#eidin lore

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 17: Blood

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: My nights have often been haunted by dreams of blood-red skies. I watch the meteors fall like glowing droplets, fire and blood weeping from the heavens.  They say that this is the inciting vision that always precedes the Echo, that meteors tearing through the sky often hail the coming of a Calamity and the awakening of new Echo users.  Not mine, though. My dreams trailed behind my awakening like an afterthought. An echo of an Echo, blood following the knife, a prophecy uttered after the fact.

[eidingate]

Eidin’s goal in life is to have enough friends in every city-state that she’s always got a couch or a floor to crash on. She’s never been one to put down roots, so she’s uninterested in purchasing a house or apartment for herself. Inns are fine, camping is fine, but nothing beats rolling up to a friend’s door in the middle of the night, jetlagged because the nearest aetheryte is half a continent away from where she teleported from, and being welcomed inside by someone familiar.

She’s always a good guest: brings gifts from her travels, cooks, does odd jobs around the place, cleans up after herself. She’s rarely anywhere long enough to overstay her welcome, which is a nightmare for anyone trying to get ahold of her (delivery moogles invented entire curse words for her).

Since Tataru stuck her with an island, she was quick to set up extra campsites so that she could finally return the favor to some of her regular hosts. The island is always seeing a rotating cast of guests, even when she’s not around. Which is hardly ever. It’s really the mammets’ island.

‪#WOLpromptAday‬

‪February 15, 2024‬

Where does your WoL like to sleep/crash? Friends house, FC house, an inn, or camp in the wilds? OR are they the friend whose home everyone else crashes at? ‬

‪What feels safe enough for them to spend more than a few hours napping? ‬

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 5: Stargazing

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Do you remember our summer in the Burn, how by day the white sand was piercingly bright, but by night it rolled out into malms of blackness, and the sky in response burst into colorful nebulas that we could have never seen closer to civilization? We would lay on our backs and fashion our own names for the shapes that we saw, inventing constellations and claiming them for our own. You insisted that one particularly vibrant cluster of stars was a whale. Your big blue sky whale.  Even in this dark place, I've caught myself searching for it. Am I looking at the same stars you and I did on those nights? If I gaze at them from the right angle, will I see them aligning? Your sky whale, following me all the way here to the end of things?

[eidingate]

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Eden Foxglove is the name I called myself when I moved to Gridania. Something a bit earthy, a bit easier for the locals to pronounce. There are some in those woods who still call me that. Foxglove is certainly easier on them than Kupfohcwin. Daughter of copper fox. What do you suppose our Sharlayan grandparents were thinking when they imparted that name upon fatyr? Did they hope he would be clever as he is? Did they forget that foxes are known for their tricks? I remember the other time I changed my name, how you and Wilt teased me. "Why would you call yourself Eidin? What oath are you pledging?"  You misunderstood. I'm not swearing an oath. I am the oath.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 9: Trade

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: How easy it is to forget, among all the world-saving business, the simpler pleasures of the land around us. I've always been fond of flowers, but never had the chance to learn much about them.  I was honored to meet an expert in the field, but I must confess that I can hardly remember a word she said about them. When her callused fingers, hands accustomed to rough and heavy work, delicately tucked a sunflower into my hair, I was left utterly breathless.  (Yes, I know. Somebody in the world exists who can make me stop talking.) I had promised to make a trade for her gift, but the rough gemstones and bits of ore on my person could not have possibly sufficed. A beauty like hers deserves beauty in kind. I promised her that I would find her something worthy before next we met.  Yes, that was perhaps an excuse to ensure there will be a next meeting. Now, do I bring her a fire opal – warm and bright like her smile? Or perhaps a tourmaline from the Shroud – green and calming like her presence?

[Featuring @ravandfriendsxiv's Lone Snowdrop!]

