(decided to use crime just to see how the wings would look on Riven, got a horrible idea and decided to check them out on Mathye, and...yep. I gotta get these on him now.)
Highlight a FFXIV blogger who answers OC (or other) asks with really interesting responses.
A really good example for this one would be @scrollsfromarebornrealm.
I always really enjoy their responses to any asks I send (or that other people send for that matter). It really feels like every small detail about their OCs serves to expand the wider story and further flesh out each, already incredibly well-realised, character.
Augustine in swimwear is an occasional bonus, but I promise it's not the main reason!
The deputy and the doctor (evidently the deputy’s brother) were hissing at each other in low tones and felt very far away. Hephaistos looked down at his granddaughter and struggled to connect the freshly changed bandages on her torso and down one arm, with the young woman who decided to throw aside her hard won masters to play at being a hero in the dust. She looked small on a bed that was long enough for the tallest likely patient. On a small stand next to the bed he saw Bel’s grimoire. He absently touched the chains and phoenix feathers which glowed like sleepy embers against his skin. Hephaistos had sent his old grimoire with her when she’d gone across the salt and she’d carefully added her own spells to the blank pages in the back.
It did not seem to have served her well here.
“What happened to her?”
The brothers Bishop looked up from whatever they had been whispering about. The doctor’s eyes narrowed, “Fucking Livia Junis is what happened to her. And she came in better than most of the people I see because of that bitch. She’ll make a full recovery if she listens to directions.”
“Better?” Hephaistos asked, his voice tight.
“Livia isn’t known for restraint,” Deputy Augustine said. “Most people-“
“Either leave here able to tell the fucking weather, or in a damned pine box.” Mathye finished for his brother. The Lahabrea patriarch noted that the doctor had a leg brace when he turned and folded his arms over his chest, “Which I’m sure you are aware of, being her boss’s fucking lawyer.”
He was aware of it, but in a distant clinical way. In the way of receiving reports from the junior associates he sent out to be the hands filling out papers and submitting them to the local judge. He sat down at the foot of the bed and watched his granddaughter. Her chest rose and fell in a steady cadence, but something of the pain must have chased her as she slept and pulled her expression from peaceful into pained.
The distant whispering stopped and the door opened and closed. Bel wouldn’t be here in this backwater clinic under the care of a backwater saw bones if she’d just listened to his advice. She could have been settling into the family firm where he could guide and mold her to take over after he retired. She could have been established at the university back in the city working continuing the research she’d started with her grandmother’s guiding hand on her shoulder. She should be back in the city where the most physical harm she might face would be a mild hangover from drinking herself a bit silly after having to deal with Athena’s high society acquaintances.
Instead she was here, burned and bandaged.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there when Bel groaned and a furry purple ear twitched. She twisted a bit and hissed when the motion pulled on her burned skin, she looked at him with unfocused groggy eyes, “Grandpa?”
The tone reminded him, too painfully, of when he and her mother had taken her from Athena’s lab after his wife’s second bout of madness. She’d been five years old and terrified and clung to him or Idunn as she whimpered. “It’s me, I’m going to-”
Another shift and hiss of pain brought sharpness to his granddaughter’s miss matched blue and green eyes. Her next words were growled, “You damn well better not have taken my evidence.”
The sudden shift felt like a slap in the face and he felt his voice and temper respond, “You stole those ledgers.”
“Like hell I did!” Bel yelled back at him. “It’s salvage if his name wasn't on the deed.”
“You have no idea what you are doing” Hephaistos was on his feet and looming over the girl.
A hand on his bicep dug in and yanked him back. The medic glared at him and jerked a thumb at the door, “Get the fuck out of my clinic.”
“This is my granddaughter!” Lahabrea growled
“I don’t fucking care. Get out of my fucking clinic.” The medic pulled him back harder surprisingly strong. Bel had forced herself to sit up so she could glare properly at her grandfather which only earned her the medics ire as well. Mathye jabbed a finger in her direction, “you will damn well lay back down before you tear that healing skin.”
Bel did as she was told with bad grace and Mathye turned his attention back to Hephaistos. The lawyer ground his teeth and looked at his granddaughter who was pointedly staring at the wall. He ground his teeth and stormed out before the sawbones could cuss at him again. At the very least the door slammed with a satisfying sound.
Hephaistos Lahabrea began to walk back to the hotel and from the corner of his eye caught the familiar sight of a priest of the Holy Mother and Father. A priest with a familiar face. He did not stare at the priest in white robes that crossed the road. Just like the priest did not stare at the lawyer in a black suit. Lahabrea walked into the hotel and stopped at the front desk to hand over a key. “I no longer need room five.”
