Prompt #15: Ache
It’s a sun after.
The boat ride is gentle. Uneventful. The healing bard, with all her aches and bruises, works on her music in the small, closet sized room on the ship. She thinks maybe it’s a good time to try and write another musical. Maybe an opera if she’s ambitious. But she struggles to come up with a good topic. Nothing as big as a Calamity has disrupted her life lately.
...Well. That’s not true.
Swiftly, her pen scratches the paper, staves already drawn out on the fiber. The notes marked down evoke specific colors and feelings in her mind. The same ones she heard whenever the woman spoke.
It’s a sennight after.
The boss is gone without a trace, leaving her beleaguered boyfriend slash butt-monkey to pick up the reins. As, what feels like, the only manager doing things around the business to help him, life is hard, but the bard perseveres. On a long caravan ride toting artifacts to a rich patron out in Middle-of-Nowhere, Thanalan, she slumps her shoulders. She imagines her best friend sitting next to her, shit-talking the rich patron. The two of them, in her mind’s eye, laugh like they used to when she was still in Eorzea. Her curse laden ranting, oddly enough, strikes a chord in her heart that leaves an aching vibrato to ring out through her chest.
She presses a few fingers to her ears, waiting a moment, before her heart leapt at hearing her voice over the line, “Hey! I’m on a delivery, do you have time to talk for a bit?”
It’s a moon after.
The Passerine Unit gathers beneath a tent under a stormy, bleary sky. Reports state that the Warrior of Light has taken the field. All the Grand Companies needed to do was stem the tide. Her father stands over a battle map of the Ghimlyt Dark in his canary yellows, looking every bard and lancer under his command in the eye. His eyes meet his lieutenant’s... his daughter’s, darkened in determination. Tempered by her experiences only moons before on Doman soil. He sets up a plan to disperse the bards with their lancer partners throughout the battlefield. It stings a little; there is no lancer assigned to Ayla. The spot was purposely left open in memorial.
“Commander Thatcher,” a familiar voice calls from the edge of the tent - a knight in dark armor. Her current boss. Behind the knight, a cadre of soldiers stand waiting in dark green and black. Doman colors, “These shinobi were looking for Ayla.”
A tall shinobi with dark hair, greying at the temples, salutes the Passerine Unit, “Master Daisuke Kubo. It’s an honor to meet you, Commander Thatcher, and a greater honor - if you’d permit it - for us to fight alongside you and your unit.”
The bard’s eyes wash over the person standing next to Daisuke, and her heart hurts with such relief. Such fondness. She sees that cocky smile lighting up those blue eyes, feels the hug that’s given after their eyes meet, and instantly knows everything will be okay.
“We’d be fools to turn down the help,” Keiran says, smiling at Daisuke, “In fact, let me distribute your men with my bards.”
The spot next to Ayla is immediately taken.
It’s a turn after.
Reconstruction efforts are going well. Now that the war’s over in earnest, there’s time to mend. To heal.
Linkpearl talks are frequent enough, but it’s not the same. She knows that. Nothing will ever replace wandering around town with her. Grabbing food together and talking about the day. Gossiping over wine together.
It’s enough just to hear her voice anymore. She’s thankful for the difference in time. When things are hard to deal with late at night - when the terrors refuse to leave and she’s left feeling drained, staring at the ceiling - her best friend is awake on the other side of the world.
As she speaks over the line, the bard listens to the little things that make that voice so distinctive - the timbre, the accent that’s gotten more noticeable since their parting, all the colors that come to her eyes when she hears it.
She wonders for a while why it makes her heart ache so much. She’s never missed anyone quite this much before.
...Well. That’s not true.
She’s never missed anyone alive quite this much before. The change in her feelings were odd. Different. Nothing like she’s ever felt before.
Perhaps writing that opera would get her mind off of it...
