#wolfic

[hawkeyeflags]

wolf in sheep's clothing gender !

[koko-mochi]

scholar — for the single-word drive!

"Wait," the archon hummed a small sound of disbelief, "don't tell me the vaunted Warrior of Light doesn't know how to read!"

R'koko sucked on her bottom lip, her brow creased in concentration as she stared at the pages in front of her. Raw text--no pictures or diagrams--filled the paper. When her friend had invited her to spend an afternoon in the Noumenon together, R'koko had assumed that all Y'shtola wanted was some company--something to break up the monotony of reading book after book on opening voidgates and navigating the rift; perhaps some of R'koko's insight based on the times that she had spent traversing the rift. R'koko had not been expecting Y'shtola to put a book in her hands and ask her to read it aloud.

It was easy to forget the cloudy-eyed Scion was blind. For the most part, she moved through the world as well as anyone else, using aethersight to find her way. And while she was not forthcoming about the toll that aethersight took on her body, there was no denying the benefit that it provided her. Her limitations did, however, make themselves known when it came to books. In a tragic twist, the scholarly miqo'te could not see the words on a page unless they were written in enchanted ink or embossed into the paper. Stone tablets were easier, because letters were carved into their surface, but if they were worn and weathered Y'shtola struggled with them.

Regardless, Y'shtola was never one to let her struggles show, so R'koko didn't think twice about whether her friend would be able to read books on her own with aethersight.

In this case, however, it would seem not. R'koko's heart had hammered in her chest as Y'shtola put the book in her hands. The Warrior of Light had opened the cover and been disappointed and a bit panicked to find no pictures. At least pictures would have helped R'koko fake it, keep her best friend believing that she could read, staving off pity and disappointment and deep embarrassment.

Instead line after line of strange characters stretched out across the page. And about a minute into her halting and labored attempt to read the book aloud, Y'shtola had stopped her, her face a mix of surprise and amusement. The Warrior of Light couldn't read.

"I never had reason to learn back home," R'koko murmured. And it was true. She had shown tremendous talent and skill as a hunter from a young age, and the leaders of her village cultivated those skills in her, rather than literacy or other more traditional elements of classroom education.

Y'shtola smiled gently. R'koko didn't want to look, didn't want to see the pity on her friend's face. But when the archon spoke there was no pity there, only kindness and intimacy. "I wish I could teach you. I wish I had known when we had first met in La Noscea." She stifled a chuckle. "Maybe I did know, could tell, by the way you stared at that memorial stone in Seasong Grotto, with such a perplexed look on your face."

R'koko's shoulders sagged. "Your memory is too good, you know."

Y'shtola leaned forward, whispering into R'koko's ear, "Maybe you're just too memorable."

R'koko blushed, but the comment disarmed her. "Just," she stammered, "don't let the twins know I can't read, okay?"

"My lips are sealed," Y'shtola said, the corner of a smile creeping into her words. "Can you imagine though? You would never hear the end of it from Alphinaud."

R'koko rolled her eyes. "I know." They both laughed, and R'koko relaxed. Y'shtola really was her dearest, most important friend, and as the two miqo'te laughed together R'koko wondered why she had ever hidden this from her, because of course Y'shtola wouldn't judge her for her illiteracy.

"As for the matter at hand," Y'shtola nodded towards the book R'koko was holding, "shall we fetch G'raha? He'll be able to read that. And I have a feeling your secret will be safe with him."

"Right," said R'koko, "G'raha it is."

[arkinfluffsonxiv]

New chapter of Take Me Lost, Make Me Found coming tomorrow! Jumping right into ShB. Here's a lil preview~

--

A moment later, hands grasp each of Arkin’s wrists, one cool, one warm. The Exarch’s low voice in his ear: “Let me take care of you,” and his arms are gently pulled behind and up so his palms are resting on each forearm, wrists pressed together. The hands lift, and he stays posed obediently as he hears the soft slap of the unfurled ends tossed against the stone floor. Touch returns with the scrape of jute coiling around his wrists, and the rough twist of the first knot, practiced fingers working swiftly. 

Arkin knows well the coarseness of his rope, even as well-used as it is. But the feeling of another body so close—arm wrapped around him from behind, pulling cords taut across his broad chest, cloth and crystallized muscle pressing into his back and then abruptly leaning away to secure a hitch before reaching back in—is entirely new. Arkin is so used to tugging his own strings in this play, of being both the puppet and puppeteer, that the absence of one role, and presence of a new actor, renders him lightheaded, almost faint. 

