#oc: synnove greywolfe

[dragons-bones]

"'Let's skirt the Talons' territory!' Rere says. 'Radlia's busy harassing Leofard and the Redbills!' Rere says. 'It's the fastest way home!' Rere says." Synnove adjusted the grip on her quoit as the Rohesia shook beneath another barrage from the Lady Radlia's main guns, and trained her rifle on a Talon manacutter's fuel tank. "Swiving hell, why do I listen to her, just get nearly blown off my own ship."

She fired, and the enemy manacutter burst into flame. With a grunt of satisfaction, the captain swung herself back onto the deck of the Rohesia, and stormed towards the bridge as her crew moved like a well-oiled machine around her.

#final fantasty xiv #ffxiv #hyur #hyur highlander #oc: synnove greywolfe #dt's screenshots #dt's witchcraft and sorcery #the forbidden tools #made new aiming glam and suddenly that sky pirate au knocked on my door #the aiming glams have been so lit during endwalker #sometimes it tempts me to change mains

[punchelfdraws]

"Aymeric had said clothes, not her clothes."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Commission for @dragons-bones

Learn more about commissions HERE

Buy me a ko-fi

#my art #commission work #commission #commissions are open #other people's ocs #oc: synnove greywolfe #ffxiv #ffxiv art #ffxiv highlander

[gunbun]

did some crimetoolin for the masses

took these portraits of @dragons-bones ’ Synnove

#oc: synnove greywolfe #ffxiv screenshots

[theredshirtwholived]

I’ve been working on this for the past MONTH and it’s finally done! This is easily the most complex art thing I’ve ever drawn and I’m quite happy with it.

I present to you @dragons-bones ‘s lovely Final Fantasy XIV OC, Synnove Greywolfe, and three of her darling carbuncles, Tyr, Galette, and Ivar. Galette and Ivar are both sniffing at their mama’s hands to see which one has SWEETS in it, while Tyr is trying to pretend he’s not interested when he really, really wants in on the action.

(Made in Krita.)

#my art blog #other people's ocs #oc: synnove greywolfe #ffxiv #digital art #krita

[dragons-bones]

The Squad of Light: Dawntrail Benchmark Edition

#final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #oc: synnove greywolfe #oc: rereha reha #oc: dancing heron #oc: alakhai noykin #dt's screenshots #*sobbing* my girls are all so beautiful #HOW DID HERON GET EVEN /HOTTER/ #god the skin the eyes the shadows #even the LIPSTICK looks so much better #no more of that awful high sheen gloss effect #*sobs* i can't wait for dawntrail!!! #i'm gonna uninstall reshade before the 48 maintenance because I WON'T NEED IT ANYMORE

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #26: The Ivory Tower

Prompt: last || Master Post || On AO3

A/N: Spoilers for Endwalker MSQ.

--

“Heron! Heron, put me down!”

Synnove looked up from her grimoire, blinking in surprise as Dancing Heron burst into her room in the Baldesion Annex with Alisaie slung over her shoulder.

“Heron, it’s not a big deal!”

Heron strode across the room to the bed and unceremoniously dumped Alisaie on it next to Synnove, causing the mattress—and Synnove, and her grimoire, and Galette, napping on Synnove’s other side—to bounce. Galette whipped her head up to glare with an angry chitter even as Alisaie popped upright.

“Heron!”

Heron stuck her finger in Alisaie’s face, right between her eyes. The elezen maid’s eyes crossed to glare at it. “No,” Heron said. “You’re going to listen to sense.”

“I said it’s not a big—”

“Ah-ah-ah!”

Alisaie snapped her mouth shut and crossed her arms, breaking her gaze with Heron.

Heron finally turned to Synnove. “Did you know,” the Hellsguard said mildly, in the tone of voice that had Synnove’s gaze sharpening, “that in all respects, Alisaie has ever been in Alphinaud’s shadow?”

“And who said that nonsense?” Synnove said. If any of her students had been present, they would have been ducking under their desks.

Heron pointed to Alisaie. Synnove turned, slowly, to look at Alisaie, her expression turned into something that could generally be called “unamused.” Alisaie, despite looking off to the side, hunched her shoulders defensively as she felt the weight of both their gazes.

“What,” Synnove said, slow and deliberate, “the fuck, honey.”

“Well, it’s true!” Alisaie snapped. “It’s like I was telling Heron and Krile earlier when we visited the Studium: Alphinaud entered the Studium six moons before I did, he graduated with honors while I didn’t, and he was the most notorious debater in a generation!”

Synnove turned to Look at Heron, jerking her head towards Alisaie. Are you fucking kidding me.

Heron flicked her hand to the side. I know, right?

“Can you please not do that with other people present?” Alisaie grumbled, deigning to glare at them.

“Fair,” Heron said. “Anyway, little sister, could you please speak sense into littlest sister?”

“Certainly.” Synnove closed and set her grimoire aside, then picked up Galette and deposited the carbuncle in Alisaie’s lap. Alisaie automatically began petting her, and Galette purred and proceeded with biscuit making on her thigh. Heron dropped down to sit on Alisaie’s opposite side, and wrapped an arm around her. Some of the tension leeched out of Alisaie’s shoulders.

“Alisaie Leveilleur,” Synnove said, quiet and authoritative, “there is absolutely nothing about you that stands within Alphinaud’s shadow. It is grossly unfair to both yourself and your brother to make comparisons when your strengths lie in completely different areas. And before you can object, I ask: what am I?”

Alisaie bit her lip. “An arcanist,” she said.

Synnove arched her eyebrows and made a ‘go on’ gesture.

“…A professor.”

“Correct,” Synnove said, “so when I say you’re speaking utter nonsense, I mean it. So what if you entered the Studium a little later than Alphinaud? Didn’t you both graduate at the same time?”

“Yes?”

Synnove snorted. “So you did a complete course of study in less time than your brother did, at the same age.”

Alisaie looked up at her, startled. “I…I suppose I never thought of it that way.”

Heron adopted a smug expression as Synnove said, “And what did Alphinaud get his highest honors in? All of his subjects?”

“No, magical arts and aetherology.”

Synnove cocked her head to the side. “And just who is it, of the Leveilleur twins, that formulated the cure to primal tempering?”

Alisaie turned bright red and she ducked her head, staring down at Galette as she scratched under the carbuncle’s chin. But a very small smile twitched at the corner of her lips.

“And bless your brother’s darling heart,” Synnove said, wriggling her arm around the elezen maid’s shoulders, “but being a debater isn’t always a good thing, especially outside academia. Sometimes one needs to take decisive action. It is far too easy to get bogged down in theoreticals and what ifs and go around in circles, and then nothing gets done, and whoops, now your country’s under occupation or the world’s dead and gone.”

