#elie's ffxivwrite2022

[fistsoflightning]

forge ahead

ffxivwrite2022 04: free day ✧ assiduous adj. showing great care, attention, and effort.

a’dewah & zaya, sort of. 6.0 end of MSQ spoilers. 985 wc.

There was a certain connection, at least in A’dewah’s mind, between gardening and healing—not literally, because A’dewah had yet to meet a race of plant people besides the Sylphs, and they only liked glamouring themselves as Hyurs and Elezen sometimes, but in the care necessary for both. Sometimes he liked to take note of injuries in a similar way he might inspect a plant, putting more focus into repairing muscle and skin than another healer might as he pretended he was simply coaxing a neglected orchid back to brilliance. 

Maybe some conjurers were satisfied with merely throwing a few cures someone’s way without thinking too hard about it, but the last time A’dewah was haphazard with his conjury was when he burned Haruki as a kid, and the people he healed nowadays were already in enough pain and distress without him adding to it.

At least this time they weren’t awake to feel any of it, A’dewah noted, because without a surplus of the usual chirurgeon’s potions and tonics he was sure Zaya would be in excruciating pain even without him messing up. The Ragnarok’s terrible lighting made it a little easier to bear and a lot harder to evaluate, but this—

(broken bones, severe hemorrhage, lingering traces of darkness and corrupted dynamis, erratic heartbeat)

—this was a lot, even for them.

A’dewah exhaled slowly, shaking out his hands as he finished healing Zaya’s wrist, the cut that had been there now little more than a scratch. The worst of their injuries had passed without any worrying developments, but there wasn’t much A’dewah could do besides heal them each day with what little aether he still received through his bond with Suzaku. Any more and he’d be in no better state than Zaya was.

In the past, he might have tried anyways. Now, though, there was someone waiting patiently for his safe return, and A’dewah never liked disappointing him.

He just needed to check how the rest of Zaya’s hand was—he thought they would have learned how to take better care of their hands, considering how much they needed them, but that felt a little hypocritical coming from A’dewah—but before he could reach down to check a calloused hand caught his wrist, wearing a familiar fingerless glove.

“I thought you were sleeping,” he said, exhaustion tamping down the little part of his brain that immediately reacted with stutter and panic, though not fast enough to stifle his initial jump. A’dewah hoped the sudden poof of his tail was obscured well enough by his coat to escape notice.

“I’d be a terrible rogue if I hadn’t learned to fake it,” Thancred replied, pushing a small bottle with gold filigree filled with a familiar liquid into his palm. “Was just resting my eyes.”

A’dewah looked down at the ether, then back up to Thancred’s exhausted face. The shadows that the light of the Ragnarok’s walls cast were still pretty bad, but the ones beneath his eyes were definitely more solid than the rest. “Zaya’s fine, mostly, and I’ll be gone in a few minutes,” he assured him, and flicked a small spell right between the gunbreaker’s eyes as he said, “so sleep.”

Thancred took the Repose with as much grace as he could muster, which frankly wasn’t a lot; he leaned back against the wall with a muttered bold bastard before his shoulders relaxed and his head tipped down towards his chest, fast asleep. Good way to wake up with a crick in your neck, in A’dewah’s experience, but he figured it was less of a problem than making Thancred leave Zaya’s side to lie down. Not even Meteion in the depths of despair and dynamis could make him leave, even when he was scattered into stardust, and A’dewah was nowhere near as hellbent on making him see reason.

He looked back down at Zaya, setting the ether down beside his knee. Speaking of dynamis…

Most of his face paint was already ruined, so he only had to wipe off a little bit more onto his sleeve before his vision blurred, right eye readjusting as the world grew dark, only illuminated by the traces of aether around them. Y’shtola was far better with her aethersight, having lost all her vision instead of just having one eye ruined, but A’dewah could still accomplish it every now and then without getting a giant migraine.

There wasn’t an awful lot to see, given they weren’t on Etheirys, but that made the few sparks of aether in Zaya’s body brighter for lack of anything else to draw his attention. Knowing what they did now of dynamis and entelechies, their aetherial composition no longer looked so worrying, but what little they did have was certainly weaker than A’dewah would have hoped. He knew from the Elder Seedseer that the Scions’ bodies, bereft of their souls, took on similar states of being, but G’raha and their interactions with Hydaelyn before diving into the Aitiascope had proven how rooted Zaya’s soul was to their body, so the only reasonable answer besides death was—

A’dewah frowned, shaking his head like it might rattle the thought out. Zaya was too stubborn to give in when the Lifestream had tried to claim them before, so why would now be any different? Why stay in limbo when they still had a future laid at their feet?

He knew there was an answer to that question, but none that he wanted to consider, so instead he lifted their hand up in his and went back to healing as the aetherlight filtered through the gaps between Zaya’s fingers. Bruised, but unbroken.

"Everyone's waiting on you," he said, almost drowned out by the hum of the Ragnarok. "Come home."

It was barely a wish, hardly a prayer, and Zaya wasn’t awake enough to hear it, but if A’dewah had learned anything from their journeys it was that miracles weren’t beyond reach.

[windupnamazu]

let's spend the night together from now until forever!

ffxivwrite2022 #09: yawn (of an opening or space) be very large and wide.

lunya and «balefire»—zaya, reese, hanami, rjoli, + more of elie's ocs, endwalker (mare lamentorum arc). 618wc. ⮞ it's called a "sleepover," not a "stay up all night and annoy hanami to death-over"!

Lunya had been sitting on the "finest sleeping module Bestways Burrow had to offer its Etheiryan guests of honor" for all of ten minutes when she decided this was going to be the comfiest bed any of them had ever or would ever sleep on again for the rest of their miserable little mortal lives.

"I need one of these at home," she declared to all and none of her friends scattered across the unending plain of the bed, because surely this delectably soft mattress that was very much designed for an Unsundered and not a Lalafell and her dozen companions made up for the fashion crimes being committed here tonight. Majj, who was already coiled up around her back in the ugliest godsdamned sleep robe she had ever seen and playing with her pigtails, twisted a peach ear to hear her passionate declaration better—as ever her most indulgent supporter. "I'm bringing back a Loporrit."

"No!" squawked Reese at the same time Valdis helpfully chirped a tired, I'll help! from where they were folding everyone's clothes and organizing boots and belts. "Go to bed!"

Nyneve's arm came free of one of her gauntlets with a distinct POP! that had Lumelle and Elwin looking down at the armor in their hands with mild concern. "Can we have a pillow fight first?"

"No," Hanami barked, clearly trying not to pincer her own pillow as she rolled away from them and their growing pile of shucked leathers and steel. She was very small without her usual array of protective pointy bits, which was incredibly cute but in a way that would get Lunya stabbed if she said so out loud and without Ser Aymeric in range. "Go to bed."

"Nyneve, if we have a pillow fight here," Reese reasoned patiently with a little bead of sweat on her forehead that suggested she was very, very afraid, "Lunya is going to cheat by making everyone's pillows weigh like bricks, Wyda will probably demolish someone by blinking at them, Zaya will probably generate so much static that Rjoli and Duscha will turn into pompoms, Myrrh and Valdis will probably set the whole bed aflame, and then Hanami will skewer us with Tehra'ir's daggers. And when we're all dead, Einar and A'dewah will have to sleep on the floor outside because they'll be too scared to come back in and check on us, and the Loporrits will find out and cry."

Majj shook his head, the little pom on the tail of his nightcap smacking Lunya in the eye—"ow," she whined, "Majjie!!!"—"We can't make them cry," he said very solemnly. "I still needta see if they can jump as high as I can."

"Ryne would like the Loporrits," Lunya said as she rubbed her poor eye, and Zaya was a blur of blue as they nodded rapidly in agreement. "We should steal one for her."

Gaia, too, Zaya signed with a little sparkle in their eyes, and Lunya nearly broke her neck energetically nodding back just as fast. Had they been closer together on the massive bed they probably would have high-fived, but Zaya was busy being squashed beneath an already-snoring Duscha and probably wondering when Thancred was going to come back from his stroll around the Burrow.

If Reese were a pufferfish she would have been bloated. "We are not kidnapping any Loporrits!"

"Um, yeah, because it's not kidnapping when they want to go," Lunya sniffed. "You're just mad that me and Growingway have a bond that transcends"—THWACK! went Hanami's punctured pillow into Lunya's face, feathers flying loose when it fell onto the girl's lap—"Hanahana!"

"GO TO BED!"

"But we don't even know how to turn off the lights!"

[fistsoflightning]

let it all be said

ffxivwrite2022 14: attrition n. the act of weakening or exhausting by constant attack or pressure.

thancred & zaya. 6.0 85-86 MSQ spoilers. 1582 wc.

Do you really love me?

It was something Zaya had asked him with a heavy tongue and far less coherency through the haze of their first levinstrike tincture, when Chessamile and Tehra’ir and Urianger hadn’t come to a consensus on how much aethersand was needed to restore the natural imbalance of Zaya’s aether and had overestimated in their calculations, and in the moment Thancred hadn’t known how to react before they’d passed out. When he’d asked them the next morning, baffled and a bit hurt, whatever they had seen in his expression had them panicking. A seed of doubt planted in their head by a nosy onlooker, they’d told him, apologetic. The regulars at the Seventh Heaven hadn’t made it any better when Zaya had made to return to the First with his belongings at his request, seemingly convinced that Thancred couldn’t have changed in the years since.

I don’t know how you couldn’t, they explained frantically, even though Thancred had done his best to assure them that no real harm had been done. If the way you hold me isn’t out of love, then I don’t know what way is, and then, more hesitant: I just thought you might have said so, by now.

