#'I've learned to keep my mouth shut until I figure out what I'm being accused of'

[eremiss]

25. Trust

*Spoilers up to unlocking the Qitana Ravel dungeon (lvl 75 MSQ?)

*Set after ‘Wilt’

*I’m currently subscribed to ‘because Duskfeather is a regular/non-magical creature he couldn’t make the trip to the First’ headcanon, as that’s how I’ve been treating him for all of ShB so far.

Thancred isn’t remotely surprised to find Gwen at the jaculu pens, watching the creatures despite the fact that they’re asleep and doing precisely nothing worth watching. Her eyes had lit up with glee --glee-- when one had soared over their heads as they entered Fanow, and anyone who’s known her for more than a day, on the Source, anyway, knows she has a fondness for the creatures.

Her lifted mood had lasted all of a minute, if that. He can’t say he’s surprised. The last few days had been naught but one harrowing twist of fate after the next, starting from the moment the Eulmorans had joined forces with the Children of the Everlasting Dark and all but declared war on the Night’s Blessed.

They’d endured and fought on, as they always did. What else could they have done?

Everything wound up alright in the end, thank the Twelve, but it had taken a hell of a toll.

And they still weren’t done. Everything before now was just assorted obstacles and hurdles on the road to their real challenge: the light warden that’s lurking somewhere in The Qitana Ravel.

That’s a problem for tomorrow, not now, he tells himself, trying not to let himself fully consider or grasp the magnitude of such a task, lest the thought drain him any further. He wouldn’t know it looking at the sky, but the hour is late. Tomorrow. Think about it tomorrow. Not now.

But tomorrow is never so far away as it sounds, always looming just over his shoulder. Unless he’s waiting for something, of course, and then tomorrow is always impossibly out of reach.

Gwen is watching the sleeping jaculu with an unmistakably wistful look, an air of longing about her akin to homesickness. If Thancred didn’t know better he would think she was considering climbing into the pen and cuddling with the jaculu in place of a certain ornery griffin. 

Duskfeather didn’t make the trip to the First, and she’s been without him for more than a moon now. She hasn’t mentioned overmuch, or drawn any attention to his absence, just as she so rarely gives voice to any of her problems, but Thancred knows her well enough, even after five years, to know that she misses Duskfeather deeply. How much she’s written about him has just been proof.

Regret worms its way into the back of his mind for the few jokes he’s made about Duskfeather’s absence and Gwen having to walk everywhere on her own two feet. She'd rolled her eyes laughed them off in the moment, but he finds himself suddenly questioning her sincerity. Perhaps such jests were in more poor taste than he’d realized. 

Gwen hasn’t noticed him, still watching the sleeping creatuers. She knows better than to act on whatever she may be thinking--or Thancred hopes she does, at least. If the jaculu are as similar to griffins in temperament as they are in appearance, they won’t take kindly to a stranger trying to cuddle them. 

Given the look on her face, she might just be willing to throw caution to the wind and try anyway.

Thancred shakes his head as he draws near, drawling, “If you want to steal one, you’re on your own.”

Gwen turns her face slightly towards him, eyes remaining on the sleeping birds. Her mouth curves in a weak smile, “I don’t look that desperate, do I?”

“You’re pining, dove.”

Her smile tilts, turning a little wry, “You wouldn’t help?” 

“I can’t say the idea of getting maimed has ever appealed to me. I much prefer my extremities the way they are: attached and undamaged.” He holds out his hands and wiggles his fingers to prove it.

Gwen lets out a small laugh and then sighs, sagging against the fence. She looks… not quite miserable, maybe, but only barely.

Duskfeather is unreachable but Thancred isn’t, and he’s far less opposed to hugs than a jacular would be. Hopefully that’s good enough. 

He leans against the gate just beside her and trails a hand across the small of her back. An offer.

Gwen smiles, mostly to herself, and shifts over to lean against him.

Rak’tika is quiet except for the bugs and the strange half-tweet, half-purring sounds of snoring jaculu, their heads are tucked under their wings to hide from the light. As the two of them stand there together Thancred becomes aware of a slight tension in the quasi-silence, the kind that suggests Gwen has something to say but hasn’t yet decided how to parse it.

He doesn’t try to rush her, despite the nagging awareness of the hour and bothersome acknowledgement that they both ought to get to sleep sooner rather than later. The last few days have been long, and tomorrow won’t be any shorter.

