Thubyrgeim regards the Bellworks Manufacturing Company's offices with curiosity.
She keeps track of all her former students to the best of her abilities, but Hyrtwyda Eyhafrynwyn had been an odd one even as far as Arcanists are concerned (which is saying something). Somehow, she'd expected her to end up somewhere...stranger.
This is just a building. Like any other here in Ul'dah. More upstanding than many, in fact - she's fairly sure she passed by five brothels on the way here, which would be excessive by Limsan standards. Everything's bigger in Ul'dah except the people, it seems.
She shifts the crate in her arms as she reaches the front door, shifting it to press uncomfortably into her side as she turns the handle and does an awkward crate-carrying-shuffle through the doorway.
The interior is...messy. The grandfather clock behind the front counter is chipped and half-broken, and there's marks on the carpets that clearly show where furniture had previously been, with each piece being in a slightly different place now. As if everything in the building had been shuffled around in some odd game.
"Ah...hello." The receptionist behind the counter, at least, doesn't seem bothered by the state of things. In fact, he doesn't seem particularly bothered by anything. The lalafell man simply turns a page of his book. She can't make out the full title, just On The Esoterek Practises of Vo--; the rest is covered by his hand.
"Help you?" He asks, gruffly, not looking up.
"Ah, yes. I'm looking for Hyrtwyda Eyhafrynwyn? I believe she heads your arcanotechnology department here?" Thubyrgeim shifts the crate in her arms and offers a polite smile to the man.
"Wyda? Probably in her loft. Through the door, up to the top floor."
She blanches.
A loft.
This crate suddenly feels a lot heavier.
He finally looks up from his book, then to the crate she's carrying. He hmphs to himself. "I'll call 'er down."
"Oh, thank the gods."
_ _ _
Wyda had hugged her. Of course she had. As a mercy, she'd left the crate on the table while she waited for her former student's arrival, so its contents aren't thrown across the whole of the office as the woman practically tackles her.
"Professor!" She sounds delighted. She looks...happy. There's a brightness in her eye that had once only been there in the deepest parts of her research. She's gained a little weight, and...by the gods, she doesn't have any cleavage showing. Thubyrgeim might faint. "'Tis wonderful to see you."
Thubyrgeim finds herself smiling right back, inviting Wyda to join her on the fainting couch in the cubby area near to the stairs. "It's good to see you as well. It's far too infrequent that I get to visit my old students - especially the ones who travelled so far away."
Wyda rolls her eye dramatically as she sits down. "You know that I live in Limsa, aye? You didn't need to come all the way out here. I have a house."
Thubyrgeim did not, in fact, know that. "...I did not. Your forwarding address was listed here."
Wyda's face falls. "Ah." Ah. Expecting an Arcanist to remember to update their forwarding address with their former guild when they move was Thubyrgeim's first mistake, when she thinks about it now. "...I might've forgotten to update my address. Sorry."
Thubyrgeim can't help but laugh, burying her head in her hands. "I shouldn't be surprised. We arcanists are rarely...the most present-minded for things beyond stratagems and research."
A tilt of her head; a concession without a thousand words to go with it. Times really have changed.
"Honestly, I think this trip out here will do me good. Some late summer Thanalan sun will help my pallor, and there's a conference being run by the Thaumaturges tomorrow which I plan to attend."
"You got tickets to that?" Wyda sounds affronted. "Gods, I'd been trying for weeks."
"Being acting guildmaster has some perks, Wyda. Not many, but it does have them." Thubyrgeim adjusts her glasses, all smugness.
Wyda harrumphs and crosses her arms over her chest, doing her best to pout. It would look more effective were she ten years younger, and were Thubyrgeim less aware of just how much trouble the woman had been during her time at the Guild.
In all honesty, the fact that she's able to be here, warm and friendly, is something that she had held doubts about. The accusations of smuggling, the open secret of her habits of providing unlicensed medical aid. Strangeness was accepted in the Arcanist's Guild. Criminality...less so. The fact that she had made it through to her graduation, to hold a doctorate and to be a proud alumnus of the guild, is something that Thubyrgeim had truly found herself doubting at times.
Sometimes she still questions if they had made the right choices.
But seeing her here, head of a department, happy and hale, she can't bring herself to doubt those choices in this moment.
