“You’re always so gods damned sure of yourself,” she pouted at him.

The man laughed and drew his miqo’te lover into his arms. “Because I’m always right.”

His self-assuredness was infuriating but also endearing in a way. She turned away from him, pouting even as he held her back against his chest.

“You can be wrong sometimes, you know.”

He laughed and nuzzled his nose against the back of her neck, just beneath her ear. “When am I wrong? Name one time.”

It was almost more infuriating that she couldn’t think of a time he had been wrong.

“Well that doesn’t mean you haven’t, just ‘cause I don’t know of a time. It also doesn’t mean you aren’t wrong now.”

Her tone took on a note of sincerity and concern.

“You aren’t wrong, right?”

He gently rolled her over so he could look into his golden eyes. That third eye of his distracting as it always was. “I swear to you. I am not wrong. We will not get caught. This war can’t last forever.”

It was so easy to believe him. Easier than arguing. He was so certain, so sure of himself that he almost was able to quiet the voice in the back of her head that was reciting a laundry list of every possible way this could go wrong. She shoved that voice down, willing it away and replacing it with his reassurances.

“You really believe that?”

“It’s okay to miss people sometimes.”

The girl’s words played in Kh’iara’s head as she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark. Sentimentality wasn’t her strong suit. When she was a younger woman back I Ala Mhigo she had a lot of feelings.

She felt the passion of resistance. In the before times. When she thought maybe they would be able to quickly throw off the yoke of the Empire. She had gathered together with the other impassioned youths to plan the different ways they would disrupt the soldiers who were now omnipresent in their village.

Passion might have been the best word to describe most of her feelings about things in general.

Even in the dark as she thought about her previous life her face remained unmoving.

She had eventually learned to get rid of her passion, to force it down and make herself a rock and not a reed. To stand firm and not bend to her emotions and whims. But it hadn’t happened immediately. Even after she had been conscripted she still had her passion.

In the beginning she had resisted the military. Her attitude changed in short order, however, when she realized that if she could excel then she could protect her friends who struggled to adjust. Kh’iara threw everything she had into protecting the other Ala Mhigans who didn’t want to be there anymore than she did.

It had worked for a time. When someone else drew the attention of the commanding officers she was there to step in with a distraction – positive or negative – to draw their focus off of her friends. It was passion that had been her downfall.

Laying in her bed she took a few slow, deep breaths. In through her nose and out through her mouth. It was dangerous, this kind of reminiscing. There was a part that she enjoyed, that bittersweet feeling of memory, but she had worked too hard to tamp down on those feelings and lock them away where they wouldn’t weight on her every day. This was a new life in a new nation. She wasn’t the same girl from Ala Mhigo.

It was okay for other people to miss people. For her? It was just a dangerous path she wanted no part of.

“Ew! Gross! You can’t make her eat that!”

“Shut up. She said it would help.”

“That’s a bug! You don’t wanna eat a bug!”

“Mari is never wrong!”

While the other children were gathered around debating the merits of eating a bug, Yachiyo was swimming just outside the boundary that separated their village from the rest of the sea.

Mari’s grandmother was the priestess at the local shrine. The kami had blessed her with visions and wisdom and the ability to help those in need. She guided the rest of the town in matters both spiritual and mundane, working as a healer in addition to her duties at the shrine. Both Mari and her mother worked at the shrine with the elder priestess. While her mother helped with maintaining the shrine and had some healing abilities in her own right, Mari was relegated to the type of work more suited to a ten-year-old – mainly sweeping.

Still, Mari had managed to pick up a few things here and there. The rest of the kids from the village looked up to her. Now and then she would offer remedies or advice for this ailment or that problem. She sold ‘love potions’ to the girls with the hopes that the boys they liked would start to notice them.

Some of the boys drank her teas with the idea that it would make them big and strong.

“Do you think she’ll really eat it?”

“I bet she will. She probably eats worms like her stupid fish friends all the time.”

“Think it’ll really work?”

“Mari said that the bugs will make her, well, you know.”

The children all dissolved into fits of giggles and whispers among themselves.

Yachiyo was… different. She always had been. She got along with the animals that lived around the village moreso than any of the other kids. She had a knack for working with animals. When she was five she trained a small group of tortoises to carry buckets of water from outside the village to a garden she was growing behind her house so she wouldn’t have to carry water.

Mari had promised that eating the legs of a sea spider would make her ‘normal.’ It would make her pretty and everyone would like her.

It didn’t take too long for her to find the bug that Mari had promised her would be there. The sea spider looked almost translucent. When she picked it up its little legs flailed against the air. She held it firmly between her thumb and forefinger as she swam back to the village, the hunter returning triumphant with her prey.

Children gathered around her behind the closest house.

“Eat it!”

“Kami help us she’s really going to do it…”

Yachiyo looked at their eager faces then down to the spider. Being ten and not having any friends was a special kind of torture. She frowned.

Was it really worth killing something to be popular?