Despite herself, Alisaie laughed quietly, and leaned into Synnove’s side. “It’s…hard, sometimes,” she whispered. “This is Sharlayan, where wisdom and knowledge and learning are considered the greatest things to which man should strive. To not meet them, to not achieve them, to not want to achieve them is…strange.”

Synnove and Heron exchange a look over Alisaie’s head. This is not the first time Synnove’s had to comfort a Sharlayan: the Arcanists’ Guild has hosted a few over the years, exchange students or transfers. It is difficult enough convincing a student of their worth when they fail after learning had previously come so easy, and their quick minds were where they had placed all their self-worth; it is another entirely to convince those students whose entire culture places high value on academic achievement.

Alisaie’s been gone from Sharlayan for six, seven years by now, has learned how the rest of the star works, but it’s difficult to combat sixteen years of thought with a mere six of experience, no matter how thorough.

“You are worth more than the sum of your grades,” Synnove said. “And any teacher worth their salt will tell you that. It’s what you do once you’re out in the world, figuring it all out in real time, that’s the most important, what you do with your life and how you live it. And you’ve done wonderfully. So has your brother, but differently, and your strengths and weaknesses compliment one another. It’s why you’re so effective a team. But even when you stand alone, Alisaie Leveilleur, you are magnificent.”

“And I’ll bloody well fight anyone who says otherwise,” Heron said.

Alisaie laughed, louder now, and let herself be properly folded into the hug from both Synnove and Heron. “Thank you,” she said.

“Anytime, little sister.”

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#ffxivwrite2023 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #endwalker #alisaie leveilleur #oc: dancing heron #oc: synnove greywolfe #dt's writing #listen i might have flipped a table during that little bit of msq #i have Opinions about self-worth and its intersection with academia

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #9: The Heart of Things

Prompt: fair || Master Post || On AO3

--

It is a common element of Gyr Abanian folk stories, particularly the ones told to children, that the wisest and most heroic of characters are the ones bearing heavy scars or twisted features or the sharpest of tongues. One-Eyed Odin lives in the wild heart of the Dimwold, preferring the company of ravens and diakka and her wife to people, but the withered crone will grumblingly lead lost children by the hand back to their villagers as she teaches them the dangers and bounty of the bog, or appear at a wandering war-prince’s campfire, on her way to visit one of her many sisters, to share her hard-won wisdom (and perhaps even offer a token to help him win the day). Her son, Vidar of the Iron Arm, is brave but war-weary, his face a canyon of scars, but his equally scarred hands have gently escorted many a maiden across the mountain paths to the homes of their bridegrooms.

Synnove’s adult, analytical mind knows—or at least suspects, since her scholarly pursuits focus on mathematics and aetherology rather than history and folklore—that such stories likely evolved to teach the children of Gyr Abania to respect the veterans of the many wars and battles their people have fought. War has been the major source of her people’s coin since Ala Mhigo first rose on the shores of Loch Seld over a thousand years ago, and is war not kind to the body or the mind.

Inevitably, many of the villains of her childhood are beautiful: the Queen of Stone and Snow, cruel and capricious as the avalanches that wipe out herds and villages; Roric Silvertongue, whose prowess with a bow and manipulations both leads to the death of three kings before Princess Elysande comes out of the north to reclaim her birthright; Wicked Audr the Facestealer, who sows chaos simply for the joy of it using their thousand and one faces, each one flawless and radiant. Not that the reverse never happens: the Bone Eater is made to be as ugly on the outside as the inside, for example, and even in her old age, One-Eyed Odin’s wife Freyja is the most beautiful woman in Abalathia, and the kindest.

But Gyr Abanian lore, for the most part, warns of a beautiful face and a smooth tongue, and for all that Synnove grew up just as much on Ul’dahn tales which feature the opposite, those are the ones that lurk most often in the back of her mind.

Which is, perhaps, why she is so surprised that she isn’t wary of one Ser Aymeric de Borel.

The man is absurdly handsome and could have stepped off the pages of a storybook with a flawless face, hair as black as pitch, and eyes a clear and icy blue. His voice is a low, smooth tenor, his manners exquisite, his smile a picture-perfect politician’s. The stories of Wicked Audr and Roric Silvertongue hiss at her to beware; the ten years of living in Ul’dah remind her that pretty promises have less pretty prices.

But for all that during that first meeting he plays Alphinaud like a well-tuned fiddle, there’s a thread of earnestness about him. There was no hiding his genuine pleasure at meeting herself and her sisters; no hiding at all the spark of delight when he saw her specifically. That the carbuncles don’t seem to mind him, even like him (well, Galette and Tyr do—Ivar not liking someone is just a fact of life), is certainly a major point in his favor, too.

It’s that meeting in the Jeweled Crozier, the first time she ever sees him outside his office as Lord Commander, where she truly lets herself be charmed. There’s no artifice in his laughter, no scheming in his offer to treat her and Galette to hot chocolate. After the ruin of the Scions during the banquet and the otherwise cold reception she and her family have received from Ishgard outside House Fortemps, his warm regard is a soothing balm.

It isn’t until well into their stay in Ishgard, the conspiracy of the Dragonsong War slowly unraveling, that Synnove has a realization. She has spent a considerable amount of time with Ser Aymeric; they’ve run into one another on errands or various excursions into the city, and he’s come to Fortemps Manor more than once to invite her to a luncheon, or a café, or just a walk around one of the parks. “And Galette, and Tyr, and Ivar, are more than welcome to join if they so want to, of course.”

She is alone in the library she’s commandeered, because there is too much downtime for her to sit idly and not work on arcanima research even without most of her resources on hand, not even the carbuncles present. She is in the middle of drafting a revision to Galette’s Garuda-egi subprogram, when uncharacteristically, her mind begins to wander away from aetherophysics and to the handsome man she had had coffee with just yesterday. His cheerful greeting to their waitress and asking after her family before she took their order, the sparkle of his eyes as he recommended the chocolate torte, the soft rumble of his laugh as she told him about the firt time Ivar decided to take a nap in a working oven, which of course was the bread oven in the Gate mess, the warmth of his smile…

He’s courting me.

Synnove sets down her pen and stares unseeing at the far wall as her mind runs a malm a minute.

She’s never dreamed of romance or courting or marriage. She had just…fallen into her previous relationship, and what a mess that had been. Though, perhaps it wouldn’t have turned so ugly if they had courted properly, getting to know one another, realizing they weren’t much of a good fit after all. (Realizing the carbuncles hadn’t liked her chosen lady at all, and really, that needs to be top of her list for anything.)

She’s certainly never dreamed of an ideal partner, either, be they male or female or other. Her preferences in the rare bedmates she’s had in the past skew towards taller than her and stronger, but that’s not really the same. She supposes if she had to choose, it would be someone with whom she could have a relationship like her Aunt Angharad and Uncle Tyr did, or Grandmother and Grandfather.

