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frenchy-and-the-sea · 1 year

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thank you for the tag @merrigelblogs!

1. Are you named after anyone? - I am not! At least not that I know of. Thankfully, while I don’t particularly love my full name, it can at least be shortened to a decidedly less feminine form, which is a massive blessing.

2. When was the last time you cried? - Legit this morning, I watched a proposal video that was v sweet and I got weepy about it. I’m a Pisces, it’s basically my day job

3. Do you have kids? - No, I gotta be like WAY more on top of my own shit before I can think about being responsible for another human being like that!

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot? - Y...yes.... but I work hard to only use it to highlight the ridiculousness of a situation rather than to belittle what someone has said

5. What is the first thing you notice about a person? - Clothing, mostly! I am that person who is out in a crowded area and tries to read what everyone’s graphic tee says, in case it’s something I recognize. I like to know where I can connect with people!

6. What’s your eye color? - Green/grey-ish!

7. Scary movie or happy ending? - Both?? Can I say both?? I like watching horror and I like watching comfort movies. It really just depends on the movie!

8. Any special talents? - I can quote the Sonic the Hedgehog OVA almost word for word because my sister and I watched it so often as kids. (So....no LMAO)

9. Where were you born? - Oklahoma! And then we immediately moved away and I never ever went back LMAO

10. What are your hobbies? - Recently? Reading (lots of SF/F), writing, playing FFXIV and d&d and a smattering of a few other video games, and generally being a menace to people online!

11. Do you have any pets? - I do! Two black cats named Gizmo and Kitkat, and a dog that some family friends found wandering around in the woods outside of their house! Her name is Beau. :> Here’s a picture of her begrudgingly sharing a bed with Gizmo. (Kitkat is not there because the only person in the whole wide world she likes enough to cuddle with is me.)

12. What sports do you/have you played? - Once upon a time, I played soccer, but that’s pretty much the only thing I ever did long term. Most of my free time in school was dedicated to marching band, which technically isn’t a sport, but demands your attention like one. (I played trombone!)

13. How tall are you? - 5′9″!

14. Favo(u)rite subject in school? - English was and will always be my favorite subject, but I DID rather enjoy my anthropology classes in college! Shoulda done more of those back then, they were delightful.

15. Dream Job? - I don’t think it’s really viable as an option for me, but I’d love to work for a literary agent. I just wanna hype people’s work up as a career, and help them navigate the process of getting it out in the world! I think it’d be neat. :>

Bonus: any significance to your blog's name - my nickname in college was Frenchy, and I have had a particular fascination with different kinds of sea-related things quite literally my entire life. also, nothing else I tried was available

Tagging @phoenix-failing, @blujayonthewing, @urdnotgrunt, @ghilegab, @nuclearanomaly and anyone else who feels keen to waste some time! Only if you’re feeling up to it, naturally :3

#about me #hush frenchy #i stayed home because i felt Like Crap today so this was a nice distraction!! thank you!!

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frenchy-and-the-sea · 1 year

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FFXIV - Crossfire

This is one of those things I started writing ages ago and fiddled with for about four months before getting fully sick of it LMAO.

Once upon a time, midway through the plot of Heavensward, Tritchet came to a very sudden realization, and determined it best to keep it to herself. Unfortunately, her siblings know her too well. Featuring @urdnotgrunt’s Onion Pock and @colonelcupquake’s Wickit Pock. <3

~2400 words, set during the HW Main Scenario Quest, The Nonmind.

----

The primal hadn’t surprised Tritchet.

She was pretty sure that it hadn’t surprised Wickit, either. The Scions of the Seventh Dawn had made long habit of digging up discontent at the roots — usually just as it sprouted a big, ugly, aether-gorged flower — and Onion and Tritchet had been around for the ride long enough to recognize the signs. They had started sharing long-suffering looks behind Alphinaud’s back when the rumors of Gnath aggression had begun to crop up in Tailfeather; now they wore them in the open, standing upwind of the Nonmind’s reeking smokestacks as their party converged on the plan that they had already known was coming.

