A knight lives to serve

I call you my sun as you, too, are at the center of me, at the center of all I hold dear, of all I know. More than all else you have shaped me, centered me, given me the warmth and brilliance needed for life.

I call you my sun but you are not mine; I share you with the world, after all. With your workshop and your family. Your shine is not to be stolen for just the one man, it is meant to keep more than just me warm.

I call you my sun because you anchor me, never letting me stray too far from myself. Shining and brilliant, you stand in the center of my life reminding me there is love, there is warmth. And there is always a place to return.

Anchor: a heavy object attached to a rope or chain and used to moor a vessel to the sea bottom.

I say you are my anchor, not because you prevent me from moving- never would I accuse you of such- but because you provide stability. Assurance that I need not be swayed if I am unwilling.

I say you are my anchor because you provide me safety against a rolling tide or raging storm. I will always find my way back to you, will never stray too far that I cannot be found by you.

I say you are my anchor because you are lodged into solid ground. There are few ambiguities about you, few things you cannot be certain of, just as an anchor lodges in the ground.

Saint: a person acknowledged as holy or virtuous and typically regarded as being in heaven after death.

I will not call you a saint- not because you do not deserve such a title, but because the church would never recognize you. Would never allow your name immortalized in it’s halls with those others who have died for their faith.

I will not call you a saint- not because you’re not one, but because I do not think you wish anyone else to show their devotion as I do; with my lips and hands and hot breath on cold days, without the cover of blankets as we have no shame.

I will not call you a saint, instead you are my sun, a brilliant light to keep me warm and guide me home, and my anchor, a promise of security and safety in the face of all else. Perhaps you are not a saint, my sun, but that doesn’t make us any less holy.

He was dying. It was a strange thought to have. He hadn’t planned on dying this mission, he had promised his father- what was it again? My shield will not break. He almost laughs but it hurts too much. It was odd, how everything was pain and nothing was. The aetherial lance had long since dispersed, leaving him bleeding on the balcony, but he still felt it, moving through him, in him. He coughs, and blood comes up.

He feels his hand grasped and he forces his eyes to focus, to turn to his friend, one who was all but family now and his lips turn up in a smile. He was leaving so much behind, but he couldn’t worry them. They had always said his smile was contagious, had always watched their anguish lessen when he offered a smile and warmth. Why shouldn’t this be the same? He was but a small player in the large game they played. They could not afford to let his death stop them.

“Do not look at me so.” The words are harder to get out than he expected but he doesn’t let his gentle smile waver. “A smile better suits a hero.” Maybe it was selfish, but he did not want his last sight to be such a dear and hopeful friend looking at him like….like he was dying. But he doesn’t ignore the tears in their eyes, the grip on his hand that he still feels, for the moment. But he was losing too much blood too fast, he was cold up here on the top of the Vault, was cold with his blood running from his wound like an ordered evacuation.

For example; both his step-mother and Ysayle are people he could likely never forgive but, if either or both of them survived, the bar for Ysayle’s redemption, in his eyes, would be lower than Miranes- Ysayle’s mostly guilty of war crimes, whereas Mirane was deliberately malicious to a perfectly innocent child.

1. my dad

2. god

3. my dad

Aymeric: That’s where you’re wrong, father! We will stop you with the powers of: Friendship!

WoL: Harmony!

Estinien, holding his bloodied lance in his bloodied armor: Incredible violence.

You knew him better than I.Count Baurendouin de Haillenarte masks his hesitation with a sip of brandy, studiously avoiding the bereft, hungry gaze of the man who had, just days before, received the news of his son’s death. Those eyes! Edmont’s eyes were terrible, pits of grief without end, and nothing could fill them; had his eyes been so lightless on that terrible morning five years gone now, when he’d received the news that…Chlodebaimt.But it won’t do to think of him here, not now; no, Edmont will be ill-served by the mingled bleeding of their shared wounds. Haurchefant. Think of Haurchefant instead… and that is a pain of a different sort: no less sharp; for all he was Edmont’s blood, he’d been as good as a son to Baurendouin, the sort of son a man could be proud to lay claim to - noble and kind, never too proud, vicious in his defense of Ishgard, dutiful in his post at Camp Dragonhead, beloved by the men and women who served him…