Chapter Text
He spends their first day on Limsan soil (or stone? The maritime city looms above them with its towers of stone and constructed walkways) simply… sitting, in the shadow of the docks, breathing in the air that is so very unfamiliar to him. The salt of the sea, the stink of fish and smoke, but amidst it all the mix of mainland air that promises soil and mountains, and it is oh-so-different from home. This is not the air of the Steppe. This is not the sound of his clansmen, laughing and raucous, it is the hustle and bustle of a people altogether different, of all colors and sizes, of Roegadyn broader than the broadest warrior of his tribe, of tiny little people called Lalafell and the slender women with ears and furry tails called Miqo’te, all of whom have turned and stared so openly as he passed. There are no Au Ra here; none that he can see, and Salukh has never felt so keenly this feeling of aloneness.
He would perhaps spend bells sitting, shaking off the swell of phantom waves from suns on a deck, giving into the numbness of legs and heart both, but… but he cannot. He must not. For it is not for his own wellbeing that he hauls himself to his feet, but for the sake of the little one curled against his chest, supported with one arm under tiny legs – little Aoi has long since fallen asleep, fitfully nestled against into his neck under his horns, her own graceful fins perhaps digging somewhat into his chin. If he, a grown Xaela man of age has felt so overwhelmed, then surely the tiny Raen girl just barely ten summers old must be utterly lost, all she has known ripped away over the course of a few brief moons for all that she has known less time on this star in comparison.
It is good that she sleeps now, has not seen his numbness, his hollow despair in the face of so much. She will not see it even if she awakes now. If not for himself, then for her, he must rise. He must ascend into this city, and make his way into some sort of fortune. Though not of his blood nor of his tribe, even, he is all she has now… as she is his.
…Perhaps Nhaama smiles on his resolve, for he has just barely made his way through the docks when he is greeted by a gruff Roegadyn man, whose face is familiar to him – one of the sailors aboard the ship that had borne them there, he realizes. A comrade of time and closeness of space.
“Ho, lad,” the sailor greets; Salukh is ashamed to realize he does not remember his name. “Was wondering where you’d gone – not far, it seems! Ya left before I could catch yeh, since I was a bit… seein’ as how we fished the two of you out o’ the water those days back… well.. there’s not many of your kind around here, and, er… ain’t any looking forward to yeh here, are there?”
Salukh looks down – looks at his haggard appearance, the slumbering girl in his arms, aware of how his clothes hang loosely on his frame and how his one good eye most show what he has been through alone.
“No,” he says, hoarsely. “There is not.”
The Roegadyn is silent, looking him up and down, and Salukh can only imagine that he sees much the same, if not more and worse—
“…Well, look, lad,” he says, and there is something like kindness in his eye. “Can be a mite confusing in this city. Won’t in good conscious let a strapping lad like you wander into dark parts where they’re like as to knife you in the gut than look at yeh… I see that axe o’ yours. Like as not the Marauder’s guild could use a broad fella like you in their ranks, showin’ em a few new things or two. The Axemaster’s a good man, looks after his own, so long as they pull the weight to prove it. Not much to start, perhaps, but—”
His heart leaps into his throat at this offered hand. He is not too proud to turn this down, not now.
“Where must I go?” He says in a rush, before the sailor has even finished his words, and the Roegadyn chuckles a bit, in delight or perhaps relief.
“You head on straight up the market, now, no turnin’ down the side streets, and that’ll take you to the Crow’s Lift. Just a bit further from the aftcastle you’ll find the guild. Bit o’ a walk, but you can take in the sights and sounds eh?” With that, he nodded, and his smile is approving. Welcoming, almost. “Limsa’s a ever changin’ mistress, but you’re not the first flotsam to wash up on her shores. In time she looks after her own. Navigator guide yeh, son, and the little lady too.”
And with that he is gone – swallowed in the crowd, some phantom of good will that Salukh is not sure he… not sure he deserves. He would scorn such pity, once. But not now. And so he shifts Aoi in his arm – still she sleeps, still so exhausted— and takes that first, hesitant step forward. And then another, and another.
For this new… home, to embrace him, so too must he embrace her in turn… and hope that her arms were welcoming, as the sailor had said, to her new son and daughter washed upon her shores.