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[pyrophoricc]

FFxivWrite 2024 (Day 4) — Reticent

[MAJOR DAWNTRAIL SPOILERS]

“You keep looking at me.”

Erenville shrugged. “Long has it been my way to observe. It is simply a force of habit, and I apologize if it disturbed you.”

“You’ve seen so much,” Bheel replied, leaning back on his hands, his legs dangling over the edge of Tuliyollal’s pier. “I hardly think I’m something worth observing with such scrutiny.” Erenville scoffed.

“Surely you’re kidding.”

“I assure you that I’m not.”

“Why think so little of yourself?”

Bheel sighed. “Because I’m just a man, Erenville.” The silence stretched on, broken occasionally by the murmur of late-night revellers returning to their homes and the call of seabirds. He nearly missed what the other man said next.

“...Elene’shpya.”

“Pardon?” Bheel’s ears twitched, straining to catch Erenville’s quiet voice over the drone of the sea.

“I beg of you,” a flush crawled to his cheeks. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

Bheel smiled slightly, despite himself. “I thought you hated that name.”

“I don’t!” Erenville replied sharply, then composed himself. “Well… Maybe I do. I think it is possible to both resent something and also fear losing it at the same time. I think, perhaps, that’s what family is, at times.” Bheel saw him tense slightly, fingers curling against the rough wooden planks beneath them. “So. As much as I do hate it, I think… I think I would hate for it to disappear. So you may use it. Sparingly. I trust you, and I think of all of us, you know the weight it carries most.” He fixed him with a piercing stare, and a part of Bheel recognized that the other man had figured him out more thoroughly than he had expected him to. Had expected anyone to, really.

“I’ll do that, then. But I can tell that there’s a point to all of this beyond just the name.”

Erenville tilted his head. “It all does circle back to the name, in the end. However… I’m being open with you, O Warrior of Light. It takes a weight off of the soul. You might try it, sometime. Even if I am not the one you choose to bare your thoughts to, I can tell by that sullen expression that you have carried all evening that it is something you are rather poor at doing.”

“That’s it, then? You think I’m not open?” 

The pointed stare continued, uninterrupted. Bheel acquiesced.

“Fine. I’ll admit that you may have a point.” He looked up, eyes roving across stars so familiar, yet so different from those he had grown used to. He recognized some of the constellations that he used to pick out during late night study in Limsa, and wondered if he would still remember how to find them in the Shroud. Back home, but then again, not home at all.

What was a home that wouldn’t even call you by name?

“...My mother’s…” he began, stilted, awkwardly. Gods, he truly was bad at it. “I took my mother’s name. She hated that I couldn’t simply fit into the mould of the dutiful daughter, couldn’t be content enough with my inheritance to kill the part of me that screamed it wasn’t for me. I told myself that I was taking it purely out of tradition, but if I’m being honest, I think it was spite more than anything. Which feels… Immensely foolish, really. But I don’t know that, even as I am now, I would choose any differently. I am Puhla’ir Bheeltoju. I am her sixth son, even if she will never see that. So… Elene’shpya… If I am to be entrusted with your hated, beloved name, I would trust you with mine as well. It’s only fair. And…” he trailed off. “I think you’re right. I really would hate to lose it.” He glanced at Erenville out of the corner of his eye. “How was that?”

Erenville laughed, but it was not unkind. He stood and placed a hand on Bheel’s shoulder. “It was terrible,” he said. “But it was a start, and you’ll have plenty of time to learn.”

[pyrophoricc]

I do also feel like I should probably post the WoL I am causing immense suffering for ffxivwrite. Behold: my son, Puhla'ir Bheeltoju (he/him, Bheel for short). He has Problems.

[pyrophoricc]

FFxivWrite 2024 (Day 3) - Tempest

[MAJOR POST-SHB SPOILERS below the cut!]

Many spoke of Puhla’ir Bheeltoju as a saint. Honest, proud, a champion of the people. A savior.

He himself had seen it a bit differently. He saw himself as a martyr. One could become the other, certainly, and the way things looked from his perspective, those around him were simply seeing things from a little behind the actual timeline. He knew better than they did, though. That sainted part of him was long dead, leaving behind a husk that those keen to sing his praises could fill up as they saw fit. It was easy to project ideals onto a dead man, even if that corpse still danced on bloody strings.

