Jul 17, 2021
this is just art
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Slovakia
seen from United States
seen from South Africa
seen from Singapore
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Türkiye
seen from China
seen from Belarus
seen from United States
seen from Tajikistan
seen from Russia
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Finland
this is just art
Broke into a house. Found myself in a Yakuza holding cell. whoops :D
Silver Lining - Q
To say she stirred awake would do a disservice - the implication far too neutral. That tiny mage woke in a panic every night, the same as this night, shooting up from her pillow, gasping and clawing for nothing. This time she had the added company of a pounding headache, a touch of dizziness, and a beautiful woman beside her.
Once her breath eased to a more manageable pace, Qatirna looked down at the woman sharing her bed. A burning lamp post just outside the dingy inn room cast light and shadow on the sleeping Hyuran face. Long chestnut hair splayed messy on her pillow, plump lips just slightly parted. When they danced earlier in the night, those gorgeous peridot eyes sparkled with drunken joy and lustful hunger, but now they lay closed and peaceful. The woman, whose name Qatirna never quite caught, reached an arm over the Xaela’s lap, and in return Qatirna affectionately tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She smiled warmly. Ears were such funny things. She didn’t wish to wake the woman who deserved a peaceful rest, right? A murmured sound still spilled in from under the door to their room - a whole crowd, a whole boisterous party, still danced and sang and shouted just outside. Maybe Qatirna’s gasping didn’t wake her sleeping companion, but that noise unimpeded almost certainly would. She wouldn’t risk it.
Their clothes lay strewn about the floor, but her satchel was easy to find. Delicately, the tiny mage lifted the woman’s arm as she scooted out of bed, replacing herself with her own pillow. She found some of her clothes before giving up, wrapping a length of fabric back to forward to up to back and tying a knot at the nape of her neck, a simple enough sarong to cover what oughtn’t be shown in public. The washroom had a small window that the tiny mage could reach if she climbed up on the sink. It had a latch to allow patrons to open for fresh air, but that little thing was small enough to squeeze through, and she did - before tumbling idiotically into the bushes below.
She was fine. They were on the first floor.
She stood to dust herself off and those wide violet eyes stared up into the night sky as she started her trail away from the inn room. The moon was full and bright, but the sky was cloudy. It created a beautiful but eerie picture as slivers of light painted that dark sky. Her own silver lining - Nhaama couldn’t watch her walk of shame.
Fluster - Story Time - Q
The mage wandered through Reunion. She wandered most places, even when she had a determined destination. Her clothing covered her head to toe, the only things poking out were the tips of her horns and a few loose locks of hair. With the weather getting colder, the wind bit at her nose and her fingertips, but the chill was merely a convenient explanation for the real reason she started dressing so much more modestly.
Today she looked for someone in particular, and she found her. The pale scaled Qestiri woman who currently seemed entirely stumped by a wagon wheel that would turn backwards but not forwards. Qatirna approached, stomping her feet slightly so as to not startle the woman as she announced her presence, and looked at the same wagon wheel before shaking her head softly. She knew a little about carpentry. She didn’t know shit about wagons.
The Qestir looked hopeful for a moment, then a little disappointed. Her hands gestured to the wagon as if to throw it away, then imitated building a fire. They could use the wagon for scrap. She smiled softly, just enough to see her cheeks perking up beneath her mask. The mage offered a flame on the palm of her hand as if to help, then snuffed it out with a fist as she giggled. The masked grin now showed a little more prominently on the Qestir’s cheeks.
Qatirna’s smile dropped a bit and a nervous expression took its place. She had something she wanted to talk about. Oelun stopped her fidgeting with the wheel and guided the mage to some crates nearby they could comfortably sit on.
At first Qatirna expressed that she was injured, shyly exposing her horn to the surprisingly unbothered prim and proper woman. She’d seen her own brother break his horns innumerable times. She even offered to wrap the horn for Qatirna, who accepted gratefully. And while Oelun treated the broken horn, softly hushing the mage should she wince or cry out - which at times she did, Qatirna attempted to explain what happened.