Thancred casts a wary glance over his shoulder, wondering if Emet-selch is going to drop in unannounced again. 

The Ascian had the decency to make himself scarce earlier, on top of actually doing something useful rather than merely plaguing them an ulcer that’s been cursed with speech, but Thancred finds little comfort in his absence. Not being able to see Emet-Selch means very little given his irritating propensity for eavesdropping and intruding whenever the mood strikes him.

A visual sweep of the area doesn’t reveal any black coats or brown-and-white hair, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Emet-selch isn’t there.

“Thancred?” Gwen asks quietly. 

Her tone immediately draws his attention. He looks back to find her picking and chipping away at her nails, and the sight draws concern to the forefront of his mind.

He settles his arm around her waist and rests his other hand over hers, putting and end to the nervous habit. “What is it?”

Her hands curl around his, loose for a moment before squeezing. “Do you,” she asks mutedly, mostly to his hands, “trust me?”

The question catches him off guard, but not so much that he doesn’t realize the speed of his reply is just as important, if not moreso, than the words he chooses. Doubt is adept at taking root in the silence that follows such heavy question. He answers at once, “Of course, Gwen. Completely.” He curls his hand as best he can around both of hers and gives a reassuring squeeze.

Gwen exhales and relaxes a little, pressing closer to him.

Glad though he is that his knee-jerk response was reassuring, he’s more concerned about where that question had come from all of a sudden. Why would she ask such a thing? His mind has already run off in a dozen different directions in search of possible explanations, and he quickly does his best to catch up with it. 

He thought his trust in her was obvious, and the implication that it isn’t weighs oddly on him.  Why...

The sense of distance between them that has been lurking at the edge of every hint of disapproval or ambivalence that has passed between them since her arrival chafes suddenly. He frowns and pushes it aside. All of that is just his old insecurity talking. They’re not so tightly knit as they were, but they’re still close.

It’s more likely she’s seeking a bit of assurance and affirmation in a moment of weakness. It wouldn’t be the first time.

A sliver of a larger thought juts out: could it be about her journal?

An uncomfortable sensation crawls across his thoughts. 

That... what does that have to do with trust?

Well, stealing someone’s dearest personal possession in order to dig through their private thoughts sounds less like the actions of a close friend and more like those of someone harboring distrust or ill will. And the same goes for taking measures to cover their tracks and avoid suspicion to ensure they aren’t discovered.

He’d stolen her journal right before she left Mord Souq, then played the fool when she returned.

It’s an odd fit, maybe, but it’s the only connection that springs to mind.

But she doesn’t know he stole it. She thought she’d lost it, and scoured the Crystarium streets looking for it the moment she returned. She doesn’t suspect he...

A jolt of cold panic shoots up his spine and his heart seizes up.

...Does she?

His heart abruptly jumps from stillness to a breakneck pace that makes his chest ache, worry coursing through him like nausea. Thancred grits his and doggedly maintains his outward composure, grateful that Gwen's preoccupied gaze is directed at the sleeping jaculu rather than at him. 

He measures his breaths, forcing them under control, and his heart rate gradually begins to fall in line.

Every time he recalls their fight, the yelling, the words they’d hurled at one another that hit too close to the truth, the way he’d lashed out and struck her desk, his heart does a sickened little flip and something inside him cracks.

He curses the way he’d lost control and the useless state he’d been left in afterwards, off balance and practically in shock at his own actions. He’d felt as though he’d been broken open somehow, and his thoughts forcibly scattered. It had nearly taken physical effort to pull himself back together again.

Thancred tells himself his addled mind is the only reason he’d been willing to act on the reckless impulse that had driven him to slip her journal into his pocket; to steal her most private thoughts despite the fragile state they’d been in, despite her presence, despite reason, despite his conscience. 

There’s no way in all seven hells he would have taken such a brazen, idiotic risk if he’d been in is right mind. He scarcely even remembers doing it. 

She’d stepped away, her back to him as she reached for her bag. One moment her journal was lying open on her desk, and the next it was in his pocket. As simple as that. 

Even though they’d only just mellowed out from the thorny argument that had erupted out of nowhere spiraled out of control. 

Even though, despite Gwen’s assurances, he had no idea what would become of them if they walked away right there and then. Even though she was on a timer, she was leaving, and the window for trying to talk, for trying to mend things or smooth them over, for doing anything at all to try and set things right again, was closing far too quickly. 

Even though she’d been five sodding fulms away in plain sight.

