I find myself dreaming of late. I sleep, too often… curbed my training routine, and I do not think anyone has noticed. I’ve gained weight, stopped eating.
My mind wanders, all too often. Even sitting now to write down my thoughts… it is messy. My mind is chaotic. I nearly killed that dark-skinned girl last eve.
I find myself dreaming of late- no, I wrote that already… my dreams though are not make-believe. They are memories. Not many people have memories of a time when there is peace, of a time when fighting was for small children, and a single death rattled us to the very core.
I can still feel the chill on my skin, the fall air warning us how close the long winter was. The sky was always the most perfect colour of blue at that time… the air still, more fragile than a sheet of ice.
The children would always take to this one cliff near the beaten paths. There was no snow yet, and they were still visible, but hardly traveled. The time would be soon where we kept inside our village, it was a dangerous trek, during the snows.
As children we waited. We knew the last bit of excitement before our inevitable confinement would be what came down that path. It was always an anxious time, and I still feel that, in preparation for the change in season.
The day they did come, you knew right away. It was the air, something about it, the complete tension, you couldn’t move if you wanted to… but every child gathered there would stand, just before the first chocobo broke the tree line.
It is a magnificent feeling, completely overwhelming. Cries, shouts of joy, children running down the path towards the emerging caravan. It was the same every cycle, since my fathers father. The smiles on the faces of those Highlanders… men and women… it was a surprise our two worlds were not merged, a surprise out little Elezen village was not their home.
Their home, was the sea.
I was eleven cycles at this time, long thin limbs hardly fleshed out, like a thin tree among thick oaks. I wore my hair free then, long and curled flying behind me as I broke the line of traders, past the first hulking men, chocobos pulling carts, searching each tanned face. Then he was there, among the crowd atop a bare chocobo, no finery nor a blanket, just twined reigns likely made with his own hands. Our gaze met as I pushed my way through, a thick hand reaching out for my own, pulling me up on to the chocobo, in his lap, above the rest.
Twelve… I remember him so vividly.
Square face, hard but neatly shaved. His hair had grown out since I last had saw him, pulled haphazardly back, fraying loose around his cheeks, brown like the bark of a healthy tree. Leathers and straps, half his chest bare, furs pulled over his wide… wide shoulders. Silver chunks of metal clinked in the middle of his chest with each step of the bird, hung with twine. He had once told me they were pieces of armour, shattered by something he would not explain. He told me he kept them, because one day he would have his own suit of armour, forged just for him.
I did not understand men then, did not know what that meant, I always assumed things would be the same as they ever were. But I was getting older, and beyond our village, things were changing.
“What did you bring me?!” I chimed in such perfect tongue. The cycle before I learnt to speak like a lady, not a farmhand. His thin lips smiled at me, producing a small necklace from his leather bag, slipping it over my head with one hand. I took it, blue eyes scanning over the stone that hung from it, the same blue as my eyes. “It is pretty Cade!”
“It reminded me of you. It’s the dead of winter during your nameday, and I’m at sea, so consider it a gift.”
I no longer have this necklace… but I remembered how I used to treasure it.
All the way back to town Cade let me hold the reigns, sitting in his lap guiding the bird through the crowd. I did not know as a girl that he guided the beast with his knees, silently filling me with pride at my apparent uncanny ability to ride.
There was always a feast for the traders when they arrived to stay the eve and rest, trade in our village. But, I did not dream of it. My mind moved forward, to much later that night when I was supposed to be in bed, standing outside of my parents room dressed only in my nightgown, that heavy necklace too big for me clutched in my tiny hands.
There was yelling, but I was used to it. My parents seemed to get angrier the older I got… they fought much more in those last years.
“He asked for her?!” Mother shrieked. I always imagined my father trying to calm her, but now that I am older, I think he mostly just starred out the window, giving up on soothing her broken soul.
“He offered ah proper gift in exchange, and yeh know they’d be happy.” he replied, only receiving a soft thud as my mother stomped the wooden floor.
“You know what happens then! No Highlander remains here! They will take her, just as any child birthed of their blood by our kin! For what? Chocobos?!”
“Raien! There are options! We’ll see ‘er twice a cycle feh sure, more if she stays with us as they take advantage of the summer!”
“NO! If I’m stuck here, so is she! I will-”
Then I wake. Alone, in a bed not near my birth-place.
Back then, I did not know why my parent argued that night. Now, I realize Cade, and his father, made an offer for my hand. Had the deal been accepted… I would never have trained, never have fought or killed. I would have been happy at home in the arms of my father, mother and brother.
Just another reason to be happy I killed my mother that night.
17th Sun, 5th Astral Moon, 1571
Deirdre Ta'ea 