"P'vytola sends her love, before I forget to share that with you, though that is not the reason I am here." Thubyrgeim clears her throat, leaning forwards to pull the crate towards herself. "...The case of the Fraefroea has been closed for some time, and the vault of Mealvaan's Gate can only hold so much evidence. Given Octavian Hostis' recent death, it--"
Wyda drops something. Which is impressive, considering Thubyrgeim hadn't been aware that she'd been holding anything to begin with. "He's dead?"
Oh. "...Did no one tell you? I had thought that..."
Wyda shakes her head. Her eye is wide. Her smile has faded.
"He vanished from Alliance custody some weeks ago, and his body was found on the coast of La Noscea two days later, run through with a spear of some kind. I had assumed someone would have informed you, given your history with him. It... We are certain it is him. No trickery or fakes. He is certainly dead."
Wyda wraps her arms around Thubyrgeim without a word, pressing herself close. "...Thank you."
Oh. She's...not entirely sure how to manage emotions like this. She offers a few pats on Wyda's back, reassuring. "It's over. He can't harm you any further."
When Wyda pulls back from the hug, she's sniffling, and won't quite meet Thubyrgeim's eyes, but there's a new smile at the corners of her mouth. Something different.
"So, ah. We. With his death, the case of the Fraefroea was judged to be fully closed, and the evidence cleared to be released. Most of your personal effects were returned to you at the time, but...there's a few things in here that I had thought you might want to have?"
She shifts the box towards Wyda. She watches her take a few calming breaths. Watches the emotions shift and roil across her like uncertain seas. Watches it all.
Watches her open the crate.
She removes things one at a time. A compass (not hers, apparently - some other crew member's). A sectant (actually hers, though it was cheap and she has a better one now). A swagger stick (probably Octavian's, the smug bastard). A musket, unloaded (definitely Octavian's).
A boning knife. She stabs the blade into the table and snaps the handle. She does it calmly, and coldly. No emotion crosses her face; no fury or grief or despair. She simply sees it and destroys it, like stomping on an ant. "I'll pay to get the table fixed," she murmurs, rolling the broken handle between her fingers.
An overcoat ("I actually forgot that I'd been wearing this when I was captured!"). A mathematical compass, distinct from the navigational one (that one is Wyda's).
And finally, the jar.
Wyda pulls it out. "You brought me..."
She stares at it. It stares back.
Thubyrgeim brushes her hair from her face, and tries her best to look positive. This was a stupid idea. "...It... Technically, it belongs to you?"
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"Alright, Hyrtwyda, why don't you start from the beginning?"
E-Sumi-Yan interlinks his fingers, leaning back in his chair and looking for all the world like a prodigy teen rather than the old man Wyda knows him to be.
Unfortunately for him, Wyda actually is a prodigy teen, and she offers a shrug. "Some of the others in the class were being cruel. Normally I ignore them, it's...I'm used to it."
She is. Roegadyn are rare enough in the Shroud, and grey-skinned ones? Gridania has...a bit of a problem with people with grey skin, considering their stance on Keepers and Duskwights. As far as her classmates are concerned, she's just an extension of that. It's...fine. She's used to it. She ignores it.
"So what was different today?" he asks, and she tries not to lash out at the fact that he doesn't immediately ask who was being cruel to her, or what they were saying. He doesn't even seem surprised, the arse. So many years of looking after children and he's just accepted that they can be cruel. He doesn't step forwards to do anything about it.
"They were being mean to another girl. A miqo'te, with pink hair, passing through Westshore Pier. Jeering her. Calling her cruel names and treating her as lesser just because she's not training at the guild." Wyda sticks to the facts. Focuses on them, instead of her bloodied knuckles and broken-and-mended nose. "I didn't like that. I told them to stop."
By the time the conjurers had reached her to set her nose, her split knuckles and split lip had already healed. If she was more aware of herself - if the teachers and conjurers had been paying attention to her as more than the girl who got in a fight, they'd have noted how surprising that was. Noted how, for all the apparent weakness of her aether and for all her struggles in classes, her wounds had healed before a conjurer had even stepped close to her.
But they're not paying attention.
"You told them to stop," E-Sumi-Yan says, chair creaking a little.
"Yes."
"And...Hyrtwyda, if I might ask. How exactly did telling them to stop progress to you hitting Pauldecrain in the groin with an oar?"
Ah.
Right.
That part.
Wyda clears her throat to disguise the almost-laugh. That almost-laugh grows as she opens her mouth to speak, threatening to betray her, and she does her best to keep her voice as level as she possibly can as she replies.
