宮助

They all warned us about times like this They say the road gets hard and you get lost When you're led by blind faith Blind faith

We are never tested without purpose. Every trial that brings us to our knees is a chance for us to rise again to our feet. Divine forgiveness was always a cold splash away, but earthly love was a longer reach for a woman like me. I’ve always preferred the clean distance of holy things. I’ve wanted to be as the sun; indispensable, simmering, whose warmth is only felt from a safe distance. Oh, but I feel it now; unbearable, molten, aching love for too much. For the world I’ve left, and for the one to which I’ve just been redelivered.

What softness there is here, now, in the ashes of chaos that was. The breeze is warm here, and the trees flower lilac in a glorious blaze. I stumbled into this place once, a lifetime and a lesson ago; I was weak and unworthy, left scars in my wake that opened gaping maws, wolf’s jaw tightening, splintering all around me between sharp and grinding teeth. Do they know how sorry I am? Do they know how much they’ll be missed? I feel them all like counting ribs up my side, one after another after another after another, with my heart beating just behind.

I’ve been reborn again into this bright, aching land, this time delivered by the multitude of doors closing behind me rather than by divine fester ripping the fabric of reality for my grand entrance. Where once I beheld a dizzying, unfathomable infinite in the rift I mistakenly tore, there is now a clear, single path for me to walk, and it all leads here. The possibilities narrow comfortingly into a thread that I can follow. I’ve been a conduit between man and divine, between living and dead; why not become a conduit between worlds, as well?

The priestess carries a tray with tea.

The priestess holds a book of old sermons and ponders the next.

The priestess strides proudly with a katana sheathed on her hip.

The priestess styles her hair in front of a mirror.

The priestess grieves at the hunter’s grave.

The priestess holds a baby. The priestess clutches flowers. The priestess throws a teapot onto the floor. The priestess has her throat cut. The priestess is held down and her skirts lifted by unseen hands. The priestess heals a sick man. The priestess falls to her knees with blood at her throat. The priestess smiles among friends. The priestess lays wide awake with milky cataracts in her eyes and stares at a ceiling while the voices take over. The priestess, the priestess, the priestess.

Even a month prior, the priestess would have been tempted to succumb to despair when faced with these multitudes. Chaos tailed her like a long, red cloak, the guilty bannerman for a fortress built on good intention gone awry. Guilt was still a ghost in the wings, but her sermons on the merits of being chosen for life’s most burdensome tests had unexpectedly been made manifest within. Her worship had ripped deep and jagged scars of stagnant light, but now she remained stabilized by the saving grace of red magic. Thanks to the forgiveness of others that had transformed from religious abstract to personal savior, she was able to rise with the steam in the smoking crater she caused and become more than just a concept, but someone who just might be truly worthy.

As Nymeia's tapestries of fate so foretold, the fair maiden's bonds were released at last by the swift stroke of the Raven Knight's dark blade. Before she could crumple to the ground in weakness, he caught her in his armored embrace, his feathered cloak swirling in the wake of his impeccable reflexes. They locked eyes and knew at once that the last threads had fallen into place, for the verse had crooned of tender love between dark and light at the world's end, and there they were at the curtain call of a journey that had, at its frightful onset, felt utterly impossible.

But lo, as the blossom of their starry-eyed meeting burst into bloom, she reached a slender finger to touch his chest only to come away with streaks of dangerous red that glittered like ruby pinpricks under the dim torchlight. "No," she whispered, the joy stolen from her breast as quickly as it had been planted. "You're hurt—"

"'Tis but a needle prick compared to the heartache of leaving you," he lamented with a soft, sad smile. And indeed, the tender love at world's end was, in the same twist, the end of the man who had become her whole world in an instant. His grip tightened enough to hurt her as he struggled to remain upright...

