Recollections

[Fates Skein]

((A series of stories about C'rhisi's travels))

 

She tossed and turned, the rain drumming hard on the slats of the cart above her head.  The desert storm left the night pitch black and her eyes could not pierce the dark, though the Hall was a few feet away, a looming in the darkness that she could hear rather than see.

 

Lightning flashed and thunder cracked in a boom that shook the earth under her and the cart above her and made the fountain shudder and creak and she was far, far away.

 

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She walked out of the bar with the small lute swung over her back.  The smell of ceruleum and the stench of burning bomb fingers and hot steel turned her stomach but she kept her face carefully schooled into empty politeness.  If a patroling security force caught her acting strangely, there could be questions, and though she could blame it on drink (coming out of a bar) it was just easier to hide her expression and avoid the questions altogether.

 

Quietly, she slipped down the cermet streets, her hat pulled down low, her tail wrapped tightly around her waist and her ears hidden under a bandanna under her hat.  She side-stepped a leg-less beggar on a streetcorner, the man too tired to even lift the cup where a few coppers were collected.  The patrols would sweep him up soon unless he had a permit for that corner and he would be whipped.  Her own back and ribs were striped from the first time she had been caught- she had been starving because no bar would let her play without the proper paperwork and she had gotten sick scrounging in garbage.  They'd given her twenty lashes and a stern warning.  She had gotten more clever after that, learned where the patrols did not go, where the other downtrodden and destitute would look out for each other.  Eventually, she managed to find Resistance members and forged paperwork.  In return, she occasionally sang songs that held hidden messages as she made her way across the Empire.  It was a good trade.

 

As she slipped through alleyways, the buildings grew meaner, dirtier, the scents grew thicker until she had to wrap a cloth around her mouth and nose.  Walking through nearly tangible clouds of fog, she made her way into the broken down part of the city, slipping into a door and up a set of creaking stairs until she found herself in a bolthole that she'd been given the use of while she sang in this part of Garlemald.  A simple mat on the floor, a bomb finger in an iron stove, her bulging travelling pack, and a pot for waste took up the entire space and she was grateful.  Curling around her pack gratefully, Rhisi slipped her lute off her pack and tied it carefully to the knapsack so it would not be left behind if she had to run in a hurry.

 

An oily rain streaked the small window set high in the wall as she settled down on the bed, the burning stove the only illumination.  The buildings around her settled and she fell asleep to the shifting, cracking, creaking sounds and the distant crack of thunder.

 

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The memory hit hard and fast, they way they did now.  Rhisi was driven out of her bedroll and into the rain, walking in the clean desert storm until the shuddering stopped and her mind was free from the clutches of too many experiences.  When she curled up in the bedroll again, she was soaked to the bone but her mind was empty...and the storm had stopped.

[Fates Skein]

The tea house was bustling, busy with the voices of men laughing and chatting and women offering drinks and gaily chattering, brightening the atmosphere.  In the center of the square space, on a natural stage created by four columns of wood, Rhisi sat with a zither on her lap.  The large harp-like instrument sang under her skilled fingertips though few of the patrons of this crossroads-inn cared to pay attention to the music.  She sang as well, in accented Doman, a song about honor.

 

A group of heavily armed men watched her playing and she kept her eyes demurely cast down, fingers running over the strings of the instrument with minds of their own, voice rising with heartbreaking purity over the sounds of the busy tea house.  One of the serving women offered the table of men a fresh pot of tea and was sent away sternly- dark eyes would brook no interruption of the miqo'te playing in the center of their vision.

 

As her verse turned to honoring one's fathers by bold and brave action, the entire table stood and the tea house grew silent save for her playing.  One of the men shouted something in Doman and pointed at Rhisi with a gunblade, his lips curling into a snarl.

 

The hells broke loose.

 

The serving women screamed and ducked out of the way, other men rose and scrabbled for their weapons, blades and spears and heavy clubs.  Tables were overturned and voices were raised in shouts.  And through it all, Rhisi did not cease her song, long lashes falling so that her eyes seemed closed.  Her hands moved on the zither with a sudden ringing trill and her voice rang out with it and a slash appeared in the tunic of the gunblade-wielding Garlean.  Then there was chaos, Doman fighting Garlean, clashing, shouting, blade ringing against blade, the echoing of gunshots, the splintering of wood as tables were crashed into or used as make-shift weapons.  And over it all, Rhisi's voice and the tinkling notes of the zither.

