#thank u again nilla aaaaaaaaa

[ishgard]

emerald, lapis lazuli, zebra stone

Me, reblogging the meme: I’mma just have fun and keep the answers ~~short and breezy~~.

Also me: VOMITING WORDS IS MY HOBBY. CRYING AS I JUST KEEP TYPING AND CAN’T STOP MYSELF. PUTTING IT ALL UNDER A CUT BECAUSE IT’S UNHOLY LONG.

THANK YOU NILLA I LOVE YOU

emerald: how my muse tells someone they love them without words 

Oh boy, this one’s gonna get long. (Spoiler: They all got long) Ahru is generally pretty openly physically affectionate with loved ones. There are times when she becomes more withdrawn, but she’s usually eager to greet her beloved friends with big hugs. The same holds true with lovers, (once she’s in an established relationship more or less) and she genuinely just enjoys being close to them. 

i absolutely 100% have had delightful visions of ahru running and tackling gaius and just wrapping herself around his upper torso 

Sex is also a pretty big one - admittedly she used to be a bit more flippant and casual in her more intimate relationships, but as she’s gotten older and so, so much more tired, she doesn’t find herself very interested in those kinds of dalliances, barring those more ‘established’ relationships. 

She’s also pretty big on gift-giving, and while she’s not the best cook in the world if she’s having fun and wanting to make something special for you, that’s a pretty big give-away (platonic or otherwise). Honestly, for a bard, she’s really BAD at telling people how she feels so she really just shows it in about any other way imaginable. She’ll take interest in what the other person likes, their home and their history (if such things are ‘on the table’) - Ahru loves to soak up information anyway, so tacking on the bonus factor of that information being attacked to someone important to her makes it extra savory and dear to her. 

lapis lazuli: where ‘home’ is to my muse

“Where the heart is”…? Home is such big thing for Ahru, which stems into the meta kind of behind her family name.

Hiraeth is a Welsh concept of longing for home, which can be loosely translated as ‘nostalgia’, or, more commonly, ‘homesickness’. Many Welsh people claim ’hiraeth’ is a word which cannot be translated, meaning more than solely “missing something” or “missing home.”

Way back during beta when I saw this I thought heck yeah I love it, it sounds awesome, looks awesome, the meaning is awesome. Yanno. Like ya do. I hadn’t really anticipated just how deeply it’d end up rooting itself into Ahru herself or her clan. I could go on and on about this for a long time though, but in brief the whole of the Hiraeth bloodline shares this underlying sense of, well, ‘hiraeth’, and Ahru isn’t an exception to that.  

Furthermore, Hir’asra, the Hiraeth village, was never ‘home’ to Ahru, even though it was where she was born. She was ostracized and looked down upon for not being capable of inheriting her mothers powers, and often sent away to various mentors in the hopes of ‘fixing her’. 

Ahru never really had a sense of home until the Waking Sands, and losing that devastated her. The Rising Stones being her new home, the Scions her ‘found family’, she’s extremely protective of both. 

Likewise, Fortemps Manor and Camp Dragonhead are both very much ‘homes’ to her, places of rest where she’s found solace, though the latter (well, both really, just to different extents) is much more bittersweet these days. Whenever she’s in Ishgard, I headcanon that she usually stays in her own quarters Edmond had prepared for her at the manor. 

But Ahru has always been at home on the road. While she’s never had strong faith, there was once a time she believed she was under the Wanderer’s eye, and for the most part embraced it as an answer to that sense of ‘hiraeth’ - and still does to this day, albeit with even less faith attached to the sentiment. 

As for the gooey gushy ‘people who feel like home’ bits; yeah, if Gaius is there, she’s content in some fashion or another. I have a whole fucking AU about her staying at HIS manor in Garlemald (post-a lot of messy stuff) and that’s a really big ‘home’ for her that she nor I ever expected but wow if that isn’t capital ‘A’ capital ‘U’. Also Alphy. If she’s got that boy with her nothing else matters. 

zebra stone: what gets my muse excited

NEW PLACES! NEW THINGS! NEW BOOKS! Ahru gets pretty tired honestly, and where she is now, well… she’s a pretty bad depressive episode, so the things that usually excite her admittedly are a little dulled at times of late. But she really does love traveling, and seeing new places, learning about new people and cultures and trying new foods! She’s got an adventurers heart through and through, it’s just a little worn and tired right now. 

Oh, good, god, though - can a fight get her blood pumping. I wouldn’t say she’s always scrapping for a fight and she absolutely isn’t the sort to butt heads just to throw fists, but any fight that challenges her, that makes her sweat and bleed? Let’s just say her and Zenos have a VERY strong albeit very twisted bond. When he struck her down at Rhalgr’s Reach, despite every other horrible thing happening around her, for one selfish moment she was elated. She was so close to being decimated, but in that instant she felt such a raw, instinctive urge to live, and it felt so goddamn good. 

“Losing” Zenos had a pretty confusing effect on her, one that is still resounding to present day (MSQ), and she loathes Elidibus all the more for wearing his skin around, as she has a strange sense of “kinship” and “respect” for Zenos himself. BUT THAT’S GETTING PRETTY FAR OFF THE SUBJECT HERE their fucked up ‘relationship’ just gives me life, and I’m so excited to see what happens when we meet Elezenos gosh. 

Anyway, in the deepest of her depressions, a good fight like this is the best way to get her riled up.