the odd anecdote of an eccentric shapeshifter

“They won’t.” Emmeryn reassures, determinedly falling into a slightly more familiar tone, just to try it out. If they were to be familiar, if they were to be some sort of….family (was it family? she wasn’t sure yet. she was worried she would be too easy to accept this new relationship at face value, and she would wake up to find she had held an assassin close to her heart and close to her family), she would need to learn how to relax around xem. She leaves it at that. She doesn’t need to explain further. She’d simply give the description and they would sort out the rest.

“By all means, you are very welcome to show me the full demonstration, but I would warn you that I know my people better than you.” Was it a tease? She wasn’t sure herself. 

Pausing in her step, Emmeryn looked back at Xane, and for the first time hesitated. Family, huh? The idea ached, like something fragile that had been chipped. Gathering her composure, she turned back to face forward. “Would you be interested in anything besides the tea? I know where the cooks have hidden the honey, after all, and it seems you would be able to get the height to reach it.”

Her simple confidence was enough for xem to leave it there.

“Gladly. It won’t fool ya if you see me transform, though.” Xir own confidence was waning; xe had been away from this land for so long that xir illusions might not hold up.

She smiled. “I do know that much, Xane.” 

They stopped at the first stand, which had pendants of all colours dangling from the canopy on leather ties, and rows of earrings laid out on the wooden counter. Eirika realized her dilemma at once.

“How am I supposed to find something that can match your eyes if…” Remembering herself at the last second, she turned her back to the merchant and spoke to Xane alone. “If you change their colour all the time?”

With a pang, Xane spotted a pendant that matched Tiki’s circlet. Xe considered getting it, but who knew when they’d see each other again? Xe was with Eirika now, so that was less complicated for the time being.

“Oh yes, I agree,” Camilla said, “I played down here as a child. I’m still very fond of it.”

Camilla took the seat across from the faux-soldier, lighting the candle and leaning back until the seat back lodged against a barrel. She slowly lifted one leg and put one heel on the table, and then the other, one leg crossed over the other one.

“Do you have a name, sweetie?” she said, “I’ll give you anything you want, but first… I think we should be friends.” 

The image of her playing down in the cellar made Xane cock xir head. She didn’t look like a cook’s daughter. It didn’t escape xir notice that she copied xir mannerisms, usually xir job.

“The name’s Xane.” Xe didn’t know the soldier’s name, and there was no point in taking another one when nobody here knew xem. “Pleased to meetcha. If we’re friends now, do I get to learn yours?”

Camilla followed the soldier down to the cellars. Just as she hoped, the temperature below ground didn’t make her a liar. To be careful, she shut one side of the cellar door before she descended the stair, and pulled the other one after herself to keep in the warmth. 

The cellar was an old one, drilled right into the rock. There were probably preserves in the depths that were older than castle Krakenburg. The ceiling was low and vaulted, the flagstones underneath pitted by footsteps. If Camilla cared to think about her youth, she’d probably find treasures she’d left down there an age ago. She lit the torches, moving swiftly to try and catch the soldier’s arm before they went too far into the dim. 

On the right was a table set up for overnight watches, set for two people with some old chairs, plates, cups and an unlit candle. 

“Don’t go too far, dear,” Camilla trilled softly, “I’ll pull you up a seat.” 

The sound of the door closing wasn’t lost on Xane. Combined with the warmth, it made sweat bead below xir helmet. As xe had thought, the stone walls looked an awful lot like a dungeon.

With the torches lit, it looked a tiny bit more hospitable. Xe knew better than to try to worm away from her hold. When given an opening, xe settled into a chair and leaned back, propping xir feet on the table. The mannerisms abandoned those of the face xe still wore, and the soldier’s boots clunked on the wood.

“It is unfortunate that your expectations have been fulfilled,” Emmeryn mused politely, leading the way to the kitchens in a rather roundabout path. The knowledge that xe seemed to know the way around the castle so familiarly as to find the family quarters…weighed unevenly on her nerves. “Perhaps next time you come visiting, you should come see me first. Without all the…subterfuge.” 

Seeing a stranger, or even one of her own guards randomly approach her, out of character, would be….unfortunately startling. 

“It is….uncomfortable to see you in the skins of people I know, because your mannerisms are not entirely accurate.”

“Sure, that sounds simpler. You sure the guards won’t get to me first, though?”

Xane didn’t question their meandering route. For once, xe hadn’t snuck in due to being famished, so it just meant extra time with Emmeryn.

“Well said.” Emmeryn agreed. Frederick was family indeed, and she would never hear a word said against him. “My family would be lost without him, so it is only fitting that we have laid a claim to him.” His care might be a touch overdone sometimes, but she had never doubted that he cared. 