Her memories of her childhood in Ala Mhigo are greyed out by time, but she remembers the feeling of those relationships if not the particulars. The comfortable silences between Auntie and Uncle as they leaned into one another, the way Grandfather would lead Grandmother in an impromptu waltz, gentle with her fragile bones as her soft laughter followed them down the halls. The respect, the care, the love. The work they had put into it.

Synnove thinks of how Ser Aymeric asks her questions about her job as an arcanist; he doesn’t always understand the high theory she has a tendency to segue into when she speaks more of her research than her duty as an agent of the thalassocracy, but he listens, and asks more questions to clarify. She thinks of his enthusiasm when she asks about him about a favorite book, or the soft, fond grief when she gently inquires about his parents, or the thin thread of frustration when he speaks on the stagnation of Ishgard's society. She thinks of the way the timber of his voice sends butterflies fluttering in her stomach, the way his midnight hair sometimes falls into his lovely blue eyes when he tilts his head and winks at her, the way he gently kisses her knuckles in greeting or departure. She thinks of how utterly delighted he was when Galette decided she was going to ride on his shoulders one day in the park, his chest puffing out with pride as he described the history of the rose gardens to them.

She thinks of it all, of what it could mean for her and for him and for them. She thinks of all the stories she was told as a child where a beautiful face could lead to ruin, but also the ones that say it didn’t matter if the face was beautiful or ugly, just that the heart was kind and just. She thinks of all the work it would take to make a Lord Commander and a Warrior of Light fit.

It would be worth it.

Synnove thinks of it all, and smiles.

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#ffxivwrite2023 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #aymeric de borel #aymeric x wol #aymeric x synnove #oc: synnove greywolfe #worldbuilding #dt's writing #my brain: we have finally come up with an idea for this prompt #me: yay! #my brain: but first four hundred words of maybe-maybe not necessary worldbuilding #me: fuck you.

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #27: One in the Hand

Prompt: sole || Master Post || On AO3

A/N: The sequel to this year's "Levin Deals." :D

--

“Synnove.”

Synnove looked up from her book, brow furrowing as she glanced around. Had someone called her?

“Synnove.”

Oh, yep. That was Aymeric’s voice echoing into the house. And her knight sounded in a tiff.

Amused, she closed her book and reluctantly wiggled her feet out from beneath Ivar, then unwrapped herself from her nest of blankets and pillows. The worst lingering effect of her sustained aethershock from the Final Days, even moons after the fact, was she was always damnably cold, even in summer. But once free, she swung her legs off the couch, shoved her feet into her slippers, and pushed herself upright to shuffle out of the library.

Another clipped call of her name, and Synnove shook her head as she made for the kitchen garden. Ixion must have broken the armistice and begun nibbling on the rows that weren’t set aside for him.

Stepping outside, she closed her eyes for a moment and sighed with delight as the sun beat down on her shoulders. Mmm, warm.

“Synnove.” Oh, last syllable emphasis. Her beau was, indeed, quite irritated.

Synnove opened her eyes. And stared.

There was Aymeric, hands on his hips and wearing his gardening clothes, his brows pulled down into a ferocious scowl. There was Ixion, happily chewing on the late summer tomatoes in one of his designated vegetable rows and making a violent mess of his muzzle.

But there was also…

Aymeric pointed. “What is that?”

“I don’t know!” Synnove said, holding up her hands. “I’ve never seen him before in my life, I swear!”

Next to Ixion, snuffling curiously at the still-growing pumpkins, was a creature that might be mistaken for Rhalgr’s steed’s twin were it not for his colors. Instead of his primary coat color being blue-violet, his was sandy brown; instead of vividly stripes, his were deep ruby, and his mane and tail aglow in orange; instead of a horn of gold and striped purple, his was a molten crag, like looking at the top layer of a moving lava field. And where levin danced across Ixion’s hide, embers flaked off his own.

Ixion gently rapped his horn against his fiery doppelganger’s, and the creature stopped nosing at the green pumpkins and lifted his head. He spotted Synnove and his ears pricked up, and began picking his way carefully around the vegetable garden, then pranced across the grass to where she stood.

Synnove squeaked with delight. Aymeric sighed heavily and muttered something that sounded like, “Bloody two of them, Fury have mercy on my garden.”

The fiery steed came to a halt and reached out his neck with a polite whicker. Synnove squeaked again and held out her hands to him, and cooed as he snuffled at them to familiarize himself with her scent. “Oh, aren’t you just a handsome lad!” she crooned. “And so warm. Wherever did you come from, sweet darling?”

“We’re not keeping him.”

“Hush!”

--

G’raha Tia was wearing an expression similar to the one had the first time he met Estinien, stars literally in his eyes, ears pricked like a unicorn’s, and tail frantically lashing about him and slapping at his ankles and hips. “How,” he breathed.

Aymeric grumbled next to him. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

Synnove, astride her new friend’s back with her arms wrapped around his neck and her face buried in his glowing mane, grunted wordlessly. Said new friend was munching happily on the buds of a stalk of Lominsan sprouts.

Roksana, loafed unhappily on Aymeric’s shoulder, mumbled, A levin unicorn, now a fire unicorn? Where’s the water unicorn for me?

“It’s like looking at one of the illustrations in my favorite book of tales as a boy,” G’raha said, hands clasped in front of him. “Phaeton! The sun’s own fire made manifest!”

“I have never been to Corvos in my life,” Synnove mumbled. She was going to stay here for the rest of her life. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaarm. “Therefore, you can’t blame me for this, my love.”

“I’m blaming you a little,” Aymeric said, snappish and yet still somehow fond all at once as he pet the still-sulking white pearl carbunclet. Synnove grinned into Phaeton’s mane; now she was warm inside, too.

G’raha started hopping from foot to foot, his ears flicking in time with the movement. “There has been some speculation since Ixion began wandering more openly in Gyr Abania that he might be the result of a Mhachi experiment, though personally I would think Allag to be the more likely culprit,” he said. “Such experimentation with fauna is much more within the purview of Allagan aetherochemists rather than Mhachi voidmages, and as Allag had a strong presence in Corvos, the stark similarities between Ixion and Phaeton go from statistically unlikely phenomenon to reasonable coincidence as the products of an Allagan laboratory.”

“G’raha,” Synnove slurred, halfway to a nap with the sun warming her spine and Phaeton warming her face and stomach and everything else, “do you want to pet the pony or not?”

“Please may I pet the pony, oh please oh please oh please.”

She patted Phaeton’s neck, and the fiery unicorn raised his head and swung around to stare at G’raha with eyes like glowing coals. The miqo’te scholar, despite visibly vibrating with his excitement, stepped forward slowly, holding one hand out. Phaeton snorted, but lowered his head to whuffle against his palm.

“This is,” G’raha gushed, “the best day of my life.”

“Know the feeling,” Synnove said. Ixion, still methodically decimating his tomatoes, whickered smugly.

