Tempest was confused by a sudden change in company, but the large xaela that had insisted he show her a new drink at the bar was a familiar and quite welcoming face. She was pretty sure she’d just seen C’tolemy’s eye twitching so perhaps it was so he could go take care of that. Baby feet in the forehead and all, something she’d been through before. Ayanga was keeping her attention mostly focused on the task at hand, but she did steal glance back at the fuming miqo’te glaring daggers her way.
“Baby moods gettin’ too him. The baby gets all angry and then you end up being full of angry because you’re already full of baby, and the baby’s full of angry.” The musing out loud lead to a few quiet blinks from those in earshot, but no one was interested in wading into a battle of wits with the blue haired woman. “Not like I said nothing mean or anything. Jus’ that maybe he should work on his pronuncification some.”
CW: Violence, gore, and some headcannony shit about how Blue Mage works
The six-segmented maw of an awahondo warrior spreads open to let out a piercing, insectoid scream and immediately sends the nearest Whalaqee huntress cowering with their head covered. Before the hooked fangs of the best can claim her head for their meat a spark of magic flies between them and in a moment of intense gravitational pull the beast’s head implodes in a shower of green-brown viscera over the crouching woman. A hand nearly yanks her shoulder out of it’s socket getting them back onto their feet and pulling them away from the swarm of horse-sized beasts thundering through the cave towards them. “RUN YOU IDIOT!” The cry from their savior was enough to get at least their feet moving on their own accord, racing to be anywhere other than in the grips of another six-legged monster.
The man still hauling him along despite his own efforts to help the escape threw constant looks back at the horde of insects rushing them down, gaining that little bit more with each curve the cavern took. Though she was disoriented, the huntress recognized the look of a man unhappy with the math of the situation. Though there is still a roar of segmented bodies and their own ragged breathing, there’s a moment of knowing silence between the pair. Each spun on their heels and called upon the wells of aether within their own body, drawing without a focus beyond mind and form. Torrents of levin surge down the hall towards the beasts leading the charge, impacting two of the creatures directly. A sickening sizzle and pop proceeds what is first the sharp scent of ozone before the freshly seared notes of awahondo flesh seeping from explosively sundered exoskeleton.
A rush of victory turns to ash in the huntress’s mouth even as they began channeling their next volley. Two of the smaller beasts, drones instead of warriors, seem to almost swell violently with aether before their own bodies burst and the energy within goes rushing to the freshly slain awahondo at the front. Outer shell begins to regrow even as the tissue beneath re-knits itself fiber by fiber. There’s another gush of excess fluid from each hole before they are fully sealed and the hydraulics within the insectiod limbs start snapping back into proper pressured position. Both of the reborn creatures release another of those near deafening screams as the charge resumes. Pointless as it might prove to be, the Whalaqee woman finishes her next spell and once again fills the cavern with lightning aether from their own reserves. Their companion’s spell however barely so much as twists the aether directly past their outstretched palm.
It was her turn to grab his arm and start them running again, something he was mentally sluggish to catch onto as he deal with processing that his reserves had been depleted past any hope a successful cast. The huntress’s last blast had bought them a few precious footfalls, but neither was under any illusion that the numbers had changed enough.The ugly skitter of dozens of limbs made for the melody to accompany the pounding of their hearbeat within their eardrums.The surface was still far enough away that they had only the light of their crystals, and the awahondo were not beset by the same fatigue trying to claw the pair of them back towards the creatures. Chewing on that thought took the huntress out of the race for freedom for just a split second, granting one misplaced footfall that rapidly sent her balance off wildly.
Even before impacting the stone floor, she knew that her life had just ended. Her companion, her savior turned briefly and started towards her as if he was going to try and fetch her from the ground, but neither of them had the time. A blade-like leg drives straight through the Whalaqee woman’s thigh as one of the insects she’d already killed catches up to her, with it’s partner in death nearly ready to spring forward upon her companion. “GO! SEAL THE EXIT! NOW!”
Her shrieked order was enough to put energy back into his legs even as she was being lifted up by her own. A second of the insectoid’s limbs drives into her body, straight through the core and a bubbling of blood rides up her throat on a cough, splattering crimson wide even as plenty more runs from the gashes in her body. Her companion didn’t have the magic left to do the task, but she was already dead. She couldn’t do it herself.