"... unusual for a primal to be summoned for something as base as a territory dispute,” Ysayle was muttering as their party stopped to huddle in the shadow of the mountainside, her brow furrowed in equal parts disgust and pity. “Even removed from the harm it does to the land, there can be no justification for that. Certainly there must be some secondary cause to push the Gnath so.”

“A primal may appear for any reason when there is sufficient will,” Alphinaud said grimly. "The Gnath may consider a territory dispute to be much akin to open war. In that circumstance, I can scarcely imagine that they would find it difficult to call upon their god for aid.”

“Which means that it probably won’t come around to asking it to tea, either," Tritchet heard Wickit mutter under her breath. A resolute furrow had appeared in the lines of her sister’s brow; she knew just as well as the rest of them what this line of thought was leading to, and she was already preparing herself to weather it. Sighing, Tritchet swung her lance down off of her back and sank against the wall behind her, twirling it half-heartedly in her hands to give them something to do. Alphinaud caught her eye sidelong and nodded, very slightly. He, at least, recognized the signs of her waiting for the axe to fall.

“So we are in agreement, then,” he said, turning back to the others and looking between them all like he expected objections. “A primal summoned in this capacity — as nothing more than leverage to the Gnath’s disputes — cannot be suffered to exist. It must be destroyed.”

“A simple solution, when the Warrior of Light is left to parse the details.” Five heads turned as Estinien stepped forward, arms folded stiffly over his chest. Most of his face was still obscured behind the low curve of his helm, but Tritchet felt a nervous, prickling sweat suddenly break out on the back of her neck as he cocked his head and said, “Is this usually how the Scions of the Seventh Dawn make ready to engage a primal, then? By setting their great slayer of beasts after its heels and praying that she returns? By guessing?”

Alphinaud's face flushed. “What? No, of course not! I only meant —”

" — he meant that he knows that I'll be able to handle a primal," Wickit finished for him, stepping in front of the boy to glare up at Estinien's shrouded face. “And because he knows that I’m perfectly ready to face another. That, Ser Estinien, has never been in question."

To his credit, Estinien had enough good sense to offer a deferential bow of his head, which Tritchet thought was the only reason he was allowed to keep his knees.

“I meant no offense, Mistress Pock,” he said, with terse calm. “There are none among us who doubt you capable of rending the antmen’s god asunder. Certainly, by Master Alphinaud’s presumption, you have already done so many times before. Yet, do we not know painfully little of this primal’s conception? Is not every summoning different? Even with your successes, to set you against something we know a fair nothing about puts you in utmost peril — to speak nothing of those who may be inclined to follow you.”

Estinien’s eyes remained hidden behind his helm, but Tritchet still felt the slip of his gaze as it passed over the little patch of wall that she and Onion occupied. She looked away before it could catch her, stomach twisting in the strange, wrenching way that it had taken to doing when she caught herself being watched in his periphery. That Estinien was arguing was nothing new. He had already foretold the futility of their endeavor from the start, and seemed to grow more convinced of his position every day. But he was arguing for Wickit’s sake now — for her success, for her safety, with the same fervor that he usually reserved for Ysayle when their blood was up — which seemed to Tritchet like something that he wouldn’t have to do to prove his ever-present point. And he had even deigned to remember Onion in his concern, and her —

"We're also pretty good at killing primals, actually," Onion cut in from Tritchet's shoulder, mercifully dragging her attention away from the thought before her traitorous mind could run away with it. “We may not talk to big sentient crystals or get recruited by secret world-saving organizations every third day, but we still walk out of all of Wickit’s fights too. And since Tritchet has bested you at least three times now, I think you're the last person who ought to start passing out doubts.”

