Marvel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tinyangryblonds) wrote2017-07-03 06:58 am
tinyangryblonds) wrote2017-07-03 06:58 am
short FFXIV drabbles
1. Cognitive Dissonance
“I didn’t think General Aldynn would say it like that,” W’vani mused, settling by the edges of the firelight with a set of soldier’s rations in one hand and his tattered journal in the other. When he received only quizzical headtilts from his companions—Solele, seated on a large boulder with her legs dangling a few inches off the ground, and Tsensen, looking worn and pensive a few feet away—he continued. “You know—‘take ‘im out,’ essentially. Regarding Zenos. You know him better than I do; have you ever heard the General speak so frankly of what’s to be done with our enemies?”
Solele made a gesture halfway between a shrug and a headshake, and chomped down on a slice of flatbread, unconcerned. Sen’s eyes flickered in the firelight as she glanced at him. “He is General, as you say. Should he not make his orders clear before the battle begins?”
“I guess I was just hoping it wouldn’t come to that,” W’vani admitted.
Sen gave a snort. “You’re naïve, boy.”
W’vani snorted back, then sighed. “I know.
It was damned inconvenient, this conscience business. He’d been around enough to know that Sen had one too, deep down—it was just more attuned to the sort of Honor that prevailed in the harsh environment of the Azim Steppes, where one had to prove one’s right to live on a regular basis, or else find themselves divested of it. The removal of a dangerous threat, by any means necessary, didn’t phase her. It was simply what had to be done.
As a child, Vani would not have lasted a day on the Steppes, even if he’d managed to avoid simply being mercy culled at birth. A twisted half-smile flashed across his face. Naïve was right; his slow, painstaking attempts to gain combat experience despite his obvious limitations, throwing himself in the field alongside seasoned soldiers, meant that he was intensely aware of that personal failing. But that wasn’t the whole story, and he couldn’t decide which way to spin the narrative. Was it good, that he was still soft enough to hate killing? Or was it another mark of weakness, a cousin to his weak limbs and fragile bones?
“I just don’t want to have to be the one to do it,” he muttered, ears swiveling as a group of resistance fighters passed behind him, regaling each other with tales from the front.
“You won’t be.” The breezy certainty in Solele’s voice was simultaneously reassuring and unsettling. She did not even look up from her meal. Sunny optimism coupled with pure homicidal intent was cognitive dissonance at its finest, but Vani decided he liked it. It was very... Solele.
Conscience, he reminded himself, is not something you and Zenos share between you. Still, he was glad to be staying behind with the tactical contingent, this time. There were some lines he was not yet ready to cross.
“I didn’t think General Aldynn would say it like that,” W’vani mused, settling by the edges of the firelight with a set of soldier’s rations in one hand and his tattered journal in the other. When he received only quizzical headtilts from his companions—Solele, seated on a large boulder with her legs dangling a few inches off the ground, and Tsensen, looking worn and pensive a few feet away—he continued. “You know—‘take ‘im out,’ essentially. Regarding Zenos. You know him better than I do; have you ever heard the General speak so frankly of what’s to be done with our enemies?”
Solele made a gesture halfway between a shrug and a headshake, and chomped down on a slice of flatbread, unconcerned. Sen’s eyes flickered in the firelight as she glanced at him. “He is General, as you say. Should he not make his orders clear before the battle begins?”
“I guess I was just hoping it wouldn’t come to that,” W’vani admitted.
Sen gave a snort. “You’re naïve, boy.”
W’vani snorted back, then sighed. “I know.
It was damned inconvenient, this conscience business. He’d been around enough to know that Sen had one too, deep down—it was just more attuned to the sort of Honor that prevailed in the harsh environment of the Azim Steppes, where one had to prove one’s right to live on a regular basis, or else find themselves divested of it. The removal of a dangerous threat, by any means necessary, didn’t phase her. It was simply what had to be done.
