#featuring sol the littlest beastmaster cat and arae the medic cat

[yuri-cocaine]

what the water gave me

She wanted to see how the royal palace shone at night. She wanted to get out of the Quarter, walk along the salt shore of Loch Seld, see the stars for once instead of a night sky bruised orange from streetlamps. Ever since the magitek distillery was installed, everyone who worked in the Ducts was laid off, and the passage to the waterways was empty. Anko squeezed through a gap in the gate and darted past stacked crates and old tarp. Dust motes floated golden around old lanterns.

She ran past her usual haunt in the sewers, picked the lock on the door around the bend, and down a spiral staircase to the saltwater well. Anko knew that there was a break in the grate at the bottom of the well, which led to a tunnel out into Loch Seld. She was going to find this tunnel, swim to the surface, and behold the outside world for the first time.

Anko had just pushed past the broken grate when she realized her mistake. The tunnel was longer than she thought, and dark too. Her lungs strained and burned as she pushed out into the dim green light, the brine stinging her eyes and nose. She sank to the bottom, and her hands felt wildly for something to grip and pull herself up to the surface with. But there was no surface, just a rock face, and her limbs seemed to weigh a tonze each. She took a gasp out of habit and choked.

Anko didn’t remember strong arms looping around her waist and bearing her back the way she came. When she awoke, she found herself lying on a towel by the side of the well and staring up at moths flitting about an old gas lamp.

“So,” said a bored voice. “Escaping, are we? Going to have to send a team down there to patch up the grate. Or maybe I could just throw a cover of the well, be less work that way.”

Anko turned her head and spotted an exhausted Imperial emptying water out of his boots. Even his third eye seemed to have bags beneath it. Forgetting her tiredness, Anko leaped to her feet and confronted him.

“Well? What’re you gonna do then? Throw me in gaol? Stick a sword in me?” Anko spat. She held her grubby chin high. “Just so you know, I wasn’t escaping. Truth. But I got every reason in me to jump back in the water and drown rather than get taken away by you. Bet I could swim faster than you. I messed up earlier, but I could.”

The Imperial guard sighed deeply. He emptied water out of his other boot and said, “Run on home, girl. I haven’t got the time or the energy to drag every gutter-churl to the dungeons. Consider this a warning, and don’t let me catch you in here again.”

Anko scowled, silently promising she’ll be back, and raced away. She did come back a week later, and found that not only did the Imperial not cover the well, but also the broken grate wasn’t fixed either.

That was then. This was now.

She filled her pockets full of stones. A fire crystal strung from a bootlace hung from her neck.

The first person who noticed was a janitor, a Highlander woman so old and bent she could barely push her mop across the floor. She frowned when she saw the girl climb the ladder and move up the scaffolding, and then her confusion turned to terror when she saw the girl stand poised over the Velodyna gorge.

It had been almost six years. The tower over the Velodyna Bridge was nearly finished. Anko had dreamt about this moment almost every night. Voices shouted below her.

Who sucked their souls back through gritted teeth? Who crawled broken and heaving along the rocks? Who drained the blood from their veins? Who would have this mutiny?

She jumped, and the crystal beat like a heart.

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Aisling awoke, vertigo in overdrive. Anko’s voice echoed in her head.

The Sandsea was as bustling as ever, but there was a certain loneliness to it now that much of the company had left for Gyr Abania. Aisling rather liked serving drinks to patrons, for it meant she could try a new persona each time. Yesterday she was a country lass newly come to the city. Today she would be a silent and mysterious woman from the depths of the urban tangle in Ul’dah who Knows Much and Tells Little.

When Sol Cheza arrived to take over her shift, Aisling shut herself in the library, poring over every tome and handbook on Gyr Abanian herbs she could find. She had hacked into the database of Castrum Oriens to copy their maps of the Fringes and the Peaks, and she marked where vegetation was lushest and sent everything to Arae’sae Evlo. Aisling traced a finger along the ribbon that was the Velodyna on the monitor screen.

She wondered what happened to Anko’s body. Did those researchers haul her up from the riverbed with a net, cut a lock of hair to take as a sample, and then dumped her back into the river? 

One day when the Velodyna dries up in the sun, a hundred thousand skulls would be laid bare to bleach.

Aisling made a list of Gyr Abanian fish, sourced her references, backed it up into a tomestone, and sent it. She kept an eye on Gilly’s position, a blinking red dot on her screen. There must be a way to trace Garlean warmachina signals in the field, she thought.

Late afternoon sun shone through the curtains. Even with ice and water shards kept in boxes all over the room to cool down the monitors, it was still swelteringly hot. Aisling’s hair draped over her neck and fell down her shoulders. She sighed, tapped her fingers on the desk, and gathered her hair up into a ponytail. Then she snatched her katana up from the floor and sliced the ponytail off.

Locks of hair fell to the floor. She swept them up, threw them away, and decided it was time for a break. A quick pause for water, maybe coffee, and then it was back to work.

But instead she made her way downstairs into the basement, stood on her tiptoes in just her smallclothes at the edge of the tub, and dropped into the water. Aisling stayed underwater, listening to the flow, savoring the ache in her lungs as three minutes passed. She imagined fierce currents, a rocky bottom, a whirl of light and streams of bubbles. It must have been cold, she thought. Cold and bright and loud.

Aisling came up when she couldn’t take it anymore and gulped deep breaths of air. She pulled her clothes on again without drying and sloshed back upstairs, leaving a trail of wet footprints. She left a puddle on her keyboard and smeared water across the screen.

Two years now since Anko had leapt off Castellum Velodyna into the water below. Aisling put her thumb on the spot where she guessed she fell, pressing hard against the screen until the pixels flickered and her thumb made a dent.

She reached for her linkpearl and started to call Arae’sae and ask him to throw a few wildflowers into the Velodyna for her sister. But then she stopped, thinking of the fire crystal in her pocket that beat like a heart, and put the linkpearl away.