Miya pushed the tome away with enough force to send it skittering across the floor. "Are you joking?!" she exclaimed with enough fury to catch several glances from the other patrons of the library. "Ridiculous! Absurd!" Anger swelled, but the keen observer would note the woman's eyes streaming rivers of tears as she marched after her jettisoned tome. "He just—dies! He spends that whole journey working to save her and—and—" She inhales deeply, ranting to the woman seated next to her whose concern she mistakes for interest in that moment. "What was the point?! Why would they build the suspense for two hundred pages and then simply let him die? They were destined to be together!"

The area remained silent, but before that can shift and long before she can feel the embarrassment catch up to her, she snatches the book up from the floor and marches back to the checkout counter, slalmming it down before the befuddled librarian. "Miss, I understand you're upset, but—"

The natural world lost a bit of its luster when the spirits left me. Truth be told, I can’t remember when they started to find me in the first place. I spent months lying about hearing the will of the kami when I came to Eorzea, and it seems as though I told the lie enough that it became manifestly true. Of course, it should have always been obvious that it was a farce; how many times did Hatsumine roll her eyes at me and tell me that I ought not worry about the silence after my prayers, for the kami answered all bids through sign and deed? The conversation was supposed to feel barren and one-sided. I guess I wanted more. No, no; of course I did, I was supposed to be a paragon.

(Source)

On her hands and knees in the soft soil, the process of redemption started with a hole in the ground and multiplied from there. Where the loss of faith had ripped a ragged hole, she filled it with new rituals, patched it with earthly mantras chanted to invoke a wellspring of forgiveness; if not today, then maybe months or years down the line. With her face shielded from the sun by a wide-brimmed hat, she was free to bow her head over the raised bed and feel what had become a regular cycle play out: shame, guilt, pity, chastising, determination. 

Miya whispered the names of the dead as she tore seed packets and pushed them into the dirt. She remembered their faces, or near enough as she could remember, as she paused to examine a diagram in a botany manual. She contemplated their loss; mothers, fathers, children, neighbors, lovers, workers. She considered the gaps left behind in their absence, the ways the people in their lives had needed to mend their sails, as well, in order to carry on. They all shared a new normal across impossible gaps. In time, even the swaths of dead land in the Twelveswood would sprout again.

(Art source)

It was foolishness that brought Miya back to the beginning of the end, plain and simple. The wood sanctuary loomed large overhead, trunks shooting forever into the sky like a bridge from heaven to earth. A pale head of hair wasn’t enough to hide a face that so many would now never forget, her thoughts too cluttered by impotent shame to so much as remember to hide under a cowl. Maybe it was more honest this way. Maybe it was just stupid.

The trek by foot was quieter than the last she remembered, but then, what wasn’t made more placid by a distinctive lack of whispering at all hours of the day and night. She had no map, but what her mind couldn’t conjure, her muscles knew in their fibers from her otherworldly wandering under the pall of night. Her feet carried her into the depths until the sounds of life faded and she knew the clearing was close. A desire for repentance filled in what fear tried to steal; her steps never faltered for the pound of terrible anticipation in her ears.

The green opened up into a deathly swath of pale white, the color of just-aged paper, the color of wool turned over to the moths to chew. She stood still at the edge of the fallow field with a bouquet clutched at her chest, beholding the destruction with competing impulse, both awe and contrition. The foliage rattled like the deep days of autumn in spite of the wreath of emerald that remained unspoiled at the perimeter. Blades withered and silently snapped under the slightest pressure of a careless footfall and stalks decayed where they had been stripped of the breath of life. A beehive collapses in on itself from the distressed shell of an abandoned shed, black ooze only barely cementing it all together from what was once sweet and golden with none of its flighted caretakers in sight.

She closed her eyes and remembered the night she had drawn on impossible strength, the void-touched bear that was felled by Ezen’s deft blade, the oasis breeze blowing at the hem of her skirt with the cool relent of night. Was there a sign, even then, that this would all come to pass? Was there something she overlooked that could have changed the course of history? No, best not to touch on that now. Whatever it had been, the graveyard in front of her was all the proof she needed that conjecture couldn’t fix such a profound mistake. A dozen gone, an acre salted...