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#ffxivwrite2023 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #oc: synnove greywolfe #aymeric de borel #aymeric x wol #aymeric x synnove #g'raha tia #dt's writing #actual disney princess synnove greywolfe

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #7: Bug Juice

Prompt: noisome || Master Post || On AO3

A/N: Assumed spoilers through Patch 6.4: The Dark Throne. This was originally going to be a food porn entry, but work nonsense yesterday sucked the soul out of me, but here at least is what I planned to cap the whole entry off with!

Yes, there's a reference in here. No, I'm not telling you, it ruins the surprise.

--

Alakhai set the bottle on the table with a resounding thunk. The clear liquid within sloshed loudly.

“Oh, Rereha is going to pitch a fit when she finds out she missed this,” Y’shtola muttered.

Zero canted her head to the side as she examined the bottle unblinkingly. “I presume this isn’t water.”

“Oh no,” Alakhai said, and she let herself smile a very feral smile. “We have introduced you to the joys of fruit, and spice, and dumplings, and cake, and oysters.”

“Bleh,” Heron said with a grimace.

“Silence, heathen.” Alakhai waved an imperious hand at her sister without looking at her, her gaze firmly fixed on Zero. “There are three things that all civilizations develop independently. You have met two of them: swords, and dough stuffed with assorted fillings and then fried. Now you meet the third: alcohol.”

Synnove began giggling into her bowl of payasam. Y’shtola said nothing, but smirked. Heron groaned.

Zero flicked her gaze from the bottle to Alakhai, then to Y’shtola, and Synnove, and Heron, then back to the bottle. A thoughtful hum was the only sound she made.

Alakhai reached forward, and yanked the cork from the bottle.

Y’shtola wheezed. Synnove choked on her payasam. Heron jerked backwards, her face contorting the exact same way Galette’s did when the carbuncle smelled something utterly foul. Zero blinked.

“What in the seven hells, Alakhai?” Y’shtola croaked.

“This,” Alakhai said with relish, “is a bottle of Jacke’s moonshine.”

There was a moment of horrified silence, and then:

“Doesn’t he make that out of potatoes and shoe leather?!” Synnove said, green eyes huge as she curled up further onto the low divan in an attempt to get away from the bottle.

“Not even the courtesy to introduce her to good booze, who raised you,” Y’shtola said with a shake of her head.

Heron covered her face with her hands and groaned louder. “Alakhai.” The despair was clear despite being muffled.

Alakhai smirked and picked up the bottle. Poured into an empty glass. Set down the bottle. Picked up the glass, and held it out to Zero.

The woman took it gingerly and leaned back, bringing the glass up to her face. She took a single sniff, and her nose faintly wrinkled as the corners of her mouth tightened. Considering how utterly impassive Zero was at the best of times, that was as loud a noise of disgust as Synnove hissing at alfalfa sprouts. Alakhai oozed smugness.

“And you willingly consume this?” Zero said.

“Unfortunately,” Y’shtola said.

“Why.”

“Depending on the alcohol, for taste,” Heron said from behind her hands. “Shite like that? To get drunk.”

“The propensity for inebriation as a form of entertainment lacks any sense,” Zero said. She sounded especially flat.

And then she tossed the moonshine back in a single gulp.

Synnove shuddered from head to toe. Y’shtola’s ears flattened in sympathy. Heron peered cautiously between her fingers. Alakhai merely smirked.

Zero blinked. And blinked. And blinked again. Stared down at the glass in her hands for a very long time. “Oh,” she said at last. There was a flush on her cheeks, the pink almost magenta against the paleness of her skin. “That is revolting. I hate it.”

Alakhai held up the bottle, smirk widening. “More?”

“Please,” Zero said, and held out her glass. Alakhai dutifully poured it to fullness.

“The most dramatic of fits,” Y’shtola sighed as Synnove made a gagging noise next to her.

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#ffxivwrite2023 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #zero #y'shtola rhul #oc: alakhai noykin #oc: synnove greywolfe #oc: dancing heron #dt's writing #this is a reminder that alakhai is secretly the biggest troll of the squad of light #rereha is just more prolific

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #5: Levin Deals

Prompt: barbarous || Master Post || On AO3

--

“You are completely lacking manners,” Aymeric said, voice dry and flat. “Utterly bereft of decorum and good sense.”

Affronted, Ixion snorted.

“Don’t you sass me, sir.”

Behind him in her lounging chair, Synnove stifled a laugh. Aymeric pointed at her without looking. “And you stay out of this!”

Synnove stopped bothering trying to hide her amusement at that.

The yard and its garden—both the myriad flowers and the kitchen garden—were typically Synnove’s domain at her Cedarwood home, but over the years, Aymeric had developed an affinity for tending the kitchen garden. The simplicity of digging in the soil, trimming back the herbs in their pots, keeping the rows of vegetables free of weeds, even readying the empty beds for winter, were chores that soothed his mind when the work of governance set him on edge. His developed green thumb proved useful, too, now that Synnove was still in recovery from her injuries and horrific aethershock sustained from the Final Day; she simply couldn’t do most of the work of keeping her home in order until she regained more of her strength.

His lady was also horribly indulgent of the overgrown colt that constantly snuck through the skies all the way from Gyr Abania to eat his vegetables.

Aymeric used the same finger he had pointed at Synnove to jab Ixion’s muzzle. The great unicorn jerked his head back with another snort, and glared at him with one baleful red eye.

Aymeric had regularly faced the might of the Dravanian Horde his adult life, and now regularly butted heads with the worst sorts of nobles and politicians in Ishgard. A spoiled unicorn, living legend or not, was not going to cow him.

Amandina, perched between Ixion’s ears and with only her head visible above the fluff of his mane, chittered, He says your dam was a hamster and your sire smelt of elderberries. Papa, what’s a hamster?

(Synnove’s laughter turned to outright cackling.)

“My mama was a saint and my da a gentleman, and I’ll thank you to leave the questions of my parentage out of this discussion,” Aymeric bit out, crossing his arms.

Ixion whickered, dipping his head, and Amandina peeped, He says sorry!

(Trust one the carbunclets to figure out how to communicate with a god’s steed or a Mhachi experiment or whatever Ixion actually was via “sympathetic aetherial resonance” as Synnove had put it, and we’re both levin! as Amandina had said.)

Sighing, Aymeric dragged his hand down his face. He’d been at this for over half a bell now, since discovering Ixion rampaging among the tomatoes and beets and radishes. And Ixion had been decimating the kitchen garden on a semi-regular basis for a few years now. It was far too late to actually put a stop to this, but he wasn’t going to let Rhalgr’s steed rule the roost.

Therefore: compromise.

He set his gaze on Ixion again and said, firm, “I’ll set aside one row of vegetables of your choice if you leave the rest of the kitchen garden alone.”

