To begin with, the bath was massively inappropriate. It probably is most of the time, so these very abnormal things should have been expected by K'airos, whether they were or not. It was nothing too scandalous; just D'aijeen being D'aijeen and having issues with boundaries and acceptable affection and such. Also there was a displacement test in which K'airos had to be repeatedly submerged and measured to determine her mass, and probably a lecture on sticking strictly to D'aijeen's planned diets.
For once free of the smell of corpses, D'aijeen wore white silk pajamas emblazoned with a "D" in several places. In case anyone doubted they were dodo pajamas. Bare-foot and bed-headed, D'aijeen would sleep for a few hours before rising from bed in a reluctant but practiced motion that did not seem at all asleep. Even though she was still asleep. She would pause for only a moment before taking small steps towards the door to head outside.
K'airos was one of those people who instantly fell asleep as soon as she placed her head on a pillow and closed her eyes. One would have thought that five years of living inside the secure buildings of Thanalan would mean her sleep was on the deep end of the spectrum, but that was not the case. There was a terrible thing she did not like, something that terrified her: bugs. After witnessing an insect the size of her foot during one of her patrols, three years ago, something clicked in her brain. Since then, she was extremely easy to wake up. So when her sister rose from the bed, K'airos thought that a giant bug of the Shroud had made its way into her room. It was only a moment before she was sitting on the edge of the bed with her pillow raised, ready to throw it, when she noticed that the supposed bug was wearing clothes. She stared blankly at D'aijeen for a while, letting her do whatever it was she was doing.
D'aijeen opened the door with a very slow and deliberate motion. At once the cool air in the hall outside, not that different from the night air of Drybone, slipped in past her. Its smell was heavy with corpses and rain. Wet corpses, the best kind of corpse. Â D'aijeen moved at a ponderously slow speed into the hallway and turned to head outside, humming as she went. There were few doors in the hallway, and the lobby of the inn was wide open to the outside. Rain blew in, the sound of the downpour like a dozen waterfalls in the distance.
Nights in Thanalan could get pretty cold, actually, and even though D'aijeen was not disturbed, goosebumps rose over her body. She shivered when her bare feet touched cool tile. Her long hair over her face veiled her blue eyes, but she caught sight of the light of the aetheryte in the courtyard a ways away.
The woman working the desk of the inn inquired of D'aijeen's well-being, but D'aijeen did not acknowledge her.
K'airos finally got out of bed and spent some time searching for her boots. She was wearing a hempen camise and trousers, grey in color, much more humble than the silky robe her sister was using. The sound of rain reached her ears, and so she took with herself her unfolded turban. She hurried out of the room and into the hallway, tripping twice with the shoestrings she forgot to tie.
Stepping into the rain, D'aijeen flinched, paused for a moment, but then continued down the steps of the inn. The rainfall was so intense that she was drenched in seconds, her green hair plastered against her mud-colored skin like a hanging plant, her silk pajamas slinging to her body. The girl's blue eyes were transfixed on the aetheryte, wide as though she'd never seen the light.
She began to hum, a slow tune, something sad but pretty. Just a few repetitive bars.
K'airos offered an apologetic look to the innkeeper before reaching the exit door and lingering under it. "Aijeen!" she yelled outside. "You are sleep-walking again!" she added uselessly, knowing the chances of it actually waking her sister up were similar to having Dalamud reconstruct itself and raise to the night sky again. Not waiting at all, she headed out into the rain towards her sister, covering herself with the unfolded turban as best as she could. "Wake up!"
D'aijeen did not acknowledge her sister's shouting. She walked down off the steps and into the mud, the rain lifting the stink of rot and stirring it in the air of the pit around her. Her fingers moved, curling into her palms and rubbing against one another, and after a moment the found her silk clothes. She kneaded the fabric of her nightshirt between her fingers absently.
K'airos was quite glad she had put on some boots on. She hopped down from the short stairs like a bunny and ran behind her sister. "You are going to ruin that robe!" she complained, trying to grab her by the arms.
D'aijeen had no power to resist K'airos' grabbing hands, but did not change her behavior, either. Staring and humming, feeling her shirt.
A ways across Drybone's open courtyard, in the shadow of a wall, a wet, muddy form stirred at the sound of shouting through the rain. Grey ears heavy with water shifted towards the noise, and with a shiver, Antimony lifted her head. She hadn't slept - the rain and the chill and the generally uncomfortable situation of sitting in a muddy puddle had doggedly prevented that - but she had managed to drift into a distant haze for a while after she'd finished the apple Megiddo had gifted her. For this reason, while the voice behind the shouting was familiar, she did not immediately recognize it.
