alightlostineorzea

[alightlostineorzea]

Ashes to Ashes

I should have been praying.

I knelt in a row of pews at the Church of Adama Landama, staring at the dust eddying around the crack in the baseboards behind the altar. It swirled in the air as the wind outside sighed, and sand pelted the church's age-gray walls. If I closed my eyes and ignored everything my nose told me, I could almost have imagined it was raining.

The kneeler was unpadded, built from the same dried-out and cracked old pine that the pews were. The back of the pew in front of me was warped, coming away from the seat. Rusted nails were starting to work loose; newer nails and in one place a makeshift clamp were probably all that really held it together. It creaked with every tiny movement I made. It was so old, it no longer really smelled of wood at all, but of dust. What it surely would be soon, for I doubted it would last more than a few more seasons.

Till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Dust. Same as all of the Scions soon would be.

Religion had never been much of a part of my life. I knew who the Twelve were, and occasionally went through the motions of acting as though I were a follower of Azeyma. I guess I'd never seen the point; unlike the beastmen with their primals, the Twelve had never been real in the same way. They didn't take corporeal forms and make edicts. They simply were. Or weren't. I'd never had any way of knowing.

But to others around me, they'd meant something. My mother had knelt and wrapped a string of beads around her fingers and asked Azeyma to lead her to truth. The altar had been decorated with dried roses that had never wholly lost their scent, and the incense she burned would linger for hours. She would tuck me into bed and her long, braided hair would fall across me as she kissed my forehead and I'd still smell it on her, camphor and sage and myrrh.

I hadn't thought of my mother in a long time. In that moment, I missed her fiercely. I longed for all of the homes I'd ever lost, and most of all the one I'd so briefly, so recently found. It smelled of sweat more than anything else, and oil and steel and musty old carpets that Minfilia had probably made some hapless adventurer fetch from a storeroom that was last opened before Mhach fell, but it had been home.

Llymlaen, guide them to the heavens. Althyk, keep their souls. And Halone... help me to deliver vengeance.

For the first time in a long time, I prayed. It was brief, and I'll probably never know if it was even heard. But sometimes, it's nice to believe that it was the gods who brought Alphinaud to me again. Who gave me hope where I thought it lost. Who gave Cid something of a life back. But perhaps that would diminish all the boy had done to find me, and to find him.

I stood up, my knees aching. The storm outside still raged, and I had hours yet before Alphinaud would arrive with his revelation. But somehow, I knew my part there was done.

The door from the vestibule opened, and Father Iliud appeared bearing a tray laden with teacups. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything, my boy. You've been so quiet... Well, a good cuppa won't hurt anything, will it?"

"No. Sorry, I was... praying."

His blue eyes narrowed for a moment before he nodded. "Azeyma, is it? Well, we've not the roses she prefers here, but I'm sure she won't take offense if one of her children in need asks from another church. Or perhaps it's another? Oschon is often beloved of adventurers like yourself."

I shook my head and took the offered cup of tea. It smelled strongly of licorice, and I wrinkled my nose slightly before sipping it anyway. "Halone. Azeyma guides my people, but it's the Fury that's always resonated most with me." It wasn't her fury that took me in battle, only my own, but I felt if any of the Twelve understood, it was her. "Besides, I didn't grow up among other Seekers, aside from my mother."

Camphor and sage and myrrh... and roses. I looked down, my vision fixing on a loose topnail trying to work its way out of the floorboards before everything went suddenly blurry. A warm hand came to rest on my shoulder, and I flinched out of instinct, my tail going rigid and a splash of tea sloshing out of the cup and onto my thigh. After a moment though, I leaned back into the comforting touch.

"We've all lost things, child. It's how we pull through despite those losses that define us. 'By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread—'"

"Till thou return unto the ground," I finished softly.

"And I pray it's a long time before you do. Come now, Marques has made you up a cot. It's not much, but I'm sure you'd not care to sleep on a hard pew. Besides, I suspect you'd wake with splinters in your... well, you'd have splinters in unpleasant places."

I smiled, looking back up at Father Iliud. He smiled warmly down at me. Things weren't all right, but at that moment at least, I felt as though they could be. And that was something.

[alightlostineorzea]

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

Adventurers see a lot of horrible things. It's something none seem to be prepared for ahead of time, that we just have to learn to accept. When we're asked to kill, it's because whatever it is we're after has done something terrible. Often we see one of its victims.

I had grown, if not comfortable, accustomed to the sight of bodies. Or body parts. They never stopped making my stomach turn, but they were a part of the world I had to deal with or give up the adventuring life entirely. But always they'd been small in number, or so long gone as to be reduced to bones. This was not what greeted me when I opened the door to the Waking Sands.

It was the smell that nearly keeled me over. I don't think they'd been dead long, but there was still an overwhelming scent of blood and offal and feces. My right hand hovered between reaching for my bow and reaching to cover my nose, and my eyes watered. Through the blur, I could see the rich, woven carpets soaked in blood and worse things. The walls bore smears where some people had tried to support themselves, the bodies now slumped against them like sacks of flour forgotten in a cellar.

I couldn't move. I hadn't known all of the Scions well, but I had regarded them as allies. As acquaintances, and in some cases even people I might come to regard as friends. Now most of their number lay dead before me. I tried to remember their names, but couldn't even match their faces, now frozen in expressions of fear and pain, to memories of the vibrant and hopeful people I had known.

