[She looks up at the sky, which is growing grey and papery. It certainly doesn't feel like it ever will from how it feels today.]
You said the Calamity was five years ago, and it's still like this. [she notes the roughness in his voice, and thinks she recognizes it.] Where I'm from, it was still hard to live outside a castle thirty years later. I don't know much about the magic in the lesser moon, but... I suppose it depends how long it takes to fade.
[He shakes his head--not in negation of what Krile is saying, more at the idea of a thirty years' winter, at the privation she had endured herself, at the chill nipping his eartips, at everything he cannot touch.] No one knows the nature of the everwinter. Or rather--no. [He sets his jaw.] If ever he knew, he's dead anyhow.
[And it is the duty of the survivors to move on.] Here's what's left of Camp Rivermeet. [Drividot gestures at the wreckage around them.] Used to be an outpost for travelers. Some of this pre-dates the Calamity. Not all of it, though.
[He? Who is He, Krile wonders. Should she ask? Or is it like trying to ask someone in Bal about Exdeath?] So no one will know until time tells.
[Camp Rivermeet... And the aetherythe in the middle. She knows it isn't like her crystals, but she still feels an unpleasant thrill at seeing a crystal that is so obviously dead.]
I'm surprised this much of it is still standing. [That's the other thing she notices] So people still used it afterwards? Did you ever come here?
[A nod and a grunt is what Krile gets in response to the question about "him." It's honestly more than Drividot likes to give him on a bad day.
In all his travels, Drividot has only seen a dead key aetheryte once. He has been all over Eorzea--all over the star--and only once, only here, has he seen one. What does it take, to kill an aetheryte? He's not sure he wants to know.]
Yes, actually. [He brightens a bit as he recounts it.] I tailed some of Lady Iceheart's men here, then from here to their hideout. This was back when Artoirel was trying to kill me. [Said with a nostalgic smile.]
[Her reaction actually brings a laugh out of him, perhaps disturbingly genuine.] Jealousy and resentment of Haurchefant, projected onto me. [The smile turns a little sad now.] Honestly, he didn't do anything himself, personally. Just arranged a convenient suicide mission. Discreet. [Drividot can respect that.] Anyhow, it all worked out.
[She watches his expression carefully. That still sounds pretty bad to her? Arranging for someone to die because of how you feel about someone else?
And, okay, Faris did try to kidnap Lenna when they met, but that wasn't murder.]
Oh... and when you turned up alive afterwards he was very sorry and everything is hunky-dory now? [She shakes her head.] You sure do make some strange friends.
I do, [he agrees with a casual shrug, though his smile is starting to fade. The moment of levity, the fond reminiscing, is departing, and while he could try and hold on to it--to explain the arc of their relationship to Krile, the emotional tumult of that time--it won't bring the winter any closer to an end. And it really is damned cold today.]
Right-- [He hugs himself, for warmth, with one arm while pointing with the other.] I'll see what I can find in that section of the camp, you check over there, and we'll meet in the middle and discuss. Sound good?
[She nods. She isn't sure what they are looking for, in terms of signs of a lessening winter, but she supposes it might be growth of non-coniferous plants or patches of thinner snow. A place where the cold grips less.]
Okay. [She gives another uneasy glance up at the frozen aetheryte and moves cautiously towards the other side of the camp.] There's plenty of wolf tracks around. We should be careful.
[And ice sprites, too, drifting to and fro. She looks up from investigating the sheltered edge of one of the tents to see one drifting lazily besides her.]
These don't bother you unless you bother them, right?
[Aye, the wolves... He hasn't seen many close to this spot, but the ones in the distance some malms back had looked half-starved. Not terribly encouraging.
He, too, isn't too sure what to make of the remains of Riversmeet. Part of that is because interpretation of the findings isn't his job--just collect the data, bring it back to Ishgardian authorities and their associated calamitologists. Another part is suspicious that what is to be found isn't calamitological evidence (whatever form that might take) so much as something more... talismanic. A sign, a portent, an omen.