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 10: Festival

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Do you know, in Gridania they have a festival devoted to frightening children on purpose? A relic of darker times, it seems, when the fright was real and voidsent were said to parade through the streets, plucking children in the night. Now it is a celebration of joy and laughter, terror turned to screams of delight and endless plates of cookies.  I sometimes wonder whether our own times will be immortalized in this way, the terrors stripped away in the retelling and distilled down to children's games. Would they chase each other around in cloaks of black darkness? Would they eat confectionaries inspired by each Primal? Would they create effigies of those who terrorized us, to tear apart or burn or hang aloft?  I hope they pick Zenos for that last one.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 4: Ship

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: There is a missive that circulated among Sharlayan's engineers, saying that in no uncertain terms was I allowed into the Ragnarok's engine room. Did they imagine that I would attempt to steal the bolts out of the very ship meant to fly my comrades and me into an unknown and likely hostile world? Actually, this sounds like Thuvwilt's doing. Leave it to him to sneak a means of teasing his little sister into the end of the world.  So anyway, I broke into the engine room.  I needed to see it, this miraculous aetherburner that was meant to propel us to the stars. This device, fueled by the very Primals that I once dedicated all my efforts to destroying. A ship that literally runs on hope and prayer.  I admit that for all the engines I have taken apart for scrap, I would not even know where to start with this one. All I can do is trust the hands that made it, the prayers that drive it, the plans we have made until now.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 7: Crowd

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: I won't pretend that there aren't times when it feels like I am suffocating beneath the weight of the world's darkness. When I can hardly breathe for it all: the horrors we have seen and the ones yet to come, the fear for our loved ones and the weight of the world's needs.  The best way I've ever known how to cope is to seek out others. To feel the throng of their movement around me, hear their myriad voices rising up into a roaring chorus. To see the tapestry of their faces in a dozen different colors, a hundred different expressions, all of it flowing and churning and bubbling like an incoming tide.  I am part of this tide. I must not forget this. I am not an island floating above it, alone with naught but the shuddering of my own breath.  We are beings of aether. We absorb it from the world around us, from the very planet beneath our feet. Why, then, should we not also draw on it from each other, in even the smallest ways? Surely there is some resonance between us when we gather.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 6: Storm

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: What does it say about me, that every person I have ever truly fallen for has carried a shield? Do I look at them and see a shelter in the storm? I cannot shake the feeling that I've never seen a shield that could not be broken.

[eidingate]

Glamtober Day 8: Ilsabard

This is necessary. When you live under Garlean rule, sometimes the only boots you’ll find are the ones you pulled off a dead soldier, and wearing the colors of your oppressors is what you do to keep warm.

But people forget that Garlemald is not Ilsabard. There were other cultures there before and they have not vanished completely.

The Sea Wolves of the Northern Empty surely would have spread into parts of western Ilsabard, as they did Sharlayan. Since they’re based heavily on vikings, this is how I picture traditional Sea Wolf garb.

Scavenger gear:

Head: Replica sky pirate's mask of striking Body: Late allagan robe of casting Hands: Tekko #55 Bottoms: Anamnesis hose of casting Feet: Chokka #55

Sea Wolf gear:

Head: White daisy corsage Body: Isle shepherd's tunic Hands: Serpentskin halfgloves of casting Feet: Tigerskin thighboots of aiming

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 16: Danger

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Danger and I, we are old friends. She visits me often, sweetly inviting me to join her dance. Will I ever stop taking her hand?

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 14: Climb

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: Children in stories are always climbing trees to escape their troubles. There is something oddly comforting in that childish impulse. I wonder if any tree could ever be tall enough to out-climb my worries.

[eidingate]

Roevember Day 8: Meal

Excerpt from a letter to a little sister: I admit that my sense of taste is likely a bit dulled compared to most. I suppose a lifetime on the road will do that to you. After a week of consuming naught but salted jerky and dry hardtack, even the most watery bowl of porridge will taste sublime if it is warm enough.  Experiencing the world anew through Zero's eyes reminded me of so many little things I've come to take for granted. The smell of trees in the rain. The feel of silk on the skin. The warmth of spices on the tongue. I find myself returning again and again for her favorite things.  Sometimes it takes the enjoyment of others to remember that something can be pleasurable.