When at last I managed to make myself walk forward, it was with a slow, almost stumbling gait. I had my hand clamped firmly over my nose and mouth, but it did nothing for the acrid smell. I feared what I would find in the solar. Its door was wedged ajar, the body of a Miqo'te woman I didn't know crumpled in front of it. But within, I didn't find the people I'd called friends. Only a dead Garlean soldier and a small, leafy limp form. My heart sank further.

"Nor—"

I couldn't finish even speaking her name before the Echo gripped me, and the last I heard of the present time was a feeble voice calling out to me. "Walking one."

Minfilia named the Echo a blessing. A gift. Perhaps in some ways it is: to understand those who speak to you is undeniably a boon. But to revisit moments of pain, of fear? To face down gods because you know nobody else can? Those are things I wouldn't have wished on my enemies. And yet those were the moments I visited then, forced to watch the Scions decimated by the Garleans. Most had been killed, but a few had been captured and I... had no idea how to get them back, only that I had to try. Somehow.

Later, I sat outside the Waking Sands, my hands and knees stained with blood. I'd tried to clean some of it up, covered the bodies and righted some of the furniture, but the empty chairs at empty tables only served to make matters worse.

In her last moments, Noraxia had asked me to seek shelter with Father Iliud. I didn't understand why, but I needed somewhere to go and that... was better than nothing.

[alightlostineorzea]

Victorious

I've never known what to call a defeated primal. Could I say that Titan was dead? At the very least, the mound of rubble before me was no longer alive in the way that it had been.

Can one even say that a primal is truly alive? They are born fully-formed by their worshippers' ideas. They did not eat, so far as I had been told. They did not sleep, or require anything more than pure aether.

My hand on my bow was slick with sweat, and dust coated the inside of my mouth in a decidedly unpleasant way. Blood oozed from shallow scratches on my right arm where I hadn't dodged flying rocks quickly enough, but I was otherwise unharmed. Considering what the Company of Heroes had been through trying to defeat Titan before, it was nothing short of miraculous.

The look Y'shtola gave me when I teleported back—feeling again that nausea-inducing stretching—seemed to agree.

"You're unharmed then?" she asked, her voice rising with her surprise.

"Near enough."

She gave me a satisfied smile, and motioned toward her forehead. "You have a little something..."

I wiped at it, feeling grit beneath my palm.

"No, I think you've..."

I used my forearm, which wasn't any cleaner, and she shook her head.

"Well, I'm sure there will be plenty of chances to clean up before returning to the Waking Sands. Duty calls me elsewhere first, but we shall meet there in a few days."

I nodded, smiling slightly.

"You know, you can celebrate a little. This weird stoic tough-guy thing you have going doesn't fool most of us." Again Y'shtola smiled at me, and adjusted one of the beads in her white hair. "We won't bite if you let yourself be yourself. Well, I won't. I make no guarantees about Yda. Or Tataru."

"Tataru's half my height, I don't think she could do much damage," I protested, but let myself smile nonetheless.

Y'shtola only smirked at me.

"I mean, she couldn't, right?"

She walked away from me, tail swishing and ears pricked.

"Y'shtola, she couldn't, right? Right?"

I didn't get my answer that day. I didn't get my answer for a long time. For the time being, I was left alone in the cool, damp canyons of La Noscea. Victorious.

[alightlostineorzea]

Dear Carpenters of Eorzea,

Do you ever take a step back to consider what you're doing when you build chairs? Let me make it clear that I'm already aware: you do not. "But F'yhano, how could you—not being a carpenter yourself—possibly know that?" you might ask. The answer is that I have sat in the chairs that you have hatefully created. I have struggled to find comfortable positions in the torture contraptions that you try to pass off as furniture. This is for one reason, and one reason only: You fail to consider that some of us have TAILS. How many times have I let myself sink into comfortable-looking chairs, only to scoot back and find that my tail is jammed into the inexplicably rigid seat back? All it would take would be a couple-inch gap in the stuffing between the seat and back (a gap that not even a Lalafell would notice, I might add!) and I could be comfortable. But no, you insist on giving me no space for my tail, so instead I find myself obliged to sit farther forward and slouch back. All I want is to live with the same level of comfort and ease that other races are afforded. All I want is a chair to sit in at the end of the day. For the time being, I suppose I'll just curl up with some pillows here by the fire. I guess this isn't so bad either. But I still want a chair.

[alightlostineorzea]

Are You Kidding Me?

A fraud.

I should have known the man was a fraud. I'd been suspicious from the start, but I'd thought he wanted gil from me in exchange for information, not that he was lying to start.

Tidus. Despite my earlier assumptions, it was not a cutesy nickname for Titan at all

I glowered and kicked at a small stone in the road as we walked toward Costa del Sol. It would be a couple of days to get there, days that we may not have before the kobolds figured out how to summon their primal once more.

"Testy, aren't we?" Y'shtola asked. Even if I didn't look over at the white-haired woman, I could hear her smiling. It was almost infuriating.

"No," I muttered silently, kicking the stone again. It skittered several fulms ahead.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you had a bit of a temper, the way you're carrying on."

"Well I don't," I snapped, then immediately regretted it. "Sorry."

Y'shtola was silent several moments. Her hands swung at her sides as she walked, and her twig-like wand bumped against her thigh. She was upwind of me, and I could smell the slightly fishy, slightly salty scent that lingered around anyone who spent significant amounts of time in Limsa Lominsa.

