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coffeeandcalligraphy · 4 years

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Witness State & Coup de Grâce | Feeding Habits Update #3

Hey People of Earth!

Before we get into this update, TRIGGER WARNING that this chapter discusses attempted suicide, mental health issues, animal cruelty, toxic relationships, and some nods to starvation, so if these are topics you’re sensitive about, I would skip out on this update!

This chapter was a slight nightmare to draft as it went through many, many iterations due to a real struggle to attain the desired emotional arc, and also because of a few logistical problems. In total, it’s about two and a half months of work as it combines some scenes from the old chapter two while also patching areas I cut with new content. Despite the difficulties, I am so happy I pushed through because the final product is quite strong. Here’s a scene breakdown:

Scene A:

We start at the “beautiful place” AKA the cove Lonan and Eliza frequently visit. The last time we’ve seen Lonan was at the end of chapter two, when he had his mild “public freakout moment” on the steps of a cathedral.

On the beach, he rests on the shoreline while reflecting on all the things he’s been tormented by since chapter two (wicked children, fathers, parenthood etc).

He sees an illusion of his father who is obviously not there (he’s very dead!) which propels him to converse about him with Eliza (remembering that Eliza and Lonan’s father were once romantically involved).

This conversation goes south as Lonan is able to unpiece some of Eliza’s mistruths until Lonan finally admits he wants to see his father again, insisting he’s still “alive” through the darkroom abandoned in Oregon him and Harrison failed to destroy in ch. 1 of Moth Work.

Scene B:

Lonan watches a moth through the window (that moth motif tho). Here he recounts what occurred at the hospital in ch. 2--the mother and her three kids taking him there, and then eventually being whisked away by Eliza.

Lonan heads to the kitchen to drink an acetaminophen but quickly realizes he’s not alone in the main apartment. His father sits on the couch looking over photo albums, each leaf holding the same photo: the postcard of Eliza that Harrison initially finds in chapter one of Moth Work. This vision obviously does not exist and is prompted by sleep deprivation but he doesn't know that lol.

Seeing this photo and his father prompt him to believe that he can only get away from this feeling of being haunted without Eliza in his life and further bad decisions ensue which I won’t get into!

I explained the meaning of the title HERE.

Excerpts:

Here’s the opening bit which is the most recent addition to the chapter:

The water is never murky, but today it doesn’t sparkle. Like it’s taken a low dose of cyan, it foams pale against the shore, an offering that wets the tips of Lonan’s shoes. He sits under the cove with one hand pressed into the current, each singular wave like a finger tottering over his veins. Today, their beautiful place is only an arched wall of stones and roily ocean.

Eliza is sunbathing. She lies on her back in the centre of the cove, where its mouth opens to a ceiling of sun. On the drive from the hospital, they both remained silent, Eliza’s hands taut like leather around the steering wheel, and Lonan’s head soldered to the cool window. Even when she pulled into the lot of a diner, named after a vague Canadian city or perennial flower, she said nothing, exiting the car to return to it with two crayon-coloured slushies, his red, hers orange. By the time she pulled up to the beach, her drink was half empty, his fully melted, urging against the brim of the cup. He followed her when she exited the car, parked against a row of pebbles, and placed his hand palm-first against the water the moment she lay against the sand and closed her eyes. Now, water puckers over the shoreline and between each of his fingers, a sort of absent massage. The water is a dull, vitamin-like blue. Warmer than he’s expected for the middle of February, pleasantly pruning his fingertips.

This is a direct continuation of that:

The sun has started to set. It flares against the horizon, its orange singeing the water’s blue. Like in front of the church, it fills him, its heat a comfortable grip around his throat. Though it should remind him to keep awake, its warmth lulls him closer to the sand until he rests his head just where the water laps. He knows it says nothing. He knows he has not slept in days. But to him, its rays nurse his skin like the loop of a nursery rhyme, and when he is parallel to the sky, he closes his eyes and welcomes the sun like it’s an infection. As colours pulse underneath his eyelids, water soaks the crown of his head, and it truly is like being buried at sea, just him, the sun, and the water at his perimeter.

The next chapter in this update is chapter four, aka Coup de Grace. This chapter was an absolute joy to write after struggling to get a handle on chapters two and three, and I’d consider writing this chapter to be, by far, the best writing sessions of my life. In this chapter I feel I really figured out the “crux” of Lonan’s character/his darkest secret, and that’s essentially that he believes all children are the wicked stems of adults, a belief he actually doesn't want to have, and actively combats until he sort of becomes absorbed by it. I learned a lot about my boy in this chapter and learning such important details about a character I’ve been writing for five years feels like a gift!