Thancred had been too focused at the time on keeping Zaya from worrying themselves to tears over nothing to process that last statement, but it stuck with him like burnt caramel in his teeth. It didn’t seem to bother Zaya past being a fleeting, nasty whisper in their head ignited by everything else they’d told him about, but in exchange it became a voice in his own, ever louder in the dark.

Why haven’t you told them?

At first it was because it was too soon—even after years of looking and wanting and telling himself they are not someone you can have—and then it was out of fear that he would only sound like his old self, when he used words like love and beloved carelessly. Later, he decided to tell them when they returned to the Source, and then changed that resolution when he wasn’t ready to ‘when the world stopped needing to be saved every other week’.

That last one in particular had been a bad excuse, because now the Final Days that had wiped out the Ancients were terrorizing Thavnair, threatened to destroy their very star, and he still hadn’t said shite. 

Thancred rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms before he returned to wringing the excess water out of a pair of washcloths in the basin. Now was hardly the time for him to get stuck in his own head, lest he turn himself into a blasphemy over three words he kept himself from saying.

If not now, a quieter, more honest part of him said, no less scornful than the voice that accompanied him in his darkest hours, then when, you daft idiot? You know well enough that the world never stops long enough for the two of you.

It was a question that he had no good answer to, but he was saved from having to consider one by Zaya, knocking gently on the drawers of the vanity they were leaning on to call his attention; when Thancred looked up, he was momentarily charmed by the way they had pinned their bangs away from their face before he realized what Zaya wanted of him.

"My apologies," he said softly, making his way over before he held out one of the damp washcloths to them. "I fear I got lost in thought."

Zaya looked up at him curiously, but ultimately said nothing as they took their washcloth and turned around to clean their face. When their eyes caught his again in the reflection of the mirror, their resultant smile was brief and dim before they looked away, busying themselves with finding their facepaint in their pack.

Perhaps it was the early hour, or the burning sky hidden behind the curtains he’d drawn shut the night before, but Thancred had never seen Zaya’s nerves get the best of them, not like this. His eyes narrowed as they shifted their weight from one foot to the other and then back again, the same way they might have kept balanced in a fight.

"Feeling alright?" he asked. They stilled, eyes flicking back to his figure in the mirror, and then set down their usual assortment of cosmetics and brushes on the vanity.

“Fine,” Zaya answered hastily, signing the word into the mirror for him to see. It was, annoyingly, the answer Thancred was expecting—after all, what better way to spread despair than for the Warrior of Light, savior of worlds, to admit they were less than alright with the current apocalypse they had to fix—but then their hands twitched, halfway back to their pot of facepaint and their brush, and lifted again as Zaya moved to add, “nervous.”

Thancred kept quiet as he stepped out of the shadows and to Zaya’s back, slightly to their left so he could be seen in the mirror. “I’m here to lend an ear, should you have need of it.”

The scales on Zaya’s nose and brow warped as they scrunched their nose and reached up for their cracked horn, fingers looping in the tails of the silk ribbon still tied around it. “M’ horns ‘re fine,” they said, reflection frowning back at him in the mirror. Thancred laughed, reaching out to clasp their shoulder.

“Not quite what I was implying, bluebird,” he said, delighting briefly in Zaya’s flustered expression before he clarified, “Did you want to talk about whatever has you anxious?”

Zaya shook their head, though not in refusal. “Scared,” they admitted to his reflection, the gold specks in their irises flickering as the candlelight swayed back and forth. “Th’ land is on fire, and ‘m leaving.”

It was a fear Thancred understood well; he had never taken well to being redirected from the battle at hand, despite knowing full well his capabilities served better elsewhere. “Things do tend to worsen when we turn away,” he said, gently running his thumb along the line where the scales on Zaya’s arm met skin, “Though I suppose you have far less experience than I do in retreating to fight another battle.”

He watched the mirror even as Zaya’s head dipped down, their face invisible as the shadows overtook everything except the glow of their limbal rings. “Wanna stay.”

Thancred swallowed thickly, and felt as if the air around them both had changed through naught but Zaya’s honesty. His hand dropped from their shoulder so he could curl his arms around their sides, pulling them closer to his chest. “If you were not our best chance of reaching out to Elidibus, I would…” he said quietly, biting his lip before he could continue.

Strictly speaking, Elidibus seemed far more reasonable than his fellow Paragons. There was a fair chance he would speak truthfully on the subject of the Final Days to the other four Warriors, but they were too far beyond the point of no return to risk learning nothing, and Zaya had apparently established some manner of bond with the Ascian in the short moment before he was sealed in the Crystal Tower. Anagnorisis, Urianger had called it. Recognition.

If they hadn’t pointed the fact out themselves over their table at the Meyhane last night, Thancred might have fought to keep Zaya here, ashamed as he was to admit it—but it was at their suggestion that their paths were diverging.

Years ago, it had been him citing their duty as Scions to keep the distance between the two of them from growing closer. It would be unfair to ask differently of Zaya now, especially with so much more at stake than there was when it was just primals and tempering and Garlemald. Completely selfish.

But to hold his tongue was to keep running. All these years, he’d buried his true thoughts away out of fear that his words might sway someone he loved into doing the wrong thing, especially because his dearest friends and family were all in the same business of keeping the world from calamity—only for his lack of them to nearly convince his foster daughter to give up her life to make him happy. He’d failed to tell Louisoix and Minfilia how much he cared for them because he’d convinced himself it wasn’t the right time to pour his heart out.

When, if ever, was the right time, for people like them? Where did duty end and loving begin, if they were ever separate to begin with? How wrong could loving someone be, if all you had was stolen time between this terror and the next?

What broke him from his reverie was not some answer from on high to all his long-held questions, but a touch, and a voice he loved; Zaya’s head shifted beneath his to look at him in the mirror, one of their hands coming to rest on his above their sternum as they steadied their voice and asked, “You would what?”

Perhaps a better Scion would have said nothing, rather than let the most reckless Warrior of Light know there was a different path for them to take; Thancred, however, knew Zaya preferred the truth above all else, and so he let himself fall.

“I would have asked you to stay,” he said, and then, almost drowned out by the sound of his own heart racing: “I love you.”

[fistsoflightning]

perfect balance

ffxivwrite2022 01: cross n. a hook thrown over an opponent’s punch in boxing.

zaya & thancred. 2.2, post ‘through the maelstrom’. 3175 wc. alcohol cw (implied alcohol abuse/alcoholism but thancred only has one drink in the fic. disclaimer i’ve never had alcohol! i’m babie!)

When Thancred stepped out from his room into the darkened hallways of the Rising Stones, a small lightning crystal in hand for light, it was a late enough hour that he had, quite reasonably, assumed the rest of the Scions were in their rooms, if not fast asleep. With how busy they had all been as of late between moving from Thanalan and the uptick in primal summonings across Eorzea, the main hall of the Stones was usually cleared out by midnight, when their hardworking receptionist headed to bed and snuffed out all the candles on her way there. 

The day itself had been fairly normal, besides the continued lack of information about their allies on the Isle of Val, he reminded himself as he went down the stairs. The chances of bumping into someone and having to explain why he was skulking around in the dark instead of listening to the now-missing Students of Baldesion's advice to sleep for once were low, if not non-existent.

And then he’d made it to the bottom of the stairwell that led to the main floor and found a faint light spilling onto the stones beneath the door.

Thancred pressed a hand to his forehead and resisted the urge to groan.

Twelve preserve, he just wanted a drink. It was a terrible habit, and one that was either going to get him put on a tight leash or killed, but it was far better than spending half the night lying in bed nauseated by the fact he felt alone in his own body, or that he could still forget how to move and act under his own power at times. The former problem was eased well enough by the alcohol, its burn not so dissimilar to the press of Lahabrea’s aether, and inebriation solved the latter, if clumsily.

He’d been hoping to fall prey to bad habits in solitude, but whoever was on the other side of the door didn’t seem like they’d be leaving soon, going by the mild racket they were causing. It was a small miracle they hadn’t woken Arenvald, who was just two doors down from here; perhaps the stone didn’t echo quite as much as Thancred had been led to believe.

Standing here in the dark like a fool wouldn’t make them leave, though, and he’d much rather endure the disappointed stares of his surprise drinking partner than have to go another damn minute ruminating on every way Lahabrea continued to haunt him.

He took a deep breath as he opened the door and stepped through, but it was only as he stood at the bar that he noticed something rather strange:

It smelled, quite strongly, of ozone.

Unless Tataru had recently ordered a crate of levin mint, that all but confirmed who his company was for the night, and left him with a sneaking suspicion as to the source of the racket coming from behind the partition. Curious, Thancred stepped a bit further to his left to see around it and caught a levin-blue flash from behind a stack of crates near the back.

For one horrible, wretched moment, Thancred was glad to know even the Warrior of Light responsible for his freedom could be just as terrible as he was about listening to advice and reason.

Then the moment faded, and he felt all the worse for it. Thancred reached under the bar for a bottle and a glass before he slid to the end of it, sat down, and poured himself a drink to the sounds of Zaya beating their training equipment to pieces; it was only once he was halfway through his glass that he hazily realized that Zaya, who regularly frightened the newer Scions with their hawk-like observational skills and stubborn silence, still hadn’t noticed him enter the room.

Thancred frowned, setting down his glass as the taste on his tongue soured. He had a faint idea of what Zaya was running from, but he remembered how they had looked, waking up in the infirmary days after the 3rd Levy had fished them out, half-drowned. Their expression had never left him to wonder if their mishap in fighting Leviathan had hurt them in a way that the other primals hadn’t; they had even brushed off Minfilia with a smile when she pressed a bit harder, asking why they would let the Scions send them out to sea if they couldn't swim.

No task too daunting for a Warrior of Light, he reasoned, not when there were bigger primals to slay, and Zaya often lent themselves to danger for the challenge anyhow. He’d assumed they’d simply bounce back the way they had plenty of times before.

