flying true @shinebow - Tumblr Blog

SHINEBOW — a.k.a. an arrow that flies true, a pair of small but calloused hands, a heart that burns as it beats. affiliated knight of seiros tanya, written by mik.

banner is alexei bogoliubov's after the rain. please read the information below the cut before interacting !

#ooc

shinebow

— DEUS DECEPTOR .

it might be heaven and it might be hell

crowsbite

"Would they?"

The way she asks it, Ursula sounds to be genuinely considering. A shove is enough only to cause her to reposition, to wind readily to the girl's other side and investigate it just the same. She leans close, wrinkles her nose as if the proximity alone is enough to disgust her, never mind that it is of her own volition.

"I'd wager the word of your victim, a woman they do not know from any other, might seem a bit easier to believe than a hotheaded deviant who would rather chase ghosts than do as she is told." It's a guess, but it's an easy one. No knight would send someone on her tail for such a superstitious matter, certainly not without trailing her a while before shooting. And to attack unprovoked without trial, interrogation? Ursula snorts. Every card laid bare without her even asking, it's adorable even.

Satisfied with her inspection, she pulls away. The light from her magic dims, whittles away into mere murmurs at her fingertips, and she turns her nose with a hum. Not much of a threat at all, this sniveling little thing. It is in this moment that Ursula decides she does not like her and all of her wrongness, the scratch of her voice against her throat and the sun warmth in her skin that not even all of this darkness can erase. They are nothing alike, not even with all of these layers of dust and ash over Ursula's once flawless skin.

Still flawless skin.

"See? Not a hair on that head of yours has been harmed." There's that venom again. Her fingers twitch for her own hair, for where time has let it grow just past where she once kept it so perfectly even. She wants to pull on its ends and drag it as far down her cheek as it will go before it tears, wipe the layer of dirt she cannot seem to truly escape from her face and shout: Look at me and all of the ways that I am not you. "But myself..."

Instead she reaches for her arm, illuminates it with milky, arcane light and turns skin until the bubbling crimson of a flesh wound can glare at its maker. Ursula hums. "It seems there is evidence right here of exactly your bullheadedness."

shinebow

"Shit, I…"

Tanya's eyes widened. The active stance she had taken on now fell apart, limbs going slack and her bow clattering to the floor. Fuck… fuck! She swore she fired into the ground next to her, but clearly, she missed her mark. The shame she tried so hard to fight back now boiled over, threatening to melt her into the very floor.

Her heart ran circles in her chest. Unable to think of anything better, Tanya untied the bandana from her forehead and pressed it against the wound. The fabric drank up the blood, orange turning into sickly brown. She tied off the end as tightly as she could, then turned away and sighed.

"L-Look, I can admit I was wrong to shoot you but…"

Tanya swallowed. Though her eyes were drawn down to the floor, the image of the wound seared itself into her mind, and she could see it dancing around her vision. An ugly mark against such pure pale skin brought about by her delivery of justice. Above that haze of guilt, too, was the visage of the woman who she had hurt—hauntingly beautiful, mature in ways that Tanya might never grow into. Was there any fighting against that?

Still, Tanya could not let this woman hold dominion over her. The petty matters of aesthetic differences and spur-of-the-moment mistakes were not justice. She took a deep breath.

"But I still don't believe you. Good people just don't talk like you."

She'd learned that over years of hearing people like her belittle her, or underestimate her, or taunt her into changing. Her intuition had to be worth something, more than a miserable encounter in a lonely church in a continent so far from her home. Gods, she had to be right—this woman had to be evil. Tanya picked her bow up from the floor, but did not return to that stiff, active stance. But she turned to this woman, chin angled slightly upward, the small sliver of spirit she had left in this moment brought forward.

"Just tell me: what are you doing here? Why do you act the way you do? You still haven't answered any of my questions properly. All you've done is just insult me and my womanhood at every damn turn!"