The Exarch is embracing him again as he holds the line taut against Arkin’s bare skin, and he deftly ties the second rope to the first, tucking the knot under his ribs. Forward and back, subtly pulling the Warrior this way and that as he finally secures the last knot in the harness and then—ah—one last strong tug and the whole pattern tightens and locks, from wrists to ink-darkened biceps to the long bands criss-crossing collar, sternum and ribs. 

The river of Arkin’s thoughts slows, then stills; like a midwinter night after snow, everything falls silent, heavy, blanketed.

--

Give Chapter 1 a read here!

[sandorara]

The Viera that boards the ship headed for the far west is someone other than the imperial soldier who bought the ticket.

from swidden fields it grows — read here (wol story prologue, set before ARR)

[eemamminy-art]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

“I know you have been in our lands more than once, spoken with quite a few of the soldiers here. Surely you’ve heard mention of a missing heir.”

It was as if his mind was being read aloud, yet still he ran from the apparent accusation at hand, “Aye, an heir who went missing some twenty winters past? Dreadful, truly, but I’m afraid I—”

“No,” the Count cut him off, his voice booming as he said that single word, then returned to his previous tone as if it never happened, “My nephew did go missing long ago, it would seem such misfortune haunts my family. I speak of my own son.”

[hawkeyeflags]

sheep in wolf's clothing gender !

[arkinfluffsonxiv]

If posted a rope bondage fic about my WoL/G'raha, would people be into it?

I have 2 chapters written already (I just really want to explore rope and also I don't see too many stories out there with top!Exarch which I wanted to take a hand at characterizing!) Here's a lil excerpt (from just before WoD):

--

Gathering courage, G’raha leans in, brushing fingertips across the strands running across Arkin’s front. The Warrior’s eyes widen, ears twitching. 

“Is it the tightness of it…?” G’raha murmurs. 

“Mm.” G’raha feels the response more than hears it and his tail swishes in response. “I like the feeling of being confined, aye. It’s…” He pauses, considering. “I have a lot on my shoulders. The fate of our world, if Rammbroes is to be believed, no?” G’raha feels Arkin’s warm hand cover his as their gazes meet. “Even I can’t take all that, sometimes. This helps, a little.” 

Something in G’raha stirs. He wants to hook his fingers under that knot and pull, see the Warrior’s eyes slide shut and his mouth open. He wants to erase this awful weight; wants the only fate Arkin feels the tug of to be the one right before them, narrowed to this moment. But– 

G’raha lets his hand drop. The dizzying desire passes. Arkin smiles again, a wry twist of his mouth. It hits G’raha like a bucket of ice.

[koko-mochi]

"Why can't I remember?"

 R’koko Zhula lay awake, staring at the ceiling of her room in the Baldesion Annex. She sighed, stretching out an arm and spreading her fingers. Her hand was a dark silhouette against the night. Sleepless nights had become frequent for R’koko, her mind fraught and restless since the events that had ended the Final Days and brought a conclusion to her bitter conflict with Zenos yae Galvus. The strength leaving her body, the darkness closing in, the quiet slip into oblivion, the horrible, bitter loneliness of it all, these things haunted her like the mystery of this body haunted her—the mystery of a body she left at the end of all things, a body she dissolved away from into nothing, a body somehow different into which she had been reborn. The final confrontation with Zenos had been won by the total annihilation of herself, hadn’t it?

  The memories lingered at the edges of her perception, half forgotten as if they belonged to someone else. She did not remember dying—it is not such a thing as a person does remember—but the life she had lived before that moment seemed clouded, seen through a mirror that hadn’t been polished in a decade. Her friends knew she was different, too. Maybe they knew she would never be the same, after what she had been through. And so they had put another adventure before her, another world to save, another hope to kindle. She was the Warrior of Light, this is what she did, this is the effect the force of her nature had upon the world. For hope, for liberation, for good. She wondered now, staring at her hand as it hovered over her at arm’s length, if she still was all of those things.

  She slammed her head backwards into her pillow a few times. Lying in bed ruminating like this wasn’t doing her sleep any favors. So R’koko rolled out of bed and dressed herself in loose, soft flannel pajamas. She shuffled into the larders of the Baldesion Annex, hoping to find a snack, instead finding her newest acquaintance, Wuk Lamat, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a brown paper bag in her lap and a small pile of bones on the floor to her right. 

