#thanks guys for saying nice things about my magicite

[thephoenixcave]

Watch me make a giant Magicite, part 3!

People been asking if they can buy giant magicites now. The answer is, not yet but maybe soon? I’m still working on making them look nice. If you want to be notified when giant Magicites are added to the shop, join the newsletter. I’ll make an announcement on there and you’ll be the first to know

[joulethieves]

👉👉👉 Number 9 for BOTH ask posts. All 4 charas/balvaan are non-negotiable.

9 [Headcanon Meme]: General Physical Contact:

Fran -

“Be still, Balthier,” Fran chides, her long elegant fingers flitting across her partner’s in calculated observance. Beneath her touch, Balthier seethes and tenses. 

“Do move along, then, would you? Ah–” Another hiss of discomfort. He hates to sass her given the circumstances he needs her help (when does he not, really), but by Ultima the splinter lodged into his finger is likely the size of a Salikawood root and no that’s not an exaggeration Fran.

The spiking throb in his hand is not much compared to the icy look she gives him here. “You will do best to practice patience. Deep, is this, and was your folly.” Her long nails press along the tired redness of his calloused hands for an easy way to pry the splinter from the flesh. Around them, lazy dust motes float aimlessly in the warm sunbeams weaving through the trees. Her touch is soft but only he knows the hardness with which they possess, her hands curved around the stock and foregrip of a crossbow or haft of a spear.

“Ow!” Balthier gripes loudly with no qualms to his partner’s ears. He bites his lip as he feels a sickening slide of wood from his flesh, and the familiar warmth of cure magic following. She spoils him, he thinks. Balthier sighs in relief, presses his thumb to the finger experimentally. “My thanks, Fran.”

“A souvenier,” she says, holding up the thin spike of wood to the sun. “I shall add this to the tally of your debt.” Her smile is in her eyes. Balthier’s is on his lips when he responds.

“I am forever in your debt, my dear. This is no news.”

Balthier -

“The theatre is a touchy-feely place. Now touch each other.”

Ffamran’s drama teacher at the Akademy always has the best quips, and the fifteen year old can’t hide his grin at rehearsal today. All in all, this is a place he can be most himself, delving into the roles of others, the worlds of others, the lives of others. He watches his fellow castmates struggle with the forbidden boundary of physical contact the Empire preaches so vehemently against in the minds of youths, and here, the drama professor attempts to beat it out of them. And if they’re going to put on a good show, may as well. With his feet propped up against the back of a chair in the near-empty theatre (against his professor’s strict command, but he is several seats up staring at the stage, so what does he know) Ffamran grins. The scene before him that his classmates are rehearsing is an impassioned dance scene of two star-crossed lovers in disguise at a ball, with just this one night to make last. 

And, with how far away they’re apart in this awkward dance, Ffamran wagers the only thing lasting will be the laughter from the audience. No, no. This simply won’t do.

Ffamran stands and walks down the aisle towards stage right, and his professor eyes him. “Ffamran. Your father bred you into ballroom dance. Care to help these two out?”

Ffamran grins. “I’d be delighted. Here,” and he walks up the stairs to join the two teenagers. He grabs the boy’s wrist and yanks him away from the girl with poorly-masked impatience he cares not to smooth over, “Let me show you how it’s done.”

He pulls her close, the crinkle in his eyes holding a smugness that doesn’t ever quite leave from that moment on.

Penelo - 

Night terrors plague the orphan and oft she is left ripped from her sleep by the sounds of her own screams. For long, she wakes alone in a room above Migelo’s Sundries, and shivers despite the dry desert warmth until sleep finds her again whether she wants it to or not. 

When Vaan returns from Lowtown after a six month leave of absence, after she thought he was dead, after Migelo refused to let her go down to the Lowers after the Imperials littered the streets and cast angry Rabanastrans down below, the first thing they do is push the two modest cots together to make one “big” bed. And the first night he is back, freshly bathed and finally fed after Faram-knows-how-long, she wastes no time wrapping herself around her friend’s middle like a vice. She feels his abdomen reverberate as he chuckles. 

“Pen, if Lowtown didn’t kill me, you just might.”

Penelo squeezes harder. “I thought you were dead. I’m gonna hug you like this, get over it. Also, you’re a good little spoon.”

But there’s nothing to get over, and they fall asleep just like that, like they will every night.

Vaan -

“Y’know, once you guys start becoming sky pirates, I’m gonna have to start charging you for this,” Vaan grins as he lifts a Lowtown orphan no older than seven from the ground by her arms and plops her above his shoulders. She squeals in delight. 

“Take me to the uppers! Let’s go! I wanna show Penelo how tall I am!” she demands, tiny dirty hands gripping his flaxen locks with more force than necessary but he doesn’t complain. 

“Roger that, captain,” Vaan responds, holding her thin ankles with his hands before taking off. Behind him, the shouts of other orphans call down the magicite-lit alleys of Lowtown.

