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RE: Wandering Lost [Story] - Aden Dellebecque - 07-22-2016
Aden's latest trial is a bold prospect, but one he's uniquely suited for.
![[Image: tumblr_nzosx0UbEK1v0ltaqo2_r2_1280.png]](https://40.media.tumblr.com/ad3bee96533553de4327d8fcd1defd67/tumblr_nzosx0UbEK1v0ltaqo2_r2_1280.png){kind=small}
Into the Mists
He's come armed with as little as he thinks he needs--the thinnest reference guide that covers the area's flora, notebooks and charcoals and a scant palette of colored chalks. They are not the weapons of a would-be dragoon, though he carries those as well, can hardly be parted from them any more. But he isn't sitting at the airship landing getting a quick and dirty crash course in calibrating aetherometers to become a dragoon--he's here in the audacious hope that Dragoon will become in part what he's doing here.
The first day he discovers the aetherometers need extra padding to survive the satchel slamming against his armor at the end of a jump. But at least when his commander laughs and berates her soldiers, equal parts amused and horrified at the damage, he is not the only one to make the mistake, nor the worst. His only needs the glass replaced.
The first night he spends alone, as expected--there have been no sneers or jeers, only stark, cold professionalism. It's better than he expected, though he came armed against the inevitable, too--I stood at the walls of Ishgard with House Caileur, where were you?
The second night he does not sleep, enraptured by the stars, how close they seem, how vibrant, how many--at midnight he hears dragons roaring in the distance, he remembers searing heat across his skin and the bone-deep caress of claws across his back, the full-body vibration and skull-splitting shriek of his armor tearing like wet paper.
He makes a poor landing in the rain the next day, nearly twists his ankle but for a reeling jerk of his tail righting him, and he wonders why they still claim elezen are better at this. It's a fleeting thought; he has more important things to do, like picking and preserving plant samples to send back to a botanist. He'll have to make the sketches from memory, somewhere dry.
Aden returns home to the Lodge two days of every week, and it's not enough time, it's too much time--he feels as though he's living in two worlds, one solid and real and his; the other some strange, ethereal fantasy where he's become one of the explorers he's spent his whole life reading about. It's not quite the same as hunting, or adventuring, but a close cousin, and it's something he hadn't considered within the realm of possibility to pursue. And yet here he is, the thing he knows in his heart he must become colliding with something once beyond hope.
He left this aetherometer tucked in the corner of a ruin, hidden from sight by a scraggly plant pushing up through cobblestones, and he finds it precisely where he left it--but about three fulms higher in the air between the paws of a moogle.
Aden stills, as if he'd just walked up upon a fawn in the woods--and the moogle stills, too, save for the wiggle of its pom. For a long moment they stare at each other, or he thinks they do, it's hard to tell with the way the moogle squints at him.
"Can I have that back?" He isn't sure what language the moogles here speak, if it will understand him at all.
"Back?" The moogle shifts an ilm or two in the air, pom wiggling indignantly. "I found it here! Abandoned! Unwanted! It's salvage!"
"I left it here not two bells ago, to gather readings."
"Readings?" The moogle turns it over to look at the back, holds it up to the pale light of the sun through the clouds. "Reading what? Fortunes?"
"It's an aetherometer," Aden says, voice slow and measured as he pushes down his annoyance. "For telling changes in ambient aether levels."
"Ah, then you've passed my test! Of course I knew what this was for, I see them all the time!" The moogle shakes the aetherometer at him in gesture, and Aden jerks forward, barely restraining himself as the tiny paw seems on the verge of dropping it.
"Can I have it back, then?"
"No!" The moogle clutches it to his chest, approximating a sneer. "I found it, and--and I need it!"
Aden settles his hands behind his back, locking them together and shifting his stance--it helps him move to a different headspace, helps him keep his voice carefully neutral. "You have readings you need to take?"
"Yes!"
"One aetherometer won't be much use." Aden doesn't need to bite back a smile, tone remaining calm. "You need several in a grid pattern."
"Well, fortunately they're everywhere! It won't take me long at all to have enough!" The moogle bounces midair, gesturing violently with the aetherometer again.
"You've clearly got something very important to do with them--why don't you gather up as many as you need and I'll help you lay them back out where you want them?"
If possible the moogle's squint intensifies, and it leans forward slightly. "Why would you do that? Don't you want them?"
"You sound like you've got big ideas--" he clicks of his tongue, inclines his head, "--and I'm tired of listening to small-minded folk. So let's see what you've got."
"Oh, oh I know what that's like! Alright!" the moogle shouts, bouncing again. "Wait here, then!" And it flutters off as fast as it can.
He waits, pondering over the wisdom of this gamble--not wise at all, but it's not quite trying to trick a sylph, at least. The sun is beginning to set, and he needs to hurry if he's going to get his hour of sketching the night sky in. Soon enough the moogle returns, balancing a stack of aetherometers, and Aden counts them with a quick glance--exactly as many as he put out.
The moogle huffs and puffs with effort, tiny arms straining and the stack teetering precariously, but it manages and puts them down on the ground in front of him. "There." It seems to flop in mid air, wiping at its brow. "That should be enough!"
"I'll take it from here," Aden says, and he begins his usual routine of wrapping them and settling them carefully into his satchel.
After a moment the moogle recovers itself, though still breathless, and hovers over him. "What are you doing?"
"Wrapping them up. They're fragile."
"Oh." It wrings its little paws, still intent on what he's doing with its ill-gotten goods. "Why?"
"I'm going to carry them for you."
"Oh!"
