left, ready to trek back out into the humid jungle haphazardly before he could warn her about the bugs being more active and irritable at this hour thanks to the floral bloom. Usual adventurer bravado, hopefully with the skill to back it up.
He’d give it a good half a bell before trying to leave, himself—with little else to do or plan, he pried open the wax seal on the letter and sat down to read.
ffxivwrite2023 05: BARBAROUS
mercilessly harsh or cruel
lumelle’s having a really bad day. sorry. that’s on me. lumelle & emet-selch. 3401 wc.
i’m not sure how to warn for this, exactly? but CW for discussion & most of the actual task for what the carers for end-of-life patients at the inn do. i don’t think it’s worse than the SHB MSQ alisaie side but. yanno.
He was back again. Much to Lumelle’s personal dismay, he always seemed to appear whenever Alisaie left her side to go on patrol, which made it impossible to fully convince Alisaie of the presence of an Ascian—a Paragon—this close to the crystallized Flood of Light. At least he didn’t seem interested in doing harm to anything other than Lumelle’s sanity, and at least his presence here in the kitchen meant he wasn’t off harassing A’dewah in the carer’s dormitory.
Lumelle took a deep breath, and looked away from Emet-Selch sitting on the kitchen counter beside her cutting board as if he were Elwin and not a full-grown man in a hoity-toity, heat-trapping robe.
“Get off the counter before I decide to chop off your fingers and use them as eater bait tomorrow,” she said evenly, gripping the bone handle of the knife in her hands tight as she continued to cut up the last harcot for the topping.
“So barbaric,” Emet-Selch sneered, but he did get off the counter, if only to loom over Lumelle as she continued her work. Lumelle had never particularly begrudged her Elezen-typical growth spurt not happening on time or quickly—even now she was only a few ilms taller than she was two years ago—except for when he did that just because he knew she hated it. “And even beyond your propensity to threaten violence and enact it, you seek to kill your friends before they become foe. Hardly becoming behavior for a hero such as yourself.”
“Whatever, Solus.” Lumelle took the biggest chunks of the harcot that didn’t look mangled and set them aside on a plate—the rest she stuffed into her mouth and chewed angrily before she wiped off her hands and turned to pry open the lid of icebox. The rule she had set for herself repeated in her head: don’t let the Ascian win. He wants you to flip out.
Emet-Selch didn’t seemed so easily deterred today—or was it tonight? His shadow fell over her as she got the heavy, ill-fitting lid off the icebox and pulled out the chilled jelly with its accompanying jar of lemonette syrup. “I thought you would leave the dubious honor of such dirty work like cooking to your fellows. That Hume girl, if not your precious Scion. Feeling guilty, mayhap?”
She swallowed some of the harcot—made a reminder to herself to ask Rhon Ron if he had any more left to sell, because these were really good—and looked up at him. “You’re in my way. If you really want to observe, get out of the kitchen.”
His face twisted lightly with—disgust, maybe? Lumelle couldn’t really tell; he looked at everything like that, save maybe when Lumelle caught flashes of him watching her cut through swathes of sin eaters, sitting bored in the distance with a stare sharper than any blade. Whatever it was, it was only there for a fleeting moment before he moved towards the kitchen doorway and said, “Do finish chewing before you say anything else. I have the time.”
“My etiquette teachers would say the same,” she said, mouth still half-full. Don’t bow your head; keep breathing normally. She put the lid back on the icebox, hoping whoever needed it next would be able to get it open, set the jelly and the jar to the counter, and then pulled out the key to the locked drawer she’d borrowed from Tesleen. “I used to listen to them—when I was seven.”
Emet-Selch scoffed. “And how long ago was that, three years?”
Lumelle snorted—she might have been angrier, if she’d not spent most of her childhood expected to hold herself in a manner befitting a full-grown lady of the house and now found being childish almost refreshing at times—and stuck out her tongue at him with her smile oddly stretched from the lump of harcot she was holding in her cheek. The petty joy of getting someone incomprehensibly ancient to stoop to arguing with her was about the biggest win she was going to get out of parleying with Emet-Selch.
“Still here?” she asked, twirling the key on her finger. Usually Emet-Selch would scoff and disappear back into the aether after Lumelle got him to stoop to playing along with her conversation instead of whatever he wanted.
Not now, though.