Turning her head slightly, she squinted green eyes past the smudged lenses of her glasses and was able to make out two forms in the rain.
K'airos started dragging her sister back to the inn. "Are you going to wake up...? No?" she asked, not really expecting an answer. "You should wake up! I'm just saying. But let's head inside and dry you up. And then you can wake up!"
Unable to stop herself from being dragged, D'aijeen is equally unprepared to keep her balance, nor does she release her nightshirt as K'airos pulls on her arm. She pops a few buttons on her shirt as she is pulled, and talks tiny, stumbling steps backwards, eyes stuck on the Aetheryte.
Seeing two tiny round shapes flying away into the mud, K'airos concluded that her current approach would result in a wardrobe malfunction. So instead of pulling D'aijeen by the arms, she surrounded her below them and by the waist. "Wake up!" she insisted, pulling her again.
Antimony blinked slowly, watching the two forms move as one grabbed the other, and attempted to make sense of the scene. It was at the very least a distraction from the dull ache that had settled into her joints, the feeling of being soaked down to her underclothes, and the chill the kept her tail shivering against her legs. The winter coat Mitari had given her had become something of a blanket, slung across her shoulders, but even it wasn't completely immune to the wet.
Antimony jerked suddenly, eyes widening behind her glasses as her mind finally placed the voice, and a moment later she was stumbling to her feet. Stiff limbs were decidedly uncooperative, and it took her a couple attempts before she was up and hurrying towards the pair in the rain, clutching the coat to her shoulders.
She stopped very suddenly when she was about mid-way between her shelter and the two girls, however, recalling the cruel words her youngest daughter had spoken, the threats. The thought of drawing K'aijeen's attention once more, and likely losing K'airos as a result, froze her more than the rain ever could, and she found she could not get her feet to carry her further. She didn't dare even to speak.
D'aijeen is a very light and weak girl on a good day, and since she didn’t offer any resistance she's decently easy to move. She stopped humming when the movement squeezed the breath from her lungs, but her eyes stayed on the aetheryte, hands on her shirt.
"Did you eat a moth while I wasn't looking?" K'airos joked, mostly to herself. She dragged Aijeen until they reached the steps leading into the inn and, once there, she bent backwards and lifted her sister so that her ankles wouldn't collide with the steps. Then she kept moving, entering the building and shouting to the innkeep: "All is fine! I got her! Ignore us! Ignore us!"
Watching her daughters - her daughters, she thought dizzily - return to the building while Antimony stood distant and unable to touch them, to speak to them, to help them, was almost as difficult as watching her family leave for war once more. Her eyes and nose burned as her legs finally managed to move, back-stepping her towards the shelter she'd left, and tried to remind herself of what K'airos - her sweet, resourceful, joyful K'airos - had promised her. It was a small but significant comfort.
D'aijeen kept doing that things she do.
"This would not happen if you slept with your mouth shut." K'airos continued, moving across the hallway and into the room with D'aijeen. "Or...did you eat one? Ew! Why would you eat one? You shouldn't eat bugs!" There was now a faint trail of mud all across the corridor leading to their room. The inn owner was not going to be happy. But then, it was an inn in Drybone: trails of mud were surely a daily occurrence.Â
K'airos let D'aijeen go near the bed, but kept one hand on her shoulder in case she tried to walk away one more time. "Wake up!" she tried, shaking her.
Soaked head to toe, cold and shivering, D'aijeen stares at nothing and... pouts. She pouts just a bit, exhaling in frustration. She begins to hum again and moves to lay down in bed.
"Do not go anywhere! I'll get some towels." and with that said, K'airos quickly left the room, her clothers dripping and leaving a sizeable puddle right outside the door.
Unhindered, D'aijeen hummed to herself and rolled into bed, puling the covers over herself and essentially going to sleep. This of course makes the bed all wet, and she's still shivering.
Opening the door by walking backwards into it and slamming against it twice, K'airos entered the room carrying a large stack of dry towels. When she turned around, she saw her sister in bed and then /she/ pouted. "Oh, for Azeyma's bright pupils!" she complained. "Now we have to change the sheets and..." She shook her head, closed the door by softly kicking it back into place and dropped the towels on top of her own bed. "Stupid moths!"
D'aijeen did not snore because she's a lady.
K'airos shook her sister energetically and spoke loudly in a last attempt of waking her up. "Stop sleeping! You are going to get sick!"
At this D'aijeen jerked violently awake, her limbs flying to either side of her and straining against the blanket she's rolled up in. She half sits up wide-eyed, yelping in wordless surprise and no small amount of instinctive fear.