[eidingate]

Countdown to Dawntrail: Iceheart

What if we were two Echo users whose hearts ached for each other from the first blush, but you'd already committed yourself to a cause in the name of a dead woman you never knew, thought you had to commit your heart to an ancient love that could never be yours, and every time we came close to expressing the need for each other, the world reared up once again? What if we were only ever silences unbroken but we peered into each other's hearts and memories in all their messiness and wished we'd been given a chance to find a place in them?

~

For @voidsentprinces's Countdown to Dawntrail week two prompts

[eidingate]

FFXIVWrite2024 #11 - Surrogate

Early ARR Characters: Tataru, WoL Eidin Words: 868

"This has happened before. Hasn't it?" 

The sun was dipping toward the horizon, casting Vesper Bay in a cloak of red and orange as the savage midday heat burned itself down to embers. Eidin dangled one foot off the edge of the rock, lounging in the evening light with a feigned composure she did not feel. Compared to her companion, she was all limbs sprawled over the sparse patches of grass that had managed to find a hold on the rockface. 

Tataru took a slow sip of her wine before answering. She had provided the cups from the Waking Sands kitchen, snatching them up with the kind of confidence that only the receptionist who was responsible for stocking the shelves could harbor. She'd nestled into a little nook on top of the rocky outcropping where they had retreated together, and it struck Eidin that the dainty little receptionist could make any stone appear to be a throne. 

"It has. Not for a long time. Not since – well, we really haven't seen full Primals like that since the Calamity." 

If Eidin had learned anything in her time in Eorzea, it was that everything came back to the Calamity. She had been far from these shores when Dalamud fell, but even she remembered when the sky burned red. The blood currant wine lingered on her tongue, heady and cloying, a gift from a woman in the Shroud in return for a few favors. "And how did you deal with it then?" 

Tataru gazed down at her cup, her eyes clouded with a memory that Eidin's Echo did not deign to share. "We had… heroes. The Warriors of Light. I wish I could remember their names."

Eidin returned her gaze to the sea, where the sun's fiery reflection was cut through with fishing trawlers. "Heroes. With the Echo?"

"Yes. Like you."

Something in Eidin bristled at the comparison, and her hand tightened around the cup. It was a little too small for her hand, but on the balance, it was probably a little too big for Tataru's. "Why was I never told? All that talk about what made the Echo so special. Yet nothing about this? About tempering, and what it means?"

"It wasn't for any malicious reason," Tataru said quickly. "I promise, we weren't hiding it from you. Minfilia always planned to tell you, but…" she sighed, setting her cup down to turn to face Eidin fully. "She won't say it because this is an old argument, but Minfilia never wanted the Echo to be used in this way. She's always believed in its power to reach across languages, to open hearts, to be used for diplomacy. She always wanted that to be its first and primary use. And as long as Primals never fully manifested…" 

She sighed, and reached for the bottle between them, falling back on her skills as a hostess to cover the tension of this moment, and topped up Eidin's cup. "She didn't want you to feel pressured. If you knew you might one day be the only one who could face such a creature and escape with your will intact, would you not feel obligated to take on that role?" 

Eidin sipped at her drink, feeling the wine swill uncomfortably in her stomach. Tataru's face was open, earnest. She trusted that Tataru believed what she said. And as Minfilia's friend, of course she was inclined to see the more noble intentions behind her actions. 

But the excitement that had radiated off of the Scions when she had been recruited, the glances they had thrown each other, the haste with which they had brought her into the fold, all of that was finally crystalizing before her. This had always been her purpose, for them. "So for want of your lost heroes, the Scions sought a surrogate. Someone who could stand in for them, now that they've gone."

Tataru froze, nearly spilling her wine down her tunic. Her mouth opened and closed a moment, as if trying to find which part of that statement to react to, before finally landing on, "you're a hero too, Eidin."

Eidin set the cup down, carefully setting it in a dip in the rough stone, because Tataru had been very kind in offering it and the inclination to throw it into the sea was too strong. "I didn't save them, Tataru. I didn't save anyone." 

