2. Horizon
Myrina never fully learned how to make connections with the people closest to her. Never quite learned how to open up the door to her heart all the way without them having to let themselves in.
It is well that those that love her knock anyway. Would that she could let them know her. When her daughter stumbles upon a piece of Myrina's past, she will have to settle for a half truth as an end result.
word count: 3,628
-
Myrina had lived in the Shroud long enough to know that thunderstorms posed a particular threat here—with the tree canopy so dense as to blot out the sun in most places, even the scent of rain on the wind was enough for most villages to begin to prepare for the worst case scenario.
Local volunteer firefighters and town watchtowers would remain on high alert, ready with countermeasures should lightning strike the treeline. As ever, she would be among them, covering the older trees and thatching rooves even as the storm so often caught them in the middle of their preparations.
On one such afternoon, a particularly brutal storm swept through their little Elmvale. The trees offered little and less protection from the rain pratically pelting the firefighters in horizontal sheets as they wrestled with the howling wind. Visibility was shot: even in the shade of the canopy, the tumultuous clouds overhead made it almost dark as night.
But the day was relatively kind, for all their efforts: but a single lightning bolt struck through the canopy and burned a hole large enough to fit a chocobo through before they had managed to smother the flames but beyond that, the village suffered no lasting damage.
That hole in the canopy line became something of a fascination for Myrina’s children even into the next day, after the smoke had thinned and the skies had begun to clear.
“Bet Rhalgr sent it,” her son, Uthengentle chirped as he hopped from one puddle to the next.
They were making a game of it; from what Myrina could parse, they were avoiding anywhere that wasn’t a puddle.
“The lightning?” asked her daughter, Serella, as she jumped after him.
“Yeah! That’s like his whole thing!” Uthengentle said with a pump of his fist in the air on his next leap. “He sends stuff like that down all the time! That’s what my Pops used to say! I bet it was a message!”
At that, Serella stood still in the next puddle she landed on and turned her head toward the newly formed gap in the treeline. Gray, overcast sky peered in on the village with its cosmic indifference from through the lingering smoke trails.
“Whoa,” she whispered, eyes wide in awe.
Even later that evening, with supper sorted and everyone settled in, Myrina still caught her daughter peering out of the window in the upstairs hallway, staring out toward the burned away boughs. It took little and less to shoo her gently to bed. Thus, Myrina slept soundly, certain that her daughter’s curiosity would be sated ere long.
She didn’t see much of Serella the next morning after breakfast, though the overcast day meant the family settled inside, content in their own spaces with only the sounds of fiddling hands to fill the gentle quiet.
Eventually, though, she heard the telltale march of little feet down the steps sometime in the late afternoon. She couldn’t help but smile at the sound: she knew it was her daughter in the way she jumped with both feet off the last step. It gave her away every time.
But there was a rustle of paper with each step, something Myrina hadn’t anticipated. Serella must have busy making something up in her room.
Sure enough, her daughter’s beautiful head of hair bounced in just above the kitchen table with her expression the very picture of seriousness and a loose sheet of paper fluttering in her grip.
“Have you seen Da?” she asked.
Myrina had in fact seen Hanvesh. He was in the den, likely reading or whittling if the lack of plucking strings was any indicator. But a small part of her felt hurt that she wasn’t asked regarding whatever little mystery their daughter got into this time.
Setting down her screwdriver and the clock she had been repairing, she said, “He might be in the den. Is there something I can help with?”
Alright, maybe a little more than a little hurt.
Her daughter demured at that, staring down at her own feet and shuffling her weight between them.
“Pro’bly not.” she mumbled at her own socks.
A far larger part of Myrina hurt at that. She fought a wince.
“I might be, you never know!” she tried again with a shaky smile, even as the words felt awkward and too loud.
But she hadn’t known how to connect with her daughter just yet; poor Uthengentle had been easy to bond with because something horrid and unjust had happened to him, too. Serella had no such loss to grapple with, sweet and earnest and untouched by the world as she was. Myrina felt shame that that was what it took for her to connect with either of her children. She felt shame that it was all she had to connect with anyone.
But her daughter’s eyes had never clouded over in haunted memories. In fighting so hard to shelter her daughter, she had made herself a stranger. She knew not how to engage with the unmarred and the innocent, even when they were her blood.
