#ascilia

silly little author's note (more like an essay)…

this has been a wip for too long! it's free! i did it!

He knelt for a full bell, head hanging, at the Mark of Azeyma. His knuckles ached under his gloves from where he had punched the stone in his frustration.

Minfilia was gone. To where he could not follow. To do what he could not, and save an entire world.

He was proud. He was angry. He was glad she had found and embraced her destiny. He grieved because he could not follow to protect her. He held onto the thin hope she offered of someday returning. He despaired because such promises were never guaranteed.

The heat of the day was giving way to a rising wind. This close to the Shroud, sudden rainstorms were not unusual in this part of Thanalan as they were further south.

Thancred forced himself to his feet, feeling stiff. He shouldered the wealth of crystals secured from the Amalj’aa and headed to Drybone, to drop them off at the garrison there.

The porter offered him a chocobo to the city, to catch an airship or even a side-along teleport back to Mor Dhona, but he hesitated. There was something he ought to do first.

The rain pattered, soaked up by the dusty ground, as Thancred wound his way to a certain stone in the lichyard. He remembered hearing about the move, feeling ambivalent about it. He almost welcomed it, strangely, as water dripped from the leaves of the spindly trees and bushes tended by the priests, the scent of the wet graves familiar.

Now that he was here he didn’t know what else to say to Warburton, except “I’m sorry.”

The stars shining over Amh Araeng made him smile. His next breath caused him to bite back a curse, as a slightly wrong shift in position sent another sharp pain through his side.

Perhaps he should have let a comrade take the lead as they searched through the Well for the Lightwarden, after his battle with Ran’jit.

That fight had prevented Thancred from seeing Minfilia one last time. Yet he was oddly all right with that still, the calm that had found him in those moments he hovered on the brink of death remaining even after his comrades’ healing.

After gazing upon his girl’s new hair and eyes and realizing what that had to mean, grief and relief mingling; not at war, but hand in hand. It was odd, but he wasn’t about to question it.

As they wearily made their way back to Twine, the clouds rolled in, the weather no longer stopped from reaching the ground by the Everlasting Light. They barely reached the town when the heavens opened up, rain falling on the parched sands.

Thancred paused just inside the gate as the deluge fell, lifting his face. The scent of the earth bloomed around him, familiar, comfortable; almost like—

Home.

He turned to look at the Floodwall, obscured by the dark and the rainfall, its shadow still looming, occasionally glinting and reflecting a random light.

“Of all the places you could have stopped it,” he murmured fondly.

“Thancred!” Ryne called from the porch of the little inn.

He shook himself from his reverie and joined her. “Sorry,” he said, lifting his hand to give her a head pat.

“Ah, no, you’re dripping wet!” she scolded while ducking away and giggling, shaking off a bit of water that landed on her own sleeve.

He shrugged and gave her a smile as he took off his soaked coat. “Sometimes one simply needs to stand in the rain.”

She shook her head. “Well, we can’t have you catching a cold on top of everything else,” she said. She’d grown so much more assertive these last few moons. “Besides,” she hesitated and swallowed, then looked up. “Think we have time to talk now?” She asked quietly.

“Past time we did,” he replied, letting her take his hand to lead him inside.

He stood at the marker in the lichyard again. The droplets pattering through the leaves slowed to a drip as the rain tapered off. The clouds rolled their way south, the forest-born storm losing strength as it crossed the arid landscape.

F’lhaminn had told him about the cat’s eye.

“Funny how they’d not found it before,” he murmured, smiling. “A last trick, mayhap?”

As the scent of home filled his nose and the sun broke through the remaining cloud cover, there was only one thing Thancred could think he had left to say.