This chapter plays with form/the timeline a bit because we jump around on the timeline, almost like a movie that begins at the end. This was difficult to do in fiction, but I think I pulled it off, and am really happy with the chapter. Bear with me tho as this breakdown may be confusing:

Scene A:

We start with Lonan rapidly making his way to his father’s darkroom which sits in the middle of a forest. He’s brought supplies with him to destroy it.

The first line of this chapter mimics the first line of Moth Work, which you’ll see below.

Scene B:

We jump back in the fictive past to the morning that would’ve occurred right after the end of chapter three. Lonan goes about his morning routine but is disrupted by a loud thud from outside. Anya, the woman he’s befriended from chapter two, has jumped from the roof of the apartment complex. This attempt is unsuccessful.

His first reaction is to run to Anya’s apartment to see if her son, Joey, is okay.

Scene C:

Less of a scene and more of an internal monologue of Lonan reflecting on Anya’s attempted suicide, and that he feels in some ways, she’s administered her own “death blow”.

Scene D:

Eliza takes Lonan to his father’s cabin to “get him away” from what’s happening at the apartment since he’s really taking the news badly.

Eliza tries to get Lonan to eat something because he hasn’t eaten much since Anya’s news, and they have a conversation about Eliza’s motives in volunteering Lonan to help Anya in the first place.

Scene E:

A flashback where 14-year-old Lonan and his father are at the cabin, about to kill a fish using the ikejime method. His father has informed him the fish is dead, but Lonan knows this is very much a lie.

Scene F:

The fictive present, where Lonan lies on a couch inside the cabin, Eliza tending to a fire. He has a bad feeling (he’s right about that lol)

Scene A2:

We continue the events from scene A as Lonan enters the darkroom, only to find out it’s been cleared out save for three pictures hanging that tell a story and reveals a lot of Eliza’s secrets.

All you need to know about these photos is that it makes their romance feel somewhat like a lie lol.

Eliza finds him at the darkroom despite telling him not to go alone, and Lonan tries to process the new info/secrets revealed.

Scene G:

In the fictive present, Eliza cuts off Lonan’s hair and together they burn each weft. They discuss a few things (his father, the women he’s befriended, future children, mating habits of the praying mantis)

Scene E2:

Back to the flashback where Lonan and his father have killed, cleaned, and eaten the fish. They rinse their hands off in the lake before his father knocks them both into the water.

Excerpts:

This is the opening, ft. the mirroring first line which makes me a lil too giddy:

The darkroom isn’t haunted, but a dead man owns it—and he knows exactly where to find him. Through the woods, Lonan brushes past bushes of gooseberries and wild rhubarb, a gas can sloshing rhythmically in his hands. In his teeth, he holds his flashlight so its beam brightens the pathway. It is not yet dawn.

This is a description of the darkroom that leads to the end of the scene:

He shouldn’t know where he’s going. The forest is so dense and unanimous, a duplication of itself, nothing more than repetitions of the same tree, same flower, same stream. But he doesn’t need to see to know where his feet take him—he doesn’t even need the flashlight. He’s memorized the direction to the darkroom like the pattern of veins on his own arm.

He is not surprised to see it still stands. As if protected from rain, thunderstorms, the fallen trees that crisscross at the walkway; it’s always been a divine place. The air is damp, and particles of mist cling to his throat.

He sets the gas can in front of the steel panelling that makes the door with urgency. He does not need to rush but cannot take his time.

Wildflowers burst from in between the cracks of concrete the shed sits on and he knows each species like they’ve been bred in his blood. Wax flowers, thistles, clusters of asters he’d sometimes gather as a boy and leave as offerings in the heart of the forest’s most prominent clearings, like an offering, or a ransom.

Lonan kneels once the first thread of sunlight leaks between the whisper of trees. He is familiar with this forest, the cabin not too far away, the messages the water speaks to him when he sits at its edge most nights, why the darkroom was his father’s favourite place and why it always will be. So when sunlight hits his eyes, he presses his fingertips against his lips, and looks to the sky for mercy.

Lonan watching his fave TV show that leads into Anya’s jump:

He turned the television onto its usual program while on his last three mandarin segments and looked on as a herd of caribou dotted a waterway. They moved like the current, pattering along the prairie, worriless. He should have heard the part where a wolf caught up to the herd, the same wolf that would later go on to single out a young fawn and silence it with two teeth in its throat like bullet wounds. He should have seen the part where the prey was consumed, its flesh a desperate shade of red. But the thud distracted him. Maybe not even a thud, more like a crash. A sound he felt in his temples, a ringing in his ear, like a chickadee. Lonan set the skin of the mandarin onto the coffee table and stood slowly. It’s his body that moved him, no force of the mind, toward the balcony. In one movement, he unlocked and shoved open the glass sliding door, rucking it forward with his body weight when it stuck. On his lip, he tasted citrus and salt, a mixture of fruit and sweat.