“...Nah, it’s okay. Got to do with stars and stuff, so, uhh...I’ll go check with him. Thanks, Ma!” Serella chirped, ignorant of her mother’s struggle as she skipped out of the kitchen in search of her father.
But it was a small house, just big enough for their little family. It was impossible not to hear them in the next room as she resumed her fiddling.
“I found a new constellation!” Serella told her father.
“A new constellation? You’re certain?” she heard her husband say with the right amount of awe in his voice for a child with a new discovery.
Because he knew how to connect with their children. With anyone. With everyone. Because that was the sort of person he was. He knew all about all kinds of things because he knew just how to ask.
Myrina didn’t know how to do that. She knew all the same things of people by silent observation, but never learned how to say things softly.
“I checked all the books in the library and all the star charts you gave me, and I didn’t see anything like this!” Serella declared with the sound of paper being smacked onto a table. “I can see it at night through that hole in the trees! Uthen thinks Rhalgr wanted us to see it!”
Myrina could picture her daughter’s face perfectly: she always got this bright gleam in her mismatched eyes when she had a mystery to solve, with a big smile that showed all her little baby teeth in an expression that dared the gods themselves to tell her she couldn’t find the answer.
Serella was her father’s daughter, after all.
The screwdriver Myrina had in her hand was far too large for the next step in repairs. She busied herself with finding one of her smaller tools in her bag.
“That’s quite the effort—well, now.” Hanvesh mused with the sound of shuffling paper.
In her mind’s eye, Myrina was sat across from her husband in the den, watching the way his brow would quirk the way it always did when something caught his attention. His head would always angle toward the opposite side as the eyebrow that arched, without fail, and she could see the way it tilted in that moment he picked up the paper and examined it.
“I don’t think I’ve seen this star pattern ‘afore in all my life, Little Acorn!” he said, though Myrina had known him long enough to tell when he was hiding something. “Say, do you mind if I keep this to take a look for myself later?”
“‘Kay!” she chirped.
That had been the end of it, apparently. Serella ran off to play, and Hanvesh followed not long after, ambling out with his cane thumping in time with him.
A bad pain day, then. Myrina set the pot on the stove and began to brew his medicinal tea for when he came in.
Except she hadn’t even finished steeping it before she heard him head straight for the kitchen.
She turned just in time to see Hanvesh join her, still holding that paper in his free hand. His expression was a queer one; it hovered somewhere between serious and playful, in that strange liminal space he occupied when he intended to butter her up for something important.
As if he needed to.
“You’ll never guess what our daughter has discovered,” Hanvesh said conversationally.
“A new constellation, by all accounts.” Myrina answered plainly.
At that, he snorted a laugh and said, “Aye, that’s what she believes. But would you believe me if I told you you’d recognize it better than I?”
As he asked this, he revealed the drawing on the paper: less a sketch and more a series of scribbled stars, one for each light she saw through the treeline.
Far too many to be a constellation; easily over a dozen dots, all arranged in a strange pyramid.
“Says she saw these after that storm the other day. Funny, the angle from the village points north, too far out to be the Shroud—”
Ah. Myrina might have known. Little wonder why she would need “buttering up,” then.
“Not a constellation, then.” she sighed and handed the paper back.
Hanvesh did not take it from her. “It’d be good to hear it from you, you know. What it really is.”
Who you really are, he did not add.
Of course it would be. If she knew how to do that. If she knew how to be a mother and a partner and a person—
“I don’t know, meri jaan,” she said around a heavy sigh.
She hadn’t even finished the exhale before he reached for her hands, gentle and sweet, as he leaned on his good leg to press close.
“Would it be so horrible if she knew her mother, mon cœur?” he asked, not unkindly and half into her cheek before he planted a kiss there.
If anyone would understand why Myrina might insist that yes, it would be so horrible, it would be her husband. That he would ask regardless meant he didn’t intend to let this go.
That it was important enough not to. That it mattered.
“I shan’t say a word,” he promised her, and when he squeezed her hands it became clear she had hidden her panic poorly. “Ultimately, it is your story to tell, mon cher.”
There was never a time he left her side without a kiss to her forehead, and this time was no exception. Cane in hand, he began to make his way back to the study.
