Chapter Text
Snoegeim squished down their pack as best they could, the leather straining on all sides against itself. There were so many texts they wanted to bring along on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but, as ever, the physical bounds of their bag were just not enough to fit them all. “Maybe…” they mused aloud to themselves, staring frustratedly at the brown bag and attempting to utilize sheer willpower to envision a way to make room for even just one more book. After a few moments, they sighed and upended the bag onto the table, a veritable rainbow of bookcovers spilling out all over before they began the whole stuffing process over again.
They placed a few of the larger volumes at the bottom of the bag before sliding in a smaller pocket-sized edition of the Enchiridion to the sides, sandwiching it between the side of the bag and the other texts’ spines. A small bound set of localized Gridanian myths followed, joined by a rather raunchy but thankfully thin printing of Lominsan sailor’s songs about Llymlaen. They picked up the copy of Essences and Permutation: A Treatise on the Six Elements and held the weighty tome in their hand for a moment, hovering it over their already struggling bag in deliberation.The book was…exhaustive to put it kindly, and occasionally helpful, but far too heavy - not to mention big - to bring along on this adventure.
A knock on the doorframe pulled Snoegeim from her pondering, an amused-looking G’Raha Tia filling the portal.
“Still struggling with the bag, I see,” the miqo’te remarked, leaning into the white chestnut doorframe.
Snoe sighed and set down the treatise they were holding. “This is practically impossible! How am I supposed to choose which texts to bring to consult when we’re talking about the most important mythological discovery of my lifetime? I mean, it’s the Seventh Heaven!”
“Would it truly be any different if you were just going to Thanalan to study…what was it, again? Belah’dian worship of Azeyma, like you had originally planned?” Raha asked with a smile.
“I suppose not,” Snoe granted, adjusting their glasses. “How long do I have? Surely this airship of yours won’t wait forever.”
Raha smirked, the century he’d supposedly spent on another world not blunting his natural tendencies towards mirth. “Oh, she’ll wait as long as we need, of that I’m quite certain.”
“...she?” Snoe asked, confused for a moment before it dawned on them. “No. You didn’t trouble her with this, did you?! Raha, she must have a thousand more important things to do than ferry a lowly mythologist to and fro!”
“Relax, Snoegeim, she invited herself-” Raha started to defend himself.
“‘Invited myself,’” came a sarcastic deep voice from the hall behind G’Raha, “you make me sound so rude, Raha.”
Snoegeim’s heart skipped a beat as the Warrior of Light joined the red-haired miqo’te in their doorframe. They’d seen the woman before, of course, at various places around Sharlayan, but never without some distance between them.Somehow, this close, she felt…taller, despite only barely clearing Snoegeim’s waist.
“Aydria Fireheart,” the black-haired woman greeted with a mock salute bouncing off the stark white strip in her hair as she turned her attention to the tall scholar in front of her. “You must be Snoegeim.”
“That’s me!” Snoe declared with an awkward wave and half-smile, realizing they were desperately clutching a textbook that had found its way into their hands against themselves.
“Nice to meet you,” the Warrior of Light said with a disarming smile, not drawing attention to Snoe’s paperback shield, if she had even noticed. “I promise I’m not as scary as whatever this old man has told you.”
“Aydria!” Raha protested, sounding perturbed.
"What?" the Warrior of Light defended, "Anything after 200 is firmly 'old man' territory."
Raha huffed, sticking his nose up slightly. "I'm more offended you think I would be gossiping!"
Aydria punctuated rolling her eyes with a singular snorted chuckle before turning her attention to the roegadyn in front of her. She paused a moment, looking up and down the taller woman’s teal coat before speaking.
“You grip that book much tighter, and you’re gonna break it, Snoegeim,” she said matter-of-factly, though clearly not upset - this had probably happened to her before.
