Received these beautiful commissions from @mounted-archer! Had commissioned her for some art of my cat Tinkerbell, who passed away in March, as well as my Final Fantasy XIV (cat) character, Wisp.
She captured Tinkerbell beautifully - I tear up looking at the little stretch and the wonderful expressiveness she captured. And she has done an amazing piece of Wisp, as well - every detail is perfect!
She also surprised me with a picture of the two together in another gorgeous piece! She was so great to work with, and I love these pieces so much- plewse consider commissioning her if you get a chance!
Wisp hid a wince at this last with a quick shake of their head and a hastily summoned flit of a smile. The top of their tail twitched, but this, they hoped, might be obscured by the swing of their robe hem as they shifted to accept the full sack of goods from the shopkeep's deft hands.
"Thank you, no. This ought to be it." The stiffness of their smile eased a little as they fished the proper coin - well, what they hoped was the proper coin, in a currency still new to them - from the small stash in their belt pouch.
The shopkeep - Aron, Wisp had learned he was called the last time they had been here, a month ago, no, two - smiled in turn as he accepted the coin. But he paused in the midst of the swift count of the tumbled stack, mouth working like it was forming words not spoken, rubbing one coin between blunt fingers.
"Is…anything amiss?" Their smile slipped, ears tipping back, watching that coin pass between his fingers. Coinage was not a necessity, here, in the lands spared the Flood - bartering could be done - but always there was more to be obtained, and less earned for what work they could do for any outside Il Mheg. If they'd been fleeced with false coin, not knowing enough of what it ought to look like, or even simply counted wrong…
"Amiss? Wh-Oh!" Aron followed their gaze to the coin in his fingers, and abruptly his hesitation melted into the quick laugh that Wisp remembered from their last dealings. “With the coin? No.” The shape of that laugh - the humor had guided their steps toward his stall in the midst of the somber air that often seemed to wind through even the beauty of this crystal-lit sanctuary when first they’d properly ventured here a month ago - no, two - lingered a moment even as Aron’s mouth worked again.
“It’s just…” An in-drawn breath, and his eyes dropped away from Wisp’s, his brow furrowing as Wisp’s own arched up as he visibly shifted the question he’d been about to voice. Instead: “They like honey, do they? The…Up in Il Mheg, that is.”
Wisp’s tail twitched once, again, then stilled, fingers tightening around the rough fabric of their woven sack. A deliberately slow breath to let the stiffness ease as their green eyes met the hyur’s grey ones, to allow the brief smile to come easier. “Oh, the honey is for me. The flowers the bees here can draw from here have their own particular taste, you know.”
“...Right.” It was another long beat before he broke eye contact. Only once he did could Wisp feel their shoulders begin to relax.
“Thank y-”
“But you are their envoy, aren’t you? Il Mheg. The Pixies.” The new voice was higher, fierce in a way that pinned Wisp’s ears back even before the hand gripped their forearm from behind. Instinct froze them, their eyes locked onto Aron’s wide - wide, shocked, but not surprised - as the speaker shifted herself into view. A slight woman, really, shorter than Wisp and sapling-thin, despite the strength in the fingers still dug into Wisp’s arm, grey threading the dark of her ragged braid.
“I’m sorry?” It was all Wisp could think to say, as though they’d misheard.
“You. You’re their envoy, their messenger. I’ve seen you - you must be.” Her voice was hoarse with that fierceness - no, desperation.
“Envoy? I - No. I’m sorry,” Wisp repeated, this time with full awareness, a shiver of something akin to fear raising the fur along their tail as the woman tightened her grip still further. “No.” Whoever - whatever - they were to the few Pixies who tolerated their presence at the bare edge of their domain, it was no envoy.
“No? But - yes, you are. You speak with them. They all say so. You must speak with them.” The woman, dark eyes standing out of that desperation-scarred face, stepped closer, into Wisp’s space, into their breath. “You must-”
“Nonna…” Aron’s hesitant protest walked over Wisp’s hiss of pain, toppled by the woman’s rising voice.
“You have to help. To tell them. My son. My son crossed their border. He’d heard you could. He just wanted to see - just wanted - but he hasn’t come back. He hasn’t come back. He meant no harm, but he hasn’t-” her voice cracked, then, shredding over the words, “he hasn’t come back.”
Wisp could feel the fear in them, could see their own fear reflected back in the woman’s eyes, so close. They knew - how could they not? - what became of trespassers to Il Mheg. They’d seen the leaf men. The wanderers. The drowned. The woman would have heard rumors, stories.
