The Breath of Thal [closed]

[Twinflame]

D'aijeen arrived on the ship from the Silver Bazaar in the late afternoon. The cool wind from the sea stirred up the heat of the desert and they spun around one another, pulling on her robes and the bangs hanging out from under her green hood. Her face was downcast; she didn't even look up as the boat moored itself to the small pier and the ferryman disembarked. The burly Hyur who stank of salt and old fish lingered near the boat, beckoning for D'aijeen to step out and telling her over and over that they had arrived. She heard him, but she couldn't move, sitting with her face down, staring at the blood that still stained her clothes beneath her green traveling robe.

 

Her clothes, which had always been so immaculately white, stained now with the blood of her... What would she even call D'ahl, now that she was dead? A passing acquaintance? She had loved D'ahl, but had not thought of her as... and in the end... the hound...

 

The Hyur man stomped on the edge of the boat, making it sway to get her attention.

 

"I am aware that we have arrived!" D'aijeen leapt up. She didn't feel the motion, but she was on the pier in a moment, dizzy but standing steadily. Her stance was wide, the muscles in her body so tight that she might have been stone encased in skin. Her tail stuck out straight behind her, her ears squeezing her skull, the muscles on her face palpably contorted into hideous shapes. She listened to herself shouting, "Such a barbaric, empty-headed animal to not give a woman a moment's peace! Where are you in such a hurry to? What grave or miserable pit must you so urgently drag your massive, hideous carcass to that you would protest to me! Your voice is like the belch of a corpse cut open, but I pity the insects in whatever pit you go to, for your stench exceeds the breath of Thal himself!"

 

"Shit, lady," the man stepped back and raised his hands. "You're the one who smells like Thal's breath. Calm down."

 

"Begone!" Something ripped out of the shadows between D'aijeen's robe and her body, falling through the planks on the pier and sliding outward. The wood beneath the Hyur man broke upward, throwing him out over the water. He landed half-on his own boat and then slid into the water with a confused wail. In the shadows beneath the pier, a man-faced, ink-black Voidsent retreated like a snake returning to its hole.

 

D'aijeen took a step back from it just before the thing melted and rose back towards her, slipping beneath her robe once more. "Stop! I don't want you!" She shouted, shifted, spun and stumbled to try and get away from it, but she could feel the chill of the Baalzephon pressing against her skin. "You killed her! It was you, not me!" She ripped the robe from her body and threw it towards the water. the Voidsent remained inside of it, resigned to the shadows. But as D'aijeen crossed her blood-stained arms over her chest and ran down the pier towards the town, sobbing quietly, others moved in the small shadow beneath her feet, chasing her. The cactuar earring bounced beside her tussled hair, its face dappled with dried red droplets.

[Ildur]

Crescent Cove's coastline was littered with fishing nets hanging over the beach, hurriedly placed over wooden frames, with both men and women going from one to the other to capture the catch of the day and clean them from all the other messy junk the sea threw at them. The town itself was nothing but a handful of wooden shacks and houses, with no tavern or inn. Travelers had to rely on the good will, and greed, of the locals.

 

K'airos had been such a traveler for some time. She was ways off to a side of the village, perched on a rock overlooking the nearby beach, deep in thought. Close to her was another, smaller rock with two long protrusions on the front, two really wide ones next to them and about half a dozen smaller ones to each side, clawing their way into the sand. Nearby, there was a large brown sack, and a scimitar resting against the sand, at arm's reach.

Besides moving rocks, there was something else odd about K'airos. The miqo'te woman was lying on her stone viewpoint with the head hanging from the edge, staring at the limbed rock a few falms away. She was dressed in strangely white clothes that didn't fit her shape: they were too tight on the sides, and the front. And everywhere, if she payed attention. A white bilaud with a carefully tied pink bow, a white hat adorned with a silver ornament on the front. At least the hat fit comfortably over her head. Her looks were broken by the sudden black boots covering her feet. But there was something else. K'airos' red hair was now a pale green, and so were her lips.

