#ty to karoiseka for mentioning the butte-like formations in yanxia

[lady-protector]

13. butte

Kaede sighed as she looked around for Marz. The girl had completely disappeared, leaving Kaede to deal with Hien and Yugiri on her own – never an appealing prospect, but even less so after Yugiri’s stunt that had almost gotten Marz killed by Zenos. Being sent out by Alphinaud to accompany Alisaie on patrol for imperials was almost a blessing, despite it obviously being busy work. Still, she was getting a little worried. Normally she would consider Marz more able to care for herself than Alisaie, but she’d been a bit strange since returning from the Steppe.

Finally, after nearly a bell of searching, Kaede spied a small, dark figure on the top of one of Yanxia’s many tall, flat-topped rock formations – unreachable except by flight or, apparently, by dragoon jump. With their yols still on the steppe, Kaede was forced to hike back to Namai to rent a falcon, grumbling under her breath the entire time. The sun was beginning to slip below the horizon by the time her boots touched the sparse grass at the top of the formation, and she dropped heavily down next to where Marz still sat, motionless.

“What in the Dawn Father’s name drove you up here?” she groused, more concerned than truly annoyed. “I was looking for you for ages.”

Marz exhaled heavily, blowing an errant curl out from in front of her face. “I don’t know. Thinking, I guess.”

���About?” Marz wasn’t normally so hard to get an answer out of, normally too forthcoming with her thoughts and opinions for most people’s comfort, so for her to retreat and require needling was strange, and concerning.

That earned her a sideways glare over the tops of her drawn up knees, but she answered, begrudgingly. “How weird it feels to be here, mostly. I thought… I thought it would feel more like home. But it doesn’t. Especially the steppe. Everyone looking to me like I ought to know what to do and what to say, like I should understand them – yeah, I’m xaela, but my tribe left the steppe generations ago. I don’t know them. And they don’t know me, even if they look like me. Just another reminder that I’m all that’s left.”

Kaede leaned back on her hands, staring up at the stars as they emerged from the dark. “Yeah. No kidding. I don’t have it as bad as you but… I guess a part of me expected to, I don’t know, recognize this place somehow? My ‘ancestral home’ and all that, where my mom is from, and her mother, and her mother before her… But I feel stranger here than I do in Eorzea.”

Slowly, Marz unwrapped her arms from her legs, her posture relaxing a bit as she shot Kaede a small, sharp-toothed grin. “’Least the xaela on the steppe were better than the raen in Sui-no-Sato. I think they’d keep their heads stuck in the sand even if their arses were on fire.”

Groaning in irritation, Kaede slapped her hand over her face. “Don’t remind me. Gods, they reminded me of my father. Selfish arseholes.”

After a few moments of silence, Marz fell sideways, letting her entire body weight rest on Kaede’s shoulder. It might have knocked her over if she hadn’t been subconsciously bracing for it – Marz had a habit of flopping around like a beached fish on occasion.

Her voice, when she spoke again, was quieter, more vulnerable. “Hate feeling like there’s nowhere I belong. Like there’s nowhere to go back to.”

Kaede had felt like that for much of her life, adrift and anchorless, but Marz had grown up with a family that loved her, a tribe that took care of each other, a man she’d wanted to spend her life with. And then it had been ripped away in an instant. There were no words for a loss that big, that painful. Comparison or platitudes would be nothing but insulting, and so Kaede didn’t try at all, just lacing their fingers together as they stared off into the distance.

The Spire had fully risen above the horizon, Kaede tracing its shape in her mind, by the time Marz moved, shoving herself back upright. “Nhaama, this got depressing. Did you come find me for a reason? Are we supposed to be doing something?”

“Nothing pressing. Alphinaud set me to the task of helping Alisaie patrol, but I think it’s just because he saw that I didn’t want to be in the same room with Hien and Yugiri any more than I have to be.” Her voice was nonchalant as she cast her bait into the waters, seeing if it would be taken.

Marz’s face twisted, confirming what Kaede had suspected – something had happened to sour the xaela’s opinion of the Doman prince. “Can’t blame you there,” she muttered, and then added, quickly, “You’ve never liked Yugiri.”

With a wave of her hand, Kaede brushed off the statement, leaning over conspiratorially. “Nevermind that. There’s something up with you and Hien, isn’t there?”

Startled green eyes, glowing faintly in the darkness, caught her own as Marz’s head whipped around. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, please. Don’t act like I don’t know you better than that, Marzanna. You’ve been avoiding him since the celebration after the Nadaam. Where you both mysteriously disappeared for a while.” Kaede raised her eyebrows, waiting as Marz shifted and fidgeted under her gaze.

“Alright, fine – we slept together. And it was weird. And bad. And I really, really don’t want to talk to him about it.”

Unlike Kaede herself, Marz was not particularly free about who she spent her time with – indeed, in the years they’d known each other, she’d only known her to have given into temptation one other time, with a very different man.

Given that she was in the middle of the longest dry spell she’d had since… ever, thanks to the fact that the man she’d recently given up casual sex for was two entire continents away, Kaede was a touch jealous, but mostly just offended that Marz hadn’t bothered to tell her about it, after all the time she spent needling Kaede about her own escapades. Reaching over, she poked the xaela girl in the shoulder. “Spill it. Details. I want them.”

Marz scrambled to her feet, looking into the distance. “Wow, is that Alisaie down there? We should probably go help her, shouldn’t we?” And without waiting for an answer, Marz leapt to the ground below, landing nimbly as only a dragoon could – if Kaede tried to follow, she’d break her ankles at least. Possibly her neck.

Muttering under her breath about annoying, hypocritical, rude women, Kaede slung her leg over her rented falcon and urged it towards the quickly disappearing dark speck in the distance, a large part of her glad to have at least shaken Marz out of her funk a bit.