the blue

Well, now if there isn’t some clothing that looks like it would be right at home in Eorzea.

That’s Yda’s third thought after running face-first into a total stranger’s chest. The first is, wah, tall- and the second, of course, is, ouch! as she goes staggering back, lifting her hand to right her mask automatically, instinctively. She tips her head back to look up at him, tipping her head and noting the unique curve of his ears, the particular build of his body. Definitely elezen, or part-elezen, or elezen-adjacent, at the very least.

And he talks pretty, too. Very proper. Well.

Yda’s mouth splits into a wide grin, lips thinning and teeth flashing, and she says, “Oh! Don’t worry, don’t worry, I wasn’t watching where I was going either! Mm, but you don’t look dressed for the kind of weather that’s around here- are you sure you should be heading out in all that?”

She pauses, backtracks, clearly scattered. “Oh, sorry- that’s not what comes first, is it? Hm. I’m Yda. What’s your name?”

“Well met,” Aymeric replies. He bows out of habit, realizing too late that it might be out of place for the setting. Oh well; casual from here on out, then.

“My name is Aymeric,” he continues. “And I daresay you’re right about my clothes; I didn’t realize the climate could be so different from Sea to Sea.”

Yda’s outfit seems comfortable enough for the temperature, though Aymeric is taking care not to stare overmuch.

Enamored as he is of forests and verdant woodland, Aymeric has saved the trip to the Sea of Tranquility for last. Almost as soon as he gets off the train, he sees the bustling city, perched in the canopy of the dense forest, and feels that he was right to do so. After that, it’s a simple matter finding a shop that will sell him all sorts of goods for outdoor activities. (Money, it seems, is no issue.) When he mentions, half in jest, that he might simply lie in a hammock for the rest of the afternoon, the kindly brown bear behind the counter offers him a hammock.

Seeing no reason to do anything else (since his time here is seemingly limitless, and undemanding besides), Aymeric decides to set up the hammock. He chooses a spot at the edge of the city, where the treeline thins into a grassy meadow.

He lies there, hammock swaying in the breeze, for what feels like several peaceful hours. According to the clock on his holophone, it’s more like forty minutes. Can he not relax, even here?

Frustrated, he decides to finish the task he’d started on his first day on the Ark: figuring out the holophone. That, at least, proves easier in the sunlit meadow than in his dark, windowless bedroom in the Palilicium. He scrolls through a few applications to learn what they’re for— most of them seem to be for communication.

After a while, Aymeric discovers the resident list. He scrolls through it absently, noting here and there the residents that he’s met, which ones share his suite, and so on. He discovers how to view their profiles. (He discovers his own profile, which he immediately closes and does not look at again.) He recognizes a few names and is still trying to decide whether to contact them or to summarily avoid them when he scrolls past his own name, and then the name Estinien Wyrmblood. He nearly falls out of the hammock.

Aymeric doubts very much that Estinien has explored his own holophone at all, and he has no desire to ambush him with a call as if it were a linkpearl. There’s an equally large chance that Estinien doesn’t carry the thing with him at all. What then— a letter, perhaps? But— Aymeric’s heart aches, which embarrasses him a little. Of course a letter is out of the question: it will take him ages to write, and Estinien has never been a great answerer of letters, if he ever gets it in the first place. And there is a small part of him that wants to see him as soon as possible— right now, in fact. He considers the holophone in his hand.

[msg] I would love to see you

In Foundation, Aymeric had had precious little time to himself, of late. On the Ark, however, he seemed to have nothing but time. He supposes that having nothing to do might be restful, but he finds himself unable to relax. His thoughts are chiefly on his duties in Ishgard, and, being indisposed as it were, they turn ever inward.

He cannot bear such navelgazing, so he decides to distract himself in the best way he knows how: cooking. Preparing something from scratch can be a laborious process, and he looks forward to losing himself in it. But his suite’s kitchen is ill-stocked for his purposes, and though the Palilicium cellar is supposedly the source of the food in his kitchen, truth be told he’s not brave enough to venture there alone.

And so he strikes out into the Sea of Crises, hoping the market can provide what the kitchen lacks. It’s not far from the Palilicium on the map, but by the time he reaches the market, he feels as if he’s been walking for nearly an hour. He shrugs it off; perhaps the winding, narrow roads have gotten the better of him.

The edge of the market is noisy and drab. He hadn’t expected to find fresh greens, really, but the color palette of the goods for sale that he can see is disappointingly pale and grey— apart from the rare exception of mottled brown. Behind one stall, a shockingly large rat is standing on its hind legs, grilling and serving what appear to be skewers of regular-sized rats. Aymeric stops in front of it to stare, perturbed.

“Fury forfend,” he curses, then realizes someone (not one of the shopkeepers, a proper person) has overheard him. One thing a lifetime of socializing with isolationist Ishgard’s upper crust hasn’t prepared him for is culture shock, and he’s dreadfully embarrassed.