He finishes and re-slings the bag over his shoulder, steps to the edge of the island to make the first jump--they don't trust him with a chocobo yet, despite his insistence they can contact his mentor for confirmation of his claimed experience--and the moogle does its best to keep up. It puffs with the effort, pom drooping, and is so worn out that it doesn't think to ask until they near the outpost--"H-hey! Where are we going?"
"I'm turning these in."
Then the moogle finds some inner well of incensed, betrayed strength, and zooms in front of him, shaking angrily. "You--those are mine! You said you'd help! Liar! Thief!"
Aden lashes out and grabs the moogle by the pom, eliciting a shriek as he tugs it close. His expression doesn't change, his tone stays utterly neutral, almost conversational. "Do you want to try saying that again?"
"I-i-i--was trying to--to teach you a lesson! Yes, a lesson! About the impermanence of possessions! You shouldn't be so attached to your things!" The next kupo it utters sounds more like a gulp.
"They're not mine," Aden says, "I'm merely responsible for them. I'm going to give them away to someone else, who doesn't own them, but has right to take care of them."
"Uh-uh-sharing?" When he shakes his head the moogle wriggles in frustration. "Alright! It was shiny and I wanted it!"
Aden lets go, brushes past the moogle and continues on his way, ignoring it calling after him.
RE: Wandering Lost [Story] - Aden Dellebecque - 07-22-2016
Into the Mists, II
That last long, fine stroke wasn't quite right, the leaves springing up from the crux of plant and stone twisting in some unseen breeze even sheltered by ruins as they were. Aden nearly gave up--he wasn't good at drawing, just passable, and the cuttings were probably enough. Something occurred to him, ears twitching, and he looked over at the aetherometer in the other corner of the room, then carefully brought it over such that he could see both at once.
"Here he is, here he is!" His ears flattened, and he looked over his shoulder in time to see a flash of white fur darting out of the door to the ruins. "Come on, kupo!"
Then a shadow covered the door, an all too familiar whoosh of air as all the dust outside kicked up. A dragon settled into the courtyard, awkwardly fitting its bulk between the walls, and lowered its head to the doorway. While Aden reached for his spear it huffed, carefully extricated its head from the doorway and looked aside, grumbling.
"What do you mean, doesn't look like much? Trust me, he's the meanest, baddest one I've met!" The moogle dipped into the doorway, waving his tiny paws wildly. "He can leap halfway from Zenith to Moghome in a single bound! I heard the Chief owes him money! He wrestled Darkscale! He nearly ripped my pom off!"
While the moogle huffed for breath, drifting back out of the doorway, the dragon turned its attention back to him--Aden averted his eyes, looking at the great scalekin's throat.
"What here rings true, son of man?"
Aden flinched as the sound washed over him, voice booming and bright in some archaic form of the language. "Nothing," he answered. The dragon had him cornered, the roof of this building fully intact. All it had to do was breathe.
"No!" The moogle wriggled in anger, a strange mockery of a dance. "He did almost rip my pom off!"
But even as he thought that, this dragon killing him would be so easy, he thought too of his first step--it would need to open its mouth to breathe. There would be a soft portion at the back of the palate, and he trusted his arm to stay true unto death--a quick, clean thrust up. If he was quick enough, perhaps he'd only lose his primary arm. Aden tensed, the metal haft of his spear squeaking at the pass of a gauntleted finger.
"Nothing." It made a sound something like a laugh. "Indeed! But you reek of the fallen shade's brood--you have known their fire, have you not? Are you not a hunter of dragons?"
Aden hesitated, needing a moment to unclench his jaw. "I am a hunter," he answered, "and I have fought dragons."
It grumbled straightening as much as it could, wings shifting. "You are one of the dragon knights, at least. You do the same strange tasks." He didn't correct the dragon. "I have need of your services. I will pay you as is custom of your people."
Aden straightened suddenly, hand still gripping his spear and eyes still down, but the tip of his tail twitched erratically. "You're--hiring me?"
"Yes."
"Um... for what?"
The dragon grumbled, head turning again. "One of my broodlings has taken up amongst those yet your enemy. I wish her returned to me."
The absurdity fully set in at the dragon's request, and Aden thought about pinching himself, but decided against making any sudden or strange movements. "Did she, uh, leave on her own?"
"Indeed. But she knows not what she does. Ours shall be the way of peace--not to chase weak snatches of warsongs past."
Swallowing thickly, Aden said, "I'm not sure I can, uh, talk a dragon down."
That laugh again, a great, whooping huff, and Aden thought he finally detected some vaguely feminine hint in the dragon's voice. "I wish not for you to talk, slayer of wyrms! I wish for you to kill them! Make a ruin of her companions as they have earned!"
"And if she fights me for it?"
The dragon reared back and roared, wings straining against the walls of the ruined courtyard. It shouted something in dragonspeak, then lowered it's head again. "Then leave her where she falls. I will mourn her as I knew her, not as what she became."
Again he hesitated, turning over the request in his mind--fight an indeterminate number of hostile dragons in the hopes it would convince her daughter to return. It was folly no matter what he did, and certain death for either himself or the broodling.
"I'll have to ask my commander for leave to do this," he answered, and hoped it was non-committal yet polite enough by dragon standards.
"Then I shall await you here on the morrow, dragon knight. I shall bring a sample of what I mean to pay you with as well, that you may know my word is true."
The dragon carefully squeezed its way back up out of the ruins, almost dainty in its effort to avoid damaging them further, and flew off, the moogle rushing behind. "Hey! Oh, kupo, what about my finder's fee?"