#ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln

[idealistsinc]

13 // oneirophrenia

n. a hallucinatory, dream-like state wc: 535 content warning: blood, violence, suicidal ideation, weird aether stuff

The cold rises from the blood he spills on his greatsword’s blade like mist from a lake.

He forces himself to run, hot agony pounding beneath his ribs. Black brume winds through the carnage strewn in his wake, gorged in death. Keep going. Swing his sword. Burst guts from metal sheathing. Choke on the sarcous reek of gore. But do not look. Do not hesitate. Do not let the ice break beneath.

S̵͓̬̓ṱ̶̇o̸̞͗͠p̷̖̈͌.̴̱͝

Raven’s-wing hair in the corner of his eye. He lurches, and in his moment’s weakness, the frost creeps in and clogs his joints; he must clutch the greatsword so hard his hands scream just to hold it. No. No, no—His lungs spasm as they fill with biting, bitter cold. 

“Yesugen!”

S̸h̴e̷'̴s̴ ̵g̸o̸i̴n̵g̵ ̵t̴o̶ ̴d̷i̷e̸,̶ ̴y̶o̶u̴ ̶k̷n̶o̷w̶.̵

The distant grind of Garlean machina trembles in the grates. He hears her over the battle screams, the shriek of steel against steel, her voice a soft and resonant hum in the back of his skull. When she was very little, she hummed a song her mother used to sing while she walked beside him, swinging her hand in his. He squeezes his eyes shut, choking on turbid water, the sword’s weight dragging his arms down. Not real.

Real enough.

“Please.” His throat is raw. “Let me find her. Help me.”

She glides like the snow to his side. Her presence is a thing of winter, of blustering gales, of the last moments he imagines for her when they severed the horns from her head. Alone. Empty. 

W̸͈͊ẖ̷͒a̸͓͑t̷͎̚ ̵̛̦h̶̰̅a̴̘͑v̴͎̂ḛ̵̇ ̷̭͒y̵̳̎o̶̺͛ů̷͔ ̴̢́ḏ̶́o̸̲̚ṅ̵ͅe̸͔̓ ̵̰̉ẗ̵̻́ǒ̵̜ ̸̹̍d̷̯͝e̷̤̊s̵̭̓ě̷̠r̶͉̉v̶̤͘e̷͔͝ ̴̭͌ï̷̟t̴̪̂?̵͍̂

Nothing.

The point of the greatsword snags in the grate, dragging him to his knees. He wonders if he’s wounded, if that’s why it feels like his life is seeping down, down, down—but he can’t feel his body beyond the gangrenous, frostbitten chill. She’s behind him. Her arms wrap around his neck in the facimile of an embrace.

Y̶̰͑ò̶̫u̷͈̒'̸̳̏v̷̬͆ë̷͉ ̶͇͂d̷̪̀õ̴̗n̴̩̕e̸̳͘ ̶͈͋e̷̫̔n̷͓̎o̶͚͆ǘ̸͚g̷̝̈́h̶̳̾----

A flash of an arcing sword. On decades of instinct, he ducks.

It’s a slash like blistering fire and scorching drought barrelling over him. For a moment, he hears a small, dying sound in a space beyond hearing as the cold is mercilessly shorn away, a rending that aches in his chest—then, silence. Sweat drips over his forehead into his eyes. He coughs and tries to remember how to breathe in the half a second allotted to him before rough hands haul him to his feet.

“What is the matter with you?” Sidurgu is bathed in red. He gives him a hard, painful shake that cracks what remains of the frost, his face a furious ruin. “Gods damn it, control yourself!”

He can’t. 

“Cheyesugen,” he says, leaning on the pommel of his sword to steady his shaking legs. “Sidurgu, where—”

“Your fucking dragon got to her first.”

Somewhere in the distance, aether roars in a boundless, leaping rage, jealously defending its hoard. If there was room in him, then, the shame might have burned him from the inside out. But as Sidurgu drags him down the corridor, shouting instructions over the sounds of battle, there’s only the same damn fear in him, coalescing to a tiny shard of ice.

You’re dangerous.

khaizo belongs to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2021 #ffxiv khaizo erebos #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #sidurgu orl #barely #my writing #lots of DRK and aether headcanons here folks #context?? nah

[mimiorzea]

VIII: Clamor

In the year that followed that first Garlean ambush, Jisun came to hate the quiet.

It was not always so oppressive, suffocating. But at ten summers old, Jisun could well remember the din on the night of the ambush: the shouting and the wailing and the awful weapons like spitting thunder (guns, they were called), and how yet none of it had been as bad as the following quiet. Nomolin might have screamed the way Mide had that day she labored with Zayaat's delivery, but at the cusp of dawn, when the camp died back down into silence, Jisun spent the morning counting heartbeats in her fingertips; she abandoned a miserable effort to sleep to skirt past the udgan's tent, fighting to catch glimpses through the entrance, to see if Nomolin still breathed.

The quiet grew haunting in the first moon. It seeped into conversation, into the glances exchanged at tribe gatherings, and into the empty air that hung when Jisun would ask; "Are the Garleans going to come back? Are we ever going home?"

"Do not worry, Jisun," her grandfather would say, after too much time passed, after he claimed a full stomach and handed what was left of his bowl of gristly stew to Harghasun; "As long as we are with each other, we are home -- and come what may, we will face it together."

