xaela | ffxivswarm

A
proper woman of the Bayaqud can ride with or without a saddle. She
can hunt, kill, and cook her own game. She can shoot the wings off a
fly from thirty paces, and then do the same while she and her target
are moving at speed. If need or her own inclination drive her, she
can wrestle a man twice her size to the ground. It’s good if she
has some skill with music or embroidery, but it’s not necessary.
When she’s acclaimed as a warrior of her tribe, she paints around
her eyes with black kohl each morning; it shows her status and
protects her eyes from the glare of the sun. She takes as many
husbands as she can support, but never more than those afforded to
the khatun or the udgan. She tends her herds and tribe and protects
them from danger, even if it means her life.

Gantsetseg
is a proper woman of the Bayaqud. She can’t play the morin khurr
and her embroidery is a hopeless mess, but she can ride and hunt and
cook and wrestle. She can shoot anything with anything, and
she never misses. Eventually she’ll take a husband or three as it
suits her, and have children. For her tribe—for the Scions—she
would fight the gods themselves. And every morning, she paints kohl
around her eyes.

This
morning, alone in her yurt, she closes her eyes and sets her brush
down. Under her heavy rugs, the floor of her yurt is jointed metal
made to fold into wedges for easy transport. Machinery hums through
her horns, the steady chugging of the magitek modules that keep the
tent warm on this cold winter day. The walls are heavy felt,
festooned with banners and hanging rugs, but the lattice supporting
them is steel. Outside, where her tribe would fence in their horses
for the night, she has a refurbished magitek reaper. She spent last
night cleaning and oiling a rifle instead of polishing a bow.

She
remembers the day she rode back into Bayaqud Iloh on that reaper,
painted a blue so vivid there was no possible way to mistake her for
an imperial. She remembers her parents clinging to her and crying
with joy, remembers kneeling in front of her khatun.

“I
swear on my honor as a warrior of the Bayaqud—in the names of our
tribesmen—I will bring to you the Garlean emperor’s head.”

An
imperial officer’s helm. A shredded tassel from the emissary’s
robes. A broken gunblade. These trophies of Garlemald, she has
brought to the Bayaqud—and each time, the same questions. Your
Scions bring us no crowned heads, Tseko? No three-eyed skulls?
She winces to think of her uncle Tsagai, who would have separated
Alan’s three-eyed skull from his shoulders whether he wore a crown
or no.

The
Bayaqud have allies, or they have enemies. A proper woman of the
tribe knows which is which. On the Steppes, she does not say This
tribe is my deadly foe, but I shall offer my hand unreservedly to
this single member, lest she find it severed at the wrist. She
doesn’t think about their eyes, or their quick, shy smiles, or
their clever hands; doesn’t want to trace the breadth of their
shoulders or the scars carved into their scaleless skin. She doesn’t
fret over the wounds to their bodies or hearts, or open her yurt to
them. She certainly doesn’t wonder about kissing them.

She
thinks about Alan’s arms, the way the skin around his eyes crinkles
when he laughs. She thinks about that first, fierce hug after they’d
realized Omega hadn’t killed any of their friends; of the way he’d
grinned, exhausted but proud, when they’d finally figured out the
secret to getting the Allagan transmitters to function after long
bells of work that had seen her screaming and throwing things at her
walls at least once. She thinks, briefly, about Alanais pyr Venditor
and how a single arrow fired a few ilms to one side might have ended
it all before it began.

“Gan,
there’s coffee!”

She
can’t stop the grin that splits her face, baring fangs. “Coming,
Al! Leave some for me!”

She
drinks coffee in addition to kumiss and butter tea. She fights with
magitek now, and not a bow or her bare hands. She still rides a
horse, but it’s a former imperial-issue reaper that carries her
into battle most days. And when she sees Alan Vesper—once a decurion of the XIVth Legion, once her sworn enemy—in the crowd, she can
only think of long bells of laughing and planning together, of strong
arms around her, of a hard day’s ride and the cool water that
awaits her at the end.

Well.

Perhaps
Gantsetseg is not quite a proper woman of the Bayaqud after
all.

Something
Gantsetseg of the Bayaqud knows intellectually: Coerthas, ever since
the Calamity, is cold.

Something
Gantsetseg of the Bayaqud only comes to understand when she is
actually standing in Ishgard’s aetheryte plaza, bundled up to her
eyes and still shaking: Coerthas is not just cold. Coerthas, in fact,
is bloody freezing.
Her
tail hurts, she can’t feel her fingers, and when she dares to move
her scarf away from her mouth her breath comes out in white clouds.

She
remembers the crash, the screams of tortured metal. The startled
gunshots as their captors panicked, and the screams as the rest of
the snow landed. She remembers how cold
it was under her bare hands. They’re gloved now, but she stares
down at them and she thinks she can still see the blood under her
claws from
where the ice had shredded her skin.

The
snow had been falling steadily around her, big white flakes that had
melted and weighed down her long hair until she’d torn the remains
of an Imperial uniform off the nearest dead soldier. It falls around
her now the same way.

No.
No, this isn’t—it’s over, it’s—

Eirk’a’s
arm wraps around her shoulders, heavy and solid and warm. She crashes
back into herself with a gasp, reflexively cracking her tail into his
shins before realizing who it is. “Azim’s dick, you scared me!”

He’s
grinning at her, teeth as sharp and white as her own. “C’mon,
it’s cold out. Let’s wait in the Forgotten Knight for Rita, huh?”

She
exhales slowly. She is a Scion, and this is Eorzea and not some
frozen Garlemald mountainside. She is safe. She’ll get inside by
the fire, and she’ll be warm.

But
gods,
she wishes she wasn’t stuck here.

@eorzeanfool