A seething glare is sent at the beast preparing to get another limb in for leverage to finally rip her asunder before snapping her gaze onto the fleeing form down the cave. Every onze of aether rushing out of her body was snatched at once and forcefully hauled back in for one last cast. A glow takes the huntress’s form briefly before all the collected power flies out as a ray, carrying what was left of her life force to pour into the vessel that was the man who saved her, the one who could save their rest of their people with just a little help. The transference left a few sparks of her mind to appreciate the odd numbness that still let her feel her body get yanked asunder by a pair of insectoid monsters fighting over the rights to her remains before what was still connected to her spine was stilled one final time.
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A sharp inhale is paired with a bodily jerk away from the object in the Sea Wolf’s hands, almost launching it across the room on instinct. Ragged, chest burning panting set in as if she’d been sprinting instead of sitting at her desk staring at the New World idol she’d spent so much money on. Feeding it just a little aether from her blue magic practice seemed like it’d be a safe experiment, not a violent trip deep into the past a literal world away. The carved wooden totem was swiftly placed on her desk to finally get it out of her hand, though he still commanded her attention. Though she had not lived it, knowledge seemed to crawl into the cozy bed of her mind and pull the sheets over itself to nestle in, uninvited. Murky memories of the hunting partner taking on those last few vivid memories in the transfer. His collapsing of the insect’s tunnel entrance, and the commitment of those memories in a lengthy ritual into the wood through shaping both it’s form and it’s aether.
One of the bottles sat upon her desk found it’s way into her palm nearly as swiftly as the totem had left it. One rushed cork yanking later a wave of room temperature rum came spill down her throat to try and wash the imprinted experience into something more manageable. In the end her need for air won out against that for peace, most of all with the race shortened by the panting still wracking her body.
As his two mothers came walking up their respective stairs and towards the aisle made through the crowd in the garden, Alvin let out a delighted half purred, half squealed sound that came out as a ‘brrrrrr-aaah!’ in rising tone. The sound and the boys wiggly excitement was enough to briefly distracted the aged Sea Wolf man holding the boy, earning him a couple of bounces for the trouble. His wife stood with a hand around Khod’a’s shoulder as they’d taken up their child watching duties a little early to help the couple prep for the big day. Truth was though, the pirate-turned-chef couldn’t keep his attention away from the larger of the two brides long.
A good four decades had passed since the woman that would become his wife told him that the mature, scar-marked woman walking down the aisle today was on the way. His first born, who was far more like him than either of them wanted to admit or even really acknowledge. Even though the longest years of her teens, the elder roegadyn always pictured getting to see her walk through the sanctum dressed in white someday. That the piracy hungry rebel would work it’s way out and sense would settle into that thick skull of hers. Today’s ceremony was about as far from the Twelveswood as one could get in Eorzea, she was in her favored dark blue with a dress cut that was far less overtly feminine, and the half of her face not made up for the occasion was marred with metal and the leavings of old burns. As had been the way with most things they’d ever fought over in her life, Bremwyda stubbornly drove head first into finding her own way.
No other path would do, after all.
Abylnpfef loved all three of his girls, and the seemingly ever growing gaggle of grandchildren both biological and adopted. His heart had swelled at each wedding and he never did make it home from one with dry eyes. He was proud of his two youngest, most of the time anyway. They’d married good men and were raising their families near home, both were involved in the family business in way or another. Brem instead had always chase the life he gave up to see her cared for, and he’d more or less given up on her settling down even before she spent her time in Ishgard’s custody. But here they were, him holding his grandson and getting to see his little girl finally saying her vows, to the gods and to the fiery young miqo’te that he had come to see as his fourth daughter, even if it hadn’t been official until today.
He still didn’t agree with her running a ship, most of all with a growing family involved. He had never been on board with her time in the arena, even if he tried to be supportive. The old man would have given just about anything to take the wisdom from his own head and cram it forcefully into her own, but if anything being here as the bindings wrap around the bridal pair’s hands had done anything it was prove that she would find her own way to that understanding. For once, he was able to just be a peace with loving his daughter for who she was, and not worry about who he thought she should be.
Tiny fuzzy ears occasionally twitch in the infant’s early moments of sleep, settling in for a nap in her mother’s arms while getting rocked back and forth. It wasn’t safe yet to move her over to the crib, Tempest had learned that lesson finally. So instead she’d continue to sit with Little Storm and let the creaking of the chair’s movement and her own low purr continue to work as a lullaby. Though if she was being more honest that was only part of the reasoning behind it. Pregnancy and most of all the delivery had been an ordeal, she was a small woman and her wife very much not, leading to a sizeable bundle of joy she was currently holding. It felt like she’d been tired for the last two moons solid with the last days of carrying and the early days of caring for an infant. But she’d look down at those twitchy little ears and it would all wash away for a bit again.