There are, he suspects, bones he could find and throw, lurking under the ice.]
They shouldn't. [His voice is raised for that, then lowered.] But if they do, we ought to record it. Gods know it'd augur something...
[Krile watches the ice sprite for a moment more. She likes watching the elemental sprites that drift around Eorzea. It seems like a good sign to her, a sign that the elements that everyone relies on are alive and well--even if this particular element is overabundant in Coerthas.
She searches around the edge of the tents and beneath the frozen cannons. Those are much bigger than the ones on Faris' ship, definitely made to the scale of people who are Drivi's size. But there isn't anything so far to indicate that anything but ice is happening beneath the surface--no little peeps of greenery, no pockets where the snow has gone away. If anything, there are more ice sprites now than when they started, and a new layer of snow has begun falling.]
Still wintry... [She makes her way back towards the dead aetheryte (it's not the nicest landmark but it is a useful one) and looks around for her tall-enough-to-be-his-own-landmark companion.] Have you found anything out, Drividot?
[The remains of the camp remain opaque to his gaze. With the aid of memories, both of this place and of similar travelers' campsites in other parts of Coerthas, Drividot can construct in his mind the narrative of the place, but not its happy ending. A sad story of decline and stillness, abandonment and freezing.
Can a dead aetheryte be salvaged? Is it even worth trying?
When Krile calls out to him, he sighs softly before straightening up from the crates he'd been inspecting. Nothing was left in it but long-broken glass bottles, their edges worn away by the elements, their contents sprouting such massive frost crystals he can't distinguish them.]
[Which means he feels empty-handed now, which means no. Krile understands that. She's getting cold, but she won't complain.]
Okay. [She looks up past the aetheryte. The sky up there is the same as it was before the freezing, surely--it's the same planet, it just got hit by well, a meteorite of sorts, and surely things started to grow in the tracks of the ones she and Grandpa and their comrades left?] It's the same planet as it was before it got walloped... I'm not an expert on lesser moons and what they're made of, but the earth is the earth, and it's still there to come back.
[She looks back down to the abandoned camp and the lights of the sprites and--wait a second.]
[The land remains, yes. The land has endured far worse over the millennia, and it remains, as it will long after he and she are both dust and forgotten. Thus while this thought is a comfort in one sense, it is not in another: the land will recover, but will it do so before all of Ishgard is but rubble worn away?
So when Krile says she sees something green, she immediately has Drividot's full attention.]
Where? [He's peering over her shoulder almost instantaneously, looking down into the dirt, squinting for sprouting leaves or buds.]
Over there. [She points, and her finger tracks what she's pointing at as it revolves on whatever invisible gyroscopic force moves it about--some paces away, a feathery breeze wearing elegant clothes.] It's the first wind sprite I've seen here.
[As she says that, she becomes a little unsure. Sure, it's the first one she's seen, but it's not like she's a world-expert in Coerthas.]
But I haven't been all over the highlands like you. Maybe it came here from the mountains or the gorge.
[She points, his gaze follows, and his heart leaps into his throat.
A wind sprite.
Wind sprites are not unqualified blessings, he quickly reminds himself, for the rising wind can mean destructive galestorms as well as the wind that turns the mills. It could simply be spun off a bluster, or, as Krile says--]
The closest land where wind sprites roam free is Dravania, [Drividot says, voice barely above a whisper.] To have been blown so far is... not impossible, but almost...
[If that's the case, it probably isn't a transplant from elsewhere. It might have sprung up from right here in Coerthas.]
So maybe there's something going on in these highlands that isn't all about ice. [She smiles.] Is this the sort of thing your friend Aymeric was looking for?
[Because even if the wind sprite gets blown out by the ice, it's still a sign of something different still existing beneath that.]
[Smiling, he gives the wind sprite a longing look.] If only there was some way to...to preserve this sight. So it's not only my word. [Not that Aymeric would doubt his word--sometimes he thinks indeed that Aymeric should doubt him more than he does, he isn't perfect... but anyhow.]