They stood over their grandfather's grave in the spring. When they did, Jisun would replay those words like a mantra, her fist wound tight in Harghasun's deel, while bitter tears rolled past her cheeks and the silence clogged her throat.

"Why?" She would ask her brother, bringing voice to the storm of emotion in her chest. "He must have been so hungry -- why didn't he ask for more food?" Why didn't I notice how thin he was getting? Why didn't I realize he was lying when he said--

Then Harghasun's hand would pull her closer, hold her tighter, while grief swallowed up the words they might have spoken.

So when the summer months came and the members of the tribe went their separate ways, when Jisun and Harghasun traveled alongside Dhunan’s family, and the quiet followed -- when the Garleans came again, took Harghasun in the dead of the night while the rest of them hid and Enkhtuyaa clasped her hand at Jisun's lips to stop her from crying his name, when Harghasun was gone and Jisun had no home, no family, and the quiet followed--

Jisun would scream just to fill it.

. . .

One day, on the brink of winter, a lost girl would return home: the girl whose mother perished in the ambush, who was destined to become khatun.

When she did, Jisun shouted in a voice too loud for her body. The scornful eyes came, scolding the child who spoke out of turn -- but Jisun would sooner die than be silenced.

"Where were you when grandfather died? Where were you when they took Harghasun? You left right when our tribe needed you most, and now you want to come back to be leader?"

"That's not fair," came a small voice from across the clearing; Nomolin, so timid, so quiet. "Cheye went all that way to try and save us--"

"And for what? What has she done?"

Then: nothing. There was nothing. Nothing but the resounding silence, draped over the camp and around their shoulders and around Jisun's throat, something threatening and terrifying and unbearable--

"I will save them," the lost girl shouted back. "I know where they're holding our tribemates. Each and every one of them -- I will get them back. I won't rest until they’re safe. As khatun of the Oryokuln, it is my responsibility--"

"No,” another argued. “This is a fool’s errand, Cheyesugen; leaving was a mistake we cannot afford for you to repeat. You must stay here, with your family, in our homeland--"

A voice rose up in agreement. Two others vowed to join her. Bitterly they argued, until the tribe rose into clamor.

In it, Jisun could breathe.

Cheyesugen and the Oryokuln belong to @idealistsinc​

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #welcome to super peripheral character hours

[idealistsinc]

11 // preaching to the choir

idiom. to speak for or against something to people who already agree with one's opinions wc: 863 content warning: blood, injury, sadfeels

She’s still angry.

He can tell by the rigid set of Cheye’s shoulders, her back as straight as an iron rod. She shrugs off Isha’a’s first attempt to help her unstrap her vambraces, yanking at the leather cords ‘till they clatter into the dirt, but they both know she can’t reach the pauldron buckles on her own without contorting her shoulder out of joint. Isha’a reaches for her armor again. This time, despite the fury jamming her posture, she lets him. He’s done it before—undoes clips and buttons and ties, strips her of steel. Her chainmail is rent at her elbow, her doublet black with dried blood beneath, but the rest is intact. These layers protect her. They’ve probably saved her life more times than he can count. He helps her out of them, too, mindful of her injury and careful not to tear more links in her mail, until all that’s left is a sweat-soaked tunic and the blood-streaked bend of her arm, still seeping.

Isha’a tentatively grasps for aether. Cheye’s feels like walking face-first into a brick wall; he can’t sense the wound, the currents along which to heal. If he was a better healer, her anger wouldn’t matter.

But he isn’t, so it does.

“Cheye,” he says softly, touching a gloved hand to her shoulder. “Can you try to relax for me?”

She releases a slow, hissing breath. “Why did you stop me?”

“Well, you’re bleeding, first of all.” But that isn’t the only reason. Isha’a grazes his fingers over her arm. Even in places where steel didn’t cut, her skin erupts in dark, mottled bruises. “…And I don’t think it’s worth arguing with Khenbish when you’re injured.”

It was a fight just like every other one. Cheye was too reckless, Khenbish thought—attacked a mech she couldn’t handle, kept too many soldiers at bay with only a halberd and her own mettle, tanking a wound meant to be inflicted on someone else—and Cheye insisted it was a legitimate course of action to take. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just about risk. But somehow, he always made it about Cheye’s inexperience, Cheye’s mistakes, Cheye’s stubborn will that’d someday get her killed. It was agonizing, actually, to watch her throw herself at him and wring absolutely no headway from that implacable wall of a man. Isha’a couldn’t stand it.

“I don’t want to argue,” says Cheye, in a sudden, frustrated burst. Even knowing her ire isn’t for him, it still stings Isha’a like standing too close to an open flame. She clenches her fists at her sides, forcing blood to run from her wound in a way that makes Isha’a’s stomach churn. “But he isn’t understanding. Why should I have the Echo at all if I will just sit and do nothing while the Garleans poison our homeland—”

“I didn’t mean—Cheye, I’m sorry, I know you don’t. I just…My father argued the same way. And it—it hurts, to explain what you’re trying to say over and over again, doesn’t it?” Isha’a’s voice chokes, even after all this time.  You won’t amount to anything out there. You’re hardly a hero—just a boy. “It’s important that he understand, okay, but maybe it isn’t worth the fight.”