If she’d seen him… He can’t even bring himself to conceive of the consequences.

And, beyond that, if she’d put the pieces together and realized just how long he’s been invading her privacy and delving into the thing she treated as an extension of her thoughts…

There’s reckless, there’s stupid, and then there’s plain self-destructive.

Thancred doesn’t let himself acknowledge the twisted, stricken little piece of him that had hoped she would notice. The guilt-ridden splinter that had all but prayed for her to turn and catch him in the act and then... he doesn’t even know what.

But Gwen hadn’t seen him. 

She had been looking the other way, and had no idea he’d slipped her journal into his pocket. With the hand she’d just mended, no less, because sometimes shame is his bedmate and sometimes it’s a person in a faraway land that he’s never met. 

Then Gwen had taken the aetheryte to Mord Souq, none the wiser, and left him standing dumbly in his room with his thoughts in pieces and his brief surge of self-righteousness and indignation sputtering to nothing, her journal weighing down his pocket like a stone.

The following two days had been... long. Reading her journal had only made them longer.

When Gwen finally returned she’d been nearly frantic, so preoccupied with finding her ‘lost’ journal she’d all but forgotten about their fight. He regretted both being the cause of such strife and allowing it to fester, but her desperate searching had eased his fears that she might be suspicious of him.

When they’d finally talked about their fight, calmly and rationally, and smoothed things over, he’d made sure they were out in public, in an open space where she wouldn’t feel cornered or trapped. He’d been careful to maintain a respectful distance and give her plenty of space while they searched for her journal and spoke. Which she found odd. But he just couldn’t shake the way she’d looked at him for that one brief moment...

Between their conversation and how relieved she had been to find her journal in her room, right where he’d put it, Thancred had thought that whole thing was behind them.

But now Gwen is asking, too coincidentally, about trust.

Cool nausea collects in his gut like bits of broken glass. 

Has she known this whole time? Was all that hubbub about combing the streets just an act? 

No, Gwen isn’t that good of an actress. She just isn’t. Her worry, the way she’d been combing the street, that had to have been ge-- 

“Does everyone else?” Gwen’s voice is soft, and the tinge of self-conciousness and something shaped far too much like doubt snatch his attention.

Thancred’s line of thought turns and redirects too suddenly, fumbling for a moment and then coming apart entirely. He opens his mouth to reply but his jaw merely hangs, almost slack, “I…” 

Does everyone else...what?

Do you trust me?

Does everyone else?

This… None of this has anything to do with her journal, or their fight.

The pieces of glass, the creeping sickness and the twisting worry vanish so quickly it leaves him lightheaded, and the surge of relief that follows hits him so hard it nearly takes him off his feet.

It takes Thancred a moment to clear his head and get his mind working again. “Off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t trust you,” he says less than gracefully, “especially amongst our friends.”

Gwen regards him firmly, holding his gaze like she’s looking for even the faintest hint that he’s lying for her sake.

He isn't. But, thanks to his panic moments ago, the scrutiny still makes him uneasy. He does his best to be as outwardly honest and unassuming as his answer.

Her hard look fades after a moment, softening into something apologetic before she tucks herself more snugly against his side. I believe you. Sorry, I...just wanted to make sure.

Seeing how she probably won’t offer an explanation on her own, Thancred prompts, “So. What’s this all of a sudden?”

Gwen’s expression draws inward and she shifts her fingers against the back of his hand, creating and smoothing out wrinkles in his glove in place of tugging loose threads or twisting rings. “The other day, while we were in Slitherbough I,” she pauses, lips shifting slowly across words she doesn’t say before she finally finds the right one, “overheard something.” She pauses for a beat, “Do you remember what Y’shtola said? When she first saw me?”

Thancred thinks that’s a rather abrupt change of topic, but doesn’t say so. It will be regrettably hard to forget Y’shtola staring at Gwen and proclaiming, with perfect confidence, that she was a sin eater. “There is but one manner of creature in this world whose aether is suffused with such an abundance of light.” 

He’s hardly surprised to learn the accusation is proving difficult to simply shrug off. 

“I remember she was mistaken,” Thancred says, trying to reassure but at a loss as to where this line of questions is leading. “It’s been years since she last laid eyes on you,” he nudges her temple with his chin and pins on a smile, “t’would seem she forgot your natural brilliance.”