But that was how the Scions lost him to Lahabrea, wasn’t it? His exhaustion and the Paragon’s mistakes looked the same if one didn’t look hard enough—and almost no one had, in the end, all because he had ever left his troubles unspoken. Now, as if to make up for not seeing the change before, he has garnered the attention of all the Scions, leaving enough space for Zaya to slip by silent and unnoticed.

Thancred had only chanced to notice because he was here, and he’d grown—fond, of Zaya. Somewhere between waking up after the Praetorium incident with their legs thrown over his and seeing them laughing in the summer rain while he watched from the safety of the Seventh Heaven’s doors he’d found himself thinking of them more often, seeking out their company when he had the spare time. It was a lingering consequence of their hands being the ones to drag him out of the dark, surely, that his memories (or lack of them) troubled him less when he was with Zaya.

He wasn’t nearly far enough into his cups to believe he could give them any lasting reprieve from their own mind, but he owed them the effort, if not more. For saving him when Lahabrea declared him out of reach, and for dealing with his sorry self the past few months.

But how to go about it…

Leaning back in his seat, Thancred cleared his throat. “Zaya?”

…Nothing. Drowned out by the noise they were making, if he had to venture a guess.

“Zaya,” he tried again, brow furrowing when they continued to brutalize one of the other Scions’ training equipment. Thancred was surprised it had lasted so long, if the lack of shattered training dummies lying around was any indication, though at the rate they were going he doubted it would last much longer.

Short of going over and standing between them and whatever it was they were punching, however, Thancred only had one other half-decent plan to grab their attention. He blamed the drink for his lack of creativity this evening.

(Of course, he was the fool who drank it, but such failings of his character could be considered at a later date, preferably while he was alone.)

Thancred wet his lips as he stood up, turning to lean against the bar and face Zaya’s general direction. Compared to the rest of the Scions, he had been a decent actor—now, though, he wasn’t so sure, especially when his audience was someone who never particularly liked being tricked, and if he pitched his voice the wrong way he could easily wake the entirety of the Stones under false alarm.

Still, better than letting the night drag on like this, with Zaya training until their knuckles bled and Thancred sitting at the bar ruining his liver. Y’shtola, at the very least, would be glad he’d interrupted at least one of their foolhardy antics.

If this works, he thought in the brief moment between him opening his mouth and his next few words.

“Seven hells, Lahabrea?!”

…Decent enough. The irregular thumps of Zaya’s fist hitting their target ended abruptly with a worryingly loud thud, a strangled noise of surprise, and what sounded like sand being poured onto the floor. Moments later the Warrior of Light themselves stepped into sight with wide eyes and a thunderous frown, only easing slightly when they caught sight of him around the pile of crates, something swinging around behind them. 

All things considered, it could have gone worse; they’d been due to replace the training equipment anyhow, even as Thancred realized what Zaya had broken was really just a sack of sand dangling from chains attached to the ceiling that was almost certainly Hoary Boulder's doing. Alphinaud had certainly been hinting at it an awful lot, and now he had his excuse.

Thancred, on the other hand, was now scrambling for one of his own, now that Zaya's full attention was on him with its usual intensity, undulled even by the late hour. He could only tell they were looking at him by the glow of their limbal rings, the faint silvery blue light shifting as they raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue as awkward seconds marched past.

Ye gods, he should have thought this through.

“Nice and early morning we’re having,” he said, feeling terribly foolish before something better came to mind. “Feel up to sparring? A continuation to our last round.”

Zaya tipped their head to the side as they considered his offer, eyes closed, and Thancred took the chance to finish his drink. Not his best suggestion, seeing as he was trying to keep them from reinjuring themselves, but before the Scions had come to Mor Dhona and Zaya started to spend most of their nights camping beneath the glow of the Crystal Tower, they’d set the precedent. It had been a distraction then, too, the positions reversed; Zaya throwing down the metaphorical gauntlet by dragging him to the training mats they hadn’t yet put away instead of leaving him to his own devices. 

Thancred hoped he would be passable distraction; considering the state Zaya was in, it was highly unlikely, but he was always willing to be a bit reckless with his wellbeing if it aided them.

The silence between them stretched on as he waited for their response, long enough that Thancred began to wonder if he’d crossed an invisible line, but the moment he set his now-empty glass back onto the counter with a soft click Zaya’s eyes reopened, brighter. They beckoned him farther into the shadows, and he pushed off the bar to follow, ignoring the way their expression soured when they inevitably caught a glimpse of the bottle left out on the bar.

There was an assortment of training weapons scattered about, haphazardly abandoned by exhausted Scions, but Thancred pulled out his own two blades as he stepped onto the mat, flipping one into the air. “I trust you have no objections to my choice of arms? ‘Tis only to equal the odds,” he said, smiling faintly when he caught their eyes on him.

Zaya shrugged as they pulled off the reinforced gloves they were wearing and tossed them aside, which was about as much answer he was going to get. Thancred sent a small prayer up to Nald’thal to keep his hands steady (who was probably not the deity to ask, but after spending so long in Ul’dah it was pure instinct) and widened his stance when Zaya kicked off their sandals and stepped onto the other side of the mat.

“Last one on their feet wins,” Thancred called out, bracing himself. They smiled in return, tipping their head in acknowledgement as the air between them seemed to crackle—

And in a blink of an eye, there they were, not a fulm away from him with their fist narrowly missing his side.

He’d learned the hard way last time that blocking Zaya’s punches was a quick and easy way to end up with cracked ribs and bruises that lasted for days, futile in the same way an Eorzean shield was when faced with dragonfire, or levin breath; the way he sparred with them now was more of a dance, especially in the way he had to avoid stepping on their toes. They swung for his face, and he leaned back just far enough to see the faint levinlight that crackled between their knuckles, the sharp scent of ozone filling his lungs as he returned the favor by aiming for Zaya’s hip with the hilt of his dagger. 

He was lucky to graze them a few times, a thin line of red along skin or a scratch across the surface of midnight blue scale, but as the bout went on Zaya only got quicker, smiling wider when Thancred began to stumble to keep up with them.

Playing it safe wasn’t going to cut it now. He’d just have to filch a couple of potions for the two of them afterwards, to keep the healers off their backs.

Thancred shifted his weight off his back foot and forwards, and swung upwards towards the side of Zaya’s throat in the same moment that they stopped badgering him and took aim at his face. In that moment, he flinched, feeling the rush of air coming towards him before he could clench his jaw and hopefully keep himself from biting his tongue—

Only to feel the light press of Zaya’s knuckles, rough and warm, against his cheek.

Thancred opened his eyes, surprised, and found the blade of his dagger pressed featherlight against the scales on the side of Zaya’s throat, their arm crossed over his in its path to reach him. 

His eyes flicked upwards from their throat to meet theirs, the blue of their irises flickering with something electric as they grinned at him, no sign of their looming shadows. He returned their grin with one of his own, feeling lightheaded from the thrill, only for it to fall when he felt something curling around his ankle—

And then he fell, his leg pulled out from under him and into a front split when the toes of Thancred’s caligae failed to keep a grip on the mat under his weight. 

“Seven ‘ells,” he croaked, a weak reprise of his exclamation earlier.  Zaya’s tail uncoiled from his ankle as they grinned madly above him, hands resting on their hips.

Thancred supposed they hadn’t set any rules for their little spar besides staying on your feet, but somehow using an appendage your partner didn’t have felt like cheating. He wasn’t even aware their tail was that prehensile.

“Feeling better now that you’ve knocked me on my arse, I see,” he huffed, already plotting his next move as Zaya gave a breathless wheeze; at least they were enjoying this. “Mind helping a poor man up?”

He held out a hand to them as he gingerly moved his legs, kicking his dropped daggers away when his knees stopped protesting at the sudden strain. When they’d finally managed to stop laughing in their usual near-soundless fashion, they stepped back and took his hand in both of their bandaged ones, heaving as if Thancred were heavy as a Roegadyn. Whatever expression he gave in response sent them back into laughter.

Thancred took that opportunity to tug back, thinking to send them tumbling down with him, but all he accomplished was cutting their joy short when a sudden panic overtook them, feet digging into the mat beneath them. Wild-eyed and no longer smiling, they looked down at him, shocked still on the ground.

Right. The Whorleater. Leviathan knocking Zaya off-balance and into the sea with a forgotten splash.

He scrambled to let go of Zaya’s hand, wincing when the bandages wrapped around their right hand came loose to reveal the scar they’d earned saving him from Lahabrea’s grasp. “I apologize,” Thancred said, the sudden guilt of both his foolishness and seeing the scar his weakness had caused setting the alcohol in his stomach alight. “I fear I got carried away, it wasn’t my intent to—”

He cut himself off when Zaya chose to sit down beside him, their feet still faced in the opposite direction of his when they lowered themselves to the floor. Their tail wound its way around their waist as they folded their legs up, knees hiding the curve of their mouth from Thancred’s sight but not their eyes, still worriedly darting between him and a spot on the floor behind him. Unsure of what to say, Thancred raised a hand up to rub the back of his neck sheepishly.

When would he stop making things worse, he wondered idly, looking down at his lap. Certainly didn’t look to be anytime soon. 

A few minutes passed before he mustered up the courage to set his right hand down beside the curve of their tail as it looped over their waist, his knuckles just barely brushing against the ridges. Thancred wasn’t sure how much Zaya could feel it, if at all, but the movement caught their fleeting attention and returned it to him.

“For what it’s worth,” he said haltingly, voice low and solemn, “I would have caught you if you fell, just now.”

It was a remarkably weak attempt at smoothing things over, even for him, and it was like to earn him a black eye. Zaya’s next move, however, was not one of anger or fear; instead, they reached down to take his hand in theirs again, fingers wrapping around the side of his hand as they grasped his thumb, hand too small to envelop any more than that. Without the bandages, he felt the rough texture of their scarred skin, how stark the difference was to the rest of their palm.