#DEUS DECEPTOR — thread #((tanya is getting boiled alive))

shinebow

— THE EARTH AND HER BLESSINGS .

waste not, want not

shinebow

Snow crunched beneath her boot. It was a strange sensation, there was not much in terms of wintery frost in the peninsula of Thracia, but Tanya did her best to hide whatever discomfort it gave her. She was much more focused on the student she'd been tasked to escort, throwing cautious glances at her every few steps. The trek was by no means treacherous, still, it was better to be safe than sorry. One could only imagine what might happen if they slipped on icy ground.

Thankfully, whatever misfortunes might have met them remained only in the realm of imagination. They finally reached their hunting ground: a forest that wrapped around the whole mountain. Tanya busied herself with preparing an impromptu campsite, laying down a burlap cloth for them to place any catches with. She then sat atop a nearby rock, grabbed her quiver and inspected the arrows. Any that seemed blunt, she began to sharpen using a whetstone. As she did these things, she once again looked toward her companion.

"You ever been hunting before, Sue?" Tanya asked, still working on her arrowheads, "How successful do you think this'll be? Because this doesn't look like the best season for a hunt…"

She turned her attention to the forest around them. It was not exactly snow-packed, but the patches of frozen white that lay between the trees surely did not bode well for their odds. This deep into the season, their prey would have been deep in that winter slumber they always fell into, with only the stragglers left awake for them to shoot at. With the amount of meat that had been requested of them, those leftovers would definitely not have been enough. Tanya sighed. A trail of smoke puffed out of her mouth.

"Orders are orders, I guess. Let's just hunt what we can. If you're ready to head out, we can start moving."

She pushed her palms against her thighs and rose. All around them, the forest remained still.

@doeofsacae

#THE EARTH AND HER BLESSINGS — thread #((thanks for waiting!))#((hope this starter works ^^ lemme know if u'd like changes to be made!!))

shinebow

— DEUS DECEPTOR .

it might be heaven and it might be hell

crowsbite

And she had been right to like her odds, staring down the point of an arrow that does not come loose of its string. They are close enough now that she can curl her fingers along the bow's curved body, reach until they snag that feeble arrow. Tendrils of arcane dance from fingertip to polished wood, writhe around the length of the weapon poised before her face like a challenge. Ursula's smile is closed-lipped and cruel, disbelieving.

"Do you hear yourself?" Her moment's ago venom has turned from searing heat to blistering frost. Beneath the heavy cloak of night there is silence in everything but them, the sound of breathing deafening. "Animal carcasses, children? You are so thick-skulled as to take the first mage you see and pin such a claim upon her? Come on, brat, I'd much like to hear this."

She steps easily out of the bow's way, turns about this short stranger as a snake coils around its prey. Her hand surrenders its hold on the weapon if only to grasp a bicep, nails digging in every tender spot they can manage. Strength has never been where she excels, and the archer's muscle beneath her grip tells her that she is outmatched in this regard, but she knows she has won in another. She's gotten a reaction, she's found a vein without even looking.

"Are you afraid of magic?" Poised now at the knight's flank, she raises the hand not currently burying itself in a sleeve. Pale light spreads from her palm in the shape of wispy sigils, writing their way outward as Ursula brings them nearer and nearer to the girl's face. A lazy threat, the usage of something so easily made violent for something as simple as studying the face of her assailant. "Did some great mage harm your family, your friends? Maybe it was a woman, one who unsettled you as I do?"

To the questions there is a strange humanity, a sincerity to the curiosity that blends itself within what is otherwise saccharine. Ursula clicks her tongue. "Tell me, do you believe yourself right to accuse me of such things because of how I look? I do make quite the nice candidate for the sort of villain you are trying to conjure in your mind, don't I? One who does heinous things to innocent creatures beneath the veil of nighttime... Perhaps there is a girl in you after all, buried beneath all these unsightly edges of yours. A joke of one, no doubt."

A breath through her nose, disgusted, though her hold does not loosen nor does the threat of her magic wane.

"How would your knights take to knowing you attacked an unarmed, unassuming woman in the dead of night over some carrion? Not well, I must imagine..."

shinebow

"Hands off me!"

