Why was it that the sky never once rained since they came to this land of endless light? Was it that it had cried each and every day, mourning a loss it could no longer remember, and had thus spent any tears it had left to shed?
She did not know. She was not the same as that sky.
As she gathered the length of her hair back, her fingers swept across the braided section. Dainty and as perpetual as the interwoven strands themselves, it would be her rope in the dark — a corded reminder of all she carried with her into what yet lay in the uncertain depths of the sea, of Emet-Selch’s purported home…
Three lengths for three lives, each as inextricably bound into another as the last. Behind her both husband and babe sleep as peacefully as they’re able in this strange realm bathed in its eerie glow. Would that she had been strong enough to contain the Light in its entirety; perhaps then the night would have remained, had endured the same as the people of the First. But she had not been so it could not, but she had only ever been tenacious.. and this? This would not be their midnight.
A hand to smooth both of their hair, to toy with those dark locks in reluctant but loving fingers. They would all leave this place together once her errand in the deep was done.
For them she fought, and for them she would come home.
FFxiv 30 Day Writing Challenge
SEPTEMBER 1st - 30th, 2020
Welcome to YEAR 4 of our annual FFxiv 30 Day Writing Challenge, folks!
In 2017 we saw 2,451 written pieces ranging from three-lined haikus to multi-paged stories. 2018 ramped up even more with 3,641 written pieces, and 2019 ended with 6,543 written pieces counted!
That means that in 3 years you’ve collectively written 12,635 pieces for this challenge!! That’s amazing!
Here’s the gist:
Runs from September 1st - 30th, 2020. During that time frame:
Visit sea-wolf-coast-to-coast once a day at 12:00pm (noon) PDT for the prompt of the day. Convert to your timezone accordingly. All prompts will be one word or brief phrase that you can interpret however you please.
You have 24 hours to write something for that prompt.
Submit the link to your entry post via this Google Form: https://forms.gle/2x9GYu73YTVbPAeR8
There are no length or skill requirements (short & sweet is fine!).
There will be no 24-hour deadlines for the first week, September 1st - 7th.
Makeup/extra credit days every Sunday.
Every entry posted within its 24-hour deadline will count toward a participation prize raffle at the end.
You can join any time with any prompt #! There’s no need for latecomers to start with prompt #1. Picking up with the most recent prompt is A OK.
If you’re an artist and you would like to volunteer to do a simple black & white illustration as a participation prize at the end of this challenge, you can volunteer here!
RULES & MORE INFO can be found here:
https://ffxiv-write.carrd.co/
(( banner art by @dantinmikannes ))
Rules & Info || Prompt List || #FFxivWrite2020 || kofi
Aymeric stirs in bed beside her, and Ane’s lips curl into an impossibly fond smile.
How strange it is to be back in Ishgard once more after all their time away -- almost unfathomably far away -- on a star teetering on the brink of oblivion. Sometimes she wakes, suspended in that spiritual listing between this world and the next, and smells the aether thick on the air, tastes the tang on her tongue, and hears the eerie buzz of a too-bright sky tingling within her horns. And in that precarious place sometimes she believes it... believes she is there, still bound to the First by its Light and all the horrors it wrought upon the land -- and, as the lingering vestiges of sleep are violently shaken away when she springs back to consciousness drenched in a cold sweat, upon her, too.
But he is never far. That twin’d planet drifting around her as she orbits him in turn, their gravity only grown all the stronger for their years perfecting this dance with one another, reaches out his hand to smooth her hair, to steady her with whispered words and fingers tangled together. For all the love the First brought back to their lives it carried with it, too, a great deal of anguish; rest does not always come so easily to those who gazed into the heart of the stars and glimpsed their deepest secrets.
But he is never far. With a mug of hot tea and a warmed honey cake placed with care by the chair beside the fire, a blanket to wrap around their shoulders, limbs caught in a bundle of safety and affection, he keeps awake those nights when sleep eludes her, when it comes in restless fits that see her searching for him and for their son. These nights are more distant now, the occasional intrusion upon their lives, but they are never easy.
But he is never far.
Here the hard edges of night are softened by his presence, and the shadows that enshroud them do so by way of his tender embrace. His breath is what moves the candle’s flame, a flickering reminder of light in the dark that she cannot see but believes in all the same, and each of his heartbeats is the measure by which time passes.
