HOME | DD

Description
I remember it felt like I was underwater. I don’t know if I was sitting or laying, in fact I had barely any awareness of my body at all. I was looking up, and night was approaching. Maybe it was the blue of the sky and the desert’s rhythmic breathing that made me think I was at the bottom of a deep and swift running river. There were hazy blue-white stars above my head, and they waved and glowed in such a way that I was positive I was looking up at them through swiftly flowing water, even though I know now that they were only jasmine blossoms swaying in a warm breeze. Even their scent seemed to feel like a liquid, and as sweet as it was, I felt like it had to be filling my lungs and drowning me. As if I’d been so desperate to quench my thirst that I had inhaled instead of drinking. I felt like I was in my last moments, like I would sink and dissolve into the water as it dissolved me from the inside out.

I should have been panicking, trying to swim towards the stars, coughing the deceptively sweet water from my lungs. But all I could think of was how I didn’t want to die swallowed by the deafening, heavy silence of rushing water, so heavy and oppressive that it might as well have been grave dirt. How I had no one to mourn for me, how alone I was. So I began to mourn for myself. Even with my lungs full of water. The voice rose strongly in my throat, as if I could force my whole being out through it, exhale my soul out of this dark river underneath a blurred sky. I couldn’t hear myself, but Alain told me I was singing, with such clarity and passion and pain in my voice that time stood still for a moment. As if I’d made the rest of the world go silent in my desire to not be silent.

The Hecatonchieres had hit me across the face with a spiked club, just moments after Alain told me to take point because he wanted to go backtrack into one of the tunnels to look for a treasure coffer. After the initial impact, I didn’t wake up for days, the left side of my face swollen corpse green and bruise purple, my body burning. That old memory, that time staring up at fragrant stars from under a blanket of swift, dusk-blue water, was just the last lingering wisp of fog from the fever dream of an overheated brain. They told me that my starting to sing on that warm evening was the first time I regained consciousness after the accident. When they had ensconced me in a hospital courtyard for a bit of fresh air at Alain‘s behest. Before he and the chirurgeons told me how the dirty, rusted metal spikes that nearly pulverized my left eye had caused a horrible infection. I was lucky to be alive, they said, of course… That’s always what they say. As if to go on existing is always fortunate. As if the endurance of a single Hyur’s life is a miracle when life persists doggedly in every corner of this world, in every mote of aether and every leaf, insect and grain of sand.

I remember he came into vision once I offered up my own funeral dirge to the sky above the water. I wouldn’t have thought it was him at all, as he looked like just another celestial phantom, that cloud-colored hair of his framing his face like an ice halo around a winter moon. But I knew it had to be him because he squeezed my hand… A hand I thought had long since dissolved into so much river sediment. Slowly the water began to drain away and I began to breathe in earnest again, as if every note I sang was forcing another drop from my lungs thanks to him.

I made a full recovery. All I was left with was a slim, fashionable scar, one that I can, and have, easily turned into a visual aid for a heroic story to earn my way into someone‘s bed. That imaginary near drowning in a fever dream was enough gravity and gloom for me… After that I didn’t want to dwell on what had happened. But Alain did. Paladin hopeful that he was, he felt as if he had committed the ultimate taboo by allowing me to come to harm. Especially since we’d been nigh inseparable ever since I’d arrived as a lone castoff in Ul’Dah some years earlier, struggling with an old Miqo‘te shortbow and playing an accordion on streetcorners. He befriended and protected me as I learned the adventurer’s trade.

After hearing such a heartfelt description, no doubt most people would think we were in love. But I can honestly say not… I was no more in love with him than a person permanently changed by the beauty of a forest vista is in love with a majestic tree or a graceful falcon perched in it. In my heart I think I knew he didn’t love me either, that he only began to respond to my advances out of guilt, as a favor to a friend betrayed. He was taller, heavier and stronger than I was… I tell myself that he could have said no or pushed me away at any time, and I was the one playing the subordinate role anyway, but physical domination isn’t the only way to extort something from someone. A traumatic memory can be wielded as menacingly as a fist or a knife.

And it was with that metaphorical weapon that I cut the ties of our friendship in the name of lust. It only took a few days for him to grow distant from me. I would see him leaving town for dungeon adventures with people I’d never seen before, he acted like he didn’t know me when I waved to him in the street, and I would see him turn and walk the other way when he caught sight of me. After a handful of such incidents, I moved to Gridania without a word, and gave up on my archery training for years, until I met Reonora, who so kindly steered me back to the adventurer’s path.

I suppose I had hopes that he would come and find me, all would be forgiven, and we would be able to shake hands and simply go back to being comrades-in-arms, but he never did. And though Reo’s friendship and that of others like Blade and Rhoda have begun to match his in intensity, his memory remains a painful one… One that makes me think I no longer deserve friendship at all. Setting foot in Ul’Dah still fills me with shame to this day.