"Well, sir. The oar was nearby. It's a pier, you see."
In the hype-time before Endwalker, I wanted to make a timeline of WoL Wyda’s canon outfits, over the years. From pre-ARR times, all the way to the outfit she’ll be going into Endwalker in.
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Hm. So. Dream, then. If there's one thing unresolved trauma is useful for, it's quickly identifying what is real and what isn't. She always has both, in her dreams.
She's in...her parents' house, again. She runs her fingers through the blanket beneath her. Her mother had to throw this blanket out, years ago, when Wyda had taken it outside, forgotten about it, and left it out in the rain for two days.
The window is open, and she can hear birds chirping through it. Rays of sunlight peek through - if she'd rested for just a few more minutes, they would've hit her face and given her a much ruder...awakening? Is that the right term, when one is in a dream?
She sits up, breathing in the scent of the forest. She smells woodsand - Eyhafryn must have been working.
A waiting room.
Hyrt's voice surprises her, for some reason. It takes her a moment to realise it's not internal - it's coming from the woman herself, across the room from her. leaned against the wall, hidden away in the last remaining shadows of the room like they're her only refuge.
That's what you called it last time you were here. When you were waiting for me.
"What am I waiting for this time?" she asks, feeling the words bleed into the surroundings and muffle into nothingness.
Well, that's the rub, isn't it? Hyrt steps forwards, trying to sidestep the sunlight as best as she can. As it hits her, it does something strange to Wyda's eyes, her appearance shifting and shimmering in a way that feels slightly painful to look at. You're here for our last lesson.
The finality of that catches Wyda by surprise, and she tilts her head in confusion. She stays quiet, though - she usually lets Hyrt do the talking, after all.
What is a soul? she asks.
Wyda blinks at the question. Thinks on it. "A soul is... a force. It's entangled aether, potential energies roiling together in controlled chaos."
A soul is a person, Wyda. It's who we are. More than our memories, more than our upbringing. It's the core of everyone's being. Hyrt grins, purple eye shining in the dark and, just for a moment, catching the sunlight. And like a body, it's the natural inclination of a soul to want to be whole.
The meaning of that particular phrase takes Wyda a little longer. "Like... stitching a person's finger back on, or using healing magic to seal wounds?"
Exactly! Gods, I love how clever we are.
Wyda snorts a laugh at that, standing up and wandering over to her window to peer outwards.
It's not her father outside.
She expected to see Eyhafryn making a table or a spear or perhaps a cupboard, but instead... Max is there, carving something delicate with a whittling knife. Humming a song that Wyda can only hear when she looks at her. The moment she looks back to Hyrt, it stops.
Honestly... I just want to be done with the lesson, and skip to the part where I tell you what's about to happen. No obfuscation, no internal monologues. Hyrt crosses her arms over her chest, looking away and clearing her throat. She seems...pained. The wall between our souls is all-but faded. With the tiniest push... it'll collapse completely.
...
...
"...oh."
...Yeah.
Wyda swallows down whatever she's feeling. She doesn't know how to explain the emotion in her chest right now. Grief, maybe? "W-what does that mean for you? For us?"
Hyrt sighs, the noise echoing through the room in a way Wyda's words aren't. You'll...be whole again.
"That isn't what I asked, and you know it."
I'm proud of you, did you know that? Hyrt says, in lieu of answering. I thought it would take another year or so for us to merge completely, but...you've surprised me. The walls break down faster when the soul recognises itself. And yours recognises me.
Hyrt walks through the sunlight again, peering past Wyda's shoulder to look out of the window. Whatever she sees out there makes her smile, and Wyda glances over her shoulder.
The humming starts again, but this time there's another voice singing over the tune. Victoria is reading a book, a pair of ridiculous sunglasses on her face and a hat covering her head from the harsh sunlight. She doesn't even seem to be aware that she's singing along.
I love you, Wyda. And I thought it would take longer for you to accept me, because... well.
"Because I don't." Wyda speaks the words out loud, and tears her gaze away from the scene outside again. The music stops the moment she looks away again; the unnerving impermanence of dreams.
No. Because you didn't. And that is why I'm proud of you.
Wyda feels a sob burn up through her throat, at the moment she least expected it. It sears through her, tears springing into her eyes as she reaches her hand to her face. "I'm not ready for you to go, Hyrt."