Emet-Selch snapped his fingers, and a chair appeared beside the doorway for him to sit in, crossing one leg over the other. “Of course,” he said, that perfectly-rehearsed smile that reminded Lumelle of the lords and ladies back home settling onto his face. “I meant what I said—I have plenty of time to chat. It’s not as if you Scions have made any dent in my plans, and at the moment I find this part of the ruined star particularly intriguing to watch.”
Lumelle swallowed the rest of the harcot to keep from frowning. She didn’t want Emet-Selch to see the contents of the carer’s kitchen drawer, but she had little choice in the matter; he really was intent on seeing this part of Lumelle’s misery through.
She should have just stabbed him when he approached her after that cursed sin eater hunt, no white auracite be damned.
Unlike everything else in the Inn’s kitchen, this drawer still worked almost as well as the day it was built. She slid the key into the lock and turned it without needing to use her strength like earlier with the icebox, and opened the drawer to see the contents split evenly between the carer’s stock. The glass bottles clattered with the movement, some rolling around freely. Lumelle’s eyes drifted to the folded piece of paper underneath the vials on her right.
She reached in and pulled it out. Unfolded it.
Dosage suggestions based on food type, amount, & patient body weight.
“And lo, the valiant knight turns her blade against those she swore to protect.” Emet-Selch sounded so damn smug, narrating from his shitty little chair; maybe he’d done it before from his throne in Garlemald. Lumelle wanted nothing more than to get her sword and pin him to it through the stomach. “Mayhap a situation not so unfamiliar. I recall Ishgard determining her heretics based on a whim quite often.”
Lumelle bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood, the juice from the harcot still sticky on her tongue making it sting. “I never swore anything. Stop talking so loud,” she grit out. Which carer wrote this? They had the smallest handwriting Lumelle had ever seen, so teensy she almost felt the need to squint to read it. In liquids & syrups, one-fourth jar, 100 to 115 po—
Emet-Selch kept talking at her. “An oathless knight. How pitiful. Even the knights of Voeburt at least had some civility and honor about them,” he said. “Though I suppose what little honor you had left you over a moon ago.”
“I’ll show you honor,” she muttered, wrinkling the slightly-yellowed paper between her fingers from how hard she was pressing them together. She hated this—she hated him. What did she ever—why did it have to be—why couldn’t he just go bother—
Lumelle rubbed her eyes hard with her free hand when the letters on the page blurred and tried to hide the moisture on her wrist, pretending it was irritation from the light sandstorm. No. This was fine. An Ascian? Psh. He could be doing this to A’dewah, and then she’d feel so much worse. He could be in the Crystarium with Elwin and she wouldn’t even know, but he was here.
She could be making lemon waffles instead of jellied harcot. She could be standing over a grave wondering how she was ever going to look at Alphinaud ever again. Maybe she was still really mad at her, but at least she was here. At least she could still—
I was fine! You should have stuck to the plan! Do you not trust me?!
“Having second thoughts?”
“About thinking you had anything important to say, ever? Oh, sure,” Lumelle snarked, reaching into the drawer for the right bottle only to pause when the glass frosted over near where her fingers were. After a moment she grabbed it anyway, barely feeling the glass in her palm, and hooked the ring of measuring spoons on her pinky before she shut the drawer with her hip.
“Please,” Emet-Selch drawled, his voice practically dripping with venom. Lumelle wondered, briefly, how Urianger’s research into making white auracite with Il Mheg’s prismstone was going. “Everything I say and have said is naught but the unvarnished truth.”
That was what Lumelle hated the most. She took one last look at the chart before she folded it back up, looked straight at him, and said, “It’s certainly not winning you any points with me. Would it kill you to be kinder about it?”
As those last few words left her mouth, she knew at once that she’d fucked up.
“Hah. Kinder, like you believe yourself to be?” Emet-Selch gestured to his side, hand waving through the doorway and down the hall leading to the patient’s ward. “A sugary lie will not suddenly make you a hero, nor stop the Light’s work. You chose to leave the girl’s side. You chose to abandon the plot laid out by your dear. You chose to leave her like this—allowed her the long defeat of transformation rather than swift mercy at your hand. And now you will prove yourself cruel yet again—at her weakest, you will deliver her poison and end her. What kindness could ever reach something as awful as you?”
