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castellankurze · 3 years

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B’aiken Shishido, What’s in a Name

I haven’t written anything in awhile, let alone for B’aiken, but an idea I should have had long ago came to mind the other night and so I ended up banging out...four thousand words, holy crap.

Takes place around 4.1-4.2 of Stormblood. Some blood. More of me rambling about sunseeker miqo’te gender politics.

It wasn't sake, but this western beer wasn't bad as long as you paid Baderon the extra coin for his top-shelf stuff.

It was a typical day in Limsa Lominsa - the sun shone through a scattered veil of clouds, light glinting from the waves whipped up by the wind that came down from the mountains of Vylbrand. Hawker's Alley bustled with a thousand voices raised to haggle for wares. The docks were filled with the shouts of sailors and longshoremen as they struggled to make sense of the bewildering array of merchantmen and privateers that sought space. The customs office with the rustle and hustle of a throng of foreigners attempting to move any number of goods.

Above the chaos, the Drowning Wench was a low-key port in the storm of humanity. It was midday, too early for the place to fill up with workers leaving shift to find respite in a mug. So it was that another visitor to Lominsa had a table all to herself as she nursed one beer after another, having little else to do in the pirate town while she waited for a particular ship. Though she sported the ears and tail of a miqo'te, her garb was unmistakably that of the eastern nation of Hingashi, as was the sheathed sword which she had unbelted and leaned against the edge of the table beside her seat.

B'aiken Shishido was no longer quite the disheveled wreck she'd been when X'shasi Kilntreader had found her in the back corner of a Kugane hostelry. Travelling throughout the Far East and to Eorzea had reduced the time for lounging in bars and waiting for employment. Her hair had been pulled into an only semi-anarchic mess at the back of her head, but for a set of bangs which fell over the left side of her face to veil the scars that crept out from behind the patch that hid her blinded eye. And she had changed her clothes.

She sat in her chair almost carelessly, her chin propped on her remaining hand as she contemplated the mug in front of her, studiously ignoring the occasional curious glance shot her way. The miqo'te woman was comely enough, with a square-chinned handsomeness and a full figure, but the dour expression that ever rested upon her features discouraged any from plucking up their courage and crossing over to inquire of her availability.

So it was that she sat and drank alone, until a set of footsteps drew near and a male voice asked, "are you the woman called Be-Aiken Shihshih-do?"

He'd mangled her name, first and last alike, but in a foreign land one learned to expect such things. B'aiken looked up and assessed the newcomer quickly. A miqo'te male, a head taller than her, and she was not a short woman for her race. Forty years of age, perhaps. He wore a shirt and skirt of interlocking metal mesh, his arms and legs covered by leather armor. An axe of the type favored by Limsan marauders was strapped to his back. His eyes were a bright green, his hair a dull and greying red. His broad face was marked by scars...and by inked designs which decorated his lower cheeks and jaw. They suggested, to her mind, a set of tusks that had swept forwards from within his hair to end with their tips just beneath the corners of his mouth.

Dangerous.

For her part, the samurai nodded in response to the question. "I am," she replied.

The miqo'te lifted a hand to the back of the seat opposite hers on the table and pulled it out, dropping himself into it. Everything about his movement and posture was coarse in a deliberate way - a practiced brute. As he sat, B'aiken noted behind his shoulder a pair of miqo'te women standing some fulms off, one of them armed with a blade and wearing a half-mask that shadowed her eyes and hair.

Very dangerous.

When the man had sat he looked across the table at B'aiken and asked, with no preamble, "why is that your name?"

This was not a question she had expected. Normally armed men came to her for one reason - gold for another blade. Not to inquire about her name. So she shrugged her shoulders and took up her mug, answering simply "my mother gave it to me," before sipping.

The miqo'te kept his gaze fixed to hers, but at her response he canted his jaw first left, then right, as if he were worrying at his tattooed tusks. It should have looked absurd, but the bluntness of the man drained away what silliness might have been found in the mannerism. "Who was your mother?" he asked after a moment's silence.

B'aiken was momentarily spared from answering the rude question as one of Baderon's waitresses came up, spying a seated figure with no justification for his presence, and the miqo'te waved her off with a curt 'mead.' Once she had retreated, the samurai narrowed her ruby eye and responded, in lieu of an answer, "who asks this question?"

