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The Warrior of Light. Saviour of the star, champion of the people, and as some might say, a god amongst men. An unassuming miqo'te from distant lands, who had found herself in a turbulent and primal-ridden Eorzea for reasons known by few. A battle-hardened mage, who rose in rank and notreity alike after many, many hard-won battles.
Those lucky enough to lay eyes on her swore by her charm, beauty, and strength. She was possessed of bright, intelligent eyes, and a freckled, round face that had hardly aged a day despite years of fighting for all that was good and righteous. Though famously of few words, she gave all a confident, hopeful smile - It inspired corageous souls to follow in her path, and assured others that everything would be alright. Behind that facade, however, lay an air of melancholy - Y'shtola found it between triumphs and tribulations, in moments of rest and respite.
Mornings spent staring at her beloved historical texts, her eyes locked onto one passage, yet seemingly reading nothing at all. Contemplative gazes out to sea on pleasant afternoons, with words unspoken as the crashing of waves filled the silence. Finally, nights where a companion or two would find her staring up at the stars, naught but moonlight illuminating the face that so many admired for its smile - One that was no longer there.
It was on one such night Y'shtola found Leihli alone, sitting in the small field adjacent to Noumenon long after man and errant loporrit alike had retreated to their residences. Her aether, positively blinding, was unmistakable. The Seeker of the Sun sat beside her moon-aligned counterpart, the smaller woman acknowledging her with a small nod before returning her attention to the skies above. Y'shtola was sure they shimmered with stars, a sight she's long since forgotten beyond the vivid descriptions Urianger and Leihli both loved to regale her with. The younger of the two was in no such mood, uncharacteristically silent for any astrologian presented with the beauty of the heavens. As such, Y'shtola decided to speak first.
"What do you think of, on nights like these?" Y'shtola was never one to mince words, and it was no secret that Leihli had been plagued with bouts of inexplicable sadness for as long as they'd known her - From when she was a fresh-faced adventurer with a spark in her eye, to her time on the front lines of an ongoing war between light itself and all life on the First. It had not been borne of their journeys, but rather, had followed Leihli through them - Like an itch that could never be scratched, or a scar that never faded.
"How would you like me to answer?" Leihli's signature sweet, yet soft voice retorted, ever wanting to please those around her with honeyed words and immaculately formed responses. "Would you like me to regale you of the horrors of war and the despair found at the edge of the universe, or would you like my honest response? I promise you, the latter is hardly as entertaining."
Y'shtola heaved through her nose. If there was one thing she wished she could change about Leihli, it would be her incessant need to satisfy others.
"The latter, please. I promise you, after my years of studying, very little can bore this old woman."
"I thought you were twenty three?" Leihli smirked, evident by the telltale lilt in her voice. They both knew Y'shtola's age was a lie - She'd been 'twenty three' since the day they'd met, despite her younger half-sister's age being far beyond it at this point.
Of course, that didn't stop Y'shtola from frowning at the keeper's response, for reasons beyond her elusive true age.
"You're changing the subject."
Leihli hesitated, or simply took her time. She picked a wilted flower from the grass beneath them, using what limited conjury she'd learned during her time in The Black Shroud to bring it back to full health. From one hand, she passed it to another, both of her hands touching for a brief moment. They eventually clasped together, flower in tow, as she brought it to her chest and sighed wistfully.
It reminded the older woman of Leihli's time spent pining over a certain gleaner in her moments of calm, and even joy. While Y'shtola had no preference, their other companions preferred listening to a lovesick fool over observing the melancholic mood that currently had its hold on the girl, like many times before. The former was easier to understand and face, rather than accept that the saviour of all had a deep, unfathomable sadness. One that persisted through the deepest despair as a beacon of hope, but existed nonetheless.
Finally, the Warrior of Light spoke, looking a little embarassed, if Y'shtola had made out her change in expression correctly.
"I miss... Me."
"Pardon?" The seeker was equally surprised and confused. Was this all due to some sort of identity crisis?
"You know of my condition of the soul - or rather, souls - do you not?"
How could Y'shtola forget, after Emet-Selch picked the most dramatic moment possible in which to make them all painfully aware?
She recalled the night they had defeated Vauthry, only for Leihli to fall to her knees and spew the purest and vilest of light. It streamed from her eyes and followed the girl's bile up her throat and down onto the marble floor, painting it an impossibly brighter shade of white - Her very body was rejecting all that she had held fast to contain.
The Crystal Exarch, now known to Y'shtola as G'raha Tia, lay unconscious and wounded between Leihli and Emet. It was rather apparent to Y'shtola that her fellow seeker was not in immediate medical danger, but it was hardly appropriate to appraise her comrades of their friend's condition when that of their other was in such dire straits. She admired Leihli for her tenacity and ability to retain her composure as the light within her threatened to rend her very being asunder. She pitied her for being chosen by fate itself to bear such a terrible burden.
It was then that Emet-Selch laid reality, and his plans, bare - He had genuinely expected these two souls, familiar and conjoined as they are, to be able to contain the light that had plagued the First for nigh a century. He insulted not the two souls within, but Leihli herself - For her weakness. For her stubbornness. For the absolutely pathetic state she'd found herself in, unbecoming of either superior being trapped within her frail, mortal body.