The other children waited around her, staring at her and chanting for her to eat the spider. There was no real way to back down at this point. Yachiyo murmured a small prayer to the kami thanking the spider for helping her and apologizing for ending its life then opened her mouth and ate it in one motion.

“Ewwwwwwwwww! She actually did it!”

“She ate a spider!”

“Spider eater! Spider eater!”

“Yachi eats bugs!”

Content note for reproductive coercion below the cut.

Yachiyo had never been to a salon before. At home her mother or another priestess would cut her hair. She wore it long and typically pulled back in a ponytail that was easy to maintain. The surface-dwellers’ concept of haircare was foreign to her.

It was really the baths that drew her in. The girl couldn’t help but squeal excitedly the first time she saw the luxurious baths that were located in a spa in Shirogane. It took her nearly a moon to scrounge up enough coins to be able to afford the services.

Inside the spa it was like stepping into a new world, one of luxury and pampering that she hadn’t even known existed. A soft-spoken woman took her coin and ushered into the back where she was given a towel and instructed to undress.

The sauna wasn’t really her favorite part of the experience. Yachiyo was used to the dark and cold of dwelling far beneath the waves, so the heat of the sauna felt suffocating to her.

After spending half a bell in the heat, she was moved to the salon. The baths were nearby, she could almost see them from where she was, but first she was to get her hair done. The attendant first washed her hair with a shampoo that smelled like a fruit Yachiyo couldn’t quite place then trimmed it. She didn’t want much changed about her hair, but the stylist spoke of split ends and damage to her hair; more words Yachiyo had never really heard. By the time she was having coconut oil and lavender rubbed into her scalp she found herself several ilms of hair shorter.

Finally she was escorted to the baths. Her hair hadn’t yet been dried or styled so that she could truly enjoy the water. The attendant left her in the bath with instructions to soak her hair and slowly work the oil out while enjoying the heat of the water and the relaxing, massaging jets.

No one had warned her just how loud battles were going to be. During her first battle she almost thought she was going to go deaf.

The whir of the magitek weaponry and machines was a constant dull roar in the background, one she still struggled to comprehend. Her unit, as much as they were one, were called the “Wild Beasts” and due to the misfortune of not being born as Garlean citizens they weren’t allowed to learn how to use magitek.

There was near constant yelling. When someone on her team got hit. When they hit the enemy. When they almost got hit. When the commanders were giving orders. Eventually the yelling all blended together into a cacophony if indistinguishable voices.

Bombs exploded.

The sound of walls crumbling and collapsing in the street. Somewhere she thought she could hear crying. Maybe it was her.

For some reason she had thought battles would be more orderly. Two lines of fighters facing off. But all she could think was how loud it was as she tried to make sense of what was going on around her, running more on her survival instinct than any sort of training or discipline.

The sun rose just before the seventh bell.

Yachiyo arose with the first rays of the sun. Her room was sparsely furnished; she had only a cot for a bed and the windows were covered with thick, dark curtains to block most of the light from entering.

She had no blankets so there was no need to tidy her room. Every morning she changed into the only clothing she owned before making her way downstairs.

The tavern had sat dark. The majority of her Company had left on a mission and had not yet returned. She passed the morning staring at the burnt out ashes of the hearth.

Around noon she grew hungry and retreated behind the bar. Someone had made a few trays of rolls prior to leaving. By now they were stale and hard. Sometimes she soaked them in a bit of water to make them a chewable mush, but usually she simply gnawed on them until she could break a piece off.

The afternoon passed equally uneventfully. She talked to a small pearl that she took from her pocket and placed on a table.

When the sun set she made supper. Stew that had also been left behind sat half-congealed in an icebox. She ate it with another roll. Eventually she would have to find other rations, but these had lasted for some time.

After she cleaned up her dishes she retired for the night.

On the 44th day, Rho arrived in the afternoon. Rho seemed surprised to find Yachiyo still there. It didn’t take particularly long to explain what had happened. There was an accident. The boat had gone down. No one was returning.

The cot was scratchy and uncomfortable and had prevented Khi’ara from getting anything resembling a decent night’s sleep. She missed her bed and her room. She missed the familiar smell of her mom cooking breakfast before her dad left for his work in the salt mines. In a way she was almost fortunate that she hadn’t slept all night because it spared her the rude awakening that was imminent for the rest of the ‘recruits.’

“Wake up!” The harsh cry of the commander echoed through the room not moments after the sun had begun to peek over the horizon. Those who did not immediately rise soon found their thin blankets ripped off of them as they were dragged to the floor.

It took no more than 10 minutes before the sleepy group were lined up in front of their cots. Three Garlean commanders walked up and down the row of people. There was a mix of miqo’te and hyur with one or two roegadyn; all were Ala Mhigan.

Khi’ara recognized almost everyone in the room with her. There were several villages dotted throughout the desert that traded with each other. Life was harsh in that area and they were dependent on their neighbors and none of the villages was particularly large, so it was easy to get to know each other. Most were around her age, within a year or two of their 18th nameday.

