#alainaux revient

[worldoshaking]

FFXIVWrite Day 4: Reticent

The bandits were almost upon them. Sidurgu urged Rielle on, but she was already tiring. They were almost to the mouth of the valley when another group of bandits poured into the pass, blocking their escape. 

Sidurgu cursed. ‘Run away, Rielle,’ he said. ‘Hide behind those bushes. I’ll hold them here. I’ll—’ An unwise movement made the pain in his shoulder spike, and he groaned, fighting to stay on his feet.

Then a flash of light illuminated the valley, and the bandits were sent whirling into the air by what seemed to be a furious gust of wind. And yet not a leaf on the trees stirred; not a hair on Rielle’s head moved. 

A laugh boomed through the air, seeming to sound from everywhere and nowhere at once. Sidurgu and Rielle looked up. A figure reclined at ease above them in a comfortable armchair: robes of shimmering green silk swirled in the breeze, and his hair blew out behind him, the colour of jade. Around him whirled a circle of gigantic swords; they wheeled and soared at a gesture of his fingertip. 

A muffled ‘kupo!’ sounded in the background, and then a slightly bedraggled moogle popped his head out of the bags slung over the chair’s back. 

Sidurgu muttered something uncomplimentary about furry little shites, while Rielle came forward and made her best bow. ‘Thank you for the rescue,’ she said. ‘Might we ask your names?’  

The figure smiled lazily. With a flick of his wrist, he dismissed the swords. ‘I am no-one of import. A mere traveller, who happened to be passing.’

‘And the moogle?’ said Sidurgu.

‘I’m Kupopo, kupo!’

‘Kupopokupo?’ said Rielle.

‘Just Kupopo, kupo.’

‘Just so. We are fellow travellers, for so long as our paths lie in the same direction. Is that not so, Kupopo?’

‘I suppose it is,’ said Kupopo dubiously, ‘though, as I was saying, I’m not quite certain which direction we—’

‘And do all mere travellers possess the skills to blow away an entire company of bandits?’ Sidurgu demanded. ‘Or make travel companions of moogles?’ It was quite clear that he thought the latter offense far more inexcusable. ‘I don’t know what those furry menaces are plotting this time, but if you think to aid in their schemes—’

The moogle bristled, his fur fluffing out. ‘That’s quite uncalled for, kupo!’ 

‘Oh, don’t pay any attention to him,’ said Rielle. ‘He’s just grumpy about the bandits. You have fine fur, by the way.’

‘Why, thank you.’ The moogle fluffed up his fur in a pleased fashion, glowing a little from the praise. 

‘To return to the point,’ said Sidurgu, ‘we appreciate the rescue, but should you have evil designs, I’m not letting you go any further.’

The stranger regarded him with benevolent amusement. ‘Evil designs, you say? The stars move and the seasons change, and the waves turn to crystal in their motion. One day, a man shall be called evil, whether he intend it or not.’

‘How did you summon the wind?’ Rielle asked. ‘We couldn’t feel it, though it knocked the bandits away.’

The stranger seemed pleased to be asked. ‘A manipulation of aether, by which the force of one’s will may be rendered reality. An excellent observation; you’d make a fine pictomancer.’ 

‘A picto—what?’ said Sidurgu dubiously. ‘You’re not teaching Rielle more moogle arts. She knows quite enough already.’

The stranger smiled indulgently. ‘Be that as it may, we must be on our way. Kupopo, if you will resume your place. Pleasant travels to you!’

Rielle waved as the chair rose up into the air, and the traveller raised a hand in farewell. As the traveller receded from view, they heard Kupopo’s voice issued from the bags. ‘And which way is that, kupo? As I’ve been saying, the map—’ 

The stranger's laugh filled the expansive sky. 'What are maps to rocks and mountains?'

[worldoshaking]

FFXIVWrite Day 9: Lend an Ear

The day’s bustling was done, and naught left to do but wait. Alainaux had had half a mind not to stay, but he had laboured long to set the fireworks in motion, and he could not deny a certain curiosity to see the results.

It was strange company Alainaux found himself in, but he was certain the party of the second part found it still stranger. Undoubtedly, passersby would think them a odd duo in their ill-matched raiment, neither belonging to Limsa Lominsa or to its port. They didn’t know the half of it.

The Wandering Minstrel was eyeing Alainaux with the peculiar expression the latter had come to expect. ”’Twas good of you to lend the Lominsans your ear,” he said, with an ingenuous smile that Alainaux distrusted. “This will be a Rising to remember.”