He heard death before he saw it. The way each identical sliding door of the apartment units around him shook open, just like his. What a woman on the sidewalk declared, her tone so shrill, he couldn’t tell if she was delighted or horrified, something like, “I thought she was a bird—I thought she was a gift from heaven.” The garbled sound of an infant, confused by the sound concrete makes when a human batters it.

We get Lonan’s first response and some Joey and *that stunning motif tho*:

Lonan did not deescalate the stairs to the ground floor to join the growing crowd. He did not call an ambulance or rush to perform CPR. He ran upward, scaling flights of stairs as if airborne, with little effort. Once he reached her unit, it was the tin of madeleines he noticed first, sitting unopened, untouched, dare he thought, neglected on her welcome mat. It’s this that lulled him, freezing him in place for a moment. He recollected nothing of bringing the madeleines to her the evening previous, of leaving them neatly tucked against her straw welcome mat. Innocently idle there, his gift unrecognized.

Joey sat on the couch. The television was on, projecting technicolor polygons onto the boy’s face. Lonan did not register what it was he watched, which animated shapes pounced and danced on screen. Joey did not cry at first. He sat, staring wondrously at the screen like it was a trap door to a different dimension. The socks secured around his miniature feet looked freshly ironed, and his hair smelled like his mother did when Lonan first met her—like coconuts.

The buzzing of onlookers and neighbours sounded like the caribou running. A constant drumming of a snare, a guttural kind of ambience. He thought of Anya the day previous, her desperate excitement to paint over the wall, the way she mixed that orange juice drink, incredulous, experienced. He thought of the sourdough he never picked up, and there on the counter they sat, one torn down the middle like it was ripped bare-handed, the other skewered with a chef’s knife. He thought of Anya’s hospitality, her coy excuses to help them both avoid embarrassment, the way each part of her apartment transformed into gold. He thought of their conversation, Anya’s initial instruction when she left him alone with her son. So when Joey cried, Lonan knew exactly to reach for the remote and tick the volume up until his sobbing quieted, like the last few minutes of a rainstorm, passionately loud, then stunningly silent.

Here we briefly reference 2 Kings 21:6: “And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.”

Anya will never be the mother she once was, in the capacity she longed to be. Joey will grow up without a father and with a mother who cannot mother him in the ways she’d always hoped; he’ll have no one to recreate. That is the real loss—what could have been. Anya burned herself into an offering, administered her own kill shot, provoked her own fate; either life or death, and her fate chose neither.

The following mirrors something Lonan’s sister, Reeve, says in Houses With Teeth about hunger:

The day Anya jumped from her balcony onto the sidewalk below, Eliza took Lonan to his father’s cabin. In a daze, he watched her pack a bag with enough things to tide them over for a month, and in that same daze, they reached the cabin before sunset. That night, Eliza rifled through the cabinets to put together a meal, and her findings assembled as a can of tuna topped with crumbles of saltines—cheap take on a deconstructed pâté.

She served him his dinner on a set of plates he vaguely recognized—terrazzo with a scalloped edge, maybe held a scrambled egg or halved tomato when he was a child. He stared through the French doors, down to the water that padded below. Even when she tried some for herself, putting on her enjoyment in exclamations like “It’s a culinary masterpiece. Refined. Daring. A little spectacular,” she couldn’t convince him to eat. His appetite disappeared when Anya fell from the sky; there would be no hunger as penance.

This is the fish flashback:

Lonan knows the fish is not dead. He is fourteen but not naïve. Sun warms the back of his neck; maggots shimmer over the gummy slick of the water’s surface. Today is what someone would describe as the perfect day. Trees whisper secrets amongst the spines of their leaves. Birds teeter on the neck of birch trees. A butterfly dusts its wings of the shore’s sand and nips at his childish knuckles.

The fish is not dead. This is fact. In his palm, it expands, its gills like the crescent cut of the moon. The fish is not dead. Its mouth kisses the air like it’s a divine thing, each blip of its lips greedy, like the air tastes of gold. The fish is not dead. Its scales grate against Lonan’s palms, shimmering, its prettiness its last defense mechanism. The fish is not dead.

More with this fish memory:

“It’s dead. It does not even know the taste of life. Why save it?”

“I don’t want to save it,” Lonan says. His father’s wedding band digs into his forehead. To an onlooker, it may look like he’s about to dip him forward into the water, not a drowning, but a baptism.

“What do you want to do with it?”

Mourn it, he wants to say. Pity it. Sacrifice it.

The water whistles ahead of them, all the uncaught sunfish gloriously slashing naively in the water. They are unaware of their future demise, and the current demise of their loved ones, bodies all piled into the net as if on display. Lonan’s eyes sting with lake water, a streak of it dripping onto his lip so when his father reaches over him and secures his hand like a marionette around the screwdriver, he tastes salt and doesn’t stop tasting it.

