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starwardbestrewn2021-06-08 08:31 am
oncedriven) wrote in starwardbestrewn2021-06-08 08:31 am
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in a realm rejoined -
The thing about Eorzea is that it is lush. It is lush and simply being there, breathing in its air, breathing air that breathes with you -
Even before you're off the ship you can feel how very alive it is. And even as much as there's something in you that breaks open with envy...
You've never been in these lands before. But some part of you has been in lands like them, finds home in the living, humid, ocean-stinking air. You breathe deep of the scent of sea around city and it smells like home.
Limsa Lominsa is a trader's city that speaks trader's tongues, and that's the polite and flattering way of putting it, but it still strikes you odd, for days, that your accent raises not a single eyebrow. The assumption that you're female, you can handle - it's not uncommon, when it comes to viera, at least it wasn't in Meracydia and there don't seem to be any others of your race here. You're not sure if that's for the better or for the worse. Much as the assumptions get tedious, you wish you weren't the exotic eye-candy to every passerby.
You wind up with the rogues by happenstance, and something about it calls to you, this den of thieves and thief-watchers. The dual blades are a reminder, cutting free the last of the ties that bound you to your old life.
For the first time, you are free -
----
You were destined for more than this, Mairead had whispered into your hair, before kissing your brow and setting you off onto the ship. Ancient even by viera standards, the matron of all those who left behind the sky, those who were never going to fit in the mold that was cast for them. All of the rogue viera - the free viera, you can't help but think - in Meracydia knew her.
Something like a healer, something like a prophet, and something that left you never quite comfortable around her. Even after living there for years, you could never bring yourself to truly settle there, in the walls of her home.
Even now, you cannot shake the feeling that she knew you better than you do yourself.
From the first vision, the feeling you get from Hydaelyn is now different. Every time you hear a voice bless you under the light of the crystal, you feel those lips once more upon your brow.
The sleeping thing grown beneath your breast hates it.
----
- You are free, you tell yourself, as fate pulls you deeper and deeper into the problems of the realm. You could just walk away at any time.
Except, after the Waking Sands, you know that you cannot. Or you could, for every moment you breathe is a choice, and this -
To fight against what others call fate, for the betterment of the world, that is the choice you keep making, over and over again.
Even before you're off the ship you can feel how very alive it is. And even as much as there's something in you that breaks open with envy...
You've never been in these lands before. But some part of you has been in lands like them, finds home in the living, humid, ocean-stinking air. You breathe deep of the scent of sea around city and it smells like home.
Limsa Lominsa is a trader's city that speaks trader's tongues, and that's the polite and flattering way of putting it, but it still strikes you odd, for days, that your accent raises not a single eyebrow. The assumption that you're female, you can handle - it's not uncommon, when it comes to viera, at least it wasn't in Meracydia and there don't seem to be any others of your race here. You're not sure if that's for the better or for the worse. Much as the assumptions get tedious, you wish you weren't the exotic eye-candy to every passerby.
You wind up with the rogues by happenstance, and something about it calls to you, this den of thieves and thief-watchers. The dual blades are a reminder, cutting free the last of the ties that bound you to your old life.
For the first time, you are free -
----
You were destined for more than this, Mairead had whispered into your hair, before kissing your brow and setting you off onto the ship. Ancient even by viera standards, the matron of all those who left behind the sky, those who were never going to fit in the mold that was cast for them. All of the rogue viera - the free viera, you can't help but think - in Meracydia knew her.
Something like a healer, something like a prophet, and something that left you never quite comfortable around her. Even after living there for years, you could never bring yourself to truly settle there, in the walls of her home.
Even now, you cannot shake the feeling that she knew you better than you do yourself.
From the first vision, the feeling you get from Hydaelyn is now different. Every time you hear a voice bless you under the light of the crystal, you feel those lips once more upon your brow.
The sleeping thing grown beneath your breast hates it.
----
- You are free, you tell yourself, as fate pulls you deeper and deeper into the problems of the realm. You could just walk away at any time.
Except, after the Waking Sands, you know that you cannot. Or you could, for every moment you breathe is a choice, and this -
To fight against what others call fate, for the betterment of the world, that is the choice you keep making, over and over again.
no subject
Familiar from a dream like the sword you keep on your hip. You were never taught to use it; your mother would never have allowed it. But the motions came so naturally to you the moment you picked it up. The day you left, you picked up the sword, whether you knew it or not. The sword belongs to the dreams, and once it hung there in reality, something about the world felt a little more right.
Now that you're here, in Eorzea, it's more apparent than ever that the style with which you use that sword marks you out. You never considered even for a moment picking up a shield with it; your stance is all wrong for it, too high even as your attacks swing lower than most are willing to risk. You hear on the streets that Eorzea's swordsmanship style originated in the gladatorial arena, and it seems right to you, because it's got that kind of showy, fully-body-downward-chop thing going on that leaves people too open if they don't have the shield on their off hand to block.
Your downward blows are at a sharper angle and come from the shoulder more than the waist. You spin your blade in your hand, you thrust at the stomach - your style isn't designed to play the way a gladiator's is. Gladiators don't go for each other's stomachs. And gladiators don't use their offhand to punch like some kind of back-alley brawler (it isn't, and you have an instinctive respect for martial arts and fist-fighters, but it feels that way compared to the life you left behind).
You picked up a set of pugilist's knuckles, instead. Just the one, the glove-mounted kind that doesn't cost you any real dexterity and more to the point doesn't require you to be holding something in that hand. It's more accurately a gauntlet than a glove, and you're still not entirely satisfied with it, but it's a nasty surprise for people who expect that sword and shield, sword and low wide stance, sword and openings go hand in hand.
But you, the dream of you, notices things. And so you notice the paired blades, the green-and-white, and the way they disappear into crowds.
And you're not so stupid that you haven't noticed them noticing you.