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In those days, the Twelveswood was quieter, darker; moss grew thick on every inch of the forest floor, and the trees crowded thick, blocking out the sky. Their trunks and outcroppings hemmed in travelers, forcing them to winding paths that often changed unexpectedly. It was a land made not for the convenience of man, but for the whims of nature; and often, those whims were cruel.
Often, but not always.
Children born of the Twelveswood were favored by the Elementals; at least, this was what young Buscarron Stacks had always been taught. Buscarron the younger, as he was called then, was certain to be among the favored – born as he was to a long line of faithful Wood Wailers sworn to the Seedseer's service. He'd been raised from birth in the little house in the woods, and had been visiting Stacks' Fold nearly since he could walk; and Nophica knew, he'd take over there one day, when he was grown. At least, that was what everyone had said.
And so, when he left his family's home that afternoon to seek entertainment, with only a folding knife in his pocket and a smile playing about his lips, his mother didn't to stop him, only called out to him to be careful. He hollered back an "I will!" and let the door to the kitchen swing shut behind him. In front of him, the forest splayed before him, dark and full of secrets. Beneath each bough might be an Elemental, a creature, some deadly threat or new fantastical discovery.
The pocketknife had been a new acquisition; his father had laid it on him, solemn as a pledge. "Now, promise me, son," he'd said, with his rough voice soft and low, "that you'll never turn this knife against a living tree; nor will you use it to do mischief to any of the living creatures of the wood. For life's precious in the Twelveswood, see, and all that we take we must ask for from the Elementals. Even if you can't see them, they mark your deeds – so be gentle and good, and they'll honor you right back for certain."
That was how it was, at that age, he thought; always some adult or other laying some sacred charge on him, or reminding him of the elementals and so on. He didn't mind living out in the woods with his mum and da, not exactly; but there were times he craved the close companionship of people his own age, instead of adults who constantly filled the silence of the wood with homilies. In the absence of such playmates, nature would have to do. He picked his way through the trees until they receded slightly into a clearing, studded with a small trickling stream flecked with ferns.
It was there that he saw him for the first time.
Buscarron was a born woodsman, and he knew well how to move quietly as a matter of course. His feet were so light on the earth, even game animals struggled to mark his movements. It was this and the soft moss which he had to thank for taking the boy unawares; for even as he leaned forward to get a better look at him, the faint shift of the leather of his boots made his long ears prick, and he turned.
Facing him, the quick glimpse he'd gotten of him was borne out – the Elezen boy was nothing like any of the children he'd ever seen, no tradesman's kid or Wailers' tyke dandled on his doting parent's knee. Piercing blue eyes narrow at his approach, and the boy's eyebrows snap together over a face so thin it brings to mind that of a shrew or a muskrat, with deep-set hollows around the eyes. A poorly-fitted mask, not wood but tanned and dyed hide, rests over his eyes, the middle sagging its way down his beaky nose so that the boy has to tilt his head up to look at him.
"You," he hisses, as though he'd expected Buscarron all along, just not so soon. He scrambled to his feet, lifting what Buscarron rapidly recognized as a man's hunting knife, already covered in blood. Buscarron freezes, and so does the boy; his eyes travel from the knife's edge to Buscarron, the expression on his face at once terrified and strangely elated.
Buscarron's heart is flailing in his chest like a captured bird as he raises his empty hands. The boy could nearly pass for some Wailer's kid, except that no Wailer would leave their kid hungry in the woods with only a hunting knife for company. Behind him, he realizes, a deathmouse is stretched open, quite dead, its entrails arrayed – that must be the source of the blood on the knife.
And small wonder. The kid can't be more than his age, but he looks like he could kill – his cold eyes are taking him apart even now. His skin is a strange hue, slate gray, nearly blending with the gloom cast by the trees overhead but for the sun that pierces through the clearing.
"I–" Buscarron starts, recognizing the Duskwight for what he is. "I won't hurt you."
"No?" The boy's lips press together, as though repressing some strong emotion. He angles his head as though taking Buscarron's measure. "You sure about that?"