“Twice, actually,” Tritchet said before she could think better of it, and then winced as Onion’s head snapped around towards her. Her sister’s expression was that of someone who had almost missed a step going down a steep flight of stairs; she stared, narrow-eyed, open-mouthed, with a slow furrowing of her brow that was dragging her expression rapidly towards betrayal. Tritchet was supposed to have joined her side, after all — or, at the very least, laughed at her dressing down of the most capable warrior in Ishgard. Instead, she had defended him. Instead, she had given him credit where none was due, which her sister’s face said was the same as an open declaration of war. Even Estinien's gaze had shifted her way now, cocked again in that odd, bird-like side-eye that said that Tritchet suddenly had all of his attention. She swallowed the hard lump in her throat and shrugged.

“I just mean that it’s not exactly a bad idea, is it? We’ve usually made it a point to do a bit of snooping around before throwing ourselves at a primal anyway. And if this one has been called upon for what the Gnath consider war, as Alphinaud suggested, then that’s all the more reason to know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

“A fine point,” Alphinaud cut in, as Onion opened her mouth to argue. "And one that I'm inclined to agree with. You have my apologies, Wickit; let us return to the Gnath and see what more we can glean about this errant god of theirs.”

Tritchet was only too happy to oblige.

——

They spent the better part of an afternoon scuttling around the pungent outcropping of sulfurous rock where the Gnath — or the Vath, as they were soon corrected — made their home, asking after scraps of information on the recently-risen god. Their responses were vastly unhelpful; warnings, mostly, and pleas to turn their attention elsewhere, as well as thinly-veiled attempts to bribe one last free meal of nanka flesh from the end of Wickit’s axe. The latter were nearly enough to make Wickit strike out for the primal herself, but Alphinaud convinced her to relent to their wide-eyed bids for bribery, and she gritted her teeth through enough of them to amass a sizable fortune of promised information. By the time she was stalking her way out into the Chocobo forest again, Tritchet had almost gotten around to forgetting the uncomfortable conversation that had led them all there in the first place.

A pity that Onion hadn’t.

"You're still not off the hook, you know," her sister said, the very minute out of earshot. They had elected to follow the very irritated Wickit back out to the riverbed so she could vent her frustration on some very oblivious nanka, and were staying a full cart’s length behind her to avoid catching the edges of her axe. “And don’t bother trying to tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. I know you do.”

“Do I?” said Tritchet mildly, even as her stomach did a series of turns that would have made a circus performer jealous. “My goodness, I must be a mind reader now too. Maybe I should be the one to talk to the Vath this time. We might have better luck then —”

“You like him, don’t you?”

The flips that Tritchet's stomach was doing suddenly dropped into free-fall. She cleared her throat. “Like who?”

"Oh, shut up,” Onion groaned, rolling her eyes. “You know exactly who I'm talking about. But just so you don’t try to play dumb again; tall. Spiky. Carries around a gross dragon eyeball in his pocket like a real weirdo. He made it sound like you and I couldn’t handle that primal, and you didn’t even bat an eye. If anyone else had said that, you would have skewered them!”

“That’s not what he said,” Tritchet muttered, tightening her grip on her lance so her shaking hands wouldn’t give her away. “He just pointed out that we shouldn’t go into a fight like this blind, and that no one should keep letting Wickit do it just because it’s worked out so far. It’s a good point.”

“Sure," said Onion dryly, "but Alphinaud makes good points all the time, and they don't turn your ears red.”

Somewhere deep in Tritchet’s chest, a scream of pure, incandescent frustration began to burn, hot as a hearth fire. She locked her jaw against her teeth, stared straight into the forest ahead, and said nothing. Onion sighed.

“Okay,” she said, when it became clear that Tritchet was no longer trying to have a conversation. “I have some things to say. First of all; ew. Ew, ew, ew. Gross.”

“That’s three things.”

“Yeah, well, if we’re going by that logic, then I have a lot of things to say. But more importantly; Ysayle says that you need to be careful.”

“Ysayle?” Tritchet wheeled on her sister, voice pitching dangerously towards hysterical. “You went around talking about this with Ysayle?”

