#happy sunday. went from literally staring at a blinking cursor for hours to suddenly full plot in the span of 30 minutes

[fistsoflightning]

14 | there will be signs

ffxivwrite2024 14: TELLING Having force or effect; effective; striking.

elwin wouldn't say he won the cactpot, but. lumelle & elwin. 1135 wc.

"Well," Lumelle said uselessly with her hands propped on her hips, "I can see where I got things wrong."

Beside her, Elwin copied her in a much more animated and irritated manner. "I told you I know the difference between kolossus and colossal like eight times and now you're reconsidering?"

She didn't need to rehash their quarter-bell linkpearl call that she spent mostly saying 'El, are you sure you don't mean colossal problem' only for him to repeat 'kolossus problem' like those were words that went together outside of Garlean robot colossi. The Gold Saucer could make up words for whatever. She didn't care. She absolutely did not care and there was no use continuing this spat.

But.

"I know you know but does the rest of Eorzea know? Someone could have spelled it wrong or something and you were just reading it out loud!"

"Lumelle."

"FINE!" She threw her hands up in the air, just to put her energy somewhere other than her voice. The Gold Saucer was loud enough to mask most of their bickering, but if she really yelled it was more like than not to gain a draconic tone near the end and that would make things extremely not fine. "FINE, you were RIGHT and I'm SORRY, but what are we going to do about—uh…"

Lumelle's voice trailed off as she turned to point at the very large korpokkur idling nearby with the most innocent look on its face. A not insignificant part of her wanted to squish its face a little and make silly noises; the rest of her was trying to figure out how her brother had ended up with it and also what the hells they could do about it. She knew that it positively couldn't come home to Ishgard. How it had ended up in the deserts of Thanalan in the first place was beyond her.

"I don't knoooow…" Elwin looked reluctantly back at his prize. "Um. Wedding gift for A'dewah?"

"Extremely funny idea, but that's not for moons at least and also this guy would not fit through Haruki's door," Lumelle said. It would be gut-bustingly hilarious to somehow put this guy in a box and witness A'dewah's face when he opens said box, but incredibly not possible unless A'dewah gets his shite together and actually sends out invitations or elopes. Whichever seems most appealing when he snaps. "Also also, I think Munehise has a korpokkur or three already, another is overkorpokkur. Can't you return him, or something? How did you end up with a gigantic korpokkur anyways?"

Elwin reached up to pull at his goggles in distress, the tips of his ears turning a dark red. Lumelle hastily reached down to keep him from snapping them over his eyes, because that was how you got eye damage, wasn't it?? And that absolutely wasn't happening on her watch.

"I won't laugh," she said. Maybe a giggle, but Elwin didn't need to know that.

"But I'm still embarrassed," her brother squeaked out.

"You have literally seen me go crazy and turn myself into a dragon because my crush was getting a little hurt," Lumelle said. "That time I came almost crying to your room because I tripped and ate floor in front of Alisaie and she wouldn't stop laughing at me because I made a funny noise when I did it. The 'who is A'dewah into anyways' incident."

Elwin groaned and said, eyes now screwed shut, "That last one doesn't count 'cause you gave me secondhand embarrassment."

"The point stands that you will never be as embarrassing as me," Lumelle insisted. "Tell me how your errand turned into korpokkur ownership before we get kicked out for making a scene and then we'll go get overpriced food and drinks that you can cry into."

"I'm not going to cry about this… Let go of my goggles." Elwin cracked one eye open, waited for her to stand back up to her full height of still-only-five fulms, and said, "So I did finish my errand. I delivered the mark seven drone to the lady."

"And you got paid," Lumelle said, "in… korpokkur?"

Elwin shook his head. "I got paid in cactpot tickets. For some reason. And they were—the Jumbo kind, which is definitely not what I should have been paid in? But by the time I thought about that she'd already left to have her husband try it out?"

She knew immediately where this was going with a biting clarity. "Elwin, no."

"So since I just had them now, and today was the number draw, I was thinking 'well, I guess I'll stick around and redeem these and get a funny hat after'. But as it turns out—" Elwin gestured to the korpokkur, which was not a funny hat in any sense. "—with my three tickets, I got the MGP from both first and second place? Since the lady had picked sequential numbers? So I had like, enough MGP in my hands to buy a small house, and a lot of people looking my way and saying things, and by then I was thinking 'I have got to get rid of this immediately or there's going to be a situation'."

"So you…"

"Bought. A few things." Elwin hid his face behind his hands, peering through the gaps between his fingers up at Lumelle's incredulous face. "The korpokkur isn't the only thing I grabbed but it is the only one that is. A problem!"

This was, frankly, hilarious to a degree Lumelle couldn't even comprehend at the moment. It would likely hit later when she was recounting the whole thing to Alisaie through laughter. She took another look at the korpokkur's gormless face, then looked back at Elwin and said, "You paid a mountain of fake coin for a whole plant that bounces. Look at it, it has no thoughts in there."

"I'm sure it has at least one," Elwin sighed.

"Yeah, the one that makes sure that water droplet doesn't fall off?"

"You're gonna hurt his feelings, Mellie."

"He's like a dog, he doesn't know! But fine, I'll be nice to your oversized moss ball. So long as he doesn't smush you beneath his roundness."

"Can I beg for mercy now?" Elwin's face was fully buried in his hands now. "I still don't know what to do with him."

"I'll call Miriel later, don't worry." And if that failed, she'd just have to go drop in on A'dewah in the Doman Enclave sooner than she was planning. No biggie. "I do have one last question, though."

Elwin groaned. "Promise we're done after? I can stuff my face in buyer's remorse?"

Lumelle patted the pocket of her coat that had her gil pouch. "Promise. Now—did you buy enough of the bunny ears for us to surprise Valdis with?"