And the end of part A of the fish memory that gets a little gory:

“It dies for us,” his father says, his voice dampened, like the distant blip of the lake. “So we give it mercy in return.”

As the screwdriver’s tip lowers closer to the fish, Lonan licks his top lip and asks, “Why do we need to show it mercy if it’s already dead?”

“Le coup de grâce. A death blow. To end the suffering of the wounded.”

“But it’s already dead.”

“Even the dead still suffer.”

Lonan does not register when the screwdriver impales the fish’s brain. He does not register when his father uses both their hands to slit the fish’s gills with a hunting knife or register the warm spurting of its blood up their knuckles. He stares at the fish’s glasslike eye, and as he and his father gut and scale the fish, puppet and puppeteer, he imagines the way he’ll feel with its head in his mouth.

Here’s a section from the fictive present:

Seven days after Anya jumps off her apartment’s balcony, Lonan lies on a pig’s leather couch his father once towed in from the city, a damp washcloth doused in eucalyptus essential oil pressed to his forehead.

At first, he fears the blinking comes from stars and that the cabin’s roof has been removed. But as he comes to, he smells it, the earthy crack of wood, the wisp of smoke, and he knows the light that pulses is a fire.

Lonan opens his eyes. As he’s thought, he lies on his father’s couch, essenced water dribbling down his temples from the washcloth. Eliza sits hunched on the stone of the fireplace’s ledge, her shoulders ripening under the orange heat. She’s burning something. The scent of scorched film is not unfamiliar to him. Like his mouth, it is dry and acrid, like the lick of a battery.

“You promised,” she says, as if sensing he’s awoken. Lonan does not move, even as the eucalyptus soak drizzles into his eyes.

Eliza no longer wears the parka. She’s stripped to a pearl-coloured camisole, her feet bare and propped flush against the brick. Glossy red lacquer colours her toenails, reflects the light in ovular patterns along its surface.

“A false witness shall be punished, and a liar shall be caught,” she says. “Proverbs.”

Going to leave this tea here casually:

The darkroom was misplaced. This was Lonan’s first thought when he yanked open its steel panel door and entered to reveal its contents. He did not need the glimmer of a flashlight to confirm his instinct. This was not the same darkroom he’d known as a child, or the darkroom he found his sister in, or the darkroom him and Harrison tried to destroy. Everything was slotted away, puzzled back into a configuration so unknown to him, so wrong to him, that the organization felt more like war.

Unlike when he and Harrison had last stepped foot inside of the darkroom, lugging the gas can along with them, not unlike what he did then, the photos that used to string clothespinned in no justifiable order were now taken down. The bricks of photo paper forming a maze around the developing tables, the amber bottles of chemicals—all of it, meticulously put back in places Lonan knew they never had. Under his boots, he did not feel the crunch of glass or slip of forgotten negatives. The darkroom had been swept clean.

Lonan dropped the gas can at the darkroom’s entrance, and removed the flashlight from between his teeth, thumbing it off. He worked his way around the shed like he’d been wounded, staggering, stopping to hold himself upright. Nothing was in its rightful chaos. Expired film lay stacked in a waste bin he’d never seen before. Bad paper cuts had been shredded. The photos he’d been so accustomed to not looking at, all gone, except for three, evenly clipped on the last three lines.

In the distance, an eagle cawed. The stream trilled. Tadpoles cricketed along the embankment.

Lonan approached the remaining photographs like they’d electrocute him. They were displayed one after the other, each on its own line. The first, a picture not unfamiliar to him. Eliza standing in front of a colourful street of vendors. Her loopy signature on the back a jagged indication of where she signed it, most likely wobbling on a train, or in the back of a taxi. He picked it off its clothespin and held it up to a hole in the roof where sun bled through. Nothing had changed from the photo since he’d taken it last year, and he was almost grateful she’d left it fossilized when she took it from his pocket. His gratitude did not last by the time he saw the second photo, so unexpected, he had to glance twice.

His father stood arced slightly behind him, his hands not visible. Lonan knew where they were—one secured around his forehead, the next urging a screwdriver up a stone. Sun scalded the water’s surface, wrinkled it with light. He remembered the song his father whistled as he fried the sunfish on a birch branch, truly less of a song and more of a reminder as he hummed up and down each minor scale, not once stopping to check his work, like he knew better than any instrument.

Lonan plucked the photograph off the line and held it closer. Though he was shaded mostly by his father’s back, he knew they were both in it. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he turned it over to find that same looping signature inked onto the back, smudged, like she’d forgotten to let the ink dry before handling.