A vigorous shake was all the effort Tanya could put towards sending the woman away, though. For in truth, her senses were weakened by her. There was a sick joy in feeling her wrap her fingers around her bicep, giddiness in the attention she now kept all to herself, even if she knew its source came from some wickedness beyond her comprehension. Her heart, in lieu of beating, squeezed. How could she feel this way knowing what she came here to do, hearing what this woman said to her? What sick and twisted sorcery was this?

Tanya screwed her eyes shut. The light from this woman's spell was not bright, but it was overwhelming. She had hoped that by blinding herself she might have stopped the fire in her chest from spreading further throughout her body, but what thrived in darkness thrived in the imagination, too. That was to say, the less Tanya saw of this woman, the more bewitching a figure she seemed to cut. Her curves bent at different angles, her voice grew lilting in its cadence. She was surely the woman of someone's dreams—maybe Tanya's own. Breathing heavily, she opened her eyes, but kept her gaze trained to the ground.

Tanya had been right to go after her. Because good people did not move like predators, slithering throughout the night. Even if she was not a dark mage, she was certainly some other kind of evil. Tanya was right, she had to be right.

"I have a hard time believing you're unarmed and unassuming, n-not when you've got your weird spell pointed at me right now." Tanya swallowed. Her bow trembled in her hands, and the arrow she had so firmly nocked on its body had slid off to the side. "The knights would for sure believe me over you. So stop trying to pretend you're innocent because you're clearly not."

Not much changed in the letter of her words, but it was clear that she had been utterly defanged. Indignity and doubt swirled into a noxious elixir and trickled down into the depths of her stomach, tempering the tongue that had grown so sharp over these years. But she was a fighter by nature. She wouldn't let anything stop her, not even her own shame. She bit down on her lip, and her senses tried grounding itself onto that pain over everything else.

"Women like you don't scare me." She spoke through gritted teeth, "You can try putting me down all you want. I don't care. All I need to do is stop you."

#DEUS DECEPTOR — thread #((my god brah))#((i might overdose on whatever they have going on))#((tanya is so pissed but she also likes the attention but she is so pissed))

"Tanya..."

The name sits tentatively on Eyvel's lips, her eyes narrowing as she watches the woman bustling about in front of her. That head of hair, that face (albeit a little younger than she remembers), and that busybody nature?

There was no doubt.

"Tanya, it IS you!" Eyvel calls, louder this time, her hand raised in a wave as she steps deeper into the knight's quarters. Fiana's former mistress was no knight herself, but her most recent job required that she work with a few of them. "Who knew I'd be finding so many familiar faces here?"

She smiles warmly, "How are you? And good ol' Dagdar, while we're at it? Still shaping up Mount Violdrake, I hope."

The Knight's Hall had a hustle and bustle that was not dissimilar to a village, only it was much more tense. It felt like a tightly packed school of fish swimming about the sea, fluid in motion yet firm in conviction. Within that flurry, Tanya felt helplessly out of place. She had yet to grow into the knights' routines, still tripping over the corners of tables or walking to-and-fro because she didn't know where certain weapons and books were kept, but at least they were nice enough not to give her too much heat for it. Really, the person who hated it the most was herself, and she had developed the habit of cursing at every mistake she made.

"Shit, sorry!" She called after an armored knight whose pauldrons she'd bumped into, rubbing her ball of her shoulder that had struck the metal. There is that thought that lingered by the back of her mind, if it was really right of her to come all this way only to become Fodlan's most mediocre knight, but she refused to give heed to that part of her. Of course she was right, because the thought of returning to her home just as weak as she had left it was unthinkable.

She heard her name get called out. Tanya flinched, wondering if the knight from before had decided not to accept her apology, but when she turned to look, she was met with an astonishingly familiar face.

"Oh! Eyvel!"

Tanya visibly brightened, and she went up to Eyvel like a dog might its old owner. Standing in the middle of the Knight's Hall broke the laminar flow of traffic, but for once, Tanya didn't say sorry. The excitement of seeing the heart of Fiana had kept her cursing at bay.

