#yotzuya

         If Ysayle was ice than Yotsuyu was fire, and O’ how witches were wont to BURN.

        She was the slow-burning tempest whose flames were stoked by adversity and spite, framed by a halo of smoke that poured from crimson lips to curse the ones who betrayed her. Witch and heretic went hand in hand; never accepted by the people – easier to reject than to question the cruelty that occurred by their own hands and spurred by their ignorance  ( Kami, Twelve or Hydaelyn —— would it have made a difference? )  and yet having the audacity to scream when the cornered animal bit back. ❝Do not fool yourself, Ysayle,❞ her mind spoke the honesty she was too afraid to admit, ❝There was once a time where you would have seen Ishgard crumble. You are not so holy.❞

         ❝Tis better to bend with the wind,” she once claimed, and she could not blame her for the mantra. How many times had Ysayle faced the might of the Holy See and the hatred of dragon-kin and thought to lay down her arms, if only for a moment of rest? But Ishgard was no Garlemald; bereft of a mighty foe until Eorzea’s uprising and free to do as they pleased against those too weak to fight back. Conformity was survival —— and the cruelty? Had Ysayle’s path been as similar, she could not reject the notion she might have developed a similar taste. Fear was power, and power was intoxicating. The men who sacrificed themselves to Saint Shiva might not have feared her might, but she could not deny the pleasure of the support, nor the lack of grief her younger self might have had if her plan had succeeded.

         A younger girl  ( a FOOLISH girl );  one so conditioned to pain she had allowed it to seep inside her and harden like finger of death beneath the brine. Yotsuyu knew this —— Ysayle saw it in her fiendish stare and cat-like smile; in dark eyes that dared her to deny otherwise the facts they both knew so plainly to be true. This world was a horror of death and destruction, wrought by powers neither could hope to stop or control. It would be better to grab at what pleasures were left to consume, no matter how taboo. Yet the difference between them both was that Ysayle had tasted both defeat and victory - dining on death and dismay before allowing herself the chance of redemption with those she now called friends. Yotsuyu —— Tsuyu —— gods, she never had the chance. Regardless of if she had wanted it, she lost her wings before the chance of flight.

         ❝T’would seem you have forgotten the beauty.❞ There was a part of her that knew the words would not reach, but ever the fool she was for trying. Ysayle knew the horror, but she also knew the joy. There was the beauty of home and the peace of her kin; the laughter of her companions and the warmth of travel. These were things Yotsuyu had been denied, but it did not make them any less real. Tsuyu had begun to understand. She wished she could hope that might endure.

          ❝Was one not content once with the sweetness of fruit? Must it all incinerate?❞

send  AMORTENTIA  for what smells my character associates with yours  /  slowly accepting.

i.   smoke.  from pipe,  from incense  ;  it coils around the air like oil over water,  and love bleeds thick and turgid with every passing breath.  there are faint remains of scented oils that were once offered up as offerings,  of sticks of sandalwood held before the cool,  pearled moon.  somewhere her spirit screams kindred,  somewhere she hears the faint trickle of a silver flute. 

ii.   pomegranate.   sadness has never before tasted so very sweet,  and it is from these burgeoning fruits which give way to burgeoned boughs still heavy with sorrow.  this is the fullness of emptiness.  this is the fleshy weight of sweet pulp given life once more.  but such things a fleeting,  and they vanish into the dead of night. 

He isn’t sure, either.

For all he might tell her of kami-given second chances and consciences and forgiveness, he simply doesn’t know if she really will be able to live a regular life. Gosetsu simply isn’t capable of judging the grace of the average Doman that way. He wants to believe that they are nobler and kinder than that, of course he does– he has fought so long and hard for them, it is painful to think otherwise.

Yet, is she not living proof of their capacity for evil? For willful ignorance, for cruelty?

Gosetsu will not pretend to be unbiased. He was there when she awoke on that island beside him, when her doll’s eyes were filled with a curiosity and a thirst for life he recognised in a child. his child, his sweetling fuyuko

He nearly wept in sympathy, in pain, in relief, that even she could learn to want to live again. Gosetsu allowed himself a grandiose thought then, that the kami had shown him this sight, for he was to be the one to nurture that rekindled spark–He was to be the one to show her the other side of life’s coin.

[ poetry starters - accepting ]

Tragedy?

Gosetsu has lived through little in his life that could be described quite so dramatically. No– save for the deaths of his family, and his revered lord, he is sure that the acting viceroy with her geta planted squarely on his cheek is the true tragedy here.

Oh, how she would scowl and hiss for hot brands to be shoved under his nails if she knew that was what he thought of her; but he feels it all the same. What a tragedy, the orphan of the Naeuri is. To have lived quite so terrible a life, to have her ambition be solely to pay them all back with cruelty and pain.

He cannot claim to understand– His parents did not think him lesser than dirt, nor was he married off to someone whose beatings of him were likely to be the least of their offenses, or sold to give his body in sexual submission.

But he knows that those who lived around her had failed this child of Doma, in simply ignoring her pain.

*looks at shoe*