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domesticatedanimal · 4 months ago

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FFXIVWrite2024

Prompt 9: 'Lend an ear'

Uh, this one goes some places. 1.0 Spoilers. Death, some violence. Big sadness hours.

The Refugee

But if it all burns down

And the flames devour everything that we are

I will hold you for the minute

I will hold you for the minute it takes

Ghost - The Future is a Foreign Land

The camp is more sand than it is wood, on windy days, and it had been windier than usual, lately. The refugees were spending their days sweeping it out of their hovels and lean-to’s, picking it out of clothing and hair, or simply giving in and accepting their dusty fate.

To say things had been getting worse would be an understatement. More travelers were arriving by the day, drawn by the promise of wealth that Ul’Dah held. The inns and empty houses had filled up first. Then it was empty market stalls, tents put up in alleys, and dark rooms made in the cracks of the city’s exterior walls. Humble shacks went up in the sands outside the city - scraps of wood and metal propped up against ancient stone bricks. Within months, the jewel of Thanalan was surrounded by a half dozen rings of camps.

Sif was lucky to have arrived early. Whatever had happened to tear the world apart, it had happened when she was already within sight of the Eorzean coast. Three sisters, their mother, and an immature sibling had shared the tiny cabin in the rotting ship, bobbing along in storms that never seemed to end.

She remembered praying to gods known and unknown to end that trip, even if it meant sinking the vessel and all on board. Those memories stung all the more, now that she was alone.

She navigated the labyrinth of tents with practiced ease, dodging left and right as other dejected forms brushed past. She clutched her pack tightly to her chest. She was freshly sixteen and taller than most, but her kind were rare in the camps, and she knew she was an eye-catching target.

A dozen yalms away from the tent. Now ten.

Strong fingers closed around her arm from behind. Sif shrieked, a piercing yell that cut through the wind.

“Gods damn you!” She growled, as Jennie laughed. “Your sense of humor is pretty rotten.”

“You take any longer to get home, and your food will be rotten.”

Sif had met Jennie a few weeks after arriving at the refugee camps. Both saw the benefits of sticking together, as opposed to trying to make it alone. Despite her dark hair and clothing, Jennie was in a perpetual good mood, and her jokes usually provided a welcome distraction from reality. Neither girl had dared share much of themselves with the other. Too much had been lost.

Under a flap of canvas and into their small camp, the pair finally felt some relief. Sif greedily tugged at the strings of her pack, pulling out her bounty. A stale loaf of bread, a few onions, and a third of a wheel of sharp cheese, still in its rind.

“I guess, sandwiches it is?” Jennie smiled. She always smiled. It’s what Sif loved about her most. She would wake, hearing Sif sobbing through the night, and she’d light a candle, sit close, and smile, rubbing her back until the tears passed. It was impossible to tell her age, but she held a quiet wisdom that simply didn’t belong to a Hyur in her teens or twenties.

Sif busied herself with slicing the bread and cheese while Jennie brushed out as much sand as she could and tied their canvas door closed. The shack was barely large enough for them both to lay down. Two walls were wood, reclaimed from a collapsed bridge, pressed up against Ul’Dah’s exterior wall. At some point, they had attempted to seal the wood and stone together with mud, but they had never managed to do it right. Within a few days it had cracked off, but by then they were surrounded by neighbors, and the worst of the chilly night wind was blocked. The canvas door was new, replacing an old rusty sheet of tin that they would have to drag in and out of place every time they left.

They ate as the sun set, the last light of the day breaking into their room through a thousand cracks and holes. Jennie liked to watch the dust dance in the light. She’d give the particles names, interpreting their random dances into stories. It was another thing Sif loved about her.

“Do you ever think about what you’re going to do, after all of… this?” Jennie’s general gesturing through the room was barely visible in the dying light of their last candle.

“There’s an ‘after this?’”

“I’m serious!” Jennie laughed. “Things have to turn around eventually. Don’t act so defeated.”

“I haven’t really thought about it.” Sif was quiet for a moment. “Sometimes I think there really isn’t anything after this. It’s just been this for so long.”

“I want to teach.”

“Teach?”

“A lot of children survived. I see them around the camps. We’re going to need teachers.”

It was Sif’s turn to smile. “You’ll be in demand. I’ll bet there’s good money in it.”

“It’s not always about money, you know. My father was a great teacher, of sorts, and we never had money.” Jennie laughed, but it sounded forced. It was the first time either of them had mentioned a parent. Sif capitalized on the moment.

“What did he teach?”

“Hm? Oh, well, it’s going to sound silly.”

“I like silly.”

“You do not like silly,” Jennie smiled. “He was a fisher. He used to show the kids in town how to cast, picking out which crabs need to be thrown back, that sort of thing.”

“I think that counts. That’s teaching.”

Jennie pressed on. The seal was off of the bottle. “We were in a town called Aleport, on the west coast. When I woke up, I was the only one left.”

Someone large and heavy passed, the warm light from their torch breaking through the shack’s gloom. Jennie was crying.