It would’ve been easier to think about the second photo’s implications had he not seen the third. He could’ve excused it—a shot taken by a neighbour, though the cabin was remote. A shot that fired itself, the camera discarded on the ground, though it was taken at eye level. A shot signed with familiar initials E.L.K, as if those letters could stand for anything but Eliza Louise Kiang. It would’ve been easier to excuse her presence. To excuse her knowledge of him, to forget she’d ever told him she didn’t know his father had children, that she swore she’d never have been with him had someone informed her. It would’ve been so much easier.

The last photo was not a photo at all, not in the same capacity at least. The ink had gone purplish from the elements but swirled, almost horror-like around the photo’s frame. He could have pretended the white swishes of colour were strands of lace, or the awkward scratch of photo blur. He could’ve pretended to not understand. But there it was. The light funnelling down on the black and white shape so he understood it was not a photograph he looked at, but a child.

I have already shared this line a few times, but it’s my favourite thing I’ve ever written oops!:

When she looked at him, she grinned, and he turned his face to the ceiling where a hole in the roof caved around a branch. The sun’s eye disappeared behind the bullet of the wood, leaving only its outer edges to skirt the sky, a veiling that felt less like an eclipse, and more like evidence of an exit wound.

Obligatory “I’m the grass” shoutout:

“All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field,” he says without once reading what’s actually written on the page. “Isaiah.”

“Isaiah was onto something, don’t you think? Poor grass, poor flowers—they all die in the end, but they have their God. They have their saviour. Everything dying except for God and his word.”

Eliza cuts another clump of hair. The fire welcomes its feed with haste.

“What does this have to do with children?”

“Do you feel you’re the God of these women, Lonan? Are you their saviour?”

Lonan shakes his head. “I’m the grass.”

And to finish:

After they eat the fish, Lonan and his father rinse their hands in the lake. This is respect. This is self-ordinance. This is a holy act.

His father stoops farther into the stream than he does, water nipping his knees. The sun has disappeared beyond the horizon, the sky now coloured periwinkle, silvering his hair. The taste of sunfish coddles Lonan’s tongue, oiled and briny with saltwater. They share a bar of orange glycerin soap, its scent cloying, like a rotting fruit basket. His father peels the bar between his palms, scrubbing until his fingers disappear under suds.

That’s it for this update! Hope y’all enjoyed! :) I’ll be back soon to update on chapter 5!

--Rachel

#writing #amwriting #writeblr #writerblr #writingupdates #fostered #mothwork #feedinghabits

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teenynyxpersonal · 5 years

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When first they told him everything, he could scarce believe it. So many years, decades, lives, come and gone. They explained how they came to find him, how much time had passed from the beginning of his isolation until now, and then finally, of the Eight Umbral Calamity.

The mention of it, however surprising it might be to others, was not what he had wanted to hear right away. Certainly, it was a predictable thing. Umbral comes after Astral, a slate wiped clean, and people rebuild, as was the case with earlier civilizations. It is only when he hears the part she played in it that he feels dizzy, sick, and an inconsolable despair swells his chest.

His crystalized hand comes to cover his mouth, red eyes screwed tightly shut as he listens. He doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to know the details, and yet he knows this is important.

“How...?” He manages quietly as the man across from him, Biggs, not the first of his name but a descendant, finishes describing the devastation. “I don’t understand how she could have died. She should not have been able to die so easily...”

“Ah, then you know about that.” He sits down, sighs and takes a drink of the warm tea he had poured them. G’Raha had yet to touch his beyond the first sip. “It wasn’t common knowledge, but yes, The Warrior of Light was essentially immortal. Both her and her sibling were blessed with finding those crystals long ago, which gave them strength and longevity. The ability to rise to any occassion and from any wound, no matter how fatal. They were to become Her champions, and Nyxia did follow that for the most part.”

“I am told after the mess with Ala Mhigo, she wandered, saw many things, touched many lives. Reverence for her actions grew in those who she met, and it is those who come from the ones she saved that labor today to pick up the pieces.”

He pauses, looks at his cup. It seems his words are too heavy, and G’Raha waits with bated breath, unable to look up from the floor.

“In the end, she was alone. Her sister Taja had perished from the corruption of Aether that seeped into the crystal she beared. Her comrades suffered a similar fate. Perhaps because she was the Warrior of Light, she did not suffer that. Hers was worse. The effects of that which caused the Calamity was that aether no longer flowed, was stopped, and stagnated. She could not recover, could not draw from outside sources, and so she had to use her own.”

“Alone with the looming of a terror too large to handle, she gave everything to put an end to it. I am told it was a beautiful and sorrowful event. The energy she harnessed and used was likened to starlight, and they say it did not stop raining the stuff for a month. At the end, when the dust settled and rescue crews could finally enter that empty ground, there lay her belongings, but not a trace of her.”