The pit in his stomach deepened. They’d done plenty good for him, and here he was, unable to return it.

He looked back up to meet their eyes, curious, and found them smiling. “I kn’w,” they said, voice rough with disuse; it sounded just the same as when he’d woken up for the first time in months alone in his body. “Thank y’u.”

Thancred’s throat was tight when he opened his mouth to respond, but still he strived for levity. “I was only returning the favor—or, at least, trying to. Hardly deserving of thanks, especially after such a poor ending.”

Zaya shook their head, and it was only then that he noticed they’d taken their hair out of its tight ponytail, leaving it to fall in slight waves down their back. “Thank you,” they repeated, a little louder with the space between them lessened. Firmer, even, as if they were forcing him to take their gratitude.

Well, far be it for him to make the night any more difficult. He squeezed their hand in return and leaned his cheek lightly against the top of their head. The smell of ozone still danced in the air, the candlelight flickering with an invisible wind as the hour ticked onwards, growing ever later. He needed to put away the mead bottle and wash his glass, and Zaya needed to do something about the hole they’d put in Hoary’s sandbag, but for now they could sit here and wait out the long night together.

“Of course,” he answered. “Any time.”

[fistsoflightning]

still anything i can do

ffxivwrite2022 08: tepid (make-up day entry) adj. marked by an absence of enthusiasm or conviction.

thancred & zaya. bad end(ish) continuation to this 2021 fill. 1824 wc. general lightwarden body horror cw, mostly for the last third.

Feo Ul leads them through the palace halls like he and Ryne are sightseeing, pointing out stained glass windows the pixies have changed to show leafmen instead of knights and little glowing mushrooms growing in corners courtesy of the Nu Mou each time Ryne’s eyes catch on a stray crystal or feather swept into a shadow. Every turn, a new sight, the palace dressed lavishly in brilliant oranges and spring greens and sky blues to hide the Light festering within; each grand sweep of their arm redirects Ryne’s anxious fidgeting into awe and reveals to Thancred another sign of what happened as Feo Ul fought to seal Norvrandt’s last Lightwarden away. Scorch marks on the walls behind their wings, the suggestion of hands clawing at the doorframes hidden behind vines.

He owes them a thousand times over—for taking initiative and spiriting Zaya away when he hesitated, for locking them away while the rest of them chased after Emet-Selch, and especially for what he and Ryne are about to try.

(If they even survive it—)

Eventually the King leads them to a halt in front of a grand set of doors, held shut by flowering ivory branches and violet vines, all their flowers a soft, glowing blue. The doors themselves are cracked, standing by virtue of fae magicks, and the air here is lukewarm when the rest of the palace is warm from the midday sun; Ryne steps forward and reaches toward a flower, flinching away the instant her fingers brush against a petal.

“They’re corrupted,” she whispers, unbearably loud in the silence of the palace. Feo Ul hovers closer to the floor as Ryne turns, hands nervously clasped around each other. “Are these vines binding them?”

Feo Ul smiles, the sad curve of their lips ill-fitting for one of their kind. “Though they knew what was happening, my poor beloved sapling was not so keen on being locked away,” they say, turning the palm of their hand towards Ryne until the scratches and bites lining their arm are apparent. “I was worried that, had I left them to roam freely, they would chew and claw their way through the palace walls, and so with a heavy heart I bound them in the room with the best view of the sky.”

Thancred catches himself before he begins to imagine it, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from slipping into what-ifs, but Ryne does not have the same fortitude; she gasps, then immediately clasps her hands over her mouth when a mournful trill echoes out from the cracks in the door, skin turning white from how hard she presses her fingers into it.

When the sound stops, and Ryne lowers her hands from her mouth, her voice comes out somber, horrified. “They don’t deserve to be trapped in there,” Ryne mumbles, tears gathering in her eyes when she turns to him; he reaches for her shoulder and gently pulls her closer. “If only I—I could have…”

“‘Tis not your fault, I promise. I know you did everything you could to help them,” Thancred says, for lack of better words, and runs his hand down her hair in what he hopes is a soothing motion. He looks up to Feo Ul, still towering over him and Ryne as they sit on the ground. “Will you allow us in?”

The King hesitates, eyes narrowing as they appraise him. “Your kind cannot float nor fly as I can,” they say carefully. “My precious flower is quite sensitive to sound, as they are now. Mere footsteps may be enough to reignite their frenzy.”

Thancred’s brow furrows, remembering the ruins Zaya had made of their Pendants room, blinded by pain. He can’t imagine it’s grown much better with time, or with their transformation, especially if Feo Ul feared that Zaya would tear down all of Lyhe Ghiah to escape with only their teeth and claws.

He looks down at Ryne; she’s still sniffling, but no longer looks as if she might begin sobbing if he were to step away.

“I’ll go in, and you stay here with Feo Ul, alright?”

Ryne whips her head up immediately with a determined gaze. “I—I have the Blessing of Light,” she says, voice still unsteady as she wipes the tears from her face. Her newfound bravery make him proud and nauseous all at once. “And I can push the Light back, too, so it should be—”

“None of that will matter if Zaya snaps again.” 

Ryne flinches, averting her eyes to stare at the palace tile; a low rumble emanates through the door. Thancred bites his cheek until he tastes iron, realizing what he’s done.

“I’m sorry for raising my voice,” Thancred says, his tongue heavy. He kneels down to look Ryne in the eyes, even as she looks between her feet, and gently squeezes her shoulder. “I know you want to help, but I have more practice walking quietly, and if I draw their ire I can handle it until Feo Ul rebinds them.”

Please let me do this for you, he doesn’t say. I can’t lose you too.

Hesitantly, Ryne looks back up at him, her lips pressed into a thin line and her hands gripped tight in the skirt of her dress. “Okay,” she says, “but you have to come back. You have to.”

Thancred gives her his most reassuring smile, though he fears the dark circles beneath his eyes don’t quite inspire confidence. “Promise. We can get coffee biscuits when we return to the Crystarium.”

Ryne sniffles, nods quickly twice, and pulls the small pouches out from her dress pockets to hand over to him; their contents clink and clatter as he grips them. If Ryne and Y’shtola are right, then these are the key to freeing Zaya from their suffering, and to banishing the last bit of everlasting light from Norvrandt for good. 

If they aren’t…

Thancred shakes his head, pocketing the sachets. “I’m ready,” he says to Feo Ul, standing back up and straightening out his coat. Ryne steps back and reaches for their hand, watching him like he might simply dissipate into thin air.

Feo Ul nods, and rises, regal and proud as they raise their scepter to the door. “Then I shall unbar your way,” they say. “Yet know this: the doors must be closed behind you.”

Thancred’s brow knits in concern. “How will I return?”

They sigh exaggeratedly. “Silly mortal. Your kind is so forgetful, but surely you remember how I was—and still am!—a brilliant branch for all my saplings. ‘Tis simple to do the same for you.”

In a smooth motion, Feo Ul taps their scepter against one of the largest branches; in response, the vines untangle and the branches recede enough for the doors to swing open a crack. The light coming from inside is far brighter than evening sunlight, Thancred notes.

“Simply return to these doors, call my name, and answer my question when I appear. Then shall I throw wide the doors, to take a page from our [friend of crystal] and his books.”

Thancred, despite himself, groans in exasperations. “Great. Pixie riddles.”

Still, he couldn’t deny it was a clever failsafe, if not an ominous one. No point in letting him out if he’d gone in and been turned. He stepped through the small gap between the doors, and turned back once he was through to look at Ryne, at how her knuckles had gone white where they were grasping Feo Ul’s fingers.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promises, and then the doors swing shut once more with a thud.

As soon as they do, a low warble echoes from behind him, questioning, a rustle of something soft following it. Thancred takes a moment to adjust his footing—the floor is uneven, covered in vines and small crystals—and braces himself before he turns.

Thancred still flinches when he sees them, a small noise of surprise escaping his mouth.

Zaya’s six wings rustle at the noise, immobile in the web of vines Feo Ul has woven to trap them in and larger than Thancred himself. Storge, according to Urianger, had taken a elemental-like form, and Zaya’s own seems to have followed suit; they are little more than their head and the upper third or so of their torso, with their arms shattered off at the elbow. The rest is the crystals entangled in the vines that string across the room and around the pillars, sometimes coming together to form a detached forearm that doesn’t fit with the ruins of Zaya’s original ones. A golden, four-pointed star is tangled in the hollow of where Zaya’s ribcage should be, pulsing with light in the facsimile of a heartbeat.

He steps further into the room, gritting his teeth when he hears something crack underfoot. Feo Ul’s magic must have influenced their form—Zaya’s flesh has become a kaleidoscope of color, vibrant beneath the white and gold shell of their skin. With each step he takes the air grows a little colder, a little thinner, up until he is standing before Zaya and his breath is making visible clouds in the air.

A songbird trapped in a diremite’s web, he thinks when they makes another noise that, if Thancred were looking away, he might have mistaken for a birdcall.

“It’s good to see you again,” he says despite better judgment, swallowing past the lump in his throat to keep his voice low and kind. Their left horn is missing entirely, and the right hardly looks any better, the blue crystal in it gifted to them by Minfilia bleaching white. “Is it me, or have you grown taller?”

Zaya blinks at him, face void of their habitual smile, as if he is only talking to a statue with their face. Thancred inhales, letting the frigid air clear his mind.

“Found something for you while I was away,” he says.

Several bunches of vines around the room snap. Thancred tenses, reaching for his gunblade to fend off whatever’s coming towards him, but the crystals never touch him; instead, they gather together before Zaya until they reform into the remainders of their arms, hands cupped together and stretched towards him.