As a child, Vani would not have lasted a day on the Steppes, even if he’d managed to avoid simply being mercy culled at birth. A twisted half-smile flashed across his face. Naïve was right; his slow, painstaking attempts to gain combat experience despite his obvious limitations, throwing himself in the field alongside seasoned soldiers, meant that he was intensely aware of that personal failing. But that wasn’t the whole story, and he couldn’t decide which way to spin the narrative. Was it good, that he was still soft enough to hate killing? Or was it another mark of weakness, a cousin to his weak limbs and fragile bones?
“I just don’t want to have to be the one to do it,” he muttered, ears swiveling as a group of resistance fighters passed behind him, regaling each other with tales from the front.
“You won’t be.” The breezy certainty in Solele’s voice was simultaneously reassuring and unsettling. She did not even look up from her meal. Sunny optimism coupled with pure homicidal intent was cognitive dissonance at its finest, but Vani decided he liked it. It was very... Solele.
Conscience, he reminded himself, is not something you and Zenos share between you. Still, he was glad to be staying behind with the tactical contingent, this time. There were some lines he was not yet ready to cross.
2. Memoir
W’vani glanced up (and up, and up) into Adelaide’s smiling face, silhouetted against the cerulean skies of Costa del Sol’s famous beachfront. Cross-legged on a beach towel with his journal in his lap, he felt even smaller and more hunched than usual in comparison to her long, lithe form. She folded herself into a sitting position beside him, under the shade of the umbrella. Vani found the abundance of bare, smooth skin in his immediate vicinity rather distracting (her delicate two-piece left little to the imagination), and he fixed his eyes on his journal, forgetting momentarily that she’d asked him a question. “Um—yes?”
She tilted her head. “What are you up to?”
“Logging the events of the last several days, up to and including this, ah, detour.”
The sand and surf around them swirled with activity as the free company endeavored to forget about the very events Vani was working so painstakingly to record. The siege of Ala Mhigo had not been an easy fight: the more obstacles they’d overcome, the more had emerged to block their path. Zenos’s descent into violent madness, his fusion with the primal, his experiments with the Echo… the implications had disturbed them all, and the fact that they’d gotten through it relatively unscathed was nothing short of—well, Vani wasn’t really a believer in “miracles,” but it was rather fortunate. Very fortunate.
“It was nice of Dhlaran to offer,” said Adelaide. “We all definitely needed it.” She leaned back on her hands. “You should relax too, hm? Surely that can wait.”
“Best to limit delays,” Vani responded, still scrawling industriously. Being able to talk and write at the same time was a talent he’d mastered long ago. “You can wait, sure, but more than a few days and things get muddled, details start to slip away. Order of events, mostly. Odd, isn’t it? You remember what happened, and probably even how you felt about it at the time, but you don’t remember which things came first. You lose all those cause-and-effect chains, easily the most important from a tactical evaluation standpoint, and then the whole thing’s moot besides, and woe betide the poor archivist who tries to use your memoirs as historical record.” He glanced sideways; her smile had taken on a glint of mirth. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?”
“A little.” There was some sort of splash fight going on just offshore, involving a ball of seaweed being hurled at Ghilley’s head by Solele. Adelaide watched with mild interest. “Seriously though, Vani, even Alphinaud is relaxing.” She nodded at the nearby hammock stretched between two squat palms, their fronds shading Flori’s sleeping face. He was passed out on his back with a white-haired Elezen teenager curled in the crook of his arm, the latter snoring softly. Adelaide sighed. “If that’s not absolutely precious then just send me straight to the seventh hell.”
Vani did not wish to comment on their FC leader’s romantic proclivities, so he remained silent. They did seem happy enough, which he supposed was charming. If anyone ever looks at me that way, I’ll eat this journal. And my own tail besides.
“Have you ever swum in the ocean?”
“No.”
“Ever wanted to?”
Yes. “It’s not something I’ve ever imagined myself doing.”
“Because of your bones?”
“Sort of.” It wasn’t that swimming would be dangerous—not any more dangerous than any other physical activity, anyway, and he engaged in plenty of that. It was the uncanny curve of his spine that made him appear slightly hunched, the unevenness of his gait, the way he could never build any muscle in his limbs no matter how hard he tried. All these things were easy to mask with clothes, especially layers; gods, he missed Coerthas sometimes. But swimming meant divesting oneself of layers, all the way down, and… his body was ugly. It wasn’t self-deprecation, it was simple fact: the damn thing wasn’t ever going to be visually pleasing, and he didn’t want to draw any more attention to that than he had to.