Her vision blurred again as she looked down at the counter before her, where she put the vial of poison and the measuring spoons. In her mind, she knew she couldn’t take anything he said to heart, that he only wanted to hurt her for whatever dark purpose he was here for. He had done it before, out on the sands when she’d stayed behind to make sure the horde would stay away, and Lumelle had let him. She had let him now, too. She thought she was ready for it this time.
It hurt more than the force of that dhruva-shaped sin eater’s crystals slamming into her when she’d chosen to protect Alisaie over Tista-Rae; the hurt swallowed her, so large and there that she couldn’t decide whether to get angry and scream and rage or cry or curl up into a ball about it before she was there again.
The hunt.
The Inn at Journey’s Head was essentially a field hospital. Lumelle had followed Alisaie here after the Exarch brought them and Elwin across the rift, and she’d known by the end of their first day that they wouldn’t hold up against any real force. She’d heard of bigger Ishgardian encampments getting burned to the ground by hordes of aevis and diresaurs and biasts before anyone could call for the Knights Dragoon, and they didn’t make new dragons every time they killed. She and Alisaie could do some real damage, especially with A’dewah there to back them up, and some of the carers knew the basics and acted as guards—but the sin eaters. The hordes they would hear about, sometimes, at Mord Souq when they were getting groceries.
Lumelle might have been raised in Ishgard and faced off her own hordes for her city, sure. This world still found new ways to scare her.
Tista-Rae had smiled and told her to keep her chin up. To keep doing what she was doing, culling as many sin eaters as she could on patrol with Alisaie. She’d come from the Crystarium when Lumelle had written a strongly worded request to the Exarch with a few others and said she’d get the carers swinging swords like Lumelle in no time. She’d even made time in her day to help the patients get more active, fighting off that plastery stiffness awaiting them the only way she knew how.
They still weren’t ready, when it was clear they had to go hunt the largest group down. There were so many.
In the sea of white-white-white, Lumelle didn’t have the time to figure out which sin eaters were the really bad ones, the ones that could turn people, which meant she was just cutting through as many as she could. She was sweating through the scarf tied over her face to keep the dust and ichor from getting in her lungs, her mouth. Someone was screaming. Their line had been pushed back to forty yalms from the Inn. Tista-Rae and the Crystarium dispatch were fighting with her, in the center of it; her sword was almost glowing full white and dripping when she looked over her shoulder back to A’dewah and Alisaie.
She didn’t even remember what she saw, what was happening, if Alisaie was actually in as much danger as Lumelle thought—only that she felt the panic take her and ran towards them, Tista-Rae shouting her name, and didn’t get her shield up in time to block the crystals. The one that would have hit Alisaie hit her instead. Thank Hydaelyn for the Blessing of Light.
And at the end, after Lumelle had dove back in to finish her job slightly worse for wear, Tista-Rae had ruffled her hair and said, I getcha. Just give a girl a warning next time, hm?
Her arm was bleeding, Lumelle remembered. She’d wrapped it up with a ripped-off piece of her Elven partner’s cape. She wasn’t wearing her Crystarium guard chainmail because she had to send it back for repairs.
She’d been doing well. Tista-Rae had been smiling and laughing and dancing for a week or two after. Lumelle almost believed it.
Then she’d got sick so fast.
The other carers were worried it had been from ichor poisoning, but Lumelle knew. Not how she was okay for so long—but she knew the bandages in the bins were hers, knew her sword hand was her left and not her right even if she was ambidextrous, knew it was—what she could have—!
She came back to herself and chose anger.
Lumelle slammed her hands down on the counter, hearing the spice bottles rattle. Pain lanced up the heels of her hands and up her arms.
“Maybe what I’ve done and haven’t done is cruel. Maybe I’m cruel,” she spat, refusing to look at Emet-Selch again and feeling that same impossible coldfire in her stomach as she did facing the Warriors of Darkness, listening to J’rhoomale speak so easily of poisoning Alisaie and then daring to shoot at Elwin when Lumelle was right there, “but it’s a damn lot kinder to give them a chance to die as themselves rather than sit there, knowing their body will transform painfully and their mind will shatter from the twist, and do nothing but wait to let it happen.”
She waited for Emet-Selch to find his next venomous arrow, for the fire that drove her to drink dragon’s blood to be fed. Waited for the pain to come again.