Thancred reaches out, gently tracing the palm of the right hand with his fingers, where their skin colder than ice. No scrapes or scars remain, besides the gilded cracks where the separate crystals come together—not even the one from Lahabrea’s Crystal of Darkness.

These are not their hands, but it will do. 

He carefully reaches into his pockets for the sachets and pours them out, one by one, until all the auracite they’d collected after defeating Emet-Selch is piled in Zaya’s grasp. Gently, Thancred coaxes their stiff fingers to curl over the top of it.

Thancred looks up to meet Zaya’s many golden eyes, still staring at him. Through him, almost.

“Go on,” he whispers. “Feast.”

Beneath his freezing palms, the crystalline hands crush the pile into dust

[fistsoflightning]

the best defense

ffxivwrite2022 07: pawn n. a chess piece of the smallest size and value.

thancred & zaya. post 6.0. 630 wc.

In Thancred's defense, the battle he was fighting was a terribly straightforward one, with no room for any of his usual tricks that might see him gain the upper hand elsewhere. He was doing an admirable job of holding his ground despite the handicap on his abilities.

Zaya still took a judgemental sip of their hot apple cider as Izumi advanced his knight to take another pawn.

"Come now, Waters," Izumi taunted, not looking up from his book as he set Thancred's pawn down on the table. "I know you played better than this before."

"Excuse me for not practicing my chess skills while I was off saving the godsdamned world," Thancred grumbled. He glared at his pieces as if they might reveal their secrets before his scrutiny.

Obviously they hadn't, Zaya thought a few moments later, equal parts amused and frustrated as Thancred hesitantly moved his rook instead of his bishop. 

Eorzean chess was not so different from the Malqir's game of Kharaqiq—save that Kharaqiq was played on a circular board with fewer spaces, and frequently with three players instead of two—which Zaya had played enough as a child to see the gaps in Izumi's side of the board. Most of the pieces Izumi had taken were pawns, yet he had left the one closest to reaching his side in a stalemate with a pawn of his own.

One right in the path of Thancred's bishop.

Zaya might have screamed, if it wouldn't wreck their sore throat more than the cold weather had and they weren’t seated in the middle of the Last Stand. That play alone wouldn’t get Thancred to checkmate, but it would be a far sight better than continuing to play defensively while Izumi kept pushing forwards with his knights. 

Thancred’s colleague continued to do just that as Zaya watched with a clenched fist. “I’m quite serious. This is abysmal, even for you,” Izumi said. Thancred groaned as he set down his coffee cup, still not looking fully awake. It was beyond Zaya why they were playing chess before noon, but here they all were anyways.

“Thank you, I’m quite aware.” 

Thancred reached out to move another one of his pieces, but before he could set his fingers on any one in particular Zaya bat his hand out of the way and slid his bishop into the damn pawn.

Izumi blinked, finally looking up from his book as his pawn rolled off the chessboard and onto the table.

“An interesting development,” he said, setting down his book to move his rook only for Zaya to take that, too. “I wasn’t aware you played chess.”

They smiled, briefly flashing the points of their teeth, before looking back at Thancred with a tilt of their head. 

“Go for it,” he said, despite the surprise apparent in his expression. A familiar flicker of curiosity glimmered in his eyes, but whatever questions Thancred had about their sudden show of proficiency were left unspoken as Zaya turned back to the board.

The game, thank Nhaama, went much faster than it had when Thancred was playing. It wasn’t long before Zaya tipped over the ivory queen with their knight, king surrounded.

Thancred leaned over their shoulder to peer at the board, giving voice to what they couldn’t say. “There you have it. Checkmate, Izumi.”

"Don’t look so pleased,” the Raen said easily, leaning back in his chair. “Your partner saved your arse.”

"It would not be the first time," Thancred sighed, sounding far more present now that he’d the chance to finish his coffee. He leaned over to drape his arm across their back and  gently kissing the curve of their horn. “Thank you for saving my dignity, bluebird.”

Zaya blushed, hiding behind their hands as Izumi started laughing across the table.

[fistsoflightning]

peripeteia

ffxivwrite2022 16: deiform adj. conforming to the nature of God; having the form of a god.

hermes & a visitor (?). 6.0 87 MSQ spoilers, but pre-sundering. 387 wc.

Working as the chief overseer of Elpis came with a wide variety of everchanging hazards, especially considering the latest trend of creators giving their creations power that left them ill-suited for life in Elpis or their star, to Hermes’ great dismay. The creatures themselves had done no wrong, but the wills and ambitions of their creators often led to their doom in the eyes of his fellow observers. Just today one man’s attempt to improve the hippe nearly led to the deaths of two observers and a handful of poor gryps, leaving Hermes to call aid from the warders in Pandemonium when it would not be contained, and then the lotis had to be relocated to Misopses Euros for their tendencies to blow the petalouda (and concerned observers) away.

He would admit that he had been exhausted by the day’s events, but perhaps Hermes should have been a bit more cautious in his evaluation of one of the latest concepts to make it to his desk; it seemed today was divined to be a rather blustery sort of day in Elpis.

The first thought to pass through Hermes' mind as he flew off the side of the Mourning Dew was this fellow's sneezes are certainly nothing to… sneeze at, shortly followed by I should transform soon ere I meet ground, but this is rather peaceful, and then finally that shadow diving towards me doesn't look like any of the avian creations I’ve approved for review.

Even if they had shared an appearance with any other creation beyond a passing resemblance, they were diving far faster than any bird he knew to be in Elpis, their tail fluttering in the wind their nosedive created.

Then the distance between him and the shadow closed, and Hermes squinted against the light of the beacon overhead, startled and fascinated in equal measure; though they had wings, whatever—or, instead, whoever was diving towards him bore a black mask, and a robe. Their neck, arms, and legs were mottled with the same deep black and blue feathers that made up their wings, talons sharp as they reached out for him as golden eyes widened behind their mask.

Reminded that he was still falling, Hermes reached up with the hand not keeping his mask from sailing away, and grabbed the hand offered to him.

[fistsoflightning]

the deed is done

ffxivwrite2022 09: yawn v. to open the mouth wide and take a deep breath usually as an involuntary reaction to fatigue or boredom.

thancred & zaya. 6.0 MSQ, post lvl-83 duty. 499 wc.

Zaya was barely standing by the time Thancred found them again, not out of injury but exhaustion. Magnai's axe bore most of their weight as they leaned forwards to press both their hands and forehead against the craggy pommel, their attention fixed between sleepy blinks on how the trickle of blood that remained on the axe blade had left a bright red pinprick in the snow.

It wasn't Zenos' blood, but the truth was far less pleasant than the lie—one Zaya was too drained to protest.

"Hey."

Zaya jolted as Thancred laid one of his hands atop theirs, incandescently warm compared to their freezing fingers. They shook off the pull of sleep to open their eyes and lift their head, and found Thancred kneeling at their side to better place himself in their line of sight. He smiled, damnably bright for the late hour, and squeezed their hands in his.

"I understand the nap earlier wasn't near enough for you to be rested," he said, "but there are better places to sleep than standing outside the infirmary in the cold, you know. Like our tent."

Lucia had said something similar, before she stepped into the building behind them to get her answers from Urianger and Y’shtola, but the last bell or so was stubbornly hazy in their memory. Along the same general line at least: rest, and somewhere warmer.

Zaya shook their head and stood up straight, waiting for Thancred to follow suit. “Waiting,” they croaked, doing their best to speak clearly through the limitations of their own voice. “T’ say sorry.”

Thancred frowned slightly. “What for?”

Their expression twisted. Where should they start—the immediate suspicion Zaya had upon seeing her come over the hill, or the crack of her ribs when they swung the Scale of the Father too hard? Both seemed equally terrible, in their eyes.

“For tonight,” they said eventually, their hands gripping the pommel harder. It was the simplest explanation.

Thancred blinked. “Unless you helped Zenos or Fandaniel, there’s naught you need to apologize for,” he said, reaching down to tug Magnai’s axe aside and lean it on the nearby crates. “Call it a hunch, but I think she’ll be far more grateful you stopped Zenos than upset about whatever it is you’re thinking.”

Hands now emptied, Zaya reached out to grasp Thancred’s wrist. “‘ow do y’u guess?”

“She’s not the only Scion to have been puppeteered,” he answered, not bitterly like he might have done years ago. He stepped a little closer, pulled back lightly on their arm until they had tipped towards his pauldronless shoulder. “I promise it only seems so terrible because you’re running on fumes, Zaya.”

They weren’t so sure about that, but they leaned their forehead against his shoulder with a sigh anyways. “Still wan’ to ‘pologize,” they murmured, eyelids growing heavy now that they were being shielded from the cold wind.

“Later,” he said. “For now, rest. I’m sure your apology will come out better when you’re well rested.”

[fistsoflightning]

walk forth

ffxivwrite2022 26: break a leg fig. a theatrical way of wishing someone good luck, as saying ‘good luck’ is considered to bring about the opposite. or, y’know, literally breaking a leg.

zaya & thancred. post-6.0 MSQ. 389 wc.

Despite the Scions’ best efforts to keep them comfortable, Zaya was starting to feel more like a particularly special log than a living, breathing person. There was only so much in their Annex room to look at from where they were trapped in bed before they started to feel twitchy and restless, much to the dismay of whoever Krile stuck with them to make sure they didn’t try to get up despite their injuries.

At least no one tried to stick them in one of those horrible-looking wheelchairs. Whoever designed the ones in the style Arenvald had been using before clearly thought the people who needed them hadn’t suffered enough already, and they definitely weren’t designed for people with tails. Zaya had feared Alisaie was about to try anyways when she left in a huff earlier after their latest attempt to roll out of bed—only for her to return dragging Thancred behind her by the wrist, the bird-that-might-be-Meteion sitting calmly on his shoulder.