"I'm good. Doing lotsa work but that's all part of the job. And dad…" A hand went to cup the back of her neck, "fixing up Violdrake is all he ever does now. The land's still pretty unworkable, but you know him. He won't stop until he gets what he wants."

She snorted. He didn't even get to see her off, he was that busy. Tanya was still unsure if that hurt her or not.

"Anyways. How are you? I feel like it's been so long since we last spoke… and uh, hey, if you can, maybe we can train together sometime? There's so much I can still learn from you!"

#inbox #((EYVEL FOR MEEEEE YES YES YESSSS))#((this got pretty long WHGAHAGHA but im just all pumped up yknow))#((thank you so much for sending nat. mwah mwah))

shinebow

— DEUS DECEPTOR .

it might be heaven and it might be hell

crowsbite

In the night's heavy quiet, Ursula's footfalls are slow and deliberate. Walk with pride, she reminds herself, you still matter. The withering muscle of her back protests at the roll of her shoulders and sets them just so, the dust in her lungs is agitated by the deep breath she takes to puff out her chest. It's dark and miserable and there is not a soul to see such a heretical display to a god these pews know not the name of. A dry laugh seems to echo in the stillness, no more alive than the rest of the marble and stone.

It comes as a surprise to her that nobody prays in the shadows here. Perhaps that is evidence of peacetimes and a society more loving such that no soul brandishes a sin so shameful that it may only be uttered at such an hour. Or perhaps it is proof of a place less honest in its hate, one where the only prayers offered so near to the heart of their so called Goddess are the ones deemed worthy of sunlight. She supposes it doesn't matter, for it means the cathedral stands empty for all but her.

With a frustrated sigh for nothing and no one, her shoulders drop in the same breath as they had raised. The endless ceilings and impenetrable dark make it as though the sky is above her despite the walls and shelter; an open maw considering her, never deeming her worth descending upon to swallow whole. Only haunting, lingering, reminding her that it sees her but does not want her. It's when Ursula lets her head loll to gaze back at it, to try and level its taunting, that a voice rings out from behind her.

Startled, Ursula staggers to turn. Her fingers reach instinctively for a tome she does not have, magic hot beneath her skin. The only light is its faint glow— the open cathedral doors empty of moonlight to spill through— and the glitter of a metal edge as it whistles towards her. A sneer pulls at her lip, torn into a hiss of pain as an arrow drags like a knife along her arm.

"What manners!" The words are spat from her lips like poison, taunting and ugly as a crow's laugh. "Who dares attack a lone woman in such a holy place as this? What rituals do you speak of, girl?"

She stalks forward, hands raised. Thin light can do nothing to pierce this endless dark, but it can show her the figure before her as the distance between them closes. The curl of her lip turns from snarl to sneer, if this woman wishes to loose another arrow than so be it, but she doesn't mind her odds. Especially not as the only space between them becomes that of the bow's curve.

"Ah," sun-dark skin and boy short hair greets her, "hardly a girl at all, are you? Speak." It's a command. "Explain yourself, lest it be me to bloody these hallowed floors."

shinebow

"What?" Tanya quickly nocked another arrow on her bow, "What did you just say to me?!"

Her heart pounded in its cage, and she could feel a heat rushing up from her stomach towards her head. She'd heard these remarks before in her childhood, from little brats in villages who found it fun to light up her short-fused temper by taunting her about her boyish appearance, or from her dad's bandits who snort at her roughness, posturing that a man would never marry a woman with shorter hair than him. Tanya's jaw clenched. She'd successfully evaded ever hearing them again by snapping at anyone who dared even speak of her tomboy tendencies, and this time is no different.

"You think that just because I look like this, that gives you the right to talk to me that way?" Well if she was a dark mage, which Tanya was certain she was, this woman was surely capable of worse things than bullying. But at this moment, where she is still tender from her own need for attention, it feels as though this woman could stab Tanya and it would hurt less. She puffed out her chest.

"I-I'm as much of a girl as you are, got that?"