When the silence kept stretching longer and longer like caramel strings, Lumelle opened up the jar of lemonette syrup—she bent the metal lid in her hand and winced—and measured out the right dose with shaking hands. If he said anything else, she really might do something bad, so maybe it was for the best.
The rest she did feeling distant from herself, every glass and metal thing she touched frosting over; the poison went into the jar, a spoon came out from another drawer, clattered on the jar’s rim as she mixed the contents in a rush. The syrup didn’t look any different as her hands poured it over the jelly already in its dish, and probably didn’t taste any different; the carers said the Crystarium put extra work into making it tasteless for them. Lumelle, knowing Tehra’ir personally, wasn’t as certain, but she didn’t want to think about everyone’s last meal never getting to taste right.
Only when she was putting the harcot slices on the top did she remember Emet-Selch’s unusual quiet.
She looked up again, setting the spoon into the jelly dish with a clatter, and found the Ascian staring blankly up at her… or through her? Whatever Emet-Selch was seeing, it wasn’t her or her anger; he might as well have been on another shard.
She just had to walk through the door and she’d be fifteen steps away from Tista-Rae’s cot, another ten to her longsword, but Lumelle knew better than to turn her back to an enemy—much less an Ascian—unarmed and alone.
“Well? No more ‘truth’ left in you?” Lumelle leaned forward to prop her elbow on the counter to hold up her head, feeling more furious and vitriolic and awful the longer Emet-Selch sat there staring a hole in the side of her head. Something about his face seemed so… wrong. “Say something, damn you. Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
It was as if he suddenly wanted to shatter everything Lumelle knew about him. He opened his mouth, eyes refocusing on her, but no words came. His mouth shut, and his once smug expression now looked like he was angry. Like he had any right to be.
Without so much as another word, he raised his hand, and with a wave he disappeared.
Well. At least she could let her eyes brim over with tears in peace now.
“Damn that bastard. Damn this stupid shard. Damn the Light,” she muttered, sniffling and trying to wipe all her tears away as they came only for them to freeze on her hands. Her anger shoved up against something in her heart and turned into the deep need to curl up in bed and spend the rest of the day crying, but she still had a dessert to deliver. Usually Alisaie or Elwin helped her pull herself back together, but Alisaie was still so mad at her and Elwin didn’t even know how bad a day she’d been having, from the carers telling her it was Tista-Rae’s time to go and Alisaie arguing with her to Emet-fucking-Selch showing his stupid face here.
What was that rhyme Tesleen told her about, again?
Warrior of Darkness, servant of death, take care of our souls at our dying breath...
“Let sinners and eaters of sin go with thee.” Lumelle sniffled a few more times, cringing at how awful her voice sounded now. Did she actually yell earlier? She hoped she didn’t. Elwin always said—he said that she got scary when she yelled now, after the whole thing with the real Warriors of Darkness back home. That turning into a dragon for a little bit might not have actually been for just a little bit. “That all may return to the sunless sea.”
She took another deep breath. Exhaled.
Could a Warrior of Light be gentle about death? Could she?
Her hands were hurting from how cold they were, she realized; she brushed her frozen tears off onto the tiles. There wasn’t really a mirror anywhere in the Inn, as no one wanted any of the patients to accidentally see themselves, panic, and possibly turn, so she’d just have to hope she looked acceptable. Carefully, so she didn’t break anything else today, she picked up the jellied harcot in one hand and walked through the kitchen doorway. Emet-Selch left his little chair—it was actually padded, he’d put that much thought into it—so she grabbed it with her other hand and dragged it with her.
Fifteen steps, and she was by Tista-Rae’s bedside. Her dusty-pink hair was down from her bun, turning white at the roots and the tips, and her eyes struggled to focus on Lumelle when she turned the chair around and sat down next to her.
“Hey,” Lumelle said past the lump in her throat. Her hands and her voice didn’t shake as she watched Tista-Rae smile up at her distantly, nor when Tista-Rae glanced at the chilled glass in Lumelle’s hands and her eyes cleared, just slightly, in realization; she refused to let them. She had to face this with her eyes afraid and awake, even if it hurt. “Sorry I took so long. Are—are you feeling up for dessert?”
ffxivwrite2023 04: OFF THE HOOK
allowed or able to avoid blame, responsibility, obligation, or difficulty.
syhrwyda, valdis, zaya, & a fish. a really big fish. 913 wc.
