👉📝 Fingers-in-my-word-doc Friday 📝👈
Shout out to @payphoneangel for the tag! Get your fingers out of my doc!! I don't know how you knew this, but hands are a biiiiig part of my current WIP (draft of chapter 9 of Nights aren't so bad with you)
Rules: In honor of Friday, gimme a line from your latest WIP or project that involves hands. (Search-find hand, hands, fingers, fingerpad, nails, wrist, palm, thumb, heel, lifelines etc)
Tagging @wisecrackingeric-2 @hamartia-grander @courtofparrots @mooseonahunt @cruisingheightswithdragons and anyone else who wants to play! (please tag me so I can see your wips <3 if you do!)
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WIP Whenever
Been ages since I've had writing to share, so I'm dumping a bunch at once!
Tagging @thevikingwoman @roguelioness @allaganexarch @impossible-rat-babies @galadae @hylfystt @lilas @coldshrugs @bearlytolerant and anyone else who would like to. I'd love to see what you're working on! 💖
~ 1000 words from an endless FFXIV Wolmeric fic I'm working on, specifically a re-working of the dinner date scene in Heavensward.
“Forgive me if this is strange to say,” Aymeric continues, reaching for the decanter and finishes filling his glass. “But I would rather you come as you are, not what you think you should be.”
She pauses. “What do you mean?”
“The dress you spoke of. Frankly, I do not care what you see fit to dress yourself in, nor how closely you choose to follow Ishgardian customs. It would make my heart heavy indeed to see you forgo the very essence of yourself and trade it for traditions that are not your own. I would not argue we besmirch custom and culture wholly and throw them to the wolves, but rather I do not believe their sanctity should go unquestioned. One must take part in tradition out of choice, not obligation. Traditions are precious and deserve to be celebrated, but to embrace them blindly does not equate respect in my eyes. There will always be those for whom tradition fails, and those who tradition forgot.”
He exhales a long breath and lays a hand on the table near his glass. “Perhaps you count yourself among them, more at home amongst the good people of the Brume then the lords and ladies of the High Houses. I can lay no blame at your feet for preferring the Forgotten Knight to the Pillars when some here see your very existence as an affront to the fantasy they deem a civilized society. Regardless, you have notoriety and grand stories of your accomplishments precede you. To some, you are as much a fixture of this era of restoration as the House of Lords and the House of Commons, or the efforts of the good overseers and caretakers of the Firmament. But as wont as the people are to place the Warrior of the Light upon a pedestal, so too are they to forget there is a very real woman at the heart of those tales. I shall not. You cannot be anything other than yourself, and I will not ask it of you.”
She raises her head and meets his eyes, her heart throbbing in her chest. Gods, why must he be like this? What has she done to deserve a friendship like his?
“Perhaps it is something we share, then,” she suggests, a quiet smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
He blinks, startled, and chortles to cover his surprise. “We do?” he asks.
“Aymeric, consider what you have accomplished. My hand may have brought an end to Nidhogg’s wrath, but it is you who had the conviction to pull Ishgard out of this war. Break down the walls this country encased itself in for centuries. Bring an end to the cycle—”
“It was not I who should be accredited with such deeds, but rather men and women far greater than myself. Lord Haurchefant and Estinien and Ysayle, to say nothing of yourself. I can still see you there on the Steps of Faith, striding fearlessly towards the wyrm. It is not a moment I will soon forget.”
“You place too much importance on it—”
“You think I say that as a commander commending his greatest general for feats in battle. It is not so rote as that. Ishgard held its breath that day and you—”
She exhales sharply. “Would you let me finish?”
He bows his head. “Of course,” he says, unable to hide his smile. “Consider me suitably chastised.”
Aureia pauses, twisting her hands together beneath the table. What can she say to get her point across? Whenever she pushes the importance of his political maneuvers, he seems keen on derailing the point to praise her actions in combat. Perhaps that is the soldier in him or the rhetoric of Halone, though in Ishgard, they are often one and the same. The fast and dazzling heroism of victory in battle will always trump the slow, tedious work of reform.
She turns her head, her gaze wandering the dining room as she gives herself time to think. Lights dance on the opposite wall, drawing her eye to the hearth and its crackling flames. A set of portraits hang above the mantlepiece, depicting a wise Elezen noble and his wife. Grey-haired, strong features, kind eyes… These must be his adoptive parents. The former viscount and viscountess. By all accounts they loved him dearly, placing no blame on him for his accident of birth.
He has spoken little of them. Considering her difficulties with her own family, she would never want to press the matter. But she can’t help to wonder how much of him came from them. He may have called Thordan Father in those final days, but his true father—the man who raised him—is remembered here, his memory hanging proudly upon the wall.
If there is anything she knows all too well, it is that family is a very different thing from blood.
“When the whole nation looks to you, what do they see?” Aureia says finally. “On one hand, the commander who did not come from noble stock. The bastard who stood in the face of bloody tradition and sought another path. The reckless fool who defies century of tradition. On the other, the viscount who has nothing but love for his country. A noble man and a man of righteous faith, for whom there is no sacrifice too great if it means bringing Ishgard to the dawn of a new day. Aymeric, you are as much an enigma to your nation as I am. If they forget the Warrior of Light is a living, breathing person with blood in her veins, then so it is true for the Lord Commander. You are an ideal to them, at once a traditionalist to be trusted and a maverick to be praised. A visionary.”
She takes a breath and forges ahead. “But the problem with ideals is that they are just that. Ideals. The work ahead of you will be longer and more grueling than fighting any dragon. My duty is done the moment my enemy is felled, but yours is just beginning. There will come a time when your people will see you not as the ideal they believe, but the man you are. And, in my experience, people do not like to see their fantasies broken.”
His gaze passes over her, blue eyes piercing and stern. For a moment, she wonders whether she has upset him, but then his expression breaks into a blinding smile. “Eloquently put,” he says, running a thumb across the stem of his glass. “Are you certain you are not fit for public speaking?”
She rolls her eyes. “Fuck, no.”
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