But the retort was toothless. The lady's shift in posture, as well as the near-imperceptible glow of her spell had added some contrast to the form of her shadow, and Tanya could see it had curves in places her own body had yet to fill out. Tanya's eyes flickered briefly upward, and the heat in her head made its way to her cheeks, too. This woman's body was… Needless to say, she would have silenced all those village brats and ensnared those churlish bandits in ways Tanya could only dream she could do.

She sucked in a breath. It wasn't just her superiors that she needed to prove herself to—it was this woman too. Which felt wrong, because Tanya was supposed to be the powerful knight whose arrows were ready to enact justice. Instead here she stood in the dark, discomfort in how light and bony her body was all of a sudden. She didn't like it one bit. Tanya growled, a vain effort to dispel the tension that was now building in her throat.

"And don't be stupid." The words were practically spat out, which left Tanya breathless, "You haven't done a good job covering up, you know. There are traces of your work everywhere! Animal corpses drained of blood, random splatters of red and black strewn about, and most damning of all: sightings of you wandering the monastery at night. You have magic—" she flicked her head towards it, "—so you're obviously a mage, and I know what you people are capable of, okay? Next, you'll tell me you've been sacrificing kids, too. Just! Don't talk anymore. I'm taking you to the Knights and you can defend yourself there."

#DEUS DECEPTOR — thread #((tanya is so pissed rn but then she saw ursula's body was tea and she so shes not just pissed shes also jealous af))#((and maybe a secret third gay thing))#((holy fuck i missed lina writing so much))#((its like youre yuri oppenheimer just dropping these yuri bombs on me))

shinebow

— DEUS DECEPTOR .

it might be heaven and it might be hell

shinebow

It was a starless night. The monsoon had ushered in thick stormclouds that drew thick curtains over the sky, obscuring the light that Tanya normally relied on to hunt. But she refused to let that stop her—this was the closest she'd been to cracking her case, and she knew that once she did, her knight superiors would finally believe her.

For there had been rumors of something wicked wandering about. Nothing tangible, just a lot of isolated incidents. Animal carcasses, mysterious traces of blood and ink and, most notably, a woman who moved only in the shroud of shadow. Her superiors had dismissed it all as hearsay, and assigned her to cases they deemed more important, but Tanya refused to let it go. She'd seen this all before.

Tanya tracked her target all the way to the Cathedral, quietly following her in before the doors could turn completely shut. Careless of her to leave an opening. Now Tanya crouched behind the pews, watching with all the hunger of a starved vulture. The woman's movements revealed little about her intentions, for Tanya was not knowledgeable enough in the art of dark magic to know what was ritual and what was trite. But she knew that this woman must have been evil. She brought her the same gut-wrenching feeling that the Loptr church had, that same acridness, same metallic taste that ripped straight to her throat. Eventually, Tanya could no longer bear just watching and leapt to action.

"Stop right there!"

She emerged from her place by the pews, fingers pinched around an arrow that was already on its way out of her quiver. Her eyes narrowed. The dimness made the woman's shadows all the more sinister. The edges of her silhouette blurred so deep into the night that Tanya could not tell where the darkness stopped and the woman began. But that was precisely the nature of wickedness—incomprehensible and unnameable until one actually stood face to face with it. And Tanya was determined to dispel the veil.

"You're not here to pray, are you?"

Her voice held all the tense anticipation of a drawn bowstring. The only thing left was to send her volley flying towards her target, which she did so without hesitation.

"Don't answer that. Because I know what you've been doing, sneaking around trying to perform your sick rituals. Well, I'm not letting that happen anymore! You're coming with me."