Ixion flicked an ear and pawed the ground. Once, twice, thrice, four times, five.

Aymeric clucked his tongue and shook his head. “No. Two.”

Ixion pinned his ears back and flared his nostrils.

Aymeric raised an eyebrow.

Ixion’s ears slowly half-perked again, and he pawed at the ground. Once, twice, thrice, four times.

Aymeric shook his head once more. “Two, final offer.”

Ixion grumbled, tossing his head (Amandina squealed in delight), then turned his head to look him straight on with one eye. He raised his hoof up, set it down. And, after another moment of thought, pawed at the ground. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Aymeric made a show of narrowing his eyes and tapping his chin, even as mentally he patted himself on the back. Three had been his initial thought, but the intelligent man did not let his opponent know his full hand in a negotiation. “Acceptable,” he finally said, and held out his hand.

Ixion tapped his palm with his horn. Deal sealed.

Synnove clapped behind him. Amandina cheered, then peeped as Ixion did a victorious piaffe as though he was the winner, Papa? What’s a hamster?

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[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #4: Boys Will Be Boys

Prompt: off the hook || Master Post || On AO3

A/N: "Hey DT, is this a p--" shut the fuck I didn't realize it until I was done.

--

Senn's frills drooped beneath the unwavering stare of Most Honorable Clutchsister Synnove. He was still learning how to read the expressions of shorewalkers, but there was something about the face of an unhappy adult that transcended culture and race.

(Most Honorable Clutchsister Rereha called it ‘vibes.’)

(Most Honorable Clutchsister Alakhai had chucked Most Honorable Clutchsister Rereha into the bay after she heard one of Senn’s brothers repeat the phrase and told her to stop corrupting everyone with her awful disrespect of language.)

Simon, Morgant, and Eyrisunn, all in a line on either side of him, either shuffled their feet or fidgeted with their hands, not making eye contact with the Most Honorable Clutchsister. Carmen and Ankabryda were back in Aleport and Senn was very sorry that he had not listened to them that this was a poor idea. Fyuu was correct: girlspawn were smarter.

“I’m not going to ask what you were thinking,” Most Honorable Clutchsister Synnove finally said, voice clipped in the way that Senn knew was most assuredly angry, “because clearly you weren’t.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Morgant opened his mouth, and Senn quickly jabbed his elbow into the hyur stripling’s side. Morgant closed his mouth. His friend was hot-tempered, but at least he wasn’t stupid.

Too stupid, anyway.

“I will ask, however,” and now the Most Honorable Clutchsister’s hands were on her hips, and even Senn recognized that shorewalker habit of many an exasperated parent, “how in the hells did you even get out here to the Range?! I don’t see any elbsts!”

The other boys all turned to look at him, and Senn’s frills dropped further. “I, um.” Oh, he was going to be in such trouble with the clutchfather, he had said he was taking Glides-in-Serenity on her daily feed! “Perhapsss borrowed Glides-in-Shhherenity.”

Most Honorable Clutchsister Synnove stares at him for a long moment, before she said, “Gulpy? The whale shark?! You rode here on Gulpy?!”

“If I die today, that alone made this worth it,” Simon muttered under his breath. Eyrisunn grunted agreement. Senn’s friends had been very excited to ride Glides-in-Serenity, and she had been a very good girl, swimming smooth and calm through the waves without dislodging any of her passengers.

“Her name ishhh Glides-in-Shhherenity,” Senn grumbled, only a little louder. Gulpy. Ugh. That one was Most Honorable Clutchsister Rereha’s fault. Glides-in-Serenity deserved all the gravitas of her proper name. He would get her a basket of her favorite shrimp, even if she hadn’t been present to hear the insulting nickname.

“She’s going to be Gulpy the entire rest of the day, just because of the way it makes your frills curl,” Most Honorable Clutchsister Synnove said, and Senn slumped with a very rude hiss he had learned from Denn. The sharp look from his Most Honorable Clutchsister had him clicking an apology, though, and hoping she didn’t mention it to the clutchfather on top of his other transgressions.

Then she sighed, shaking her head, and held out her hands. “All right, boys, circle up,” she said, wry and, dare Senn believe, fond. “Time to get you back to Aleport so you can be somebody else’s problem.”

Then Most Honor Clutchsister Synnove settled all the weight of her focus on him and said, “Also, I’m telling Heron.”

Senn whined in distress, even as he took her hand and Simon’s for the teleport. Most Honorable Clutchsister Dancing Heron’s ‘I’m Not Mad, Just Disappointed’ face was the worst!

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[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #8: Behold, a Man

Prompt: shed || Master Post || On AO3

--

Ryne clapped both hands over her mouth, shoulders hitching. Gaia bit her lower lip and looked skyward, vainly attempting to keep a straight face.

The amaro yearling in the middle of her first molt sighed heavily and flapped her wings. Each of her four wings were utterly bare, her soft baby down having fallen out all at once, the naked, pink skin in stark contrast to the grey-green of her shaggy coat. “Bwee,” she chirped, forlorn.

Gaia snorted, gaze still to the sky. A choking wheeze escaped Ryne.

“Girls, what’s the mat—” Synnove stopped right behind them. A strangled squeak escaped her. “Oh,” she said, voice pitched high. “I see.”

The yearling bleated. Gaia chanced a look at her; the amaro’s eyes were very big, and limpid, and sad. She flapped her bare, stubby wings.

Gaia hurriedly looked up again. Such a lovely blue the sky was. A shame there weren’t any clouds today, trying to find shapes in them would make for an excellent distraction right about now.

The pitter-patter of little paws across the paddock reached her ears, followed by the soft thump of a carbunclet running into the back of her legs. Oof! Roksana, then. Sorry, Gaia!

“It’s all right,” Gaia said. She was very proud of herself: her voice was only a little bit strangled.

And then, the horrified, too-loud whisper of a carbunclet who still didn’t quite understand volume or who not to project her harmonic to: Mommy, what happened to her wings?!

Gaia snorted again, and broke, and cackled. Automatically, she and Ryne braced their shoulders together to stay upright; Gaia wrapped her arms around her stomach, as if that would do a damn thing to keep her near-hysterical laughter contained, while Ryne still had her hands clamped over her mouth, eyes squeezed shut as desperate, wheezing giggles escaped her.

Mommy, she looks like a plucked chicken, came Amandina’s incredulous harmonic echoing through their minds.

The yearling, outraged, squawked.

Yeah, nope, Gaia was done.

Both she and Ryne collapsed to the ground. Her best friend curled up on her side, tears pouring down her cheeks and laughing so hard she wasn’t even making sound any longer. Gaia meanwhile was on her knees, forehead pressed into the bare dirt of the paddock and one fist pounding the ground as she gasped for air between bouts of laughter. She felt Roksana poke her cheek with a paw and heard her ask What’s so funny? and it only made her laugh all the harder.