In any other scenario, such blatant disrespect of their beloved friend would be responded to with hatred and protest - Spells would fly, and blades would be swung. However, a silence washed over the scions as the Warrior of Light's true nature had finally been revealed. Silent revelations were made - Ideas between scholars which would only be spoken of outside of Leihli's presence when all was said and done.
"That's probably why she's so hardy in battle despite being a mage." Thancred had offhandedly recalled to F'lhaminn over drinks at The Rising Stones, while Y'shtola nodded along and sipped her tea.
"Thus explaineth the little one's steadfast and admirable aptitude towards all knowledge - Of the battle arts and intellect both." Urianger quietly declared to the seeker as they collectively mulled over the dusty tomes of the Baldesion Annex.
"She changed overnight, you know. After the calamity." Alisaie took a draw of her water as they rested in between training sessions. "Showed up to the Studium with freckles, and a whole lot of confidence to boot. It was the first time anyone in class had noticed she was even there."
'Her aether, unmistakable from all others...' Y'shtola had thought to herself as she watched Leihli chatter to their companions, the excess life energy wafting through the very air around her. 'Bright, brilliant, and concentrated - Far too much to be held by any one soul, even of the source.'
Brought back to the present by a sudden breeze brought on by Sharlayan's damnably cold weather (at least, in seeker standards,) Y'shtola finally formed a pathetically short answer to Leihli's question.
"Yes, I am aware."
"These souls - my souls - long for one another. They have since time immemorial, when they were whole." Leihli, still holding the flower with both hands, let her fingers intertwine. Perhaps it was an attempt at representing the union of souls, or the shards that formed them - Y'shtola could never quite read the girl's thoughts, even after all this time. The younger of the two let out of dry chuckle.
"Perhaps that's how they found one another in the end, crammed into this little body of mine. I rather like the idea of finding those you love, time and time again."
Y'shtola was familiar with the popular, if not romantasized, theory of thought Leihli seemed to be referencing - One that regarded souls after the true nature of the aetherial sea had been discovered: Souls bonded to one another in previous lives would always find each other eventually, throughout the unpredictable and turbulent lives of all on Hydaelyn. With the truth of the sundering laid bare, it was further surmised that souls belonging to ancients who had known one another intimately would find ways to reunite in each reflection, if possible. Of course, that was all speculation, unless Hydaelyn herself had meddled in her peers' many reincarnations.
Y'shtola, knowing what Leihli had told her about She who had been known as Venat, didn't entirely discount the possibility of her doing so. There was one question at the forefront of her mind, however, which she simply had to voice.
"Aren't their very souls mingling right now? I can think of no greater way one can feel their lover's presence than their - your - rare circumstance." Y'shtola tilted her head, as though Leihli's condition and the emotional state it induced would be any more understandable at a thirty degree angle. It was not.
"Yes, and no." Leihli frowned, her grip tightening even more. The flower in her hands seemed to be suffering for it. "They're together, but they cannot see one another. They cannot share words of affection, or feel one another's touch. They see through my eyes. Speak through my words. Feel what I do. Yet... I myself feel like an outsider."
Leihli paused, mulling on her next words. Y'shtola was surprised that her tight-lipped friend had said this much to begin with.
"I'm my own individual. I have my own aspirations, goals, preferences, and..." A light blush settled on Leihli's cheeks, sensed by Y'shtola by the rush of aether to them. "My own love. For someone that is not a half of my own self."
"That would be strange... And strangely narcissistic." Y'shtola commented before she could consider otherwise, earning a light, surprised giggle from Leihli.
"Yes, it would." The amusement dripped from the keeper's voice, washing away the embarrassment of declaring her love for a certain vieran man. Not that it wasn't obvious to everyone around her, anyways.
"The souls within me and my own mind are whole, yet insoluable. We are three streams of consciousness within one body, and I am simply the one at the forefront, yet the weakest and least experienced of us all."
Y'shtola silently disagreed with the former descriptor, knowing how frighteningly tenacious and stubborn Leihli could be. She said nothing, allowing the girl to continue.
"As a constant observer of the two other beings within me, I can't help but feel their longing as if it were my own. I know it's irrational, and nothing beyond our collective return to the aetherial sea can bring them peace. I would quite literally have to die, but I can't. Not yet."
Y'shtola knew that their little warrior had not planned to, but hearing that still brought a sigh of relief past her lips. It went unheard by Leihli, carried away by the strong nightly winds of The Northern Empty.
"I have so much to do and see, spurred on by none other than those I used to call foes and strangers, and now know as my long-lost friends." A smile formed on Leihli's face. Warm, subtle, and entirely unlike the confident grin shown to the masses, as being the star's pinnacle of inspiration required. Y'shtola quite preferred it.
"Hades. Hythlodaeus. Venat. Meteion. Themis. Erichthonios. Hells, even Lahabrea." That was a name Y'shtola hadn't heard in a while, and she was thankful Thancred wasn't here to scorn the twice-dead man.
