#g: miqo'fell syrcus

[windupnamazu]

apples to apples

ffxivwrite2022 #10: channel emulate or seem to be inspired by.

lunya/g'raha and their kids, with several mentions: @nuclearanomaly's ninira; @whitherliliesbloom's illya, eulalie, and ipheion; @fistsoflightning's oki; and @hqmillioncorn's cherrypit. post-canon/future fic. 1293wc. ⮞ they say the mirror apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but g'raha and luneth probably could have done this in a less embarrassing manner.

The double cry of "we're home!" drew some but not all eyes away from the board game the family was gathered around at the entrance hall's coffee table.

Lunya's smile grew at the sight of her twins in the doorway, pulling off backpacks and belt attachments and kicking off their shoes. Their father was distracted, frowning at his dice rolls and muttering beneath his breath as he shifted tokens on his faction card—one of the perils of playing a war game with a competitive Sharlayan and former leader of a city-state—but when Nynya bounced over to press her cheek to his own G'raha was all warmth as he reached up to ruffle her hair.

"Welcome back," Lunya cooed as Nynya gave her her beso next while Luneth followed behind her, greeting G'raha first. The week had been long without them around the house, but they both had the satisfied glow of completing a good adventure. "Did you have fun?"

"Yeah!" her little spark chirped, plopping onto the floor by her feet and immediately pawing her sister's hand out of the way in the tortilla chip bowl. Chichiro rolled her eyes, swatting back good naturedly before retreating to spoon more salsa on her plate. "We stopped by Tita Nini's place first thing and she gave Luneth this sick new robe!" (What she didn't say was that the three of them then gorged themselves on Ninira's gigantic stash of cookies she'd been saving for them, forcing Estinien to babysit them overnight as they griped about stomach aches and nausea and Luneth's hypoglycemia kicking in.)

"Second-Mama's Boy," Liliru coughed, sticking her tongue out when Luneth scrunched his face at her. The kids were quite fond of their boldly hypocritical proclamations; none of them were shy about having favourites among Lunya and G'raha's extended family of friends, which Lunya had been far too slow to realize in order to stomp it out of any of them early enough.

Linnet dropped her tortilla chip in the guacamole as she looked up, which Colala snatched and stuffed right in her mouth before she could realize she had. "She's right, sick robe, Neth! Wait, where's my chip?"

The "sick robe" in question was a long cape coat made in a deep blue that shimmered like the night, lined with gold embroidery of four-point stars and constellations, silk tassels and crystals hanging from looping chains at his waist. Inside the hood was a lining made from authentic Thavnairian silk, gold and silver brocade shimmering throughout. Luneth flushed at all the sudden attention and sank into the plush ottoman to Nynya's left, though he was clearly overjoyed with their aunt's gift.

"Oh, oh, get a load of this," Nynya faux-whispered conspiratorially, her sisters and mom leaning in closer. "We stumbled on the Leveilleur twins in Mor Dhona, and y'know what Luneth did?"

"Nynya," hissed Luneth, which meant that this story was going to be particularly juicy. He kicked at her ankle and she yelped as she jerked it away, banging her knee on the underside of the table as she did. "Nynya, stop talking."

But Nynya refused. "He climbed the scaffolding above the Find and jumped into the middle of their conversation!!!" Lunya nearly screamed. On her right, G'raha went completely still. "I thought he was gonna break his legs!"

"Did he do a flip?" Chichiro wondered.

"Doubt it," Liliru decided. "In front of Ate Eu? He'd mess up his hair."

"And Mr. Rammbroes doesn't even blink, he just goes, well, if it isn't G'raha's runt! I take it you're interested in Allagan history as well! and Ipheion's staring at Lun like he's grown another head and I thought Eu was going to faint and we'd have to call Tito Al's linkpearl like, hey sorry, my supergenius brother thought he could impress your daughter by giving her a HEART ATTACK—"

"Alphinaud's done worse to show off in front of Liya," Lunya dismissed. "Like the sea urchin incident."

"So he sets us up with a job (yes, Mama, we got paid, I was listening when you told us we can't just do every task for free) to protect this relic that's being targeted by Ilsabardian smugglers, and it turned into this WHOLE THING. Also he said something about the scaffolding in the Find being far too old for the men in our family to keep doing 'that sort of thing' on?"

Luneth and G'raha both seemed to be trying to melt through the furniture as Nynya's story picked up speed.

"—so we gather in the hall BUT THEN," Nynya began to yell all while she was leaping up and down in a bold impression of a younger Lunya or perhaps a frog, "THE GIGAS START BREAKING DOWN THE DOOR, AND YOU KNOW HOW HELPFUL AND RESPONSIBLE OUR LUN IS, RIGHT?"

"Yeaaaah," their sisters chimed in long-suffering unison. Little old ladies loved Luneth as much as their friends complained that their parents were always going on about how they should act more like him.

"HE SLAMS HIS STAFF IN THE GROUND AND HE SAYS—" If the other inhabitants of the house weren't listening in before, they certainly were now, and Lunya thought she caught a flash of her and Luneth's carbuncles zipping after Gyosei through the growing crowd of legs upstairs as Nynya dropped her voice to a pitch more like Luneth's in a rather impressive display of vocal control. "—HEED ME, MY FRIENDS—"

"WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS," Luneth wailed as he jumped to his feet and began to rattle Nynya like a salt shaker. The absurdity of it all was only amplified with their height difference—when Luneth finally hit his growth spurt at fifteen summers he nearly doubled in height and was now a solid ilm taller than G'raha, to the horror of literally everyone else in the house. Admittingly, he was still considered short to the rest of Etheirys, but his mother was a Lalafell. "WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS!!!"

"Indoor voices," Lunya reminded them serenely.

For her ears alone G'raha murmured, "My lodestar," his face red with the trials of enduring second-hand embarrassment and refreshing a memory over two decades old that you were hoping to lose as you approached your 50s, "have pity on our son."

As she always had when he was being silly, Lunya simply reached up and patted his cheek indulgently. "Nah."

"—WE RISE TO UNLIMITED HEIGHTS WHEN WE STAND TOGETHER," Nynya bellowed with a hysterical cackle, voice warbling as Luneth continued to shake her. "TOGETHER, WE CAN ONLY PREVAIL! Eulalie thought this was all very cool, by the way, but Oki thought it would've been better if we threw flower petals while he was making the speech."

"Asdbhfbwngawba," Luneth babbled as he dropped his twin and hid his face in his fancy sleeves.

"Awww, our baby boy's all grown up," Linnet said dotingly. "Look at him, impressing girls."

Chichiro harrumphed. "To think it was just yesterday he was begging us to order his meals for him."

Doing a very terrible attempt at holding back a shit-eating grin, Lunya looked her husband in the eye as she squeezed his knee. "This sounds an awful lot like some of the stunts you pulled when we were younger, Lord Exarch."

G'raha pulled his glasses from his nose so he could bury his face in his hands, making it especially clear which of his parents Luneth got that habit from. "It's… not too late to stop telling them tales…"

"Don't worry, Papa," Liliru said with a patient-yet-remarkably-condescending pat to G'raha's elbow as she offered him a chip, the board game now forgotten completely in between the bowls and plates of that evening's meryenda. "Titito Cherry's already told us all the cringe shit you did when he was a baby."