And Wisp had heard more than that. Cries, in the dark, in the fog. Whispers, in their own ears. Requests turned to impetuous threats, the demand of a child with the powers of an ageless magical being to back them.
“I’m sorry,” they repeated again, a whisper this time. A step back. A tug of their arm, away - away. “I’m not…I cannot help you.”
“You must, no, you must-My son - you must do something. Please, please-” a cry broken on a sob
“Nonna-”
“You must-”
“I am sorry - please-I-”
The fingers slipped, strength gone of them as that woman’s face crumpled in on its hope, fragmented in the shards of light cast out from the crystal encasing them.
And Wisp turned, and fled, half a shadow of themselves, the heat of shame burning into the icy fear pressed into their arm where the woman’s - the mother’s - fingers had gripped them, into the numb skin of the silvery white scar just beneath where that scar had been. They stumbled a step, those cries ringing in their ears, walking but fleeing all the same. Away from the Crystarium and the thin safety of its walls. Back to the tumbled stones of the scant shelter they had found here on this world.
Back to the nightmare dressed in the finery of a dream that was - could be - Il Mheg.
_______
The Central Shroud, Gridania, The Source; Now
Leaves shushed and whispered overhead, around, through - a thin wall of sound, of safety - speaking but not speaking, a language of wind, of life, of-
“Hey. You.”
Wisp’s eyes snapped open, gloved hands following suit, instinctively dropping the small trowel that had hung limp from their grip a moment before even before their eyes had fully registered the shape, the color, the meaning of the boots planted just beyond where they were crouched, off the path leading onward to the Eastern Shroud.
They’d been drifting, again, they knew - but knowing it, recognizing it, and stopping it were such different things, yet. And there was little time, now, for self-recrimination as Wisp’s gaze traced the boots up to a moss-green tunic, and up again to a still face made all the more impassive by the beech half-mask, so alike to Wisp’s own, that shielded the upper half of the face of the Elezen man standing over them, lance in hand. Wood Wailer.
And here were they, marks of moss up their arms for any who looked closely in the gap between glove and sleeve, hands in the dirt of the Shroud, reaching for its protected plants. A belated wave of stiff fear caught at their breath.
“I’ve permission,” they managed, when their breath rocked back into them. The wood wailer’s face - unfamiliar, still, in the short time since they’d been back, and keeping away from the city and the guild as much as possible. They cleared their throat and tried again. “I’ve the permission of the Fane, for this. Sustainable gathering - taking only as needed,” they added, unnecessarily, tipping their raised, empty hands toward the full-leaved plant before them.
The Wood Wailer snorted, then, and lifted his gaze from them to the wider forest beyond. The spear remained with its butt planted on the ground, held almost loosely. “I know. Wisp Alsentia, yes?”
Wisp nodded, hands half-signing assent before they fully processed he might not see. “Yes. Is there something amiss?”
He started to shake his head, then paused, and lifted his free hand to scratch his chin as he looked down at them again. “You tell me. The Sylphs want to see you, I hear. You’re their envoy?”
Wisp’s mouth tightened, ears tipping back as they pushed slowly up out of their crouch, following the shift of his gaze down the path East, toward the Sylphlands, out of sight from the ground, but sensed, somehow, in any case. Wisp could not remember if that had always been so, that sense.
“That is not the word for it, I think,” they offered, softly. Envoy - that word again.
The man’s attention snapped back to them, no real expression visible on his face, still, as his head tilted just slightly. “What would you call it, then? You’ve worked with them.”
“Aye,” Wisp allowed, “I have. Assisted them, as asked - as I could.”
“An assistant, then.” This said with a barest hint of humor. “Then, think you would assist them again?”
One ear flicked back toward him. “Are they…in need of assistance?” Their voice was only slightly less tight than it would have been had not that humor colored the question.
“You tell me.” The Wood Wailer’s head tilted just a little further, enough to look uncomfortable. Wisp turned fully back to face him, then, looking into the non-face of his mask as he looked back into theirs.
“What…do you mean?” this time their hands echoed their words, signing the confusion.
“I think they do. Can you feel it? I think they are seeking you. Will you. Assist them?”
For a moment Wisp’s mouth tightened again, as they swallowed. Always dangerous, any agreement with any form of Fae. Any promise, all the more so, if vague.
“Aye. I can try.”
The Wood Wailer nodded, and before Wisp could react or frame a coherent question, he melted back into the woods - in the way of a trained hunter, or a shadow, or magic given other form.
Wisp stood a moment, looking after his emptiness, then turned slowly to face East again, listening to the leaves whisper. Could they help? They must.
