#this was going to be a silly fareena one and then i decided to hurt myself instead

[storms-path]

FFXIV Write 2024: Day 5 - Stamp

“Something on your mind?”

Fareena looked up. Fran. A single eyebrow raised, her usual stony look replaced with one of concern. Fareena shook her head, rising to her feet. “Just expected something more, that’s all.”

Fran looked as if she wanted to pry further, but chose instead to let sleeping hounds lie. One of the problems with living as long as they did was the regrets that lingered with them. While Fareena had a few decades on the other viera, they’d both lived long enough to understand.

And besides, the grave Fareena knelt beside gave no impression of who lay beneath it to anyone but the viera herself. Couldn’t live long enough to say you told me so, mother?

Dalmasca was silent as the dead. The 4th legion had vanished into the deserts before their arrival. Those few Dalmascans who remained told their story for them. Noah van Gabranth was dead, slain by the beast king Lyon. The castrum burned. The resistance’s work had been done for them. All that was left was to gather up those that remained and rebuild.

And all that was left for Fareena was to wander among the ashes of the home she never wanted. Ghosts surrounded her on all sides. The dead crowded the streets. The living wore masks of death. But all Fareena could feel, when she finally found the woman she was looking for, was relief. It was a bitter thing, to realise just how badly the old woman had clung to her back all these years. But she was gone now. Dead as the empire that burned her home to the ground.

Idly Fareena wondered how it had happened. Her mother wasn’t the type to take the annexation of her home lying down, but would she have been fool enough to join the resistance? Not likely. Her mother had been a coward. She had slung bitter words and hateful bile at her only daughter as she had left Dalmasca near a century ago, but she had done nothing to rebuild the bridge she had burned. She had sent nobody to find her wayward daughter. She had let Fareena become a ghost in her life.

Not that Fareena had wanted to be found, but it was the principle of the thing.

“The provisional government will be meeting shortly.” Fran’s words were clipped, neutral in tone. The sympathy in her eyes was carefully ignored by Fareena. “We’d like you to attend, as a representative of Bozja and the Eastern Alliance.” More politics. More pointless, empty posturing. Fareena would normally have turned Fran down, and none too gently at that. But something pulled on her. Something kept her here.

“Lead the way,” Fareena replied. She ignored the tug at her heart as she turned away from the grave. She ignored the yawning abyss as the reality of her mother’s death hit her. She ignored the way her eyes were suddenly stinging.

To her credit, Fran did too.