 

The commander fought his way to her only to find her on her feet, catching the blade of his weapon with her instrument.  He shoved and she fell backwards, long sleeves of her robes catching her, tripping her.  One of the Domans caught her and she was back on her feet, wrapping her sleeves around her arms and dashing for her pack.  The zither was reduced to kindling and she mourned it's loss but it had done it's purpose.  As she ran she bent to grab her pack only to feel the sudden searing cold of the gunblade against her ribs.  The gunshot threw her forward and gave her the momentum to keep running, to drag her bloodspattered pack with her.  She'd escaped, though enough of her lifeblood had been left on that floor that by rights she should have lain there with it.

 

 

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Rhisi sat in her bath, fingertips slowly running over the scar on her ribs.  The thin slice that led to the star-shaped scar tissue where the bullet had passed through.  The only reason she had survived was because her slim ribs had caught the blade- it had nicked the bone and gotten caught instead of passing through.  The sound of the gunshot was something she'd never forget.  It had been so loud she had been half-deaf for days as she had tried to heal herself, half-delirious with pain and on the edge of fever.  One of the resistance had managed to track her, though she'd done her best to hide her trail, and found her lying half-dead in a creekbed.  He'd gotten her to an herbalist.

 

She'd stayed there only a few days, but they had been good days.  She had learned a great deal.

 

The song she had played on the zither fell from her lips in a soft hum and she smiled.  It had been called "Honor".  She wondered if she should translate it and sing it for the people of Eorzea.

[Fates Skein]

She lay by his side as he slept, for the moment peacefully though she had no doubt that eventually his mind would turn as it always did to painful things and he would be tossing and murmuring.  When he did she would be there, offering the small comfort of her arms and gentle, wordless lullabyes that she hoped would filter into his nightmares and offer him some small succor.

 

For now, as he rested and she looked at his silhouette in the dark, her mind went back to the thoughts and memories that had sprung to life when she had smelled the rose hips and chamomile.

 

-----

 

There had been a merchant in the bar, speaking of the endless blue of the Rhotano Sea and the amazing sight of the great ships in the harbor at Aleport.  His words had filled her mind with the sights and smells of a sea she had never seen and later that day she had quit her job and gathered her things, setting out for Vylbrand and adventure she had never seen.

 

It was there, sitting on a pile of crates and carefully balancing her fear of the water with the wonder that the sights and sounds of Aleport filled her with, that she had seen the man with the ancient helm.  She had consented to play for him on the lute strapped to her pack...

 

-----

 

Such a simple, simple thing.  She remembered the song- her notes on it sat on the desk a few feet away from the bed.  He had begun calling her Songstress- she had thought it sweet, if a little reductive.  She was so much more than just a singer, though that strange man with his strange ways could not have known that then.  He knew little of miqo'te and nothing of the tribes, but he meant no insult so she had smiled and let it be, consenting to travel with he and his strange group of companions on little more than a whim- she would be going home soon, after all, and one last grand adventure would give her enough to tell a great Song when she returned.

 

Rhisi sat up in the bed and curled her tail around herself.  There was the soft sound of rain on the windowpane above her bed and she turned to watch the droplets fall and make their eldritch patterns on the glass.

 

When had it gotten complicated?  It hadn't been long, she knew that much.  There had been something about him that resonated in her poet's heart, something that she did not have the knowledge, the worldliness, to understand or even name.  They understood one another, knew what it was to stand in a land and be different and strange and yet somehow full of the self-assurance that comes from knowing where one's roots lay.  But he was Hyur and taboo.  She would be going home soon.  He was not miqo'te, he was not Coeurl.  He was far older than she.

 

Then, he was taken.  By one whom she called 'sister'.