The man worked his jaw once more, and then sat back in his seat and took a breath. B'aiken recognized the stance of one reigning in one's more hasty impulses. "My name is Be-Hahn Nunh," he said. He frowned slightly and added after a moment, "as an Easterner, do you know what that means?"

B'aiken nodded slowly and sipped the last remnants of her drink. Her parents' teachings about the western world were but a dim memory of her childhood years, but since coming to Eorzea she had learned at more length from M'naago Rahz about the tribal structure of miqo'te in these western lands - the twenty-six major tribes with their distinctive division between rank and file Tia males and the elevated Nunh. In some tribes the Nunh held great power, whilst in others they were but figureheads of the female leadership, but there was one commonality - the right to father children.

B'hahn Nunh settled his arms atop the table, one hand covering a loose fist. "Who were your parents?" he questioned again.

B'aiken set the mug down atop the table. "My mother's name was Grayne," she said. "My father's name was Cossen."

B'hahn leaned back in his seat as the waitress delivered a drink B'aiken was certain he had no intention of touching. As he did so his gaze finally wavered, dropping down to the tabletop as he once more worried at his tusks. "Cossen and Grayne," he said softly. His eyes came back up. "We had long wondered what became of them. Are they still in the Far East?"

"Buy me another drink," B'aiken replied. Without hesitation the Nunh pushed his mead across the table to her. She drank. It was too sweet. "They worked in the service of a Hingan lord. My mother was slain by assassins who meant to kill his child. My father took revenge upon their employer, but it killed him. This was when I was six years of age."

The Nunh closed his eyes for a moment. "Did they teach you the meaning of your name?" he asked when he had opened them once more.

B'aiken's stone face cracked slightly, her full lips tugging upwards into a smile. "In the tongue of Hingashi, 'bai ken' with the correct context means 'boisterous plum.' My mother said she chose it because I came out of her screaming and giving her trouble and refused to stop."

B'hahn Nunh did not seem to share her humor. Instead he frowned, his lips pressed tight. "But did they teach you the meaning of the 'Be'?" he asked.

B'aiken sipped her too-sweet mead. "Why does this so concern you?" she asked.

She saw his tongue press against the inside of his cheek as he once more rolled his jaw side to side. "Cossen and Grayne fled from these lands to the Far East to escape judgment from the Boar Tribe," he said. "Cossen was of no standing to pursue a woman as openly as he did. Both flouted our laws and ran when they were discovered. Now I am Nunh, and word comes to me of a woman not known to our tribe calling herself Be-Aiken-"

B'aiken had already begun to bristle at his assessment of her parents, but she had contented herself to let that slide - it seemed factual enough. But when he butchered her name a second time her patience snapped. "B'aiken," she interrupted, pressing her lips together and blowing out a pop of air to emphasize the 'B' sound.

He stopped, blinking. "What?"

"I say my name B'aiken. Not Be-Aiken," she emphasized with a shake of her head.

B'hahn Nunh frowned. "When the written word comes to us of the Scions and their exploits, your name is printed with a B, then an apostrophe, and then the remainder of your name," he said.

B'aiken nodded. "That part is correct. It was how my mother told me it would be spelled in the land of our foremothers."

"No," B'hahn Nunh growled, bristling suddenly. "That is not acceptable. The Boar honorific is the symbol of our tribe. It was not an exile's to grant a child born in foreign land. Her transgression, not yours," he added, perhaps an attempt to offer an olive branch as a scowl grew upon her face. "But nevertheless it cannot continue, unless you choose to rejoin the Boar Tribe."

Heads turned as a short, sharp laugh cracked in the air of the Drowning Wench, but even as it left her lips B'aiken's features faded once more into stony obstinance. "I am ronin, B'hahn Nunh. I have no interest in throwing myself into the ranks of some strange clan, simply because I bear some accident of kinship," she said.

"You might be welcomed," he pressed. "We have heard of your skill with a blade. It would be honored."

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. "No."

He worried his tusks. "Then your name must change," he said stolidly. "Call yourself 'Baiken' if you will, or 'Aiken' if that would hold meaning, but the use of the Boar honorific must cease."

"Hey," a new voice interjected. "Is something going on over here?"