The miqo’tes hands clench in his robe, and he feels hot wetness welling behind his eyes. How scared, she must have felt at that moment, knowing she was about to die. Alone, afraid, desperate, she did what she had to. It saved many, but at such a cost... such an inexcusable cost!

“Eorzea plunged into darkness from then on. Riots broke out, the Grand Companies collapsed, chaos took hold. Garlemald ruled for a time, then perished, and order was never restored no matter who tried to take control. Murders happened in the streets, the world crumbled with her loss. Yet here, in this final place, you will hear stories of her, songs sung of her final moments and of her bravery.”

“Bravery.” G’Raha scoffs, angered, hurt. “Not a single thing to be said about the woman behind the Hero. Even then, even in our time, they held not a thought for her, but for what she could do for them!” His jaw clenches, teeth grating as he stands. He is furious, the most angry he has felt in such a long time. Even longer than he realizes perhaps, but that is beyond the point.

“She was more than a Champion to Eorzea! More than the Warrior of Light! More than anything, she was-! She was My Inspiration! My everything! Before she was a Hero, she was Nyxia, the woman who I-!” He chokes, his chest tight, and he sputters, coughs.

“Easy, easy, calm yourself. Getting worked up will only hurt you.” Biggs encourages, a big hand guiding him back onto the sofa. G’Raha lets him, only because he has not the strength now to stop it. He had only just woken up a day ago.

Nothing but the sound of labored breathing fills the room for a time, and then a choked gasp, a near silent sob. G’Raha shakes as he does his best to gain composure back.

“I knew... I knew I would likely never see her again.” From all those years ago, the events from then reoccur before his eyes. Bright ruby eyes to match his, snowy hair, a brave smile sitting on too tight lips. But she had smiled for him, had told him she would wait.

“Just you wait to hear what I tell you when you wake, ‘Raha! You’ll have so much to catch up on, it’ll make your head spin!”

“I wanted to believe that I would wake to find her waiting, but knew it was impossible. Still... still to know that she has been forgotten, that she left the world in such a cruel way...”

“Hey now, she hasn’t been forgotten. Did I not tell you that they still tell stories of her?” Biggs says and he snorts, shakes his head.

“Of her actions as a Hero. Not the actions of Nyxia Oni.” Not the life of his greatest companion, only distorted memories of her battles.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to judge. Was that a flaw of yours from before? I think I read in a journal somewhere about your stubbornness, and your habit of jumping to conclusions, but this is excessive.”

Another flare of rage flashes through him, and he looks up, mouth open and ready to give a few choice words, but he is met with an old, leather bound book instead. He blinks, looking at the detailing, the dragon pressed into the cover, the title neatly inscribed in silver ink. Heavensward, penned by Count Edmont de Fortemps.

“Give this a read, will ya? Before you go off again, why not play a bit of catch up?” Biggs says, handing it over. G’Raha examines the tome, the old but preserved pages, and huffs. He’s of course interested, but is now really the time? He flips it open, reads the dedication page, and therefore loses himself to the words penned.

The author paints an intimate picture of the time, of the snowy landscape he had never seen first hand, a civil war taking a nation by storm, and in the middle of all of it, she was there. Count Edmont writes of her fondly, dearly, like a father of his child. His pride and care for her tear his heart at times, and make him laugh at others. The scolding tone when addressing her fashion sense, his adoration when recounting their conversations...

Several times, he has to wipe his eyes, pause to catch his breath, but by the end of it, he too is proud, triumphant. He had been wrong. His earlier hope, that she would be remembered in full, it was all here in this book. It is but a shame that he could not speak with the Count himself, praise his accurate depiction.

History had remembered her, and not just what she was. His earlier anger was misplaced, and from then on, he involved himself with the others, learned more of her deeds. In each tale he heard, her personality, her generosity, her self was present, and his heart swells with each new one.

“Each life she touched, she left for the better. Each action she made, she left a piece of herself to remember. History did not forget her. I am... so very thankful.” he finally confides to Biggs, the man who but a week ago, he was ready to brawl. In hindsight, he might not have gotten far... and he is embarrassed that he allowed his temper to get the best of him in such a moment.

With time to cool off, and the situation now clear to him, he thinks on what the true purpose of the dive into the Crystal Tower had been.

“Using technology from her foray into Alexander, and that of Ancient Allag, you and yours seek a way to undo that past Calamity.”

“That is correct. We had not expected to find you before we found our answer, though the Cid from years ago did leave record of your sealing.” Biggs tells him, and a lalafellin girl, Wawaru, she is called, nods. “We are still searching, for it is only a matter of time before this place too falls.”

The threat that she gave her life to stop had only been delayed. That is the true unfair outcome from all of this. Why should she have had to die not only alone, but for nothing? G’Raha will not stand for such a thing, oh no, and now that he is mostly over his despair, he is ready to get to work.

