(See here for my cast of characters)
Kovalt stares fixedly at the parchment before him. This is one of the harder tasks of his new life, this parchment. Harder than the conjury lessons, which they say he does well at despite how odd it feels to sit somewhere for hours on end, listening, learning, meditating. Hearing.
Harder than the physical labor, shoveling manure or carrying sacks of seedlings to and from all corners of the Twelveswood. That he takes to easily enough. A life of hard training and following orders had prepared him for odious tasks, and there is a clean-ness to these new tasks that Kovalt appreciates. Even the nightsoil.
No, he prefers conjury and labor to working on this parchment. But he is a man of duty, and so he follows the exercise as Hearer Aeskyl has bidden. The elezen Hearer waits nearby, though half-turned away from him to work on something at his own desk. He will wait patiently, Kovalt knows, remembering the first time he did this. It had taken hours, excruciating hours—better to get it over with quickly.
“Today I Feel...” is written at the top of the parchment. It is followed by faces, so many faces, half hyur and half elezen, half female and half male. Each of them contorts into a unique expression, helpfully labeled in clear and blocky Eorzean letters: Astounded, Anxious, Doubtful, Happy, Sad, Lonely, Courageous, Content, Jealous, Proud. And more, so many more.
“Serious,” Kovalt announces, pointing at one of the faces: a solemn little elezen lad. That is an easy one.
Hearer Aeskyl looks up, then turns in his chair to give Kovalt his full attention. “Indeed,” he says, his lips curving up in that little smile (Amused, the parchment would call it). “But you said that yester-eve, and three days before that. What else?”
He’d expected as much. He points to another, a hyuran girl’s face. “Fine,” he says.
The elezen chuckles. “That’s a bit shite, don’t you think?” he asks, but this ribbing tone is familiar enough to him. “The kind of thing a soldier says when the conjurer asks about a cut or three.”
“Aye,” Kovalt replies. He looks down at the table (wooden, with uneven grains that twist and turn, unlike the unbending metal he’s used to), considering whether or not he should say anything more. “That’s the way it was for us too. With the medicus.”
“Seems common to all the Star’s soldiers,” Aeskyl says. He wears that same tiny smile even as he shakes his head. “Though the seasoned ones learn to report some of what ails them. Go on then.”
He knew his teacher wouldn’t be satisfied with the words so far—he usually wants a good handful of them. “Uncomfortable,” he says. This isn’t clear from his voice, which is solemn and steady as ever, or his posture, which is as straight as it can be while sitting at a desk.
But he prefers not to show weakness even if he admits it out loud. The Hearer has explained that this feelings-parchment is an important task, that it will help him interpret the forest’s whispers if he first knows the whispers from his own mind. Sometimes he thinks of this in the terms of his old life: the Twelveswood’s whispers are radio signals (often distorted ones, like when a transceiver’s power cell is nearly depleted) and his own mind is a source of interference. Interference garbles comms, bad comms get people killed. He understands this.
“Uncomfortable because this is difficult,” he goes on before Aeskyl can ask him to explain his choice. (He does that often, to Kovalt’s dismay.) “But they trained us to push past discomfort,” he adds. He thinks for a moment of garbled comms and the ponderous forest. “I am Determined to do so.”
The elezen’s head tilts slightly (Puzzled? But no, he wears the Amused smile still.) “You said ‘determined’ two days back—but we’ll let that stand. You’d have to be determined to have made it across the wall.”
Kovalt shakes his head before he can stop himself. “It sounds harder than it was,” he says, explaining. “Crossing the wall. There were less automated defenses. Since the breach had rerouted many of them. And there were supplies.” He doesn’t mention the details of that: the passcode that still (surprisingly) worked to open a few lockers. The rations and power cells scavenged from the fallen.
Hearer Aeskyl listens silently, and Kovalt decides that he would rather not talk any more about his journey over the wall. This preference might be unproductive of him—his memory of the climb brings many emotional responses, plenty of fodder to match with the faces of the parchment. But even so…
There is the twinge of something in his chest, and it takes him some moments to pin the feeling down and name it. “Frustrated.”
The elezen doesn’t seem surprised. “With the exercise?”
“Aye,” Kovalt replies, evenly as ever as he hopes the Hearer won’t ask—
Kovalt draws in a long breath, then lets it out. Of course he would ask. “Because…” This is often difficult. “Because the faces are all of children. You’ve said this is something Eorzeans learn as children,” he adds quickly, wanting Aeskyl to know that he’d been attentive. “But we never learned it.”
“Not with Garlemald.” Aeskyl shifts in his chair, crossing one knee over the other. Kovalt pretends not to notice this. The elezen has a bad knee, a wound from fighting Garleans many years ago. Sometimes Kovalt wonders whether he argued with his superiors at Stillglade when he was asked to mentor…someone like him. Probably not, he reasons. Hearer Aeskyl was a soldier once, like him. They both understand duty. “Why do you think that is?”
Kovalt finds himself looking at the parchment. There is a strain in the corners of his mouth, and he suspects his face looks akin to that of the scowling elezen girl’s. “Because it wouldn’t have helped us any. To think about that shite.”
“No, likely not,” Aeskyl agrees. Kovalt notices that he is not smiling anymore. Rather, he frowns, though this seems directed more at the situation than Kovalt himself. “It wouldn’t have helped with your duties.”
“It would have made them harder,” Kovalt says, and as he hears himself, he realizes that it’s true. It would have made them hesitate. It would have made them… “There is no face for Insubordinate,” he notes. “But there should be.”
“There should be,” confirms Aeskyl. “What would you want that to look like? The face for Insubordinate?”
Kovalt usually hates those what-if questions, but he finds himself answering this one readily enough. “A hyur lad. Gyr Abanian. With his hair in braids.”
“Like the ones you’re growing now? In the Ala Mhigan style?” Aeskyl smiles faintly when asking this. Kovalt doesn’t know why, but it doesn’t seem Mocking, at least.
Kovalt nods. “Last time I grew out my hair…” He pauses, thinking on how to explain it. “They’d tolerated it for a time. But there was a new centurion with different ideas on—grooming standards.”
He can see that Aeskyl understands him, but there is something more he wants to say. “It took three to hold me down while the fourth shaved my head,” he adds, feeling his lips stretch a little as he grins to recall it. “Which I am Proud about.” He taps the matching face on the parchment. “Is that an odd thing? Being proud of it?”
The elezen takes a moment, his gaze lifting to peer at Kovalt’s hair. Some of his braids go past his ears now, and he’s even found a few beads and bands to thread into them. There are brown beads, blue beads. There should be a red bead or two, and he thinks that he might be able to find those at the market next week. (If the Gridanians don’t decide to execute him, as a part of him still suspects they might. He hasn’t seen anything like that since coming to this forest, but he can picture it easily enough: a firing squad of archers instead of gunners.)
“Not strange at all,” Aeskyl tells him, and hearing that brings forth another feeling, one akin to pride in how it makes him sit a little straighter. It is a good feeling, even as something in him can see that there is a glimmer of Sorrow in Aeskyl’s eyes. “Not strange at all, to be proud.”