Adelaide sighed, and made to get up. “Well, if you change your mind…”
“I won’t. But… thanks, Addy.”
She smiled, and the pink tips of her hair seemed to glow like fire as she stepped out into the sunlight. Vani watched her go, then sighed and flopped back on the towel to stare at the underside of the umbrella. Alphinaud’s snores grew louder.
3. Dawning
When had the Steppe become so strange?
The approach of the footsteps behind her was gentle, and there was no attempt to hide their presence, so she did not tense, merely turning her head to look over her shoulder. Her eyes widened, and she scrambled to her feet. “Grandmother!” The woman’s wizened face cracked into a smile as Tsensen rushed to her, touching her shoulder as if unsure of her corporeality. “But--we’re malms from Dotharl Khaa!”
They embraced, and Tsensen took the opportunity to look around furtively for an escort. There seemed to be none, but surely the old woman knew better than to wander alone on the Steppe... “How did you… that is… I hadn’t exactly advertised my presence here. I wasn’t expecting--”
Her grandmother’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “Grandmothers can sense the presence of their grandchildren, didn’t you know?” Her eyes sparkled at Sen’s dubious look, and the wrinkles in her face deepened. “And news travels fast on the Steppe.”
“So I recall.” She shook her head as if to clear it. Her grandmother was an oddity among the Dotharl—few of them lived to old age, and those who did were considered to be near the end of their reincarnation cycle, full of wisdom from lifetimes past and afforded the corresponding respect. Tsensen could not recall her exact age, but the woman had to be at least midway through her seventies by now. “Please, grandmother, sit.”
“Oh, stop. You were sitting when I arrived, so you can sit again if you like. I want a good look at you, and I can only do that standing up.” It was true. The woman was even shorter than Sen, back bent with age, but her eyes were still sharp. They seemed to bore right through Sen’s body, turning her over like a stone on a riverbank and checking for secrets underneath. “How long will you be among us? The Dotharl will give your people a proper welcome, if I have anything to say about it.”
How long, indeed... “As long as it takes.”
“Did you find the answers you left to seek?”
“Mm.” She considered this. “Yes. But behind them, more questions.”
“Ah.” The woman’s noise of understanding managed to sound both enlightened and completely unsurprised at the same time. “When I heard word of your return, I was hopeful, and yet…” She reached out to touch Sen’s cheek, a gentle rasp of calloused skin against black scales. Her smile was tinged with a melancholy, rueful pride. “You are no longer of the Steppe.”
Sen nearly flinched back as if struck, the truth of those words cutting to the bone. She turned away, facing out toward the Dawn Throne. As a child on the Steppe—no, even as an adult, its shadow had loomed large, seeming to follow the tribe wherever it went. Now, the inverted dome seemed… small. Dwarfed by the rising sun, its shadows did not reach so far as she remembered. Her hands curled into fists at her sides.
“When the man who fathered you was young,” her grandmother said, pausing to be sure she was listening. The phrasing was a mark of respect for Tsensen’s mother—it was never “your father,” or “my son,” not even now, 15 years after her mother’s death and almost 40 since her rape at the hands of the Dotharl man. Her grandmother continued, “One of the older warriors, one he looked up to, left the tribe. Left the Steppe entirely, to seek his fortune in other lands. He asked our khatun how such a thing could happen in this life, how he could abandon the place and the people from whence he’d come.
“She told him that the souls of many great warriors find their way to the Steppe, drawn to a community of kindred spirits. Those with the brightest souls, souls wreathed in the fires of battle, may choose to become part of the Dotharl tribe. That is why we have children whose previous selves were of other tribes, or even, sometimes, from outside the Steppe altogether.”
Sen turned to meet her eyes. They held each other’s gaze for a long moment.