Hovering near the window in the den on his way, he said aloud and certainly to no one in particular, “Methinks the sky’ll clear ‘round sunset, give or take a bell or two.”
He left it at that. She hated that he had, just a little, even as she knew he had the right of it.
Hanvesh had made rabbit stew out of her catch that night for dinner, and their little ones had been eager to help her make bread.
The conversation at the dinner table never veered toward Serella’s “constellation,” lively as ever though it was. It was nice, always, to sit and watch her family happily chatter about their day. To bask in the warmth they exuded, the warmth they folded her into.
But her thoughts were malms away from the table in that moment. Despite not having set foot there in almost a decade, a massive gate of wrought iron and stone cast a looming shadow over her thoughts.
Realistically, she knew she could not keep her children from knowing forever—even if she did not tell them, their school would doubtless be covering broader Eorzean maps and history any day now. Though her name would not be there, the shape of the place would be unmistakable, and then the questions would follow; chief among them, the question of the household’s secrecy surrounding it.
Nay, better to at least try.
There was about a two-bell span in the evening, after the house had gone to sleep, that Myrina knew her daughter would often shove pillows under her blankets and sneak down to the study, where all those star charts and fairytales were within her grasp, with time uninterrupted and free. Doubtless, Serella was eager to be nose-deep in some map or other, still dedicated to her new discovery.
Myrina knew a better mother might try to reign that in, to stamp down a bad habit the moment it was found. But she had been one such child once, scurrying in the shadows of her own home, delighting in the thrill of sneaking without true fear of harm. She could find no good in denying her daughter the chance to befriend the dark.
Tonight, though, she could give her daughter something better: an answer.
As expected, her ears perked at the sound of little feet trying to cling to the sides of the stair steps to reduce their creaking. In an effort to startle her daughter the least, Myrina waited until the footsteps hit the bottom before slipping out .
And, as expected, Serella spun around with such shock that she nearly sent herself to the floor when she met her mother’s eyes from the top of the stairs.
“You’re not in trouble,” she promised her daughter around the lump in her throat, holding up her hands as if to show she was unarmed. “There’s something I wanted to show you.”
Her daughter regarded her with wide eyes, watching her as she closed the distance.
“What do you mean?” Serella asked hesitantly, her whole body already bent in the shape of cornered prey.
Hard not to wince at that, but Myrina managed.
“I heard,” she said, and produced her daughter’s crude star map, “that you found yourself a constellation?”
Serella looked at her own drawing like she was somehow in trouble.
“Well…yeah. I mean,” she said in a halting voice that snagged on her own nerves. “I can’t find it in any of the books or maps I’ve been able to check. It’s up in the sky. What else could it be?”
Before she could talk herself out of it again, Myrina asked, “Would you like to know?”
That got a look of surprise on her daughter’s face, her spine unfurling as the fear left her.
Then, as though the two of them were conspiring, she leaned in an whispered, “Do you know, Ma?”
At that, Myrina couldn’t help but crack a smile as she motioned with her head toward the front door and said, “Something like that. C’mon— get your shoes, and I’ll show you.”
With that, she led her curious daughter out through the front door and toward the treeline.
When she stopped in front of the tree that had been struck, she peered up through the burned branches.
Had she not known what those little twinkling lights were, she might also have thought they were stars; even with this hole, the trees above hadn’t thinned so much that the sky was in unobscured view.
“This one, right?” she asked, pointing at the gap.
When Serella nodded, Myrina mirrored the gesture, knelt before her daughter, and offered an open arm.
“Here, hang on to me.” Myrina instructed.
When Serella tilted her head in clear confusion, Myrina’s smile returned as she said, “We’re going to fly for just a moment. So hang on tight.”
Gasping and gawking, her daughter scrambled, her little arms wrapping around her shoulders and squeezing.
For as unfamiliar as she was with laying her heart bare with her children, she knew without conscious thought how to swing her daughter onto her hip, arm wrapped around her like she was a toddler all over again.
It had been a while since Myrina had properly ridden the wind…but dragons never forget how to spread their wings. They who have supped on that selfsame aether were no exception.
Just as well. Short though the trip might have been, it still required a few hops around the dense canopy branches so as to hit the bigger ones, though just before breaking through the treeline, she made sure to wind up her leap as far and as high as she possibly could.
Might as well give her daughter a good view—nay, the best view she could.