K'airos took a step back. "Are you awake?"
Falling still, D'aijeen panted in silence for several seconds, trying to catch the breath that K'airos scared out of her and waiting for the tiny wave of panic to wash out of her. She then declared, tiredly and with great offense, "Yes, Airos. I am awake, quite obviously."
Reaching her sister a towel, K'airos smiled. "I'm sorry! You sleepwalked into the rain and you seemed very obviously awake if not for the fact you didn't answer to my inquiries about how awake you were!"
"... What?" D'aijeen squinted at the towel as though it had insulted her, looking through the veil of green hair over her face. Gradually, she became aware of her situation, and she pulled the covers off of herself to look at her legs and the bed, all of which were soaked through.
She shivered, and when her tail popped up beside her she grabbed it in one hand, pulling it to her chest. "... Oh." After a time, she reached out and took the towel.
"Sorry, you were already outside by the time I reached you". K'airos took another towel from the pile and started drying herself up, starting by her hair. "You didn't accidentaly eat a moth, did you?"
"No I did not eat a moth," D'aijeen answered immediately, holding the towel up against her chest in knid to her tail. "What kind of question is that? Did I eat a moth. No. No, I did not."
"I don't know!" K'airos protested, throwing her arms, and hence her towel, up in the air before resuming to dry herself. "You were staring at the aetherythe while humming, so I thought...isn't that what moths do? Maybe you had one of those fancy dishes using animals from the Shroud or La Noscea or something!"
"That's ridiculous," D'aijeen muttered, burying her phase in the towel. She hasn't even started drying herself yet, her tail just shivering in her lap. "And I apologize. This is something that has been occuring recently in Ul'dah. I think I will blame the stress. Yes."
"Stress? Why? What happened?"
"In general!" D'aijeen stated, annoyed. "As of yesterday you and that woman. I cannot find peace from the many infuriating experiences I must endure."
"Oh." K'airos did a good job at looking sad. "But if it started in Ul'dah there must be something else!" she said, standing up and being quite proud of how dry she was now. This wasn’t really much, as her clothes were still quite wet. "In any case we'll forget about all that once we get back to the city, right?"
"I'd love to forget about it immediately." D'aijeen said, rolling off the bed with a grumpy huff. "Change the blankets for me, please, Airos." She threw the towel over her head to dry her hair. She has a lot of hair.
K'airos pouted. "You are the one remembering it." she mumbled, moving to the wardrobe and getting out some dry clothes. The only thing left for her was a rather heavy red dalmatica, unfit for sleeping; the brown trousers she wore constantly under her armor and some other dark grey trousers people kept telling her were called 'chausses'. She chose this last one and the only cloth she had to cover her upper body. "I'll go get your blankets. Don't forget to clean your feet!"
D'aijeen looked down at ehr feet and, seeing them muddied, took on a look of disproportionate distress, and began to clean them immediately.
***
At some point during the night, the rain stopped, and not long after this, Antimony finally succumbed to sleep, or simply passed out, but the end result was all the same.
Morning rose on Drybone as it always did, the quick warming of earth bringing out the smell of soggy corpses until the town was all but saturated in the smell of rot. This would ease as the day wore by and the land (and bodies) dried, but early in the morning, it made breathing especially unpleasant, even for those used to the phenomenon.
Antimony remained blissfully unaware of the smell, tucked against the wall she'd taken as shelter. In her sleep, she'd dropped down the wall until she lay on her side, and the coat Mitari had gifted her lay over her body like a blanket. She went largely unnoticed by those citizens of Drybone starting their day, as a sleeping homeless woman was not a particularly unusual sight for them.
K'airos left her room quite early that day, making sure Aijeen was asleep before departing. She had a small panic attack when the innkeep told her there was no "Antimony" registered. But she quickly recovered and as any level headed woman she ran out of the inn and started desperately poking all the refugees about a middle-aged Miqo'te woman with grey hair, glasses and probably no money at all. Luckily for her, there were almost no Miqo'te refugees in Drybone, so finding her 'fake' mother took almost no time.Â
Once she did, she kneeled besides her and poked her once with her open palm. "Hey" she said. "Are you awake?"
Antimony had a very predictable reaction to this gesture for one who had gone nearly three days without sleep: She stirred slightly, ears shifting in the drying mud, and then promptly went quiet once more. Not exactly the most uplifting or responsible image to present to her daughter, but we can cut her a bit of slack at this point in time.
K'airos did no cut her any slack, sadly. "Did you pass the night outside? In the rain?!" She brought both hands to her face, eyes wide open. "Oh no! You have no money, don't you?"