“The Dazkar are blind,” her grandmother said quietly, “if they think you could return now. The world outside the Steppe is too vast, greater and more terrible than any of us can imagine, and you belong to it now.”
Sen could not contradict this without uttering falsehoods, so she said nothing, glancing back out at the Dawn Throne.
“And,” her grandmother said, tawny braid falling over her shoulder as she leaned to peer at Sen’s face, “there’s a man.”
Sen’s skintone, dark as the night sky, prevented all but the most furious flush from showing to the naked eye. If one looked closely, one might see a tint of dusky purple. “There is no man.”
“Not a Xaela. Not of the Steppe. But a warrior nonetheless, eh?”
Someday, Sen would figure out how the elders of the Dotharl did that, and then there would be hell to pay. “...Mm.”
“Appreciate it, child. Where you might have fallen to despair, instead, you have managed to squeeze two lives into one lifetime.”
Sen considered this perspective on things. It was not inaccurate. She had left for many reasons, but prominent among them was pain avoidance, running from the memories of all she’d held dear that had been lost. Yet she’d found something in the end that she hadn’t even known to look for: a new life, outside the Steppe. More important than her old one? No. Equally so. The scale was simply grander.
“I feel death everywhere I am now,” Sen remarked, crouching once more to look out over the Steppe, a hand on her spear. “That is the nature of my Gift. Eorzeans call it the Echo. Even when there have been no recent deaths to upset the balance, I still hear them when it’s quiet, as if from a great distance. Often, they whisper. In some places, they scream, or cry. Sometimes laugh. In others they are silent altogether.” She paused. “The dead here are like nothing I have ever heard.”
“How so?” Her grandmother stepped forward to stand at her shoulder, taking in the sunrise as it threw lines of light and shadow over the rolling hills.
Sen smiled. “Here, they sing.”
4. Plans
"What I need," Ilya said, snapping the lid of his briefcase shut, "is someone who won't cause the Sekiseigumi to flag us as potential threats to national security the moment we make port."
"I paid for the property damage--"
"Be that as it may. Kokomo is the logical choice--she is patient, charming, and rule-abiding to a fault. You are none of those things, and so here you will remain." The man ran a hand through his dark hair, peppered with silvery gray strands, and turned his flinty eyes toward the Miqo'te boy who stood pouting in his office doorway. W'vani had become something of a fixture on these excursions, and it was likely stinging his pride to be left behind, but expecting to be the first choice every time was unrealistic at best for someone whose reaction to a list of rules was to go through and circle the loopholes in red. His eyebrows quirked as if to express this sentiment, but his face softened. "Don't worry. I have other plans for you."
The irritated thrashing of Vani's leonine tail stilled, and his ears perked forward. "What plans?"
Ilya pulled an envelope from the interior pocket of his coat. The wax seal was embossed with his personal sigil. "This is a letter of recommendation to the Conjurer's Guild of Gridania. While I am gone, you can focus on further rounding out your magical studies." Eyes bright, W'vani made to grab for the letter, but Ilya pulled it just out of reach. "Don't get sidetracked, and don't cause trouble."
W'vani snorted. "Please. Limsa's where you go if you want to cause trouble. Gridania's where you go if your idea of adventure is drinking rotten bean juice. What would I even do to cause trouble there?"
"Insulting the Mun-Tuy bean would be a start." Ilya gave him what he hoped was a sobering gaze, which did nothing to quell the excited swishing of his tail. Resigned, he slowly lowered the letter to within Vani's reach. "Don't open it. Don't lose it. And show the Padjal some respect."
"Yes, sir." He received the letter with decorous restraint, and ran his finger over the swell of wax at the edges of the seal. "Honestly, you talk like I'm some kind of barbarian. Respectful I can do. Simpering, not so much."
"I've yet to see evidence that you can do either."
"I choose not to with you."
He's sixteen, Ilya reminded himself. You can't resort to violence against a sixteen-year-old. It would be unseemly. He cleared his throat and retrieved his briefcase from his desk. "You're dismissed. Linkpearl if you need--" A patter of feet, and the sound of his front door opening and closing. "...Anything."