“Oh course sir,” the young woman had a carefully blank face. “Will there be anything else?”
“That will be all,” Lahabrea left without any pleasantries. Once he was in his room and the door locked behind him he poured water from the pitcher on top of the dresser into the basin that provided the most basic of washing up possibilities. He splashed water on his face but did not look into the mirror to see what he already knew was there. He found himself thinking of his Ericthonios in the wake of the encounter with his granddaughter. His son looked like he was every inch his son from his ember orange hair to the scarlet eyes set in dark skin, but his son was aging into laugh lines not scowl lines and his hair was not burned white by his own ambition. He considered looking for Claudine who he knew was lurking around Stonewood but after all of today’s chasing after nothing he did not have the energy to hunt down a son to argue with.
There was one possibility that might salvage this trip to this town forsaken by the Mother and Father. Lahabrea grabbed the hand towel and patted his face dry. He locked the door behind him when he left and began walking to the chapel on the west side of town. He knew the shape of the building he was looking for without ever having seen it. The Holy Church of the Mother and Father liked to keep a consistent image. He’d been raised in the old religion that had come from across the salt. He still went enough to be seen doing so, making an effort at the show of piety helped mitigate some of the dark reputation that the Lahabrea Legal Firm had.
The inside of the church was a pale shard of the grand cathedrals in the lands across the salt. The walls were white washed with middling violet and blue tapestries. The wooden pews were painted white with faded purple scrollwork painted on the backs. Behind the alter the rounded abstract figures of Mother Hydaelyn and Father Zodiark were carefully painted wood rather than carved alabaster and amethyst lit from within by ancient crystal. The only thing that did not seem like a worn out facsimile was the blood red stole that now hung over the shoulders of the priest.
“You are several hours early if you want to attend midnight service.” Lahabrea would never lose that edge of surprise when the deep baritone voice rang out from the man’s slight frame.
“Elidibus,” He stopped walking at the front row of pews and watched the priest set out candles in preparation for the service.
“I prefer Themis these days,” the he turned to face Lahabrea. Themis was the same age as his sons, old enough to have children grown, but he still looked barely old enough to convince a saloon keeper to let him drink.
“This isn’t where I expected to find you,” Lahabrea probed but only received one of Themis’s polite smiles. He pushed harder, “I assume you’ve-”
“I do not work for you anymore Hephaistos,” Themis cut him off, “And I have not for several years now.”
“One does not simply walk away from a vocation like yours, Elidibus,” Lahabrea put heated emphasis on the name.
“Oh there has been nothing simple about my path,” Themis stepped up to the alter and looked at him with that same polite smile but now the blue eyes were calculating. “I would advise you to caution Hephaistos Lahabrea. The Mother and Father ensure balance in all things and all lives. You would not want anything to upset that balance and draw their will into action.”
Lahabrea bristled at the obtusely worded threat. “Nothing you know could be used in court.”
“True balance is rarely found in the Dawnservent’s courts. You have helped to ensure as much. And so I doubt that any redress for your sins would happen there.” Themis folded his hands neatly in front of him. “I will pray that you have an uneventful trip back to the city.”
Lahabrea clenched a fist as Themis turned away from him. He stormed out of the church without even crumbs that might make something of the trip to this backwater. He returned to the hotel and slept poorly in an unfamiliar bed that night. The next morning at the train station he watched two Landsguard agents in full uniform board with the box that contained the evidence that he had originally set out to get.
He would need to find out what those ledgers contained. Hephaistos took his seat in the single passenger car and pinched the bridge of his nose. It could wait until tomorrow when the dust of Stonewood was no longer clinging to him as a reminder of what he had failed to do.
So, if Zoissette came to Aeryn asking about advice regarding Mathye (Do you think he is genuinely interested in me and if so what do you think I should do about that?), what would her response be?
Confused a bit, cuz aren't they friends as well as coworkers? Once she lets her brain catch up thirty seconds later to "Oh, interested! Uh. I dunno; I've never been good at figuring that kinda thing out. I know he's nicer to you than most other people, even Riven and his brother, so um. May have to corner him and ask him.
"...Wait, do not take me literally about the cornering, Zoissette, I mean like, sit down at lunch or something. In public somewhere for some privacy maybe but not where there can be a scene, y'know?
"You should really ask someone else though, I've only got novel plots to work off of. "