Cheye looks at him with a clear, watchful gaze. Some of that defensive tension has leaked out of her. “It is worth it to me.”

Factual. Intractable. Unarguable. Isha’a might have supposed it would be. He musters a smile for her that he knows without a doubt doesn’t reach his eyes. “Then maybe you can save the arguments until after I’ve had the chance to heal you.”

“Yes, of course.” She hesitates, searching, and touches his hand on her arm with blunt and swollen fingers. “Isha’a,” she says, unusually soft. “It matters that you understand. I hope you know.”

Something thorned snakes through Isha’a’s throat and squeezes.

He understands. He does. If he were in her place, wouldn’t he do everything he could to try to save the people that needed him?

…Wouldn’t he?

Rather than answer, Isha’a calls his aether again. It comes sluggishly, moving thickly like ichor, coalescing into a watery glow in the place where he prods Cheye’s flesh to knit itself together. She winces a little, but makes not even a noise of complaint. Cheye isn’t afraid of the wounds she receives. She treats her body as a means to an end, more frustrated when it bows under an injury than concerned about what every cut, every bruise, every broken bone might do to her.

But Isha’a is. Maybe it’s selfish of him, but Isha’a is very, very afraid.

Once he’s finished, Cheye flexes her arm, testing. Isha’a is light-headed with fatigue, the start of a headache pounding at his temples, but it is worth it for the tired smile Cheye gives him—worth it for when she folds him in a hug that feels like it might be only thing holding him up. “Thank you, khairaa.”

Sudden tears prick Isha’a’s eyes. No, don’t cry. If she can do this, so can he. Still, he counts to three before he replies to make sure his voice comes out right.

“You’re welcome.”

isha’a and khaizo belong to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2021 #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #ffxiv isha'a molkoh #my writing #welcome to today's episode of 'everyone gets fucked by ghimlyt' #today it's softboy isha'a with the heroic crisis #ft. some healing headcanons

[idealistsinc]

3 // scale

v. to come off in scales; to shed scales wc: 323

After a long time, Yesugen took a slow breath of steam and lifted her arm out of the bath again.

A patchwork of ashen, flaking scales clung to her skin like a fungus, specked with scabs from where she’d dug in nails too deep to scratch. She slipped a fingernail beneath them and began to work gently to release those tender white scales underneath. Now she would have a clean molt, she hoped—but, though softened in the soak, the scales yet stuck to the sunken wound across her forearm and tore when she tried to peel them back. Another bead of blood welled in the imbricate places where old scales met the new. Yesugen resisted a fierce, animal urge to sink her nails in and shred her shed skin to pieces.

A bad molt wasn’t new; her scales were as heavy, thick, and coarse as pine bark. But this was the worst she could remember—an itch burrowed under her skin that she could only scald out, the smooth sides of the tub painful against raw flesh, her old scales catching on every groove when she at last coaxed them to peel. She had several guesses as to why. The arid heat of the desert, the biting cold of Coerthas, and the thick peat smog of Mor Dhona could hardly have done her any favors.

And there were, of course, the scars.

She remembered despite herself the latticed wounds on Khaizo’s back, his scales a broken mosaic of obsidian. What a nightmare molting those must be. Perhaps he would—

But Yesugen had already settled against it before she could finish the thought. Better not to trouble him with it, after everything. She would finish her molt even if she sat here in the bath all night. Even if, when she finished, the bathwater was pink with blood.

She sighed. Then, steeling herself, she set fingers to her scales and began to peel the next.

#ffxivwrite2021 #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #my writing #i felt kind of tired this evening and had a hard time writing this one #they can't all be winners!

[idealistsinc]

20 // petrichor

n. a distinctive scent, usually described as earthy, pleasant, or sweet, produced by rainfall on very dry ground. wc: 188

The sun-cleaved earth guzzles rain. The topsoil she sifts through her fingers is already as light and dry as powder, but in Thanalan, even the briefest storm bears fruit. She crouches to touch the dewy leaves of the small, pink flowers peeking from beneath a knotted shrub.

"Is this what you're looking for?"

Next to her, Isha'a's tail stirs the dust. "No. Saffron has red stamen -- the bits in the middle of the petals." He gently bends a stem between his fingers, thoughtful. "Pretty, though, aren't they?"

All the life in Thanalan seems to hold its breath in anticipation for a cloud's blessing, waiting. It reminds her of the Steppe, blooms that struggled up between stone crevasses or crouched low against bellowing winds. Survivors like her. "I like them."

His ears twitch. Then, he snaps a flower at the base of its stem, reaching delicately to tuck it into the thick sheath of her hair. "There," he says. "Doubly pretty!"

She's more like a rugged weed than a flower. Nevertheless, his attention is as soothing as a morning mist. She adjusts the stem behind her horn and smiles.

#ffxivwrite2021 #i was straight up ready to quit ffxiv write over this prompt #my muse was like 'no' but i hit it with a newspaper repeatedly until it gave me words #by no means my best work but it exists #ffxiv isha'a molkoh #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #my writing

[idealistsinc]

17 // destruct

n. the act or process of intentional destruction wc: 357 content warning: serious injury and descriptions thereof

She was lowered to unyielding steel. Shadows drifted above her, faint compared to the immolating flames that still burst behind her eyes; they hummed and muttered somewhere beneath the sustained, screaming note in her horns as brutal hands pulled her armor apart. It felt like her flesh peeled with it, crusted to the underside of her mail. She dragged a scalding breath into her lungs and clenched her consciousness in a white-knuckled grip.