The closer the commanders got to her, the louder she could feel her heart beating, as if it was going to break through her ribcage.

They had come from village to village, winding their way through the desert. Hers wasn’t the first. They had heard rumors of the soldiers gathering up anyone over 18 and under 30, but there was no time to leave the village or do anything to stop them. At least the children were safe.

The soldiers split them up into groups. Those who were older were sent into workcamps or… well she didn’t want to think about what else may have been done to them. She recognized those whose parents fought in the Resistance. They were the second group, and the Twelve only knew what happened to them.

Then there were the rest of them. Khi’ara hadn’t been old enough or near enough to the fighting to really take part in the Resistance. But they took everyone from her village, anyway.

“Stand up straight. Beasts you may be but you can still stand up and pretend you’re more than that,” one sneered at her as he walked by. With the helmets and armor they all looked the same. Funny. People who called her and her kin beasts when they were the monsters. They were the ones who were indistinguishable from one another.

Her face must have betrayed her thoughts with a whisper of a look or a glimmer in her eye because as the thought filtered through her mind she found herself the focus of one of Garlean soldiers. He grabbed her by her arm with no warning, throwing her down to the ground.

“Pushups,” he barked at her.

The conscripts filed out of the makeshift dorm, leaving her to her trial.

Yachiyo peered at the fish swimming back and forth in the large tank that filled the center of the restaurant. Ethereal fins floated through the water surrounded by brightly colored corals. The auri girl’s cheeks puffed out with her lips pursed together and her eyes wide as she stared at the fish. Her head moved almost unconsciously along with the fish.

Left. Right. More to the right. Left again. Back and forth in slow, rhythmic movements.

They weren’t like the fish she had known back in her village. These were from the shallow waters where the sun still filtered through the water enough for the plants to bloom in bright colors. Their fins had an almost airy quality and their colors were as varied as the flora that made up their home.

A few people in the restaurant had noticed the auri girl standing by the fish tank, but for the most part no one was paying her any mind as she opened and closed her mouth, keeping her cheeks puffed out. As the conversation between the girl and the fish progressed, she placed a sympathetic hand on the glass.

The fish continued to swim back and forth without really seeming to acknowledge her presence.

Suddenly she straightened and gave a determined nod. In an instant there was a splash as she hopped into the fish tank.

Diners and staff scrambled.

“Miss! Miss you can’t be in there!”

An angry roegadyn grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, dragging her out of the water like a misbehaving cat.

“Miss what are you DOING!?” he bellowed, having to bend nearly in half to be at eye level.

Yachiyo simply stared back at him, mute but with her cheeks still puffed out from when she was speaking to the fish. Her silence seemed only to infuriate him, making his face darken in his anger. Other patrons had started to leave the very expensive restaurant, complaining about the antics of the girl. Water pooled at her feet.

“Get out. Get out and do not step FOOT in my restaurant again!”

A pair of bouncers dragged the bedraggled girl out of the restaurant, escorting her fully to the road before they seemed satisfied that she wouldn’t return. A small squeak that escaped her throat was her only response to the entire ordeal.

Once the bouncers turned around she began to sprint towards the nearest pond. Yachiyo fell to her knees with her hands gripping the muddy bank. The ends of her ponytail fell forward to brush against the surface of the water as she opened her mouth, spitting out a mouthful of water and two fish she had smuggled out of the fish tank.

“You have to leave.”

The words stung as she remembered them. There was something final about the sentiment, or maybe it had been the look in her mother’s eyes as she handed Kh’iara a tattered knapsack with a change of clothes and enough food and water to last a week.

It wasn’t her fault, really. She never wanted to fight, but she wasn’t exactly given a choice and Twelve did she have the scars to prove it. She used to do hair in her village. She cut the guys’ hair so it was short enough not to get caught in the machines they used to move those big rocks in the mines, and while they were working she invented braids and twists peppered with wildflowers for the girls waiting at home for the guys’ return.  

But at the end of the day she had to fight. Choice or no choice the truth was still there. She had been on the wrong side of a war she was forced to fight in, and no one back home cared that she didn’t have a choice. Not when there was such blatant evidence of her supposed betrayal.

She hadn’t had a choice but she had SURVIVED. And now survival wasn’t enough.  There were other, more important things that she had to consider.

And so she had to leave.

Leaving might have actually been harder than staying. Knowing just what it was she was leaving behind. Knowing she’d probably never hear from or see any of her family ever again.

But none of them cared about that. Her grief was their victory, and so she hid it. At least she had learned that during her conscription. She wore her indifference like armor, protecting her from the judgments of those in her village who wanted her gone. They couldn’t have known what it was like, what she went through. Who were they to tell her to leave?

Anger burned hot in her as she turned to walk out of her family’s home for the last time, leaving behind everything that mattered to her.

Some art of our characters. @ketsuchikotetsu looking miserable with all of Norah's pets.

Norah pouting about something shitty he’s done or said (probably) (also I fiiiiiinally got the casting top from the 24man!)