"Just bring us another round, for Twelve's sake," the Nunh growled, pushing several coins into the waitress' hand. She departed, carrying a suspicious look and B'aiken's last mug.

B'aiken was grateful for the momentary distraction as her rage burned suddenly hot within her breast. She forced herself to sit back slightly and distract herself with a sip of the too-sweet mead. As she had learned from her near-violent confrontation with M'naago, it was not reasonable to expect these westerners to know that 'aiken' in the Hingan tongue meant dog. That part, her mother certainly could have thought about a bit more. Then a thought occurred to her and she lowered her cup to glower over the rim of it. "B'hahn Nunh," she said. "That means you have offspring."

He blinked, perhaps thrown by the sudden shift in the current, but nodded.

A sneer worked itself across B'aiken's features. "And if I did give myself to your tribe, would you have me for your bed, Nunh?"

He frowned slightly, but there was little hesitation. "Not unwillingly."

She snorted, but decided the response seemed earnest enough that she could let the sudden suspicion drop. "No," she said again. "I do not belong in your tribe simply because my mother and father once did. They were faithful to one another," she suddenly diverted once more. "To the best of what I learned from their cohorts as I grew, theirs was an enviable love. They lived and died for each other." She took a moment to breathe. "And so my answer is no, B'hahn Nunh. Neither will I join your tribe, nor will I renounce my name as my parents gave it to me."

His frown deepened, but he glanced over his shoulder and made a beckoning gesture. The two miqo'te females that had been standing off and watching with increasingly poor attempts to disguise their interest came walking over. The one that was armed moved with a grace that suggested skill with the blade she carried, while the other's was a more normal tread. "Kinrah," the Nunh demanded. "She refused both offers."

The unarmed woman - B'kinrah - blinked a pair of pale pink eyes and snatched up a book she carried, flipping it open to a marked page and hurriedly scribbling with a quill. For his part, B'hahn looked back across the table, his face stone. "B'aiken...Sh..." He hesitated.

"Shishido," she supplied the proper pronunciation.

"B'aiken Shishido, on the honor of the Boar Tribe I summon you to a duel. We cannot countenance your use of our tribe's honorific and if you refuse to relinquish it, you must defend it with your blade." The Nunh delivered the words slowly and deliberately, his voice unwavering as B'kinrah copied down his challenge.

B'aiken spared a moment to consider, finishing off the mead the Nunh had given her in exchange for the information by which he now hung her out to dry. "I am ronin, Nunh," she said for the second time that day. "I have no honor. But my name...that does have meaning for me. I accept your challenge," she said, setting down her cup and reaching out to close her fingers around the sheath of her sword, thumping it against the table. "Now, if you'd have it."

"You're drunk," he said, working his tusks.

She laughed. "Afraid I'll throw up on you?" She flexed her legs and stood, and the Nunh hastened to match her as she belted her katana. "Your girl there has my words in her book," she said with an ironic smile for B'kinrah, whose face colored as she met the samurai's ruby eye and held the book up a bit higher. "If I didn't stand by my drunken words, then I would have none at all."

"Hoy! HOY!" a voice shouted across the room. The gathered sunseeker miqo'te turned as one to see Baderon leaning over his bar and frantically waving a finger at them. "Whatever yer doin' yer not doin' it 'ere," he scolded. "If it's t'be drawn steel then go out past the Aftcastle."

B'hahn Nunh nodded. "Aye, Baderon," he said in acknowledgement.

The waitress who'd been bringing the next pair of drinks stopped a few steps short and huffed. "You're still short seven gil," she said, cross.

B'aiken reached into her belt for one of the solid gold koban from Kugane she still had banging around and thumbed it onto the table. Then she reached out and plucked one of the proffered mugs from the girl's hand and threw it back. Her throat didn't work; no audible gulps or gasps emanated from the samurai, but instead she only tipped the mug further and further back until it emptied and she slammed it down atop the table, the corners of her mouth wet with the excess.

"Let's go," she growled.

The quartet left the bar at a walk, heading south to where the bridges of Limsa Lominsa connected to the isle of Vylbrand. The wind made B'aiken's long robe flutter, as well as the empty sleeve that dangled from her right shoulder. She stayed a double arms' length from B'hahn, both of them careful to stay abreast of one another despite looking determinedly forward.