"—armor took the brunt of it—"

"—mail melded to the—try to cut it off her—"

"Cheye," said a small voice. A butterfly touch in her hair, something soft beneath her skull. "Don't try to look. Lie still—good. You're so good. I'm right here."

She hacked iron moisture into her mouth. "You..."

"Shh. Tell me later, okay?"

In the distance: "—shrapnel in her shoulder—"

"Sidurgu?"

"My arm has a bullet through."

A weighted silence. In her horns, the mecha's exoskeleton shrieked with the rapid expansion, rupturing like a carcass left too long in the sun.

"I can do it," said Khaizo.

"Pliers?"

"At camp."

"Take my knife. Is she conscious?"

A chirrup by her head again. "Yes."

"Give her this." Something flat was gently worked into her mouth between her molars. Salt and leather—a belt, maybe. Her tongue thudded against it. "On three."

A breath before the precipice. Yesugen promised herself that she would not scream. She would sooner choke to death on the gods-damned belt than scream, than rend their hearts to beating shreds like that.

But her body chose for her. Something sharp sheared her skin, burrowed deep into bone with a lightning arc of agony, and she bit down hard enough to grind her teeth to dust, a glottal wail gutting her throat. Somewhere, she heard a name. Then, thick, murky water churned over her head, silt raw in open wounds. She gurgled, tried to struggle.

"I'm sorry." A whisper, now, fingers at her cheek. It sounded as if he was crying. "You're all right, I'm sorry. Just try to hold still."

Elsewhere, a heavy breath, the clink of steel against the grate. Rough: "Next one."

Yesugen closed her eyes.

khaizo & isha’a belong to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2021 #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #ffxiv khaizo erebos #ffxiv isha'a molkoh #with tiny mention of #sidurgu orl #my writing #whee phone writing #i tried

[idealistsinc]

15 // thunderous

adj. resembling thunder; threatening wc: 253

Did you know yol fly away from storms?

Songbirds won’t. They’re small enough to fit under boughs and in crevasses on the scarps; they’ll weather a bad rain. But it doesn’t cost a yol much to fly ten malms out of the way to avoid them. I remember one summer we had such a fierce thunderstorm that, when it was over, only half our flock came back, all wet and bedraggled. We spent the next three suns scouring the mountains for the stragglers and bribing them with dzo chucks. 

I don’t know if you had storms like that so far north. They were rare but fierce in the Crescent. Nhaama help you if your frame was weak or your knots were loose on your yurt — carelessness was a good way to lose your canvas down in the gorge. Up on the peaks, I saw them coming in sometimes across the steppe, purple and black like a bruise. All we’d really do is make sure the yurts were secure. The wind would howl when it bore up against the rock face and come down some of those ravines like a stampede, and then it’d be on top of you. There are some things in nature you can’t defend against.

It was like that. They rolled into our camp and we couldn’t defend ourselves. The noise...I don’t know what we would’ve done differently. Get out of the way? Where was there to go? I just  —

I thought there would be something to fight.

#ffxivwrite2021 #my writing #blargh #power was out for most of my evening so i didn't have a lot of time to work on this #this was painful to get down #not a fan #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln

[idealistsinc]

14 // commend

n. to entrust; to cite or name with approval wc: 216 

“Is it wise to commend her?”

Orbei followed his gaze to the udgan’s yurt, where their daughter was presently having her broken arm mended. “She acted decisively.”

“Recklessly.”

“No more reckless than I was at her age — or you. Have you forgotten already, old man?”

Sharyugar’s mouth tightened. “I would rather she didn’t emulate how I was at her age.”

That was a matter of perspective. Orbei thought Cheyesugen could be well-served by a little more of Sharyugar in her — even the one yet untempered by time and fatherhood, the young man who tried to win the affections of a strange bird with sheer, stubborn persistence. She touched her hand to his back. “Judgment comes with experience, but courage can’t be taught.”

“Courage without caution is dangerous.”

“She hardly has thirteen summers behind her. There’s time to work on caution.”

He sighed, drawing her closer. “I only worry she’ll get hurt.”

Perhaps if she was born in another era. Perhaps if the moon hadn’t fallen out of the sky, Orbei could rely on another security, could allow her flesh and blood the softness her husband wished for her. 

But she was khatun, and she could not.

“She will,” said Orbei, finally. “As does everyone. All we can hope is to be prepared for it.”

#ffxivwrite2021 #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #my writing #i'd like to expand on sharyugar and orbei's relationship sometime #they love each other very much but have somewhat opposing views on parenting #today is not that day though #tired and therefore short fill

[idealistsinc]

28 // irenic

wc: 545 note: a follow-up to @mimiorzea‘s xi: ultracrepidarian. read that first!

“Fighting with him isn’t helping.” 

Yesugen bends to add another twig to the growing heap of kindling bundled under one arm, ignoring him. Although she’s meant to be resting, Sidurgu has not seen her sit down once in several bells; she and Khenbish are more alike than either will admit, he thinks, stubborn as dzo and half as shrewd. “Nor are you doing him any favors by walking on those wounds.”