Everything is gentle and still tonight, a calm and glassy shoreline, because he is never far.
for prompt #29 || free day! choose your own adventure!
Mandragora purrs approvingly as she slips her nails under his chin and gives him a good scratch, and every time he tilts his head to guide her hand to a new place in need of a little tender loving care, Ane cannot help laughing. The two of them have been constant companions these past few months -- every time she arrives home from the clinic he is waiting by the foray to greet her, and on those occasions where he is preoccupied elsewhere, the sound of the door opening is more than enough to summon him to her side. Entwining between her legs as she tries to walk until she must finally be still, and once he has her still? Why, then it’s far too easy to persuade her to gather him up into her arms with a baleful meow, and once there he tucks his head into the crook of her neck and bumps her jawline with the top of his head. Even at this age his fur is still so soft and magnificent, meticulously cleaned and kept with careful tongue during the day; after all, he must look regal given his position in this household! Batting at balled up paper like a kitten, whapping at his tail before he has properly settled down for a nap beside the fire, kneading at her ribs when he lays against her as she falls asleep on the windowseat... his lordship is an attentive master of the house, and every day she grows to love him a little bit more, appreciates him a little bit more, and wishes him to always be with them a little bit more.
{ content warning: something that feels like body horror; ShB spoilers }
She is falling, falling, falling further and further down.
The earth spins, turning sky to stone and stone to sky, and beneath her all the world is uncanny, unfamiliar, unwelcoming -- this is not a place she remembers, this is not a place she forgets. Would that deja vu had the fortitude to stand up beneath the burden of this memory that is hers, this memory that is not hers, to a her who is not her and yet still is and always will be and has been up until this exact moment when the two hers collide and pull apart at the seams, bone grating against bone and chipping them both to pieces, worn down into dust until they see they are made of the same stuff, breathing the same air, living the same life and yet never have they ever been more different than right now, right here -- but deja vu cannot sustain her, cannot keep from buckling under the weight of what she knows and cannot know. A crumbling foundation, collapsing pillars that throw her temple down with such violence. Gravity forgets her, and yet it has never held her in so tight a grip as it closes its hands on her chest, crushing the breath from her... choking her, unmaking her, creating her anew with disciplined fingers. She feels herself splitting -- sinew tearing, viscera spilling, her insides are becoming her outsides and she cannot move her arms to keep herself together, instead she can only weep and scream in a keening cry that moves the heavens above Amaurot in a way the city has not heard in what feels like a hundred thousand years.
make it stop make me stop make it stop make me stop
Then it stops.
Ardbert is there, carrying her in his arms beyond the blinding light. Where are they going? She hasn’t the strength to ask. Addled by the phantom echo of the pulsing agony that had only just been stretching her body in a hundred thousand directions, she keeps her silence... and he keeps his. Of course he does. They had only just begun to tell each other things about themselves -- stories of journeys the other had never seen to places they could only imagine, the people they had met, the loves they had learned, the lives they had lost. Unfamiliar one and all, and yet the both of them had felt the dull gnaw of that same nagging thought... hadn’t they heard this story before? Had they really never been there? It rang a bell somewhere distant, somewhere deep inside them in a corner of their selves they never knew existed until right that moment -- and yet? Yet it felt as though they had always been aware of it, the way one knows a lighthouse must surely stand sentinel on the coast to bring ships safely to harbor, even when shrouded by mist. Through this impenetrable fog they have reached out and found one another, and in his arms there is a strange sort of solace... it feels melancholy, sad in a way that feels like farewell, and suddenly she comes alive against his chest.
❝ let me go. ❞
His strong legs carry her, him, them forward towards the inevitable.
❝ i said let me go -- ardbert! stop! you cannot do this! ❞
❝ you know the same as i, warrior of light. my story is over, but my part in yours? this is it. ❞
But it doesn’t have to end here. Your story can continue. We can keep meeting during those moments I am alone and at my lowest. We can keep talking. We can keep hearing about one another. We can keep being friends.
