#I also miss how vauthry and ran’jit talked

[impossible-rat-babies]

maybe it’s just 6am talking, but I’m trying to puzzle out in my head why ShB still grabs me so much compared to DT when they both have themes that are adjacent and are interesting to me

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #29: Names

Prompt: free write (identity) | Master Post | On AO3

WARNING: Spoilers for throughout Shadowbringers MSQ!

She wondered, sometimes, if her parents had had another name for her, one carefully considered and picked. Would she have been named after a relative? A grandmother, perhaps, or a great-aunt or even a close family friend. Perhaps a name from a story, one that caught her mother’s fancy, or maybe something her father heard in the marketplace. Was it a name they had always called her? Was it a name they had whispered to themselves in the dead of night after the soldiers of Eulmore came for her?

Or, from the moment of her birth, with a tuft of blonde hair on her head and fathomless cerulean blue eyes, had she only ever been Minfilia?

To General Ran’jit and the soldiers of Eulmore, she had only been Minfilia or Oracle of Light or, more simply, Oracle; perhaps, my lady to the nervous new recruits or the respectful veterans. Lady Minfilia, to the servants who came to her luxurious prison deep beneath the City of Final Pleasures with food or fresh laundry or a set of books (approved, and censored as necessary, by Ran’jit, or more likely by one of his lieutenants). Once, when she had been presented to Lord Vauthry when she had been…eight? Perhaps nine summers? She had been addressed as Lady Oracle and oh, she had hated it, the way it oozed off Vauthry’s tongue, condescending and triumphant. Something to call a pretty caged bird.

But it hadn’t been incorrect. She had been a pretty caged bird.

The superfluous titles had mostly fallen away after Thancred had stolen her away from Eulmore and Ran’jit possessive grip. Oracle of Light became, primarily, not a term of address, just a description of who and what she was. Minfilia, though…

That name suddenly acquired a new weight.

To Thancred, and Urianger, and Y’shtola and Alphinaud and Alisaie, Minfilia was someone else, first and foremost. They had known the first Minfilia, the original, the savior from another world who gave up her identity and her life to save Norvrandt from the Flood of Light.

When Ran’jit, and many other residents of Norvrandt, looked at her, they saw a legacy, an unbroken line of girl-children warriors against the sin-eaters, born to fight and die and do it all over again in the next life. When Thancred looked at her, he saw regrets and missed chances, the shadow of a woman for whom he had wished he had done more. Urianger looks at her with sorrow in his eyes, too, but that doesn’t stop him from speaking kindly to her, to throwing open his library to her voracious appraisal.

It’s not until the Crystal Exarch brings the Warriors of Light of the Source to the First that she began to feel…well, herself.

Rereha accompanies her for their share of the chores the pixies give them in Lydha Lran. After the third bit of ridiculous busywork, she was tired and frustrated, and ready to scream. As one of their pixie ‘hosts’ gave the pair their third task, however, she remembered a story she read in Urianger’s library, from a bookend of Lakeland fables.

“I’ve never done this before,” she said earnestly, making her eyes as big as possible, her expression as innocent. “Could you show us how to do it properly?”

Rereha took her cue from her, the dwar—lalafell smiling and nodding agreement. “Aye,” she said, “we don’t want to cause a mess!”

The pixie had narrowed their eyes at them, before slowly nodding. “Well, all right then,” they said, “you do it like this.”

And after the pixie had shown them how—

“Oh, I’m not sure I understood, I’m so sorry. Could you show us again?”

And again, and again, until the chore had been done. The pixie had sulked as their friends whooped and laughed and lauded her for a trick well played.

As they had gone to rejoin the others, Rereha had said, “That was brilliant, Minfilia!”

She had blushed and shrugged, suddenly shy and unsure once again. “I had read about something similar, once,” she said, “a story about a fox named Reynard outwitting his foes and tricking his friends and laughing the whole time.”

“Well, you might not have been laughing,” said Rereha, grinning, “but that was well done, little fox kit.”

Synnove had been the next to give her a nickname, on the journey back to the Crystarium. The older woman had been patiently answering her questions about the Source, about arcanima, about the carbuncles. How did she make them? What did they eat?