From the pier, the woman looked like a bright white smudge against a brown cliff.

 

"I should teach you tricks!" she said cheerfully to the living rock. It did not answer, but she felt the need to continue. "Maybe you could open the door for us. Or peel potatoes! Your pincers are good for that, right?"

 

The rock raised its antennae slightly and, for a brief moment, it looked like it looked at its own limbs in confusion.

 

"Great! I'm glad you agree with the idea!" the girl said, clapping her hands together and rolling off her rock. With this action, she noticed another mostly white figure with green hair and a tail arriving on the piers and moving quickly across them. She smiled, took a deep breath and brought both hands towards her mouth.

 

"Aijeen! Over here!"

[Twinflame]

The voice pierced through all the panic and screaming thoughts inside of D'aijeen's head, and she stopped in her tracks, leaning forward and bending at her knees. She coughed and brushed tears at her face. The sleeves of her robe were almost more red than white, all with blood from the night before. For a moment, she was almost afraid to look up at K'airos, unwilling to face the sister that she so adored, and that had chosen someone else over her. Everything D'aijeen had tried to make that right had failed. They had collapsed dramatically that somehow, something inside of her had twisted until she had summoned a beast to... No. no, that hadn't been her! She hadn't willed that! She'd been desperate to stop it!

 

Part of her blamed K'airos' betrayal for what had happened to D'ahl. If K'airos hadn't lied to her, D'aijeen would not have tried to renew the love between herself and her mother. If she hadn't done that, D'ahl would not have felt betrayed and would not have tried to hurt the woman. Then D'aijeen would not have been so angry. She would not have chased D'ahl down in the night. She would not have...

 

D'aijeen pulled on her ears violently. Her mind was suddenly full of images from the night before, of the silent fountain, of D'ahl crying alone in the dark, of the monster stepping from the shadows summoned by D'aijeen's fury. D'ahl hanging from its teeth. Her body dashed against the stone again and again, ripped into, split nearly in two. Blood flying everywhere. The dead look in D'ahl's eyes. Screaming.

 

Voidsent stirring beneath her feet, D'aijeen lifted her eyes to look at K'airos. And D'aijeen broke.

 

She collapsed to her knees at first in sobs, but only for an instant, and then threw herself forward in desperation. K'airos stood in the sunlight, in the beach she'd been so happy about visiting together. The woman's red hair had turned green, her lips painted green, her Brass Blades uniform traded out for a too-tight white ensemble obviously stolen from D'aijeen's own wardrobe. The girl had disguised herself as D'aijeen. It was ridiculous. It was annoying. It was adorable. It was K'airos, and everything she loved about her.

 

D'aijeen cried out wordlessly as she ran, embarrassed by the base disregard of the gesture but unable to contain it. She was still crying, felt herself shivering and numb all the way to the tip of her tail, but she didn't care. She ran to her sister, threw herself bodily at the woman and clutched at her, and just cried.

[Ildur]

K'airos smile broke down into a thin line when her eyes noticed that the red on her sister's clothes was actually blood, and then her expression broke again into mild despair.

 

"What happened? Are you hurt?" she asked, eyes wide open. She glanced at her without letting go, and she quickly concluded that there were no wounds to worry about. Only a gross red color covering her attire. She knelt down, letting Daijeen rest her head against her shoulder.

 

"What happened?" she asked again, her voice lowering. Behind them, the limbed rock moved closer to them and stared at the shadows below them.