K'airos was so very rude that one would think D'aijeen hadn't taught her any manners at all, especially not about disturbing sleeping people!
Ahem.
What the young woman's hand could not, her exclamation did. Antimony flinched at the dismayed voice and blinked her eyes open, coughing once as she awkwardly pushed herself up. She could hardly see anything through her glasses, but just over the top of them, slowly awakening eyes caught bronze skin and red hair, and the miserable night in the rain was largely forgotten.
"Airos!" As she spoke her daughter's name, she hastened to her feet, catching herself dizzily against the wall for a moment and nearly losing her grip on the coat. Her clothes felt stiff with drying mud, but she ignored them to thoughtlessly wrap her arms about the young woman, pulling her into a hug. "Ah, you're here. You're here. I wasn't imagining..."
K'airos returned the hug dearly, perhaps squeezing Antimony a bit too much. "Yes, I'm still here. And so are you...! All dirty and covered in mud. Didn't you get a room at the inn? Do you need money? I...I can spare some!" she said, not letting her go.
"It's fine, don't worry about me, I'm fine," Antimony murmured, leaning into the hug and breathing in her daughter's scent. All the rot and death in the world couldn't hide that, a smell she had known since the day she'd given birth. She found herself smiling, though her eyes stung and her vision seemed blurry now from more than just her glasses. "I am simply looking forward to traveling to Ul'dah with you," she breathed.
K'airos let the hug linger a bit longer. "Well, we can't go together as that would just make Aijeen mad, but we can meet there!" Moving to pull out of the hug, though not completely, and still leaving her hands on Antimony's shoulders, she said. "I'll be going to Ul'dah today to calm her down. I'll bring you enough gil for a day at the inn so you can pull yourself together and have some food, and then some more so you can travel back to the city tomorrow and meet with me once you arrive. Yes?"
A vague weight settled in Antimony's chest, and her brows knit together in distress. "... Aijeen will be there?" She pulled back from the hug a bit as well, grip loosening at the ill thoughts the mention of her youngest daughter stirred. She had been so caught up in the thought of finally spending time with her baby girl, her K'airos, after five years... She had not thought of what the other would do. Antimony drew a shaky breath, coughed when it hitched on something scratchy in her lungs, and then cast an uneasy look over K'airos's shoulder.
It felt strange, to be a mother seeking comfort from her children rather than the other way around, and she wondered dimly if she should be ashamed of it, if she should be taking more care of their own worries and needs. So if K'airos wanted to bring K'aijeen, then... "... Alright. I will, ah, see you there soon, then."
"Well, I can't leave her alone in Drybone. Even if I did, and knowing her, she'd just follow me." she smiled. "But don't worry! I'll find a way to have time to spend with you. I promise. Now..." K'airos let her mother go and untied the purse from her belt. "Here! I don't want to go back to the inn and find Aijeen awake, because then you'd have no money left and I don't think the refugee look suits you." She handed the bag to Antimony. "It should be enough for the inn and a journey back to Ul'dah!"
There was a very sharp, almost painful humility in accepting money from your own children, but Antimony managed it as graciously as one covered nearly head-to-toe in mud, half sick, and oscillating between grief and absolute joy for the lives of family she thought long dead could possibly manage. That is, she clutched at the purse in one hand and flung herself against K'airos once more, holding her daughter to her and just feeling, smelling, /knowing/ that she lived. Oh, and she cried, too, but that was to be expected.
"Thank you," she breathed. "I don't know what I... Oh thank you for surviving." Then she forced herself to pull away.
"That was Aijeen's doing!" she replied with a smile. She was now, too, covered in mud. She'd blame the rainfall from the last night and some poor refugees who were in too much of a hurry to see her while they rushed away from the plaza. Yes, that would do nicely. She kept smiling.Â
"There's much we should tell each other, but if we start now we'll only finish when Aijeen comes like an angry thunder. Or maybe an angry moth." she said, trying desperately to groom her hair, even though it was already groomed. "I should get going now. Remember! One day at the inn, then get back to Ul'dah. I'll find you when you arrive! Or maybe a couple days later, but I will!"
Antimony nodded, keeping her eyes on K'airos as though the woman could simply up and disappear any moment. "I understand." She hugged the purse to herself and tried not to think of what she might do once she returned to Ul'dah, of who she might see.
She did not simply disappear. She first waved and said "I'll see you again in Ul'dah!" with the broadest of smiles, giving four steps backwards and turning around at the fourth. She walked away quite happily, and it seemed like she was having trouble walking. Or perhaps it was just her usual excitement manifesting in the form of rampant hopping. And then, she did disappear after taking a turn towards the inn.
