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sladez · 1 year ago

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Au Ra April 2024

II. Weathering the Storm

The summer sun warmed Seishin’s skin and glowed orange against his eyelids as he sat in the soft grass and breathed. His hair, untied, blew gently in the cooling breeze. He focused on the bubbling sound of Yat Khaal flowing over rocks and against its banks to his right, whispering secrets in its ancient tongue. But rather than the calming wind and water around him, in his head there was only fire.

His thoughts were so far elsewhere that he didn’t hear the footsteps approaching, or maybe the one they belonged to stepped lightly as a matter of course. It wasn’t like him to be so deeply lost. He opened his eyes slowly as Styrnrael’s grandmother Maral plopped a low wooden table down in front of him.

“You’ve been out here all morning. Trouble sleeping?” Maral placed a deep blue cushion down and sat on it cross-legged, across the table from Seishin. Her knees popped audibly as she sank into a comfortable position.

He smiled weakly at her. “I’m sorry if I’ve troubled you. It’s a habit of mine to wake with the sun. But yes, there’s been much and more on my mind recently.”

Maral wordlessly pulled from around her a lacquered rosewood box and set it on the table. The edges had a deep patina that spoke of its age and reverence. She opened it by the side hinges and pulled out a large circular board. A kharaqiq board, Seishin recognized, and an extremely well made one at that. She finally looked up at him after placing it on the surface.

“I’ve seen the storm raging behind your eyes since the day you arrived at our iloh. Styrnrael’s as well, and all of the companions she has brought home with her. Whatever is troubling you may not be quelled in a single morning, but perhaps a game might help you weather some of it?”

“I don’t know that this will help,” Seishin laughed softly and waved his hand in front of his nose.

“Well, the Naadam is but suns from now. As the Steppe chooses its leader in this season, so too does every tribe their khan. The Malqir are no different. And I’m going to need the practice if I am to retain my title.”

“If you need to train, why don’t you take Bertram as an opponent? He is far more skilled at this game than I.”

“It is a wise warrior that learns from many teachers, is it not?”

Seishin smiled and bowed his head. “Words deftly spoken. All right then. I will gladly accept your challenge.”

Maral began removing the game pieces from the box and grabbed the light and dark horse pieces, one of bleached and carved dzo bone and the other of a deeply blue azurite, richer by far than the dark stone of other boards Seishin had seen. She took one in each hand and shuffled them behind her back. Seishin considered a moment, then pointed to her left and she held out her hand to reveal the light piece. “The bone horse. Fitting; it matches your horns. It seems I will play earth, from which we came and to which we will all one day return.”

Seishin looked away. His eyes clouded as his vision was filled with an image of Meffrid’s face, anger and shock and sadness veiled behind blood and unfulfilled promise; and the kinslayer, her rage—at what? the world?—twisting her face into an infinite snarl as she shook his blood from her blade. The first visit to his homeland since he was a child, full of naught but betrayal and death. The cold rain of that night felt as real as the sunlight on his arms in the now. Seishin shook his head to clear it. Maral stared at him, curiosity playing in her wrinkled eyes, as he reached for the piece and began arranging the bone side of the board. As he did, Styrnrael’s brother Siban, with his long dark hair behind his ebony horns, came out of a yurt with a tray of tea. He placed the cups before them and poured it, followed by a quick spot of dzo milk, which furrowed in the amber liquid like mist spreading on a fallow field. The smell was strong and pleasant, and Seishin’s mind felt a little calmer. They thanked Siban before he bowed to Seishin and squeezed Maral’s shoulder and departed, leaving the kettle on the side of the table.

“I’m glad I don’t have to explain the rules to you,” Maral chuckled as she finished setting up the earth pieces on her side of the board. “Do you play Kharaqiq much where you’re from in Eorzea?”

“No; honestly, I had never heard of it before Styrn taught me on the day we met.”