I kept my eyes trained in front of us, my ears pinned back slightly. The track was dusty and well-worn, but there weren't any other people about; it stretched out before us in a narrow, sinuous line until disappearing over a scrub-covered hill. On either side grew irregular tufts of pale, spiny grass that even an aldgoat would have struggled to find appetizing.

We caught up to the rock and I kicked it again. It bounced off of a rut left by someone's cart and went careening off into the grass. I didn't attempt to find it again.

"You'll find that in most cases, the first piece of information we receive is far from accurate." Y'shtola broke the uncomfortable silence at last. I shoved my hands sullenly in my pockets. "But often it leads us in the right direction regardless. Despite Trachtoum's... deception, at least we now know where to look, which is more than we knew this morning."

Inside my pockets, my hands balled into fists. "And what if all the time he wasted ends up being the difference maker? If innocent people are tempered..."

"Then we were too late before we ever even started. Unless that Echo of yours gives you foreknowledge as well?"

I shook my head.

"Well then there you go. You can hardly expect to bypass the entire investigation. You'll have to do it the slow way, like those of us who are normal."

"Normal?" I asked, an eyebrow raised. I doubted any member of the Scions was quite normal. Tataru, maybe, but then she had to be there for a reason. But so far as I knew, Y'shtola was both a scholar and a powerful conjurer. That was hardly how most people defined normal.

She grinned and swished her tail. "Well, relatively speaking. I'm not the one itching to fight primals."

"I'm not—" My protest died before I could even finish speaking it. It was true. Despite hating every memory I had of the incident with Ifrit, I longed to do it again. To prove myself against gods. To unflinchingly raise my bow and refuse to break in the face of beings who were accustomed to unquestioning obedience.

"It's not such a bad thing, you know. Some of us prefer diplomacy, but we need people like you too. Those who can do something when diplomacy has failed, or can't be done."

Truth be told, sometimes I wished I could be a diplomat. Diplomats, for the most part, didn't lie awake in bed wondering if they had done the wrong thing, killed the wrong people. They didn't fear their own anger, misdirected. They didn't regularly have to think about whether something would leave a scar or not. I envied them, fiercely.

However, those weren't things I could ever have said out loud. Instead I bowed my head and pressed my ears against my head and tried to smile.

"Perhaps not," I said slowly. "Either way, if it turns out this has taken time we don't have..."

"Then we'll deal with it from there. No sense borrowing the future's problems."

“I still think we should toss him off a bridge,” I grumbled. “Into the ocean. So he can meet ‘Tidus’.” 

[alightlostineorzea]

Of Monsters and Men

I couldn't get the woman's face out of my head. I saw it when I closed my eyes just for a moment. It featured prominently in my nightmares, laughing at me while I chased a man in a mask. I'd seen bodies before. Gods, I'd made them. My hands were hardly clean of blood. But what had been done to her was so far beyond what people should have been capable of.

That Lady Amandine was a monster had never been in doubt. I only wished she hadn't been the worst sort of monster, the sort that had been human. She'd been twisted by jealousy, and death, and the years, but her evil didn't come from a place of mindless violence or instinct. She'd known what she'd done. She'd known what she'd become, and she'd chosen it. And the masked men had helped her. Why? What did they want with me? With anyone?

I lay back on the hillside and looked up at the stars. The sky had never seemed so big in the Shroud. It had been hemmed by trees, and the stars were often covered by them. But here on the coast, it seemed to stretch forever.

My ears twitched against the spiny seagrass at the sound of approaching footsteps.

"Y'shtola?"

"I suppose I can't sneak up on you, can I?" Her voice betrayed her smile.

I shook my head. She was right though; the two of us shared the same senses. Keen hearing, though not as good as that of a Lalafell, and an even keener nose. There were few creatures of natural origin that could sneak up on a Miqo'te without approaching from downwind.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Y'shtola sat beside me, her jade-colored eyes turned toward the stars. "The stars seem brighter here than in Sharlayan. Or perhaps it's just that I can see farther in general without all the fog."

"It's foggy there?" I asked, then realized I didn't have the faintest notion of what Sharlayan was actually like. Full of scholars. And gone. She and several of the other Scions had been natives. I couldn't imagine just completely losing my homeland that way. "Sorry, if you don't want to talk about it."

"It's quite all right. I've had plenty of time to grow accustomed to its absence."

She told me of the things the Sharlayans had built. The expanses of libraries, the domed towers their builders had favored, the things they had done in the name of discovery. She spoke, and for a little while, I managed to forget my troubles while the starry expanse turned above us.

Eventually the wind picked up, bringing with it cooler air that sent us back to the shelter of the Waking Sands. That night, I fell asleep to thoughts of trying to imagine a faraway place I'd never see, and if worse things plagued my dreams after, I did not remember them. That, I supposed, was as much mercy as I could hope for, and I was grateful for the brief respite it offered me.

[alightlostineorzea]

In the Dark

I stood, breathing heavily, covered in the viscera of the largest diremite I'd ever seen. The bottoms of my boots squelched and stuck to the uneven cobblestones as I took a step forward, toward the space that had been occupied only moments before by a man in black robes.

"Where...?" I whispered. I reached out my hand toward where he'd disappeared, but found nothing more than air. It was as though he'd never existed. Sometimes I wondered if he did, if his appearance wasn't yet another manifestation of the strange power that the other Scions told me was called the Echo.

