"Lady Seiros,” they beg her long after her mother has been returned to her tomb, “what does the Goddess call us to do now?”
She doesn’t, Rhea thinks. She’s dead because of you people and you ask for more? But Seiros is a prophet and already the scribes in Enbarr have written down every word that have dropped from her lips regarding Mother; hungry, the Elites who have turned in their “holy” weapons clamor for answers, for absolution.
She has never learned how to forgive, but Rhea realizes she has become quite adept at lying.
And so she does. She and Timotheos work on the Book of Stars first, and there is something comforting in going back to these familiar figures. If she must share with the people her Faith (oh and she shares so much her stories, her memories, her blood itself) at least she has her celestial guides to bracket her.
The Goddess now lives in the Blue Sea Star, she tells them. The Goddess lives in your hearts so long as you believe.
(Rhea is best, after all at lying to herself).
-
They know not what they do, Rhea explains to her brother when he refuses to follow her back to the mountains; oh, he laughs, oh sister look at their gold and their estates and the pieces of our family they hang above their hearths. They know well enough.
But he is wrong. When the first archbishop of Garreg Mach mourns the failure of the Rite of Rising it is her human bishops and acolytes who comfort her, not her apostles.
"Surely, if we create a truly pious land the Goddess will come back to her earthly abode. We will work harder, archbishop. Lend us your strength."
And so she does, putting the final piece of the monastery into place herself. She comes up from the Holy Tomb to her pilgrims and townspeople praying at the chapel and as the light comes through the stained glass windows it strikes her eyes.
There is a burning there, as she realizes she has more in common with these people than any of the remnants of her family.
-
The shadow library is her own idea, for she fears her flocks' intellect just as much as she respects it.
She does not regret continuing the teaching of magic across the land, for without it those not possessing crests would be in even more disparate circumstances. She simply had not expected an entire community -students, teachers-to-be, researchers all - to pop up however even if the Kingdom of Faerghus did ask rather nicely for the Church’s blessing before formally opening said School of Sorcery
When she visits to deliver said blessing the curriculum, the scope, the vision of it all nearly takes her breath away.
(What you gave them, you can take away she reminds herself when the burning in her eyes reflect only javelins this time).
“Wonderful work,” she tells them, “and we really should discuss scholarships for the Officer’s Academy as with so many young minds I know the Goddess could only ever be pleased, ah, but for now might I visit your library?
thani mastery drabble. no spoilers just spell meta :^)
Micaiah had learned to write the ancient tongue long before she could practice the common scrawl. The old priestess who raised her made Micaiah write three hundred lines a day in between gathering herbs for poultices, cleaning the cottage, and whatever other chores inevitably came up: it was the lines, written over and over, imitating that twisting and strange script that never changed.
[ヒカリヨ ホトバシリ
ワガミチヲ ハバミシモノヲウテ]
It must have been around the tenth time they’d had to rearrange the space where Micaiah kept her growing collection of sheaves of paper filled to the brim with those lines that the old woman brought out the tome for the first time.
Micaiah had stopped writing when her mentor had dropped the book in front of her unceremoniously where it fell to a page that had what Micaiah could just make it out were common shopping ingredients written out awkwardly in the ancient tongue.
“Well, go on then,” she’d said when Micaiah had just stared open-mouthed, frozen with quill in hand, at the intrusion, “it’s best to write what you know. And I should think you know those lines by now.”
“This is magic!” Micaiah reasoned, a little helplessly. “Your magic tome. I can’t just take it –”
“You can,” the old woman had said, the flint in her voice something Micaiah had only heard a handful of times before, “and you will if you want to continue in your endeavors. Magic is just as much a tool as anything else you’ve learned here so it’s best you treat it as such. Discipline is not what you lack, child; have courage.”
Micaiah picked up the tome carefully, and thought the warmth there a remnant of all the times her mentor must have held it, used it to call forth light in a way Micaiah could still only marvel at.
“You’ve written a lot more here than what you’ve taught me so far,” she murmured, carefully not mentioning the odd selection of ingredients toward the top of the page as she picked up her quill again and began the familiar, near meditative process.
The old woman just laughed. “The words will come to you. In our magic it is the intent that matters, and more than that: how we shape it, when you are as old as I am some shapes simply aren’t what’s needed any more.”