Loralwyn raced through the marble mouth of the courtyard archway clutching a woolen cloak of darkest night to her heaving chest. Milk-moon as round and full as Matron's breast shone most urgently onto her path as though she were being guided by Her gilded hand, her breaths short and panting like the enchanted evening she'd spent in the Barrows with her clandestine paramour. Was she too late to sing her pretty protestations in the face of the sinister faces that would seek to undo the beauty she'd spread hand-in-hand with her knight most gallant?

The convocation had convened a bell's toll past and she feared there would be naught but a body drained of warmth left for her to hold. The clever bishop had arranged a foul distraction and were it not for the words of the gods spoke from the lips of the little handmaiden who saw with the clear eyes of uncorruptable childhood innocence, she may have never known the life of Jhaeros, her Jhaeros, her proud lion, the shield to her delicate hummingbird heart, dangled by naught but a thread as thin as spider's silk while all the world held fast its breath.

She could see it now, the high rise of the courtly chamber with the lanterns lit within. Loralwyn hitched up her skirts and willed the flight of angels beneath her; the door awaited and she swore if it did not open, she would burst through blazing fire behind her, but indeed they did open and indeed did she see the council assembled with her brave sun shining as brightly as ever in manacles below them. They turned at the sound of her urgent shouting and murmured between them, aghast as plans unraveled before their wizened eyes.

"What is the meaning of this?!" shouted the eldest of them, rising shakily on his wooden staff. "Explain yourself, princess!"

"Free this man at once!" her voice boomed, the strongest it had ever been, as clear and sure as rushing waters. They had never heard such power coming from her pale throat. "It is not he who planted the poisoned needle and you are fools not to see through this gossamer lie! Our queen, my royal mother, has perished unduly at the hands of a charlatan among you!"

The commotion swelled as accusations were made. Loralwyn marched to the side of her shackled love, where he knelt beside her beautiful skirts, and spoke from the heavens to earth, unimpeachable in her righteous defense. "I accuse the bishop Ghendol Whittaxe of queenslaying. The stableboy has confessed to what he saw; her Highness' treacherous sister has lain bare her guilt and I have writ her confession; the conspirators who lined your pockets to throw this man under the carriage have been made to see their sins." She turned for her grand finale, sweeping her arm to the bishop who had grown pale and tremorous in his high seat on the dais. "How do you plead?"

"Th-this—this is heresy! This is—how dare you! How dare—!!" They knew at once the princess spoke naught but truths and converged on the shamed man.

"Arrest him at once and let Ser Jhaeros free from this farce!" she commanded, swelling with pride, and so it was done that the guardsmen loosed his manacles and helped him to his feet where he turned and swept up his princess, his one true love into the steadfast safety of his passionate embrace. In front of the gods, the scandalized council, and the kingdom itself, he kissed her with true honesty and nothing left to hide after they'd fled so much and held their burgeoning affections away from the light. She threw her arms around his broad shoulders and met his mouth with dizzying want, breathless and impulsive. When at last their flushed lips parted, they noticed a hush had fallen around them. In the haste of their reunion, the armored men and women had dropped to their knees before them in obeisance, bringing tears to Loralwyn's big, beautiful eyes.

"All hail the queen, our queen, Loralwyn Hesh!" a lone voice she identified as the guard captain cried out. She thought her heart fit to burst. A choir answered without hesitation. "Long may she reign!"

The end

--

Miya closed the borrowed tome and glanced around the plaza self-consciously as she quickly wiped tears from her eyes. Her face had grown red and blotchy from her sporadic, poorly-hidden weeping and all told, she never intended to binge the novel then and there; it was at the bottom of a dusty pile in a vendor's book wagon and after a quick flip through the pages, she decided to indulge. Hours later and the sun had grown heavy and her errands rendered incomplete.

(Art source)

CN: Disordered eating

“Miss, are you ready?”

She wasn’t. She hadn’t been the last two times the kindly waitress came around, either. She was on her third glass of water and faced the menu items like enemies in formation marching line after line against her. The pressure had mounted with each subsequent pass to her table where she, alone, perused the options under a growing dread that simply was not proportional to the task at hand. Who would even understand were she to explain? She, herself, couldn’t fully comprehend her own neuroses, and doubly as of late.