I held my torch up higher, as though that might somehow make him reappear. The walls of the one-time gaol seemed to ripple in the uneven light, but there was nothing more there for me to see.

My entire experience in the abandoned warren of tunnels had been unpleasant. It smelled of rot and acrid venom, making my eyes water from the very start. It was damp, and dark, and something occasionally dripped from the ceiling and onto my head. Once it had dripped into my ear. It was populated by poisonous plants and vilekin; one had managed to bite my knee, which now itched horribly.

"Come back and explain yourself!" I shouted into the emptiness, but my only answer came from the now stirring sylph that had been held captive here.

"Walking one saved this one?" Frixio asked. He had clearly well earned the title of elder among his people. His voice was wavery, and his foliage had faded to more of a slightly greenish, near-white tan than the bright color I'd come to expect, though the silk stalks coming from his head were longer by far than any I'd seen. They wobbled in a braided pile as he flew to hover in front of me, bleary eyes squinting at me.

I nodded, and felt a droplet of goo drip from one of my ears at the motion.

"Then this one thanks walking one. But why was walking one here?"

"I was looking for you, actually." I explained that I had been trying to learn about the status of Ramuh and what the sylphs were doing about them, and how I'd learned of his disappearance.

Despite the unpleasantness of the abandoned gaol, it had helped us to ensure that peace with the sylphs continued. Perhaps that was good enough a reason to endure it. Gods knew I would choose it over a potential summoning any day.

[alightlostineorzea]

Choices

I sat back in the Waking Sands, resisting the urge to let my head drop down onto the table. I had a lot to think about; the Grand Companies were expecting my answer but all I wanted was to sleep.

"Long day?" a blonde young man asked me, straddling a chair nearby to rest his chin on the back of it.

"Long few days. Arenvald, right?"

"One and the same. So, you want to talk about it?" He grinned, the smile seeming to take up most of his broad face.

"Not really. Just a decision to make."

"The Grand Companies, right?" He chuckled at the sharp look I gave him. "No need to tie your tail in a knot. Everyone's heard by now. Not every day they even deign to recognize our existence. Though I guess it's less our existence than yours, I suppose."

Perhaps a little truer to his words than he knew, I let my tail relax, the end of it resting on the floor behind my chair. I'd jumped so quickly to assuming he had ulterior motives. Not everyone was like Ungust. Not everyone was looking for an opportunity to betray me.

"It's them," I confirmed, unable to completely shake my wariness. "I just haven't decided."

"Well then, I'll help!" Arenvald announced brightly. "What about the Twin Adder? You're from Gridania, aren't you? Even if it weren't for the... You know..." He traced out the shape of ears above his head. "You've the sound of it in your voice, too."

I didn't point out that he sounded rather as though he'd come from Ala Mhigo, so why didn't he go back there? It would have been pointlessly cruel.

Still, Gridania wasn't an option for me. Maybe it wasn't an Imperial territory, but it had been made adequately clear to me that it had no love for an outsider. Even if the commander claimed me as one of Gridania's own, it had been a lie on his part. A lie that inadvertently touched closer to the truth than he knew, but still, the city had soundly rejected me. I knew where I wasn't really wanted.

I shook my head, ears pinning back slightly.

"Okay, not them then. So that leaves the Maelstrom and the Brass Blades. So how'd you like Limsa Lominsa and Ul'dah? You visited, right?"

I grimaced a bit. I couldn't say I'd found either city to be an especially pleasant experience. I'd never liked the sea, even if the fishy sound made me hungry. Or perhaps that was why I disliked it. But Ul'dah had been so full of avarice, even if the environment was more to my liking.

"That bad?"

"That bad."

"What about the leaders? Surely there's a distinction there."

"Charismatic. On both fronts." Merlwyb had a presence to her. I could see why pirates and civilians alike were willing to follow her. The pair of Nanamo and Raubahn had been different, with the Lalafell woman soft and kind and the huge Highlander man with an almost implacable force behind him.

I finally let my head fall onto the table. "I don't know how I'm supposed to choose between them. I'd say the Blades, to make up for failing me before, but would they even want me after that?"

Arenvald was silent a few long moments.

"But they still invited you, didn't they? I'm not an expert on Ul'dahn culture, but I think that means they'd still welcome you."

I looked up at him, and he smiled.

Only a short while later, I was the Brass Blades' newest private, still not sure I'd made the right choice but satisfied in my knowledge that it was the only choice I could have made.

[alightlostineorzea]

Hellfire

Rocks dug into the side of my cheek, and dust choked my nostrils. I sat up slowly, blinking away the dirt and grime from my eyes as I tried to take stock of the situation. The Echo? Everything smelled, strangely, of brimstone and smoke; my eyes watered slightly.

"F'yhano, right?"

A Roegadyn man in a yellow Immortal Flames uniform stood over me. The wavy blonde hair on one side of his head was matted with blood, but his hands and face were surprisingly clean. I nodded at him, and he extended a hand to help pull me to my feet.

"I should have known somethin' weren't right. That we shouldn't have trusted..." He trailed off, and I remembered. Betrayed to the Amal'jaa by the trader. We'd slain... I didn't even know how many. Not enough. That mage had put me to sleep like it was nothing.