Gwen’s mouth twitches with the faintest smile that’s gone as quickly as it came, her eyes still on his hand while her own are still busy wrinkling and smoothing his glove.

He lets the smile drop. The back of his hand is getting a little sensitive with all of the touching, but he doesn’t mention it.

So. It seems Y’shtola really hit a nerve. But what does that have to do with trust?

“Talk to me, dove,” Thancred mumbles, lifting his hand from her waist to rub her upper arm. “I can’t read your mind. I can’t know what you don’t tell me.” 

Not entirely true, but…

Gwen draws a few purposefully slow breaths, trying to calm herself. Instead, her shoulders only seem to tense further under his arm. 

“When,” she starts slowly, “when the Eulmorans...” She stops again, brows knitting, and abandons her attempts in favor of more time considering her words.

He thinks while he waits, trying to figure out where these questions could have started and where they might lead.

Their days in Rak’tika have been so hectic and felt so long that Thancred can scarcely keep track of everything that has happened. He can’t recall anything, specifically, happening in Slitherbough? Except for the Eulmoran’s arrival... which eventually led to several long, grief-stricken bells of thinking Y’shtola had been lost to them.

Gwen surely spent every second of it blaming herself, convinced she’d stood by and done nothing as her friend perished. He knows that feeling well, and he doesn’t envy it.

Does that have anything to do with trust? No one blames her, though surely she’s blaming herself. She says she overheard something...perhaps a traitor among the Blessed, or some clue she hadn’t realized the importance of?

Or does it perhaps have something to do with what the others think of Y’shtola’s accusation? Is she worried they might question or distrust her after being branded a sin eater that’s ‘suffused with light’?

Possibly... But nothing hits Gwen harder than loss. 

He takes a chance. “If it has anything to do with Ran’jit or Y’shtola’s second foray in the lifestream...”

Gwen shakes her head and squeezes his hand.

He swallows the assurances that are waiting on his tongue.

Five years ago he would have been able to piece together what was bothering her and where she was headed with all this.

Five years ago they didn’t yell at one another, nor was she so unsure of his faith in her that she resorted to bluntly asking about it.

Gods damnit...

“...Her accusation, then?” Thancred tries, slightly desperately.

Gwen tenses and then huffs, making a frustrated sound of agreement under her breath.

Something distantly related to satisfaction and accomplishment sparks in his chest. He waits for her to elaborate, secure in the knowledge she wasn’t quite so foreign to him as he’d feared.

“Before the Eulmorans came to Slitherbough, I,” she stumbles in the same place again, and her voice loses a bit of volume when she continues, “I overheard Y’shtola talking to Urianger.”

Thancred resumes rubbing her shoulder, trying to reassure. “What about?”

Her mouth crumples with a grimace. “I’m not sure how long they were talking, or how much I missed, but…” 

She tells him what she heard.

By the end Thancred is wearing the stony scowl he’s developed over his five years on the First, dry bitterness curling on his tongue and in his throat. He stares at the ground in the pen, mulling over her recounting of the conversation. 

He states flatly, “So Urianger’s keeping secrets again.”

Gwen has withdrawn a bit, folding her arms against her chest. “We’re killing another Light warden tomorrow,” she says, rather grimly, “and neither of them have said a word about the Light.”

Indeed they haven’t. But...

While Thancred understands Gwen’s concerns and sympathizes with her frustration for being left out of the loop, his shrewder, more pragmatic side is muttering: what good will telling you do? 

After all, Gwen is the only one who can slay Light wardens safely. Or relatively safely, perhaps. She’s the only one who can bring darkness and night back to the First. She’s their only option. She knows this.

She, and the Scions, already knew the undertaking would be dangerous, though precisely how dangerous had always been rather nebulous, and forged ahead anyway. 

Knowing the specifics --if anything Gwen overheard could be called ‘specific’-- changes nothing. It wouldn’t change the fact that she's the only one who can fight and slay Light wardens. It wouldn’t affect this ‘nascent corruption’ that she, apparently, was unaware of before Y’shtola beheld her aether. It wouldn’t change the fact that they have no way to rid her of the Light she’s already taken in, and no way to prevent her from absorbing more short of stopping their battle against the Light. And they all know that isn't an option. 

If she hadn’t overheard them nothing would be different, would it? She would be in much the same position as she is now, only without the additional stress of how potentially dire her situation is, and without the troubling awareness that they had no solutions. 

Is the burden of questions without answers, without recourse, honestly better than simple ignorance?