[Twinflame]

"I don't know." D'aijeen collapsed against her sister, pulled herself as close as she could get, and then closer still. If it weren't for her weak body,s he might've crushed her sister from her desperation to pull herself into the woman's lap. "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't I don't I didn't do it! It wasn't me!" She couldn't stop herself from crying or talking, blubbering senseless words at her sister. D'aijeen choked, tried to hold her breath, tried anything to stop herself from crying and reclaim her mind, but nothing changed. She felt like she was bleeding out her sorry, coughing it up like blood. It was not that the warmth and closeness of her sister was not reassuring; it was strengthening beyond compare. But it merely promised that she would recover. It could not stop the sadness before it was exhausted.

 

"D'ahl is dead!" she finally managed. "She died! I couldn't stop it. I wanted to stop it. I didn't want it to happen! I didn't want it to!" She pulled at the bow on her sister's chest. "K'airos, say it's not my fault. I didn't do it! I wouldn't do something like that! Tell me I didn't do it!"

[Ildur]

"Of course you didn't!" K'airos' answer was quick, a reaction from her instincts. She had no idea what had transpired. Her sister was stained with blood, but she dared not to imagine anything. It didn't matter right now. She felt that her duty as a sister was to soothe D'aijeen first and ask later. Or perhaps never ask about it. She rubbed her shoulder reassuringly.

 

"It's not your fault. Do not blame yourself." she said, and repeated those words two more times, moving her body back and forth, cradling her in her arms. "Just cry until you feel better, alright? Crying will do you good. Don't hold it!"

[Twinflame]

She did cry. She wouldn't have been able to stop herself, but with K'airos' permission, she stopped trying not to cry. She tried to cry all the more. D'aijeen cried for her sister, shaking in the woman's hands. As she cried, she tried to say, "I wanted to fix everything. I wanted everything to be better for us. I went to mom and talked to her, but D'ahl got jealous. And then D'ahl and mom fought, and D'hein got angry, and that Lalafel attacked D'ahl! Everything just fell apart. I tried to fix everything but it just fell apart! It's not my fault. I tried. I tied. Everyone was so terrible and I couldn't do anything." She wailed, "I wanted to make everything perfect for you but I couldn't! I'm sorry." D'aijeen hadn't expected herself to apologize, had almost forgotten that it was for K'airos that she'd been doing everything. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

[Ildur]

K'airos had trouble understanding the words mixed with the crying. She catched glimpes of it, and made a mental picture with what she got: There was D'hal, a lalafell and a fight. That tiny creature must have been her murderer. But there was also her mother. It could not be the woman called Antimony, for she wasn't her mother, and D'aijeen had just said "mom". Not a pretender or a fraud. Not Antimony. Just "mom".

She almost smiled at that.

Yet she did not. While she was forming these images in her head, she immediately threw them all away, one by one. There was nothing to think about. Nothing mattered more than her crying sister.

 

"That's alright. You did nothing wrong!" the words came out quickly, pushed by her sisterly instincts. "It wasn't your fault." she told her once more. And then again: "You don't have to apologize. It's not your fault!"

[Twinflame]

The words helped. K'airos was the only person in the world whose words meant anything anymore. D'aijeen closed her eyes and held close to her sister, feeling the movement of her chest as she breathed, smelling that unmistakable scent that had been with her for all the best parts of her life. Truly, if there was anywhere in this world that love existed, then it was where K'airos was. If any person who was truly capable of it, then it was only K'airos. And herself. For what else could this be?

 

It was exactly what her mother did not feel for her.

 

"Airos." D'aijeen lay her head against her sister's chest, lay her hands flat against her body. "Why are you dressed as me?"

[Ildur]

She failed to see the change of subject coming, and so her words strumbled into each other awkwardly, forming a meaningless sound. She tilted her head, looking into the sea. "Well, you told me nobody but you should find me." she started after a short cough. "So...I thought...after a while...that if I was here as a Brass Blade somebody could recognize me. Then I dressed up as you, because if anybody was looking for me, they wouldn't be looking for you! And you wouldn't confuse me with you, because you are you and you know that I am not you! So you could recognize that you were really me! Except I wasn't...you, so you couldn't really confuse me with yourself! But others could...you know, confuse me with you and then they wouldn't find me."