My hands were gritty, dirt sticking to them. It was difficult to tell in the dim light, but I suspected they were covered in blood. Mine, the others', that of some of the Amal'jaa... did it even matter?

"It wasn't you," I told him. I rubbed my hands together, trying to clean them. I'm not sure they'd ever be clean again. Our foes hadn't been the only ones to die today, and it had been Thancred and I who had planned this. I who had promised to see it through. "You didn't do anything."

"Ain't that just the problem," he muttered bitterly.

I dropped my hands to my sides. "It wasn't you. Just... tell me why we're here. Why aren't we dead?"

I looked around the area we were being held in. It seemed to be one end of of a slot canyon, with a narrow opening to the sky above. It was wider where we were, but the only exit was barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast. It was rough sandstone, like so much of Thanalan. Not something I suspected most of the others could climb in their condition. Not something I thought I could climb, if I were being honest. There was a pool on the far end, probably where he'd cleaned himself up some.

"I don't know. They keep speakin' in their tongue. I can't understand." He was looking increasingly distraught. I couldn't blame him.

"It's fine. I'll figure something out." I didn't even have the beginnings of a plan. "What's your name?"

"Skribhwab. You got something?"

I shook my head. "Not yet. I need to wash my hands and... think."

Not that water could clean all of this away. I needed to do something before I screamed. Before the shadows got to be so dark and so deep that I started jumping at every sound. I knelt beside the water's edge and scrubbed, trying to hold my stomach's contents where they were.

Heavy footsteps behind me made me pause. "I'm near done, Skribhwab."

A harsh, guttural voice answered me. "Up!"

I turned, reaching for my bow but it wasn't slung over my back where I expected it to be. An Amal'jaa stood behind me, his spear pointed at my chest. He laughed. "Look for puny weapon? Fine." He shouted at one of the others of his kind, and a bow was shoved into my hands by another of them. "No matter anyway. Ifrit will judge same."

Ifrit. Their primal god. I felt sweat prickle at the back of my neck. We'd come to prevent him from being summoned. If it was too late for that...

The chanting of the other Ama’jaa grew more urgent, frenzied. They stamped their feet and beat the butts of their spears against the crack-crazed ground. The smell of brimstone, of hell grew stronger, and heat radiated from all around us. I held tight to the bow, which was a full foot and a half longer than my own. 

And then he came. Ifrit. A horned god, with a mouth that yawned open to a void of lava. He spoke, tauntingly, his voice like the crackling of fire. “Is this all you bring to me? These pitiful few? But it is of no matter, for I shall have them all.”

He breathed out a blue flame and I put my hands up to shield my eyes and said one last prayer to Nophica. I had failed everyone, and now I would die with them. The flames swirled toward us, engulfing us, but parted before me as though before a canoe’s bow in calm waters. The others all fell to their knees, somehow unburned, at least not physically, and I? I alone stood against the primal.

Godslayer, they later called me. All of the stories speak of how I slew Ifrit with the Amal’jaa’s own wicked arrows. None of them tell how my comrades groveled before him. None of them mention how many people I couldn’t save. Skribhwab, the other Flames. Even Ungust, who traitor that he was still didn’t deserve his fate. None of the stories mention that when the primal finally fell, I stood paralyzed by the fear that I had forgotten only moments before. So many lost. So many pointlessly, senselessly lost. 

And save for a gift I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, I would have been one of them.

[alightlostineorzea]

In Disguise

"Thancred?"

"Hm?" The white-haired man paused in the adjustment of his disguise. He'd spent the past couple of minutes muttering about how the peasant look really didn't suit him, though now his attention was fully on me. He squinted at me for a few moments, then at the sight of my waistband sagging beneath the base my tail while I held the front half up, burst into giggles.

"I don't think we thought this all the way through." I gathered the extra fabric around my waist and tugged it forward to illustrate my point. "Who was this made for, a Roegadyn?"

"Hold still and I'll cut a slit in the back for you. As for the rest, just tie it up with an extra bowstring. You have got those, haven't you?"

I nodded, and set my teeth to keep from flinching when he worked the knife so close to my tail.

"You know, this is the first I've seen you smile." I looked up from tying the string around my waist when he spoke again. "I mean really smile, not that... other face you pull when you're trying to be friendly."

"That bad?"

He settled against a scrubby sort of tree, hands loosely at his sides just over where he'd hidden his knives. "Not bad per se. Just... not exactly genuine. It puts some of the others a little on edge is all. I don't think they know what to make of you. You don't say much, and while it's clear you at least try to do the right thing, none of us know what you're thinking at any given time."

I crouched beside the pool of water, staring into it. My own face stared back at me. My green eyes were all but lost in the color of the water itself, but my expression was serious again. I supposed it was a face I made often. There hadn't been much in recent times to find levity in. The more I looked, the more... rotten some things seemed to be.

"For what it's worth, I don't think you're a bad person. You're just... not what some of us are accustomed to, is all." He smiled brightly. "Besides, how are you supposed to attract the ladies when you look so dour all the time?"

"Men," I said quietly, still staring into the tiny pond.

"Right, men then. Either way, you've got a nice smile, when you see fit to actually use it. Lighten up! Besides, your face isn't bad. There's no helping that scar obviously, and the tattoos are... well, I suppose among your people they're considered nice-looking aren't they? At least that's what Shtola swears up and down whenever I ask her."

I snorted lightly.

"See, there. That look."