"How could I?"
He gets a disdainful look for his troubles. "If it's not starving us out or finking us out to the Elementals, it'll be getting your Wailer da' on our case," the boy drawls, his accent flat. "I know you. You're one o' them Stacks, ain't you? Seen you around. Heard you, too."
His heart sinks a little. "Aye, I'm – yeah, I'm a Stacks."
"Then you're just as bad as the rest of that lot." The knife is shaking a little. "I ought to do for you right now 'fore you go and squeal an' get us all caught."
"I wouldn't," Buscarron insists in despair, "I won't – here," he says, striking around for anything to change the subject and landing on the bloody display behind him, "did you kill that thing?"
"What's it to you if I did?" the boy fires back. "You trying to get me to confess?"
"No!" Buscarron squeaks as the bloodied knife lunges an inch or so closer to his collarbone. "I just – if you needed help butcherin' it, yeah? My da' showed me how to."
"Your da did, huh?" Buscarron thinks for certain he's going to make fun of him; but instead the boy eyes him, steadying the knife in his palms. "Well, bully for you and your bloody da. You gonna help me carry it back, too? See where we're laired?"
"I'm not gonna tell on you," Buscarron says, trying for a lowered, patient voice like he's heard his dad use on the family chocobo. "Really, I swear it." And, despite his better judgment, he adds with a quirk of his lips, "But – I do want to know how you got it in the first place. Aren't those things dangerous?"
"Hnh." That actually seems to please the boy; the corner of his mouth twists up in a cocky little smile. "Maybe so. For a little slip of a Hyur like you, anyhow."
He tilts his chin and examines Buscarron with renewed interest, though he keeps the bloodied knife hefted. Despite his starveling aspect, Buscarron gets the impression somehow he'd be a ferocious bully. His flat blue eyes are exacting, compelling; they hold no room for mercy. And yet it's hard to take his arrogance as an attack, somehow. Especially when he's looking at him like that.
"You swear you won't tell?" the boy says, seeming to have made up his mind. "You never saw me? You'll keep me a secret from everybody, even your mum and da'?"
"I swear it," Buscarron agrees readily, "on – on the Elem–"
The other boy's palm is over his mouth suddenly, muffling him; he can smell the copper of the blood on the knife. "Not to them," he growls, his aspect fierce and wild again. "Not around me, you don't. Try it again and I'll gut you. Swear on somethin' else."
He lets Buscarron go, and the smaller boy gasps in a few breaths, lightheaded with terror and a kind of curious elation. So long as the other boy is threatening him, he's keeping his interest. He thinks he'd rather like to keep things that way. "I swear," he says finally, "by the blood of that mouse you killed, and the dirt that'll swallow it – I won't tell anyone about you, ever. I promise."
An improbable grin stretches across the other boy's face. He's young yet, and yet his mouth is broad and thin like the slash of a knife as he tucks his weapon into his belt for safekeeping, never minding the mess. "That's better," he says with evident satisfaction. "That's a proper oath." And he spits into his hand before taking Buscarron's to seal it. The saliva on his palm is warm and sticky, the fingers that wrap against his hand already much longer than Buscarron's.
He's unlike anyone Buscarron has ever met, which means that he probably oughtn't keep on talking to him; and yet he finds his curiosity bubbling up. "What's your name, anyhow?" he asks, his success making him brash. "You know all this stuff about me, but I barely know a lick about you."
"It's Sev," Sev says with a little hint of a grin, and relinquishes his grip on Buscarron's hand. "Severaint Delacreux. But everyone calls me Sev." He hitches his head toward the deathmouse. "Well? Are you gonna give me a hand with this thing, or no?"
They talk a lot, then, as Buscarron puts his father's pocketknife to work slicing entrails and parting skin. About how Severaint felled the diremouse, with an arrow to the base of the neck, and tracked it to this stream where it lay dying to put it to rest. The mouse would be a present to his mother and sister, who were waiting below; Sev is vague on the details, and Buscarron doesn't press. It's more fun anyway to debate how best to skin a deathmouse. The mask on his face was a ward, of course; but Buscarron is more interested in what he can do with a bow.