“Technically, anything,” Synnove had laughed. “As aether constructs, they don’t have the digestive system of a beastkin. But they do have preferences, and what I cook for myself, I feed to them, too.” She had gently stroked Galette’s tails, the emerald carbuncle draped around her neck. “Be careful with this one, duckling, she’s got a sweet tooth the size of a mountain and no shame in getting her next fix!”

She had tilted her head curiously at Synnove as they had walked. “Duckling?”

“It’s something I call the baby first year arcanists,” Synnove had said, a rueful smile on her lips. “The braver ones follow the senior assessors and professors around like ducklings, quacking questions and gobbling up the answers like bread crumbs, though their shier classmates trail along, too. If you don’t want to be called that—”

“No!” she said, then almost immediately ducked her head. “No, I don’t mind. I rather like it, actually. I like the idea of being a student.”

Synnove had smiled, warm and gentle. “Well, then, so long as you don’t mind, I’ll keep calling you that.”

Her third nickname had been straightforward. A few days of walking under true sunlight in Il Mheg, Lakeland, and then wandering the Crystarium had turned her pale skin bright red and achy. Dancing Heron had come across her in the market, taken one look at her miserable expression, and hustled her to Heron’s room in the Pendants.

“Oh, poor Sunshine,” the roegadyn had said ruefully, braiding her hair out of the way before helping to slather her face and shoulders in a thick, clear salve called aloe vera. “You aren’t the first person here in the Crystarium to get a sunburn.”

She hadn’t reacted to the name, mostly because like the others, she liked it. It was just about her. She had also had more important things on which to focus. “The sun can burn you?” she’d said, absolutely horrified.

Heron had laughed. “Aye, it can! Too much of a good thing can quickly turn bad, even the sun. Pale skin especially is more susceptible, but even someone as dark as I am needs to be careful; on you, at least, it’s easy to see when the damage occurs! Synnove and Rere have been showing the folks at the Mean how to create sunscreen—that’s a cream you put on your skin that helps prevent a burn from happening at all. In the meantime, we’ll get you a wide-brimmed hat, and you’ll need to keep putting on the aloe vera. That’ll soothe the burn and the itch when the skin starts healing, and keep your skin moisturized, too.”

Oh, the itch had been awful. And the peeling skin had just been…gross.

Alakhai, of course, had eventually given her a nickname, too. The Xaela was quiet, in the way of someone who just didn’t prefer to talk, at least not when it wasn’t necessary. In the shadows of the Rak’tika Greatwood, Alakhai had shown her a few more knife tricks, the proper way to bend and flick her wrists to get her knives to dance.

“Thancred’s good with his blades,” Alakhai had said quietly, demonstrating the movement in slow motion, “and he didn’t do half-bad training you. But he hasn’t been as short as you or I in a long time, günj, and there are just some things he can’t properly demonstrate.”

She heard ‘günj,’ but in her mind, thanks to the Blessing of Light, she knew the word meant princess. It had slipped out, the same way it had with Synnove and Heron, tinged with soft, genuine affection, and again, she decided not to draw attention to it.

Instead, she went through the move Alakhai had just shown her slowly, at first. When Alakhai nodded, she did it again at full speed, her knives driving into the target at neck height on an adult male hume with the right and at kidney height with the left.

Alakhai had grinned, proud and vicious at once. “Very good, günj. Now, again, and again, until it’s as second nature to you as all the rest.”

It had been those nicknames, bestowed on her without a second thought, for a girl they had barely known, that had helped sustain her through Amh Araeng, when the doubts began to eat at her and who she actually was. Those nicknames, that were just for her, that rang in her head when the first Oracle of Light, the first Minfilia, had asked her what her choice was. When she accepted the chance to be her own person.

Red hair and grey eyes. A surge of power, of Light that was gentle and warm. A purpose, and the determination to carry it out.

Thancred, after they had vanquished the Lightwarden of Amh Araeng, had taken her aside privately and said, “There are no words to express the depths of my sorrow for how I’ve treated you these last years. I will do better. I hope one day you can forgive me, but know that you don’t have to. Not know, not ever. That’s my burden to bear.”

She had thought he had hated her for so long, but he had been sincere. She knew she could trust him, and the forgiveness…the forgiveness would come one day.

After all, he had given her a name.

And as Ryne well knew, names were precious things indeed.