 

K'airos felt satisfied with her logic once she was done explaining it. She turned her head again to look at the odd living and limbed rock behind them. It clicked its pincers together. She thought that it must have been applauding at her cleverness.

[Twinflame]

"That's very clever," D'aijeen said, playing with the bow on her sisters chest. She sniffled, the crying having slowed by the tears still flowing down her cheeks. She pressed herself firmly against her sister, closing her eyes again. "Airos, I command you to forget every comman I've given you. Think whatever you want about anything."

[Ildur]

It took a very long moment for her emotions and thoughts to catch up to each other. Her mother, K'piru, and the imposter called Antimony were the same. She always knew that, but just now her mind could actually accept it in the same way she had accepted it as a fact, back in Drybone. Her tribe was alive and well. D'aijeen had lied to her about her own't family's death, and of her tribe.

K'airos remained there, kneeling by her sister, cradling her between her arms.

 

After what must have been a full minute, she tilted her head and looked down, smiling. "I think...!" she cheered "...that we should get you cleaned up. and changed! And then we can eat something. But not here. All the food gives me a tummyache. So we should go to the Bazaar, or to Vesper Bay. Spend a couple of days there by the beach! We could even go swimming! Or rent a boat! Shelly will be our first mate!"

She finished by looking and pointing with one hand to the living rock. It was still clicking its pincers together. K'airos smiled broadly, identifying it as another proof of smallshell aproval.

 

"See? He agrees! It's a good idea!"

[Ildur]

((Ugh! Double post))

[Twinflame]

Wishing she could cry again, D'aijeen just curled up tighter against her sister, eyes pinching shut. "You still want to," she breathed, her tone embarrassingly high, cracking. Knowing everything, having a clear image of it, completely in control of her every thought and action, she still chose D'aijeen. It was real, her real sister, really loving her.

 

"Airos." D'aijeen lifted herself away from her sister for just a moment, grabbed her head in both hands and turned the woman's face to look at her. And then she lay her body against K'airos' body, and her lips against K'airos' lips, still crying, but happy.

[Ildur]

That was the second thing K'airos had not seen coming that day. Her instincts kicked off again almost immediately by demanding a sudden and forceful action. But how could she? Her sister had witnessed someone's death, and she had come to her, broken, covered in blood and tears, looking for reassurance and soothing. Pushing her away could destroy that. She had to react firmly, and yet she couldn't.

 

She placed her hands on D'aijeen's shoulders and gently pushed her away, creating space between them. Her eyes were anchored at D'aijeen's shoulders. She frowned and opened the mouth twice, and twice she failed to say anything. Then she tried a third time, and something did come out of her. "Is that a...a thing of the Dodo Tribe?" she asked, trying to find excuses for her sister's behaviour, even though she had no idea of what any of that tribe's customs were actually like. "That's not something that sisters do. We should talk about that..." she said, and then quickly added in a forced new cheerful tone that was almost the same as the real one: "But first we should get you a new set of clothes! And introduce you to Shelly!"

She stood up, and tried to make D'aijeen stand up with her. She didn't wait for her to answer or say anything, interrupting any possible reply with more words that were increasingly upbeat.

 

"Maybe we could learn to sail! That'd be a nice change from Thanalan. Oh, and go shopping! Vesper Bay must have some Lominsan wares before and cheaper than in the city! And I hear they have a pretty statue of a lalafell lord. Some...Lolorito guy? I don't know who he is, but he has his own statue!"

[Twinflame]

Letting herself be stood up by Airos, she smiled, the look in her eyes as she considered her sister one of pure adoration. "Yes, it is a Dodo thing. And a you-and-I thing." She continued to play with the bow on her sister's chest. "I would love to go everywhere with you, Airos, my shining sun, my new Azeyma. But first, yes, a change of clothes. I have brought none, so I'll have to find a private place and undress you."