"Even with knowledge of the purest despair and destruction that had befallen all they held dear, they saw the future in me. They encouraged me to do not only what was necessary for all life on the star, but to enjoy my mortal life to the fullest. Not that of the two strangers within me, but my own."
Y'shtola observed a shift in Leihli's perspective in her very words. The latter's grip loosened on the flower within her hands, before it fell between her delicate fingers and onto the ground below. Neither of them made an attempt to retrieve it - Leihli regarded the flower with a melancholic, yet accepting smile. Y'shtola observed the flower's life force as it fizzled away yet again, no longer supported by that of the most powerful mage of their time.
It seemed as though the Warrior of Light had come to a conclusion all on her own, without Y'shtola's interference. Perhaps what she had needed all this time was but an open ear and mind.
"Maybe this is what everyone wanted all along - For me to enjoy whatever life brings, and allow these reunions between lovers, friends, and family to come when they may - When I've finally lived my own existence as an individual to the fullest."
There was Leihli's answer. A weight finally lifted itself from the girl's shoulders, if only after what must have been a decade of inner turmoil. To Y'shtola, she seemed lighter - Her very aether uncoiled and relaxed, before stretching across the field. It wound around blades of grass and the roots of trees, seeping beneath the gaps of doors to bless their inhabitants. The Warrior of Light lightened the very air around her, emitting an aetherial aura that elated the spirit and calmed the nerves. Y'shtola found it positively blinding, and quite difficult to resist the effects of.
Is this what the masses felt, feasting their gazes on their champion? In her mind's eye, she could only recall the appearance of a young girl, no older than ten and eight summers - One who clung onto the older miqo'te's shirt and cried like a babe upon witnessing the tempering, and subsequent execution, of the men and women she'd failed to protect from Ifrit's influence. How did this frail little astrologian, who could hardly harm a fly, become the saviour of Etheirys and its myriad of reflections? The seeker supposed she'd have to ask Hydaelyn herself (at least, the soul She'd left behind) when the time came to join her ancestors in the aetherial sea.
The refreshing and calming atmosphere found its way into Y'shtola's very being, allowing her some light teasing after being subject to Leihli's turbulent and complicated emotions. It was only fair.
"So, what do the two estranged lovers within you think of that gleaner boy of yours?" A glint reached her cloudy white eyes, and was met with the purest of embarassment as Leihli practically fell over in shock. In that very moment, the warrior was but a normal girl of tender age - Young, inexperienced, and hopeless in matters of the heart. Perhaps she was not so different from the little girl Y'shtola had comforted all those years ago.
"I-I'll have you know they're very approving of him! E-even though he's not quite to their tastes..." Leihli rather sheepishly scratched at her cheek. Y'shtola did recall her having different preferences from the two souls within, and wondered just how far their differences lay.
'What will become of Leihli's third, and decisively unique consciousness once she...?' Y'shtola pondered, frowning a little at the prospect of the star losing such a hopeful soul in favour of her two components. Leihli's sharp, battle-trained eyes quickly noticed this, and her still-flustered mind decided to take said frown in the entirely wrong way.
"Do you not approve of him?" From what Y'shtola could tell of Leihli's voice and shifting aether, the younger miqo'te's eyes were looking particularly large, pleading, and positively obnoxious. Y'shtola playfully scoffed and crossed her arms.
"I can't say he fits my tastes either. He's somewhat aloof, overtly absorbed in his studies of interest, and entirely too effeminate-looking, as male viera are wont to be."
"That description reminds me of someone I know..." Leihli mumbled under her breath, earning a pointed glare from Y'shtola, executed entirely out of dramaticism on account of the seeker's ironic inability to see.
"What was that?"
"Nothing..."
Y'shtola chuckled, having not bantered with nor seen this side of Leihli in quite some time. Not since the stakes of their work had increased tenfold and shaped their lives in ways not even Urianger, their resident fortune teller, could predict. Though she would never admit it, she had sorely missed this version of the little girl she viewed as her own sister. Perhaps sensing mild stress and upset on Leihli's part, Y'shtola felt the need to reassure her. Just a little.
"But if you have to know of my unbiased opinion on Erenville..." Y'shtola smirked at Leihli's aether once again rising to her cheeks at the mere mention of his name. "I believe that he is quite fitting for you, and has a hard-working spirit to match your own."
Leihli relaxed, sighing longingly once again, though this time with a rather attainable goal in mind. Y'shtola could count on one hand the men and women who would deny the Warrior of Light herself, yet supposed it was only good and fitting that the living legend in question didn't possess the ego or care to exploit this.
"If the ease of the creatures he handles and cares for is any indicator," Y'shtola continued, "he has a good and gentle heart. One that may be difficult to reach, let alone grasp, but a promising one nonetheless. Of course, you and I both know that these types are far too common amidst the Sharlayan youth."
They shared a knowing smile. It was all but decreed that all born of or invited to live upon this land were eccentrics, with hearts filled only with love for their crafts and the pursuit of knowledge. Of course, love was stubborn, and painstakingly persistent. It found its way through these cluttered, wayward hearts, fitting itself into every crack and crevice that remained.
Until the heart, and soul, were made whole again.