Sore as her body was and as worn as her arms in particular were, she was more than content to keep hold of the weight of the child in her hold. She may not be one for deep thought about the future often, but she knew how long it had been since she’d seen her own mother regularly, and thought a great deal recently about how long it’d taken her to meet Kasen’s mother and the strain between them that had stretched on for years. She didn’t fully understand what all was wrong there, but she did know that it had taken her wife a great deal to even start trying to reach out. And from it all the decision had firmly been made in her mind already. It didn’t matter how tired she became, how much work it would take, or what she would have to do...
Her Little Storm wouldn’t ever need to know what that kind of distance is like.
A mixture of getting used to a constant lack of sleep, recovering from the pregnancy still, and the raw chaos that was her schedule now managed to have Tempest awake before her lover on a regular basis these days. Mostly the time got spent tending to Little Storm and trying to keep the crying to a minimum to keep from waking Kasen, because she’d insist on helping instead of resting up to go work. Since the miqo’te wasn’t able to go handle her leve duties at this point, she knew the roegadyn’s earnings were all the more important.
Today however, was a different matter entirely.
Curiosity had been plucking at the back of her mind for a while now, and seeing the peak of her wife’s pale breast rise and fall in her slumber seemed to present the perfect opportunity for an experiment. A pair of comparatively tiny hands reach out and begin to descend upon the hapless globe as a whole. One focuses on giving little sweeps and tugs at the other woman’s nipple while it’s partner in crime grabbed hold of deep-set instincts to properly get a kneading motion going on the breast as a whole. Or at least as much of it she could get in a handful at a time. The thing was slow and steady, with a purposeful wrenching up of her features to focus on the task. All that care though does end up a bit moot as the Sea Wolf’s eyes pop open and set upon her feline lover. “Kitten? I ain’ complain’ but.. what’re ye doin’?”
“Trying to get your milk to come out. You c’n go back to sleep. I know it can leak out without you bein’ up. Happens to me lots.”
As the now familiar ‘my wife just said something crazy’ expression washes past the roe’s expression, she takes a moment to collect her still morning fuzzy thoughts and focuses on dealing with that statement. “I ain’t got no milk, Kitten.” Those words brought an immediate dubious furrowing of the miqo’te’s brow, who makes no effort to stop trying to milk her wife as they spoke.
“That doesn’t make no sense. I’m a momma, and I got milk. My momma had milk when she had my lil’ brother. All the other mommas I know have milk. It’s what the baby’s gotta eat! You’re a momma now too, so you should have milk and my nipples need a break.”
Another long breath works out of the roegadyn as she becomes forcefully aware of just how long her morning was going to be.
A laugh comes boiling over the edges of both figures as they crash into the wall near the inn room they were head towards, the first proper interruption to the chain of chaotic and sloppy kisses they’d been sharing the whole way up. While Mosh’ka wasn’t nearly toned to the point her huntress friend was, she was more than able to heft up this bubbly blonde midlander and walk them both up from the collection of glasses they’d emptied in the Quicksands over the course the last bell. The effort of course was helped by all four of the smaller woman’s limbs being latched onto the bun, from the legs she was wearing around her waist like a belt on to the two hands pushing up into the mop of brown hair. She’d even managed to find the one spot right at the base of the viera’s ear that was working raw, determined heat into every breath she was able to get between their addled lip-lock. She only spares one hand from her middy companion’s rear long enough to swing the door to her room open and pull the both of them inside, kicking it shut behind on her way to drop her lover of the night directly onto the bed.
Though she’s got to rebound from a bounce after first landing, there’s swiftly two sets of hands doing everything short of ripping the blonde’s clothing off, or at least enough of it for the two of them to attend to their immediately pressing business. After whipping the smaller figure’s panties across the room, the viera’s immediately got a hold on the midlander’s thighs and gives a firm yank to get very much to that pressing, grinding her own panty-clad groin forward into her drinking buddy’s own. A slow, shoddy mockery of rutting followed with a low, intent-filled bit of throaty giggly seeping out of the bun until the fabric over her cock had grown darkened with dampness amid the teasing. The blonde surges up and grabs the viera by the shoulders, yanking her back into another kiss that still tasted of their drip through the bar’s lower shelves. “Fuck me already before I go insane!”