Bursting through the treeline felt almost like breaking through the surface of water—for as much as she had come to love Gridania, its dense treeline made it easy to forget the world beyond and above it. It was easy to drown in the leaves.
Now, though, the whole world stretched out in every direction further than the eye could see. Shaded treetops stretching out as far as they eye could see.
And above that, all, the glittering canopy hung higher than any tree. The stars welcomed her and her daughter into the rest of the world in that moment. The moon fair set the world alight that they might see its splendor.
Dragoons were ever taught to land lightly and hover on the barest of points, and much like their penchant for moments of flight, it was a muscle that never truly fell out of practice.
So it was nothing for her to perch on the natural “net” of the treetops, so dense as to support their weight on one of the highest branches as she settled in and set her daughter on her lap.
For so long as she drew breath, Myrina would never forget the look on Serella’s face, staring straight up at the sky—nowhere near where her newfound “constellation” was, mind, but just staring, unblinking, at the expanse of the universe with tears rolling down her cheeks as she took in the width and breadth of the night sky for the first time in her life.
“Wow…” Serella whispered. “I’ve seen it in pictures, but…”
Her words trailed off in a sniffle, even as she did nothing to wipe her tears away.
Myrina let her process this new discovery, her head on a swivel as if she would never see the sky again and had to commit it to memory.
With a little lean toward her daughter, she murmured, “Just ahead of us. There’s your constellation—but look closer.”
Following Myrina’s outstretched hand, Serella at last scrubbed her face of tears and looked out, out, out beyond the treeline, on the far edge of the horizon. Dozens of lights twinkled back, all concentrated in the shape of a spire.
Or more accurately, several spires.
“It’s…a building…?” Serella trailed off, squinting at the outline that encased her newly discovered stars and leaning in as though it will help her see.
Eyes widening as she straightened again, she squeaked, “...No, it’s a castle!”
Oh, how far and near to the truth she was. The truth might well break her heart.
Despite everything, Myrina couldn’t help but smile as she said, “Something like that. It’s where I’m from.”
Serella’s head had never whipped toward her so fast.
“You came from over there?!” she exclaimed.
“Of a certainty. It’s—”
In her mind, Ishgard was as constant as the Twelveswood itself. Two homes, alike in cruelty, tumultuous as a roiling tide; made of the same waters and always destined to crash together but never unite.
Myrina could not tell that to her child. Not when she looked up at her with such wide, inquisitive eyes. She could not be the first one to take that away from her.
“The…castle, you called it? It sits on a mountaintop with the surrounding town. It’s called Ishgard.”
Serella repeated the name slowly, as if she were testing its authenticity.
“What’s it like, Ma?” she asked.
Just as Myrina had feared.
Slowly, she found the words to skirt around the horrid nature of the Theocracy. Staring out at the myriad lights that flickered so far away, her tone almost carried her voice to those windowsills she had so often pressed her nose against.
“The people there—they’re warm and kind. For the most part, that is,” Myrina started slowly, because that was true enough. “But they’re…it’s…”
Swallowing, she tried again, “No one is allowed to be their truest selves, unless they are inherently cruel. No one is able to truly be friends—with one another or with those not from there. It is a place cursed with loneliness and strife.”
As she expected, Serella’s tear-glossed eyes widened in shock and hurt at this revelation. Of course her tender little heart couldn’t bear the thought of such a place.
Rather than a fresh wave of tears, she shifted in her mother’s lap to face her fully as she asked, “Then we can make friends with everyone! Then they won’t be lonely anymore! Oh, can’t we go mom? Please?”
Myrina knew that look on her daughter’s face. That bright gleam in her mismatched eyes with a big smile that showed all her little baby teeth in an expression that dared the gods themselves to tell her she couldn’t fix an entire town with love.
Her sweet, innocent little girl. May she never know the harsh truths of the world—or may she defy them upon discovery.
With that little prayer in the back of her mind, she kissed the crown on her daughter’s head and promised her, “When you’re old enough to hold a sword and draw a bow, sweetheart, we’ll go together.”
Time had a funny way of half-breaking most promises and poorly keeping the rest. Twenty and two summers later, Serella would cross the Arc of the Worthy, driven there by the harshest truths and the cruelest lies of the world and trying not to wonder what her mother might make of it all.
