#hvnswrd spoilers

[nymfaia-archive]

👥 Estinien with either Alta or Kain 👀

muse hcs / accepting! / @dragonlancer

i've made a few posts already about kain being a sulky little shitlord because he thinks the Azure Dragoon title was his birthright, and that the end of the war kind of took his entire life's purpose and a decade of training from him that he now thinks is useless (it isn't but he's 19 and depressed), so. i'm not going to reinvent the wheel there. akdngkngk

however, after the war and the real shift in Ishgard began, when Aymeric approached him with the truth of his family's legacy, Kain realizes he really can't just... detest the older dragoon any further.

One of them had real experience with befriending dragons, and it wasn't Kain. (Infuriatingly, the Warrior of Light seemed to have more experience than he did, not even being Ishgardian. But they already had too much on their plate, and scarcely knew of the soldier's existence. Estinien, he hoped, would at least remember the boy from how fervently he stood in his shadow as a young recruit.)

In the few - oh so few - visits back to Ishgard that Estinien allows himself, Kain is not far behind. After enlisting Aymeric's help, the man is able to meet with the dragoon just once, catching him before he flees the city-state once more.

If he wanted to know about raising and befriending dragons, the man said, he was better suited to asking them themselves.

During Stormblood and Shadowbringers, Kain does just that. And, when next Estinien next sees Kain, the dragoon has a dragonling on his pauldron... much like Orn Khai.

Haurchefant had spun tales of the Warrior of Light to both of his best friends: their adventures, their strength, their tenacity. He had waxed poetic about their wiles and their wit until Aymeric was coughing back embarrassed laughter, almost certain that the knight had simply found another traveler to warm his bed.

He hadn't mentioned that the woman was half his size. He hadn't mentioned that she was primarily a healer - that had, somehow, managed to fell gods and primals regardless.

And he hadn't even hinted that she bore the likeness of dragons. While Estinien didn't speak much during the meetings in the Falling Snows, his silence was sharp and distrusting. Without having exchanged more than an introduction, the Warrior of Light and the Azure Dragoon were already off to a rocky start.

I imagine it took a long while for the two of them to even attempt to get along. Estinien is used to working on his own, and Alta is forever chased by the fear of not being able to heal or help those she needs to. I don't think he would be fond at all of her quiet stubbornness, or how unbothered she seems to be by his attitude. She doesn't even give him the pleasure of truly arguing the few times they do clash.

(And then the knight dies, and I think their similarities would come to the forefront. They are both trying to make up for what they couldn't change, crippled by the need to be better and finding out it truly doesn't matter anyway. She had cast spell after spell into his corpse, his hair fanning out on her thighs like a halo made of steel: he had picked through the rubble of a razed village, fingers bruised and blistered from the dragonfire heat, desperate for a chance that his brother would be there.

They were not so different.)

[walkafter]

[mappingway]

ESTINIEN LEFT HER FLOWERS,

[nymfaia-archive]

I've made posts in the past about Alta not wholly grasping the formality and pomp that comes with Eorzean marriages and weddings. They're events for others, she thinks, and her opinion doesn't sway, even after getting as close to Haurchefant as she does.

(They would not be required such a show, he promised her. He was not Artoirel, or even Emmanellain: should she want to indulge him in seeing their love recognized by Halone, it would simply be the two of them. That was all he needed.)

He had bestowed upon her a ring. It was little more than a thin hammered band, a glittering yellow stone set carefully within.

He could've chosen something flashier, he had teased her, but he knew she treasured practicality over anything else. It was not a gem but materia, the magicked glass shimmering every time she cast a spell.

She still doesn't wholly understand the concept of promise rings - it smells to her of marking territory, something that makes Haurchefant snort. But the gift was touching all the same, and the way her stomach knots and her throat tightens when his fingers ease the ring onto one of her own - ... maybe she was being too hard on Eorzean traditions.

It glitters and gleams every curative she utters, like a fraction of the very sun was against her finger, shining in the sunset even as he fell.

She never got to truly see what Ishgard's traditions would be like. She never had a billowing dress or the ability to stumble over vows, spoken in old Ishgardian. But - now, after everything, after he is buried and returned to the star - ... she understands.

Sometimes, when everything else is gone and quiet, she casts a cure, watching the world-weary gem sparkle in the dark. She knew he had loved her... but the reminder, a light in the dark, was as close to hearing him say it she'd get ever again.

[nymfaia-archive]

I've always kind of headcanoned that Alta was so quiet and struggled to speak as an adult due to vocal cord injuries she obtained after the Hotgo tribe massacre. She was so young when it happened that her first response wasn't to shut down, like it often is in the MSQ now: it was to scream. And scream she did.

Her grief was so inconsolable that she lost her voice. By the time it began to come back, she had been taken in by the Kha.

The Kha never hear her speak above a whisper. Her entire tenure in their tribe was in silence or murmurs. It was not until she traveled to Eorzea, where people were ignorant of her history, and got off the boat in Limsa Lominsa, where the drunkards were more than willing to tell her to speak up, that she realized she would need to use her voice just a little more.

Eorzea was good for her healing. Over time, she slowly outgrew her coping mechanism, but her voice retained the scratchy, breathy characteristics from the strain she had put on them years ago.

By the time Heavensward rolled around, she had, more or less, found a morsel of peace. She still struggled with her Eorzean, and still preferred silence over filling space, but her spirit was on the mend.

And then Haurchefant died.

