Work Text:
The skies can't keep their secret!
They tell it to the hills —
The hills just tell the orchards —
And they the daffodils!
-Secrets , Emily Dickinson
~
Short, cramped writing all strung together, so illegible as to nearly be in cipher.
He infuriates me every day, but he excites me, too. I can’t explain it. His smirk makes me want to punch him and kiss him in equal measure. The way his hair flops effortlessly into his eyes—no, not effortless, I’ve seen how long it takes him to style it of a morning—makes my palms itch to push it back, to pull it til he yelps. Maybe I just want to see him laid low for once. Small and misbegotten, the way he makes me feel. What would it be like, to have power over a man so beloved, so charming, so used to getting his own way?
Good. I think it would feel good.
But these are useless, inappropriate thoughts. His smirk and his hair and his long, talented fingers are as out of reach to me as Azys Lla. It is better that I forget these wild imaginings and bend my focus toward the Song of Oblivion.
We are close now. I can feel it. The Moogle King knows something—this is no wild goose chase.
I wish Guy I wish he were here. His snark and cutting wit, while infuriating, would be a welcome reprieve from the cold winds and dismal sky. We spent three hours traipsing after a clue Mogta felt certain was good, only to find crumbled stone and mud where the sigils should have been.
The Warrior appears unmoved by these setbacks—sometimes I think this is but a holiday for him—and he is, as usual, implacable and disinclined to conversation. I myself have never been one to chatter needlessly, unlike some. But I find myself wishing for his voice, raised in song to pass the hours as we wander, or his fingers strumming lithely over the strings of his lute. It is a beautiful instrument. It reminds me of my grandmother’s—
The words trail off and smear into a blotch of ink, as if the writer snapped his pen in frustration.
~
A fresh start. The writing is less cramped, but just as difficult to read as before.
We have been camping up in the clouds for nigh on a week. I begin to wonder if I am wasting everyone’s time. Mogta is as cheerful as ever—he seems to have an endless supply of energy, and an equally endless supply of clues and fairytales to send us chasing our tails all over the islands. The Warrior comes and goes, as is his wont, ever the stray cat wandering back into camp whenever it suits him. I feel sometimes that he is observing me the way an alchemist observes the liquid in a beaker, bubbling on a stove. Except that I am the beaker, and the frustration in me the brew that I fear is on the cusp of flowing over.
I am reading too much into it. I am overtired. I am no stranger to roughing it, but even the domain of the kindly moogles is harsher than the Shroud I am accustomed to. I wonder if G would find it as strenuous as I do, or if his long legs would eat up the miles with ease, piercing eyes bound ever toward the horizon as it shifts and changes before us.
Curse him, for making me wonder. Curse me for letting this silly fancy fester. I think of him too often to be healthy. I worry for him. What if he never meant to leave? What if danger befell him in the wilds of the Forelands, and he has been playing the part of a dragon’s dinner this last week?
A short break in the text. The next few lines are rounder, soft-edged with relief.
I forced myself to voice these concerns to the Warrior, instead of sitting on them til they choked me. He smiled, rather enigmatically, and said he did not think that G had come to harm. He said that I was welcome to go and look for him, if I desired to engage in a different sort of hunt, but I refused. This is of the utmost importance. It must be, if I am to return to my superiors with proof of this project’s veracity. I had a feeling that the Warrior was laughing at me when I refused, but of course I could not prove it. Everything he thinks and half of what he says occurs entirely behind his eyes.
G had a way of drawing him out. A certain… charisma. Perhaps it comes of them both being Shroud natives. I wish I could find common ground with them the way they do with each other, but I cannot blame the Warrior’s reticence. We are only colleagues, after all. The same way that G and I are. Were.
I don’t think he’s coming back.
~
Scribbled on a loose leaf of paper that has been folded and pressed between the pages.
I can’t find my bloody journal, so I begged the Warrior for assistance and he produced these, on which I shall recount our adventures until such time as I recover my lost notes. I pray the damn thing didn’t fall off an island somewhere—there are state secrets in there! Not to mention more than a few embarrassing
The writer has stopped mid-sentence and carries on again a few ilms down.
