Her Shadow- (OOC welcome)

[Renn]

(I'm new here. I don't really RP in game (way too shy, maybe someday), but occasionally I write stuff. I thought this might be the right community to share it with. I am completely up for feedback, in or out of character. If this isn't an appropriate place for random stuff like this, also please let me know. Thank you.)

 

Her Shadow

 

Today I set out for Ul'dah. It seemed the logical place to start my journey, since hers would have started there, seven years ago. Though Limsa Lominsa is a port town, with ships to all over Hydaelyn, I'm certain she would have gone to Ul'dah first. Despite mother's many patient attempts to teach her conjury, it was always father's tales of his time at the Platinum Mirage that enraptured her as a child. And in those days, before the tragedy forced inter-reliance among the isolated nations, Ul'dah really was the center of Eorzea. Back then, the Ul'dah markets were famous everywhere, with merchants having to wait sometimes weeks or months for the opportunity to get a space in the wards. Adventurers and fortune seekers flocked to the desert city in droves. So I'm sure, that night she slipped out with nary a word to anyone, that's where she would have gone.

 

Mother worried, of course. Father worried too I'm sure, but was far more good-natured about it. In those days, Ger was still running with Carvallian's crew, so we had more than enough drama at home, and no one could spare too much worry for the child that wasn't there.

 

We got letters, sometimes. Tales of her adventures, tokens from her travels. (Some of which, for the record, were just plain odd. Who feels the need to pick up dead bat's wings, let alone send them home?) We know she worked for a time taking contracts on monsters of unusual strength, and raiding ancient ruins for treasures. For a while there were letters about some man who was teaching her to open her 'chakra,' whatever that meant, and she joined the Maelstrom when it was reformed. Then the tone of the letters turned darker, more ominous. Less of her stories were entertaining anecdotes, and more of her Maelstrom work was classified, beyond the point where she could give us details. Between the gradual decent of Dalamud in the sky, and the rumors of Garleans abroad though, it was clear that something serious was happening, and she was doubtless caught in the middle of it.

 

I would see her from time to time, when she was in Limsa. She would visit the house briefly, but always 'on business' and never long enough for mother to start one of her guilt trips. More often I would see her out around town- at the Maelstrom Headquarters (once talking to the Admiral herself!), drinking or chatting with Baderon at the Drowning Wench, or at the docks down by Fisherman's Bottom, waiting for a ferry to some island the Maelstrom had stalked with dangerous beasts.

 

That would be my sister. Sees an army of terrifying monsters, wants to punch them all in the face.

 

The last time I saw her was ten days before the Calamity. She and another adventurer - I suppose he must have been a warrior of light too – stood at Llymlaen's shrine, overlooking Limsa. The red moon hung heavy in the sky behind them. I remember that she turned, and I remember that she smiled at me, not that I can recall what the curve of her lips actually looks like, shadowed in light as all my memories now are. She then nodded at her companion, and they vanished in a burst of aethereal energy.

 

I think that was her goodbye.

 

The next week was hell. The lands underwent fearful changes, and voidsent swarmed to the camps to drain the crystals dry. Eventually, they invaded the cities as well. Limsa and Gridania were bad- every day we hid inside from the abominations that would come crawling through the streets. It was hard to get information, with no one able to travel by land or sea, and the lack of it made the situation all the more terrifying. Ul'dah was apparently hit the worst though- tales are told of hordes of Garleans patrolling the central avenue, of monstrous ogres and wave upon wave of nightmares inside the city walls. The adventurers bound their soul energies to the home crystal, and would fight off the invasion until they were incapacitated, only to revive and plunge back into the fray. It's said some resorted to begging the Twelve for help against the impossible odds. For some, it apparently worked. But the whims of gods are fickle, and often as not it failed.

 

It really felt as though the world were coming to an end, and any thoughts of survival were vain beyond reckoning. We focused on the present, on living day to day, because it was impossible to envision a tomorrow as our world collapsed around us.

 

Eventually, that hellish period ended with the Calamity, and a new hell of rebuilding began.

 

Mother's conjury was useful in the aftermath, and father took up fishing to feed us. Some of the things he fished up those first years were...disturbing. They were hard years all around. After the Calamity, something inside Mother broke. You could see it in her eyes sometimes, the way she would stare off into the distance, when something around the house reminded her of the daughter the world had lost. Father put his proudly won fists away, as though simply hiding them would make us forget the girl we could no longer remember. In a way, I think it was crueler than death- the events at Cartenau. Although she may have saved the world, become one of the legendary 'warriors of light,' the gaping hole left in our hearts can't even be assuaged with memories of the life we lived together. Those too have been stolen from us, and it makes the grief hard to bear.

 

We survived though, and life goes on.

 

Since the Calamity, the Admiral brought the pirates under her thumb, and most of the gangs have turned clean..er. Ger now works as a marauder with the yellow jackets. I don't think that shade of yellow actually looks good on anyone, but Father is proud, and I think Mother is just relieved that he's no longer near Carvallian as much (who is also 'clean' in that he now only steals from the Garleans. Since they're trying to kill us all, I suppose that's fair.) Raz, on the other hand, has always had his head stuck in a book. I don't know that he would have noticed the fall of Dalamud, if it hadn't stained his midnight reading red. Anyway, ever since the arcanist woman came to town with the revelation that books can be used as weapons- well he's disappeared into Melvaan's Gate, and he hasn't been home since. Mother brings him food sometimes, and reassures us he's alive. He's apparently working hard to become a 'scholar.' I assume it involves a great deal of reading.

 

So of the four of us, I seem to be the only one who hasn't found my life's calling. Rumors began to circulate recently though, a few at first, and then more and more solidly. When I heard them, I knew what I had to do. I told my family I was leaving, of course. I don't think Mother could take another shock in her current state. Some drivel about traveling the world to help people, and that seemed to satisfy her. Ger looked up from the whore he was flirting with long enough to give me a manly nod, and though I told Raz, he was in the middle of some research, and I know he didn't hear a word I said. Mother will tell him next time she brings food, I suppose.

 

So, today I packed up my bags, and booked passage on a ship to Vesper Bay. It was a smooth trip, and once we arrived, I hired a chocobo-pulled carriage to Ul'dah, which we travel in as I write this. Ul'dah, the famed jewel of the desert, and the starting point for my journey.

 

Because the rumors have said that the Heroes of Light have been returning.