 

In her shadow, unseen things still stirred, though they did so sluggishly. The sank and lost cohesion, flattening out until they were indistinguishable from her normal shadow.

 

"Take me wherever you want to go, Airos," the small, frail woman breathed. "You are the light of day, the brightest thing in the world, and I want to be the shadow that you cast, as close as skin."

[Ildur]

"Alright, let's change." K'airos nodded. Raising one arm away from town towards the coast, she said: "I've not seen many people on that side, so we could change somewhere there."

 

She walked back to the rock she had been using to stare at Shelly, the smallshell and living rock, before D'aijeen arrived and picked up the bag that was lying next to it. The sound of metal pieces clashing against each other could be heard when she lifted it over her shoulder. She let out a sigh of relief. D'aijeen had at least come back to her usual inscrutable self.

 

"I'll change first, since you need the clothes I'm using. Then I'll keep watch!" She made a little hop, turning around to face her sister. "Then we'll eat! And while we eat, we'll discuss about your new diet! Because I think that you are too thin." she said, pulling from her clothes to emphasize how tight and uncomfortable they were on her.

[Twinflame]

"Let the smallshell keep watch," D'aijeen said, her expression unchanged, her eyes taking in the tightness of the clothes on her sister. "Nobody will bother us, and you'll need my help to get out of those clothes without damaging them. As for my diet," She followed after K'airos, her tail swinging behind her as she did. The young woman, thin and dark, stained with blood and smelling vaguely of corpses, leaned forward and said in a quiet tone, "Maybe I'll just take a few bites of you while you're changing."

[Ildur]

She shook her head. "What? No!" she started. But then she let her shoulders drop, turning around and walking towards what she thought was a big enough cluster of boulders near the cliff. "I guess that If I break your clothes you won't have anything to put on." she said, defeated.

A few more steps and she spoke again "You also need some actually filling food! And my diet doesn't include myself for dinner. You need actual filling food! Shelly!"

 

The smallshell stopped clapping her limbs around between each other at the shout. It wasn't actually responding to it's name, but K'airos concluded that was the only logical explanation. With a stern but amused frown she commanded the walking rock: "Keep guard! If anyone comes by, pinch them with your...pinchers! Or just look cute and distracted them."

 

The little creature moved one antennae up and down. K'airos interpreted this as a salute, and so she turned happily to continue their march. But Shelly did not move from its spot, instead chosing to keep clapping its pincers.

[Twinflame]

Following her sister in silence, D'aijeen mostly watched the woman's tail. The way she kept talking to the smallshell just made D'aijeen smile wider and wider, energized her tired body more and more, chasing her despair and grief farther away. Surely if D'aijeen loved someone as much as she loved K'airos, she could not be the kind of person who would kill D'ahl.

 

"I think my diet should include little nibbles of you," D'aijeen said wryly, following her sister very closely. "Not with dinner. After. Maybe right before bed. And you can have a few nibbles of me. Yes! I'm adding that to your diet. A few tastes of Aijeen right before bed."

[Ildur]

There were no further discussions about diets while Shelly kept watch as the sisters got to their proper attires. However, K'airos tried to kept herself and D'aijeen distracted by narrating how awful the food in the Cove was, how evil the buzzards were since they constantly tryed to poke Shelly out of her shell, how the air smell too much of salt. By the time they had changed, K'airos had also spoken at lenght about boats. Even though it was clear she didn't know how they worked or why. Her dream boat was some sort of floating wooden cottage, imagined from what she had heard about Gridanian houses, dragged by many pet smallshells that'd crawl their way across the bottom of the sea. After all, boats were made of wood, and wood floated. So anything made of wood should float. And so her cottage would surely float.

She wondered why there weren't any actual floating cottages in the Cove, but she didn't allow that to better her that much.