@crowsbite

#DEUS DECEPTOR — thread #((hi lina. hi))#((i really cant wait for this i feel my veins buzzing from everything we discussed))#((on a writing standpoint i feel like this could be better but))#((i think its best to start now and then go crazy later yea?))#((and i really do believe we're gunna go crazy))

shinebow

— AFTER MIDNIGHT .

no ball for me? :(

shinebow

Everything about the monastery was already far grander than anything she'd seen before. Even comparing it to her father's manor or the great fortresses that they had felled, Garreg Mach's architecture spanned geometries that went past her comprehension. Tanya could only look out in awe at how this ballroom seemed to extend far past what four walls could normally contain, how its sculpted details were gilded with the sort of gold she knew she'd never have in her life. It was brimming with clutter and mess, sure, flooded with papers and petals and rotting leftovers, but no one could deny the beauty that lay beneath it. Not even some bumpkin like Tanya.

But the majesty that such a room beheld all but faded away as Tanya was handed a broom and a wet rag and nudged towards the worst of the chaos. Right, she was here for work.

Tanya sighed. If she arrived earlier, maybe she could have been making the mess instead of cleaning it. Just her luck that she got here right after the ball ended. At least the task wasn't too difficult, just tedious, and she had other volunteers here with her. Tanya began gathering the trash on the floor, which mainly consisted of empty food containers and scattered petals of different colors. There were a ton of petals, actually.

"It's a lot of flowers, huh?" Tanya remarked, to no one in particular, though she was sure the girl beside her could hear. She kept sweeping more of those petals into her dustpan, "Some ball it must have been."

@milafaithful

#AFTER MIDNIGHT — thread #((let me know if this is ok!!!))#((tanya will never admit it but she wants to hear all about this ball))

shinebow

— PLASTIC LOVE .

hello, work husband!

shinebow

She was sweating through her shirt, though the air was chill enough that she knew it wasn't the cause—no, it was the man strolling by her side, his fingers entwined with hers, that made her nervous system the wreck that it is. Tanya was never a romantic person. She never squealed over cute boys like other girls her age did, never snuck kisses during dusktime or ran across shorelines when the weather turned warm. She was perfectly content being by herself, thanks! But that didn't make the prospect of pretending to be a couple any less intimidating—it seemed only to add to it, in fact.

She glanced towards Deimne. Her supposed boyfriend. Just thinking of those words made her itch. But she tried to stay professional. They were both here to investigate a secret shop, which Tanya knew existed in Thracia to some capacity, but the one here in Fodlan had a ridiculous premise: couples only. Unless you had a membership card which, of course, neither of them had.

So here they were. Marching hand-in-hand toward a non-descript building by the edge of town. This should be it… Tanya took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

"Hi, we heard there's a promo for couples here?"

The door cracked open. A single blue eye peered at them from the darkness, going up and down and all around before disappearing back into the depths. A low voice rasped out.

"Sorry, but it's gotta be romantic couples. You two are brothers, aren't ya?"

"B-Brothers?!" Her eyes widened. The urge to rip the door from its hinges and sock the man behind it was severe, but Tanya managed to quell it. What she could not subdue, however, was her temper. Face red, she yelled into the opening

"I'm a girl! And this is my b-boyfriend, you dolt! Could it not be more obvious that we're dating?"

She whipped her head toward Deimne, teeth clenched and voice forced into a whisper. "Come on, do something romantic!"

@secularch

#PLASTIC LOVE — thread #((hope this works! let me know if not))#((tanya has the facecard of a brown haird boy))

extenebris

Fire and Ice

Herald | Tunnel Collapse, Salem & Tanya

extenebris

That could have gone worse.

Salem picked himself up off the ground, pebbles and dusts skittering down his shoulders and back. His leg had been caught under some of the rubble, but he could still feel it, and when he turned around to drag it out from beneath the rock, he realized he'd gotten lucky. Although his clothes and shoes looked worse for wear, through the wide gash near his ankle was only a scratch - bloody, but shallow. He tried his weight on it. It didn't give.

The wall of newly-dislodged rock stopped up the tunnel entirely, but worse than that: the span of it was far too large to dig through. Voices came through from the other side, but muffled, mere sounds that could have been mistaken for noises from the earth settling had Salem not known the rest of his party followed close behind. He only hoped none of them had gotten caught under the landslide. They would be surely dead, then.

