Work Text:
She isn’t sure she’ll ever be able to get used to the cold of Ishgard. It’s so different from her home – beautiful, yes, but terribly frigid. Bundling her coat closer around her, she pulls herself up the final steps to the parapets circling Camp Dragonhead. Saanvi takes in a deep breath of the icy air, letting it fill her and wake her up as it billows within her chest. A good way to wake up, she can admit. In Radz-at-Han, she might still be feeling the last dregs of drowsiness pulling at her whilst the sun beats its unforgiving rays down, down, down.
She leans against the wall to peer out over Coerthas. The white landscape stretches out ahead, peppered with trees and goobbues and a few coal-black karakul. Further ahead, she can make out the imposing tower of the observatorium, and the enormous astroscope perched atop it.
It takes her a moment to realise she is not alone. A shift in the air, a sound catching at her – one of her keen ears twitches, and she blinks, twisting to look over her shoulder. She’s surprised to see the armoured dragoon – grim and steadfast as ever. Saanvi hasn’t a clue what he wants or what he’s looking at, but he hasn’t spoken to her, so she tilts her head in bemusement before turning back to continue looking out.
“Coming here was the first time I ever saw snow,” the miqo’te says, conversationally, but not really expecting any kind of response. Simply thoughts that would normally be internal, spontaneously spoken aloud merely due to the presence of another person. “It’s so nice and soft! And did you know that there are all sorts of shapes in the snowflakes…?”
She knows Estinien doesn’t like talking, possibly with her least of all, but just because he is here, she cannot help babbling away regardless. Regardless that he does not like her, and regardless that she is ambivalent about him in the very best of times. But that does not mean she should tell him off simply because he has deigned to share in this view. Brushing a hand through her hair, she continues gazing over the parapets to the land below, observing a few of the fluffy karakul snuffling at a shrub in the snow.
“I hate the snow.”
Saanvi’s eyes widen slightly at the abrupt response. She turns to look at the looming dragoon, his jaw set as he stares down at the same view, though he is not with her.
“I still remember how it was before. The highlands used to be beautiful. Greenery far as the eye could see, tracts of farmland.” He clicks his teeth. “Now ‘tis nothing more than a snow-ravaged wasteland.”
She looks away, ears flattening to the top of her head. Suddenly cold, she shivers, pulling her coat more snugly about her. Perhaps her fanciful musings sound naive. Perhaps they are.
She comes from a land of heat and colour, of brilliant riches. There was no snow to be found in Thavnair. Indeed, not even in Limsa Lominsa, or Gridania, or Ul’Dah…
She had never seen a lick of snow in her life before venturing into Coerthas. And it had been magical. But to someone who had known Coerthas as it was before…
Of course it would seem bleak. Hers is simply the view of an ignorant outsider looking in.
“I don’t think it looks like a wasteland.” She receives nothing more than a disdainful, cross grunt in response, but she continues on. “It’s so beautiful and pristine and clear. And every single colour is so vibrant next to all this white, even your armour. Not to mention — the air is so refreshing here. So much different from —“
“You only say that because you have no memory of what it looked like before.”
“It’s precisely because I don’t remember that I can appreciate it now.” She can’t keep the snap from her tone as she turns to press her back against the wall, arms folded indignantly. Already they are going back to how things usually are – and here she was thinking that perhaps they could…be different.
Her answer doesn’t please him – or maybe it does, there is no way of knowing. But he doesn’t respond to her before stalking off, and Saanvi watches him go with mismatched eyes until he has gone out of sight.