"Um, excuse me," a soft voice said at her shoulder. She turned her head slightly to see the scribe doing her best to keep up with the taller miqo'te's longer stride. "If it's not too much to ask, how did you get the name Shishido?" B'kinrah questioned, blinking her pale eyes through her dark hair, quill poised above her open book.

B'aiken considered her response for several steps. How to describe her apprenticeship under the legendary samurai? Her sensei had taken her under his wing for many hard years of training that had defined the course of her life right up to this very moment. But on reflection, the woman didn't want to hear her life story. Just the basic information. "He taught me how to use the blade," she said simply, and B'kinrah bobbed acceptance and fell back as she scribbled down the response.

They passed over the stones of the Aftcastle and proceeded down the connecting bridge to the island, under dirt rather than dressed stone slapped underfoot. A quartet of Limsan Yellowjackets manned the entry, and one of them must have seen the way B'aiken and B'hahn drifted apart as they left the bridge behind, their posture increasingly wary of one another. The roegadyn came forward, eyeing first one and then the other. "A duel?" he asked. He received an assortment of nodding heads in return, and with a sigh he lifted his hand to point. "No deaths, and off the road," he instructed.

The pair obeyed, stepping into the grass and walking a short distance from the side of the road. "What, then?" B'aiken asked. "First blood?"

B'hahn Nunh shook his head as he unstrapped his axe and threaded it behind his back, bending his elbows around the haft to limber up. "A full surrender," he replied.

B'aiken considered this for a moment and then nodded. She lifted her hand to the metal shoulderguard that she wore on her right shoulder and pushed, sliding it laterally so that it took her garment with it, baring the stump of her right arm where it ended abruptly halfway down her biceps. She heard a gasp from the road and glanced aside briefly as she tied the sleeve into her belts, seeing Kinrah holding her book up to her face. The other woman, the one that had been silent all this time, showed no reaction.

B'aiken did much the same with the left side of her robe, tying the sleeve into her belt so that it would not interfere with her movement. Her remaining arm was muscled, as was the miqo'te's stomach, her breasts concealed by the wrappings she wore beneath her garb. Her hand dropped down to the handle of her katana and levered it forward slightly, swinging the sheath behind her legs as she bent her knees and stood flank-on towards the Nunh. She could feel the tingle in her fingertips as she readied herself, her ki - what Eorzeans called aether - already flowing between her body and the sheathed blade, making it tremble. "Come forth, then," she said.

B'hahn Nunh had taken the intervening moments to swing his axe a time or two, flexing his legs to ready himself. At B'aiken's invitation he took in a slow breath and exhaled. Then, in the space of half a heartbeat, he was suddenly roaring and charging forward like his tribal namesake, his eyes a ferocious glowing red.

He crossed the space between them in an eyeblink, his axe swinging hard, and B'aiken was forced to hurriedly drop back before he took her remaining arm. Her katana leapt from its sheath with a rasp of steel and she swung for his leg, but the Nunh was fast and sidestepped so that the tip of her blade passed through empty space. He swung again, a shorter chop this time that allowed him to follow up with a quick reverse blow. B'aiken managed to turn it aside, and aether crackled in the air as the samurai's blade encountered the berserker's axe.

He was good. He was very good. He couldn't sustain such a pace for very long, surely, but the sheer ferocity of his assault had no doubt served him well in unmanning his opponents in the past. Nor did he fight with the axe alone- he took his hand from the weapon to swing at her with a leather-clad fist and she ducked aside. She didn't miss his stomping boots, either - the Hingan-born miqo'te wore a set of open-toed zori, and one good smash from the Nunh would break her foot. But B'aiken had fought a number of opponents like him - taller than her, stronger than her, more lustful than her. She threatened him with her blade as she ducked in and out of his range, the air humming and her aether-clad katana whipped past him, roaring whenever the two weapons deflected off one another.

There came a whistle from the direction of the bridge. Presumably the Yellowjackets had come off their station to watch the show. B'aiken didn't have time to look. She whirled, stepping past B'hahn even as his axe whirled past her so that the pair of them reversed positions. With a quick filling of her lungs the samurai cocked her sword back and swung it underhand, sweeping the flow of aether from the land and sending it thundering forth from her blade in a blood-red halo that struck the Nunh full-on and forced him back, sheltering behind his axe. In the moment he was thus distracted, B'aiken brought her sword back down and laid open his forearm, his leather bracer snapping beneath the sword's edge.

