Work Text:
Why did you become an adventurer?
The question rattled around Zoe’s tired mind long after she had retired to her new lodgings in the Carline Canopy. The dark-haired miqo'te’s handmade lance lay at the foot of the bed, next to her meager pack of rations and small trinkets, while her dirt-crusted clothing haphazardly littered the floor. She tried to relax into the inn’s mattress, but after a half decade of makeshift shelters and musty bedrolls, she found it far too soft for comfort. The unfamiliar scents of Gridania, of baked bread and torchlight and newly worked wood, only made it more difficult for her to get some rest.
She lifted the ring that the peddler, Bremondt, had gifted her before they had gone their separate ways. She rotated it in her nimble fingers, watching the dim chandelier light reflect off its silver surface. The day had certainly been quite eventful: bizarre dreams, a beastman attack, a flying mythical teddy bear, and numerous unexpected kindnesses, but somehow the peddler’s simple question was the one detail she kept coming back to.
She had not had an answer for the man, instead remaining stoically silent as she averted her eyes, a fact that rather embarrassed her and made it even more difficult for her to talk further. In the moment, she had considered herself a rather rude and terse conversation partner, clearly out of practice from her years of exile, and so was extremely surprised to receive the ring at the end of it all.
Twelve Hells, why does anyone become an adventurer?
As one does, the young adventurer thought of all the things she could have said but hadn’t.
Fortune? If wealth had been all that important to her, Zoe could have found far better places for her self imposed exile than the wooded wilderness that spanned the distance between Gridania and Ala Mhigo. While she had been overjoyed to finally bathe in clean water and gorge herself on meat miq’abobs earlier that day, her needs had been made simple by her travels, and even before that she had always scoffed at the idea of becoming an idle woman of luxury, sitting lazily in a gilded manor with the most opulent objects of her desire a mere whim away. After all, it was not like someone who had done the things she had done would even deserve-
Power? When she was younger there was certainly a martial appeal to her in strength for its own sake, but the academy had thoroughly removed any romantic notions she’d had of such things. Power could mean all sorts of things though. Power to protect others? She thought of the Gridanian couple who had told her of the Adventurers’ Guild, of the various people she had protected from the dangers of the forests over the years. She had helped them, hadn’t she? She could protects others too! She thought of her sister Yahka and her family and her brother and the blood and-
Glory? Zoe scoffed. Glory was the dream of a little girl who had read too many stories of mythologized heroes and ancient warriors. A girl who had learned better a long, long time ago. What glory? Glory would attract attention at best, and attention was the last thing she needed. Hells, how could she be so selfish as to even think about glory for herself when-
She took a deep breath. She was just thinking in circles again. She took another look at the ring, musing over how well-made it was. The design was plain, giving the ring little identity of its own, but the metal was strong. She was no expert, but remembered enough from her times accompanying Babusa to the markets to recognize high quality silver when she saw it. It occurred to Zoe that there was a small indentation where a pattern could go, but the smith had evidently decided to leave it blank. Curious.
A ring for someone whose future is a mystery, the words came unbidden to her mind, One who cannot say where they are going or why, but who is going there all the same. A design to be filled. A blank canvas to one day be painted.
Zoe slipped the ring over her finger and smiled at how well it fit. She did not know why she had become an adventurer, but she knew it was what she wanted to do. The peddler had seen something in her, and she would find out what it was.