 

With the awkwardness of the dress up out of the way, K'airos lead D'aijeen closer to the fishing village. She was now dressed in her usual red and rust Brass Blade uniform, though her hair was still dyed green, and her lips were painted green. D'aijeen's bloodied clothes had been thrown into the bad, which, naturally, was now much lighter.

She stopped next to one of the large net racks that littered the village and silently 'borrowed' four fishes from a nearby barrel recently filled with them.

 

"I'm not fishing." she offered as an explanation to D'aijeen, though she didn't look at her. "Fishing is silly and boring. I could catch them faster by swimming and using my own hands!" A moment later, she had procured everything she needed to make a small campfire. That is to mean, she found the remains of someone else's and claimed it by right of sitting next to it.

 

"Now we just need fire and we can eat."

[Twinflame]

There was a disappointing lack of nibbling while changing clothes, even as D'aijeen did disrobe her sister and had not passed on any opportunity to make contact. K'airos just prattled on about boats and smallshells, which was adorable but not particularly intimate. It was like K'airos had no sense of romance at all. But that was finel K'airos would have to sleep at some point, after all.

 

Still, they were here on the beach as evening approached, ready to cook and spend the evening together. That counted for a lot, and D'aijeen had absolutely no complaints she channel aether into her scepter to light fire to the remnants that K'airos had claimed. "All we need is each other, Airos. We can light our own fire whenever we want." She sat down next to the fire, letting her sister take care of the fish. Cooking shouldn't be a problem for her; back int he Sagolii, K'airos had learned the skills of survival that the tribe taught. D'aijeen's skillset had always been a little different, though she was sure if she really needed to cook a fish she could figure it out.

 

"I'm looking forward to the next few days," D'aijeen looked her sister over again, still amused by the greenness of her hair and lips. "But what about after that? Are we going home to Drybone?"

[Ildur]

"I guess. Would you like that?" K'airos asked. She had impaled the fish on sticks and was taking turns twisting them over the fire, then letting them roast in place. Her eyes raised from their future meal to set on her sister.

 

"I still have duties there, but I could find work someplace else. Of course..." she said, tilting her head and combing her head with her hands, as she hadn't brought a comb. "That would set us back on the savings. Though..." she trailed off again. There was hesitation, a short breath and then the words."And I heard that our tribe was moving closer to it. So I don't know if you'd be comfortable with that. Maybe we could set ourselves near Ul'dah? Or maybe even around the Bay! Or in Horizon. There's less Amalj'aa, too, so I'd just have to deal with even more brainless beasts." She tilted the head the other way and combed that side.

[Twinflame]

"Do you really want that?" D'aijeen's brow dropped, her voice fell. She leaned forward under the weight of the subject she'd accidentally broached. Had it been an accident? D'aijeen knew how much K'airos missed her family; she knew it now better than ever. "You would move away from the tribe, avoid them, just for my own comfort?" She frowned. "Or would you just house me in Horizon and then go to Drybone on work constantly, keeping me away from them and going to them alone?"

[Ildur]

There were a few rebelious locks of hair on K'airos head, and she continued to comb them into submission. "I'd like to see them once per year, at least." she said plainly, as if she was preparing to bargain. "Though I don't know if they'd consider me an exile by now. And...I'd...I'd like to see mom once a moon, too." she added. The rebel locks at last surrendered to her merciless combing.

She straightened her posture and smiled. "But I will stay with you all the other days, and we'll continue our plans together!" Still smiling, her fingers started tapping against each other, hands raised over her chest. "We'll buy a house and live together there. And we'll have Shelly as a pet! And she'll keep watch for us. Maybe we could set up a shop! You could then stay with me while I work! We'd sell Shelly miniatures! Or...something. I don't know what's good to sell...and I don't know how to manage a shop." She poked her chin with one finger, pondering about something related to the economy of a Shelly based economy. She then lowered her finger, and continued to tap her hands together. "But...how does that sound to you?" She looked at her sister, expecting her answer.