Description
I remember it felt like I was underwater. I don’t know if I was sitting or laying, in fact I had barely any awareness of my body at all. I was looking up, and night was approaching. Maybe it was the blue of the sky and the desert’s rhythmic breathing that made me think I was at the bottom of a deep and swift running river. There were hazy blue-white stars above my head, and they waved and glowed in such a way that I was positive I was looking up at them through swiftly flowing water, even though I know now that they were only jasmine blossoms swaying in a warm breeze. Even their scent seemed to feel like a liquid, and as sweet as it was, I felt like it had to be filling my lungs and drowning me. As if I’d been so desperate to quench my thirst that I had inhaled instead of drinking. I felt like I was in my last moments, like I would sink and dissolve into the water as it dissolved me from the inside out.

I should have been panicking, trying to swim towards the stars, coughing the deceptively sweet water from my lungs. But all I could think of was how I didn’t want to die swallowed by the deafening, heavy silence of rushing water, so heavy and oppressive that it might as well have been grave dirt. How I had no one to mourn for me, how alone I was. So I began to mourn for myself. Even with my lungs full of water. The voice rose strongly in my throat, as if I could force my whole being out through it, exhale my soul out of this dark river underneath a blurred sky. I couldn’t hear myself, but Alain told me I was singing, with such clarity and passion and pain in my voice that time stood still for a moment. As if I’d made the rest of the world go silent in my desire to not be silent.

The Hecatonchieres had hit me across the face with a spiked club, just moments after Alain told me to take point because he wanted to go backtrack into one of the tunnels to look for a treasure coffer. After the initial impact, I didn’t wake up for days, the left side of my face swollen corpse green and bruise purple, my body burning. That old memory, that time staring up at fragrant stars from under a blanket of swift, dusk-blue water, was just the last lingering wisp of fog from the fever dream of an overheated brain. They told me that my starting to sing on that warm evening was the first time I regained consciousness after the accident. When they had ensconced me in a hospital courtyard for a bit of fresh air at Alain‘s behest. Before he and the chirurgeons told me how the dirty, rusted metal spikes that nearly pulverized my left eye had caused a horrible infection. I was lucky to be alive, they said, of course… That’s always what they say. As if to go on existing is always fortunate. As if the endurance of a single Hyur’s life is a miracle when life persists doggedly in every corner of this world, in every mote of aether and every leaf, insect and grain of sand.

I remember he came into vision once I offered up my own funeral dirge to the sky above the water. I wouldn’t have thought it was him at all, as he looked like just another celestial phantom, that cloud-colored hair of his framing his face like an ice halo around a winter moon. But I knew it had to be him because he squeezed my hand… A hand I thought had long since dissolved into so much river sediment. Slowly the water began to drain away and I began to breathe in earnest again, as if every note I sang was forcing another drop from my lungs thanks to him.

I made a full recovery. All I was left with was a slim, fashionable scar, one that I can, and have, easily turned into a visual aid for a heroic story to earn my way into someone‘s bed. That imaginary near drowning in a fever dream was enough gravity and gloom for me… After that I didn’t want to dwell on what had happened. But Alain did. Paladin hopeful that he was, he felt as if he had committed the ultimate taboo by allowing me to come to harm. Especially since we’d been nigh inseparable ever since I’d arrived as a lone castoff in Ul’Dah some years earlier, struggling with an old Miqo‘te shortbow and playing an accordion on streetcorners. He befriended and protected me as I learned the adventurer’s trade.

After hearing such a heartfelt description, no doubt most people would think we were in love. But I can honestly say not… I was no more in love with him than a person permanently changed by the beauty of a forest vista is in love with a majestic tree or a graceful falcon perched in it. In my heart I think I knew he didn’t love me either, that he only began to respond to my advances out of guilt, as a favor to a friend betrayed. He was taller, heavier and stronger than I was… I tell myself that he could have said no or pushed me away at any time, and I was the one playing the subordinate role anyway, but physical domination isn’t the only way to extort something from someone. A traumatic memory can be wielded as menacingly as a fist or a knife.

And it was with that metaphorical weapon that I cut the ties of our friendship in the name of lust. It only took a few days for him to grow distant from me. I would see him leaving town for dungeon adventures with people I’d never seen before, he acted like he didn’t know me when I waved to him in the street, and I would see him turn and walk the other way when he caught sight of me. After a handful of such incidents, I moved to Gridania without a word, and gave up on my archery training for years, until I met Reonora, who so kindly steered me back to the adventurer’s path.

I suppose I had hopes that he would come and find me, all would be forgiven, and we would be able to shake hands and simply go back to being comrades-in-arms, but he never did. And though Reo’s friendship and that of others like Blade and Rhoda have begun to match his in intensity, his memory remains a painful one… One that makes me think I no longer deserve friendship at all. Setting foot in Ul’Dah still fills me with shame to this day.