The sun skimmed the edge of the water, red as the flame of Ifrit's gaze. The angry wine-soaked bile that rose in Eidin's throat was not for the fear that she'd felt at her capture, or the days she spent recovering with burns and smoke-filled lungs. It was that Minfilia and Thancred, in their wisdom, had let her spend those days thinking that at least she had saved those people from Ifrit's fire. At least the men who'd sat tied up shoulder-to-shoulder with her could go home to their families. 

None of it true. Everyone she thought she had saved was doomed from the moment they beheld the Primal. Once again, nothing she did resulted in a single life saved.

She stood, the edge of the cliff dizzyingly close. Tataru looked so much tinier below her. "Don't cast me in the role of your dead heroes."

[eidingate]

FFXIVWrite2024 #1 - Steer

[Pre-ARR / words: 691]

The magitek armor hunched contemplatively in the darkness like a drowsy bear. This particular bear was of the rearguard model: nearly double the size of the standard type, with two arm-like projectile weapons so massive that they had to rest on the ground when not in use. It was an unwieldy design, made to lumber slowly along the back line and fire from a distance. It was little more than a cannon on legs.

Correction: a cannon on one and a half legs. A faulty joint had taken off a three-pronged "foot," leaving the thing leaning lopsidedly to one side. Such a defect would be complicated to repair on so huge a machine, and the mountainous terrain of the Werlyt countryside likely posed too much of a challenge to move it far. Thus the Garleans, in their haste to follow the shifting front, had parked her in the narrow mouth of a cave, trusting in the natural shelter to keep it from prying eyes when no patrol was nearby. 

Few would be foolish enough to try to pilfer Garlean property in occupied territory, anyway. Military presence was high, every road crossing the countryside heavily fortified by checkpoints. 

Two fools they were indeed, one shadow and then another peeling away from the edges of the cave to slip beneath the hulking machine. Eidin hung back for a few breaths, covering her brother's back as he slipped ahead, trusting her to spot any sign of danger well before he could. A gunblade glinted on his back: a prize he'd picked off the corpse of a Garlean officer some years ago. They were well practiced at this routine, and the barely perceptible tilt of his head was all the signal she needed to follow. 

It had taken nearly a week of scouting and carefully distributed bribes to learn the patrol rotations, giving them a safe window in which to work. Nald'thal willing, their trail would be long cold before anyone noticed the warmachina had been surgically gutted, its innards harvested and already sold off to rebels and pirates. 

Thuvwilt hesitated beside the crooked magitek armor and gave it a careful shove, testing its stability. 

"Wilt! Hurry it up!" Eidin hissed at him. 

"Don't want it rolling over on you," he grumbled. Always the cautious one. 

Eidin rapped her knuckles against one of the barrel-shaped cannons that rested on the ground. "Look at that thing. A charging aurochs couldn't tip it over." Thuvwilt remained silent, which was not unusual. It normally fell to Eidin to do the talking for both of them. "If it starts to tip, I'll steer it against the wall. Or I'll jump. Probably both."

She did have to admit, now that they were actually beneath it, that this was a beast of a machine. They'd dealt with the more common vanguard models before, but she had not quite appreciated until now just how much the rearguard loomed over a person. 

Still. She'd yet to find a piece of Garlean machinery that could not be taken apart with a common set of tools. 

Thuvwilt ignored her until he was satisfied that the armor would not tilt with her weight. Only then did he hoist her up, Eidin nimbly stepping up onto his hands before launching herself up the side of the warmachina. It was easy enough for her to find the handholds she needed to reach the latch that was hidden near the cockpit door, and soon she had swung herself into the pilot's seat. Down below, she could already hear Thuvwilt opening up the machine's undercarriage. 

Many assumed that the magitek core was the only valuable part of Garlean machinery. But the black market had a way of making use of even the mundane bits and pieces that nestled within Imperial tech. Eidin lovingly ran her hand along the console, feeling the glossy buttons beneath her fingers. Oh, it was a beautiful console, so much bigger and more complex than the standard vanguard model allowed. The wiring alone was worth precious gil. 

This job was going to keep their family fed for months. All they had to do was finish it.