Micaiah nodded. Our magic, repeated in her head; it was the first time she had ever thought of Thani as something of her own.
*
She hadn’t understood then, really; had only just grasped it when she managed to conjure light a few weeks before the old woman’s passing; but in that moment as the ball of light in her hands refracted off the pitcher of water on the table before sputtering out, she thought about the fluidity of the spell.
The words might change, the intent did not.
"The light of life! Shine a ray upon my path and... strike my enemy!”
(Later a man of learning - of numbers though, not of magical formulae, would tell her that light always takes the shortest path to its destination. He understood best of all.)
When she had first met up with Sothe again Thani and her Farsight had been the only thing she had to give to Daein, and she had been terrified. How could she possibly support Sothe who needed the most precise timing, and the element of surprise to best use his skills when she was so, so showy?
She prayed to the goddess then. Funny, they’d just started to call her miraculous then but she’d never really felt a religious connection - but to help them take back their homeland, she would do anything.
Standing up against three Begnion knights on horseback Micaiah sees Sothe nod at her, and she remembers her mentor’s words: have courage. She nods back.
The light she summons then is a pillar, breaking through armor and cleaving man from horse; it is a shining emblem that carves a path for Sothe to finish the job.
I hadn’t realized I’d been smiling, he had told her once. How like him; for even if that were true, back then pushing it away as he had, he’d still known why.
Micaiah had been the opposite – reaching, always reaching even when she shouldn’t, even when the reason evaded her.
It’s not simple – caring for someone like this – it never could be, for as big and vast and frightening as human emotions were, but it had been the choice she had made and each time she looks at him and sees a smile, sees the why, she cannot bring herself to regret it.
She feels a little spoiled, actually; now, surrounded by stacks of books and the everyday sounds of Soren’s puppy the door over she can lean up against Pelleas and look up at that expression without needing words or excuses.
There are words, of course. I love you. Does she not say them enough? If so, it is because every moment her heart is shouting I love you but that’s not enough it can never be enough when your life line is so short and the future stretches on, and on, and –
So, if she is spoiled, selfish as she always has been, it is because she wants to fill herself with memories the way tomes are with words, or trees with leaves; so she can define herself by this time together even when it has long since passed.
She does take from him, after all. But in the way of a garden. She takes just a bit, so she can watch and be and revel in the bloom.
The hearts Micaiah had felt for the last twenty four hours had only been her own and Leanne’s and suddenly with the reappearance of Rion she feels hundreds, no, thousands, all beating in time – a cacophony so loud she feels as if she is falling.
It’s her first memory, one she’d long since forgotten, and she is falling. The Holy Pegasus Knight's steed has been shot just as she and her parcel arrived at the borders of Nevassa and it is only the knight’s last act using her body as support for the infant that saves Micaiah’s life.
“Ah, this was a sad one, then'," the priestess who finds them comments. “The spirits said I would meet a child, a fallen star but, let us give your friend a burial first, mm? Plenty of time afterward for us to get to know each other.”
And there was, time that is. But not enough. It was Granny who had taught her how fragile human life was and Sothe who had taught her how strong the bonds of people even so (even when one wanted to sever them).
She’s facing down Sephiran in Ashera’s tower, hand on her Thani tome but something in her is screaming not to fight this man. He lowers his own weapon and tells her “If I had known you still lived, I…”
She is ten years old and sitting at Sephiran’s feet as he explains to her what it means for the Apostle to have a sister. Her right hand is still covered but her countenance – so different, self-assured as always but with a haughty flourish. She brushes his worries aside and declares: “it matters not what the Senate thinks. She is my sibling and I will love and protect her as I am meant.”
She is standing in front of Pelleas holding a gift from her king that makes her feel just as sick as his next words do. But it is an order, and she a citizen of Daein, and so, she accepts.
(Disappointing, she thinks, not of Pelleas but of herself. Had she no will of her own?)
She is always a priestess, a medium, though sometimes one of light and sometimes the servant of a dark god’s will it is Yune she so faithfully serves in each timeline.
She stays behind in the tower with the goddesses. She serves as the first sovereign queen of Daein. Always, she looks out to sea, and wishes she could fly away.
She often dies alone. Even after thousands of years and multiple life times it still hurts as much as she thought it would.
Thump. Ba-thump. Thump.
Her heart was beating now, here. In Fódlan. Get up Micaiah, there’s work to do.
