I want to share one of the big things that has most helped me with getting past the block stymieing this next chapter.
Last fall I'd actually joined a FFXIV server focused explicitly on writing and reading fanfic. Wonderfully creative and supportive, and I'm glad I did. One of the mods ( Starships, who is a wonderful author and overall great person and writes amazing fic herself ) has started hosting writing workshop for those interested, and yours truly signed up.
The first prompt we were given was to write a letter - a letter from our character to us as the authors, from their current place in their story.
And it helped. SO MUCH. I knew some of these things, objectively. But I ended up emoting with M'aila and feeling her emotions as if they were my own, and that seems to have burst the dam, so to speak.
And so I want to share the idea, and share the letter M'aila wrote. It's incomplete, as we only had 10 minutes for this prompt, but it was more than enough.
This references events from chapter 9, 10, and 11 of Solace
I don’t know what’s happening and everything seems to be moving so much faster around me than I ever thought it would when I started adventuring. I don’t know what’s going on, why *I’m* the only one that can fight primals, and I don’t want to die, and … I think I already have and it scares me.
Cid says they kept me asleep for almost a month, and it doesn’t feel like it, but the seasons are different, and I think Garuda really did kill me, but I’m still alive, and …. I don’t know what’s going on anymore. I think I remember something about a crystal - Hydaelyn? I should be dead, but I think she ….. Brought me back? Stopped me from dying? I don’t know. All I know is that I feel like a stranger that shouldn’t be here anymore but somehow is, and everyone’s acting like nothing’s different, but everything is and I don’t know how to explain it.
It scares me. Is this going to be the rest of my life? Fighting primals and dying but not dying every time? I just wanted to escape the woods, get away from B’olah Tia and the tribe, and …. Just help people and see the world. I just wanted to see what else was out there. I didn’t want everyone to start depending on me to fight gods.
I’m not a hero, I’m just …. Me. I’m just M’aila. I don’t want to this to be me, but there’s no one else to do it. No one knows where the Warriors of Light disappeared to, and I’m all they have now. Just, me. A scared little miqo with no home and no special skills, just a bow and a harp, and they think I can somehow save them. I’ve been lucky so far, but what happens when I fail? What’s going to happen if I don’t come back from the dead next time?
I don’t like that phrase. “If I don’t come back from the dead next time.” I’m already accepting it too, and I’m scared of that too. Am I even a spoken anymore? What else is there? I’m no immortal god, but I don’t know of anything else that can’t die like that. Minfilia’s gone, so I can’t even ask her if this is something normal for the Echo.
Gods, do I even want to tell her? “Hi Minfilia, I should be dead, but I’m not, and I don’t think I’m a zombie. No, I don’t know how it happened, but I swear I’m not crazy. At least, I don’t think I am?”
Yes, because that would go well. Mark me down as the crazy girl they have to depend -