Miya forced herself to look up, to make eye contact, and ultimately—to smile. It wasn’t the waitress’ fault. It wasn’t the chef’s fault either, or at least not yet it wasn’t. It had nothing to do with the dishwashers or line cooks. The hostess, blameless. Her mantra repeated until she felt the ball of wholly misplaced apprehension shrink into something small enough to swallow back. It was enough to simply not make a scene.

“I’m ready.” She wasn’t.

“What can I have the chefs prepare for you?” Nothing. Everything.

“I’d like...the chicken saltimbocca.” She worried about the cut being thin enough that the pieces would be even and tender. She worried about it being overcooked with the chewy resistance of jerky. Was the proscuitto a quality make or would it resist chewing? Would she feel the rubbery tension of fat as it slipped between her molars? Did they use lemon? Did they add red pepper flake as the restaurant in Gridania had? Would the spinach have the right consistency or would it be stringy? She could already feel the limp fiber wedging between her teeth and felt her stomach lurch. She said nothing of it.

“Very good. What would you have with it?”

There was salad, but she’d gotten a mottled leaf among the rest in her bowl there once and it ruined the experience. The next step from mottled was slimy and her next bite was ruined when all she could think of was the lukewarm, wet tang of brown mush coated in vinagrette going down the hatch. That wouldn’t do. But what of asparagus? She liked the crunch, and the tips had the consistency she was searching for in broccoli, but at a more predictable rate. What did the menu say about it? Was it steamed? Sautéed? The words seemed to fall off the page the very moment she went looking for them as her heart seized in her chest. Potatoes. Potatoes were predictable. It was hard to screw up a potato, wasn’t it? Nature’s panacea in the form of a humble brown lump. What restaurant didn’t have an inoffensive potato?

“Potatoes.”

“Baked, mashed, au gratin...?” Fuck.

A whole new cycle of questions. Did they clean the skin thoroughly enough for baked? Nothing made her ready to slip from her skin and run screaming like biting into an unclipped eye or the faintest little bit of dirt. No, baked wouldn’t do. Too risky. Would their mashed potatoes have the skin on or off? Would it be creamy or lumpy? Did they use buffalo milk? Yak’s milk? Aldgoat? This is crazy. Just choose something.

“Mashed. Just give me mashed.” Was she breaking a sweat? She felt her face flush with embarrassment.

“Would madame like anything to drink?”

Drink? Drink? She wasn’t even done ordering. What if neither dish satisfied? What if she needed something plain to fill up on? Would they think her a glutton to order more? Would it seem too unusual to order several sides? Did she look like a voracious eater? Would they think her pregnant?

“Asparagus. However you make it, steamed or boiled or...whatever. Whatever. I’ll eat it however it’s prepared. And...a bowl of plain, white rice. The wheat loaf sounds nice, as well, with a side of rosemary butter.” The words came all at once, in a rush to exit her mouth before it could be sabotaged by compulsion. Before she could cook up yet another way this meal could possibly repulse (and her imagination was quite vivid). This is where it usually started to fall apart. Smiles would tighten. Pencils would pause above the paper pad. They didn’t get it. They couldn’t. She wouldn’t give them the chance. “And to drink...” She didn’t look up at the waitress; if she was aghast at her peculiar mannerisms, she didn’t need to see it. Press on.

“A white wine to match the chicken; not too sweet or cloying, those turn my stomach. Cold water in a carafe. And I’d like coffee after my meal, as well; cream and sugar to the side for me to decide.” She was offering them mercy with specificity, whether or not they knew it. There was no stopping now. She’d be lucky to eat a quarter of what she ordered while they sat back and tutted to themselves about the waste. She knew it was a waste, but she was really, truly trying. What if the coffee is too bitter. The thought was automatic, intrusive. She frowned at nobody in particular and shooed it away.

“I’ve written it all down. Is there anything else I can get for you?”