Maral nodded. “The girl has a talent for the game. She is still raw and a little unrefined, like her mother was. But I’m beginning to see the glint of a gem in there.” Seishin could have sworn he saw her wink. “Well then, shall we begin?”

Maral immediately moved a Bardam pawn into position to take one of the contested territories in the right center board, and Seishin did the same on the opposite side, rather than fighting her for the same space. When he did take the territory he had sought, Maral was right there ready to snatch it back from him, and so on the game went, the clattering of stone and bone joining the river’s steady susurrus in the undersong of the summer morning. She forced him on the defensive early on, and try as he might, he struggled to protect his pieces from her. She was a true master, hers on another level from any other game he had played; every exposed position was full of traps. After his gambit to defend a segment of his territory with a Khun Chuluu piece failed as she found an easy way around it, Seishin put his hands in his lap and breathed deeply. The anger that had simmered in him the last several weeks before arriving in Othard was beginning to bubble back up as frustration, and he tried to push that down, to starve it of oxygen. He had left his patience lying in the mud of Rhalgr’s Reach, crushed under Zenos’ boot, and he struggled for it now. Maral watched him closely as he tentatively made another defensive move.

“You are wiser than your years let on. You approach this game with the eyes of a philosopher, rather than a general. And that is why you will lose to me today.” The beads on her indigo coat jangled as she moved the prized red horse around the edge of the board, surrounding his last bastion. Like taming an impetuous stallion, the red horse could be taken over by a player and quickly turn the tides of battle.

Seishin considered her words for a moment and rubbed the ivory scales on his chin. “But the Malqir tribe uses Kharaqiq as a way of making decisions, do you not? If there’s a metaphor to be had, wouldn’t it be helpful to think of it as a game of philosophy?”

“Oh, the two are not mutually exclusive. But in playing to think, rather than to win, you are holding yourself back from both.” Maral put her hands on her knees and looked deep into Seishin’s face. “You have much anger in your eyes, in your muscles, in your fingers, in your very tendons. But I don’t see it in your play. It’s as if you are damming it in your mind rather than feeling it, letting it flow. Anger is not a force to be feared, son of Azim. Stoked as a fire it can accomplish great things.”

“But what if it burns too hot? If you scald yourself and those close to you?” Seishin closed his eyes and thought again of Fordola and her wrath, incinerating everyone around her, and his jaw and fists tensed.

Maral gestured to the center of the iloh, and Seishin followed her arm to the large firepit in the common space between the yurts, where in the distance Bertram was helping others from the Asterians stack fresh wood from Reunion to keep the flames going. “A fire properly kept burns without raging. It warms us in its violence, and we must be careful of it and never lose control, but if we close ourselves off or smother it, we will grow colder in its absence. There; I believe that’s checkmate.”

Maral cleared a space in the center of the board and lined up one of each dark piece from the earth side. “I have something to show you, Seishin. As you have said, Kharaqiq is a deep game. It speaks to us through the language of time. And each piece is as a part of our souls.” She slid the large Khun Chuluu piece toward Seishin. “What does this one mean to you?”

Seishin thought a moment, reflecting on the face in the center of the large flat piece. “This is a defensive piece. It protects not only a segment of the board, but other pieces as well. It does not move far and doesn’t have much ability to attack, but it blocks the most mobile of your opponent’s pieces. Its purpose is to keep its allies safe.”

Maral nodded sagely, sliding the piece back to the ranks and replacing it with a Yol, its feathers of intricately carved azurite. “And this?”

“The Yol can move diagonally and fly over other pieces until it’s ready to strike. It exercises patience and foresight.” His mind wandered to his own Yol, with its deeply iridescent wings, which he and his fellow Asterians had tamed only days before, a prerequisite to participating in the Naadam.

Maral slid another piece in its place. “The dzo?”

“Stubborn and obstinate. It represents determination.”

