#angellllll

---

“Does it always have to be so hard?” She spoke to Fray, but would have liked to pose the question to several gods, too.

---

He backpedaled, holding his arm close. The saber lay at his feet, yet he didn’t reach for it. He wasn’t even trying. Why did that make it worse? “Do you even want to live at all?” Fray said. Kethry said.

---

“Yeah, we’ll go out. Unless you can trace the aetheric signature of defensive constructs. Or whatever that last scholar was talking about.”

“Kweh.”

“Me neither.”

---

She threw up her hands. “What for? If there’s something that needs killed again, I’ll get it out of your way. Happy?” She shook grit from her log and stood. “If I can’t do anything else, I’d like to do my job without busybodies.”

---

He thumbed his chin. “Still, the fact that she changed plumage, I assume after she reached full maturity, might make her something of a scientific anomaly.”

Kethry’s ears flattened. “An anomaly? That’s so! So!” she sputtered. “That’s so rude! She’s a good bird!”

“I’m not saying she’s not,” he said, in a tone somewhere between confusion and amusement. His eyes landed on a fin stuck to Phoebe’s beak. “Perhaps it was induced by dietary changes?”

“She’s just blue! Don’t be mean!” Kethry struggled to scramble into the saddle and maintain disapproving eye contact at the same time.

---

“There’s something like this up in Coerthas too. They say it came down when the moon fell. Saw an Echo of it happening first time I came here.” She waved his question away before he could ask. “I get these… past visions, sometimes. Side effect of the Echo. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, this whole thing formed ’cause of the impact.” She narrowed her eyes and tossed him the arrows. “But don’t stand there thinking about what it all means. That’s on your own time.”

---

This arrow flew true, but a twirl of her staff knocked it out of the air. “No, she just has Limsa. For now.”

“Has Limsa.” He drew several arrows to fire in succession. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

She turned to avoid the first shot. “It’s hers.” Ducked under the second. “She can use it.” Sent the next skittering and sparking along the crystal. “Get people to do things.” Startled him by leaping over the fourth with a dragoon’s high jump, and aimed for the fifth on the return. It zipped under her—she swung for it and missed, landing with a thud on the field. “She takes a cut for organizing trade. Makes the fleet sail here or there. But if she messes it up, or pulls too much…” She opened her hands and dropped the staff, then kicked it back up to herself. “Someone will take it from her. And if that can happen, she’s not really in charge of it, see? It’s a tool she can use while she’s got it. Or something.”

---

“Mmbwuh,” said Kethry.

---

“It doesn’t…” She scrunched up her face, then made a waving motion. “When Alphinaud and Y’shtola cast spells, you can feel their aether move when they weave it, and it goes like, fwoosh. But when I try to shape mine into a sigil, or anything like that, it’s like pulling on an anchor rode. Doesn’t move.”

---

“I just. When I lived here. We were hunting, the kids. I mean, we were kids, not that we were hunting any. It was the first time I was supposed to lead. And we ran into one of those, a boar, they grow too big here, and we should have ran, but I tried to take it down anyway, and—” She shook her head, to try and shake out the memory, too. “It got my cousin. Tore her right open.”

---

Still, he’d been whiny about it. “Since when have you gotten so demanding?” he panted.

“Since I decided we were friends.”

His ears flicked. “Oh? And when was that?”

She folded her hands over his head and rested her own on top of them while she considered. “Right now? A while ago? I dunno. I'm hungry, though.”

---

She shook her head, flicking water about as she did so. “The only reason not to help people is if you can't. And you should be sure that you really can’t, not just that it might be hard. Anyway, I know the Echo doesn’t work like that, probably. That's why it's stupid.”

---