Goldjoy

[Talha Olobi]

Talha understood now why so many Keepers had chosen to make the Black Shroud their home. It was so peaceful and quiet here. Much more calm than the cities, she thought. Then again, she had grown up outside of city walls. It was no surprise she found them to be a little much. 

 

Beneath a canopy of massive, ancient trees, she sat by a shallow river that trickled slowly through the roots and wild terrain. She had pulled off her gloves and laid them on the ground beside her. Now she sat on her knees, cleaning her knuckles in the water. 

 

Both of her hands were bruised and scraped up. These days they usually were, but she certainly wasn't complaining about it. Something about the pain filled her with pride. Every fight she walked away from alive meant she got a little bit better. The pain was experience and it was hers.

 

"Kweh!"

 

A chocobo stood across the small stream from her, saddled and dipping into a pile of gysahl greens left for him on a flat rock. Talha looked up at the big, yellow bird and smiled. She had named him Goldjoy.

 

"You like those?" she asked, as she ran water over her knuckles. "I hope so, because I spent the last of my gil getting them."

 

Goldjoy cocked a head at her and replied, "Kweh?"

 

"Yep," said Talha, as though she'd understood precisely what that meant. 

 

Maybe this was why she was always broke. Truth be told, she had not really needed a chocobo - it wasn't as though her legs had stopped working. But it could get lonely out on the road when you were alone, and the stable was not charging anything exorbitant. 

 

Somehow, Talha had lucked into a stable job at Shroudrose Teahouse - she still wasn't quite sure how, with the way she had babbled desperately at Ms. Covington - but she had only just begun her employment there and wasn't about to go asking for money so that she could buy a chocobo. Instead, she took on a few odd jobs. 

 

It had been the last of these tasks which had left her knuckles so beat up. A small group of bandits, held up off the road in Eastern Shroud, had been attacking merchant wagons bound for Gridania. It had not been terribly difficult dealing with them, but their armor had left its mark on her with every blow Talha had delivered.

 

She splashed some more water over her hands and muttered, "Swiving armor… swiving bandits."

 

By now, the Gods' Quiver would have collected them where Talha had left them unconscious, and they would either end up in a cell or worse. She wondered what their families would think, if any of them had one. 

 

Talha looked up at Goldjoy. She told him, matter-of-factly, "My mother was a bandit, you know."

 

"Kweh," said Goldjoy. 

 

"Well, sometimes," Talha corrected herself. "And that was a long time ago." 

 

She stood up from the ground and shook her hands dry. 

 

"My sisters and I didn't know it at the time," Talha explained to the chocobo. "We were so young. Not to mention, she did a rather good job at hiding it from us. Mother was smart - she still is - she knew how to keep it from us."

 

Not that they hadn't suspected something. Or at least, Sosuh and Basah had. Talha and Duhsa had been far too young to even notice or question anything unusual. She remembered her eldest sisters getting into arguments with their mother, usually late at night. Talha would wake up to it, but could never understand what they were saying; and she knew well enough not to be caught out of bed at that hour. 

 

Duhsa would cry in the bed next to her, though she tried to hide it with her face buried in her pillow. Talha didn't cry, she was just confused. She didn't understand why Mother went hunting at night when they went to bed and she didn't understand why sometimes she would get hurt doing it. Whenever she did this, it had  been during times where they were always hungry and their mother seemed agitated about something. 

 

Talha retrieved her gloves off the ground and pulled them back on.

 

"Basah was the one who told me, when we were a little older." Talha said to Goldjoy. "I was so furious with her. I thought she was telling stories again, they were always  teasing me like that."

 

She had actually thrown her shoe at Basah for it, which as a child, had been her favorite method of retaliation. That had not really changed into adulthood, now she just kept her shoe on when she threw it at people. 

 

Seeing Talha throw her footwear usually meant a fight between her daughters had, once again, broken out. Their mother intervened swiftly, pulling Talha off of her sister. Then she yanked Basah aside and hissed under her breath at her, something too quiet for Talha to hear. Their mother ordered Basah to go sit quietly and wait until she had decided on an appropriate punishment. 

 

Then she took Talha aside, firmly, though not with the same anger she had with Basah. Privately and out of earshot from the others, she asked Talha to explain what had happened. 

 

Talha stepped over the stream and walked up to Goldjoy. "I thought Mother was going to punish me for fighting again. I was ready for it, but she didn't. Instead, she asked me why the idea had upset me so much."

 

She had told her mother that bandits were bad and their mother wasn't bad. Talha explained it made her furious that her sister would say a thing so mean about their mother. 

 

"Mother didn't lie to me," Talha said, reaching into Goldjoy's saddlebag. "She told me the truth: she had done bad things. Gods, I cried. I was so angry that she had kept it from us, it was like the woman who'd raised us hadn't been real our whole lives."

 

Her mother had remained calm, though. She gently shushed her youngest daughter, noticing that it was getting her sisters' attention. Then, something very unusual happened: Talha's mother pulled her into a hug. 

 

"When she hugged me, I stopped crying right away," Talha pulled a canteen from the pouch she had been fishing in. "I think it was mostly because I was so surprised."

 

Talha could, to this day, only remember her mother hugging them a few times. She did, most certainly, love her daughters and later, her grandchildren, more than anything else in the world. Talha understood that now. Open and warm displays of this affection, however, were just not the sort of woman their mother was. 

 

In that moment, however, she told Talha something her youngest child would always remember.

 

"She said to me, 'Talha, life is not easy or simple. It will always make you fight for the things you need most. Everyone is fighting for something, be it food, shelter, or simply wealth. We fight to protect what is dear to us, no matter how difficult it can be.'"

 

Goldjoy flapped his short wings, "Kweh!"

 

Talha dipped the canteen into the stream, filling it. 

 

"I started looking at her very differently after that," she said. "I didn't really understand it at first - didn't think anything had really been 'dear' to her. She'd always been so tough and strict. But there was something very dear to her, and she would have walked through all seven Hells for it."

 

"Kweh…" 

 

Talha stood up with the canteen and deposited it back in the saddlebag. She took hold off the saddle and pulled herself up, mounting. 

 

"You're not much of a talker, but that's okay," Talha rubbed Goldjoy's head. "You're a good listener. Shall we head back to Gridania? I can't really eat gysahl greens."

 

Goldjoy shook his feathers out and lifted both legs up and down off the ground, readying to run.

 

"Kweh!"