Oelun didn’t appear angry, or even judgmental. She seemed relieved that everyone involved came out alive. And in turn that relief flooded Qatirna, who hadn’t known how the Qestir would respond to the story.
They sat for a time, a strange silent comfort in their shared presence, a gentle warmth radiated between them. Then the Qestir changed the subject. She glanced over shrewdly at the tribeless Xaela and curled a finger around her ring finger, a Western symbol of marriage. They both knew who the Qestir was thinking of, she’d asked about him before.
Qatirna’s eyes widened in response to the inquiry, the color might have drained from her skin before, but today it brightened, her cheeks warming and adding another shade of pink to her already tawny red skin. She shook her head in short quick movements, with a shy grin as she watched for Oelun’s reaction. There was no new news. No changes in status.
Oelun looked... unamused. Though not necessarily judgmental. She repeated a motion that she made when they *talked* about this before, waving her hand down and back up like a graph and then looking at Qatirna with a knowing expression. She could choose whether or not to stay miserable and locked away in the past, or to let herself be happy.
Qatirna blushed a little more. Oelun was right, but just because she understood that truth didn’t mean she understood how to live it. She reached behind her neck to scratch at the scales beneath her hairline, then shrugged and looked back at Oelun. She mimicked the Qestir’s gesture from before, indicating her ring finger and then giving a pointed look to the pale woman. What about *her*?
In response, the Qestir simultaneously wilted while her porcelain skin burned a shade that almost mimicked Qatirna’s. An uncomfortable topic for both of them.
Feckless - Q
“AH!” he winced suddenly, grabbing his cheek with strained cautious fingers where an azure scar cut through cerulean skin. The mage startled at his outburst and turned to him with clear worry in her eyes.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he lied.
“You’re holding the place you got hit with those falling rocks.” She frowned. He was a bad liar. “Did you not see a healer when we got back to Thanalan?”
“I’ve been busy with work.” “Oh Nhaama! I only stopped the bleeding. I’m not a real healer, you know that!” She chastised, though affection could be heard under her scolding tongue.
He didn’t give her a verbal reply. Instead he dropped his cheek and took her hand with his, giving her a reassuring squeeze. His gaze seemed to focus on the hood covering her horn, and she understood what he was getting at. He somehow never seemed to actively judge her poor decisions. She worried him, that was obvious. She worried most people who cared about her. That’s why she pushed people away. But he never outright told her that her actions were wrong, he never even implied it. He just always asked that she be careful and then let her go and do her own thing. That’s probably how he’d managed to keep her from running for so long.
“Look I saw a healer right after I got these injuries and he said the horn would have to grow back naturally,” she snapped, but her expression quickly dropped, now tender and apologetic. “I will get my horn rewrapped and then I will start wrapping it myself going forward. It just… freaks me out to touch it.”
Her eyes averted his gaze for a moment before looking back with determination. Her free hand moved gently to his scar and a soft blue light illuminated the veins in her arm. The light leaked from her fingers onto his cheek before it quickly seeped into his skin. Her magic would do nearly nothing for the healing process, but it should help dull the pain. She smiled up at him warmly. “After I get my horn taken care of, we’re getting you to a proper healer. Deal with it.”
Petrichor - Q
The sun rose and set three times before the young mage finally blinked open her violet eyes. As if Azim had been keeping his watch over the girl, the clouds parted that morning for the first time since she fell into her coma. After three days of tireless work from the healers in the Circle of Ash, Qatirna woke to the unique smell of clean wet desert sand after an uncharacteristic storm.
“<Mama?>”
Her mother, after shouting her voice raw for two of those turns, had finally been allowed in to sit by her bedside. She didn’t eat, how could she? And she only slept when the intense exhaustion pulled her away from consciousness, bent over in her chair laying her head on the cot right next to her daughter. Khadagan didn’t immediately notice her daughter’s stirring, not until the hand she clasped moved. She looked to the girl’s face with cheeks wetter than the sand outside to find darkened coal black limbal rings surrounding her bright amethyst irises.