The request is met immediately with the bun’s teeth snatching her partner’s lower lip, playing up a growl as she drags back off of that grip. A couple of shimmies and a few tugs from one very eager hand and she’s got her underwear far enough down her thighs to let her length flop free, landing with a resounding plap over the middy’s mound. A couple of confident rolls of Mosh’ka’s hips were intended to saw the firm length back and forth for a bit more teasing, but instead had the languid friction of a soft mass of skin dragging upon skin. Those few passes needed a moment to get through the alcoholic fog around her brain so it can start properly looking into the problem. A hand wraps around her frustratingly slumbering member and lifts it up for a couple of tugs, moving on to hold the root and flick that hold and her hips to slap it down over those very patiently waiting lips. Even having been drunk under the table, the blonde was picking up on the signs that something wasn’t quite right. “Is.. are you not..?”
“I just.. need a moment.. this uh.. this never happens..”
Another Einar story today. This one’s after the confrontation in the Bargain prompt. Might be slightly odd, but I don’t know of any CW things to prompt for.
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The young viera continued to keep their eyes and ears on high alert as they worked their way deeper into the jungle. The generally knew better than to be wandering off entirely on their own without telling a soul, but this was work that others weren’t ready to hear about. Not yet, anyway. The trip wasn’t helped by the somewhat baggy, ill-fitting clothing hanging from the teen’s form catching on every branch and thorn, but it too was sadly not optional. Thankfully only another handful of moments had them at their destination only an hour or two away from the village proper. Before that grinning face was a starkly clear pool hidden within the dense plant life. For most there might be a few light motes to be seen, but for one of the Gifted the flow of aether off of it was nearly too radiant to look directly into.
Dropping the pack brought along next to the edge of the water, Einar takes a few moments to strip out of those lose clothes before leaping directly into the water in a blur. Even with the heat of the jungle around it, that pool itself was cool to the touch, almost shockingly so when getting in over one’s own head, but a little chill wasn’t going to put off the plans any longer. This was going to take every scrap of aether that could be spared, and there was no more abundant place to be found that wasn’t highly trafficked by the rest of the village.With one final deep breath, the viera releases the racing thoughts to instead let their Gifted senses seep out and into the abundant source of energy. At first it’s all the more overwhelming than the frigid shock of the water, nearly sweeping the young healer away in the current, but with the practice beaten into them over the last few moons it doesn’t quite drag them under.
The viera was a fixture in the stream now, like a stone sitting in the current and forcing it to part around it. All that was left now was to start slowly wrestling control of that energy stream bit by bit, not unlike building a dam. Molding the flow with slight adjustments like trying to pull the lost aether back into an injured being, though this time it was more akin to building a funneling force to drive it directly into their own body. As the flow finally breaks over and starts to crash fully into Einar’s own, the unexpected fullness of aether nearly pushes the viera back fully into their more mundane senses, threatening for a few moments to shove them under the onslaught’s influence. Once again, there’s a clawing for control that the teen wasn’t prepared for, but stubborn desire to see things through was enough of an anchor to leverage from to stable back out. A grin slips onto their half-glazed features after a few moments of regaining control. It was time.
What came next was beyond anything the elder ever taught them, or would ever consider teaching anyone for that matter. By anyone else’s measure, Einar’s body was perfectly healthy, and in no need of the blessings of a Gifted touch guiding it. But that was a view too limited for the young viera. Traditions and expectations had carved out so much of what their life was supposed to be. No one bothered to ask if was what the teen had wanted. Born into being male, their fate was set. The discovery of the Gift put forth the skills they were to study and develop on a specific path. The few grasps of choice and freedom, like the company of Mjara and Shar, were seen by others as distractions and childish delusions. But here, in this overflowing aetheric womb, the Gift could set things right. To make things the way they were meant to be.
With hands that extend well past the viera’s physical bounds started to drive the aether into new paths, sending it flooding into spaces to encourage flesh that was healthy to try and mend and rebuild, reshaping it through the course of flooding restorative energies in to push past the normal bounds. Other spots were pulled inward instead, using the currents to wash out existing mass to push it into the stream elsewhere. On occasion parts would have to be torn open to be properly rebuilt, and done over and over again to allow this false healing to do it’s work. And every bit of it was like gouts of flame running through every blood vessel in their body, the searing agony of being shattered and forced back together time and again.There was no half efforts here though, and even as blackness crept in on Einar’s conscious mind, they knew there was only one chance of getting this right. To make them see who they really were, what they would do to have the life they wanted to have.