For once free of the smell of corpses, D'aijeen wore white silk pajamas emblazoned with a "D" in several places. In case anyone doubted they were dodo pajamas. Bare-foot and bed-headed, D'aijeen would sleep for a few hours before rising from bed in a reluctant but practiced motion that did not seem at all asleep. Even though she was still asleep. She would pause for only a moment before taking small steps towards the door to head outside.
K'airos was one of those people who instantly fell asleep as soon as she placed her head on a pillow and closed her eyes. One would have thought that five years of living inside the secure buildings of Thanalan would mean her sleep was on the deep end of the spectrum, but that was not the case. There was a terrible thing she did not like, something that terrified her: bugs. After witnessing an insect the size of her foot during one of her patrols, three years ago, something clicked in her brain. Since then, she was extremely easy to wake up. So when her sister rose from the bed, K'airos thought that a giant bug of the Shroud had made its way into her room. It was only a moment before she was sitting on the edge of the bed with her pillow raised, ready to throw it, when she noticed that the supposed bug was wearing clothes. She stared blankly at D'aijeen for a while, letting her do whatever it was she was doing.
D'aijeen opened the door with a very slow and deliberate motion. At once the cool air in the hall outside, not that different from the night air of Drybone, slipped in past her. Its smell was heavy with corpses and rain. Wet corpses, the best kind of corpse. Â D'aijeen moved at a ponderously slow speed into the hallway and turned to head outside, humming as she went. There were few doors in the hallway, and the lobby of the inn was wide open to the outside. Rain blew in, the sound of the downpour like a dozen waterfalls in the distance.
Nights in Thanalan could get pretty cold, actually, and even though D'aijeen was not disturbed, goosebumps rose over her body. She shivered when her bare feet touched cool tile. Her long hair over her face veiled her blue eyes, but she caught sight of the light of the aetheryte in the courtyard a ways away.
The woman working the desk of the inn inquired of D'aijeen's well-being, but D'aijeen did not acknowledge her.
K'airos finally got out of bed and spent some time searching for her boots. She was wearing a hempen camise and trousers, grey in color, much more humble than the silky robe her sister was using. The sound of rain reached her ears, and so she took with herself her unfolded turban. She hurried out of the room and into the hallway, tripping twice with the shoestrings she forgot to tie.
Stepping into the rain, D'aijeen flinched, paused for a moment, but then continued down the steps of the inn. The rainfall was so intense that she was drenched in seconds, her green hair plastered against her mud-colored skin like a hanging plant, her silk pajamas slinging to her body. The girl's blue eyes were transfixed on the aetheryte, wide as though she'd never seen the light.
She began to hum, a slow tune, something sad but pretty. Just a few repetitive bars.
K'airos offered an apologetic look to the innkeeper before reaching the exit door and lingering under it. "Aijeen!" she yelled outside. "You are sleep-walking again!" she added uselessly, knowing the chances of it actually waking her sister up were similar to having Dalamud reconstruct itself and raise to the night sky again. Not waiting at all, she headed out into the rain towards her sister, covering herself with the unfolded turban as best as she could. "Wake up!"
D'aijeen did not acknowledge her sister's shouting. She walked down off the steps and into the mud, the rain lifting the stink of rot and stirring it in the air of the pit around her. Her fingers moved, curling into her palms and rubbing against one another, and after a moment the found her silk clothes. She kneaded the fabric of her nightshirt between her fingers absently.
K'airos was quite glad she had put on some boots on. She hopped down from the short stairs like a bunny and ran behind her sister. "You are going to ruin that robe!" she complained, trying to grab her by the arms.
D'aijeen had no power to resist K'airos' grabbing hands, but did not change her behavior, either. Staring and humming, feeling her shirt.
A ways across Drybone's open courtyard, in the shadow of a wall, a wet, muddy form stirred at the sound of shouting through the rain. Grey ears heavy with water shifted towards the noise, and with a shiver, Antimony lifted her head. She hadn't slept - the rain and the chill and the generally uncomfortable situation of sitting in a muddy puddle had doggedly prevented that - but she had managed to drift into a distant haze for a while after she'd finished the apple Megiddo had gifted her. For this reason, while the voice behind the shouting was familiar, she did not immediately recognize it.
Turning her head slightly, she squinted green eyes past the smudged lenses of her glasses and was able to make out two forms in the rain.
K'airos started dragging her sister back to the inn. "Are you going to wake up...? No?" she asked, not really expecting an answer. "You should wake up! I'm just saying. But let's head inside and dry you up. And then you can wake up!"
