#FFxivWrite - Day 11 Prompt: Extra Credit / You Pick - "Listen"
Taking a short piece today to sketch out Euodia, my WoL's Azem, a little bit more. I've known for a while that I wanted to tie her gift into sound, but hadn't taken time to flesh out particulars. I still feel like there's probably some more to unpack there.
[No this isn't going to hit extra hard when she's one of the first people who can hear a certain "keening," dunno what you mean] (:
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Tucked into the wooded landscape amidst the greens, browns, and bursts of floral color, was a figure hunched so low to the ground one might glance right past her if one did not know to look. Her black robes pooled in a circle around her, and her dusty teal hair spilled in loose, carefree waves down her back. There was no need for her mask out here, so it dangled from her neck, swaying perilously close to the mud on the forest floor. Its absence revealed a face that stared fixed into the middle-distance, as her ear was tilted towards the ground, her silvery eyes awash with wonder, her lips barely curled into a fascinated smile.
She was listening.
This was her first official mission under her title of Azem. She had never been in this part of Etheirys before. The woods around her were heavy with the fragrance of flora she did not recognize, mingled with a rich, heady scent of loam. Light filtered through the canopy of trees in the most dazzling patterns, splashing across the ground in a lacy, luminous patchwork. Birds of various species and colors flitted in and out of the branches. Vines and lichens climbed up trees on their slow, silent march unto the skies. She could lose days out here if she let herself, drinking it all in.
But what had caught her attention this afternoon was a tiny glint of iridescent blue, clinging to a fallen, half-rotted log.
The insect was not one she had seen before. She knew of others like it. But this one. Its color was striking. But oh, its sound.
It was minding its own business, doing whatever it is that insects get up to when left to themselves. She must try to remember to ask one of her colleagues who specialized in this type of creation when she got back to Amaurot. (She almost certainly would not remember to do this.) But whatever this behavior meant, its wings intermittently flicked back and forth across its carapace, catching the sunlight in such a way that had glittered and drawn her attention. And the lightly ringing hum this motion produced was positively breathtaking.
Of course, were one of her colleagues on hand to ask now, they likely would not know to what she referred. She was gifted with keen hearing that enabled her to focus on small, subtle, or distant sounds that many other people found inaudible. Most could no better hear the things that she heard any more than she could perceive souls’ colors like Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch could—no matter how often she marveled at their gift and daydreamed about how spectacular it must be to behold.
But more than just detect the sounds, she could resonate with them in a way she could feel. And this minuscule, six-legged creature produced a sound that felt so fragile and fluttering, she almost dared not breathe to disturb it. Amazing. She wondered whose idea this creation was.
She sat back on her heels and tipped her face up to the sun, paying no attention whatsoever to the mud squishing under her knees. She closed her eyes and just let her hearing wander, listening to whatever she happened to find. The nearly mournful drone of the gentle breeze that wove its way between trees and rock faces. The rhythmic shaking of the leaves, accompanying the creak of the branches as they ever so slightly wavered. The light tapping of claws—some manner of rodent, she guessed—deftly working its way through a bramble. A birdsong she had never heard before. She could visualize where its notes fell on a scale. The way the water in the nearby creek tumbled over a series of stones, each one resonating with a slightly different pitch, spaced apart in a wild organic rhythm.
Truly, there was music everywhere.
She opened her eyes and stood up once more. She could not linger overlong, no matter how she wished to. She was Azem, now. Duty bore her to the settlement over the horizon, It would be full of people who were no doubt wonders in their own right. But oh, there was something so special about the wilderness. As she looked through the trees down into the valley below, with a wide world spreading beyond it, she could not but thrill at the thought of just how much of it there was to experience. It was that fascination that she and Venat had first recognized in each other, and it had drawn them to each other as mentor and disciple.
Now as Euodia, the newly-appointed Azem, was setting off in her teacher’s footsteps, she felt unimaginably fortunate. How grateful she was that this, of all things, was her purpose in this world. What an undeserved gift that this was how she could serve the people she loved so dearly.
The world was a beautiful place, and she wanted to see it all, and to listen to whatever it had to say.
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Tapping the sign ahead of patch tomorrow. Please be kind and take part in the embargo. Tag your stuff, use rot13, censor your images, etc. Those of us who can't do patch right away will be very appreciative.
On that note, I'll be tagging all my posts with "#6.5Spoilers" and "#EndwalkerSpoilers" if I end up tweeting anything, but I'll be doing my best to not do anything/as little as possible.
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