Zaya had to commend her for her thinking, at least; if any of the Scions were more prepared to deal with them being a little shite, it was Thancred. Bonus: he was far more willing to rearrange their pillows so they could lay down on their side instead of on their back and tail, regardless of how many times he looked down at their legs with a furrowed brow.

He looked again over the top of his novel when they reached over to get maybe-Meteion to hop over from his lap onto their open hand, slipping in his bookmark and closing it when Zaya glanced back up at him curiously. 

“I assume you haven’t been successful in escaping thus far,” he said, drumming his fingers atop his knees.

Zaya grumbled in response, mushing the side of their face into their pillow. Being unable to walk did tend to make that harder, even without Alisaie setting a pile of heavy pillows on top of them just to make sure.

Thancred smiled, setting his book down on the table beside the bed. “Well, I’d hate to completely ignore the advice of Krile and the other chirurgeons,” he mused, “but I think some sun and a little time out of bed might be in order.”

Zaya frowned, and then sputtered as Thancred carefully lifted them up into his arms.

[fistsoflightning]

the wind on high

ffxivwrite2022 19: turn a blind eye fig. to pretend not to see something; to ignore something that you know is wrong.

zaya & ardbert. 5.0 MSQ spoilers. 804 wc.

The 'Exarch' hasn't done anything worthy of shoving him off the cliff, Zaya reminded themselves as they frustratedly sorted their collection of gemstones out into two piles, separating the heart-worthy ones from the ones too small for use in their mega-Talos. You can't kill him just for being a piece of dzo shite.

Except he had (at least, in Zaya's humble opinion), and they could, just that it wouldn't be terribly heroic of them to shove the Crystarium's leader off a several malm long drop.

"If you need more reasons to consider not committing murder of an important ally," Ardbert drawled over their shoulder, "how about 'your chosen sister is clearly harboring feelings, even after gods know how long'?"

Zaya scoffed and ducked their head to avoid Ryne's curious gaze before they scowled back at the ghostly warrior. They'd been making more of an effort to talk to him since returning from Nabaath Areng and resolving the whole ordeal between them, Thancred, and Minfilia—along with everyone else, but that was besides the point—but Ardbert was a lot snarkier than they'd been expecting. Which was fair, because unlike everyone else he had a running commentary of Zaya's thoughts as they dealt with everything shoved onto their rickety mental bridge of wellbeing, much to both of their dismay. Still—dick move.

Ardbert raised his hands in defeat. "Alright, fine, no advice from the peanut gallery," he said, which made Zaya wonder what nuts had to do with anything. "Still, isn't offing the man a tad harsh when all he did was talk to you yesterday?"

They ran their thumb over the smooth face of a piece of aquamarine they'd cut the other day as they remembered, jaw clenched. If it was just a talk, maybe—but then the Exarch spoke of adventures with old friends who showed him the way forwards and the eternal winds sweeping across the land and Zaya nearly reached over to rip his stupid hood off then and there.

If he was going to try and pretend himself a stranger to their faces, G'raha Tia might have at least tried harder to hide. Lunya had known him by voice, and Hanami by both the sight of the Tower behind him upon arriving and his claim as its keeper, but if he was going to start dropping phrases from the song he had them play accompaniment to on their morin khuur then what was the fucking point anymore.

"And there's the look I get whenever I ask any one of you damn bastards about him!" Ardbert exclaimed, crossing his arms. "If you don't have some manner of convoluted history with him I'll eat my axe," he continued, and then he lowered his voice to ask, "Is this another one of those things you'd rather I'd not push in case of random memories coming to light where you'd prefer they didn't, or…?"

It occurred briefly to Zaya that their best choice would probably be to take their good gemstones to Y'shtola and walk away from this mess of a topic, because it wasn't even an easy one like when they'd told Ardbert to stop prying for information on Thancred and Minfilia. And yet...

G'raha Tia, despite all irritations and mistakes, was their dear friend. They would have toppled the entirety of the Crystal Tower's defenses ten times over to have him back.

But the man that tore away all the Scions from the Source, the man who called them just in time to give Zenos' body an opening to strike and who told them all the only way to save the First was to slay the Lightwardens at risk of becoming one themselves wasn't G'raha Tia. He was the Exarch, leader of the Crystarium and summoner of the Crystal Tower, either because he couldn't or didn't want to be anyone else.

Zaya didn't want to know which one it was, even if it meant living a lie, because at least there was hope in uncertainty. Neither the thought that G'raha had forgotten them or was using them callously had to be true if Zaya chose to pretend there was some inscrutable third reason for him to pretend he knew not their names or faces.

"Suit yourself," Ardbert sighed when it was clear how hard Zaya was trying to focus on not letting anything slip through to him. "I just hope all this secrecy's not about to blow up in your faces again. It's plenty clear to me that you've all suffered more than enough already, even without the weight of the Light."

Zaya sighed, picking up another cut and polished gemstone and holding it up to the light. The ruby between their fingers shimmered in the light of the everbrilliant sky that peered through the cracks of the roof, free of flaws.

They hoped so too.

[fistsoflightning]

bereft of hearth and home

ffxivwrite2022 24: vicissitudes n. a negative event or circumstance that is common to a particular setting or situation and is usually beyond one’s control.

zaya-centric. 2.3 MSQ. 485 wc. (slight format change b/c life is beating my ass lmao)

Stonesthrow was already a mess by the time Zaya stumbled out from the Gate of Nald’s shadow readjusting their turban and mask, which was a shame; the camp had been looking slightly better when they had visited before the Scions’ move to Mor Dhona, and now it was in ruins. Not much worse than what some merchants had done on their way into the city, though.

It was still a little baffling, how far some people were willing to go in order to drive the divide between those with gil and those who had none. At least Alphinaud wasn’t here to make some snide remark on top of it all.

Zaya stepped around the collapsed tents and canopies carefully, picking their way over to the Brass Blades still harassing the refugees. The mask with the turban wasn’t their best idea, with the metal frame that didn’t fit their face quite right and the stupid pinholes they couldn’t see that well out of, but it was what Zaya could find in a short timeframe, and without their eyes visible no one seemed to recognize them immediately. Putting their hair in braids instead of a ponytail and the lack of blue in their outfit probably helped, but Zaya wasn’t about to ask what it was that made them blend into the crowd, even with their horns and tail.

They tapped the shoulder of the highlander Blade standing at the edge of the crowd once they’d gotten closer, squinting at the insignia coin tassel dangling from her turban when she turned; it glimmered too much in the midafternoon sunlight to see the flower of her unit, so instead Zaya quickly reached up to grasp it. She was polite enough to let them—that, or she’d recognized the Flames’ Bloodsworn harness from beneath the billowy linen of Zaya’s shirt.

A balsam engraving greeted them from the shadow of their palm, which at least meant she was supposed to be here, assuming she was on guard shift. They let her insignia tassel go and tapped her back twice when she didn’t straighten up immediately.

“If you’re here t’ take over,” she said carefully, which confirmed what had kept her from leveraging her status over Zaya, “th’ Blades who started this mess are Gerbera, and that one’s their captain.”

She jerked her head over in the direction of a lalafell, who was flanked by two taller Blades as he approached some of the cowering refugees.

Zaya cleared their throat and took a deep breath. “Blades started?” they asked roughly, shoving down the climbing panic from having to use their voice with a complete stranger.

The highlander paused, as if she hadn’t heard them quite clearly, and then nodded. “Swear on my life an’ blade,” she said. “I’m one of the lucky Ala Mhigans, sure, but I’m not ‘bout to turn my back on the rest of us by arresting them on suspicion.”

[fistsoflightning]

ABOUT FFXIVWRITE | FILLS TAG

total word count: 19567 words longest fill: cross (3175 words) shortest fill: confluence (253 words)

/playdead... ‘tis done! i finished 4 more fills than i did last year, iirc, which i am going to take as a w b/c the planets went gatorade like halfway through the month & almost took me out, which may explain the amount of wolcred i wrote this year lmao. i’d like to come back to a bunch of these & expand - the fills for tepid, attrition, deiform, vicissitudes, and fuse, mostly - so plfti in the hopefully near but probably distant future??

01. CROSS | perfect balance thancred/zaya | 2.2 | implied alcoholism cw | 3175 wc. zaya and thancred have a late-night spar.

02. BOLT | stardew fantasy tehra’ir & valdis | post 6.0, no-real-spoilers MSQ mention | 719 wc. tehra’ir and valdis are on the hunt for a thief. in their beachwear.

03. TEMPER | how hard could it be valdis & alisaie, minor lumelle/alisaie | nebulously 5.1 | 336 wc. alisaie tries to temper chocolate. valdis is just here for the show.

04. FREE DAY ✧ ASSIDUOUS | forge ahead zaya & a’dewah, minor thancred/zaya | 6.0 end of MSQ spoilers | 985 wc. a’dewah continues to pick up the pieces of his friends after every adventure.

06. ONEROUS | old burdens elidi-themis & atalanta | 6.0 4th area MSQ spoilers | 2353 wc. themis and atalanta, before and after the sundering.

07. PAWN | the best defense minor thancred/zaya | post 6.0 no spoilers | 630 wc. zaya helps thancred out on the checkered battlefield of chess.

08. TEPID | still anything i can do thancred/zaya | lightwarden bad-ish end AU | body horror cw | 1823 wc. thancred goes to visit the last lightwarden.

09. YAWN | the deed is done minor thancred/zaya | 6.0 post lv. 83 duty iykyk | 499 wc. there's something zaya needs to do before they sleep. thancred disagrees.

10. CHANNEL | home point zaya-centric | between 2.2 - 2.5 | 1057 wc. zaya hasn’t been able to attune since the calamity.

12. MISS THE BOAT | end of the world who? lunya & zaya | pre-endwalker/very first quest | 836 wc. there's no better time for fishing than the present, even if it makes you miss the boat to sharlayan to stop the apocalypse!