A smile better suits a hero.

Down here, though, in the salt-touched city at the bottom of the Tempest, he was beginning to realize that they had all been wrong. Puhla’ir Bheeltoju was not a saint. Puhla’ir Bheeltoju was not a martyr. Puhla’ir Bheeltoju yet lived, but had killed the best parts of himself and hollowed out his sorry flesh to make a home for the storm that raged through his veins. Its winds sung violence, from his feet to his fingertips; from his gut to his teeth as they sank into flesh (he was all weapon, now, so what point was there in differentiating between steel and fang?).

If he was a dead man walking, the task at hand wouldn’t be tearing him apart from the outside even as the tempest within tried to do the same from the inside.

Friends fell. He had always known, in a deep dark part of himself, that none of them would stand a chance if he chose to walk a path that brought them into direct conflict. It terrified him. He had locked such thoughts away, worried that the knowledge would be what broke him. The Light had brought him so, so close. He remembered the way it burned beneath his flesh, pushed out from behind his eyes, crawled up his throat. It had hurt, blinding pain that had come as a surprise to his deadened senses (the mind learned to stop warning the body of what failed to kill it, he had found, and very little could kill him now). But—and this is what scared him most—it had also felt like freedom. It had been a hint of a dangerous high, a taste of something that made his body rail against his heart with the desire to give chase. To sink his fangs into it, to taste the warm copper tang of its blood, to feel it in his jaw as tooth met bone.

The emissary’s trial would haunt him as long as he lived. Even as he let the storm wash over him, let it carry him forward, he knew that much. He just hoped that, once the deed was done, he could once again trap it within his flesh, never to let the tempest rage again.

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FFxivWrite 2024 (Day 2) - Horizon

[Just ARR this time!]

The busyness of living things takes many forms. You get used to one, and another sweeps in like a Thanalan sandstorm (you only get caught in one without goggles once, Bheel learned that lesson the hard way); filling your ears, your throat, your nose. Horizon, situated close to the port at Vesper Bay, was certainly not the hub of activity that Limsa Lominsa had been, but it was different: the flow of coin changing hands replacing the flow of sea currents, the smell of dried spices and herbs permeating the air instead of the smell of salt and fisheries.

Growing up in the Shroud, outsiders were a threat, or so he was told. After breaking away from his family, he had fled to the seaside city to continue his education and had found himself lost in the ceaseless tide of bodies flowing through the immense tangle of bridges and stone. It had taken him hours to wend his way through the narrow streets, too afraid of the seething mass to ask directions. It had been no small fortune that a member of the Arcanists’ Guild had spotted the grimoire at his hip and the panic in his eyes and had steered him towards his destination. She had not been particularly kind about it, but such was the way of the people that he grew to call comrades. There was a kind of efficiency that ruled them, a need for control. The same methodology was applied to their lives as it was to the great sprawling sigils refined into precise whorls of ink, fitting neatly across a single page.

That living sea had seemed like such an immutable, immortal thing. And then the moon had fallen, sending up great waves, and Bheel found himself standing upon a dry seabed and realizing for the first time that he had fallen in love with the water.

He had thrown himself headlong into the restoration efforts, after that. He focused his studies on the healing arts afforded him by his craft and took a kind of solace in the realization that the gifts he had been taught to weaponize could be used instead to mend wounds, mend lives. He saved those darker arts for those who could not be saved, whispering venom into their veins that afforded them a painless sleep until their souls returned to the Lifestream. This work had ingratiated him to Baderon, who had started offering him tasks that carried him, a ship upon the sea, to Y’shtola, and then onwards to the sands upon which he now stood.

He tucked his chin down, mouthing the words he had been told to speak: “I will go whither the Wild Rose blooms.” People took no note of it. Their own tides cared little about his. Horizon thrived around him, signs of the new dawn vibrant and visible in the sheer quantity of life around him. His own new dawn rested before him, visible on the horizon. His mouth twisted up in a begrudging grin. He had once thought himself a poet, and thoughts like that were perhaps evidence of why it was not meant to be. But the fact remained: the night persisted, but the sun was rising. One just had to chase it.