“I can’t breathe,” Ryne wheezed, then managed to stop her convulsions long enough to gulp in a breath before more giggles overtook her.

Gaia was vaguely aware of Synnove stumbling around them to console the embarrassed yearling, but the older woman’s snickering was audible over the hysterics of the two Oracles. She could vaguely hear two of the Zun amaro keepers—probably Szen and Knem—chuckling somewhere behind them, and then Szel’s familiar voice calling out, “Girls, no dying, or Captain Lyna will be cross!”

“Trying!” Gaia croaked.

“Try harder!”

“Not helping!” Synnove’s voice pitched too high from struggling to contain her own laughter. The amaro yearling was audibly grumbling.

Eventually, both Gaia and Ryne managed to get a hold of themselves, and they flopped on their backs as they slowly got their breathing back under control. Gaia dared to peek over at Synnove and the yearling; the yearling had her head pressed into Synnove’s torso, still grumbling and growling her discontent, while Synnove scratched her neck and crooned wordlessly. She hurriedly looked away before she could see the poor yearling’s wings again.

Roksana, meanwhile, had flopped onto Ryne’s neck—from this angle, Roksana’s body obscured Gaia’s view of the lower half of her friend’s face—and Ryne was cuddling the white pearl carbunclet. You two are weird, Roksana chittered.

“So are you,” Ryne said, and Gaia saw her eyes crinkle in the way that meant she that was smiling in that wide, shining way of hers.

Her vision was suddenly full of black pearl carbunclet, and Gaia grinned up at Amandina. “Can I help you, little miss?”

Amandina headbutted her cheek and said, her harmonic soft and staticky in the way that meant she was speaking to Gaia alone, Ask her out already.

Gaia gathered the little carbuncle up and kissed the top of her head. “Stop trying to rig the betting pool for your mum,” she whispered into Amandina’s ear. “When we’re both good and ready, all right?”

Amandina grumbled. Fine, fine.

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[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #10: [INDIGO ABRASAX]

Prompt: reactivation (free write!) || Master Post || On AO3

A/N: This idea originated before the 6.4 PLL that announced Certain Specific Scholar Updates. Yoshi-P, I demand royalties along with the use of my twenty-year old internet handle as the abbreviation for your new expansion.

--

Synnove stared down at the soulstone on her desk; the dark blue stone was cut in such a way that what little light refracted through it drew the eye to the Scholar’s bespectacled emblem carved into its surface. She poked at it gently and the sonorous bzzz of unaspected aether brushed against her mind. Soulstones didn’t usually have unaspected aether unless they were blank, waiting for memory and experience to fill them.

This one was weird.

“This one is weird,” she said aloud. “Not that I don’t mind a mystery, but Surito is sending this along because…?”

“It’s something about the fairy,” Halulu said. “This one is from the most recent cache of soulstones the recovery teams have located in the Palace, and it’s the only one Surito can’t place to its original owner at the time of Nym’s fall. All the others, if he couldn’t recognize the aetherial signature, the fairy within responded at least long enough to identify herself and her Scholar.”

“But this one stayed silent,” Mhaslona said, not a question after Halulu’s explanation. Synnove’s old advisor lounged in one of the chairs on the other side of her desk, turned to the side to allow her to stretch her prosthetic leg out.

Halulu nodded and said, “And since Synnove is Eorzea’s resident strange summons expert…”

“You rewrite the laws of aetherology once and everyone expects you to walk on water,” Synnove grumbled without any heat. Halulu and Mhaslona both snickered at her. “All right, I’ll see if she’ll say hello to me.”

She pushed back from her desk and stood, picking up the soulstone in the same motion, and walked to the center of her office. Those first summonings of Tyr and Ivar had taught her never summon a damn thing near her desk ever again. The Gate quartermaster would likely refuse her requisition for another ironwood desk, especially one that would need hauling all the way up the northeast tower.

Synnove cupped her hands together, the left under the right, with the soulstone nestled in the center of her palm. She allowed her eyes to unfocus as she reached out with her aether to nudge the soulstone. In her mind, it hummed acknowledgment, but did nothing else.

The logic for a fairy wasn’t one with which she was intimately familiar, but her perfect memory could recall it regardless and Synnove held it in her mind as she drew on her aether—and frowned.

The soulstone refused to respond.

Only faintly conscious of her head tilting in puzzlement, Synnove mentally prodded at the soulstone again. Scholar soulstones were locked with the fairy logic; summon the fairy and the bearer could begin to attune to the soulstone. And it wasn’t a mystery lock, either, the logic was practically writ into the soulstone’s aether, one just needed to ‘fill’ it and—

—unless it wasn’t a fairy.

Synnove mentally threw out the fairy logic and plunged into the heady waters of the soulstone. Yes, there was the most basic of geometries used in summoning at its heart, pulsing and strong, but the way it branched out into the greater logic didn’t match the ones Scholars used for their fairies. She followed the equations and lines spiraling out from the core, mentally tracing out the shape of the summon that guarded the soulstone’s heart.

…This was familiar.

This was very, very familiar.

Without intention, without even having finished tracing this not very Scholarly logic because it wasn’t a logic at all, it was an array, Synnove filled in the blanks, and aether sang out in her office.

Synnove looked down.

A bright blue carbuncle blinked up at her.

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then a sound not unlike that of an Allagan node—though oddly feminine in its neutrality—rang out in her mind.

[>>776SKK900NLS0000 GLORIOUS DAWN NRM-COM/IPMA: ASSETS//CORE//IMPERATIVE IMMEDIATE ACTION ORDER Tactical morality reset from EMERALD EXIGENT. SECURITY STATE is ADAMANTOISE. LUCIFERON is INACTIVE and MIDNIGHT. Primary command structure defragment commence on mark. Evocation matrix INDIGO ABRASAX reactivation success. Format moral structures for KYRIA TRACE. STOP STOP STOP 776SKK900NLS0000]

With the way Mhaslona and Halulu were excitedly chattering behind her, Synnove knew she was the only one who had heard that. She suspected she wasn’t supposed to have heard that.

And then the carbuncle opened her mouth, and in the same voice said:

[Greetings, New User! I am the Intelligent Personal Obligant and Medical Operative for Emergency Applications! You may call me Ipomoea for convenience. Please specify the nature of your emergency for prompt service.]

Dead silence in her office.

“Um,” Synnove said intelligently.

“Is,” Halulu whispered, “is she talking? As in, open mouth, sound comes out talking?”

“More like an orchestrion rather than talking,” Mhaslona said slowly.

“Oh, I don’t like that. Not one bit.”

--

“So,” Synnove said, filling the final shot glass with whiskey and keeping it for herself, “best I can tell, the soulstone was carved from a carbuncle-quality focus gem.”