13. CONFLUENCE | testing in progress thancred/zaya | early 6.0 MSQ, pre 1st dungeon | 253 wc. good ol aetherial sickness strikes again. (6.0 thavnair branch spoilers)

14. ATTRITION | let it all be said thancred/zaya | 6.0 lv. 85 - 86 MSQ | 1582 wc. thancred and zaya have one last conversation before they’re a world apart (again).

16. DEIFORM | peripeteia hermes & “a visitor” | 6.0 lv. 87 MSQ spoilers | 387 wc. when a sneeze sends the chief overseer flying, a visitor is out to save the day.

17. NOVEL | stories told along the way haruki/a’dewah | post 6.0, no spoilers | 561 wc. a’dewah gets a delivery of novels in exchange for being mortally embarrassed.

19. TURN A BLIND EYE | the wind on high zaya & ardbert, zaya & g’raha | 5.0 lv. 88 - 89 MSQ | 804 wc. ardbert lends an ear to zaya’s troubles for lack of a way to not do that.

24. VICISSITUDES | bereft of hearth and home zaya-centric | 2.3 MSQ | 485 wc. the refugees outside ul’dah have it hard. zaya would know, having lived with them.

26. BREAK A LEG | walk forth thancred/zaya | post 6.0 MSQ | 389 wc. when zaya’s bedridden, the scions shouldn’t completely trust thancred to keep them from escaping.

27. HAIL | find your way zaya-centric, zaya & sadu | pre-calamity steppe, lv. 65 dungeon | 873 wc. zaya’s echo wakes seven years before the calamity.

29. FUSE | light up the dark zaya & g’raha | post 5.0, quest ‘for every child a star’ | 583 wc. g’raha recruits zaya to help with katliss’ fireworks show.

30. SOJOURN | wherever the wind blows thancred/zaya | nebulously post 6.0 | 1237 wc. thancred and zaya have a nice dinner at the quicksand before they set out on a new adventure.

[fistsoflightning]

wherever the wind blows

ffxivwrite2022 30: sojourn n. a temporary stay.

zaya & thancred. sometime nebulously post-6.0. 1237 wc.

To Zaya’s knowledge, the Quicksand had never seen a slow day or night since Momodi stepped up behind the bar, but tonight in particular seemed especially busy. If the two of them hadn’t known the proprietor personally, there wouldn’t have been seats open at the bar, thanks to all the new adventuring hopefuls coming to Ul’dah in part thanks to the Rising; Momodi had called over one of her waitresses when she saw them walk through the doors, Thancred on their heels, and had her save one of the tables being cleared while she beckoned them over for a bit of conversation. She didn’t even bat an eye at the bluebird taking a seat of her own in the ceiling fountain’s greenery, diving in just before the doors closed behind them.

Of course it was to bend their ears—or horns, which made little sense physically speaking but Zaya wasn’t versed enough in Eorzean phrases to bother with finding one that made more sense. A few tales about saving the star (and one attempt at wrangling any ‘romantic developments’ from them) was well worth the table near the central fountain, at least in their opinion. Thancred seemed less appreciative of the near-interrogation, but not enough to say it to Momodi’s face, or to them as she shooed them away to their table with a small platter and a leveplate.

“Looks fairly interesting,” Thancred said, reading the details as Zaya took the plate of various breads, meats, cheeses, and spreads out of his other hand and set it on the table. “Any adventurer’s bread and butter—investigating ‘strange phenomena in a recently unearthed ruins out in Western Thanalan’, with payment to follow the clearing of said phenomena along with some of the treasure found within.”

Zaya smiled wistfully as they popped a cracker into their mouth, if a bit confused. It did sound like something they would have done as a job, before Minfilia managed to rope them into the Scions proper; delving into ruins to clear the way for some manner of archaeologist, researcher, or gil-grubbing merchant willing to pay a fortune to have first choice of some age-old relics, diving headfirst into danger only because it would mean exploring somewhere brilliantly new without regard for safety. 

What it didn’t explain was why Momodi had handed it to the two of them personally, rather than let the levemete handle seeking the talent required to fulfill the request. 

“Voidsent?” they asked. 

It was a reasonable guess. Momodi never liked giving any new adventurers the chance to take a job involving voidsent, despite Thanalan being home to plenty; it had something to do with a voidsent hierarchy and the upper rung demons showing up more frequently after the Calamity disrupted all of Eorzea’s aetherial currents. Zaya had never bothered to learn more about it, since few of the voidsent could match up to the wildlife of the Steppe anyways—now, though, they were realizing maybe they should have sat down for a lesson or two while they were in Sharlayan.

Thancred shrugged, sitting down across from them and setting the leveplate on the table. “Could be,” he said, taking a slice of bread and dipping it in a bowl of oil. “The description of their phenomena is horribly vague, given the format of the standard leveplate. I do hope whatever troublemaker’s causing our friend Painted Dawn isn’t too much of a bother, voidsent or not—between the two of us, I wouldn’t exactly say we’re in top form.”

That was exaggerating it, really, especially since he came back from Ultima Thule with little injury, and if Thancred wanted to keep them bedridden a little longer there were plenty of better excuses for him to use. Zaya nudged his shin under the table with the toe of their boot, sinking down in their chair to reach.

“I know, I know, Krile said you were as well as you were going to get before we left,” he conceded, taking a small bite of his bread before continuing, “and your legs seem to be working fine, but I think I’m owed a fair bit of time fretting over your wellbeing. Seeing you laid out more than once hasn’t made the sight any easier on me.”

Zaya relented after that, because it seemed cruel to playfully harass him for being worried like any normal person might be; any other adventurer would have keeled over if they had been through half the things Zaya put themselves through in the name of saving something that wasn’t their own life. Even traveling across the rift to another shard nearly lost to calamity would have driven a veteran at the trade to retire, probably. They reached across to brush their fingers against the bare knuckles of his idle hand in apology, his gloves draped over the edge of the table; the Quicksand was too loud and too crowded for them to want to try to say it verbally, to make sure he knew they meant it, but Thancred smiled regardless and twined his fingers in theirs.

“Doesn’t mean I’m not used to it, bluebird.” He squeezed their hand lightly before letting go, eyes shifting to some of the crowd around them; his eyes, though, didn’t falter or darken when his attention was drawn back to them, still brightly shifting between hazel and gold in the Quicksand’s evening lights. “Instead of going in recklessly as you’d like, I was thinking we spend tonight comfortably in bed, and then tomorrow morning we double back to the Waking Sands and request Urianger’s expertise before we go ruin diving, to ensure we both come out unscathed,” he said, his smile turning a bit sheepish between bites of his bread. “Afraid it’s not quite as romantic as going with just the two of us, but…”

Zaya snorted, kicking the closest leg of his chair lightly as they chewed on another cracker. “You said adventuring is bad as a date,” they said, letting their hands be a bit loose with the signs.

“It is, if the other person spends the entire time terrified,” Thancred countered, no heat behind his words. “Which is not something that applies to you, as I’ve clearly learned. You’d hate me if I took you to plays and dinners or some such establishment where you stay seated the entire time.”

Hate was ill-fitting, Zaya thought, nose scrunching up as they considered it. It would take something truly terrible for them to hate him, if his demeanor when they first arrived in Norvrandt hadn’t done the trick—being upset, though, sounded more along the lines of how’d they react to one of those stuffy Ul’dahn theatres. “Thank you for not doing that,” Zaya signed languidly. “I love you.”

Thancred laughed quietly, drowned out by the noise around them. “I would hope I know you well enough not to drag you places you’d hate, because I love you too,” he replied, his voice a lovely low sound they could hear thanks to him leaning slightly over the table. “Now, not to ruin the mood, but do you mind helping me finish this platter so we can retire to the Hourglass? I’m sure our night would be much nicer without any stray eyes on us.”

They smiled as angelically as they could, and then plucked Thancred’s half-eaten slice of bread out of his hand, dipping it in the softened butter before shoving it indelicately into their mouth.

[fistsoflightning]

find your way

ffxivwrite2022 27: hail v. to pour down or strike like hail.

zaya-centric. pre-calamity steppe shenanigans. 873 wc.

Between the magicks flowing out from that pile of pebbles in the center and the lightning spears circling the platform, there was barely time to breathe, let alone think; nothing less than complete evasion seemed to please the requirements of this trial, and if there were any tells besides the shifts in the aether that only Sadu—the pride of the Dotharl—could see then Zaya wasn’t seeing right. Just a moment’s hesitation had seen their brother bound in stone chains after two of the crackling spears grazed his sides, shooting out from the etchings in the floor beneath their feet with unerring precision.

In the moments between each attack, Zaya kept looking up at the stones calling itself Bardam, he who was given second life by the gods and now a third by their memories and magicks, and wondered: how were they meant to fight a khun chuluu of this size without their weapons?

The path towards the Rebirth of Bardam the Brave had made their weapons unbearably heavy, until not even Magnai could drag the Scale of the Father any closer to their next foe, leaving them defenseless save for their own reflexes. It had not deigned to attack them directly, thus far—even now, the Hunter it had created with a mighty crash of its hammers had stopped, allowed them a pause as Sadu and Magnai brushed the stray pebbles off their hands and knees earned by diving for safety—but one swing could easily crush them all, armed or not. 

≪The second trial is upon you…≫ it rumbled, uncaring of Sadu’s war cry claiming that this was no combat that made her soul burn; of their brother, still bowed beneath the weight of his failure made manifest.

Zaya flicked their gaze up again when Bardam slammed together its hammers, the engravings on the floor lighting up in three separate circles just at the edge of their sight. When Sadu ran to stand in one, they stumbled to one of the remaining two as a bolt of lightning struck all three; the shock that emanated from the empty circle that Magnai had failed to put himself in tingled far worse than the bolt they’d received on their own.