She straightens. Then, before Sidurgu can react, she dumps the entire pile of kindling into his arms, saved only on reflex from spilling all over the campsite. “If you’re so concerned,” she bites, “make yourself useful and hold those for me.”

But she is in pain. She is not practiced at hiding her hurts, and the caution with which she places her bandaged feet, the tightening of her face when she closes her hands, gives her away. Sidurgu shifts his burden to one arm, softening in spite of himself. She has surely been scolded enough, by Isha’a and Rielle and Khenbish all, for the circumstances that caused those hurts. “He is only worried, you know,” he says.

Yesugen picks up another stick, head angled to the ground so that Sidurgu almost doesn’t hear her reply: “I do know.”

“Why argue, then?”

She sighs. He is struck, sometimes, by how young she is—younger than Rielle—and understands a little why Khenbish still names her a child. “Because it doesn’t matter what he thinks. The Black Rose has to be stopped.”

“I think Khenbish’s point,” says Sidurgu dryly, “is that you don’t have to do it. Estinien is more than capable.” Yesugen’s mouth tightens in a way that is becoming increasingly and aggravatingly familiar to him. Of course I have to, that expression says. He presses, “There is a difference between heroism and suicide, Cheyesugen. That mech—”

“If Khenbish had been the one to strike that tank, he would have died.”

Her voice is like a whipcrack. Her hands clench around the stick, then tremble as a ripple of agony seizes her arm. Sidurgu does not want to think about what her hands had looked like when Rielle peeled them from her gauntlets. “The Echo keeps me alive,” she says, that burning glint in her eyes. “I don’t know how or why it does, but that is why I’m here, Sidurgu. As long as it’s my body standing in the line of fire, no one has to get hurt.”

What Khenbish sees when he looks at her, Sidurgu knows, is the sallow face of a corpse. But what Sidurgu sees then is a desperate girl on the edge of a precipice. To be willing to temper your body in flames to train it, to break everything you are on the point of a sword, to lose a tribe and yet still cling to the light of its memory to guide the meek…

She would make a good dark knight.

“Very well,” says Sidurgu. “If you truly believe your life is the one thing standing between us and certain death: Protect it. That is all I’d ask.”

She blinks, waits for the argument that never comes. Finally, something settles in her shoulders, and when she speaks, it is with all the gravity of a knight’s oath.

“I will.”

#ffxivwrite2020 #sidurgu orl #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #ffxiv khaizo erebos #the adventures of trying to decide which name to use with a character who has two different aliases #also my first foray into actually writing a canon character #whoo #my writing

[idealistsinc]

23 // shuffle

wc: 739

When Yesugen had gone, Charlotte reclined in her chair, crossed her arms, and mustered her best accusatory pout. “You let her win,” she said.

It was nearly surreal to see Khenbish—Khaizo, now, she supposed—under the garish and glimmering lights of the Manderville Gold Saucer. Against the monochromatic backdrop of Coerthas, Khaizo had always seemed a man etched from stone, as cold and distant as Dravania’s mountain peaks. But here, warmed from drink, with tinny music whining in their ears and the glare from the game machines bleaching his hair more gray than black, Charlotte could hardly reconcile the person in her memory with the one before her.

After all, Khenbish of the Vengeful Lance never smiled.

Khaizo began to reshuffle the deck, his face utterly blank. “No, I didn’t.”

“I was watching the discard pile. You could have won, like, three turns ago.” Thancred had taught her that particular trick, although she often found herself too…preoccupied to pay attention to counting cards. “Not that I blame you. She’s adorable.”

Charlotte hadn’t been sure what to think when Yesugen had opened the door, a serious and robust girl with a slow smile and a broken horn. Young. Perhaps a little too serious. It had taken a few drinks for her to seem to enjoy herself; she had grinned like a child when she’d put down her winning hand, and Khaizo, whom Charlotte had also managed to coax (read: browbeat) into having a drink or two, had smiled with her like he had no idea he was doing it.

He didn’t contradict her, she noticed, although his brow had started to furrow. Maybe now that he’d been plied with alcohol, Charlotte could get some more information out of him. “Where did you even find this girl?”

“Ask her,” said Khaizo, clipped.

Charlotte groaned. “Come on. You have to tell me something. She’s from Othard, isn’t she? Is that Doman you’re speaking with her? How old is she?”

Khaizo put the deck, shuffled, down on the table with more force than was strictly necessary. “Yes, she is from Othard,” he said. “She speaks Xaelan. And…”

He didn’t continue. After a few moments, Charlotte realized it wasn’t his usual “freeze people out until they stopped asking” tactic. She gaped. “You don’t even know!? And she’s been living with you for, what, six months—”

“Two,” said Khaizo, in a tone like Charlotte had leapt over the table with a wrench to pull out his teeth.

“—and you haven’t even bothered to ask how old—Matron’s tits, you’re hopeless.”  Charlotte craned her neck to see if Yesugen had come back and saw her lingering at the edge of the room, talking with great focus to a white-haired Miqo’te woman in the Gold Saucer uniform. She flagged Yesugen down, and she at last returned to the table. “Gen, how old are you?”