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FFXIV Write 2024 (Day 1) - Steer

[Big Endwalker spoilers below the cut]

Bheel had never entirely gotten used to the sea.

Riding aethereal currents? That was fine. Dancing upon fissures of ground torn asunder? His body was well accustomed to the balance of such things. And yet the sea still made his gut churn and his legs wobble. Normally, he stared out towards the horizon, in equal parts to soothe his stomach and to pray that land would appear upon it. Today, however, was windier than most, and he watched the helmsman grappling with the ship’s wheel with a curiosity that sufficed to deaden his tormented senses, somewhat.

The man wrenched the great wooden contraption to the side, steering the hulking ship as if it were a child’s plaything. But Bheel could see the way he tensed, and how tendons stood out against the flesh of his neck. Not even the smallest movement came without effort. And yet, directing the course of the boat and every life upon it, the helmsman persisted.

What would it have taken, Bheel wondered, to apply such force and will to his own life? He had long thought himself a sailor but had come to realize in recent months that perhaps he was more so the ship. Someone else was always at the helm.

His encounter with Venat had not been the reunion that he believed she had anticipated it to be. There had been something maternal about her, yes. Something that told him that she expected something tearful, almost joyous.

But Bheel was sick to death of mothers.

His own had raised him to be, first and foremost, a daughter. That hadn’t stuck, and it had made her angry. He had failed her in that regard and had also failed her in what she believed to be his familial role: To be a weapon, a guardian of the home, one who twisted life and death into a force that repelled the outside world and kept them safe. What safety was it, though, that came at the cost of so many others?

He wondered about that often, these days.

So he had fled from the shackles of daughterhood, and believed himself to be more than a weapon in the hands of those with something bigger than him to protect. But he had never escaped that, had he? Minfilia had seen in him a primal-killer. Venat had seen a son, of sorts, certainly. But more than anything, she had seen a capacity for violence in the guise of sainthood. Every step he had taken had been charted by someone else, every movement wrenched into place by those seeking some greater destiny.

He was tired.

He sighed. The winds had started to die, and a younger sailor brought the helmsman a tankard of water. He downed it, laughing as an approaching companion clapped him on the back and let out a jovial “Well done, lad!”

Bheel ran his hand along the ship’s guardrail. The helmsman was deserving of praise, certainly. He had directed the boat admirably, kept it on course, kept those within secure. But the ship itself had never wavered, either. Even as her rudder strained against the tide, as the waves beat against her wooden flanks, she had survived. Despite everything, she remained.

And so did he.

Bheel whispered his thanks to the wood and stared once again out at the horizon.

[pyrophoricc]

[pyrophoricc]

☆★ NON-ZERO-SUM GAME ★☆

A chip may weigh only a few grams, but it has the mighty power to upset the balance of the scale. In the gambler's hands, the chip leaps lightly and lands softly, like a key to destiny. It causes the heart to beat, as if a piece of gold is stricken with rocks. In that split second, the decision for heaven or hell is made.

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I ALSO adore Alisaie. She is full of love. She is full of incredible violence. She signs her name as a lowercase “a.” She hates pirates. Pirates love her. She decided that the proper use of her magical talents is to make a sword out of her own soul and hit people with it. She hates being mistaken for her brother. She still has the same hairstyle as him. She insulted Zenos so hard he had a mortifying brush with self-awareness. She is also still the size of a middle schooler. She can breathe underwater. She keeps jumping off high buildings. She reacts to being given a sword like she just got a birthday present. She was ready to straight-up kill Urianger when he pretended to betray the scions. She sculpted the worst porxie known to man. She used her rapier like a longsword until partway through Stormblood. She tries SO HARD to be cool. She would not shut up about us to Tesleen ever. She fistfought G’raha. She’s even gay.

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Strange roadside buildings where you shouldn’t ever go.

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Newtons 4th law is that for every "it's so over" there's an equal and opposite "we're so back"

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orison Every prayer, no matter how small.

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in the peaceful woods

prints now available

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My wol's issues are slightly different than the canon DRK questline so i'm playing in that space

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got trapped

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pov you are about to fucking die