"So you hunt – you do other stuff too?"
"What other stuff, sing? Dance? Paint?" Again with that ugly sense of humor, though Sev softens it with a rakish grin.
"Was thinking spearwork, actually," Buscarron says lightly, trying to mind his manners. "My da's going to teach me, once he comes back. And it'd be good to have someone to practice with – even if your reach is bigger'n mine by half."
Sev huffs. "Typical Wailer's kid." He stands up, wiping some of the blood from his hands on his trousers without thinking before catching himself and moving to the stream to wash. "Spears don't catch game, y'know. 'Less you throw 'em, I suppose."
He'd never considered that. "I guess not, no. You can defend yourself with one, though, yeah?"
"Didn't figure I'd catch a Wailer's get saying we ought to arm the people of Gelmorra," Sev says, and though his voice is light too there's some indefinable bitterness and longing in it.
Buscarron stands up, too, leaving the deathmouse and the pile of skin and fur they've excised from it. Sev's hands hang by his side, clean of blood, and he's staring out into the middle distance; but when Buscarron comes closer, he startles and looks down at him.
"You're poaching," he says softly. "You know that, right? You as good as poached that deathmouse, same as me."
"Butcherin' ain't the same as poaching," Buscarron says reasonably, rubbing his hands together under the cold shock of the water. "You needed it to eat."
"That don't matter, and you know it," Sev insists, his voice shrill. "When you hunt, it's just hunting. When we do it, it's poaching and we get caught out and strung up for it and taken to the Deepcroft to rot."
"Well, yeah, 'cuz you didn't ask permission first. But you had to eat either way, didn't you?" Buscarron looks up at him. "Everybody's gotta, even if it's not allowed."
Sev is staring hard at him. "A good Gridanian kid like you, and it doesn't bother you?" he asks, and Buscarron hears it again in his voice, a note of tension that's akin to fear. "Supposing the elementals get you for it? Helping me?"
It's a fair question. Buscarron takes his time standing up, his hands dripping, fingertips tingling with cold. He's conscious, as every Gridanian likely is, of the eyes of the elementals on him, imagined but just as real as the trees or the rocks of the stream.
"I don't know much about the people of Gelmorra," Buscarron says, fairly honestly; he's heard a thing or two, but his ma had impressed upon him the need to verify such things with his own eyes and ears. "Hardly anything, really. But I'd like to learn what I can about 'em. And about you, if – if you'd like that." When Sev's sharp eyes catch his own he gives him an honest smile. "If it means helping you butcher somethin' you've caught – why, it's already dead, ain't it? No harm in that. And if I've got to get you a lance, I'm sure I can figure somethin' out!"
Sev is examining him. "You're a weird one, all right," he decides finally, straightening up, and Buscarron's just debating if this is a good or bad thing in his books when he adds, "Fine, then. You teach me what that Wailer da' of yours has to say about lances, and I'll – I'll train with you. When I can, when they don't need me below."
"Okay!" Buscarron says, his heart tripping excitedly in his chest.
"And you'll have to find me first," Sev adds, a little mischievous grin playing about his lips. "Like you did today. But next time, I don't intend to make it so easy on you. Deal?"
Buscarron's grin grows. "Deal."
And that's how it begins – his training in the lance, and in other things besides. His father despairs at first when his son misplaces his first lance within a day of obtaining it, but once a replacement is furnished he improves by leaps and bounds – far faster than anyone had expected, in fact. And, in secret, he and Severaint meet again; sometimes to duel, sometimes just to share the woes and triumphs common to young boys.
Buscarron grows practiced over time at picking him out of the landscape – a dusty gray shape in the gloom, his face framed by thin brown hair. His light steps quicken when he sees him, which always draws Sev's attention by the prick of his ears. When Sev knows himself spotted, he leaps from his hiding place to catch at him, and they roughhouse and grapple each other until they both overbalance and collapse onto the moss below. Buscarron learns to cherish his smile then most of all.