Unable to stop herself from being dragged, D'aijeen is equally unprepared to keep her balance, nor does she release her nightshirt as K'airos pulls on her arm. She pops a few buttons on her shirt as she is pulled, and talks tiny, stumbling steps backwards, eyes stuck on the Aetheryte.
Seeing two tiny round shapes flying away into the mud, K'airos concluded that her current approach would result in a wardrobe malfunction. So instead of pulling D'aijeen by the arms, she surrounded her below them and by the waist. "Wake up!" she insisted, pulling her again.
Antimony blinked slowly, watching the two forms move as one grabbed the other, and attempted to make sense of the scene. It was at the very least a distraction from the dull ache that had settled into her joints, the feeling of being soaked down to her underclothes, and the chill the kept her tail shivering against her legs. The winter coat Mitari had given her had become something of a blanket, slung across her shoulders, but even it wasn't completely immune to the wet.
Antimony jerked suddenly, eyes widening behind her glasses as her mind finally placed the voice, and a moment later she was stumbling to her feet. Stiff limbs were decidedly uncooperative, and it took her a couple attempts before she was up and hurrying towards the pair in the rain, clutching the coat to her shoulders.
She stopped very suddenly when she was about mid-way between her shelter and the two girls, however, recalling the cruel words her youngest daughter had spoken, the threats. The thought of drawing K'aijeen's attention once more, and likely losing K'airos as a result, froze her more than the rain ever could, and she found she could not get her feet to carry her further. She didn't dare even to speak.
D'aijeen is a very light and weak girl on a good day, and since she didn’t offer any resistance she's decently easy to move. She stopped humming when the movement squeezed the breath from her lungs, but her eyes stayed on the aetheryte, hands on her shirt.
"Did you eat a moth while I wasn't looking?" K'airos joked, mostly to herself. She dragged Aijeen until they reached the steps leading into the inn and, once there, she bent backwards and lifted her sister so that her ankles wouldn't collide with the steps. Then she kept moving, entering the building and shouting to the innkeep: "All is fine! I got her! Ignore us! Ignore us!"
Watching her daughters - her daughters, she thought dizzily - return to the building while Antimony stood distant and unable to touch them, to speak to them, to help them, was almost as difficult as watching her family leave for war once more. Her eyes and nose burned as her legs finally managed to move, back-stepping her towards the shelter she'd left, and tried to remind herself of what K'airos - her sweet, resourceful, joyful K'airos - had promised her. It was a small but significant comfort.
D'aijeen kept doing that things she do.
"This would not happen if you slept with your mouth shut." K'airos continued, moving across the hallway and into the room with D'aijeen. "Or...did you eat one? Ew! Why would you eat one? You shouldn't eat bugs!" There was now a faint trail of mud all across the corridor leading to their room. The inn owner was not going to be happy. But then, it was an inn in Drybone: trails of mud were surely a daily occurrence.Â
K'airos let D'aijeen go near the bed, but kept one hand on her shoulder in case she tried to walk away one more time. "Wake up!" she tried, shaking her.
Soaked head to toe, cold and shivering, D'aijeen stares at nothing and... pouts. She pouts just a bit, exhaling in frustration. She begins to hum again and moves to lay down in bed.
"Do not go anywhere! I'll get some towels." and with that said, K'airos quickly left the room, her clothers dripping and leaving a sizeable puddle right outside the door.
Unhindered, D'aijeen hummed to herself and rolled into bed, puling the covers over herself and essentially going to sleep. This of course makes the bed all wet, and she's still shivering.
Opening the door by walking backwards into it and slamming against it twice, K'airos entered the room carrying a large stack of dry towels. When she turned around, she saw her sister in bed and then /she/ pouted. "Oh, for Azeyma's bright pupils!" she complained. "Now we have to change the sheets and..." She shook her head, closed the door by softly kicking it back into place and dropped the towels on top of her own bed. "Stupid moths!"
D'aijeen did not snore because she's a lady.
K'airos shook her sister energetically and spoke loudly in a last attempt of waking her up. "Stop sleeping! You are going to get sick!"
At this D'aijeen jerked violently awake, her limbs flying to either side of her and straining against the blanket she's rolled up in. She half sits up wide-eyed, yelping in wordless surprise and no small amount of instinctive fear.
K'airos took a step back. "Are you awake?"
Falling still, D'aijeen panted in silence for several seconds, trying to catch the breath that K'airos scared out of her and waiting for the tiny wave of panic to wash out of her. She then declared, tiredly and with great offense, "Yes, Airos. I am awake, quite obviously."