Surito Carito, Setoto Seto, and Alka Zolka were huddled around her desk with herself, Halulu, and Mhaslona, each with a shot glass in front of them. The bottle of Synnove’s best whiskey was not as full as it had been half a bell ago.

Surito sighed heavily and rubbed his face. “I remember her,” he said. “Her summoner—though perhaps better to say her programmer—was the college’s Allag expert, Vatete Vate. And carbuncles weren’t a popular choice for familiars; fairy logic was the preference, since it wasn’t reliant on gemstones infused with living aether.”

“We were isolated from most of Aldenard because of Mhach and Amdapor’s warring over the centuries,” Setoto said, shaking her head. “By the time of the War of the Magi, we hadn’t had a reliable gemstone trade in generations, it was why the fairy logic was developed at all.”

Mhaslona sucked on her teeth. “Where the fuck did Vatete even get the Allag tech? Based on what Synnove heard, it sounds like she reverse-engineered one of their command nodes into a carbuncle array.”

The two tonberries and one former tonberry all shrugged.

“Best we can do at the moment is ask around the Palace,” Surito said, raising his whiskey glass to sip from it. “Vatete isn’t among the tonberries, and she kept to herself much of the time, but she’d ramble to anyone who showed a lick of interest, so it’s possible, though not probable, that she may have let slip something without either she or her audience realizing the import.”

Synnove rested her cheek on her fist and sighed, then said over her shoulder, “How’s that database update coming along, honey?”

[Azys Lla terminal connection is sporadic, update is only seventeen percent complete.] Ipomeoa had, thankfully, switched to an aetheric harmonic upon request, although it still sounded vaguely artificial. [Prioritization algorithms are still sorting data. WORLD STATE: HYDAELYN set to UNBOUND.]

“…I don’t want to know what that means,” Alka Zolka said wearily. “I don’t think I have the clearance to know what that means.”

“You do now,” Synnove grumbled, and tossed back her whiskey in one gulp.

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[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #2: Drumming Song

Prompt: bark || Master Post || On AO3

--

“I think I’ve found it,” Synnove muttered to herself, examining a rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb made of tiny, glittering aetheric equations repeated over and over in a perfect tessellation, floating amongst a ribbon of other geometries.

Her new carbuncle, Tyr, was a lovely, sweet boy, gentle despite his enormous size, but he was…quiet. Unnaturally so: he made no physical sounds like the purring or chittering common of carbuncles, nor did he communicate via the aetheric harmonic that Galette uses with her. The lack of it has clearly frustrated the lad, and so Synnove had spent this first sennight of possessing a new summon on unspooling his physical form into a single line of code to examine each and every fragment of his full manifested array. The written array was perfect, so clearly something had gone pear-shaped during summoning.

And now, finally, she’d found it. This equation tessellating into the honeycomb, at a glance, seemed to be related to sound; Synnove jotted down the full equation in her notebook, as well as a sketch of a flat rendering of the shape it formed, to better study it later. Her current theory was that the sheer density of aether contained in Tyr’s topaz had caused some sort of interference and so far, the evidence supported it. That this was the only hiccup was a pleasant surprise.

For all that he couldn’t communicate in a traditional manner at the moment, Tyr was still aware and able to make himself known: the ribbon of his unspooled-self did an excited little shimmy. Synnove grinned as she began to pluck the honeycomb apart, pinching a dodecahedron here, smudging one with her thumb there.

As she worked, something rhythmic began to niggle at the back of her mind, thumpthumpthump, like someone rattling a door, growing steadily louder as the honeycomb. Her grin widened. “Patience, Tyr,” she crooned, and despite her growing excitement, she kept to her own methodical pace.

Finally, as the penultimate dodecahedron melted away, leaving but one behind:

--ama! Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama!

“Hello, Tyr,” Synnove said, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. Tyr’s aetheric harmonic was the comforting thrum of gazelle-hide drums and tolling brass bells. “It’s nice to finally meet you!”

MAMA! MAMA MAMA MAMA HI HI HI!

Synnove shoved her chair back, and the long, glittering ribbon of golden light abruptly rolled itself up with an audible snap! As the roll completed, Tyr burst back into full materiality, and he landed with a wood-creaking THUD. For such an enormous carbuncle, he was fast, and in the blink of an eye he had rushed forward to shove his head into her stomach, his tails lashing as he tried to crawl into her lap, and chattering at a high pitch.

She aggressively cuddled him back, leaning down to plant a smacking kiss between his ears, and laughed when the action elicited in an adorable tippity-tap from Tyr’s paws. “All right, my boyo,” she said, drawing away and cupping his head in her hands, “want to give me a nice big bork hello?”

Yeah! Tyr chattered. He backed up a few steps and sat down, so excited he was visibly vibrating. His chest expanded and he opened his mouth and—

[the agonistic colliding of tectonic plates and the melting of corruption into coal into diamond and the igneous iron at the heart of the star and the tintinnabulation of limestone water into stalagmites and stalactites and the ever-wait as fire becomes stone and the ancient humming at the root of a mountain and the patient rumbling as crystal becomes Self]

—Synnove’s  eyes snapped open and she wheezed for breath as she stared up into Tyr’s worried face.

Mama, did I do it right?

Synnove was not sure what he had just done. Her scientific brain was furious about that. Her common sense brain told her scientific brain to shut the fuck up and reminded it that sometimes stupid mortals Did Not Need To Know Things. Synnove listened to common sense brain, and promptly let her memory go fuzzy and grey.

Instead, she reached up and patted his cheek. “Think so,” she croaked. “We’ll work on volume. And tone.”

Tyr promptly dropped down onto her in a full-body sprawl—she wheezed again—and began to purr. It was deep, almost soundlessly so, but it sunk down into her bones and caused every muscle in her body to relax and woah. All right, yes, that. That was good. And amazing.

Synnove wrapped her arms around her carbuncle, and decided this was probably as good a time as any for a nap.

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[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #3: The Ink on Your Soul

Prompt: reclamation (free write!) || Master Post || On AO3

Essentially a followup to some of the aftermath of "The Long Road Home" from last year's FFXIV Write.

--

The first tattoos that Synnove has restored, once she’s deemed healthy enough to handle it, are the most important: her clan marks.

Oh, her arcanima sleeves and her compass rose style backpiece will be redone, in time, but her clan marks? They are as integral to her identity as her own name.

This is one of the few ways in which the House Greywolfe—like its progenitor House Wolfe—is traditionalist: for every new member of the family, the matriarch will pick a set of marks for them to wear in the house color. Rohesia had been a Greywolfe by marriage, but that still made her head of the family by Greywolfe custom, and it had been she who had chosen the marks Synnove bore all her life, she who had first applied them in a mix of pigment and clay on her forehead and nose when Synnove was but a few days old.