“I will be blunt. Even should you find a way to traverse time, it will not undo the Calamity, for that is not an action that was brought on by our particular star. The same events would simply repeat, perhaps with increasing consequences.” G’Raha begins. “In order to fix that which caused the death of the Warrior of Light, one must first look to the source of it, which is to say, which shard was destroyed.”

He lifts his hand, and a grid of light forms, showing thirteen orbs, and a fourteenth at the center. “Each Calamity that befalls us is the death of a shard. We here on the source suffer for the tragedy that engulfs another world. In order to prevent such a thing here, we would need to fix the problem of that shard. The question is... which do we start with, and ultimately, how.”

“We had hoped that using the Tower, we might gain insight to find a good solution. Is there not a way to single out which shard brought on the Eighth Umbral Calamity?” Wawaru asks, and G’Raha considers, going through the vast knowledge he had accumulated through his years. While he slept, he had absorbed much knowledge about the Tower. As the only one capable of using it in present times, surely there must be something...

“Ah. Yes. There is a way to single it out, and I do believe there is a way to even traverse that aetherial sea that lies betwixt each shard. Or rather there should still be.” He looks up, smiles smugly. “In fact, it has been managed before and none other than our Champion had made the leap.”

“You mean-!” Biggs is beside himself with excitement, and G’Raha nods.

“That is right. Nyxia had traveled to one of the shards before. The one that had fallen to Darkness to become the Void, home to Cloud of Darkness. The Allagan ruler from centuries before had found a way to patch into that dimension, and it held for all those years. If he can manage it, then surely I could as well.”

“Amazing... that you should know so much is truly something.”

He grins, ears twitching as he crosses his arms and sits back.

“I was told long ago that a man could study for two lifetimes and never know as much as I do. Let us put that knowledge to work then, and fix that which should never have happened. It will be an ultimate test, a message sent back to her from all of us. She was remembered, she was loved, and she is still needed.”

He will save her from that, surely. No one else will do to deliver the her from that fate.

“History is my passion, the study of ancients thrilling and endlessly entertaining, but if we must undo everything that has happened since the Calamity, then I will be the first to strike it from the books. There is no way I can allow it to happen, if it can be prevented.”

#Hi this is a mess and I lost steam toward the end because everyone was yelling but lol #FFXIV #Shadowbringers #G'Raha Tia #I think I was going somewhere with this #I might write more later who knows #also I guess if anyone wants I could find the post where I explain what I mean y immortal #but I doubt anyone wants that much depth lol

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04/23/2019 DAB Transcript

Judges 1:1-2:9, Luke 21:29-22:13, Psalms 90:1-91:16, Proverbs 13:24-25

Today is the 23rd day of April. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is always, every day, a pleasure to be here with you around the global campfire taking the next step forward as we continue our journey through the Scriptures. And we finished the book of Joshua yesterday, which brings us to the book of Judges, which is what comes next after Joshua, but it's very different than either Joshua or Moses leadership.

Introduction to the book of Judges:

The book of Judges will lead us all the way to the times of the kings of the monarchy and that's where we'll be by the time we finish Judges. So, this book, Judges, traditionally was authored by the prophet Samuel. Many modern scholars don't really feel that he could have been the sole author of the book. They believe that many sources were drawn together because the book of Judges covers many generations with Samuel being the final judge. So, it makes sense that he would be involved in recounting Judges. And it’s a good time to point out that Judges isn't…like…it's mission isn't to talk about judgments, it's not the book of judgment, it's the book of Judges and the Judges were the people who were the leaders after Joshua. And, so, we’ll find that the time after Joshua, during the time of the judges, is a bit more somber than in the time of Joshua with all the drama and conquest. Judges is what comes next and we’re about to watch the children of Israel as they fall away and walk away from their covenantal relationship with God and suffer some of the consequences of that back-and-forth that becomes their story. So, in this book we will encounter 13 judges that led the children of Israel after Joshua. They didn’t have a king yet, as we’ve mentioned. And, so, they were the rulers. And the culminating story in the book of Judges illustrates how one thing builds on another, every decision bearing weight on a greater outcome and how little subtle decisions by seemingly unrelated and relatively unimportant people ended up bringing on the terrible annihilation of an entire tribe of Israel. So, the book of Judges was probably written somewhere around 1000 BC. So, it's obviously several thousand years ago, but ironically, we shouldn't have much of a problem finding ourselves in this book. It will resonate with all of our stories. We've all had the back-and-forth in our relationship with God. We've all been able to experience the joy of intimacy with God but some of the repercussions of allowing that relationship to falter and us willingly walk away from it. And at the same time, God doesn't ever not have His arms outstretched toward us asking us to come home. His words are never not return to me, come back. And, so, with that we begin. We’re reading from the English Standard version this week. Judges chapter 1 verse 1 through 2 verse 9.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word, we thank You that as we continue through this week and moving our way day by day towards another month that You have been faithful to us every day and You have spoken to us in many deep ways and You are transforming us from within, from the inside outward and we thank You for that. And as we move into the book of Judges and we begin to see what comes next we ask, Holy Spirit, that You begin to help us see ourselves in these stories because we’ve watched the generations rise up and finally be able to go into the promised land and we will certainly see how the cultures all around them do in fact become a snare to them and what happens next. And, so, Father, You have brought us on this path and we have seen much. We don't want to go on that path anymore, the path that will lead us away from You, and we’ll see us walking away from You even as You're standing there with Your arms out saying, “don't do this.” We have done that many times. And, so, now as we enter into this territory in the Bible where we can see this happening to a whole people we ask that You make our own story clear to us. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