Reaching her sister a towel, K'airos smiled. "I'm sorry! You sleepwalked into the rain and you seemed very obviously awake if not for the fact you didn't answer to my inquiries about how awake you were!"
"... What?" D'aijeen squinted at the towel as though it had insulted her, looking through the veil of green hair over her face. Gradually, she became aware of her situation, and she pulled the covers off of herself to look at her legs and the bed, all of which were soaked through.
She shivered, and when her tail popped up beside her she grabbed it in one hand, pulling it to her chest. "... Oh." After a time, she reached out and took the towel.
"Sorry, you were already outside by the time I reached you". K'airos took another towel from the pile and started drying herself up, starting by her hair. "You didn't accidentaly eat a moth, did you?"
"No I did not eat a moth," D'aijeen answered immediately, holding the towel up against her chest in knid to her tail. "What kind of question is that? Did I eat a moth. No. No, I did not."
"I don't know!" K'airos protested, throwing her arms, and hence her towel, up in the air before resuming to dry herself. "You were staring at the aetherythe while humming, so I thought...isn't that what moths do? Maybe you had one of those fancy dishes using animals from the Shroud or La Noscea or something!"
"That's ridiculous," D'aijeen muttered, burying her phase in the towel. She hasn't even started drying herself yet, her tail just shivering in her lap. "And I apologize. This is something that has been occuring recently in Ul'dah. I think I will blame the stress. Yes."
"Stress? Why? What happened?"
"In general!" D'aijeen stated, annoyed. "As of yesterday you and that woman. I cannot find peace from the many infuriating experiences I must endure."
"Oh." K'airos did a good job at looking sad. "But if it started in Ul'dah there must be something else!" she said, standing up and being quite proud of how dry she was now. This wasn’t really much, as her clothes were still quite wet. "In any case we'll forget about all that once we get back to the city, right?"
"I'd love to forget about it immediately." D'aijeen said, rolling off the bed with a grumpy huff. "Change the blankets for me, please, Airos." She threw the towel over her head to dry her hair. She has a lot of hair.
K'airos pouted. "You are the one remembering it." she mumbled, moving to the wardrobe and getting out some dry clothes. The only thing left for her was a rather heavy red dalmatica, unfit for sleeping; the brown trousers she wore constantly under her armor and some other dark grey trousers people kept telling her were called 'chausses'. She chose this last one and the only cloth she had to cover her upper body. "I'll go get your blankets. Don't forget to clean your feet!"
D'aijeen looked down at ehr feet and, seeing them muddied, took on a look of disproportionate distress, and began to clean them immediately.
***
At some point during the night, the rain stopped, and not long after this, Antimony finally succumbed to sleep, or simply passed out, but the end result was all the same.
Morning rose on Drybone as it always did, the quick warming of earth bringing out the smell of soggy corpses until the town was all but saturated in the smell of rot. This would ease as the day wore by and the land (and bodies) dried, but early in the morning, it made breathing especially unpleasant, even for those used to the phenomenon.
Antimony remained blissfully unaware of the smell, tucked against the wall she'd taken as shelter. In her sleep, she'd dropped down the wall until she lay on her side, and the coat Mitari had gifted her lay over her body like a blanket. She went largely unnoticed by those citizens of Drybone starting their day, as a sleeping homeless woman was not a particularly unusual sight for them.
K'airos left her room quite early that day, making sure Aijeen was asleep before departing. She had a small panic attack when the innkeep told her there was no "Antimony" registered. But she quickly recovered and as any level headed woman she ran out of the inn and started desperately poking all the refugees about a middle-aged Miqo'te woman with grey hair, glasses and probably no money at all. Luckily for her, there were almost no Miqo'te refugees in Drybone, so finding her 'fake' mother took almost no time.Â
Once she did, she kneeled besides her and poked her once with her open palm. "Hey" she said. "Are you awake?"
Antimony had a very predictable reaction to this gesture for one who had gone nearly three days without sleep: She stirred slightly, ears shifting in the drying mud, and then promptly went quiet once more. Not exactly the most uplifting or responsible image to present to her daughter, but we can cut her a bit of slack at this point in time.
K'airos did no cut her any slack, sadly. "Did you pass the night outside? In the rain?!" She brought both hands to her face, eyes wide open. "Oh no! You have no money, don't you?"
K'airos was so very rude that one would think D'aijeen hadn't taught her any manners at all, especially not about disturbing sleeping people!
Ahem.
