[Return to the Shroud - Crimes Against Nature Part One]
In those, long past, distant days of yore.
When we learned , our songs of love, and lore
Of Misty wood, and ancient timber,
Of mighty boughs, untouched by cinder.
Where heroes, beyond our ken, once stood,
Within that dark, that black, that Mirk-wood.
-Excerpt frow a Gyr Abanian Folk Song
The legends of the Gyr Abanians are steeped in the depths of the great valley forests of their highland home. They speak of nearly impenetrable interiors the haunt of terrible other-worldly dangers, and sights of breath-taking beauty. The great forests are said to be home of mystcial creatures beynd the reckoning of man, and jealously protective of their mystery.Â
Passage through these legendary wood for many stands as an allegory for the transition from this world to the next. The final steps of a life well lived, or one filled with contrition and fear of damnation. For others it marked the passage from one life to another: a great milestone from which they emerged forever altered. For all, it was to be touched by the unknowable.
The ancient lyricists who put these tales to song may have been aware of that greatest Mirk-wood: the Black Shroud of Eorzea. There the depths of the wood stretch deeper than imagination. The shadows darker than night. The secrets more terrible and fantastic. A forest alive, and possessed of an unknowable will.Â
So, was Aya born into this tradition. She heard the songs, and clung raptly to the stories she heard as a child. She passed through the great wood as her family trod the path of refugees. And as a teenager she dreamed of the great expanse of the forest as a realm of freedom; she heard the call and gazed longingly upon the distant green canopy from trespassed rooftops of far-away spires.Â
And so, as she made her great escape, giving up all she all she had known, she sought to make her own journey through this Mirk-wood. She embraced the howling call, and, like those before, she emerged forever changed.Â
Those days she spent wrapped within the forest as a wandering home stayed with her in undeniable ways. And, though the ways of the world had conspired to flush her from it and back out into open spaces, she still felt that same longing for the full lushness of its enrapturing green that had entranced her teenage dreams.Â
The rather sudden offer of work in Gridania seemed as though it could not have come at a more opportune time. Monsieur Vann's (as she called him) assistant had surprised her near the end of an evening shift at the Quicksand. She had been tasked, the diminutive Au Ra woman stated, with hiring a model for a new line of Vann clothing marketed specifically to the forest city of Gridania. It seemed an offer tha Aya simply could not refuse.
Due to her growing Freelance work, Madam Momodi had kindly extended her some flexibility in her scheduling. And, the next thing she knew, she found herself leaning over the railing of an airship as it made it's way effortlessly and serenely over the edge of the Shroud. She let out a quiet breath. Her mind wondered over those memories of the not-too-distant past. Of the paths and ways that she had learned. Of the faces of the friends she had made—and of some she had lost. Of the good times and the bad. And those one could not tell from the other. Of those she sometimes wished she had never known. Those moments that forever change a person. And of regret.
She leaned a little further over scanning the sights below. The Sun was setting; the fiery hue of its departing rays illuminated the fading wild flowers of a forest meadow below. She remembered some of the stories she had been told. The forest Miqo'te seemed to know the wood better than all others and they told stories of equal wonder and terror. They told of such splendor and trickery that one came away convinced only that a life-time was not enough to learn the full ways of the Shroud.
She sighed softly as the day's last rays lapped high clouds a brilliant shade of pink. She remembered those forest gatherings. Friends, comrades, pitched in a circle. Those times had slipped away: forever gone, as surely as the light of the sun would too.
A porter met her at the hanger, and with considerable swiftness she made her way from the lower-level platform out onto the cobblestone pathways of what counted for avenues in the forest city. The Carline Canopy held memories of its own: her first workplace outside of Ishgard. The site of so many friendships and of her eventual recruitment. But, there was still the issue with Miounne and some six months of long past-due rent. The matronly Elezen was known for her kindness, but underneath it all Aya knew she was a business woman well aware of the bottom-line. It was the sort of trouble that Aya took no chances with.
No, their destination was a small boarding house in the northern neighborhood of the city. A spot where those who wished for more personal attention than the Canopy could offer often chose to stay. A quiet spot to stay while she waited for word from her employer, Monsieur Vann, or his retainer. And that is what she told all who asked her about her reason for visiting Gridania. Unspoken, in her heart, she knew it was otherwise.
That first night she carefully slipped off the clothing of a fashionable Ul'dahn. She looked, with a smirk upon the freshly manicured fingers that would serve her well as a fashion model. She strapped on a pair of what she considered to be more practical forest boots (of the heeled and buckled sort they used to tease her for during her days in the Shroud—perhaps she had not changed as much as she thought).Â
She escaped quietly out of the house and skirted the lit street lamps in town. She passed through the gate, within the disbelieving sight of the posted guards. She stepped into the woods, and with a confidence born of experience, she took off at a run into the moonlit forest.
She was stronger than she had been. And soon she found, faster too. Years of additional training had seen to that. The rigors of training and rehearsing amongst Ul'dah's Miqo'te dancing girls had done its share too.Â
She beamed a silent, brilliant grin that none but the forest itself could appreciate.
Home at last. Free again.