Yesugen blinked, then said, with enough confidence that Charlotte doubted she had misremembered the Eorzean number, “Sixteen. Why?”

“Just—wondering.” Charlotte desperately tried to remember how many drinks she’d ordered for a sixteen-year-old girl; Khaizo, dealing a new round of cards like his life depended on it, was not doing much better. Yesugen wandered back to her seat in apparent confusion.

“So…we play again?”

Perhaps Yesugen would be more receptive. Charlotte leaned her elbows onto the table, testing the waters. “How did you meet Khaizo? I don’t think either of you have said. Was it at the stables?”

“No,” said Yesugen. “We meet in Ul’dah on the street. He help me with having work—he work there already, so then we work together.”

Did she have nowhere else to go? “And you stay with him?”

She tilted her head. “You know that.”

Gods, Yesugen was nearly as bad as Khaizo. At least she had the excuse of a language barrier. “I mean, do you like it?” Charlotte leaned farther forward, shielding her mouth conspiratorially. “You might not have noticed, but he’s kind of grumpy.”

She thought maybe she heard Khaizo sigh, just a little. Yesugen looked at her carefully, though, and said, with long pauses between as if she was weighing her words, “Ul’dah is different. I learn things, still, but—I guess I like it.”

This wasn’t getting anywhere. Charlotte settled back and checked her hand for the new round.

“Khaizo,” she said, trying hard not to smile. “Where’s your head, old man? One too many on the cards.”

Khaizo snatched it out of her hands, scowling profusely.

charlotte & khaizo belong to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxiv khaizo erebos #ffxiv charlotte leroux #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #my writing #me coopting mimi's characters again #they're just so fun #i kind of got lost in this one halfway through but i'd already committed so #here we are

[idealistsinc]

21 // foibles

wc: 263

“Cheyesugen, leave that there.”

Yesugen peered at Khaizo over the rim of a pot half as tall as she was; it was a testament to her strength that she could lift it at all. “It was on the stovetop,” she said. “I’m putting it away.”

Khaizo looked about. The kitchen shelves, just behind the counter of his makeshift storefront, were full to bursting with display cases, enameled statuary, embossed platters, and the other odds and ends of Khaizo’s prolific production. “Where?”

“I’ll move those upstairs,” said Yesugen, inclining her head toward the disorganized pile of logbooks that accounted for nearly six moons’ worth of commission requests and material inventories. “You shouldn’t have them so close to the stove, anyway.”

Khaizo frowned. “I do all of my inventory down here—”

“—and now you have space on your smithing bench to do it, since you finally put your tools away—”

“—that I was using—”

“—where they belong.” Yesugen pushed the logbooks over with her elbow so she could set the pot down, then turned to inspect the empty stovetop. “There. Doesn’t that look better?”

Khaizo said nothing. Satisfied, she hummed and gathered the fraying logbooks in her arms. “Oh,” she added, with a glance over her shoulder, “make sure to soak your slops when you get back from mining. The dirt sets.”

She disappeared up the stairs. Khaizo made sure she was well and truly out of sight, then lifted his eyes skyward as though in supplication and, in doing so, noticed how much more open the kitchen seemed.

Well…maybe the stovetop did look nice. 

khaizo belongs to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #ffxiv khaizo erebos #my writing #i started a new job today! #which means these fills are about to get a whole lot shorter lmao #but hey #if i can power through these last 10 days i'll be golden

[idealistsinc]

15 // ache

wc: 356

They are born as clear and unblemished as glass.

He remembers her that way, sometimes. Uncurled fingers and shut eyes, that downy cushion of dark hair pillowing her head in his wife’s arms. A little seed of a person in need of nourishment, warm soils, enough sun. It’s hard to describe the burden of that responsibility. It’s as if his love itself has weight, a boulder he will carry for the rest of his life—but carry joyfully, for all the teething cries and colicky screams are not even a price when compared to the privilege of her first smile with meaning, her first words formed with intent.

“Dada!”

And then the world grows in like a weed. And then their screams have intent as well as their words. And then, if you’re very unlucky, the seedling children are torn from their roots in pieces.

He still carries that boulder. He always will, even as it makes his shoulders ache.

. . .

She is a tangled underbrush of memories he will never truly know. The world has already grown in her. Her steps are practiced, but he learns she will use them to walk across continents; her voice is rough, but he learns how she raises it to defend the innocent. Her teeth bare in a snarl or a smile. And when she screams, it reaches to a place deep within him that once bade him to fling himself out of bed in the middle of the night, just to make certain the baby still breathed.

He chooses to remember her this way. Arms close around him, curled fingers and open eyes, that downy cushion of dark hair barely touching his sternum. She says, with intent, “Have a good day,” and he ignores her complaints when he gets down on his knees so he can reach her, a growing seed still in need of nourishment, warm soils, and enough sun.

In these moments, his love is like a boulder he will carry for the rest of his life. And for once he aches not for what was nor what could have been, but for all that might yet be.

khaizo belongs to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxiv khaizo erebos #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #my writing #something more metaphorical and experimental today #because why not #i love me some feels

[idealistsinc]

13 // when in rome

wc: 620 content warning: tooth-rotting fluff

“Okay, next one! Here, take a look.”