Snoe looked down at their white knuckled grasp on a copy of Halone and Fighting Men , which was beginning to buckle in the center of the book’s spine. “Oh!” They laughed nervously, suddenly very self-conscious, trying and failing to release the tension built up in their shoulders. “I was…just packing it!” they feebly explained, quickly shoving the poor paperback roughly into their bag.
The Warrior of Light raised a thick black eyebrow in skepticism. “Uh-huh.”
She walked over to the pile of books in disarray over the low table in front of Snoegeim, picking up a heavy hardcover copy of Eorzea and Her Symbols before turning to look up at the red-faced roegadyn. “Here,” she offered with the book in a half-gloved hand, “hardcover will make a better shield when you have to defend me from that one’s vicious assaults on my reputation,” she said with a wink before glancing back towards a crotchety G’Raha Tia.
“Keep it up, O Warrior of Light, and I might just have to actually deface your reputation with a few embarrassing stories after all,” the redheaded miqo’te threatened. “But that won’t get us aloft any sooner.”
“Oh, fine,” Aydria said, waving a hand dismissively. “Go get your bag, I’ll help Snoegeim with these and we’ll be on our way.”
“You really don’t have to-” Snoegeim began, still quite embarrassed from before.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ve got more books than this onboard already, a few dozen more isn’t going to break any weight limits,” Aydria assured with a smile, beginning a stack of books with the slightly bent edition of Halone and Fighting Men at the bottom, promptly flattening it under a heavy blue-green tome simply titled Etta as Raha turned and left the two women alone.
“So,” Aydria began, “do you need all of these? Because that poor bag isn’t gonna cut it if you do.”
“Oh, no. I mean, yes. But not really,” Snoe waffled. “They’re all useful, but I don’t actually need all of them. I have more, these were just the ones I thought I’d end up referencing most.”
“Mmm,” Aydria acknowledged, perusing a few of the titles before what Snoe had just said registered for her. “Wait, you have more?”
She glanced around the room, gaze coming to rest on a disheveled looking bookshelf that was clearly missing a rather large number of texts from its shelves. “Do you want to just bring all of them? We can, you know.”
“What? Yes! I’d love that!” Snoegeim exclaimed, excitement overtaking them as the difficult decision of priorities was lifted off their shoulders.
“C’s gonna give me so much shit about this,” Aydria murmured to herself as she pulled back the leather on one of her gloves to reveal a magiteknical wristlet that she tapped at a few times, brushing at the holographic interface projected out of it.
“I’m not being a bother, am I?” Snoe asked, nervous.
“What? No,” Aydria assured, pulling the glove cuff back into place over top of the wristlet. “C-V just tends to whine a lot about its battery efficiency when I make it carry heavy things. And your books will be heavy. Don’t worry about it, it’s just like that; tends to say whatever comes into its circuits.”
Snoe furrowed their brow, slightly confused, but felt too embarrassed to ask for clarification. “I see,” they said, still not totally understanding.
Aydria began stacking the spread of texts into short stacks, organized roughly by size. “So,” she said as she stacked, “I’ve known Raha for a decent while now, but he’s never so much as mentioned you until we found this place. You known each other long?”
“Raha? Not…particularly, I’d say. We were in Studium around the same time, though I was just starting my mythological studies as he was finishing his Archon thesis. Spent a lot of late nights in Noumenon keeping each other awake while researching for papers, back then. Though that was years ago, now,” Snoe explained.
“Some of the Students were rather distraught over his sudden departure, if I recall,” Aydria observed, an unspoken question within her words.
“Seeing as I only knew him so briefly, it came as a bit of a surprise, but I certainly would not have called myself distraught over his disappearance,” Snoe answered. “I was more intrigued and grateful to have been able to unknowingly study alongside someone so dedicated to understanding our world in connection to himself.”
Aydria laughed, setting a copy of A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth on top of her most recent stack. “‘Dedicated.’ That’s certainly one way to describe how he was back then.”
Snoegeim flushed, feeling like they’d said something wrong. “Y-you probably know him better than I did, of course.”