Oh, darling... Hyrt approaches, distorting and shifting ever more as she steps into the sunlight, until she's closed the gap between the two of them to almost nothing. She reaches up, her fingers brushing Wyda's cheeks as she wipes her tears away. Please don't be sad. Come now, this should be a joyous occasion!
Wyda just sniffles in reply. She can't find the words to explain.
I'm coming home, joining with your soul once more. So...I won't really be gone.
Hyrt smiles, so gently.
I'll be a part of you! And that is the best fate I could dream of.
Wyda swallows, and meets Hyrt's eye. She stares, until she feels able to speak. "...I love you."
Aye. You love you, and that is the greatest gift of all.
Wyda rolls her eyes, giggling despite herself. "Don't you twist my words around on me."
Then speak more clearly!
They stand there, in silence, for a while. Wyda isn't sure how long it is. It could be ten minutes, or it could be a bell or two. Time moves strangely in dreams, and she's in no rush to move.
Are you ready?
"...No. But... I don't really get a choice in the matter, do I?"
It's the natural inclination of the soul to want to be whole, she answers, soft and sweet.
"Some day, you'll learn that your clever-sounding answers aren't always as clever as you think they are."
Hyrt brushes her thumb over Wyda's cheek. I'll learn when you do.
Wyda rolls her eyes, laughing to herself. And, after a moment, she leans forwards until her forehead rests against Hyrt’s. "... Okay. I'm ready."
Then close your eyes.
She closes her eyes.
Breathe deep through your nose.
She breathes, slow and deep.
Let the air fill your lungs, then let it pass through your lips. Slower. Slower.
Her breathing slows.
Listen to my voice.
Listen to our heartbeat.
With every breath you grow lighter, and slip further…
Musical notes. Orchestras. Punchcards. She should practise playing the piano soon, she was rusty last time she tried it.
Did she oil the door's hinges? They've been reacting oddly to the autumn weather. She did, good, she remembers, she did it when Max and Victoria were out at the market.
No. Another path.
Not musical notes. Written notes.
What notes has she had recently?
Note to self, notary, a one-note personality.
No.
Notes about that thesis on the arcano-mechanical connection to the divine by that idiot K'arei.
She needs to pester the guild again about the thesis on gaseous or mist-form ceruleum's effect in intensifying and worsening pre-existing respiratory conditions. Its author might think of it as a curiosity but she's interested in seeing their research. It could help.
"Wyda?"
Wrong. Another path.
Notes on her umbral attunement? No. Those are up to date.
Darkness is getting a little intense again. She'll need to deal with that soon.
Somewhere more isolated this time. Passing merchant almost had a coronary when he saw her.
Heart, Hyrt, hart.
Oh, she should put venison on the grocery list, she hasn't had that in a long time.
Might be best to pick that up from the Shroud though.
Her dad's nameday is coming up soon. Could be good to go home for it.
"Wyda!"
A hand clasps her shoulder.
She stares, wide-eyed, at Brave.
Arcanotech. Notes on research. The upgrades to the rotary engines.
Oh.
"...Of course. Sorry."
She rummages through her paperwork, searching for it. She knows she has it here, somewhere. Cluttered. Always cluttered. Never neat when she should be. It should be easy. Everyone else can do it, so why can't she?
Her hands are shaking as she flicks through the papers. Her teeth are itching.
Teeth. Canines. Dog. Lupi. Has Arcian seen her sister since the campaign?
Stop it, you're busy. Focus. Notes.
Teeth. Saw. Eyes. Hostis. Yellowjackets. Wespes.
Teeth. Saw. Riddles. Look in the mirror, see what you saw...
She yanks the notes free of their place half-buried in the pile, handing them to Brave and giving her a harried smile.
"Thanks. And uh...sorry for surprising you earlier. You seemed deep in thought."
Did you know no living being knows exactly how deep the caverns beneath the Shroud reach?
Did you know the Crystal Tower is six thousand and three fulms tall?
Did you know the astrologians of Coerthas rely on calculations that presume the exact location of Dalamud in the sky based on its prior path, despite its fall?
Gods, Carteneau was a fucking waste.
Wyda shrugs. "You know me!" she says, light and jovial. Her grin widens, and she even throws a wink Brave's way.
Knowledge is power.
Money is power.
Time is money.
Time heals all wounds.
No. another path.
Knowledge is power.
Power equals work divided by delta time.
Another path.
Knowledge is power.
Power corrupts.
She leans back, glancing over towards her wall of equations.