When no other spell or summon or shock followed, Sadu and Magnai devolved to arguing, only to be taken aback when a ring of void dark aether suddenly appeared and hit the both of them, followed by the sound of stone chains rattling out from the ground and around them.

Which, of course, only led to more arguing, because the rings were centered on the two of them, leaving Zaya the last one standing with one failure weighing down on them as Bardam spoke in its stone-rough voice once more.

≪Be not tempted to rest, but fly across the Steppe as the wind…≫ 

Zaya inhaled sharply as the midday light dimmed, the platform of their dance with Bardam now lit more by its magicks than Azim’s glow. How many more trials were there, that they now had to face all alone? Bardam in legend had fought a demon for three days and nights before he had triumphed, had walked for endless moons across the expanse of the Steppe without horse or cart; Zaya, having seen all of thirteen summers, had neither his wits nor his endurance.

What they did have, though, was someone to watch their back.

“Up, you fool!” Sadu roared, startling them as she struggled to jerk her head up at the sky. “Look up!”

Zaya looked up as they hesitantly stepped back, expecting the shadow to be cast by a cloudkin, or some other creature looming over them from the mountains that made the walls of this ravine—and gasped.

All hail Bardam the Brave. Not even the distant and fleeting stars of Nhaama’s domain were beyond his reach, setting the darkened skies alight as they flocked to his call in overwhelming clusters. They couldn’t even begin to guess where they might land. Zaya, despite Bardam’s warning, froze and stared up in awe and horror; even Sadu and Magnai went silent in face of the impossible sight and trial before them.

And then, in that silence otherwise filled only by the cold wind and the river rapids—

≪Hear…≫ a new old voice echoed, faint in the distance. It was almost familiar, as if a voice pulled from one of Zaya’s long-forgotten dreams, and soothing in a way that made Zaya close their eyes to catch it over the sound of the water rushing beneath them. ≪Feel…≫ 

The stars were closer, but suddenly their fall no longer felt so inscrutable when Zaya reopened their eyes to the sky still aflame; no longer did Bardam’s travails look so daunting, despite the promised trials ahead. They took one step forward, and then another, watching the trails of each star curve slightly as they moved to the center of the stone platform, as if caught in their pull.

≪Think…≫ 

The first one touched down in a crash of flame and stone, and Zaya dived and rolled out of the way with ease before they hiked up their skirts and began to run around the arena, stepping around the impact of the stray stars not falling on their heels.

[fistsoflightning]

stories told along the way

ffxivwrite2022 17: novel n. an invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events.

a’dewah & @blackestnight‘s haruki. post-6.0, no spoilers. 561 wc.

"I'm back!"

A'dewah jolted awake as the door to his Annex room swung open and Haruki stumbled through, his voice interrupting the soothing music pouring from the table orchestrion. “Welcome back,” he said after a moment’s delay, shifting the pillows beneath him so he could sit up. His eyes widened when he saw the pile of books Haruki set down on the table. “Thought you were just going to the Last Stand…?”

“I had one more errand to run at the markets and Noumenon,” Haruki said, lifting up one book to squint at the title. “You know, I don’t remember the titles on your bookshelf being so hard to read.”

“It’s the script they use for the titles,” A’dewah sighed. His tail was definitely stiff from sleeping on it; if only the bench were a little more comfortable. “I can’t read it well either.”

After a few seconds of staring at the title, Haruki shrugged, gathered a few more books into his arms, and came over to sit down beside the bench, setting down the stack of books within A'dewah's reach.

He eyed them curiously, even as he was leaning over to kiss Haruki’s forehead. “Once I start on those…”

Haruki laughed and reached up to rest one of his hands on A’dewah’s knee. “That’s kinda the point, isn’t it?” he said, because it wouldn’t be the first time A’dewah had ravenously gone through a stack of novels and tomes. “Since your medicine keeps you stuck in here most of the day anyways.”

“You’re the best,” A’dewah sighed; he picked up the topmost book and flipped open the cover to read the summary before he recalled something Haruki had said and looked back over at the spines of the stack. "You said you went to Noumenon?"

Haruki nodded, taking a tome out from the stack. "Before she left for Ala Mhigo, your mom strongarmed me into lunch and hinted that she might have written a few books," he said, holding up the book so A'dewah could see his mama's name embossed on the front, "so I thought I'd look for them, but I was only allowed on the first floor?"

A'dewah gave a small grimace, remembering his disappointment when he'd seen Noumenon's endless shelves only to be restricted to the topmost floor. "Books are restricted based on content and your status in Sharlayan," he replied, trying not to feel bitter about that. "Visitors stay on the top floor. And since she helped with the improvement of spells like the Forum's silencing one…"

"They were pretty far down," Haruki said. "So, I had to get some help."

"Help," A'dewah said dubiously. Maybe he was becoming paranoid after Tataru had taken advantage of his mandatory rest to grill him for details about his 'thing' with Haruki, but this felt suspicious.

"Sneaking in," he clarified, smiling. 

A'dewah pressed a hand to his forehead, eyes going wide. "...Did you get one of the Scions arrested, Ruki??"

Thankfully, Haruki laughed and shook his head. "No, he's completely fine! Didn't get caught or anything," he said, which was relieving up until he leaned towards A'dewah's ears and whispered, "So, was that the G'raha Tia whose arms I'm competing with?"

He was going to die the second Lunya heard about this.

"I—well, yes, that was that G'raha, but no you're not competing with him for anything he's married!"

[fistsoflightning]

end of the world who?

ffxivwrite2022 12: miss the boat lit. to miss out on something, like that boat to Sharlayan you just ran past.

zaya & @windupnamazu‘s lunya. pre-endwalker. 836 wc.

Usually it was Zaya causing problems for Lunya, not the other way round.

Sure, Lunya could be a bit of a gremlin, but they were the added chaos factor that brought it out of her, and therefore Zaya’s own observations about her couldn’t be trusted. Besides, their list of misdemeanors was far longer; attempting to eat a piece of materia in a bout of curiosity, jumping off high cliffs and buildings without warning to get on Ochir’s back, deliberately getting struck by lightning, ignoring the Echo and standing in danger’s way to keep their combo rolling…

(Thancred was right, they noted. It was a small wonder they were alive.)

The variety of their usual antics lent themselves to dealing with Lunya’s brand of occasional troublemaking—but this? 

This was evil.

“Zaya,” Lunya called from above them, where they were trying to find a semi-comfortable way to lay their head on the deck of the Endeavor. Zaya cracked one eye open to look up at their sister, who was holding a fishing rod instead of an astrologian’s globe. “I know you’re trying not to look at the ocean, but the icebox has waaay less ridges for your horns to catch on.”

They lifted their head off the deck a little more to level a doubtful stare at Lunya. Zaya knew she had caught a whole cast of tortoiseshell crabs when they sailed through the Cieldalaes Margin earlier; the only way Lunya dragging them onto the fishing boat could get worse was if they ended up needing their allergy medicine because of her dinner.

Lunya smiled like she had done them no wrong, only looking away from them briefly to cast her line back out to sea as the anchors dropped. “The crabs can’t hurt you if they’re in the icebox, silly.”

Zaya grimaced; they most certainly could, if their fishy residue had got on the outside of the container. Still, Zaya got up from the deck and draped themselves over the icebox, tilting their head so they only had to look at Lunya, and not the giant swathe of ocean that separated them from Limsa Lominsa’s docks.

They should have asked Thancred to come and find them before they set sail, Zaya lamented. The whole reason they were on the Endeavor and not the boat to Sharlayan was because they’d asked Lunya to keep track of the time for them, since Eorzea had just recently changed when five in the morning was across the entire continent, or something. She had more experience with docks, and boats, and boarding schedules in general, so when she offered to help them out Zaya hadn’t thought twice of it.

Sure enough, she had woke them in time to catch a boat—just not the right one. They’d raced down from the Arcanist’s Guild aetheryte shard and past the Scions right onto the deck of the Endeavor as Thancred, G’raha, and Tataru shouted for them to come back, leaving the Scions bewildered as they set sail on an all-day fishing expedition.

A warm-up, she had said that morning, when Zaya was still half-asleep and not quite finished processing the turn of events. We step into the water before we jump into the deep end of sailing! It’ll be fun!

It had been a very long several hours since then, and Zaya had yet to find the fun in being surrounded by so much water.

“This is the last stop,” Lunya said, clicking her tongue when she reeled in her catch to find an eel hanging off her line. Zaya nudged her tacklebox closer to her as she tossed the poor thing back into the water, watching as she recast her line. “I promise we’ll be back on solid ground where you can cling onto Thancred’s arm like a koala soon enough.”

Zaya groaned, hiding their reddening face in their hands. This had to be revenge for accidentally knocking a cup of water over her first draft for G’raha’s new clothes.

“Why didn’ y’u take Val,” Zaya asked, muffled behind their hands. She would have been a far more engaging fishing partner than they were, at least, minus the fact that the Viera wouldn’t need to adjust to boats like they did.

Lunya tipped her head back to look at them, eyes bright. “Besides getting you on a boat before we’re on one for, like, two weeks, Valdis has already seen what I want to show you,” she said mysteriously, before her fishing rod bent forwards and her head whipped back around, “and this might be it! Help me!”

She was definitely strong enough to reel in whatever fish was tugging so hard on her line by herself, but they weren’t about to ignore her. Zaya lifted themselves off the icebox to shuffle behind Lunya hastily, wrapping their arms around her waist to keep her from going overboard. 

“Here… we… go!”

With one sharp tug, Lunya’s line and catch broke the surface of the water, sending a giant, glowing, blue shark flying right towards them.