...But shouldn’t that be her choice to make? It’s her life, after all. Shouldn’t she be the one who gets to make decisions about it? 

 She’s the one with the Blessing, and the one absorbing the Light. She’s the one putting herself at risk. Shouldn’t she know the toll it’s taking on her, and the very real risks and potential consequences? Doesn’t she, at the very least, deserve to be aware of what’s happening to her?

He can see both sides, to say the least.

Gwen has the Blessing. She can contain the Light. That’s what the Exarch said... But the Exarch doesn’t have Y’shtola’s Sight, he can’t see what she does. Not to mention his fondness for secrets and schemes...

Thancred looks Gwen over, examining her skin, her hair, her hands, and doesn’t find anything out of the ordinary...for whatever that’s worth.

The complication of emotions moving across her face, all of them sharp and aching, gives him pause. Concern weighs on the corners of his mouth and starts pushing his brow together.

Logic doesn’t change the fact that one of her friends is aware of what’s happening to her and hasn’t uttered so much as a word of caution about it. It doesn’t change the fact that Urianger probably has no intention of telling her anything until the very last moment, just as he had in the Bowl of Embers.

Gwen presses her lips together like she’s struggling to keep her thoughts behind her teeth. She shifts away from him, thrusting her hands down by her sides, and a moment later she relents and exclaims, voice aching with exasperation, “Why didn’t he tell me? Why hasn’t he said anything?”

Thancred blinks dumbly, the sudden outburst and surge of emotion leaving him stunned.

“Why can’t he just tell me the truth?” Her tone turns sharper, angrier, “The truth wouldn’t stop me. It can’t. I know I have keep going no matter what, I just…!”

‘Keep going no matter what’ clings like tar, stirring unpleasant memories of a time in Ishgard the whole of Eorzea had made her feel more like a tool and a weapon, a means to an end, than a person.

Thancred lifts a placating hand. “Gwen--” 

“I’m the only one who can kill Light wardens, I’m the only one who can do anything about the Light,” Gwen flings a hand upwards to indicate the sky, “I know I can’t just stop. And I know that if-- I know it-- I know telling me about the corruption would just give me one more thing to worry about but-- This is-- It’s happening to me! Don’t I deserve to know? I’m the one that’s--  I’m the one absorbing the Light, I’m the one who-- the one that might--” 

Her breath hitches and she stiffens. “Should I know that I’m in danger? Shouldn’t I, of all people, know what the Light could-- what it is doing to me? Urianger and the Exarch haven’t said anything. Even Y’shtola. She only let it slip because she didn’t recognize me.” 

Her expression twists, threatening to crumple, “She didn’t recognize me. She looked straight at me and called me a sin eater.” 

Thancred watches her catch her breath in silence, protective agitation making a prickly trail through his thoughts. Urianger’s motives may be well-intentioned, even noble, but… Gwen has a point.

Her shoulders start to slump as her breaths slow, and his expression tightens with a sympathetic grimace. He’s never been able to say the right thing when it mattered, and now seems to be no exception. Gods, he hates nothing more than feeling useless.

Gwen shakes her head slowly, and her tone is so resigned and heavy it makes his chest hurt. “I mean, alright, maybe I… Maybe it was naive of me to think I could just,” she gestures listlessly, “absorb the Light without consequences. To assume I’d be fine and not think any more about it, but I… I thought if something started to go wrong, or if one of my friends noticed something or-- or thought something might be happening to me, I-- I thought,” her expression strains and then crumbles in defeat, “I thought someone would say something, not just… stand by and leave me in the dark.” 

Thancred’s throat tightens, sharp with anger and thick with sympathy, and his heart clenches alongside his fists. He’s still groping for words and finding none, but given the tumult of protective anger building in his head, that’s probably for the best.

Glistening dark green eyes look at him pleadingly, vulnerable and full of hurt and doubt that cuts like a knife. “Is it really so hard to be honest with me? To tell me the truth? Am I really so hard to trust?”

His anger shatters like glass and Thancred pulls her into a tight embrace, both to keep him from storming to the bunk he’s sharing with the atsrologian --for all of their sakes-- and needing the pressure of it to keep his heart from cracking. “It’s not you dove,” he says as firmly and calmly as he’s able. “You’ve done nothing wrong. He just…” Thancred grimaces as her arms slide around him, recognizing the insubstantiality of it before he says it, “He’s trying to do the right thing.”