“<Oh Nhaama has blessed me,>” she cried, tenderly brushing locks of dark hair away from the girl’s forehead. “<How do you feel, my desert rose? You’re still so warm.>”
Kazagg Chah kept himself busy those three days, but he kept his work near the hut that Qatirna slept in. If something needed his attention further away, he rushed back as soon as he could. He tried to appear unfeeling about the whole thing, but anyone could see his worry. He pushed the young mage as far as she could go. If she woke would determine if he’d pushed her too far.
A healer ducked out of the hut to find Kazagg Chah pacing the damp earth nearby. “<<She’s awake.>>”
He straightened his posture, nodding briefly to the healer in thanks before pressing into the hut.
“<<Good. You survived. Your training continues when your eyes have regained their color,>>” he said curtly, then immediately turned away and left. Qatirna didn’t feel ready for more, but she knew she would soon.
Destruct - Q
Smoke filled the run down brick building not quite enough to suffocate the patrons, not quite enough to cover the smells of boozey sweat and sex and vomit. Years of neglect left the floors and walls stained with food and drink and even the occasional splash of blood. At least there wasn’t carpet. Smoke discolored the ceiling, but no one could see it through the dim lighting. Although who would come to a place like this and stare at the ceiling with eyes clear enough to see it? It was the kind of place that was so depreciated that the filth covered the grime, making it almost tolerable.
Everyone there came from wildly different backgrounds as far as race and profession, but they were all there because they had sunk low enough to be there. A shameless disgrace shared among everyone in that building.
Qatirna had wandered into a group of strangers and wound up sitting on the shoulders of a Xaela nearly twice her height. A drink in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, she kept her thighs against his horns to keep from losing her balance.
“So this is what it’s like to be taller than everyone?!” she laughed with dumb intoxicated elation.
“<Hopefully this isn’t the last time your thighs are around my horns tonight,>” he said as imposing hands wrapped around her legs, slowly sliding up her skirts.
“<You can’t just say things like that!>” she squirmed and squealed in response. Smoke and shadow hid her flushed cheeks, she’d never felt so grateful for something so unpleasant. Still, she had no plans for a room that night. What was the point in spending gil on something she wouldn’t use? She knew before she got to that bar that later she would end up in someone else’s bed.
The Xaela beneath her just laughed, low and husky, as his hands continued trailing up.
Avatar - Q
The full moon glowed bright but gentle on the desert landscape below. The light and the sand mixed together into a beautiful soft sepia and the shadows cast by craggy cliff sides and towering cacti created a dramatic stylized portrait of Thanalan.
Qatirna sat near a small fire atop one of those mesas, the rock having turned a deep dark red under the night sky. She watched the moonlight of her mother goddess and the earth of her homeland blend. Mama always told her that she was no less Xaela for her birth or her life lived away from the Azim Steppe. Everywhere she went on this star she would be touched by the light of Nhaama and Azim under the same sky.
That thought brought her comfort on the nights she needed it the most. On nights like this when she felt the most alone. When she remembered everything she had lost and everything she never had. She would be visiting the Steppe soon. Her first time ever in her motherland.
The fact that she couldn’t share this with her parents stung like a thousand cactuar needles in her chest. The fact that she knew no one from their tribes. The fact that she would never meet anyone from her mother’s tribe, and she didn’t think she would ever meet anyone from her father’s tribe either. She worried that she didn’t even belong. Anywhere really. Can you return to a home you’ve never been to?
But Nhaama’s light graced her bare shoulders, and would continue to in Thanalan or the Steppe or in fucking Ishgard. And in Nhaama’s arms her parents watched over her. Maybe she didn’t belong anywhere in particular, but she belonged. Anywhere below the sky she belonged.