#the name belisar had to come from somewhere :P

[snowbird-down]

Prompt 12: Miss the Boat

“Laelia! Deliveries!~”

Verina’s voice sang so sweetly from downstairs. Laelia grumbled and pulled her headphones down tighter over her ears.

“I need a minute!”

“They gotta go now!”

“I just need a minute!”

One day she’d learn not to start a game up during operating hours, but it was a snow-in kind of day and none of her friends wanted to do anything and she was fucking bored. Of course, the colder it got out the more people tended to order takeout, and sure enough this was the sixth time she’d been summoned for delivery tonight.

The problem was the aethernet. One couldn’t simply pause an online game – a concept that her mother absolutely did not understand. At the moment she was getting spawn camped by what sounded like a twelve year old boy with an equally obnoxious bird in the background. Solus help her, if she ever met him in real life she’d hang him from a coat rack by the underwear and take his lunch money for good measure.

“Laelia!” Verina called again.

“Just—five more minutes!” she called distractedly, as she finally got the upper hand on that damn kid. Just a few more steps and she could drop him...

“LAELIA MARIA PRISCILLA BELISAR. NOW.”

Laelia tossed her controller and sprang to her feet. That wasn’t Verina, that was Mom. And the Emperor himself couldn’t save you if Mom started using your middle names.

She ran downstairs, shrugging on her coat, to find Verina beaming at the counter and Mom absolutely glowering next to her. Verina handed her the box of deliveries as if nothing was wrong at all.

“How many times do we have to go through this, young lady?” Mom demanded. “If you want to keep living under this roof you will do your job!”

“Whatever! I’m going,” Laelia said.

“Don’t you disrespect me.”

“I fucking didn’t.”

“Don’t you curse at me either!”

“Do you want me to go, or not?”

“Justus!” Mom turned with exasperation, but Dad was tempered by the television set they had hanging in a corner of the empty dining room.

“The Blues just pulled ahead,” he said, distractedly.

She rolled her eyes, and in that moment of distraction, Laelia showed herself out.

It’d gotten colder since she’d last set out. Now the snow had re-frozen, and her boots crunched pleasantly over it. Laelia beelined for the car and prayed that some of the heat from her last trip yet remained in it; it did not, and worse, the windshield had frosted over again in her absence. She started the engine and set everything defrosting while she fished out the ice scraper, but the car was sluggish to start in the first place. Stupid beat-up ass old Novus D. The only thing miraculous about Scaeva’s design was that it was cheap. Tacitus had bought it because it was cheap; he only let her use it because he was too busy studying to leave the house anymore.

Laelia checked her watch when she was done; she only had twenty minutes to make all of these deliveries now or – by restaurant policy – they were free.

Welp.

That was plenty of time.

She climbed into the car, hit the radio, and floored it.

The junker peeled off down the street and into the neon night.

If she encountered any Roaders, well...she’d deal with it.

#ffxivwrite2022 #laelia belisar #belisar in cucina #thanks for the vid wyda you inspired me #i'm sharing nutley's headcanon about the level of garlean tech here #do they have online games? who knows #there's also a roman history joke buried in here #10000 internet points if anyone gets it #the name belisar had to come from somewhere :P