"Sorry. I—"

"Gods, no, why are you apologizing? And here I thought we were making progress!" Thancred ran a hand through his hair. "Look, the Scions. They're good people. They're not out to get you or in any way menacing or... whatever it is you're thinking."

"It's not that," I tried to reassure him. "I just haven't had much... I've been on my own a while, is all. I'm not accustomed to... people."

He raised an eyebrow and leaned forward toward me a bit. "A while?"

"Since the Calamity. I think. Maybe before? I can't remember. The year before the Calamity and a couple of years after are just..." I shrugged. Either way, if there had been anyone with me, surely they wouldn't have left me on my own in a tiny hut in the western woods of La Noscea.

"That long? And you didn't die of boredom?"

I shrugged again.

"No, of course not. You seem like the type who might actually find watching moss grow to be interesting. And no doubt you had no problem providing for yourself, if what Yda and Papalymo have to say about your skill with a bow is true. So what brought you back into the world?"

"Boredom."

"But you just said..."

"I didn't die of it." I grinned faintly at his groans. "No, to be honest I don't really know. It just seemed right. Like it was time. I woke up one morning, intending to come back to my hut and work on some warmer clothes for winter, and then... I didn't. I hopped on the first carriage I could find heading to Gridania."

"You're a strange one, you know."

I let myself settle back onto the rocky ground. "Maybe."

Thancred quirked a smile, and I returned him a crooked one in kind. Maybe in some ways he was right. I'd grown so accustomed to being alone, I'd forgotten how to act around other people. Instead of re-learning, I'd just withdrawn further to avoid doing something off-putting, but it had apparently had the opposite effect.

[alightlostineorzea]

First Outing

I stood at the entrance to the cave, all of my senses straining to identify what might lie in wait inside. I could hear distant voices and waves echoing, and smell salt and damp and sweat and something cooking. But beyond the entrance, I could *see* little. My mind invented more sinister explanations for what I heard and smelled. Monsters lurking, eager to devour the first poor fool who came stumbling in. The mage next to me conjured a light, and I felt myself relax as I stepped into the cave after her. My tail eased out of the rod-straight position I'd held it in for the past several seconds. "First time doing this sort of thing?" she asked companiably as we sloshed through frigid shallow water in the darkness. "Yeah." I should have said more. She was smiling expectantly over at me, her round cheeks framed by wavy lavender hair. I couldn't summon the words. "Don't worry, it'll be fine. Griese and I have done this plenty of times! Well, not *this* this I mean, this is our first visit to La Noscea, but... stuff like this. Going into places other people can't, or won't. Plus, it pays well." I nodded and forced a smile. It was probably horribly insincere-looking, but she just kept on smiling back at me. Sweet girl. She deserved better than to be heading down into some dank hole in the ground. But then, that was what we adventurers did, wasn't it? Ventured into dark, damp pits to face an uncertain fate. The rest of my time down there was a near blur. Halla and Griese were friendly, but we all grew quiet when we learned what the pirates had been doing down there. I thought I would be sick, and yet... and yet I kept going. Because I had to, or because it was expected of me. I wasn't sure. I'm still not.

Twice more I ventured into cold, dark places before I returned to Gridania. I saw the effects of cultists trying to change reality, and the long-delayed vengeance some golems tried to enact for the Ul’dahn’s greed.  To this day, I’m not sure that every time I tried to go on an adventure meant I was doing the right thing. Some people didn’t deserve to be helped; the Ul’dahn’s who had enslaved the golems certainly didn’t. The line between good and evil, right and wrong, often seemed to grow blurred. Things would get worse, before long. I tried not to let it keep me up at night.

Truth be told, most nights I failed at that.

[alightlostineorzea]

Weaknesses in Plain View

"Hear. Feel. Think."

The bed beneath me was soft and the blanket warm. I groaned and sat up as the voice faded away. It had sounded like my mother. I hadn't dreamed of her in a couple of years; sometimes I wondered if I could even properly remember what she had looked like.

The air on my now-bare shoulders was cool, and I shivered for a moment before pulling the blanket back up over myself. I couldn't remember coming back to the inn the night before, but clearly I—no. I shook my head. The ceremony. I'd collapsed again. This time hadn't just been for a few moments either, judging by the sun streaming in the east-facing window. And what had happened to my clothes?

I spotted them folded on top of a chest, my bow—thankfully unstrung—leaned against the side of it. It was only the work of a minute to dress myself, the old brand scar on my shoulder pulling a bit as I tugged my shirt over my head. I supposed whatever reputation I'd gained for myself as an adventurer would be ruined now. Nobody would want to hire someone who fainted for no reason.

"Feeling all right now?" Mother Miounne spotted me as soon as I came down to the common room. I nodded noncommittally, and slumped into a chair across from her.

"They're all chalking it up to stage fright, you know," she told me, though her mouth was creased into a worried frown. "It helps, that almost nobody here knows you. They're eager to assume that someone who's proven useful can continue to be in the future, if you're concerned about that."

I grunted, and shook my head.

"You talk in your sleep, you know." I looked up sharply then, upon realizing that someone had helped undress me and put me in bed, felt my face flush hot. "Nothing embarrassing, of course. Just... strange."

I met her hazel eyes, and frowned.

"More than I've heard you generally say when you're awake, really. Most of the adventurers who come through here, they're loud, boastful. Want the world to know who they are. But you..." She poured a mug of tea, and pressed it toward me. "Drink. You rarely say much. You just do."

