chasing daybreak

The sensation should be familiar to most Au Ra. Not him. Somewhere along the way he became unaccustomed to the heat. His life since childhood is defined by Coerthan grit and cold, even before the Calamity turned the region into an icebound waste. Sojourns into the Dravanian Forelands and the Black Shroud—or even the northern most reaches of Thanalan—cannot compare to the raw Gyr Abanian sun at the height of summer.

For what it’s worth his skin is burning, too. Already it has the weathered violet cast it gets when he spends too much time in the mountains when the sky is clear and the sun is high and the snows are so bright he is in danger of going blind. Last night Rielle told him straight to his face he’s turning into an onion.   

“Oh, you know,” she explained with a huff, giving Aureia that knowing look she gives her when they share something he’s not privy to. “Purple and peeling. And you smell. And I think you make my eyes water.” 

He thought about the onion comment that night while he prepared for bed. He thought about it again when Aureia woke him to trade watch. He thought about it again that morning while he chewed on a piece of smoked jerky for breakfast.

The onion comment had no bearing on their decision to detour to the river.

Splash. 

“Aureia, look! Aureia! Aureia!”

Delighted giggles echo downstream.

What was intended to be a short diversion to fish and resupply has turned into a day of leisure. He was irritated at first, grumbling about the delay. Ishgard is a long way on foot, and they are already travelling slow thanks to his injuries. He and Rielle do not have the benefit of travelling by chocobo or aetheryte the way Aureia does. He spent the morning stubbornly standing guard over their camp in full armour with greatsword in hand. Aureia said he was being stubborn for the sake of it, and left to explore the shoreline with Rielle.

She wasn’t entirely wrong.

By midday he was defeated. After baking the morning away in his armour, he stripped it off and plunged into the river to cool down. His feet may have sunk through a fulm of silt and the water may have barely come up to his knees, but feeling it then was more divine than anything anointed by a blasted Halonic priest. He retreated to a smooth, flat rock on the shoreline and lay down, tail curled around him. When Aureia and Rielle returned, they found him sprawled on his back with an arm thrown over his face and his feet in the water, fast asleep.

They let him rest.

A part of him remains resistant. That grinding gear in the back of his mind that says he must always be on the move, always watching, always preparing. Though many moons have passed since the Godhand was put to rest, the fear that he will be caught off-guard and Rielle will pay the price of his failure has never quite left.

Perhaps it is with good reason.

To the outside eye, Ishgard has been reformed and all is right within its walls. The Lord Commander has done his duty and reshaped the city-state into the finest version of itself. But little thought is given to what lurks beneath a charming and wealthy man’s persuasive words and the façade presented by the new government. No matter how well-intentioned the House of Lords and the House of Commons may be, prejudices fester like rot in the walls, hiding in secret until long after they have become a problem. Those who slaughtered his parents have been dead for years, but many who still think like them remain within the ranks of the Temple Knights. Ser Aymeric would have to dismiss more than half his knights to be rid of them all, a choice he cannot afford. Not without crippling his army and exposing his nation so soon into his alliance with Eorzea.

But perhaps it is not. He may have every reason to fear, but a growing part of him desires to deny it. Rest does not come easily to him, nor does the ability to let go. They are as foreign to him as the summer wind. But this business that began with Aureia’s shattered soul crystal has brought many questions that do not have answers, and as he sits here by a quiet river on a sweltering summer’s day he finds himself doubting the instincts that kept them all alive. Something is changing, and he doesn’t know what to make of it.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of their weapons where they rest against a tree. A dark steel greatsword carved with runes—once Fray’s blade, now hers—slumps over, its hilt bumping against his.

Our journey. Our end. 

The words come quietly to him, as if whispered on the wind. Would Fray be happy knowing this is where his sacrifice led them?

He thinks he would.

Splosh. 

Something heavy hits the water and Rielle shrieks, joyous laughter ringing in the air as Aureia splutters and curses. More splashes and shrieks follow. Something must be happening down there. With some regret, Sidurgu rises to his feet, grumbling as he shakes a numb leg awake. Bloody hells, how long has he been here on this rock? Four bells? More? Too long. No wonder his scales are burning. Judging from the position of the sun and the gold-tinged sky, it is late in the afternoon and evening approaches.

Shrugging it off, he steps into the river and heads upstream.

He finds them playing in the shallows with their trousers rolled up to their knees. Aureia’s fishing gear lies haphazardly on the shore next to a couple of freshly caught fish. Her tunic is spread wide on the grass, weighed down by a collection of rocks—a pure white pebble the size of a child’s palm, an irregularly shaped stone, a chunk of what must be the red stone so prominent in Ala Mhigan homes, and a shard of an earth crystal.