“And you brought this t’ port… why?”
Even with a small crowd gathering around her and Syhrwyda, Valdis seemed just as unflappable as ever—at most, a touch confused. Zaya watched in amusement from the relative safety of the Fisherman’s Guild’s archway as she glanced at the forty-fulm-long fish floating in a bubble by the guild pier, swimming restlessly in loops, and said, “Wanted to show Tehra’ir. And ask for one of his daggers to eat it, but that’s later.”
Syhrwyda’s face made an incredible journey in the span of a few seconds from baffled through concerned straight into a replica of the face Y’shtola gave Zaya that one time they admitted they ate a lightning crystal shard once. “This fish? T’ show him?”
“Not this fish, exactly,” Valdis said, waving her free hand in the air as though this revelation cleared anything up. “The coral ray and elasmosaurus didn’t bite during the spectral currents. I should have asked Alle to come along and help me.”
The crowd of excited fishers and baffled merchants around them got louder and rowdier, and Zaya had to press themselves up against the stone wall to avoid their knee colliding with the fisherman guildmaster’s face as he darted by. Something about legends of the sea?
“An’ this one?”
“What about ‘this one’?”
Across the harbor, Zaya caught a flash of something silver and green pause at one of the carved-out windows go from still to a blur as it rushed out of view.
“I—well, just because th’ change of all the aether currents o’er the star means you could fish up new deep ocean monsters an’ bring them back to Limsa don’t mean you should,” Syhrwyda said while rubbing the back of her neck, seemingly unable to decide whether she should look at the horrible leviathan with knife-teeth, Valdis herself, or over to Zaya—the last specifically with a frown. They must not have been doing a great job of stifling the silly grin they could feel edging on outright laughter.
Maybe they ought to feel some measure of guilt, but Syhrwyda did lose the three rounds of rock-paper-scissors when they’d rushed down here from a nice lunch at the Bismarck to deal with ‘a sea witch and her menagerie of monsters’ and instead found Valdis at the center of the storm. She really needed to stop leading with rock.
Valdis, seemingly still oblivious or mayhaps playing it up, tilted her head. “But then, no one but the Sharlayans will know about the new fish,” she said, and then: “Do you think Tehra’ir is out on a job? I was hoping he’d come out by now…”
“Why not just… go in an’ ask for him?”
“The doorman doesn’t like me.” Valdis crossed her arms, letting her fishing rod nearly thwack the poor lalafell guildmaster. Not that he seemed to notice. “Though, V’kebbe does...”
She turned away to look across the docks at the door leading to the Dutiful Sisters, at which Syhrwyda took the chance to fully turn towards Zaya and do something with her hands that was neither a combat sign nor any official Eorzean sign Zaya knew, but conveyed the general meaning of WHAT DO I DO???
As far as Zaya knew, it wasn’t a secret that Tehra’ir had something against deep sea fish—or any fish that fell outside the usual standards of ‘fishy-ness’ towards ‘could-be-a-terminus-horror’, really. Just half a moon ago he’d burst through the door to Zaya’s room with his tail all fluffed up mumbling about some truly awful-sounding sharks he’d seen while walking down to the Rogue’s Guild, calling them the Navigator’s mistake before launching into a frantic rant that ended with him swearing vengeance on Mitron, somehow. How Valdis seemed to be unaware was a mystery to them, as were many things about her, but here they were with a fish four times Syhrwyda’s height and teeth long as Tehra’ir’s daggers anyways.
Zaya looked back up at the window again—now, they could vaguely make out a figure that was probably Jacke standing there with his arms crossed, with Tehra’ir’s tail flicking in and out of sight—then looked back at Syhrwyda, still looking at them helplessly. They shrugged, trying not to smile too much about the situation or bust out into laughter, and gave her the combat sign for protect hoping in this situation she’d take it more as COVER FOR HIM I GUESS.
Syhrwyda grimaced, but the gap in the crowd closed just as she raised her hands, moving in a wave of sorts towards some of the other fish-carrying bubbles Valdis had enchanted. Not wanting to get swept away or miss Syhrwyda and Valdis maybe leaving, Zaya pushed through the crowd towards them.
Thankfully, Syhrwyda’s height and voice were there to act as a lighthouse in the crowd.