"Haven't got much to say," I told her with a shrug.

"And certainly not about... giant crystals?" she probed.

I shook my head. "Strange dreams lately."

"And... runes?"

I stiffened, feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Not runes. K'rhun. I could still feel his ice-blue gaze on me, harsh and unyielding and... "It's nothing," I lied. Badly. Why had I dreamed of him? "Just another part of the strange dreams."

I could tell she didn't believe me, but at least she didn't press the matter further. She just slid an oatcake onto the counter in front of me. "Eat, while I tell you about the job I have in mind. Kan-E Senna is of a mind to send you to the other city-states, and so long as you're there..."

[alightlostineorzea]

Anonymity Lost

“Mister F’yhano, right?”

I turned to see a kid with a little toy bow standing behind me. Near as tall as I was, she wore an eager expression, and was practically covered in mud from the knees down. Clearly, she’d spent most of the day running around in the rain, probably with the smaller boy trying to hide behind her.

“Miss Leih said you’re new here, but you’re good at archery. Are you?” she asked. Her blue eyes were wide, taking in the bow slung over my back. It was a beat-up old thing. There were dents and nicks in the ash wood, and the grip was stained almost to black with sweat and oil and dirt, but it was nothing that threatened its integrity.

I shrugged. "I'm all right. Good enough, I guess?" Children were... difficult. Confusing. I never knew what to say to them, or what not to say. "What's your name?"

"Amilie!" she declared proudly. "And my little brother is Jacquelaux. He doesn't talk much." She furrowed her brows for a moment, then gave me a beaming grin. "Is it true you saved the Guardian Tree?"

So that's what this was about. The story of what had happened, or at least some version of it, had spread quickly, much to my consternation. Most of Gridania still didn't look too kindly on my presence there, and for an "outsider" to have been the one given credit for what had happened—not that I'd even acted anywhere near alone—seemed to gall them. "I had help."

Her blue eyes went wide, and she whirled around to stare down her brother. "See, I told you!" she crowed. Jacquelaux looked down at the ground, then pushed her roughly before running off.

"Uh, sorry, gotta go!" Amilie dashed off after her brother, mud splashing up around her with each step.

I groaned as I watched her go. Even the children knew who I was now. I wasn't really sure I was comfortable with the whole situation. It was all very sudden. I'd only done what was right, but people acted like I was some sort of hero. Even the Elder Seedseer had wanted me to play the role of Envoy. She thought I didn't know what that meant, thought I was ignorant of their—our—customs.

I wondered if she would have done the same, had anyone remembered me from my childhood in Gridania, or if this was some attempt at including the outsider. But then, maybe it didn’t matter. Whatever anonymity I’d had was near gone, and once the ceremony happened, it would vanish completely.

[alightlostineorzea]

Masked Men

I’ve never been fond of the dark. Ever since I was a small child, I’ve been prone to imagining what might be lurking there, just out of sight. My mother used to tell me that there was nothing out there, that everything would be all right. As I grew older, I learned the truth: there are monsters hiding in the darkness, and most of them mean you ill.

I had told myself that no matter what came up, I wouldn’t step foot underground. Not even once. I’d run some errands around the Shroud, earning coin so that I could afford to stay at the inn until I decided if I was going to stick around or move on again (though where, exactly, I planned to move on to I couldn’t say).

The screams from the deepcroft were chilling. I didn’t want to go. Even if the Hearer needed help, my feet refused to move. I nocked an arrow to my bow with shaking hands, and tried to will myself to take even a single step forward. I could smell the mold and rot from within, and the rocks were damp and slick.

It could be damp with blood and I’d never know the difference, I thought, then shook my head. The smell would be different. I would know.

Slowly, I forced myself to take a step, and then another. I barely lifted my feet, and the soles of my boots dragged slightly on the rock, but I was still moving. It was better than nothing. The Hearer was surrounded by more of the imps and I raised my bow and, in one careful movement, took aim, drew, and let my arrow loose.

The imp fell limply to the ground, my arrow in its neck.

“We should leave. Now. Are you all right to move?”

He didn’t even have time to answer me before the masked, robed figure stepped out from behind a nearby column. He spoke words with no sense to them and a rock golem rose from the floor.

I had no sooner dispatched it than the hyur and lalafell from the forest appeared again. They barely got two words out before the world went fuzzy once more, and I saw... them. Not there, not then, but I saw them. The future, or the past, whatever my aether-addled mind had decided to hallucinate. At least this time my body stayed upright, for when I came to with my head once more fuzzy and pounding, I was still standing.

They were looking at me strangely. I excused myself, saying I needed to help the Hearer back, and got out of there, back out into the brilliant sunlight. My eyes drank it in, and I tried not to think too hard about what I’d seen.

I’d dreamed that masked man. How had he stepped outside my nightmares?

[alightlostineorzea]

Crystal Dreams

Looking back, it seems strange that I so readily attributed my first experiences with the Echo to aether sickness. Perhaps I merely wished it to be so simple, or perhaps on some subconscious level I knew what it meant, and dreaded the days I knew must once more follow. Though there are surely those who envy my position, I know—and knew even then when I could not remember who I was—better: the Warrior of Light's path is not an easy one to walk.

The innkeeper, Mother Miounne had sent me after a disturbance in the woods. Suitable for an adventurer such as myself, she had assured me. On some level I wondered if she was simply hoping that I would meet my doom out on the sunlight-dappled forest floor.