“She came to me,” Onion snapped. "Otherwise I wouldn’t have said anything to her. Obviously. But she’s not stupid, and neither am I, so she asked if I knew of anything strange going on between you two. Apparently she can tell that your weird dragoon energy was going absolutely nuts back there. You’re lucky I told her that I didn’t know what she was talking about.”

Tritchet let out a long, strangled breath through her teeth.

"Strange,” she said tightly. “I don’t feel lucky, considering I’m still having to have this conversation.”

“This isn’t a joke, Tritchet.” For the first time, Onion’s voice hardened into something almost like real anger. She snatched Tritchet’s arm and dragged her to a stop, green eyes hard and bright as welded steel. "However you feel about him — which, again, ew — you know he’s about as stable as a rocking chair when that Eye’s around. Ysayle’s right to be worried. He’s prancing around holding onto a bomb, and the only thing standing between us and it going off is how hard he can pretend that he’s okay. And given how quick he is to start arguing with, oh, everyone who dares to have an opinion, I don’t like those odds! I don’t! And I don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire if —”

“There is no crossfire!” Tritchet hissed, the fire in her chest finally bleeding over as she yanked her arm from her sister's grip. “There’s not anything, okay? I get that you’re worried. Don’t be. If, Twelve forbid, the Eye does actually get the better of him, it’ll be the same problem for me as it is for everyone else. There’s nothing — ” She gestured viciously to herself. “ — nothing here, okay? So stop worrying. It’s just…. fine.”

She huffed and turned back to the path in front of them, trying to look everywhere but her sister’s direction. Her face felt like she had pressed it to a cookfire, bright and red and stinging with something halfway between shame and fury. She should have stayed back at camp; she should have stayed back in Ishgard. Better yet, she should have insisted that her role as Azure Dragoon the Secondary was enough to support their trek across Dravania, and made her sisters stay behind…

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Onion’s diamond-hard expression crack at the corners, just a little.

“I’m sure it’s not nothing,” her sister said after a moment, fiercely, like she couldn’t quite shake the last of her irritation away from her concern. Tritchet let out a sigh through clenched teeth. Definitely should have stayed in Ishgard.

“I don’t know,” she said tightly. “Maybe. Maybe not. What I’m not trying to do is make a big thing of it. So just…would you tell Ysayle that I’m not stupid? That I know how bad things could get and I’m not going to throw myself on that pyre? And then could you never, ever talk about this with her or anyone else ever again? It’s bad enough to think that now you will start having some weird ideas every time I so much as speak to him —”

“You could stop speaking to him,” said Onion sweetly. And then, when Tritchet’s glare almost lit her on fire, “Fine! Fine. I won’t say anything. But understand this; if he so much as puts one stupid spiky finger over the line —”

“I’m sure he’s got other problems,” Tritchet said, rolling her eyes. “The endless horde of incensed dragons descending on his homeland, maybe. Or the war-fed primal standing in our way! Or maybe just a really long hike in those awful greaves of his. There’s a laundry list of things for all of us to concern ourselves with instead, and I’d really, really rather focus on those.”

“Would you?” A third voice suddenly rang out from ahead of them, and Tritchet turned just in time to catch the reeking, river-gorged sack that was flung her way. When she looked up, Wickit was glaring at them from the middle of the river, soaked from the waist down and burning with a dull red glow of frenzied aether. “Boy, am I glad to hear it. Now maybe I can finally get a little help with this!”

Tritchet scowled and slung the dripping sack over her shoulder with a wet slap. Next time, she thought. Next time, she was saving the world alone.

#my writing #ffxiv #ffxiv writing #tritchet pock #begging gabby's utmost pardon for always stealing onion like this #i just like how fraught her relationship with tritchet is regarding one singular elf man #but she does it out of love! out of care! out of the want to kick estinien in the kneecaps!#and i think that's beautiful #oc crap

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