Alainaux made him a polite nod. “’Twas the least a stranger like me could do.”

“Do you call yourself a stranger?” said the minstrel, with an odd little laugh. “You have been here before, have you not?”

”Not in such circumstances as would alter that appellation,” said Alainaux. It was no falsehood. Though he had been here a dozen times, he would always be a stranger to this wind-blown city, nor would he have it otherwise.

His meetings with the minstrel through the years had been fortuitous and abrupt, fraught with possibilities that were rather too interesting. ‘Twas certain that the minstrel of the present day did not recollect the past, but all the same he had a nose for momentous happenings, and an unerring instinct for identifying the perpetrator of deeds Alainaux had no wish to claim. The latter had been inclined to flight at first, but he had grown resigned to the frequency of their meetings. The minstrel was as impossible to avoid as the weather, and Alainaux’s apprehensions had been relieved by his evident ignorance of the past.

But the minstrel was looking at him with an alarming familiarity; the product, perhaps, of their contemporary meetings.

“None of us are truly strangers to the Calamity, are we? We carry the memory of it with us in every moment, and it is a memory that unites us. Even those we do not remember—” He paused, with a glance at Alainaux, but Alainaux gave him no encouragement, so the minstrel went on. “This celebration is for the things we do not remember, as much as the things we do.”

“There is small joy in such a celebration,” said Alainaux. He had no desire to prolong the conversation. “People have plenty to be grieving in extant recollection.”

“And yet the destruction of the Calamity compassed so much more.”

“You speak as though you have griefs of your own.”

The minstrel smiled ruefully. ”Would that I did. When I was younger, I was overfond of the sound of my own lyre, and I missed many an opportunity to listen instead. I wish I had paid more mind to the world around me; to so much that is now lost, both stories and songs.” The minstrel gazed out to sea. The sky was beginning to darken; it would be time for the fireworks soon. ”The heroes of that world deserved to be heard; to have a song made of their deeds, that would ring across the world.”

”You would have forgotten,” said Alainaux drily.

The minstrel laughed. ”Likely I would, but I should like to have heard them, all the same. Songs have a way of living on, even when they’re forgotten.”

The minstrel was not so eager now to share his music; he did not often play to crowds, or seek to spread the music that he made. Before Carteneau, he had come to Alainaux with great eagerness, longing to talk and be listened to, to have his songs heard. He had found scant enthusiasm among those he approached; there was quite enough unease about, and no-one had the stomach for his talk of comings and calamities. Alainaux had not been welcoming either, but the minstrel had sought out his company with some tenacity, and he had grown accustomed to his meetings with him. After their first meeting, he had not seemed so eager to press his songs upon Alainaux’s ear; he had found plenty else to talk about, plenty of other diversions in his company.

Likely he had now forgotten the songs he had pressed upon his hearers then.

”Those the songs tell of are not so happily situated,” said Alainaux. ”And this world has its own songs.”

“Indeed,” said the minstrel, ”and its heroes. Wouldn’t you say the Warrior of Light deserves a song of their own?”

“Undoubtedly,” said Alainaux. “But they are not here.”

“A great pity,” said the minstrel, with another odd smile. ”One might say their presence would be fitting.”

Alainaux paid him no mind. Whatever the minstrel might insinuate, he was not the Warrior of Light; he was a traveller who had happened to be passing for some momentous events, circumstances that one of his powers could not well leave be. He was not this world’s hero, by temperament or inclination.

He did not remember Carteneau, though the memories came to him sometimes in flashes: the faces of the others, altered beyond recognition by terror. His own hand slipping from the cliff’s edge, as the rocks exploded around him. The ruin of the world, in a flash of light.

The sound of Hydaelyn’s voice, too late, in a paean of grief that split the sky.

There was a strange irony to his presence here, at this celebration for the dead, this symbol of hope to the living: he was one of those dead. He was not here for hope, or for sorrow. He didn’t know why he was here, why he’d chosen to linger in the city. Only that there was something fitting about it, that he should be here, the only person who could fill in the gaps of the city’s memory with his own jagged shards.

[worldoshaking]

FFXIVWrite Day 16: Third-rate

‘You are an unexpected spectator here, my friend,’ said the Wandering Minstrel, settling into a chair and wiping his brow. ‘But gratifying, of course. And what is your opinion of my latest verse? Oh, a cup of tea. How kind.’ He poured himself a cup. 