"It seems we're the only ones to make it to this side," he said to Tanya, who was somewhere nearby. The snap of his fingers brought a small flame to life and he peered down the other end of the tunnel.

"If you're hurt, I can take a look at your wounds. If not, then we should look for a way out. Trying to break through on this side will be a waste of time."

The firelight didn't reach far, but the next several feet ahead of them looked unimpeded by rock. With any luck, the rest of the tunnel would have survived the landslide intact. Realizing that a second pair of footsteps weren't echoing right behind his own, he stopped and looked back.

"Tanya." Sharper this time. "Let's move."

@shinebow

shinebow

"What?" Tanya said, in a voice loud enough to risk another cave-in, "We can't just leave them!"

She couldn't just leave them, at least. Those muffled voices on the other side of this rock were her responsibility, and the thought of failing her first-ever mission as a knight made her squirm. But even if it wasn't her job, she would have been obliged to help. If there was one thing being in Leif's army taught her, it was that no one was getting left behind. No one.

Bending low, she began to dig at the rubble, tossing whatever chunks of rock she could feel to the side. Though she couldn't tell how meaningful her effort actually was. Maybe if Salem and his firelight hadn't moved so far away, she'd be able to do a better job.

She grunted. Why did he leave to begin with? It didn't sit right with her, how quickly he'd chosen to step away.

"We're not moving." The syllables have an insistent bite to them, "Come on, help me out! Just shine your light here, and I'll clear away the rock. It can't be that hard—" Tanya wedged her hands beneath a large slab of stone, trying and failing to use her knees to leverage it up. It fell with a thud, sending a cloud of dust straight into her nose, "—ugh!"

#FIRE AND ICE — thread #((THANKS FOR STARTING US OFF!! salem a delight as always))#((i actually wrote this like a week ago but i kept it in my drafts hoping i could polish it more))#((but perfection is the enemy of progress etc etc))#((it's better to throw it out here now HAHHAHA))

“Tanya!! I'd heard your name among the new knights, but...” The Knights of Seiros were the ones being tasked with all the orders from Baile, and with it, gossip and chatter about how one person does compared to another within those ranks increases. Leif had set out to help on some tasks in his free time, enticed by one particular name.

But it is one thing to hear of her; it is another to actually see her in the flesh.

“Your father is OK with you all the way out here? What about Osian? He didn't give you trouble when you left for Fódlan, did he??”

Despite having a feeling of the answer, Leif still glances around, as if looking might manifest one or the other.

"Lord Leif!" Tanya's eyes widen, "Hey!"

It takes her a moment before she can return his greeting. She's surprised at how much he seems to have changed. She can't exactly tell how, just that he has. Now Tanya knows that the boy from Fiana had long grown into a man, but seeing him here, all the lines on his face and the height to his body, it still startles her. There's no way he's outgrown her, right…?

Even more flustering are the questions he shoots at her. She had been determined not to think so hard on what she left behind, focusing instead on whatever lay ahead but—well. She's more sentimental than she'd like to admit.

She scratches the back of her neck. "Well… my dad'll get over it."

Dagdar had Violdrake to occupy his thoughts with, at least, so she's sure she must be the least of his worries right now, but she knows her father's about as good with ooey gooey emotions as a rock is good at swimming. If he'd wept at her departure, he must have wiped away his tears before she'd seen them.

"And as for Osian…" Her expression turns tight, "that jerk's always giving me trouble, y'know? He didn't think I was actually gonna leave. Well, look at me now!"

A passing knight shushes her. Tanya quickly salutes and lets out a small 'sorry!' before returning to Leif.

"Um. Anyways." Her voice is much softer now, "You look different. I almost didn't recognize you. Has… it really been that long since we last spoke?"

#inbox #((im not joking i saw the notif for this when i posted the nanna ask))#((AND I WAS LIKE WOW. TWO CAKES))#((ANYWAYSSS THANK U FOR SENDING NNNNNN))#((I LOVE THEM A LOT))#((i dont know how tall toa leif is but))#((i dont think tanya is super tall so the odds of him outgrowing her or even just Looking like he has))#((they are very real))

"Tanya...?"