Yesugen lifted her head a little off Isha’a’s shoulder so she could properly see the plant he was thrusting in her face: a glossy, green-leaved vine with a smattering of young berries. After the heartfelt nameday gift he had carved for her, she had shown enough interest in the Twelveswood’s flora that Isha’a, in a fit of academic excitement, brought back samples from his latest trip to Gridania as visual aids—including a few unintended burrs she had passed half a bell pulling carefully out of his hair. To be honest, she was rather more interested in a cuddle and a nap just now than day-old, withered-looking greenery, but he had gone to such an effort that she felt obliged to at least pretend to listen, even if only to absorb the soothing cadence of his voice. A regular scientist, she thought fondly, turning the plant in her fingers by the stem.

“What is it?”

“It’s called matron’s mistletoe.” Pages rustled in Isha’a’s lap as he leafed through the botany guide with his free hand, and Isha’a read, in what Yesugen had begun to think of as his Sharlayan professor voice: “It’s ‘a variety of parasitic plant’ — meaning it steals water and food from a host — ‘named after the goddess Nophica for its appearance of embracing the trees on which it grows.’ Eorzeans decorate with them around the Starlight Celebration.”

“You decorate with…parasitic plants?” said Yesugen. She had never heard the word parasitic before and pronounced it carefully.

Isha’a huffed a laugh. “Well, when you put it like that, it does sound weird. But they’ve been associated with growth, new life, and the coming of spring for a long time, so people decorate with them as a way to hope for those things in the middle of winter. In fact, there’s, um, kind of a tradition…”

He trailed off. Yesugen twisted a little to see his face; a flush had begun to creep up his neck, his tail twitching against her thigh.

“What?”

“You’re supposed to, uh, kiss under it,” he said. “Evidence suggests it started as part of marriage ceremonies in ancient Allag, but the tradition resurged in Coerthas after the Calamity since mistletoe still blooms in the cold, and anyway Ishgard tends to have complicated mores around  — Cheye, what are you doing?”

Yesugen had moved out of his reach to stand up on the sofa. Very delicately, she set the little sprig of mistletoe on the overburdened wooden shelf above them, a splash of festive, out-of-season greenery among the assorted jars, crucibles, and aludels already in residence. “It’s an Eorzean tradition,” she said matter-of-factly as she dropped back to a sit, raising her eyebrows. “I’ll try it.”

Isha’a’s face turned a truly interesting color. “But it’s—it’s the fifth astral moon. It’s t-too early…”

“We’re under the mistletoe,” said Yesugen, insistently. She twined her arms about his neck, trying hard not to smile at how he blushed and melted at her touch, although it must have been at least the hundredth time she’d held him in such a way, and failing miserably. “Tradition. That’s how it works, yes?”

Yesugen could almost sense him pulling himself up by his bootstraps. “Yes. Tradition,” agreed Isha’a gravely—or, really, as gravely as a very flustered, very happy Miqo’te could sound, which was to say, not at all—and kissed her.

That was his magic, thought Yesugen later when they parted, giggling to themselves, then laughing at how silly they were. Because no matter how many times he put his lips to hers, or grinned that toothy smile, or laughed that breathless laugh…

She always felt the swell in her chest like it was the first.

isha’a belongs to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxiv #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #ffxiv isha'a molkoh #honestly i didn't even write this to a word prompt #i just put on 'accidentally in love' and here we are #absolute fluffy nonsense #i love these dorks #my writing

[idealistsinc]

07 // nonagenarian

wc: 359

“How old are you, Khaizo?”

The gloom of steerage obscured his expression. In the space of his silence, Sharyugar heard the dampened roar of a wave below, the untold weight of the ocean embracing and releasing the hull of their vessel; above, a battered rain crashed to the deck. The ship would soon stagger on account of the storm, parents gathering their children to their breasts, the childrens’ shrieking drowned out in the torrent — but now all was quiet, and Yesugen slept on.

“Forty-one,” he said at length. Then: “Forty-two, shortly.”

Khaizo seemed more aged than that. Something in the eyes. There was a weatheredness about him like a lightning-struck tree whose bark yet grows around the burn.

But then, war had made old men and women of them all. 

“Hardly a man of middle age,” said Sharyugar, in a good humor he did not feel. “I’ve ten years on you.”

He knew not when his father died. However, he must have long passed from this world, for Sharyugar had seen half a century’s cycles already, and Obinata men, when they did not perish with the sword clenched in their bloody fists, withered surely by sixty, bending to the years that they spent throwing their bodies unto steel. Some mornings Sharyugar found he could hardly stand for the pain in the knee, swelled from the damp of the ship, that the old imperial decurion had crushed under his standard-issue boots. Some mornings, he thought Khaizo might suffer much the same.

Ninety years of living between them. Ninety years of fighting. Ninety years of ever searching for that elusive thing called peace. 

As was his wont, Khaizo said nothing. Sharyugar followed his gaze to where it often fell — to Yesugen, stirring on the mat in a restless and exhausted sleep, beige scales distinct and the crop of her hair brushing her jaw.

All a parent wanted was to see his children successful, to grow fat and happy and old. But war was for the young; and it seemed to him then that their thoughts were in tandem:

How many wars will she fight when she fights so young?

khaizo belongs to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxiv #my writing #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #ffxiv khaizo erebos #tfw none of your characters are anywhere near the age of a nonagenarian and few ever will be #gotta get creative with that prompt

[idealistsinc]

29 // paternal

wc: 449

Her father was kind.