“No, that will be all,” she settled, deflating as the stress relented. But a thought occurred to her that perhaps there was more she could do, after all. A recent lesson had been both humiliating and enlightening. That’s what she was after, right? Enlightenment? Wasn’t this about repentance, about repaying the debt she’d incurred twelve times over?

“Bring me paper boxes with the meal. Anything I don’t eat, I’ll give to someone hungry.”

The waitress paused, canting her head to the side, and then blossomed a gentle smile. It was fascinating to see herself the way a stranger would; they couldn’t know the tumult she’d gone through to even get this far. At this moment, she was a hungry eccentric with a charitable streak and not a cursed specter bearing the burden of guilt. She’d done worse before.

“That’s kind of you. I’ll request it from the kitchen right away, madame.”

Miya—I can tell you’ve already started your life here.

From chainmaille rings to lacing boots to stitches in simple broadcloth, repetition had grown into a meditative ritual in this new life as an ascetic. In the magic space of mundane taskwork, her thoughts could settle as muscle memory made something of the yearning for absolution. Shirts were mended, armor repaired, leathers softened with methodical kneading. It brought peace when nothing else could touch that bramble.

Today, she was allowed to contemplate Inika’s observation. Whether she meant it as a simple statement or something more, it was hard to deny that she’d found a tentative peace with her place in the dying world. Perhaps she had avoided incarceration for the crimes she’d committed, but the blaze of ever-present holy light bearing down on the last vestiges of humanity felt near enough to a reckoning that she settled in much the way a prisoner would, and sought to serve time on her own terms. In the first few months, she would wake from a fitful sleep to a beam of light in her face and wonder if she wasn’t already dead. The answer still wasn’t always as clear as she might’ve liked.

The locals knew her only as the quiet waif who seemed kind enough, but distinctly detached from the life bustling around her even in the midst of the markets. Her assistance was offered with little fanfare, thanks brushed aside with nothing in the way of a smile, and when one job waned, the next was just an arm’s length away. She’d been a goldsmith, a seamstress, a nanny, a gardener, an errand girl, a watchman, and before she knew it, she was handed an apron as grey as the dishwater and left her to the drudgery of scouring pots in the communal kitchen, silent and alone.

A soot-rimmed glass lamp burns low on a bedside table with a sleepy glow, softly illuminating the contour of a woman curled around a worn book filled from cover to cover. Folded pages stick out of the side, a collection of loose sheets added later, half-thoughts gathered up to make an inviting anthology. She props her arms up on a short stack of tomes, lolled head gazing down at the pages from beneath heavy lids and dark circles, eyes dragging from left to right as though each line is a mile to run over and over and over. The hour is surely late, but the infernal light that creeps unbidden along the edges of the heavy curtains would never reveal it. She can’t help but dive deep into the messages left for her from the past, the manuscripts of sermons before they came alive at the altar. These were her words, her thoughts. It was guidance she desperately needed at a time when the world had never felt emptier or more void of hope.

Amidst the cluttered margins, her memories are set alight by the fiery passion recorded on the lines in tight cursive. What details she can’t recall precisely from the treachery of transformation, she can recognize from the dull pang of familiarity that blooms a terrible ache in her chest, as heavy as her own grave slab weighing down. On rare occasion, the words come as a warm embrace from an old friend, replete with unconditional love and understanding. The miasma exhausts, but does not grant her slumber until she finds the last complete page before the journal meanders off into incomplete notes jotted, ideas for future lectures, market lists, and mundane reminders.

Why would anyone choose to take on the burden of the Khotgor? An endless war, raging against the Void with no end in sight. Watching generations rise and fall to beat back the encroaching darkness. Is it courage? Is it faith? You could attribute any number of noble qualities and be correct, but what rises high above all, as bright as sunlight, is extraordinary love. The sort that is not often called upon, but is remarkable and profoundly changing when it’s made manifest. The kind that is held in a deep reserve for a day when you must trust you’ll know it’s right to use.