“Why did you want t’ show him this big one, anyroad?” she asked. “Aside from th’ others not bitin’.”
When Zaya broke through, Valdis had turned back to Syhrwyda.“Sisipu told me this was a roguesaurus,” she said, now frowning. “I thought he would think it was funny, instead of scary.”
That was, unfortunately, Zaya’s last straw; they broke out into wheezing laughter at the side of the pier, now one of four standing in front of the roguesaurus. Who named these things?
Syhrwyda put a comforting hand on Valdis’ shoulder and said, “It’s after the river, actually.”
“Oh. Damn. I suppose we can just skip to eating it.”
ffxivwrite2023 01: ENVOY
a messenger or representative.
how’d i end up with a letter fic?? erenville & alle. 748 wc.
His payment for services rendered found him not long after he’d checked the last requisition off his list and stored it in his pack at the hands of an adventurer.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I believe I’ve a delivery for you!” The adventurer—looking rather ruffled, perhaps from the long trek between here and the closest town—pulled out a letter with no envelope sealed by unstamped wax and a small bottle no larger than his palm from her pack. Though he didn’t recognize the bottle, other than it being a common piece of glassware sold back in Sharlayan, he caught sight of the ink stamp on the letter’s back and smiled.
“Thank you,” he said, taking both the letter and the bottle from their hands. “I’m afraid I’ve little to reward you with, at the moment.”
“Oh, no need, sir,” she said, waving her hands. “I was paid by the lady beforehand—quite generously! I was almost afraid I’d have to find you knee-deep in monsters.”
With that, the adventurer left, ready to trek back out into the humid jungle haphazardly before he could warn her about the bugs being more active and irritable at this hour thanks to the floral bloom. Usual adventurer bravado, hopefully with the skill to back it up.
He’d give it a good half a bell before trying to leave, himself—with little else to do or plan, he pried open the wax seal on the letter and sat down to read.
TO E;
Here’s your proof of life.
I found her. The “ears” made it rather easy, thankfully. ^-^
At first she didn’t seem to trust me, but I suppose Archon marks can serve more than one purpose—never expected to get interrogated about my thesis so far from home. It was refreshing to be allowed to thoroughly explain myself, for once.
She left in a rush to respond to a call from the Scions—turns out the rumors of their downfall were exaggerated—and the Warriors of Light. Plural, as in possibly more than a dozen. A very curious bunch. They were quick to accept me into the fold upon seeing me at her side, and seem to be searching for a number of their members, as if there weren’t enough of them. Soon enough I suspect I’ll find myself in extreme excess of company where before I was lacking.
The prospect is… frightening? Perhaps that’s not the word for it. But—not to sound like some sap—even though I’m glad to be away, I miss our table overlooking the harbor, often.
At least the food here is comparable. Some of my fellow scholars at the Studium had nearly convinced me that food was meant to taste offensive, and that the Last Stand was the anomaly.
Very intriguing to see the once-New-Sharlayan for myself now that I’m old enough to remember. Lots of goblins and adventurers here now, if you haven’t been. They’ve certainly renovated the place—though they’ve kept a nice plaza free from “gobbie brainthoughts, pshkohh”. (Does the Studium offer lessons on gobbiespeak? You’d think I’d know, but I don’t. If not, they should think about it.)
I hate that it’s true that exercise and fresh air make you feel better. Utterly awful. Why can’t my body simply adapt to a more sedentary lifestyle? Stop laughing, that’s rude.
It’s likely unsafe for me to keep in touch—did you know that the Bibliothecs have no qualms about sending assassins overseas should it best suit their interests—but if you ever want for an ear (or pair of eyes, I suppose) to receive another scathing critique of the gleaner’s life, direct your letters to a Tataru Taru in Aldenard through a postmoogle. She is the Scions’ secretary, if I’ve understood correctly.
Don’t let that oversized plant you’re after get you with its sap—if it’s the seedkin I believe it to be, it’ll do something awful to your aetheric balance should even a few droplets get on your skin and you’ll be ill for weeks. Better not to question how I know, just that I do from a look at your current list of assignments. I’ve sent along some medicine should the worst come to fruition, if my warning is a touch too late.
Travel safe. By Thaliak’s grace may the waters you sail over be smooth.
Oh, and—thank you. Truly. The world would sooner end ere I forget the good you’ve done me.