What the young woman's hand could not, her exclamation did. Antimony flinched at the dismayed voice and blinked her eyes open, coughing once as she awkwardly pushed herself up. She could hardly see anything through her glasses, but just over the top of them, slowly awakening eyes caught bronze skin and red hair, and the miserable night in the rain was largely forgotten.
"Airos!" As she spoke her daughter's name, she hastened to her feet, catching herself dizzily against the wall for a moment and nearly losing her grip on the coat. Her clothes felt stiff with drying mud, but she ignored them to thoughtlessly wrap her arms about the young woman, pulling her into a hug. "Ah, you're here. You're here. I wasn't imagining..."
K'airos returned the hug dearly, perhaps squeezing Antimony a bit too much. "Yes, I'm still here. And so are you...! All dirty and covered in mud. Didn't you get a room at the inn? Do you need money? I...I can spare some!" she said, not letting her go.
"It's fine, don't worry about me, I'm fine," Antimony murmured, leaning into the hug and breathing in her daughter's scent. All the rot and death in the world couldn't hide that, a smell she had known since the day she'd given birth. She found herself smiling, though her eyes stung and her vision seemed blurry now from more than just her glasses. "I am simply looking forward to traveling to Ul'dah with you," she breathed.
K'airos let the hug linger a bit longer. "Well, we can't go together as that would just make Aijeen mad, but we can meet there!" Moving to pull out of the hug, though not completely, and still leaving her hands on Antimony's shoulders, she said. "I'll be going to Ul'dah today to calm her down. I'll bring you enough gil for a day at the inn so you can pull yourself together and have some food, and then some more so you can travel back to the city tomorrow and meet with me once you arrive. Yes?"
A vague weight settled in Antimony's chest, and her brows knit together in distress. "... Aijeen will be there?" She pulled back from the hug a bit as well, grip loosening at the ill thoughts the mention of her youngest daughter stirred. She had been so caught up in the thought of finally spending time with her baby girl, her K'airos, after five years... She had not thought of what the other would do. Antimony drew a shaky breath, coughed when it hitched on something scratchy in her lungs, and then cast an uneasy look over K'airos's shoulder.
It felt strange, to be a mother seeking comfort from her children rather than the other way around, and she wondered dimly if she should be ashamed of it, if she should be taking more care of their own worries and needs. So if K'airos wanted to bring K'aijeen, then... "... Alright. I will, ah, see you there soon, then."
"Well, I can't leave her alone in Drybone. Even if I did, and knowing her, she'd just follow me." she smiled. "But don't worry! I'll find a way to have time to spend with you. I promise. Now..." K'airos let her mother go and untied the purse from her belt. "Here! I don't want to go back to the inn and find Aijeen awake, because then you'd have no money left and I don't think the refugee look suits you." She handed the bag to Antimony. "It should be enough for the inn and a journey back to Ul'dah!"
There was a very sharp, almost painful humility in accepting money from your own children, but Antimony managed it as graciously as one covered nearly head-to-toe in mud, half sick, and oscillating between grief and absolute joy for the lives of family she thought long dead could possibly manage. That is, she clutched at the purse in one hand and flung herself against K'airos once more, holding her daughter to her and just feeling, smelling, /knowing/ that she lived. Oh, and she cried, too, but that was to be expected.
"Thank you," she breathed. "I don't know what I... Oh thank you for surviving." Then she forced herself to pull away.
"That was Aijeen's doing!" she replied with a smile. She was now, too, covered in mud. She'd blame the rainfall from the last night and some poor refugees who were in too much of a hurry to see her while they rushed away from the plaza. Yes, that would do nicely. She kept smiling.Â
"There's much we should tell each other, but if we start now we'll only finish when Aijeen comes like an angry thunder. Or maybe an angry moth." she said, trying desperately to groom her hair, even though it was already groomed. "I should get going now. Remember! One day at the inn, then get back to Ul'dah. I'll find you when you arrive! Or maybe a couple days later, but I will!"
Antimony nodded, keeping her eyes on K'airos as though the woman could simply up and disappear any moment. "I understand." She hugged the purse to herself and tried not to think of what she might do once she returned to Ul'dah, of who she might see.
She did not simply disappear. She first waved and said "I'll see you again in Ul'dah!" with the broadest of smiles, giving four steps backwards and turning around at the fourth. She walked away quite happily, and it seemed like she was having trouble walking. Or perhaps it was just her usual excitement manifesting in the form of rampant hopping. And then, she did disappear after taking a turn towards the inn.
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"Song dogs barking at the break of dawn, lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm; and these streets, quiet as a sleeping army, send their battered dreams to heaven."
Hipparion Tribe (Sagolii)Â - Â Antimony Jhanhi's Wiki