“Come back soon! Me next! I wanna go to the fountain!”

At Migelo’s, Vaan kicks the door open and bounces in with the girl bobbing on his shoulders in child-light squeals. “Pen, look how tall Lotto’s grown!”

Penelo wants to say something about not kicking doors open of the shop where they live for free but instead just stares up at Lotto, who is smiling down at her with a gap-toothed grin. 

“Wow! How’d she do that! She must be eating her vegetables, huh.”

Both orphans before Penelo scrunch up their noses. “Ew, no way!” they both say in unison, and Lotto collapses onto his head in a fit of giggles. Vaan squeezes her ankles and winks at Penelo. 

“Anyway, gotta run. I have a few more passengers to pick up.”

“Mind the door, would you, Vaan?”

“Man, that’s a nice door,” he comments before kicking it open. He’s dashing down the street, childish giggles in his wake. 

9 [Domestic Meme BalVaan]: Do they act different when they’re in private/public?

Balthier’s limbs splay langoriously about the rickety seating in the Whitecap as he nurses his Madhu, Fran opposite him. Too long has it been since they’ve stepped foot in Balfonheim and he can say with some fondness that he’s missed it. Long has their journey been and long will it continue to be - back in the web of sea and sky pirates makes him feel a bit like his old self, before ugly wrought faces of the past decided to snake themselves back into his happy life of sin and debauchery. 

Speaking of sin and debauchery, Balthier wonders where the errant street-orphan that burrowed his way like an insistent little sandbug into his bed last night is up to on their first afternoon in the city of pirates. He thinks of the night prior, and the Madhu isn’t the only reason he’s grinning into thin air. My, a lithe boy indeed. He’ll have to thank Penelo for teaching Vaan to bend like that, no doubt. 

“Ah,” Fran’s lilted voice pulls him from his reverie, which he also must thank her for, because blood was running south fast at the memory, “it does not take him long to find the heart of Balfonheim.” Fran is looking down from their balconied perch at the door, and Balthier follows her gaze to land right on said errant street-orphan. Balthier chuckles at the sight as Vaan enters. Why, he can nearly see the boy’s heart hammering out of his chest with the pure adrenaline of it all. He’s nearly beside himself, mouth agape in a toothy grin, head turning left and right as if he were a hatchling chocobo fresh out of the nest. How cute. Balthier watches and thinks to beckon him up, but nay - Vaan has an awful knack for finding him whether or not he wants to be, it won’t be long until–

Oh.

Oh no.

Balthier nearly knocks over a chair in his haste to stand as he watches a group of nearly five burly sea pirates approach the sunkissed Dalmascan immediately with a bodily interest nothing short of licentious. Oh dear oh no this is not to happen, Balthier thinks as he weaves with little grace or regard through the packed tavern. How foolish he was to think Vaan would not be immediately regarded as - well, there are lots of plundering jokes to be made, let’s just say that.

By the time Balthier pushes aside a burly Bangaa pirate that snarls at him, he has reached a wall of muscle. A wall of five heaping hunks of muscle, adorned with tattoos and reeking of fish. Their backs are to him as they surround Vaan and why are they so tall? Suddenly Balthier is reminded why he hates sea pirates. Not a subtle lot, are they.

“I’m Vaan!” he hears Vaan say in a response over the backs of the oafs before him.

“Vaan, eh? New here, are ya? We’ll have t’show you a-”

“Ah, Vaan.” Balthier’s voice is a smooth ripple over the clanging cacophony of their choppy diction. Just because they live on the sea doesn’t mean they must sound like it. Rough and tumble, too much for his liking. Balthier slides through the sea pirates like ice across glass, and hooks an arm around the boy’s shoulders, tugging him close, very close. “Was wondering what took you so long. Come, let us drink.” 

“Huh?” Vaan grunts, and Balthier can feel five pairs of eyes narrow on their forms. 

“Bah,” one says. “Balthier always gets the pretty ones.”

Balthier wagers he should recognize the voice but cares not to rifle through the files of his memory and place why exactly he knows any sea pirate personally. He writes off the recognition as a mere stamp of his glorious reputation, and leans his head against Vaan’s. His eyes flit across his newfound audience and he grins.

“Sorry lads,” he says in a way that implies he most certainly is not. “Finders keepers and all.” And here, he presses his lips to the crown of Vaan’s sunsoaked flaxen hair. “Come along, Vaan.”

“Huh?” he says again as Balthier drags him off. “Hey, I was making friends. Did you see that one guy? He had a freaking eyepatch.”

“Vaan,” Balthier continues, guiding him up the stairs to where Fran waits with a grin, “You’ve a lot to learn about what friends mean to men stuck with only each other on a boat in the middle of the Naldoan Sea for months on end. You can thank me for teaching you the easy way.”