Dec 14, 2024
speaking of au ra lore I've been updating and refreshing my steppe card including adding some colorful portraits!! if you want to learn more about the azim steppe and some of the tribes as I see it check out this linky
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speaking of au ra lore I've been updating and refreshing my steppe card including adding some colorful portraits!! if you want to learn more about the azim steppe and some of the tribes as I see it check out this linky
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... - Day Five: Reunion
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
This work continues the Fluffuary 2026 challenge on Tumblr and Ao3. Today's work features the topic: Reunion.
The story is also below the cut if you don't feel like accessing Ao3.
20
What the fuck, Ringo.
He could say the same to me, and I won't deny that, but still ... hopefully it doesn't bite him too hard in the ass, given he's got a family, and all.
So, the Pearl is growing, I guess, which means they need more space to put everybody in, which means they had to relocate to a larger building, which means a great big shuffle to get everything moved to a bigger building. You never realize how heavy a couple tonzes of dirt actually is until you watch people try to move planter boxes about.
Coincidentally, I managed to scrape together enough gil from odd jobs and such to move my stuff into an apartment right near the stables Baby's staying at. I still made a point of scooping up one of the company rooms in the new place, but it's on the small side, more of an office you could maybe live out of rather than a proper apartment. Given the dimensions I think it was meant to be a broom closet, to be honest, but it's mine and I've never needed a lot of space.
Baby's doing better, by the by. I've not been writing, with everything going on, but yeah. He got over the bird sniffles without incident, and now he's actually big enough to train for riding, even flying. Right now he can only carry lalafell about, but a year or so and he'll be full-grown. That's not a lot of time to learn everything he ought, and being that I'm not an expert, I'll leave it to the experts.
My cycle came and went, with bad decisions as usual. Probably should just play like I'm deathly ill, bar myself in my room until it passes, but that never seems like a good idea in the moment.
Did you know, there's a word for the kind of magic we do? "Hemomancy," magic relating to the blood. One of the more common uses is to just do what we do, burn it to refill a dwindling wellspring of aether. From what I've heard, it's really common among blackbloods, too - being a dark knight is more about will and martial might than a mastery of magic. It's not impossible for an archmage to don full plate - it's just not terribly likely.
I lured out my stalker, finally. Quiet little thing, for a mandragora - it pretty much takes the fear of death to elicit a cry from it. I think of it as a 'him,' but I doubt seedkin think of gender the same way we do. They've got a language, all squeaks and gestures, nothing I could begin to emulate, but if I listen, I can understand.
Which is disorienting as fuck, when the person I'm talking with isn't even talking.
Cotota was really excited that I could understand what she wrote and what she meant, when she talked all in gestures. It feels shallow, somehow - I still don't know what the gestures actually mean, and I couldn't replicate them if I tried, but when she 'speaks,' if I listen, I can understand. It apparently extends to text, she wrote something in a Xaela script, and while she was writing it, I heard the words as though she were speaking them. She wasn't, though, is the thing - Cotota was Qestir, and they don't talk.
I guess they've got this idea that words are lies, which is only half-right, in my opinion. You can pick out the truth of a person by listening to how they say things as much as what they're saying. Only a fool listens only with their ears - there's more truth in how words are spoken than in what's really said.
Looking back, I remember that Au Ra fellow I met at the Bountiful Chest. He was so angry - he felt the Echo was a really invasive gift, the sort of thing that should be exterminated. He's not wholly wrong, is the thing - without the degree of control I've had to develop ... it's indisputable fact that the Echo does simply erase many of the barriers folk put up between one another. The thing is - those barriers exist for a reason. Many reasons.
No one should know how it feels to die until they've done it - and I do.
Thanks, Hydaelyn. I appreciate your "gift."
Mentioned: @gigantpole ‘s apartment, @blue-berry-lizard and @themidnightpearl
I think these two would be very good (girl)friends :)
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he noticed
pt. 6 (technically 7 or maybe 8 but you know what who cares)
22
"Use an axe," with an unaspected crystal. The meaning's obvious, and in testing, I can move aether back and forth. It takes all my focus to sense it, at least, in the amounts that I actually feel safe moving about in my weakened state, but I wonder if that is something I actually can work on.
Barring a blessing from the gods themselves, there's no real way to expand upon how much aether my body's capable of containing at once, but even the Padjal use tools in their work. Foci make it easier - and therefore more efficient - to work magic. To a limited extent, every calculation inked in conductive metal is a focus. Likewise, the blade is an extension of the body, for the purposes of the Arts.
It's not like I don't already 'cheat' the cost of some of my abilities, storing up the aether used beforehand. That's how summoning my weapon works - the entire cost is in shaping it to my will, the aether is tied up in complex magic to my soul crystal, so I need never go unarmed.
Likewise, when I was first reading up on carbuncles, the cost seemed prohibitive, but I found that scratching a few extra lines into the calculation would let me store the aether in the gemstone used as a focus, bringing the price down to what I could manage in a single bloodletting. As an added benefit, I could pretty much endlessly reuse the same aether, provided the construct didn't take too much damage. My assessor called the solution 'creative,' though I'm beginning to realize that, in matters aetheric at least, 'creative' isn't always a positive trait.
I started being able to sense the power in the world around me when I finally learned to hear my dark side more clearly. Maybe the skills are related - and if so, it seems entirely likely that I can train a greater sensitivity to magic, just as I learned to perceive the darkness in my own soul.
I read that previous entry again, with a clearer head. A part of me is afraid that it's true - but the thing about being a jack of all trades is that you have a variety of talents available to use. At any given moment, there's something worthwhile that I can put my talents toward. No, I'll probably never be the best archer to have ever shot a bow, but I'm decent. No, I'll never become a Dragoon - I don't want to be, not anymore - but the traits I developed to become a lancer did carry over into becoming a blackblood.
A protector needs strength, endurance, and no small amount of courage, after all. I also have faster reflexes than most who'd put themselves between a blow and an ally - for what it's worth. The point is, every little trick I've picked up along the way, it's all useful, because - if for no other reason - the best fighter, the best caster, the best fucking cook in the world - none of them can be everywhere at once.
The trick is in knowing what is needed in the moment, and using whatever tricks will be useful in a given situation.
I only fear that, all too soon, everyone will need more of everything than actually exists.
A Note
Tucked into the journal, folded in half, and written in Cotota’s handwriting:
How do you chop down a tree?
You use an axe.
P.S. Thank you.