Rielle stands in the centre of the river, one foot submerged and the other perched on a wobbly rock. She’s pinned her fringe back from her face. The tips of her nose and ears are sunburnt. Mercifully, she is mostly dry, save for the bottoms of her trousers. She cups her hands and proffers them as she prattles away, delight shining in her eyes. Beside her, Aureia laughs and leans over, gesturing at the river creature in her hands. She is soaked to the bone and has attempted to knot her dark hair at the top of her head, but the length is too short and it is already unravelling.

Rielle catches sight of him. Her face lights up. “Sid!” she calls. “Sid!”

He grins and raises a hand, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare. “Look at you!”

“I caught one! I caught one!”

“Caught what?”

“Um. We’re not sure. I—oh no!”

A small, skittery thing leaps from Rielle’s hands and plummets into the river with a splash. She yelps and pulls her hands tight into her chest, aghast. Aureia snorts and bends over laughing, hands on her knees.

Behind her, Sidurgu chortles.

Rielle looks from her to him and back again, and her face cracks into a wide grin. Soon, she is laughing, too.

“Rielle,” Aureia says once they have laughed themselves out. “Can you do me a favour and take our catch back to camp? Make a fire if you want, it will be sundown soon.”

Rielle nods and scrambles across the river, picking her way over the rocks as if she has made this crossing a dozen times before. “What, Sid?” she calls, gathering up the gear. She puts the fish on top of her collection of rocks and hefts the woven basket. “I can help.”

He holds back a laugh. “I never said you couldn’t.”

“I know how to make a fire.” She flushes pink with pride. “I can cook, too. You don’t always have to do it for me, you know. It’s nice when you do so I have an excuse to be lazy, but sometimes I want to do it myself!”

“The fish?” he repeats.

Her eyes narrow. “What else? I’m not holding apples, now am I?”

He presses his lips together. It would not do to laugh. Not now. “No, I suppose you’re not.”

“Stop teasing me. Aureia doesn’t tease me.”

“I’m not teasing—”

“I know how to gut a fish, Sid.” She says it with all the determination of someone who has never done the task but has watched others do it countless times. “I don’t need help.”

“I never said—”

“I don’t need help!”

Hefting the fish, she gives him one last pointed glare then picks her way through the brush back to camp.

Sidurgu sighs, shaking his head, and turns back to the river.

His jaw drops.

Aureia stands in the middle of the river bathed in golden light, blue-green water rushing around her as she glances over her shoulder at him. Her expression softens—ruby eyes wide, chapped lips parted—and she rakes her fingers through her wet hair, pulling the escaping strands back into the knot. The points of her ears turn red in the sun. Her sodden trousers pull low on her hips and her undershirt clings to her breasts (not that he is looking). She has shortened it by twisting the hem into a knot above her bellybutton to keep it out of the way. The straps tie at the nape of her neck, leaving her shoulders and upper back bare—scars and all. Water droplets shine on her sunkissed skin, catching the sunlight.

Standing here in the shallows like this, she could very well be a river spirit of yore.

“Hey,” she says.

He swallows his surprise. “Hey.”

“You made it.”

“I did.”

“Sleep well?”

“I…”

A thought lingers in the fringes of his mind.

He brushes it away.

Aureia laughs, the corners of her eyes creasing as a grin spreads across her face. Knotting the last of the loose strands, she picks her way across the shallows to the far side of the river. Her steps are swift and nimble, almost like a dance. She doesn’t dance as far as he knows, except with the Lord Commander at Ishgardian balls (not that she has attended one in years). How does someone as surefooted as her fall into the river? Did she do it on purpose? Perhaps to make Rielle laugh, or to chase a creature she spotted but was too afraid to catch herself. He can picture it quite easily, Aureia diving into the waters without fear or care for her own dignity. There are a multitude of ways in which the Warrior of Light is self-sacrificing.

The small ways are the ones that matter the most.

“You shouldn’t tease her,” Aureia says, leaping from the last rock and onto the shore.

He folds his arms. Damn. His mind is drifting. “What?”

“Rielle. You shouldn’t tease her.”

“I wasn’t teasing her! Don’t tell me you agree with her—”

She gives him a look.

Damn it. Foot in his mouth. Again. He was not meant for this. “Bloody hells. Damn if I know what is going on with her these days.”

“She’s growing up. You can’t expect her to remain the child she was when you first met.”

That was pointed. “I know.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Don’t you remember what it was like being her age?” she asks, meandering upstream along the rocky shore.