That was the first time any of the Scions - or her Ishgardian companions, for that matter - had heard her raise her voice even a little. By the time she had depleted her mana and her hands were numb from the sheer amount of aether she was trying to channel into him, her pleas had evolved from shrill panic into cracked, wispy begging.

And then Ysayle died, too.

Alta didn't speak for the remainder of Heavensward. For the second time in her life, she had begged and pleaded for her loved ones to respond - and for the first time, she had the ability to save them.

And she had failed both Haurchefant and Ysayle.

Her losses set her back several, several years in her trauma recovery, and it wasn't until she got to the Steppe and recognized Cirina that she began to make slow headway once again.

[nymfaia-archive]

After being adopted into the Kha tribe, Alta ceased wearing the Hotgo face paint for many, many years. What had began as fear - the Kha elders worried that the Dotharl would try and finish their killings if they spotted a Hotgo with face paint - evolved into little more than ignorance.

Alta had been too young to truly know the recipe for the paint. Her father had always shared his jar with her. What had remained of each individual's tint container had been shattered and ruined with blood during the altercation.

Until she went to Eorzea, she had went many, many years without the face paint. It was not until she arrived in the continent that she spotted other adventurers with their own war paint, and a love for the self-expression was abruptly rekindled.

What they sold in Eorzea was not near the same as she remembered, but it was a start. Throughout A Realm Reborn, she stuck to dark indigo pigment, similar in form to henna: it would dry on the skin and then flake off, leaving a navy stain behind.

She wore it well into Ishgard, when she was abruptly reminded of the Hotgo's mourning paint.

The mourning paint was originally intended to be put upon the deceased. As every Hotgo wore different pigments and designs, painting a loved one's cheeks in the same pattern and shade as others in their tribe was meant to make it easier for each family member to recognize kin in the aetherial sea.

Alta, so far from her homeland, did what she could. She adapted some of Arenvald's thick, clay-based paint, received Edmont's blessing, and painted his son's face before he was laid to rest.

He had not had much of his own family. Alta hoped he could find comfort in hers.

It was after the events of Heavensward that she continued wearing the clay paint for her journey. Still in mourning herself, the white paint reminded her of her second home in Ishgard, and of the stark, bleak feeling she had going into Stormblood. Upon reaching the Steppe once more - and finding out that Temulun had, of course, a faded memory of the Hotgo recipe for staining pigment - Alta began wearing the indigo paint once more.

She had left as a Kha. She would leave her home as a Hotgo, wearing the markings proudly against her fights with Sadu.

After being pulled to the First shard, Alta was stuck with the only jar of pigment she had on her when she was abducted: her white mourning paint. Supplemented with Lakeland's ever present lilac foliage, she adapted what remained into being a light purple, and wore that while she was off the Source.

White had once been a welcoming lack of color. It once reminded her of Ishgard. On the First, however, the light pollution tainted her appreciation for it.

(It was also on the First that she realized Arenvald's paint acted much like sunblock in the light-infested realm. By the time she returned to the Source, she had pale lines across her cheeks that essentially promised she would have to keep changing up her design until her complexion settled.)

Now, post Endwalker, Alta cycles through a handful of shades. Her traveling bag has multiple tiny glass jars of pigment - her indigo, the white clay, what remains of her Lakeland purple. On occasion, she can be caught wearing a shade akin to wine, her attempt at recreating the color her father had worn when she was a child. Most often, however, it's simply her indigo pigment, a stain that can sometimes be seen dipping down her collar and over her forearms.

[nymfaia-archive]

i think well and truly alta loved haurchefant like no other and will continue to love him like no other - regardless of any “endgame” ship, i don’t think there’s ever not going to be a part of her that wonders what could have been if things went different. to think about events and life milestones and saving the entire realm.

one day she will be happy and content in her island sanctuary or retiring in ishgard with her loved one(s) and still, still think of him.

[nymfaia-archive]

🤲

Make my muse tell their secrets 🍑 accepting! 🍑 @magitekhearted

"I - ... just wanted - ... I wish we had more time."

More time together, with his sword and shield at the ready, with snow collecting in his eyelashes and puffs of air billowing from his mouth with each broad swing of his weapon.

More time together, with his pleasant humming as she healed him afterwards, in the quiet of his chambers. As if it didn't burn like fire in his veins. As if she wasn't still learning and he had all the time in the world to spend next to her, mana curling into his wounds.

(More bells spent in the manor, their lips sweet from chocolate liqueur and bitter from the coffee he had poured it into, the breakfast he had brought her in bed long eaten as they skirted around dessert.)

"I - ... wish he had gotten to see Ishgard. After - ... everything. And the Firmament, and how well Francel has grown, and - ..."

Each other, just once more. Not as knight and warrior but simply themselves, duty abandoned, just for a moment, to savor the taste of humanity. Maybe if things had been different - ...

She tightened her hands into fists, shaking her head to clear away the daydream. Alta wished he had more time, but she also wished it was spent beside her, following stuffy Ishgardian courting traditions and finding a piece of solace away from the oaths they swore.

Things were not different. They simply were, his shield basking in the golden glow of dawn and her finger barren of a ring she had thought frivolous all those years ago.

"I'm - ... I'm sorry. Sometimes, when I'm here, I - I think I'm - back in Ishgard. And - ..."

She still looked for him, hundreds of sunrises later, for the glitter of chainmail and the contagious laughter that would lead her home.

[mappingway]

it doesn’t get easier, does it.

[mappingway]

love the full circle of haurchefant bringing us hot cocoa when we were in a time of need, to nidhana having us bring hot chai to the people of palaka’s stand when they were in need.

very lovely.

[walkafter]