She tenses and inhales like she intends to speak. 

Thancred has suffered more keenly than most from Urianger’s secrecy and efforts to do what he thought was right, pragmatic and otherwise, for his friends and Eorzea. He empathizes with Gwen’s frustration and feels a little pang of pity for their loquacious friend. Urianger is good at keeping secrets, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for him. “I’m not saying he’s right to keep his secrets, Twelve knows I, of all people, have suffered the bad end of them, but his secrecy has naught to do with you, nor anything you have or haven’t done. He trusts you, Gwen. We all do.”

Gwen is still for a long moment, perhaps weighing his words. She exhales, slowly, and relaxes against him. 

Thancred eases his hold a little, getting on top of the tide in his head and breathing a little more steadily, “I’m sure Urianger has his reasons. Keeping secrets is a suffering all its own, and he isn’t wont to do such unless he thinks it utterly necessary.” He lets out a thin, frustrated groan, “I’m sure intentions are good, that he only wishes to help, but that doesn’t mean his methods aren’t flawed. He keeps his secrets so as not to burden us, or you, with them. He wishes to spare us what he can, as do we all. If any of us could lessen the burden that you, especially, have been made to carry, you know we would.”

He bites off ‘don’t you?’, because his doubts aren’t her problem.

Gwen’s arms tighten around him, and she takes a long breath. “I know.” He didn’t ask, but she assures him anyway. She shifts her arms, and he feels her curl her fingers in his coat. "What about...” She sighs, “What do you make of what Y’shtola said?”

Apparently she doesn’t have the energy to go on another rant, which is actually something of a relief. It wasn’t like her to lose her composure so suddenly, or explosively. 

Thancred can speak about as much for Y’shtola as he could Urianger, though there’s that biting remark she’d made in front of Minfilia that threatens to color his words. He closes his eyes, exhales, and pushes it aside in favor of a more even answer. “I think she has her own concerns and she will make them known to you soon enough, as the two of you are alike in your disdain for secrecy. But, if you’re referring to her comment about your aether…” Thancred shifts his weight, temporizing. He knew this question was coming and he still hasn’t quite worked out a good answer. “I think she isn’t wrong to be concerned. And I think she was right to seek a second opinion and confirm her suspicions rather than coming straight to you with theories and conjecture. But I know for certain that, should something become of this light you’re carrying, she will not hesitate to intervene. Neither will I, nor Alphinaud, Alisaie, Minfilia or Urianger. You’re not alone, dove.”

Gwen noticeably relaxes, her hands easing against his back. That was what she’d wanted to hear. He likes to think the little pet name helped.

Thancred remembers all the times she’s written, and the few instances she’s said, that she feels as though no one remembers that she’s just a person beneath her title. One person who needs to lean on others every now and then, because the world is a terrible weight to carry. 

He lifts a hand to her face and tilts her head up, finding her significantly calmer and steadier between his words and their embrace, though tentative unease still lingers behind her eyes. “You’re strong, Gwen, but I know you have your limits. If ever you falter, know that I’m here to steady you. I will not stand idly by while you suffer the light alone. I’m with you, dove.”

I will not stand idly by and let you become a sin eater. Thancred doesn’t say that part even though it’s true, as it’s far too harsh, too fatalistic, too prudent, and it would dampen her mood more than lift it. 

He’s told himself. That’s enough.

Gwen’s expression brightens, softens and warms with something too tender and meaningful to be mere fondness, something he’s gone without since he arrived on the First. One corner of her mouth lifts in a smile and he mimics her, keeping the little burst of soft, almost-heady feelings to himself.

He leans down and she lifts to meet him, whispering against his lips, “Thank you.”

-----------------------

GUH DOWN TO THE WIRE, I LITERALLY SUBMITTED IT AT 3 I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE A CHANCE TO WRITE A NOTE AT FIRST BECAUSE I WAS FREAKING OUT BECAUSE I WAS ALMOST LATE ALDJSKFLADK-- *passes out*

came in with to neaten up this note section and stuff the next day now that I’m not losing my shit...

Thanks @rhymingteelookatme for the suggestions!!

I like some parts of this more than others, but overall it’s pretty good!! I spent way, waaay too much time rewriting one particular part over and over and cutting it down again and again, but I like the version that ended up in here. The ending is ruuuushed XD but on rereading it’s not quite so bad as I thought

Jaculus are what they call griffins on the First. They look the exact same. Just FYI