#welcome to the star-gazing club ardbert

[therovingstar]

Prompt #5: Starlight

For the January 2021 @seaswolchallenge. 1288w, Ardbert x WoL (if you squint). Of course she would manage to remind him of home in a way that, for once, did not hurt. Takes place post-5.3, in a timeline in which Ardbert chose a second chance at life and followed the Scions back to the Source.

“I hope it will suffice.”

He almost forgets she’s there, until the warm rasp of her voice cuts through the percussion of his heart pounding in his ears. He blinks, and half expects the vision before him to collapse like the illusion it is, but…

No, it remains. By way of her magic, most like, a glittering manifestation of her aether creating the tapestry of stars above them. It rotates slowly, thousands of them seemingly stitched into the ink-black canvas of the sky, close enough to touch.

“I didn’t think you still used those cards,” he breathes. “Or that...star-shooting thing.”

“A planisphere,” she reminds him, with a smile he can hear in her tone, even if he has not looked down to see it. “And yes, I still use it. I am a healer, after all, first and foremost.” Now he hears her stretch, the soft rustle of cloth and her intake of breath as she angles her arms upward. “I suppose what I am healing right now is that pout on your face.”

That makes Ardbert finally look down, just in time to see the beginnings of her smile, her own gaze locked where his was previously. “I was not pouting,” he halfheartedly argues, feeling the temptation to gently jab her with his elbow.

“But you were disappointed,” Odzaya insists, and that he cannot deny. Why else had he come all the way out here in the middle of bloody nowhere, guided only by the promise of a kind stranger. “A spectacle guaranteed to bring tears to your eyes!” she had said, before traipsing off in clothing he thinks may have been Gridanian in origin. Or not; he is still so new here, after all. But her down-to-earth manner had been oddly charming, and the notebook she gave him a good distraction from another moment in which survivor’s guilt had struck and the point of his continued existence had once again been called into question.

So he had accepted the “sightseeing log,” as she had called it. Flipped through it while dodging young lost adventurers all looking so much – too much – like himself, like Lamitt and Renda and Nyelbert and Branden–

And one particular entry had caught his eye, about a place in Thanalan, far from the lights of the city, where the sky seemed so clear as to be like a window offering a glimpse into the cosmos. And because he was still so new to it all – to Eorzea, to the Source, to supposed life as a Scion – he had jumped at the chance to be away from it all, if only for a while. To see the stars – for no matter where you went, they never changed, did they? – and regain some perspective.

Of course she would still manage to find him.

“Stargazing was a bit of a hobby of mine, way back when,” he says instead of verbally confirming her statement. “In Kholusia, so close to the sea, the sky was often foggy, so clear nights could be rather rare, depending. When they came, I would climb to the roof of our house and gaze at the stars practically all night. Try to count them, and pick out shapes.” He smiles slightly. “They don’t look too different here.”

“Different shapes, perhaps,” Odzaya comments. “It took me some time to learn the ones they look for here.”

“I forget that you’re not originally from this continent. Othard, was it? In the east?”

“Mm,” she confirms. “In my homeland, we have different constellations, with different gods attached to them.”

“Then…” Ardbert again looks up at the tapestry she created, glowing with the lights of a million lightning bugs. Almost reflexively when it appeared, he looked for the constellations of the First, and then, feeling that telltale homesickness, switched his focus to those shared by the Eorzeans. Again, he was no expert, but learning them had served as another small hobby, another distraction. One that had paid off as he found them: the Arrow, the Balance, the Spire and the Spear. And yet they seemed slightly...altered? As if imagined by a different mind, viewed from a different perspective. “Is this that sky, then?” he asks. “The one you see?”

“There are similarities, mind,” she says, lightly shrugging her shoulders. She does not deny his claim. “Surprising ones. Here, the watcher of the stars is Nymeia, the goddess of fate. In my culture, it is the Dusk Mother Nhaama, goddess of the night. Just the same, Eorzea has Azeyma, goddess of balance and of the sun. For us, it is –”

“Azim the Dawn Father,” he answers. Odzaya cuts herself off in surprise, and finally, Ardbert looks down the scant inches separating them to see her eyes predictably widened in surprise. The sight makes his smile widen in turn. “Urianger’s been going on about it for days. The similarities between them all. Azeyma, and your Azim, and…” The one they used to be. The one they came from. “Azem,” he finishes, more soberly.

Then he smirks, for once refusing to allow the memories and melancholy to take root. “I wonder if you count among them, too. Odzaya.”

Her snort is loud and affronted enough to make him laugh. He calls her “princess,” but he finds his favorite moments with her are when she acts like the exact opposite of one. “I do not,” she says definitively. He hums, amused.

“I wonder. ‘Shepherd to the stars,’ or so that Emet-Selch called us.” He gestures upward and follows with his gaze, where the heavens still spin lazily, just for them. “You’re shepherding these easily enough. Mayhaps because it was your calling in our other life, too.” Our. For whatever reason, he doesn’t feel the connection quite as keenly to this Azem, this woman who had shined brighter than the sun, only to burn herself out for the sake of her doomed world. For the last century, he had been a shade, for gods’ sake, unnoticed and useless to all he had come across. The exact opposite of what she had apparently been.

But Odzaya, she fit. A single bright beam that had penetrated his purgatory, and brought him back to life.

And she has done it again. Here he was, lost in a muddied dark, alone, the sky barren of all but fog, trying in vain to find the light promised by a kind soul. And when he found none, she brought it to him, easy as anything.

Just as then, so as now.

“I can change it, you know,” Odzaya says. She shifts slightly, her eyes once more on her aether. “The shape of them. I remember the stars of the First well enough; they brought me comfort, too, on nights when I needed a reminder that my world still existed, that yours could still be saved. I could try to replicate them.” She smiles lightly. “You could show me your shapes.”

Ardbert considers; twould certainly be nice to see, if only momentarily, the sky of his youth, feel a similar wind blowing through his hair as he dreamed of other places.

Instead, he shifts himself – settling more into his skin, it feels like – and shakes his head. “Mayhaps another time,” he says casually. When he looks down, she is watching him, subtle skepticism and concern warring for supremacy on her pretty face. He thinks he could do something to assure her, poke his finger to the single scale patch interrupting the wide line of her nose, the way the Scions do when she tries to outdo all her daily little miracles.

He doesn’t. Not yet. Instead, he merely looks back up at her latest, and starts memorizing. “I like yours,” he declares. “Quite a bit, I think.”