The day was pleasant, though the air was humid with the previous day's rain. Steam rose from the ground in places, disappearing after a few feet. Sunlight streamed through the trees, warming my back as I walked east. I saw what I had not the day before: that the forest was disturbed. Vilekin roamed the little paths, and I couldn't hear the shrieking of children playing in the abundant streams. Instead there was the angry buzzing of flies grown to many times the size they should have, and the chittering of opo-opos that I couldn't remember ever having come so close to the city. My home, contrary to what I had at first believed, was not in fact at all the way I had left it all those years ago.

I had thought returning might help me to recover my missing years, the reasons why I had left in the first place, but somehow I started to doubt it. My memories were a haze for the year leading up to the Calamity, and for nearly three years after. Wherever they had gone, the Shroud wasn't going to help me find them now.

Still, I'd been given a task. And that was what adventurers did; we adventured. We fixed the things that others couldn't, made the world safe enough for them to continue living. Seeing as I couldn't remember what my life was supposed to be, it seemed a fitting enough occupation.

I found what I was looking for before the sun had even reached its zenith, and reached for the sword that had been thrust into the heart of a fallen tree. Three figures accosted me before I could pull it out: a lalafell, a hyuran, and strangely a Moogle. Before I could explain that I'd had nothing to do with the sword's presence there, all of us were set upon by furious Treants. Not that I could really blame them this time.

By the time the fighting finished, I was feeling positively dizzy, though in truth I had hardly exerted myself. The humidity perhaps? It was rather warmer here than the borders of Coerthas where I had been living most recently. My head throbbed, and the light seemed brighter than it should have. I was only vaguely aware of my body collapsing while my mind wandered elsewhere. To a great crystal, and its—her?—pleas that I do... something to prevent the darkness from taking hold.

I awoke with my cheek damp, and moss ground into the side of my hair.

"You fainted," the hyuran woman informed me in what seemed entirely too cheerful a tone.

I pulled myself up to a seated position, moving my limbs carefully. It seemed nothing had suffered for my fall, even if my head still felt fuzzy. "And had the... strangest hallucinations."

"Aether will do that," the lalafell piped up. A man, I thought. Truth be told, I'd always found it difficult to distinguish when they lacked facial hair, which this one did. His voice was just a bit on the low side though, and he smelled faintly of aftershave.

"I suppose it will," I agreed, and pushed myself to my feet with a groan. There was mud on my bowstring. I'd have to replace it tonight. "I don't suppose that magic of yours cleans things?"

"Hardly!" The lalafell seemed quite offended by the very idea. I gave him an apologetic shrug. It had been worth a shot. I'd never really understood how magic worked anyway. He muttered something to the woman and the Moogle that was carried away from even my keen ears by the wind.

The trio said their farewells and departed, leaving me to deal with the sword. It came out of the tree easily, and I finished my assigned task before the day was done. However, I was left with even more questions than I'd started with, not least why there was with a surfeit of aether in the middle of the forest. Strange times indeed, and I liked them not at all.

I spent the evening at the inn again, surrounded by people drinking and making merry. I ate my trout in silence, unable to shake a growing, gnawing feeling of dread. The entire night, not one smile was sent my way, not one kind word of welcome. By the time I retreated to my bed, I was equal parts exhausted and lonely. Sleep was still a long time coming, and by the time it finally did my fitful dreams were full of talking crystals and black-robed men.

[alightlostineorzea]

Homecomings

I remember the Shroud, but the Shroud does not remember me. I've always found it odd that I cannot quite remember the circumstances that led me to find my way back to Gridania. I tell myself that it was fate, or destiny, or even nostalgia, but the truth is that I don't have the slightest clue why I felt compelled to step onto that creaky wagon and ride back to the land of my birth. The morning I arrived was gray and drizzly. Everything smelled of loam, and no sunlight filtered through the leaves overhead. Drops dripped onto my uncovered head, making my ears twitch when they landed on them. The ground squelched underfoot, and as the wagon pulled away I saw the chocobos struggling to make decent headway down the sodden road. All was as I remembered: the terraced roofs of Gridania mingled with the ancient trees scattered about the city. The water wheel creaked and groaned, and the river burbled as it wound it's way northward toward the sea. I walked toward the inn, my head down against the rain, when I bumped into the archer. "Watch where you're going, outsider," he snarled. I looked up to see the hard blue eyes of an Elezen leering down at me. My hands twitched as though to grab my bow, but I stilled them. That couldn't help me here. "Sorry," I mumbled instead. Outsider. The word stung more than he could have known. On the way here I'd asked after the people I'd known. It was as though they'd never existed. The Calamity, the merchant who owned the wagon had assured me. It had happened to a lot of folk. Even the Warriors of Light were all but erased. Someone will remember you eventually, he reassured me. But we'd passed the village I had once lived in: it wasn't just destroyed, it was gone. There were no signs anything had ever been there. "Your kind's not welcome here," he spat, then pushed me roughly aside to stalk down the path. "Better find your way back to wherever you came from." I couldn't tell him I already had. That night, I curled up in a bed that had been made for someone much taller. The drizzle had continued all day, and my mood had been much like it. Some people had been relieved to have an adventurer around, but most attitudes had been cool, if not openly hostile. I honestly wasn't sure any more what I was doing there.