#if you look close there's a ref to Rinh's Azem

[equinoxbloom]

Fleeting Friend

[FFXIV Write 2024 | Day 3 | Tempest]

The rain fell in a torrent, a cleansing rush from the heavens, and turned the dusty roads to mud. It wasn’t monsoon season, but the levin darted white and purple across the sky. She tucked her knees to her chest, bare toes wriggling against the smooth wood underfoot. She had not stayed a night in the Bokairo Inn in… how many years now? She exhaled, long and slow, and the sound disappeared into the percussion of the storm. Even under the shelter of the eaves, the wind whipping in from off shore skated across the surface of the hot springs and set long hair lashing against her cheeks.

“Imagine my surprise, seeing you step off that ship. Nearly that of seeing you in Ishgard,” Kyokuho was saying, his voice half lost to the gale. It was hard for her sensitive ears to focus, but it afforded them privacy too. Not that their familiarity was a secret. Rather, she had the sense that it was easier for her traveling companions to simply accept she’d arrived miraculously from the East and who, or what, she’d been before they’d pulled her into their fold was fine left at a distance.

She didn’t blame them, really. There was only so much humanizing anyone wanted to engage in when it was rapidly becoming clear she would be sent off to die again and again. Because she wouldn’t die. Because anybody else would be better off if they did. It didn’t really matter if they cared about her on some level. It might be worse if they did.

“It doesn’t rain like this as often in Eorzea,” she said. Kyokuho paused - he’d been saying something else - to stare at her, lips parted. 

“You haven’t changed at all, have you?” he laughed, quiet with a passing affection that settled familiar over her shoulders. He’d always been so quick to call someone, ‘friend,’ and to mean it. Years hadn’t snuffed that warmth; she’d felt it, instant and sure, when he’d recognized her under the wide brim of her hat in the lamplight of the Astrologicum.

“I like to think I have, a little.” It would have been unkind to the memories of those she’d lost if she’d not been changed. He didn’t know the half of what she’d seen. He didn’t know the half of what she’d done. “It doesn’t snow here like it does in Coerthas.” But she was still just herself, as singular and impotent as that felt.

“Does it feel like home across the sea?” he asked. She rolled the thought over once, twice.

“The storms are different, but they still feel familiar. The dark nights still feel familiar.” Where she was speaking of, exactly, she wasn’t sure she could have answered. She had been told the places she would exist. Here and there. Had she found home in anything that wasn’t fleeting? Minfilia’s welcoming embrace. Haurchefant’s warm hand around hers. The weather that descended, violent and aether rich, and stole her breath away along with the rest of the world. Wind, snow, levin, rain.

“Have you found companions you trust? Miss Leveva seemed fond of you.” He kicked his legs over the edge of the engawa, letting the water spilling from the sweep of the roof drench his ankles. “I worried about you when you left,” he said. She frowned. He was younger than her by a couple years. He’d felt like a child when they’d parted ways. In truth, she’d never considered them close. She’d never considered anyone close, besides her brother.

“I have,” she said, though, and found she meant it. The sensation coiled deep in the pit of her stomach. A fragile happiness, a resounding dread.

“And the goddess…” he began, and she shifted to push a finger against his lips. In the rush of the storm, their words were lost as quickly as they were spoken but she stopped him still. The storm wind howled along the hall and set the folds of their hakama fluttering. 

“The rain will leave as quick as it’s come,” she said with a fleeting smile. He nodded slowly. And so will you.