B'hahn roared and surged forward at her, seemingly heedless of his wound, and he leapt high enough to nearly clear the level of her head as he brought his axe down in a fiery smash that she was just quick enough to avoid. B'aiken felt the heat of the moment set her nerves alight, her skin pricking as her hair seemed to stand on end. The Nunh

will come at me with a rising swing and there will be a moment that his leg is unprotected

came at her with a rising swing and with reflexes sharper than the blade she wielded, the miqo'te dodged to one side and lashed out with her blade, letting it be sheathed in energy that extended past the tip, a cut longer than she could have made with the blade alone. The toughened leather of the Nunh's boot split open just beneath his armored skirt as she sliced through the meat of his thigh, and he stumbled as his leg went out from under him. He caught himself on his good leg, but it was to no avail as the tip of the samurai's sword came up beneath his chin and hovered at his neck.

B'aiken's chest heaved for breath as her head throbbed in the wake of the sudden insight, her musculature gleaming with the first signs of sweat from the short but explosive fight. "Surrender to me," she demanded.

B'hahn Nunh worried his tusks for a moment, his face torn between emotions, but after a breath to think, he nodded slightly. "You win."

B'aiken stepped away to the sound of clapping from the Yellowjackets, and the sound of boots on the grass and B'kinrah came forward to crouch beside the Nunh, lifting a hand that glowed to hover near his wounds. For her own part, B'aiken lifted the handle of her sword to her teeth and fished in her belt for a cleaning cloth, wiping away the blood before she returned the weapon to its sheath.

"Well?" she asked as the Nunh stood. His arm would bear a new scar, it seemed, as Kinrah's magic was sufficient to close the wound but not erase it from his flesh. B'aiken did not resist the urge to wallow momentarily in pleasure at the sight, though she kept it from her face.

He nodded. "You may keep your name, B'aiken Shishido," he said, pronouncing it in the same manner she had done.

"Is our business then concluded, B'hahn Nunh? You will mark that I am not one of your tribe's women, nor will you attempt to take my name from me a second time?" she asked, keeping her gaze pinned to his.

He paused and worked his jaw once more before answering. "It is concluded. There will be no second challenge."

B'aiken shrugged and began the process of unknotting her sleeves from her belt so that she could put her robe back to rights, while the Nunh gingerly walked himself back towards the road with B'kinrah in tow. At the same time a set of footsteps came towards her, and B'aiken looked up to see the blade-bearing miqo'te coming to a stop a few fulms from her. She lifted up her hands to remove her mask, and B'aiken was struck by an odd sense of familiarity as the woman revealed bright purple eyes and near-black violet hair. The stranger offered a slight smile to the samurai before she spoke.

"My name is B'sayyda Eskil," she said. "My mother's name is B'lotte Zinba, and she was full sister to B'grayne Zinba."

B'aiken paused in the midst of shrugging her arm back into its sleeve. She blinked her eye as she looked upon the other woman, near as tall as she, broad in shoulder and hip like herself, close to her in age. "So then...we are cousins?" she asked as she finished donning her clothes.

B'sayyda pursed her lips briefly. "In blood if naught else. In spirit if you wish. In arms...only if you were to rejoin the tribe," she said with sudden formality, which she promptly dropped as she went on. "My mother spoke from time to time of missing her sister. I'm sure she'll be sad to learn of her passing, but perhaps the knowing will give her comfort." The swordswoman shrugged and smiled a bit once more. "Especially to hear that Grayne and Cossen stayed together until the end. If it's alright with you I'd like to tell her about all this. Let her know Grayne had a child. It would mean something to her."

B'aiken considered this. She reached out with her hand to squeeze B'sayyda's shoulder. "Tell all, then," she said. "Be well, B'sayyda Eskil."

"And you, B'aiken Shishido," said the violet-haired woman, returning the gesture with a squeeze of B'aiken's shoulder. Then she turned and pulled her mask back into place, following after her kinsman and woman.

Left behind, B'aiken stretched out her arm and turned her face up towards the sun, letting the wind wash over her.

It felt free.

#FFXIV #miqo'te #seekers of the sun #B'aiken Shishido #kurze writes

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