For those Gyr Abanians who still follow the practice of clan marks, the paint is usually enough. But at sixteen, one was allowed to have the marks permanently tattooed into their skin, should they so choose. And that was what Synnove had chosen.

In those first days of consciousness after the aversion of the Final Day, standing in a Sharlayan hospital bathroom and seeing her reflection in the mirror, Synnove had not recognized her own face.

It was fortunate that it had been Aunt Angharad who was with her at the time; Synnove had frozen, eyes going too-wide and pupils dilating into pinpricks, a violent tremble overtaking her at the sight of her strange, blank skin, unable to speak. Galette’s shriek of alarm was what had her aunt skidding into the room, and the older woman had taken one look at her, gone pale, and immediately turned to fetch a tin of her own facepaint. Auntie usually wore only her Redclawe marks, but Grandmother had chosen a set of Greywolfe ones for her upon her marriage to compliment her birth ones, and Auntie’s paint tin contained both red and grey pigments. It wasn’t until Auntie had drawn Synnove’s marks onto her skin for her that Synnove had finally calmed down.

But she wouldn’t feel wholly at home in her own skin again until the marks were permanent.

So today she is laying on her back in Atheleys Wyght’s workroom in Limsa Lominsa, patiently waiting while the old tattoo mistress mixes the pigments that would be embedded in her skin.

Synnove had lain on this same table when she was sixteen and Atheleys’s hair was black streaked with white rather than white streaked with black. Atheleys herself hadn’t originally been a full-time tattoo mistress in the old Gyr Abanian tradition, but she had been a member of a large mercenary company wintering in Limsa Lominsa when Ala Mhigo had fallen to the Garleans and like many of her fellow sellswords, had decided to take up other work in her new home. She worked strictly in Gyr Abanian styles—clan marks and battle honors and skin stories—and strictly with mallet and hafted needles made of adamantoise shell. Most would assume her clientele would be limited, but Synnove wasn’t Atheleys’s first customer to return with skin made bare from an overflow of conjury so potent it made no distinction of what perceived flaws to heal.

Finally, Atheleys leans over her, holding a piece of wood wrapped in leather in her hand, one bushy white eyebrow raised. Synnove shakes her head; she had needed it when she was sixteen, biting down hard in a futile attempt to distract herself from the pain, but now, at nearly thirty-three?

She’s known worse.

Atheleys sets the bit aside and picked up the haft; Synnove feels the points of the adamantoise needle settle on the bridge of her nose.

Synnove takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly but steadily. Atheleys brings her mallet down on the haft, and pain explodes in the middle of her nose, radiating out into the rest of her face through the bone.

The outlines first, first the nose mark and then the curving dot on her forehead, the radiating pain causing her head to throb despite the willowbark tea she had drunk upon arriving. As she had when she was sixteen, Synnove thinks a prayer to her grandmother in thanks for granting her a distinctive but small set of clan marks. Not for long, though, for Atheleys hums as she works, a wordless Gyr Abanian tune that soon has Synnove drifting into a mediative state, even when the tattoo mistress begins to shade in the outlines and the sharp, piercing pain is replaced by constant scraping in its stead.

It still has nothing on being nearly gutted by a sword.

Synnove is brought back to full awareness when the sting of witch hazel swipes across her brow and down her nose, and she blinks once, twice, a third time to focus her gaze on Atheleys’s own. The tattoo mistress wears satisfaction like a mantle.

She takes a moment to let her body settle, the pain fading into a dull throb across her face, then pushes herself slowly, carefully, upright. The room swims for a moment after being so long on her back, but she gives herself the time to calm. Once it does, she swings her legs over the side of the table to sit on its side. And in doing so, face the mirror on the opposite wall.

Synnove stares at herself. She’s still too thin, her skin still a washed out brown rather than a healthy bronze, her dark brown hair—no dye, it’s been too troublesome to keep applying during her convalescence—still mostly brittle and prone to breaking in ways that frustrate her attempts to put it in a proper set of braids. Recovery is still a long road before her.

But there is grey is on her forehead, and across the bridge of her nose. Despite the enflamed skin around her clan marks, her face is hers once more.

Synnove smiles.

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[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #25: The Best Cure

Prompt: call it a day || Master Post || On AO3

--

“I am nob sick.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m nob!”

Synnove gave her knight her very best “I Know You Speak Bullshite” look that she normally leveraged on carbuncles and students. Aymeric’s answering scowl would have been a more effective rebuttal if his hair wasn’t disheveled, his eyes not watery, and his nose not bright red.

“You have run yourself ragged,” Synnove said, hands on her hips, “and now you’re paying the price for spreading yourself so thin.”

“Dere’s too much to—ACHOO!”

Aymeric got his arm up just in time to sneeze into his elbow. And then a second time, and a third, in quick succession.

“Darling, you have a very competent second-in-command and an equally competent new political secretary, you can take the bloody time to rest and get better.”

An authoritative mew drifted up from next to Synnove’s shin. She pointed down. “See! Lady Crème agrees with me!”

The Ala Kharan cat leaped up onto the bed, then sat primly with her tail curled over her paws, and stared at Aymeric. Aymeric refused to look at his mother’s cat, instead trying to scowl again at Synnove. “If I always did what the cab wanted,” and now he seemed to be vainly trying to ignore how his congestion was only getting worse with every word he spoke, “I would neber ged anyding done.”

Synnove narrowed her eyes.

“Tyr.”

The topaz carbuncle popped his head over the side of the bed, and, like Lady Crème, stared. Now Aymeric looked concerned.

“Sit.”

Boof!

Aymeric tried to scramble away, Lady Crème hissing angrily at being jarred, but too late: Tyr was crawling up the bed. As soon as his hindlegs were on the mattress, the enormous carbuncle threw himself forward to flop on Aymeric’s legs and torso. Aymeric went flat on his back with an oof!

Synnove smiled. “Good boy, Tyr.”

Another wordless boof, this one smug, as Tyr drew himself up into a proper loaf shape. For good measure, he swished his tails to the side to drape over Aymeric’s face. Lady Crème stalked up the bedsheets to claim one of the pillows next to Aymeric’s head.

“You fight dirty,” Aymeric grumbled, voice further muffled by both snot and carbuncle tails.

“I fight to win,” Synnove said, smug, as she walked around the bed. “I’ve already gave Lucia a call on the ‘pearl, and I’ll be contacting Norlaise shortly.”

“Conspiracies.”

She snickered, and brushing the tips of Tyr’s tails out of the way, she leaned over and kissed Aymeric’s forehead. “I’m going to go help Hersande make some chicken noodle soup,” she said. “I’ll come check up on you in a bell. If you need anything, just tell Tyr and he’ll come get me.”

“Fiiiiiine,” came the sulky whine. A pause. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Synnove gave an ear scratch to both Tyr and Lady Crème, and then headed out of the bedroom.

Aymeric was snoring by the time she closed the door.

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