❝ but if you do this-- ❞
❝ i know. ❞
❝ i cannot send you if-- ❞
❝ i don’t want it. ❞
His voice is... frail, somehow. Gruff, of course, but soft somewhere beneath it. The guilt of one left behind when all his loved ones have gone ahead. As he speaks his words vibrate in her chest, as though they were joined in voice and body for a brief moment. Comfort washes over her chased by dread. This feeling... she cherishes it, and then despises it for what is to come. Aye, he is right. They both know what needs to be done, what must come to pass for the future of all they hold dear to be won. But what of no more sacrifices? Of this world having its share of heroes?
❝ wherever it is my friends went off to, that’s where i’m headin’... that’s where i intend to go. if they’re gone, then... i’d rather be gone, too. ❞
She understands. She wishes she didn’t. The shard of her last Crystal resonates cruelly around her neck as he holds her a bit closer, as she stares out into the distance and sees nothing but blinding white. It’s the crossroads -- somehow she knows they stand in the dead center of all these paths, all the paths they could choose to take and had chosen in other lives, all they chose not to take and had not taken in other lives, all the paths she would take and would in this life... his footprints end here, deep and permanent for having carried her weight, too, at the very last.
Now though? Now she will carry him.
❝ together..? ❞
❝ aye, ❞ he murmurs, and the curve of his smile brings new tears to her eyes. ❝ together. ❞
Who wore what mauve-colored gloves with that burgundy gown, really, what could she possibly have been thinking? matching such shades together as that! Or trying to, rather, we all know she had no hope of succeeding. Why, she had even less hope than the House of unburying Ishgard from the many trials it faces now -- can you believe the news that the Lord Commander intends to open our borders to the Doman refugees, even those horned creatures our Knights Most Holy handled all those years ago? No doubt pressured by his marriage to one of their number, seduced into it perhaps... is this now to become our city? The state of it? This on top of all the ridiculous notions already passed through the House -- lowborns amongst the highborns, common blood mingling with the old! How quaint. How cruel. How unsanitary. And did you see her shoes? Oh, how she tried to hide them beneath her hem, but at her height, really... who did she think she was fooling?
The overlapping voices are an agitated current, pushing in one and hundred directions and seemingly going nowhere, and yet for as long as she remains idle, Ane feels herself pulled along by it. Lady Satavier holds her counsel with teaspoon in hand, scraping the cup in the most irritating fashion with its bowl; the enamel veritably peels from her teeth with every pass. Word had gotten out how Lord Borel had defended the behavior of Lady Borel from their last gathering in the parlor, and it feels as though the other highborn ladies involved have been so inclined towards doubling down on their awful conversation.
It isn’t until Ane feels the light touch at the base of her elbow, a tender contact reminiscent of that Aymeric uses to bring her back from her thoughts when they are standing side by side -- perhaps that is why he does it, the safe and familiar feeling of it -- that she tips her head back, and there is Elouan asking if she should like him to escort her home. Soft lips part in surprise until she remembers the gratitude in his voice when she saved him last; now it is his turn to rescue her.
All eyes are upon them as they quit the room, Ane’s skirts swishing and Elouan’s armor clinking quietly, and all at once the horrible topics die down for those far more mundane -- still horrible, mind you, but no longer with the intent to get a rise out of the Lady Borel.
She spilled the tea quite often back then -- pouring it out on to the table, on to the floor and staining the fine tatami beneath. Oh, she very seldom got any into the cup proper, and it was a truth that left her hanging her head as her face positively burned with shame. What sort of wife would she be if she could not do such a simple thing as this? And even barring marriage, how could she be a proper citizen of Doma if pouring a cup of tea continued to elude her? These fears plagued her whenever her guardian would cluck her tongue against the backs of her teeth and make a comment on the mess she had made, and so she practiced tirelessly to get it just right. Attempting to find the grip she needed to do what the others could so effortlessly took more than a trivial bit of work; ahhh, how often she would burn her little fingers with scalding hot water! And yet, somehow, she seemed born to do this -- the scales that decorated the backs of her hands seemed perfect protection against the heat of the teapot’s spout, and so she discovered she could rest it just lightly upon them to better control her pour. From there she learned how to feel out the lip of the cup with her fingertips, how to best disguise this movement as part of the pour itself, and in time she came to do so with confidence and conversation.
Ane makes a soft sound, something in the spirit of a satisfied chuckle, as she retrieves the kettle from over the fire and pours herself a cup without even so much as a splash.
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