The name escaped her before she quite meant it to. For a moment, Nanna simply stared. There were some people one expected to find exactly where they had always been. Like landmarks. Like hearthfires left burning in windows. Even after all these years, some childish part of her had apparently assumed that if she ever returned to Fiana, Tanya would be there with a bow slung over her shoulder and some complaint already halfway out of her mouth.

Yet here she was.

A laugh caught in Nanna's throat, bright with disbelief.

"Hehe... I don't think I ever imagined finding you here!"

And wasn't that the truth of it? She had only recently walked the roads of Fiana again. Had stood upon familiar shores and listened to the waves roll against the coast exactly as they had when they were children. The village had felt smaller than she remembered. Softer somehow. Yet every corner had still carried traces of the people who had filled it.

The thought drew her forward before she could think better of it.

"How long has it been?" The question came warmly, bundled together with a dozen others. "I only just returned from an expedition through Thracia, and while I was there, I kept finding myself wondering how everyone was doing."

Her smile softened.

"Dagdar. Osian. Halvan. Patricia..." Each name arrived with its own memory attached. "The village looked peaceful. More peaceful than I think I've ever seen it."

A wistful note slipped into her voice.

"It almost felt strange."

The ocean had still been there. The boats had still drifted across the water. Children still ran through the streets.

That realization returned now, prompting the question Nanna had been circling since the moment she recognized her.

"But what about you?" Her head tilted gently. "What drew you all the way here?"

The inquiry carried no judgment. Only curiosity. The sort reserved for old friends whose stories had continued on without you for many years.

"...Was it difficult to leave?"

Because when Nanna thought of Fiana, she still found pieces of herself waiting there.

"Nanna! Wow..."

Well, if Lord Leif was here, Nanna could never have been far behind.

Tanya knew this, yet the shock of seeing her in the flesh had still sent its barb into her chest, and now she felt whatever stiffness within it melt away into something like warmth. She laughed, because she did not know what else to say. Tenderness is a concept quite foreign to her, having grown up with the sort of crude dastards who roughened up the soft things that lived in her, so to bask in it now leaves her utterly speechless.

"It definitely wasn't easy. The little scamps in Fiana wouldn't stop clinging onto my legs." Tanya scoffed, "They almost boarded the damn ship with me!"

Not that she really would have minded. She would have liked their company, just like how she liked Nanna's company, because leaving Fiana behind had been much lonelier than she expected. But she would have never voiced those thoughts aloud—rather, she couldn't. So Tanya just shrugged.

"But I just felt I had to leave. So I could get stronger. Make sense?"

Maybe it was a stupid reason. Certainly less noble than the other knights she'd come to know. She stood by it, though. Shooting at rabbits and deer could only take her so far, even if it did bring food to other people's plates. She needed something more challenging. More challenging than this newfound peace that had settled over them.

Tanya sighed. She looked off into the distance, in the spot right above Nanna's shoulder. "Y'know, you're right. It's been awful peaceful back home. Maybe it's even a little boring." She blinked. Shit, what was she saying? "Uh, but that's not so bad. Better than fighting for our lives constantly, yeah?"

She laughed, because she did not know what else to say—or perhaps because what she wanted to say felt utterly brazen, and Nanna's grace had finally begun to rub off her. Tanya put a firm hand on Nanna's shoulder.

"I wanna ask about you, though. How are things?"

#inbox #((RAGHHHH THANK YOU FOR SENDING))#((MUY FREAKING FIANAS))

wanted plots (mission season: herald)

TANYA YEAYYYY she is a knight of seiros which means she can be your unaffiliated partner for this month, how exciting! i can be convinced to do most of these prompts, but here are the ones i specifically wanna do and will therefore prioritize. as always, please ping me or dm me if you're interested in taking these up.

#ooc #((these are a fucking lot of prompts sobs))#((but i've been thinking about how i would write these prompts with tanya even before i reserved her))#((which is probably the biggest sign that she was gonna win da muse war in my head))

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