 

The group of strange and varied companions had grown on her, had become closer to her than blood.  She had begun to think of them as family.  They fought together.  Sang together.  They shared their strengths and fears and struggled to be a light in a weary world.  They grew and shrank like a living thing- breathing in, breathing out, smaller one day and larger the next.  And through it all, a man in red standing as a living beacon of honor, drawing them in.

 

------------

 

Sitting beside a campfire in Thanalan, after running off a pair of strangely dressed men.  She had begun to sing and the voices had lifted with her.  He had smiled and the fire had burned so much brighter...

 

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Then, things had happened so fast she could scarcely put them in their proper order.  Injuries.  Poison.  The truth of the color red, the vow, the realization that she was never going home.  The growing sense that she was running downhill with no ability to stop, rushing into something she did not understand and was not prepared for.  Testing the waters of affection with one who would be safe, though all the while her eyes could find him unerringly, slivers of iron caught with a magnet.  A great bell ringing in her head with the tone "Forbidden".  The too-observant eyes of her sister upon her, the insistence that she was a child who could not know her own heart.

 

Acceptance and rebellion in the same breath.

 

Rhisi ran her hands through her hair and closed her eyes.  It still hurt.  She was who she was, had been taught that selfishness was the way to ruin not only for herself but for the tribe as a whole.  And though these were not Coeurl and they could not know it and would never understand it, they had become her tribe.  And she had smiled in the light and sung and danced and put aside foolish, impossible things with a pain in her heart that seemed so large sometimes it would swallow Azeyma herself.

 

The bad days began soon after.  Living with a heart divided guarantees sickness and she had bled to death while writing the song that would rejoice in the joy that had been revealed to her.  For his sake, for the sake of her 'sister', she had smiled, she had filled the air with song.  She had hidden every emotion but joy because she could not stand for them to see her in pain- nor could she ever, ever admit why.

 

She'd begun travelling then, going as far as she could into the desert with the mark of the outcaste tattooed for all time on her cheek, a mark of failure, a sign that she had abandoned everything she had been born to be.  And for what?  For who?  Someone who did not want her.  Someone taboo.  Someone who saw her as a child.

 

And someone who would break her heart.

 

She had returned for a single night, meaning only to share that she was well, that she had come to learn much on her journey.  When she had arrived at the great ediface of stone that she had come to love, it's solidity seeming unshakable, she had heard the news that had sent her back out into the world, away from all of it- away from temptation and responsibility and honor and everything that Hall stood for.  She had ridden aetherial currents as far as they could take her then used her own two feet and her wits to carry her further still.

 

Until on the Far Eastern shores she had had to face everything she'd been running from.

 

------

 

She'd been sitting on the beach, watching the water, sharp eyes catching the sight of sails from fishing vessels drifting peacefully with the tide. A small group of children were playing in the sand under the watchful eyes of their mothers.  Her robes had hidden her tail, her hair had been done up to hide her ears, and they had not noticed her.

 

The song they sang as they skipped and jumped and made castles in the sand had not registered at first.  Then it was all she could hear, high children's voices singing about the Red Samurai.  The surf vanished, the sunlight filled her eyes, and she heard over those innocent voices her own voice, nearly as innocent as theirs, swearing an oath that she had fled across the world to run away from.

 

She had come to herself in a cave created by the cliffs meeting the sea, far and further from where she had sat in the sun.  The tide was high and she was trapped, the light summer kimono soaked with sea spray and tears.  She had slept there and dreamed and her dreams had been unkind in their honesty but at the same time had filled her with such painful joy that when she woke she wept to have them end.

 

-------

 

He shifted and made a noise and she looked to him, feeling again that mingling of pain and joy.  It would always be this way between them.  They had shared too much for it to be easy- each had their scars, the tender places of their hearts where the healing had been incomplete and they would ache forever when it rained.  She was yet naive enough to pray in the stillness of the night that their choice was the right one- that for once, for them, the decision to seize a little happiness would be best for the many and the few.  Then he was tossing, turning, his expression catching the moonlight like a mask of tragedy, and her musings and memories were all forgotten, cast aside like children's toys as she obeyed the simple, primal, overwhelming urge to ease his pain- and in so doing, perhaps find her own little slice of peace.