“I remember hearing the kids,” she continued, “I didn’t know them, but it was the first thing I remember hearing.”

“I’m sorry. I… I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s ok,” she sniffled. “I mean, nothing is ok, but oh, you know what I mean.”

“We were in a ship,” Sif began, breaking a few minutes of silence. “Biggest ship I’ve ever seen, but an ugly dry-rotted mess.” Jennie’s fingers felt around, finding Sif’s and entwining with them. “It was everyone left in my family, all of us that made it out of Dalmasca.”

“Dalmasca? You’re from Othard?”

Sif absently rubbed her ear. “Not a lot of Viera from anywhere else.”

Jennie laughed, and Sif cherished the interruption. “Can you believe I forgot? For just a moment I… It doesn’t matter. Go on.”

“We were fleeing a war, or the end of one. I never really knew. ‘Too young for such worries,’ my mother always said.” She felt the tears rise. “My sister spotted the land first. She liked to sit out on the front of the ship, uh, the bow, watching the waves.” The natural question didn’t need to be asked. There was no sister in the shack with them that night.

“Did you see it happen?”

“I heard it. A roar. Like the world was tearing itself apart. At the time, I thought it was the boat breaking up, but what everyone is saying now, about the dragon?”

“How did you make it?”

“A few parts of the ship were floating, after I woke up in the water. There were a few of us, but I’ve don’t think they made it here. We made it to the beach by morning, but went our separate ways. None of us knew what happened or how bad it was.”

Jennie pulled herself over, and the girls leaned on each other for a while, letting tears fall in the darkness. Sif felt like an uncorked barrel, months of pressure spilling out all at once.

She didn’t realize she was falling asleep. It didn’t last long.

When Sif opened her eyes, Jennie was gone. She could hear her voice outside, alongside a dozen others. Instincts kicked in, and she was on her feet and pushing through the canvas flap before she could think.

The night was aglow with flame. Ulms away, something exploded, sending a chunk of something sharp and hard into Sif’s cheek. She reeled in the sand as the blood fell. Strong arms, wide as trees, caught her and held her upright. An aging Roegadyn she had seen from time to time. He left her without a word, disappearing down another path. Dozens of pale and shouting faces flowed around her. She choked and coughed, the superheated air scorching her throat.

The noise. When was the last time she had heard noise this loud?

“Sif!” Jennie’s voice cut through her confusion. Her heart vibrated in her chest as one foot shot out in front of the other. Adrenaline carried her forward. “It’s an attack. I don’t know what to do!”

They collapsed into each other and braced themselves against the panicking refugees who threatened to run over or through them. Sif’s eyes darted around, picking out large black shapes against the burning huts on the outskirts of the camp.

“Amaal’ja.”

The beasts were marching through the camp, torches held high. Sif watched as fleeing refugees were cut down. Then the arrows came. Thick and heavy shafts rained into the ground nearby, jutting out of the sand like saplings.

“We have to get back inside!” Jennie shouted against Sif’s shoulder.

“The fire!”

“We have to try. We can’t fight them!”

Sif turned, feeling the fear take her. Their shack was gone - a bonfire squeezed between too many other tinderbox homes.

“Come on,” Jennie ordered, “I have an idea.”

Sif let Jennie lead them down one path and then another. The sand burned her bare feet, and the oppressive heat seemed to light the sky itself aflame. They quickly came to a small set of huts, slightly apart from their neighbors, one with sheet metal walls. Sif felt faint. She couldn’t get a breath in without coughing. The constructs beside the metal hut were already starting to catch, but what other choice did they have? Die to the fire, or be taken by the beasts for some worse fate?

Jennie pulled her inside, where Sif collapsed onto a hard straw mattress. Sif gazed around in a stupor, as Jennie grabbed armfuls of clothing, a blanket, some scraps of fabric, and threw them into a rusted water jug.

“There isn’t enough.” She muttered to herself.

“What are you doing?” All Sif could think about was the water, and what a waste this was.

“My father taught me this,” Jennie was wrapping a sopping robe around Sif’s legs. “After the tavern burned down.” She turned and flipped the blanket over Sif’s chest, pouring the jug’s remaining contents on top. “I told you he was a good teacher.”

She was smiling. Even now, she could still smile. Her cheeks looked wet. Sif’s mind swam. Her eyes couldn’t focus.

“The metal is going to get hot, but the wet linen will protect us. With a little luck…”

Sif was fumbling under the blanket, and Jennie helped her, slipping down next to her and finding her grasping hand. “You’re going to make it, Sif. I promise, there’s an ‘after this.’”

---

Smoke rose from the camps’ ashes well into the next day. Very little was left standing. No one knew what inspired the raid, that night. The Amaal’ja took few captives, and there was nothing the refugees owned worth stealing. A sultansworn paladin held a water skin out to the scrawny dark-haired Viera girl he had pulled out from under a twisted sheet of steel. He’d heard her cries as his party carted away charred bodies. She was badly burned, but she had made it through the night, somehow.

Jennie always wanted to protect people. It was another thing Sif loved about her.

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