We have found another clue. That is, Mogta did, in company with the Warrior, who always seems to stumble over the right answer given enough time. I pray his instincts lead us true. I cannot dally here in the clouds much longer; even this far out of reach, I can feel the Adders breathing down my neck, doubtful and disapproving. As perhaps they should be. I have wasted a great deal of their time and no small amount of their coin on this venture. To return empty-handed will be a stiffer blow to my pride than I can bear.
~
A brief, sharp note consisting only of two words, underlined thrice.
He came.
~
Written in the journal once more.
I must recount the last several hours, lest my foolish brain scramble their events and lose all coherency. We—the Warrior, Mogta, and I—had come to a foreboding place at the far edge of the Sea of Clouds, populated by no one and nothing save the abandoned homes of moogles long dead. I fear a great weakness came over me. I saw the stone carvings, the rites of sealing and cleansing, and could not stop myself from breaking those ancient bonds.
The creature that emerged was a horror. Beautiful and terrible. I was shocked to the point of inaction; I stood there like an utter fool as it came upon me, seeming to blot out the sky with wings and a song fit to shine beside Garuda. I could see nothing, hear nothing but the siren.
Then, a shout. The twang of a bowstring and an arrow past my cheek, so close I could feel the wind off its fletching. The spell was broken, and when I turned it was to see Guydelot across the field, eyes a furious green blaze as he drew forth his lute.
I can’t explain the joy I felt at seeing him. The battle passed as a blur. My lance was a lightning-bolt in my hands, darting this way and that, spurred along by the rise and fall of Guydelot’s music. The battle-clangor of his voice hooked itself beneath my sternum and pulled me along, a puppet on a string. And I was happy to be led.
A short break, followed by a crumpled, mud-stained page that was torn out and replaced with care.
Mogta stole my journal. I am humiliated. I am distraught. After everything I confessed, all the ridiculous, private, unadulterated nonsense—
I cannot look him in the eye. This must be my last entry. This must be our final mission together. I’ve never been so ashamed in my life. Thank the Twelve we got what we came for, in a manner of speaking. I intend to purchase a new journal in Ishgard on our way home, and there I shall compile my notes into a professional report to give over to our superiors. This journal I shall burn.
~
Two words, in a different hand, sharp and left-leaning.
Please don’t.
~
Fine. I will not burn this journal. But please stop stealing it to write notes and rude drawings in it. I use this for work.
A short break in the page, followed by that same hand, less cramped and stiff than before.
I may have been too hasty in my judgments. It turns out that it was this very journal that brought Guydelot back to me—to us—damn it all, to me. I will permit myself to be selfish just this once. I will permit myself to write his name freely, to disclose all the things he is to me, a multitude of songs whose lyrics I have yet to memorize.
I have purchased a new journal after all, to use for more official purposes. This one I shall keep, a memorial to my foolishness and pride. And to how bloody lucky I am.
I write this from Buscarron’s Druthers, where we have stopped before making the last leg to Gridania proper. The bathhouse here is rather rustic, but private, and it was pleasant to scrub away the days of travel. Particularly pleasant when one has help in washing one’s back. If, perhaps, things occurred other than bathing, well. That is between myself and my paramour and the plain pine walls.
Said paramour is currently occupied with charming an entire roomful of drunks. He’d quite good at it. His voice is pleasant but not angelic—do not pinch me for saying so, when you inevitably steal this to read later—and his vast repertoire of songs includes plenty of bawdy tales and nonsensical adventures that appeal to this type of patron. I am settled in a corner, secure by the fireside, admiring him from afar. But not so afar that I do not know the taste of his lips, the soft touch of his hand on my—
Well. That is enough of that. This may be a private journal, but as I have learned, one can never be sure when one’s personal belongings will be rifled through for the sake of the mission. Or a song. He is always looking for new material, and I should be greatly distressed to hear my own sappy, private thoughts aired to a room of rowdy adventurers.
That is a threat, Guydelot. Consider yourself warned.