He follows without question, choosing to wade rather than walk. The river deepens on the other side of the shallows, and soon he finds himself waist-deep in the water. Minnows dart around his legs and tail, bumping curiously against his scales. They must think him a giant lizard or some sort. “Of course I do,” he says. “But I was already under my master’s guidance at the time. Circumstances did not give me the allowance to be as expressive with my emotions. At least not all the time.”

“That’s the question, then, isn’t it? Do you want to commit her to training in the ways of war, or do you want her to have a childhood?”

“I think she should choose for herself.” Water ripples around him, gentle and carefree. It would be a shame to leave it so soon. “I suppose she must soon enough. Once we return to Ishgard.”

They walk a little further. Around the bend, the river widens into a deep pool where a waterfall plunges over the red crags so common in this region. The remnants of an Imperial airship cling to the top of the cliffs, its burnt-out carcass abandoned many years ago. No one has thought to remove it—not the Garleans when they occupied this territory, and not the Ala Mhigans now they have reclaimed it.

A spit of land juts out into the pool. Aureia walks the length of it, then finally comes to a halt and sits cross-legged in the sand. “Did you have days like this?” she murmurs, ruby eyes fixed on the rushing waterfall. “When you were little, I mean? Before Ompagne.”

A diplomatic way of putting it, delicately leaving the other event out.

“I… I’m not sure.” Sidurgu wades out of the pool and joins her, his tail curling behind him. His scales glisten in the light of the setting sun. “I don’t remember much.”

“You said you were from Doma?”

“Yes, though I can’t tell you where.” Beyond them, the waterfalls roars. If he shifts his body and tilts his head at the right angle, the airship is hidden by an outcrop. “There was a green river. It was… peaceful.” He can still recall the way the light sparkled on the surface. “I used to wade in the reeds, looking for frogs.”

Aureia chuckles quietly. “It was crabs for me.” There’s a pain in her voice like a reopened wound. “My… brother, really, but we did everything together.”

A lump forms in his throat. Bloody hells, when did he get so sentimental? “There were plum trees near the river.” He remembers that well. Pink blossoms in the wind. “I wanted one so damn badly, my mother put me on my father’s shoulders so I was high enough to reach.” You’ll be tall one day, Sidurgu. I promise. Why do these words come to him now? Did she even speak them, or did he simply bridge the gap in his memory with a figment of his imagination? “My mother… she braided flowers in her hair.”

Those days are so distant now, the memory of his mother’s embrace and his father’s laugh lost to time. A sharp pain aches beneath his ribs. It’s been so long since he has tried to recall, he can’t remember what they looked like. Not the shape of his father’s horns, or the colour of his mother’s eyes. They are ruined canvases in his mind, charred holes where their faces should be. The most he has of them is their name and even that has faded. Sidurgu Orl traded for Sidurgu of the Obsidian Heart.

Funny that he cannot recall his own mother’s face, but he remember Rielle’s mother’s quite well—right before he severed her head from her neck.

Aureia shifts her weight and shuffles close, leaning her head against his shoulder. Her weight is comforting, and he finds himself wishing the conversation to last. But the sun is setting in earnest now, and it won’t be long before they must return to camp.

“Do you ever think you would return?” she says after a moment.

“No.” He swallows the lump. “Too far.”

“You could travel by aetheryte—”

“I was too young to attune. Not everyone has the capacity to make a journey around the world like you, Aureia. If I do choose to board such a ship again, then I have become either delusional or old or both. Or the Moogles have scrambled my mind.” The objection is harsher than he intended, but it is not seasickness that he opposes. It is what happens after disembarking in a foreign land. “There is no point in going back. That place may no longer exist. Even if it does, what good does it do me? I am not of Doma. Not anymore. Ishgard is more my home than it ever was.”

The words are wrong, but he says them anyway. It doesn’t have to be right to be a truth. Whether he likes it or not, he is as tied to that city as any Temple Knight. “Ask me again another day and I might say I would give anything to see that green river again.”

She nods soberly and falls silent, lacing her fingers with his. There’s a warmth in his scales again, tender and unfamiliar, and this time it has nothing to do with the heat of the sun.

He ignores it.

Squeezing her hand, he curls his tail around her and turns his gaze to the heavens. Scarlet and orange streaks across the sky as the sun sinks below the rocky crags and spires, and the first stars emerge from the depths. Seven hells, he is grateful for her company. Grateful for the day, too, come to think of it. He should thank her for insisting they stop. It is one day out of many on this journey, after all. There is no reason to rush.

There will not be any other days like this once they are back on the road.