Aydria finished piling the last stack of the thickest, heaviest books with a solid thud.
“Snoe, relax,” the Warrior of Light soothed, grabbing the taller woman’s hand and giving it a comforting squeeze before letting go just as quickly. “That wasn’t a test or anything; I just like to know about the people I’m working with, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry,” Snoe said reflexively, taking her glasses off and beginning to polish them on a section of their coat. “I’m a little nervous, is all.”
“I seem to have that effect on people, for some reason. You’d think being four fulm nine would diminish that, but somehow…” Aydria trailed off with a smile.
The redheaded roegadyn looked down at the smiling hero in front of them. She was right, of course - a woman half Snoegeim’s height shouldn’t be that imposing - and equally, it almost felt like she shouldn’t be capable of being so easily soothing. This was a woman who had fought in wars, traveled across dimensions, been to the very edge of reality and back again - and seemed, despite it all, the picture of composure and calm.
A loud ca-thunk resounded in the hall outside before Snoe could say anything more, followed by the telltale whirring of servos and clank of metal against the stone floor as C-V01 made its noisy entry to the Andron.
“<Captain,>” it spoke in a monotonous voice, “<this expenditure will cause a 12.8% decrease in estimated battery life.>”
Aydria rolled her eyes, smile fading as she turned from looking at Snoe to her seven fulm machine ally. “Just put the books in the chest and put them in with mine, would you? I upgraded your battery two weeks ago precisely for this sort of thing!”
“<I understand,>” the machine blipped, almost sounding sarcastic. “<Unnecessary overtaxation of battery for manual labor will commence as ordered,>” it quipped, marching itself and a rather large chest over to the table where the piles of texts sat neatly in little towers.
“Oh, c’mon, C.You wanna make the poor girl carry 50 ponze of books all by themselves?” Aydria shot back, clearly having dealt with the cantankerous droid’s complaints before.
“<That does not sound so bad to me,>” C-V muttered, quickly moving the books safely and neatly into the chest before closing the lid, then unceremoniously lifting the entire bookshelf containing the rest of Snoegeim’s many books off the ground.
Aydria turned her gaze back to Snoegeim. “Alright, you got anything else you want to bring along?”
Snoe grasped their head in surprised horror as they realized they were, in fact, missing something. Rather a lot of somethings, actually. “Oh, seven hells! Clothes! I forgot clothes! I was so focused on the books…”
They rushed over to their dresser and threw it open in a panic, shoving various clothes off the top into their now-free bag in a rush to make up for time.
Aydria laughed again, a twinkling peal. “You’re not the first to do this, don’t worry.Take your time; grab what you really want to wear! C and I will go get your books squared away on the ship, and you can meet us there when you’re ready, okay?”
Snoe stopped, half of a second coat awkwardly hanging out over the top of their once-again straining bag. They sighed, feeling incredibly, ridiculously pathetic-looking.
“You’re sure it’s alright?” they sheepishly asked, bracing the bag of haphazard shirts and coats against the dark wood of the dresser.
The Warrior of Light smiled again, nodding gently. “Really, Snoe. It’s fine. I can wait as long as you need. You know where I’m moored, right?”
“Bay Four,” Snoe said, brushing their hair back behind their ears. “I won’t be far behind, I promise!”
Aydria and C-V01 walked silently through the paved streets of Old Sharlayan in the direction of the small airship landing.“<Their heartrate was 28% elevated from resting while speaking with you,>” the machine observed seemingly at random.
“What did I tell you about monitoring my goggle’s sensors, C!?” Aydria snapped.
“<Your heartrate was elevated 12% from resting as well,>” it stated flatly, not acknowledging the order. “<This could be an impact on your overall tactical and strategic performance.>”
“I did not ask for a health check, C,” Aydria said with an annoyed frown. “I’m fine. It’s nothing either of us need to worry about.”
“<I understand,>” C-V01 monotonously intoned, saying nothing further.
Though she certainly is quite endearing, Aydria thought privately.