#tehrair is here technically but like in a window.

[fistsoflightning]

if you catch a rogue a fish

ffxivwrite2023 04: OFF THE HOOK allowed or able to avoid blame, responsibility, obligation, or difficulty.

syhrwyda, valdis, zaya, & a fish. a really big fish. 913 wc.

“And you brought this t’ port… why?”

Even with a small crowd gathering around her and Syhrwyda, Valdis seemed just as unflappable as ever—at most, a touch confused. Zaya watched in amusement from the relative safety of the Fisherman’s Guild’s archway as she glanced at the forty-fulm-long fish floating in a bubble by the guild pier, swimming restlessly in loops, and said, “Wanted to show Tehra’ir. And ask for one of his daggers to eat it, but that’s later.”

Syhrwyda’s face made an incredible journey in the span of a few seconds from baffled through concerned straight into a replica of the face Y’shtola gave Zaya that one time they admitted they ate a lightning crystal shard once. “This fish? T’ show him?”

“Not this fish, exactly,” Valdis said, waving her free hand in the air as though this revelation cleared anything up. “The coral ray and elasmosaurus didn’t bite during the spectral currents. I should have asked Alle to come along and help me.”

The crowd of excited fishers and baffled merchants around them got louder and rowdier, and Zaya had to press themselves up against the stone wall to avoid their knee colliding with the fisherman guildmaster’s face as he darted by. Something about legends of the sea?

“An’ this one?”

“What about ‘this one’?”

Across the harbor, Zaya caught a flash of something silver and green pause at one of the carved-out windows go from still to a blur as it rushed out of view.

“I—well, just because th’ change of all the aether currents o’er the star means you could fish up new deep ocean monsters an’ bring them back to Limsa don’t mean you should,” Syhrwyda said while rubbing the back of her neck, seemingly unable to decide whether she should look at the horrible leviathan with knife-teeth, Valdis herself, or over to Zaya—the last specifically with a frown. They must not have been doing a great job of stifling the silly grin they could feel edging on outright laughter.

Maybe they ought to feel some measure of guilt, but Syhrwyda did lose the three rounds of rock-paper-scissors when they’d rushed down here from a nice lunch at the Bismarck to deal with ‘a sea witch and her menagerie of monsters’ and instead found Valdis at the center of the storm. She really needed to stop leading with rock.

Valdis, seemingly still oblivious or mayhaps playing it up, tilted her head. “But then, no one but the Sharlayans will know about the new fish,” she said, and then: “Do you think Tehra’ir is out on a job? I was hoping he’d come out by now…”

“Why not just… go in an’ ask for him?”

“The doorman doesn’t like me.” Valdis crossed her arms, letting her fishing rod nearly thwack the poor lalafell guildmaster. Not that he seemed to notice. “Though, V’kebbe does...”

She turned away to look across the docks at the door leading to the Dutiful Sisters, at which Syhrwyda took the chance to fully turn towards Zaya and do something with her hands that was neither a combat sign nor any official Eorzean sign Zaya knew, but conveyed the general meaning of WHAT DO I DO???

As far as Zaya knew, it wasn’t a secret that Tehra’ir had something against deep sea fish—or any fish that fell outside the usual standards of ‘fishy-ness’ towards ‘could-be-a-terminus-horror’, really. Just half a moon ago he’d burst through the door to Zaya’s room with his tail all fluffed up mumbling about some truly awful-sounding sharks he’d seen while walking down to the Rogue’s Guild, calling them the Navigator’s mistake before launching into a frantic rant that ended with him swearing vengeance on Mitron, somehow. How Valdis seemed to be unaware was a mystery to them, as were many things about her, but here they were with a fish four times Syhrwyda’s height and teeth long as Tehra’ir’s daggers anyways.

Zaya looked back up at the window again—now, they could vaguely make out a figure that was probably Jacke standing there with his arms crossed, with Tehra’ir’s tail flicking in and out of sight—then looked back at Syhrwyda, still looking at them helplessly. They shrugged, trying not to smile too much about the situation or bust out into laughter, and gave her the combat sign for protect hoping in this situation she’d take it more as COVER FOR HIM I GUESS.

Syhrwyda grimaced, but the gap in the crowd closed just as she raised her hands, moving in a wave of sorts towards some of the other fish-carrying bubbles Valdis had enchanted. Not wanting to get swept away or miss Syhrwyda and Valdis maybe leaving, Zaya pushed through the crowd towards them.

Thankfully, Syhrwyda’s height and voice were there to act as a lighthouse in the crowd.

“Why did you want t’ show him this big one, anyroad?” she asked. “Aside from th’ others not bitin’.”

When Zaya broke through, Valdis had turned back to Syhrwyda.“Sisipu told me this was a roguesaurus,” she said, now frowning. “I thought he would think it was funny, instead of scary.”

That was, unfortunately, Zaya’s last straw; they broke out into wheezing laughter at the side of the pier, now one of four standing in front of the roguesaurus. Who named these things?

Syhrwyda put a comforting hand on Valdis’ shoulder and said, “It’s after the river, actually.”

“Oh. Damn. I suppose we can just skip to eating it.”