Sighing, Emm brought her palm to her cheek, as though she might cradle her head in her hands, but hadn’t committed to the action. Stranger or not, Xane knew more than Lissa. Nearly knew more than Chrom, since she had taken care not to spill too much of her emotional distress in public, when her family was just learning how to smile without the shadow of her death looming over them all.

“Perhaps,” She allowed, too used to being self-contained to reach out and grab the offer implicit in Xane’s words. “Stranger, I have been a rather poor host,” she said, trying for humorous. 

Holding out a hand for xem to take, Emmeryn smiled wryly. “Please allow me to get you some tea.”

“It’s good to keep a hold of people who are good to you,” Xane murmured. Xe tried not to think about that too hard, though xe was glad to know someone was there for the Exalts. 

“Eh, this is about what I was expectin’. But I sure wouldn’t say no to some refreshments.” Getting shoved against walls wasn’t new to Xane, but at this point, neither was having xir luck turn around. Several people had treated xem gently, especially in this family line.

Xir stomach flipped at the thought of all those that had come in between the ones xe’d met. Xe didn’t know if xe was glad to have missed them, to have missed that loss, or wished xe’d been around for the brief window of opportunity.   

“That green does look lovely with your hair,” Eirika said as they walked. She wished she could grow her own out at whim. 

As it was, Xane had compromised by helping her curl and pin her hair up so that it looked shorter than it was. Xe was able to help with her cosmetics, too, subtly changing the shapes of her eyes and face. Eirika wore a plain gown as brown as Xane’s cloak and an undyed shawl that seemed like it should’ve belonged to a woman twice her age. 

It was exciting to walk in anonymity, even if it was for something as simple as a market trip. 

“Jewellery, of course,” she answered when Xane asked. “I’d like to get you something, if that’s all right.” 

Xane tossed the braid. “Doesn’t it?” Xe glanced over at her, subtly checking that her disguise was still in place--and then more subtly checking the crowd. What few eyes they drew seemed only to be admiring them. “We’re a pretty pair.”

“Cute,” Camilla said. “I know my own soldiers. You don’t stand like one.” 

She nudged the cellar door with the point of her shoe without closing it, angling her head so that her covered eye nearly showed. Her hand came up to curl by her mouth. 

“Back straight! Knees together! Feet forward!” she barked, before her voice was once again soft and coy, “Were you raised in a barn, dear? I’ll make a pretty mercenary of you yet.” 

She gestured to the cellar, indicating with her chin. 

“Go on. Go inside. I said I’d give you something, and you know you’ll be warmer underground.”

Dammit. That was the problem with bouncing from land to land. No time to study the locals’ mannerisms.

She had to be some kind of leader or general, by the sounds of it. Xane followed her commands, easy enough to do with all xir experience with mimicry. Soldiers always had the most uncomfortable posture. That was why xe imitated them so poorly at times.

“You don’t think I’m pretty enough already?” xe asked. It was hard to make the effect work while playing soldier.

It wasn’t a warm evening in the castle grounds, and the breath of the horses and wyverns - both warmer than the humans that tended them - blew visible and thick into the air. Camilla was leading Marzia lightly by the reign to settle in to her roost when she noticed somebody who didn’t particularly fit in. 

She couldn’t say what it was, though maybe she knew that a person shouldn’t be in that place at that time. She adjusted her course with Marzia walking patiently in tow, noting how the rich aroma of seasoned cheese and the crisp tang of vinegar on the stablehand plates could’ve brought them in. It wasn’t unusual for people - youngsters, mostly - to sneak onto castle grounds and take unguarded food.

“Hello,” she called, her voice soft and soothing as she moved toward them, Marzia’s neck periscoping upwards with interest, “Don’t worry, sweetie. If you want something to eat, I’ll get some for you-”

Xane was no stranger to sneaking into castle stores, as xe felt bad stealing from people who actually needed it. Usually xe ended up shoved against some wall. In some ways this made xir skin prick more.

Had xe made a bad choice with the young soldier xe’d copied? Sure, the armor around here didn’t leave much to the imagination, but xe should have blended in.

Of course, there was the open cellar door. That might have been a clue. 

“The Grimaleal, I think.” Emm said, frowning. The change in Xane’s tone concerned her. “Those days are fuzzy, and hard to recall.” She echoed that same mirthless smile, and wondered at the similarities she saw there. Perhaps Xane was family of some sort.

“Family is why anything is worth it.” Emmeryn responded, trying to shake off the sense that Xane was staring through her, as though she truly were a ghost. Living without her family would have been excruciating, so she was glad she hadn’t needed to try.

With slight, mournful hesitation, Emmeryn thought of Phila. “My most trusted friend did not survive the place I died, but I have my siblings. And Sir Frederick.” A fledgeling connection, perhaps, to the dynast of Chon’sin, though she could never assume.

A painfully small number of people. She hadn’t made herself open to friendships, and she had little of the personal charm Chrom and Lissa did, so it was no wonder she was alone so often.