  The Hrothgar woman looked up as the door to the larders creaked open and R’koko slipped in, her eyes going wide as she blurted out between bites, “R’koko! What are you doing here?”

  “Just getting a snack, Wuk Lamat,” R’koko mumbled, her gaze lingering on the bag in Wuk Lamat’s lap. “Is that from the last hunt?”

  “It is,” Wuk Lamat said, “But, uh, this is the last piece.” She gazed sheepishly at the half eaten chop of meat in her hand, the bone blackened by the cooking fire and the meat seared to perfection.

  “That’s okay,” R’koko shrugged, picking out a day old loaf of crusty bread, a small jar of dark honey, a scoop of rolanberry jam, and a small wedge of cheese and piling them onto a wooden serving dish. It was a far cry from the Archon Loaves that had filled these shelves when the Scions had arrived here from Eorzea, but new culinary advances from the Studium and the Last Stand, as well as an influx of refugees displaced by the Final Days, had brought what seemed to be the beginnings of a culinary revolution to Sharlayan. R’koko was glad for it. “I’m not really in the mood for meat, anyways.”

  Wuk Lamat did nothing to conceal the surprise on her face. “A miqo’te, not in the mood for meat? You certainly are full of surprises, R’koko Zhula!” 

  R’koko wasn’t sure how to respond to that. There were a lot of things from before the Final Days that simply weren’t true anymore. She rarely, if ever, had the stomach for meat now. She had picked at a salad while her friends filled their bellies with the meat she and Wuk Lamat had brought back from their latest hunt. R’koko chose to avoid that particular conversation with the Turali woman, saying instead, “It isn’t the same as home. When the hunters would return from a successful outing we would feast and fill our bellies around the fire, singing and dancing and talking into the night.” She tried to remember the smells, the tastes, and the faces of her village, but she found that she couldn’t. She felt a pressure inside her chest, a deep wrongness in the center of her being. Her voice trailed off to a choked whisper, “…why can’t I?” R’koko looked away, tears welling up in her eyes.

  Wuk Lamat looked around anxiously, as if trying to find another person in the room. Her voice rose in urgency. “Wait. Wait wait wait. Are you crying? Was it something I said? Are you okay?”

  It was the barrage of concern that broke R’koko. She swayed, slid to her knees, and put her face in her hands. The tears came hot and wet, the sobs shook her. This was not the way she wanted to behave in front of a foreign dignitary, but everything caught up to her all at once. The horrible witness to her own annihilation. The sleeplessness. The memory loss. The concern shown by her friends. The irrefutable knowledge that nothing would ever again be the same. These feelings and more crashed over her with the strength of a tidal bore. She slumped against the cool stone wall of the larder, shaking with sobs. “I c-can’t…can’t remember…” she whispered between sobs. Then she wailed, “Why can’t I remember?” 

  Wuk Lamat scrambled across the stone floor on her knees, grabbing R’koko by the shoulders and squeezing the small miqo’te against her chest. “I don’t understand,” stammered the Hrothgar, “what can’t you remember?”

  “Any of it. All of it. Everything that happened before I…” she choked out the words between gasping sobs, her fingers grabbing hold of Wuk Lamat’s fur and holding tight. “It’s like it was someone else’s life and now I’m….now I’m…”

  “Shhhhh,” cooed Wuk Lamat, “shhhh.” She gently rocked R’koko in her arms. “I had no idea you were suffering so much.” 

  “Nobody knows. I can’t let them know.”

  Wuk Lamat pet the top of R’koko’s head, between the ears. “You know, I only just met all of you, Erenville’s tall tales aside, but I have a feeling they might know more about your struggle than you think.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe if you’d let them,” Wuk Lamat chided. “Here you are crying to me, and we just met. We went on a hunt, sure, so we’re definitely friends, but I don’t know much about you besides what your friends have told me.” She slumped her shoulders. “I’m no good at counseling like this, but maybe, even if it’s just with me, you can have a new beginning. Maybe actually share how you’re feeling?”

  R’koko let her sobs trail off, and couldn’t help but chuckle. “You…are kind of bad at this,” she said, weakly, “But maybe I can try.”

  The Hrothgar almost knocked the wind out of R’koko as she clapped her on the back. “To new beginnings, then! And to the Champion of Eorzea giving up her whole ‘strong silent type’ act, eh?”

  The Warrior of Light couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Sure. To new beginnings.” And despite the edge of sarcasm and exhaustion in her voice, and despite the dark circles under her eyes, R’koko Zhula smiled.