Alainaux took a sip of his tea. The steam floated away on the breeze, like the leaves of yesterday, but his chair, reclining a yalm above the ground, was as immobile as the clouds. ’Your verse is trite as always,’ he said. ’It commits the most grievous atrocities of style and form. But its worst flaw is that you crowd too much into it; you are adamant in cramming an epic into every verse, and too preoccupied with telling the audience they must be impressed to have any room left to impress them.’

The Wandering Minstrel laughed, and took a sip of his tea in turn. ’Meanwhile your verse, my friend, is committed to saying nothing at all, to getting so lost in the intricacies of its own wit that it forgets it is a poem.’

‘There, you see?’ said Alainaux, regarding him with amusement. ‘Even that was a better poem than the one you just read. It’s verse, not a public announcement. If you have things to say, you’d best turn town crier, and declaim them in the square.’

The minister’s smile broadened. ‘As you did in Gridania the other night?’ He held up a beautifully illuminated manuscript. ‘I hear you are famous once again.’

On a misty evening, Alainaux had had an encounter with an earnest youth near Fullflower Comb. Finding him quite conversible, he had paused to speak the lines that came to him amidst the bright dew and the looming trees. 

He sighed. Evidently the youth had recalled the verse, and transcribed it, or spoken it to others. Such things had a way of happening to him; he was always encountering passing scholars, and illuminators, and merchants eager for new tales to tell on their travels. He travelled light and swift, but renown had a way of finding him; he was always hearing his own verse at inns and libraries and forums. He had even had to duel an apparition of his own writing on his visit to the Great Gubal Library. 

‘Officious travellers,’ he said. ‘’Twas a passing reflection, nothing more.’

The Wandering Minstrel’s smile was now definitely a smirk. ‘And do all passing reflections bear all the hallmarks of a learned poet’s style, set out with perfection and elegance? It would have been a perfect poem in the traditional style, if it weren’t for that flourish of sentiment to the end. Rather unlike you, that.’ 

‘And yet you identified it without a doubt as mine,’ said Alainaux. ‘I did not know you were such a dedicated scholar of my verse.’

‘Of course I did,’ said the Wandering Minstrel, without a trace of shame. ‘It was unmistakeably yours, from start to finish.’

‘What do you do when you aren’t composing atrocious verse, or admiring my flourishes of sentiment?’ Alainaux asked. 

The Wandering Minstrel inclined his head, amused. ‘Converse with great scholars and poets, evidently. Or heroes, should they happen to be passing.’

‘A rare occurrence, no doubt.’

‘Quite.’

[worldoshaking]

FFXIVWrite Day 20: Duel

‘...Or rather I would, though I doubt any of your latest exploits will suffice. Not to belittle them, but what I seek are stories of only the greatest and grandest battles. Even the most skilled minstrel will struggle to entertain an audience with tales of everyday do-goodery,’ said the Minstreling Wanderer, as he insisted on calling himself, with great complacency. Despite his protestations, he evidently suffered from no lack of eloquence on the subject. 

Alainaux snorted. ‘Is that so, stranger? You presume I’ve been doing good, do you?’ 

‘What could a hero do but good?’ said the Minstreling Wanderer, looking charmingly ingenuous.

‘Many things,’ said Alainaux. ‘With such a limited imagination, I suspect your struggle to entertain your audiences might not be the fault of your subjects, or even of your rhymes.’

‘Oh, but I haven’t been struggling,’ said the Minstreling Wanderer. ‘My song of your last duel met with a most gratifying reception, and is still being sung across the length and breadth of Norvrandt.’

‘More’s the pity, given those rhymes,’ said Alainaux. ‘But I see the fame has not sufficed, for here you are, seeking me out again at ever shorter intervals.’

‘A minstrel may not rest on his successes, my friend,’ said the Minstreling Wanderer, though Alainaux could think of no reason he would address him as such. ‘I cannot live on the echoes of past glory, on songs that have long left their maker’s name behind.’ He smirked. ‘Minstrels are rather like heroes in that respect.’ 

Alainaux snorted again. Even when he was pretending to be someone else, the Minstrel could not refrain from his dreadful attempts at wit. ‘How fortunate, then, that I am a sinner,’ he said, ‘for sins live forever, I’m told.’

He had no objection to this Minstrel’s insistence that they were strangers, even if it was an unoriginal pretence. It amused him considerably to observe that the Minstrel was borrowing his stratagems as well as his stories. And it was an entertaining turn of events; under the circumstances, the Minstrel could hardly act wise and knowing about his, Alainaux’s, past. (That the Minstrel should succeed in entertaining him was certainly no frequent occurrence.)

They smiled at each other, alone in the middle of the city, with their eyes sharp and their secrets sheathed.