So much of her personality had been stifled under the crown, she sometimes was at a loss of who she was without it. 

She might haunt Ylissetol’s castle halls, but she had no idea how to live within them, now that she was not queen. A life where she didn’t put the nation first and her siblings temporarily second….she had no idea how to live like that.

Thoughts of that vein seeped into her bones, but Emmeryn tried not to let that deep ache in her heart touch her expression. There was no room for self-pity. “Frederick is nearly family, anyway.”

So she had lost almost everyone. Though guessing human ages was hard, she didn’t look so old for someone on her second life. Human lives were short. She should have been spared Xane’s pain, but here she was.

Xe couldn’t maintain xir smile after her mention of the Grimaleal, but xir voice held little gravity. “Siblings help.” Xe thought of Tiki. “And near family. If it’s close enough, then might as well just consider them family, huh?”

Xane stopped xirself from babbling. Millenia of loss hadn’t taught xem how to deal with it, other than through jokes, and that didn’t seem like her thing right now. Xe crossed xir ankles.

For once in his life, Marth didn’t need to be told twice to rest. He collapsed onto the pillow Xane offered, also choosing to ignore the bed (he was accustomed to them, yes, but there was always something so appealing about sleeping on blanket and pillow nests, and it was so rare he had the opportunity to do so), and smiled at the shapeshifter.

“It was a good laugh,” he admitted, his eyelids slowly blinking shut. “You’re always such a joy to be around, Xane.”

Thankfully Marth’s eyes were already closing, or he might have seen the moment where Xane’s guard fell. Among all humans, only he had imagined to strip it away before, revealing the bitterness Xane went to such lengths to hide. For him to call Xane a joy now... It was funny, really.

Xane didn’t laugh. Xe pulled a blanket from the bed and laid it on top of Marth, tucking it around his shoulders.

She shakes out her hand, the nerves still smarting, and she smiles sourly. “They did not complete what they intended, so there are less side effects than you might think. I live, but I am not bound to the will of my resurrectors as they would have wished.”

Speaking of her…affliction so openly was a sort of odd, when she was more used to speaking around it. Even though she had bared this unhappy truth to her brother, she had kept it secret to spare Lissa pain, to spare Frederick his guilt. It was like it had built up to be poison inside her, and speaking like this to a stranger who….maybe, claimed to be family, was in a way, healing.

“No matter how I love my family, how much it would have hurt them to lose me again, I would never have stayed, if I thought I might be a risk for them.” She watched Xane carefully, wondering if she would see horror, now. Where it hadn’t been before…

It was odd, not to see disgust, or horror, in the face of someone who wasn’t Chrom. 

“The largest result of it, it seems, appears to be a newfound fragility.” And the burden of knowing how it had been managed. She would never forget the lives that the dark mages had stolen, to coax her body back to a form of health and life.

Bound to the will... A shadow crossed Xane, xir tone losing any hint of being carefree. “Who resurrected you?”

Xe shook it off. The one in front of xem was one of the exalts, not them. “It’s good you’re free. Not surprised though, I guess. You come from determined stock.” Xe smiled with no mirth.

“It changes everything, doesn’t it? A family, I mean.” Xe had tried to avoid staying tied down for so long, knowing the pain and failure that came with it, and yet here xe was. No amount of worlds xe traveled to could have kept xem from returning to this castle eventually.

It’s a bit disappointing how easily Xane parried him, but even Marth had to admit that he had been going a bit light on the offense. Next time, he’d bap faster, harder-

All that flashed through his mind in an instant, because when Xane pulled xir fakeout, he couldn’t help but freeze, even if for a moment - enough for Xane to easily bap his shoulder.

He couldn’t help it. He sank down to the ground in a fit of laughter, clutching his pillow tight. The prince of Altea, down for the count after taking a pillow to the face, and the shoulder.

“It’s so late,” he muttered, after a few moments, as though that might explain why he had absolutely lost it with laughter over so little.

Sure, Xane had hoped Marth would relax in the moment, but xe hadn’t expected him to come so undone after one bap. Xe stood holding the pillow in mid-air, taking in the unusual--and amusing--sight.

Something protective flared up in xem. The way people talked about Marth, you would think he was a divine being himself, not a young and silly human.

The mischievous smile on Marth’s face widened to a grin as he catches the newly equippable pillow with ease. Still, for all his enthusiasm, there’s something gentle in the way he launches himself towards Xane, as though part of him is holding back from the full force of a pillow onslaught.

…If, you know. You could describe “aiming to bop someone on the head with a pillow” as “gentle.”

As soon as Marth was armed, he went on the offensive. So Xane was the prey, not the predator, this time. Xe could live with that.

Xe parried with the pillow, finding xe could fend off most of Marth’s attacks if xe focused on defense. Leave it to Princey to be careful even with pillows.