headcanon // xel and her family.
xel metallium is a woman whom hails from a region most won’t expect to hear falling from the mouth of a miqo’te, for after all, most know that miqo’te tend to be nomadic; either singly or in pairs if they’re not part of a tribe of the seekers, or reclusive if they are of the moon. but neither of those structures were part of her life, nay. xel hails from a province of coerthas in truth, close to ishgard, and she names it her home.
but how does a miqo’te of a tribe usually found in the warm arid climes of ul’dah come to call the rich mountains her home? well ... rather simply, in all honesty.
she doesn’t remember which tribe was hers, though her name implies which one she came from; however, despite visiting the x tribe, none of them recognized her when she went back years later as an adult. but she also doesn’t remember her birth mother or her father, whether he was a nunh or a tia. she suspects she’s a nunh’s child, however, but xel truly cannot recall. all she knows is she was but a kitten, no more than three or four summers of age, and alone when her father found her.
a hyur merchant that had been traveling stumbled across her, almost literally, for xel had been traveling along a road and it was but by a miracle alone that she hadn’t been set upon by a monster or a hungry predator. but with no food or water, she collapsed eventually and awoke to a kindly man peering down at her and asking if she was alright. she had no words and just latched onto him, crying, and unable to talk at that point in time. for days afterwards, he took care of her while she struggled with being able to speak until, finally, words began to pour out of her.
she was unable to tell him where she came from for she had no memories of what had happened or how she had gotten to where she was, but she latched onto this man and his kindness without hesitation. when he finally began to move on from selling his wares, he made attempts to pass her onto another tribe of miqo’te, only to be met with fierce resistance from the little girl who would break down into screaming fits. eventually, however, he resigned himself to the fact that she seemed to want to stay with him.
so it was that gillain took her home with him to his wife. sonya immediately took a shine to the little miqo’te girl because she and her husband had a pair of children already, not much older than xel herself. xel was shy at first with her new home and her new family, her name eventually fading from the x’el that she remembered of her name, all she remembered of her name, to the xel she uses now.
while things were initially quite good, xel found herself not feeling like she fit in. she was very close to her mother, though, when still little before things began to change. as xel grew older, she found herself receiving a classical education - along with learning that she had an affinity for magic. their closeness to ishgard left xel being trained first in ishgard for the burgeoning magic that she possessed, but that didn’t last long. xel’s affinity for magic was not that of the preferred white arts but steeped in the source of black magic. while black magic was not exactly illegal in coerthas, it was not widely studied so xel found her studies hampered by a limited range of teachers and study.
the little family grew larger as time passed and xel found herself starting to have friction with her parents as she began to grow older. being a miqo’te in coerthas had ever left xel standing out due to the rarity of her kind in those lands and showing affinity for black magic left her even more isolated from her peers. she was, in sum, a lonely child who lost herself in studies of old and obscure things out of interest. not only that, but as she grew older, sonya began trying to groom xel into being a paragon of a well bred young lady. to make her mother happy, xel tried to learn how to behave in social and political situations, learning such things at her father and mother’s knees. over the years, gillain had earned revenue and personal power alike and thus their family began to grow prominent in their province.
the clashes between xel and her parents, however, did not truly begin to occur until she was older. xel was a miqo’te in a hyur family and miqo’te are often creatures of instinct, especially the seekers. those instincts were not something that sonya and gillain were truly prepared to deal with, and xel was forced to learn to constrain such things within herself. however, such rules from one’s parents can lead to rebellion in teenagers and xel began to push back against her parent’s influence. she threw herself into what studies she could make of her time. it was hard to say how well things worked out but xel did learn how to be a proper young noblewoman in those years.
it was not, however, until her parents began to talk about marriage that her relationship with them truly fractured. xel was of marrying age by then, sonya had decided, and while she had not thought to be one of the children considered for such things, given that gillain and sonya had seven natural children by then as well as xel, she was their second daughter, though, as they had decided, and sonya had wished to see her happy. however, it was not until she began to talk to xel about the possibility of forming a relationship with a young man of another noble family that xel began to truly buck against the constraints of her parents. what began as an argument ended in fire as xel’s magical affinity left her accidentally setting the drapes of the room aflame with a burst of temper.
it was at that point that gillain decided it was time to send xel to the thaumaturges’ guild in ul’dah, knowing that he would not see his daughter for a long time once that occurred. her father had always been a quiet fixture in her life, teaching xel the magic of numbers as she would often help him with his ledgers and encouraging her in her choices. it was him she said goodbye to on the day she finished packing her bags and she promised that she would write them. it was gillain that saw her off as did her closer siblings. so it was that xel departed with a caravan heading towards mor dhona, planning to travel from there to ul’dah.