The words seemed not only to be read, but to read her right back. Her eyes fluttered shut as her hands tightened on the covers like an anchor to a tossing ship. A chasm threatened to tear her in two, her own voice commanding the words back to her as clearly as if she were kneeling before herself in the shrine that now laid in ashes from the rage of those she’d made victims; in the dim shelter of her inn room, she was priestess and congregant alike. Her own eyes bore down on herself, her own judgment striking wicked bolts with each syllable.

Though these men and women have sacrificed, we cannot and should not aspire to become martyrs, nor should we be asked to pay such a steep price in our own blood by beings who look after us. Their price was volunteered, offered from within, and not commanded from on high. This is what makes their work so precious. Indeed what we should be chasing instead is a love that inspires us to defy odds. Not just romantic love, but love that extends impossibly in all directions, in ways we can barely imagine. Love that works in ways we can’t fathom. Extraordinary love for the world and its inhabitants is the purest kind of heart. Care for your fellow man that reaches beyond earthly grievance is the cornerstone of goodness. There is no higher virtue between heaven and earth that better exemplifies or honors the innumerable spirits that dwell among us.

How far off had she veered in the end? She was made a martyr by a force that should have never asked it. She was beckoned down a path of righteous ego one heroic act at a time until it became impossible to imagine that anything she touched could turn to aught but gold with enough belief tipping the scales behind it. Shame swelled so rapidly in her gut that she had to pause simply to catch her breath. This was right, this dolorous state; what could be more appropriate than to let the weight of her sins bear so fully and so unabated, free from the too-helpful hands of those that would try to soothe. She needed this. She read on.

It may feel impossible to reach such a transformational state. It may seem too radical, too out of reach, too much transformation that it’s impossible to know where to start—but there is something for everyone, steps that can be made on the long road ahead. Honor the dead foremost. Ensure their selfless and transformational love is not forgotten or done in vain. Continue to strive to espouse the virtues that made them great and to carry on the work they began so they might transcend death in such a way. Tell their stories not to hearts who already agree, but challenge those that don’t. Open closed eyes with awe, let them see example of your stories in your deeds, as well. Be the living embodiment as often as you can and aspire to better when you cannot.

A dozen died by her hand, an immutable fact that haunted her at all hours. She had unleashed an aetherial rot that stole life from the land by way of immaculate light and collected the souls of the desperately infirm under the guise of divine intervention. How could she hope to embody anything but humility after such a thorough humbling? What sort of priestess could hold her weight in a challenge of ideas when her own sins cast such a long shadow over her legacy? There were no kami. No spirits would save her. No gods would touch her.

Do not wait until you are dead or collapsed to seek out those who radiate it here and now. There are always others who are further along the path than you, and they are to be learned from. They are among you, in places you least expect, as well as places that seem too obvious to work. Serve while you are able. Give them not only gratitude, but help them to shoulder the burden. Bolster their path as they lift you in yours.

Her fingers paused on the page and for a moment, the brackish waves breaking in her head quieted. She was given just enough relent to look up, to shake loose the tight breath locked up in her chest for far longer than she had realized, and to let her body release a mountain of tension just this once. Slumbering silence had made way for the first stirrings of life outside to herald another everlasting day in the dying world while she was absorbed in her reading. If she had once been so close to virtue, perhaps it wasn’t so far to climb to find it again. These words were her words. These beliefs had once been her beliefs and perhaps they still could be.

Extraordinary love is not by accident, it’s cultivated, and you must be its vigilant gardener. Beauty beyond measure starts with earnestly scattered seeds. The seasons turn; winter never lasts no matter its bitter depth.

Whoever she became in the wide, yawning, swallowing, screaming margin between worlds could perhaps close the distance enough to remember what came before and to carry it forward. To honor it. Perhaps even to love it. If she could not be a paragon, then she could make to lift those who would. If she could not wash the blood from her hands, then she would need to use them to build a life whereupon another pair could remain a little cleaner. She reached out and snuffed the lamp, leaving a lazy drift of smoke to curl from the blackened wick.