parting thoughts.
Tagging @korporxie / @doctorlaelia-ffxiv / @whitelotus-ffxiv for mentions of her gals!! And also as a big heckin’ ‘thank you’ to pushing out content while we play with our characters in our Discord sandbox!
It is an odd feeling, having my family at my side once more without the backdrop of Garlemald behind us. The air of Doma is thick and heavy with humidity. The fog hangs heavy over its mountains like something from a painting. I can see the people milling about in their villages, tending to their simple lives, smiling and laughing, from the windows of the carriages as we travel to the easternmost docks. Sometimes a few children will follow beside us, holding pinwheels to the breeze as they race the horses.
Though my childhood memories remain fuzzy, I like to think that I smiled as they do, that I was a happy child when not around Caius and my grandmother.
The Jade Palace is a cursed place. That is my final observation of it. The people living there can act as though they’re better than my family and I, that despite our hands not having Doman blood upon them we are just as complicit as Yostuyu and Prince Zenos.
Emperor Zenos, now, if the rumor mills from Arduro and Auntie’s network of informants is to be believed.
But the people in that palace smile with daggers and teeth ready to tear. Their eyes aren’t soft at all; they’re hard and cold, eternally looking for a weakness to exploit. They’re strange and otherworldly, and merely being in their presence made me want to cower behind my mother’s skirts like a tiny child. And that man… That lecherous old man, offering up his grandchild like a bartering chip, was the worst of them all. As much as I wish my mother controlled herself more, her outrage mirrored my own, and I am grateful that she uses her voice when she deems it necessary. It reminded me too much of my grandmother, arranging a marriage with a man who would become my friend.
I wonder if he realized who we are—refugees and outlaws, fleeing a land drenched in chaos and war, desperate for sanctuary. We’re not people who could give him a leg to stand upon in Garlean politics, even if we wanted to.
And judging by hawkish looks Father and Auntie gave him, I will bet that if he tries it with another Garlean more susceptible to his snake-like charm, they will fight him every step of the way.
I hope the Au Ra woman he’d tried to woo at his banquet chokes him in his sleep before then.
But the palace, in all its shining glory, in all its rotted corruption, is behind us, finally. And I am grateful.
The winds from the ocean aren’t much better than the muggy mountains, and the water stretching far into the horizon threatens to swallow me whole if I take a wrong step. But we are in the final stretch of our journey.
Father holds his head higher. Mother holds his hand and tells us all stories of her travels before my siblings and I were born. Auntie Caelia and Calliope hold each other tighter. They’re anxious to see Caius again and meet Audrey, I think. And I almost think that, despite herself, Laelia’s mother is grateful to see the sun reflecting upon the waves.
And Arduro…
My Arduro.
Audrey told me on a rickety little rowboat that she thought water had no memory, that it cleansed and healed. I still stare into its depths and see nothing but a hungry mouth that wishes to erase me from existence, but I hope—I pray, to whatever Doman or Hingan kami, or Eorzean god that wishes to listen—that she was right.
I wish that this next journey across the ocean will be one that lifts the weight that presses on his shoulders.
Even if it doesn’t, I know that his hand is always there to hold mine. Even if he won’t allow me to shoulder the burdens he bears, I can be there, at his side, and do my best to give him strength to push on.
I know we’ll be returning, at some point; I can see it in Arduro’s eyes every time someone mentions Bozja. He’s a man of action, and his grandfather still remains in Garlemald, doing what he can.
The drums of war are always thudding in his chest, and I don’t know if they’ll ever silence completely.
These moments in Hingashi will be our reprieve, but when the time comes, he’ll be marching off to wage war on those who silence the vox populares.
And I will be at his side.
Now and always.
Manus in Mano.