Maral surprised him by skipping over the tiger piece to the earth horse with its deep blue mane, azurite of the same color as her skin. She held it up and raised an eyebrow, and in her expression he saw Styrnrael, that first night on the shores of Thanalan: The horse can move as far as it wants in any one direction, she had told him. It’s free, like the spirit of the Steppe, and that we all have inside us. Satisfied, Maral replaced it, and picked up the tiger swiping the air with its claw. “The Baras pounces in its movement; it represents speed and agility,” Seishin said.

Maral cocked her head and smirked. “You have to look deeper than that, my boy,” she chastened. “The Baras does not move straight; it lurks, it prowls. It waits. The Baras is quick, yes; but what it represents is opportunity. Brute force only works against us in many ways. It’s often better to lie in wait for the perfect opening to strike.” She brought the piece back with a force that clacked loudly on the table. “But make no mistake: there is a difference between patience and hesitation. And missing those opportunities is often worse than trying and failing. If the Yol represents foresight, the Baras is the taking of those opportunities that foresight yields to us.”

Seishin was silent a long time as he stared at the pieces on the board. Finally he said, “There is so much I have yet to learn. Every time I face Styrnrael or Bertram in this game I glean something new from it, as I have against you today.”

Maral laughed and crossed her arms. “Full glad am I to hear that, my child. I can see understanding dawning in your eyes. The Malqir do not believe that playing Kharaqiq itself makes you wise, but it is the wisdom that you bring to the table that is mixed into the flow of time. When you play a new opponent you take some of their wisdom into your own life, and you in turn impart it to others. I meet my ancestors in every turn on the game board.

“But there is still one piece we have yet to discuss.” She picked up a pawn, a Bardam piece, chiseled in the shape of a Xaela warrior. “I’m sure you have guessed that this piece represents the people, not just of the Steppe, but of the Star. It has the slowest movement, but it is the most plentiful, and all major pieces can promote to it. This is because in numbers are we strong. We can accomplish great things, but only together. Look at this world,” she said, sweeping her arms out and around her, her beads rattling noisily, and Seishin looked up at the azure sky and over the sweeping verdant plains of the Sea of Blades, towards the towering Dawn Throne, further to the distant ilohs dotting the horizon and the base of the mountains with vibrant spots of color, at the bustling crowds of Reunion in the distance. He turned with her in the other direction, toward Malqir Iloh, as farmers robed in deep dyed indigo tended flocks of sheep and dzo, balanced stones from the quarries of the Fanged Crescent, sat in the common area around Kharaqiq boards, preparing to test their mettles during the Naadam. And in the center of the common area, he watched Styrnrael leave a yurt in a coat of her tribe’s indigo colors and wander over the fire and place a hand on Bertram’s shoulder before sitting next to him on a log, their backs turned to Seishin in quiet dialogue, listening to the soft drone of a morin khuur. He felt Maral’s eyes on him as his gaze lingered on the two of them. She cleared her throat.

“Our clan makes a habit of not interfering with the other tribes of the Steppe, and as a matter of course we do not compete in the Naadam. My granddaughter will compete in it in the coming days, and for a second time at that. And the crazy part is, I think she can win. But she cannot do it alone.” Maral turned and placed her hands over Seishin’s. They were small on his and felt like soft leather. “I love Styrnrael deeply. I know you have come far and accomplished much and more together. Now it is your turn to protect her. You and Bertram both, as you all have thus far. You are weathering your own storm right now, as she is hers, as Bertram his. But only together can all of you succeed. Only together can you keep each other safe, no matter the outcome of the contest.”

Seishin shifted his hands to take hers and squeezed them gently, nodding at her as she did him. “I promise,” he said, and for the first time since leaving Ala Mhigo did his voice resonate with his usual resolve. Maral smiled and patted his hand.

“Well, the day is getting on,” she said, leaning back and pulling back her Kharaqiq pieces. “But I think I have one more match in me before lunchtime. What about you?”

#AuRaApril #AuRaApril2024 #posting a day late because I finished it late last night!#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #stormblood #seishin tag #kharaqiq #sladezwrites #wolxwol

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