Before blacking out they pushed themselves back into their normal senses, and started to pull them self up out of the water to collapse near the water’s edge. Almost immediately the convulsions of aether sickness set in, fighting against Einar’s attempts to drag a few ‘borrowed’ goods from the healing garden to try and offset the worst of it. Once the worst of the quakes had passed, the viera’s eyes turn down to the changes in their form, and a pained smile took to their lips. They didn’t quite get everything they they wished done, but there was no mistaking them for a masculine figure.
She might not be able to stand up just yet, but she would be coming home to stay.
Another Einar story, set between the previous two. This admittedly dips into head-canony explanations of healing magic used by that village of viera. Don’t @ me about it being wrong, I won’t care.
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“Steady your breathing, Einar. You’re getting too tense..” The chastisement at first only serves to wrinkle the young viera’s brow further. Having the fact that he wasn’t relaxed properly pointed out to him wasn’t often helpful in his experience, no matter how much his mentor did so. “You try to hard to take charge and force things. You’ll end up disrupting the flow even worse being too firm with it. Deep breath in, then let it out slow.” Displeased as he may ever be with the methods, the boy did as asked and set on focusing on his breathing instead of patient currently before the two of them.
An errant ball earlier that morning had snapped the stem of one of the herbs they grew behind the elder’s hut; a collection used in a broad range of simple remedies for the village to keep the Gift reserved for times it’s truly needed. Normally a plant wouldn’t qualify for such lofty treatment, but the boy’s teacher was looking to have him practice on something that couldn’t scream out in pain if he messed things up too badly. “Good, good. You are getting there. Don’t push it out of you, simply let it flow forth on it’s own. Your current will meet the plant’s own naturally. It wants to help, that’ll draw you where you need to go.” As instructed, albeit with a short sigh, drew himself back from trying to reach out so directly to the injured plant. Slow, steady breathing. The instruction ran through his head until he was almost hyper aware of his own breath and little else in the world around him. Slowly breaking through that bubble was a sense of some sort of movement in front of him. Not physical or a trick of wind, and it was stilted harshly, but there was no doubting that was in fact movement. Instead of leaping on the instinct to reach out towards it with the aether flowing out of him, he let it ride on it’s own.
“That’s it, Einar. You can feel it now, yes?” A smile graced the elder viera’s lips as she watched the young man work. For her picking up on all the currents within living things around them had long since become a passive second nature. Seeing his seep out past his form and reaching for the broken plant was as simple as watching someone reach their hand out to pick up a glass. “Let it sweep you up in it’s current. It’ll take you exactly where it needs you to go. Just keep breathing. Slow and steady.”
When the movements he was reaching for first took hold to guide his probing along, a short gasp slips from the boy’s lips at the sensation. He could only guess that he knew now what it felt like when a feather was caught dancing on a gust of wind. As simple a patient as he was dealing with, it wouldn’t be long before that sweeping current brought him right to the point of the break in the stem, where the plant’s aether was nearly a swirling mess of chaos. Pushed in directions it wasn’t meant to go, and much of it spilling readily out of it and diffusing out. “Now, look past what you feel immediately. It’s not what is that matters right now, but what was. Feel for where the currents used to flow.” Her tone is far more hushed to keep from pulling him out of the work and back into his more mundane senses. For his part, Einar barely even grunted an affirmative, as curiosity had him already gently playing his senses along the broken space. The plant’s flesh knew how it was supposed to be, the shape of the river bed that it’s aether would flow through. It naturally yearned to return to that correct state, it just simply lacked the ability to do so all it’s own in the time it had left. But it did have enough left to pass the vision of that shape to the viera.
Whatever his instructor said next was lost to the boy, he was given fully to the task he felt ahead of him. It started with pulling that spilled aether back in, giving him the base to start slowly turning the whirling chaos back into a strong river of life. Some mix of what was lost, what was already there, and a gift of his own began to change the currents, pulling them every steadily back to where they belonged. Not that his eyes were focused enough to see it, but the herb was starting to pull back up from it’s harshly bent shape. It was as he’d seen before, the flesh knew how to mend itself, it just needed a hand to guide it back to where it was meant to go. A soft glow danced over the youth’s hands as his work carried on, likewise playing against the stem as it knit itself back together. Once the flow matched the ‘blueprint’ he’d been given, he draws his senses back into himself and lets a tension he hadn’t know he was carrying fall out of his shoulders. A triumphant, if slightly worn smile is turned up to his mentor, an expression she readily returns.
“You see now, the beauty of the Gift? It’s not simply just about mending a broken bone or a snapped plant. You can bring things to the way they were meant to be.”