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If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link and that link lives on the homepage. So, thank you for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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And that is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning family. It’s Mary Lynn from New Brunswick. It’s my first time calling on my mobile phone so…on my mobile device in the car so I apologize if it’s hard to hear me. I’m calling today to thank Lee. Lee, oh my goodness, your prayers for sloth, for procrastination. And basically, what I’m hearing is disobedience of any sort has really hit home this week. Our church also had a special event this past week and it was a prayer and worship night on Sunday night for the community to get together and believer miracles. Specifically praying for actual biblical type miracles and we were praying and worshiping, and it was an amazing night. And something strange happened to me that I, of course, did not obey and I procrastinated. I allowed to sloth to get the best of me. There were two young ladies sitting next to me in the front row, both in wheelchairs, and as we were praying I just felt almost unable to control myself by reaching over and touching one of the ladies and asking God to heal her and I fought a desperate like you would not believe, I refused to do it. I let sloth win and it has been on my heart and mind all week and I have repented, and I am continuing to repent, especially whether or not I should actually confess to one of my pastors and talk to them about it. But I’m telling you, you really hit home boy. Thank you for everything you’ve contributed, and I will call back again and let you know what’s going on. Thank you. God bless family. Bye.

Hi my names Kevin, I’m calling from Arkansas. I just heard Dawn Perry, she wanted prayer for her son Tyler. I can relate to that, I’ve been through that and I just know that God can heal and touch his mind and also Johnny from Colorado. I want to pray for his friend Nick that he was so sensitive to call in and just really caring young man, I believe junior high. So, I’m gonna be praying for both these with you. All, pray with me. Dear Jesus we just thank You for this beautiful day, thank You for Daily Audio Bible, thank You for Brian and Jill and all the staff Lord that go into making this possible Lord, that we can just pray over the airwaves Lord and that You hear…and that You hear our prayers and that You answer our prayers. Lord I just pray for Dawn and her son Tyler Lord, that he will just start taking his meds Lord, that he will get back on track Lord, we’re just believing for total healing, that he can be a productive Young man and have a really good future Lord, we just thank You for that. We thank You for Johnny Lord calling in for his friend Nick Father, that he’s just such a caring Young man and he’s been there Lord, so he knows, knows that we can comfort others in areas we’ve been comforted Lord. So, just pray for Nick Lord that he gets in the right foster home or that You just work his family situation out Lord, just work a miracle Lord, that he can just enjoy his Young years Lord and just grow up to be a godly man. We thank You for that and thank You for all Your blessings. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Love all you guys at DAB. I pray for all of you every day. I don’t call in very often but love you and have a great day. Bye-bye.

Hi DAB prayer partners this is Rob Still worship dude in Nashville Tennessee or as we like to say, worship city. Hey, I wanted to ask you guys if you would please pray for me on my next missions trip. As I’m calling it’s Thursday, April 18th. I’m leaving on the 24th. Yeah, that’s when I fly out and I will be ministering in Eastern Europe for almost a month and I would really appreciate your prayers. I’ll be in Czech Republic and then Austria and then Ukraine on three very different projects. Anyway, and if you could also please pray for my wife. Her father passed away about eight weeks ago and she’s gonna be working on settling the estate and things like that. So, anyway I love you guys. I appreciate your prayer support. The Lord be with you.

Hello this is Lisa from San Jose California, first-time caller, been listening since the middle of February. What a wonderful gift this Daily Audio Bible is to me. My husband and I have been going through a lot of things. He’s got cancer for the fourth time. He’s going off to a conference this weekend for healing. Please pray for him. There’s an evil spirit on him causing this illness. We pray that they will be a broken off this weekend completely. And then me, I have all kinds of physical problems…undiagnosed…as I can’t breathe. Anyway, I just am reaching out to Jesus every day and I know that He strengthens me to get through everything. So, if you could please pray for deliverance for both my husband and I, Lisa and Craig Smith, thank you very much. Talk to you next time.

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