“Everything has spirit,” he used to say, “and you must treat all things as living.” That was how he approached the world: like it was an injured animal he must soothe to release from the trap, cautious and measured and gentle. He never raised his voice. He never took life without need. And it was only when it was too late that she understood he had long tired of killing and cruelty, for he had devoured his fill decades before she was born.

Her father was kind, and Khaizo is not. She knows him well enough to admit that he’s closed, impatient, prickly. This is how he approaches the world: like an enemy, looking always to take that corner to which he’s staked his claim. He has raised his voice, and taken lives, and kills out of a muscle memory instilled by too many wars.

And, worst of all, Khaizo still keeps the house too cold.

“Khenbish.”

He is bent over the workbench, linking chains, and grunts an acknowledgment without glancing up. Yesugen sighs. Then, she crosses the room and unceremoniously drops the blanket in his lap. “It’s freezing in here. You’re going to catch something.”

“I’m accustomed to it,” says Khaizo, but puts down his tools for long enough to look at what she’s given him. His brow furrows.

The blanket is of felted aldgoat hair, simply and cleanly embroidered. He owns nothing like it—felting is truly an art of the steppe, and its workmanship is difficult to find in even the most overzealously stocked Eorzean marketplace. In response to his unasked question, Yesugen says, “Erdenechimeg, Mide, and I made it.” When he makes no attempt to reply, she adds plainly, “It’s for you.”

He thumbs at a stitch, testing the craftsmanship. “Why?”

Why? she wants to say. Because even Mide conceded, between critiquing Yesugen’s amateur stitching as she cleaned up loose threads, that she and her sons would not have ever seen Eorzea’s shores without his intervention. Because Dene cared only that her grandson lived and made no issue of his savior’s demeanor. Because he is the one who first put a spear in her hand and taught her to fight. Because he is not her father, and yet he has followed her and follows her, still.

Because…

“It’s too cold in Coerthas,” she says, smiling, “for such old bones.”

Khaizo is not a very kind man…but nor is she always kind. He understands that in a way few people can, now, after it all; and he holds that blanket in hands that have killed like anything but the softest touch might tear it, and he says, cautious and measured and gentle,

“Perhaps.”

khaizo belongs to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #ffxiv khaizo erebos #my writing #i gave up yall #my brain Did Not Want To Write Today #we don't proofread we die like men

[idealistsinc]

20 // where the heart is II

wc: 531

“Would you want to go back to the steppe?”

The tent’s roof bows beneath the driving rain of a Thanalan monsoon. Yesugen stiffens in Isha’a’s arms, such that he adds, apologetic, “I was—I was just thinking that I might end up there for research someday, and that you might…want to come with me.” He nuzzles at her hair, sighing. “I didn’t mean for that to be a loaded question. I’m sorry.”

Would I?

It still hurts, somewhere in her, to imagine the purple majesty of those granite mountains, their warm shadows casting upon the valleys and stirring the summer crickets into song. Hurts, still, to pine for the animal musk of skins and furs on which to lay her head at night while, through the open flap of the yurt, a dozen other fires twinkle in the distance like stars. But…

“No,” she says, “I don’t think I would want to go back.”

His fingers skim a path down her arm, linger over rough scales; he doesn’t press her, but she can nevertheless sense his confusion. It’s her homeland, she’s sure he’s thinking, doesn’t she miss it? And she does, in a way. But what she longs for isn’t the land, isn’t the mountains, isn’t that vast and uninterrupted sky. It’s the life that was irrevocably taken.

When she arrived in Othard during those desperate winter moons, Oryokuln had lain in pieces. It was never more clear that her home was in ruins than it was in Sayin’s voice when she said, sharp with accusation, “You would abandon your family?”

Sayin, a woman struggling to glue the shards of their lives together. Sayin, for whom family would only ever be those little broken pieces. Yesugen forgives her, in spite of herself, for offering too little too late to save her cousin, Sayin’s own blood son—for how difficult a decision that must have been. What she has never told Isha’a: how difficult a decision it had been for her, too, because even among those scattered remains of her people, half her heart had already been in the Gold Saucer stables, in a house in the Goblet, with a sweet-natured Moonkeeper Miqo’te. Even back then, they were parts of her she could have no more abandoned than the right arm Isha’a touches now.

“No. I wouldn’t. But there is no family here.”

“Eorzea is my home,” Yesugen says. “My family lives here, not on the steppe. But…”

She turns and rests her palm on his chest. He curls his fingers at once around hers, holding it against the steady beat of his heart with a hand still smooth and soft and unblemished. A hand that healed her before she was anything but a lost refugee, building a home out of driftwood and sand. A hand that heals her, still, no matter her scars. “Anywhere you wanted to go, Isha’a, I would follow.”

He looks at her a moment, ears low. Then, something crumples in his face, and he buries himself in her arms like he will never leave them.

“I love you,” he says thickly, barely audible over the drum of the rain.

And she thinks, You are the home I fight for.

isha’a belongs to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxiv isha'a molkoh #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #i was not done with this prompt so for free day i did it again #gimme all the found family fluff goshdarnit #my writing