Yeah... if we could take what we're seeing and put it on a sheet of paper, somehow. [Yes, they could draw it, but the real image, the one in their eyes, with every circumstance and detail so that they could show other people.] I'm sure no one has reason to doubt the Warrior of Light and Defender of Eorzea and so on, but it'd be nice if we could show them.
[A chilly breeze across the camp makes her shiver, though--still plenty of the non-wind element about.]
Is this enough of a sign?
[she refuses to complain about the cold! but. she's just interested.]
I wish I had more, but--this will have to do. [Wishing one had more was, after all, a common state of being in Ishgard, after the freeze. Surely Aymeric would understand.] Can't promise I won't be back tomorrow, though. With more coats.
At home... we always kept a close eye on monster season. How many there were, how ferocious they were, year after year. When you looked at just the year after last, it wasn't so different, but all of them together--it was starting to get less bad. So maybe there'll be another wind sprite here next year.
[She smiles, and shivers. he said it first so now she can too.]
I like the idea of more coats, though. Maybe with some fire crystals stitched into the pockets, since you've just got so many here.
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You said the Calamity was five years ago, and it's still like this. [she notes the roughness in his voice, and thinks she recognizes it.] Where I'm from, it was still hard to live outside a castle thirty years later. I don't know much about the magic in the lesser moon, but... I suppose it depends how long it takes to fade.
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[And it is the duty of the survivors to move on.] Here's what's left of Camp Rivermeet. [Drividot gestures at the wreckage around them.] Used to be an outpost for travelers. Some of this pre-dates the Calamity. Not all of it, though.
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[Camp Rivermeet... And the aetherythe in the middle. She knows it isn't like her crystals, but she still feels an unpleasant thrill at seeing a crystal that is so obviously dead.]
I'm surprised this much of it is still standing. [That's the other thing she notices] So people still used it afterwards? Did you ever come here?
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In all his travels, Drividot has only seen a dead key aetheryte once. He has been all over Eorzea--all over the star--and only once, only here, has he seen one. What does it take, to kill an aetheryte? He's not sure he wants to know.]
Yes, actually. [He brightens a bit as he recounts it.] I tailed some of Lady Iceheart's men here, then from here to their hideout. This was back when Artoirel was trying to kill me. [Said with a nostalgic smile.]
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[SORRY THAT HAS COMPLETELY DISTRACTED HER FROM THE MOURNFUL ATMOSPHERE]
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And, okay, Faris did try to kidnap Lenna when they met, but that wasn't murder.]
Oh... and when you turned up alive afterwards he was very sorry and everything is hunky-dory now? [She shakes her head.] You sure do make some strange friends.
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Right-- [He hugs himself, for warmth, with one arm while pointing with the other.] I'll see what I can find in that section of the camp, you check over there, and we'll meet in the middle and discuss. Sound good?
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Okay. [She gives another uneasy glance up at the frozen aetheryte and moves cautiously towards the other side of the camp.] There's plenty of wolf tracks around. We should be careful.
[And ice sprites, too, drifting to and fro. She looks up from investigating the sheltered edge of one of the tents to see one drifting lazily besides her.]
These don't bother you unless you bother them, right?
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He, too, isn't too sure what to make of the remains of Riversmeet. Part of that is because interpretation of the findings isn't his job--just collect the data, bring it back to Ishgardian authorities and their associated calamitologists. Another part is suspicious that what is to be found isn't calamitological evidence (whatever form that might take) so much as something more... talismanic. A sign, a portent, an omen.
There are, he suspects, bones he could find and throw, lurking under the ice.]
They shouldn't. [His voice is raised for that, then lowered.] But if they do, we ought to record it. Gods know it'd augur something...
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She searches around the edge of the tents and beneath the frozen cannons. Those are much bigger than the ones on Faris' ship, definitely made to the scale of people who are Drivi's size. But there isn't anything so far to indicate that anything but ice is happening beneath the surface--no little peeps of greenery, no pockets where the snow has gone away. If anything, there are more ice sprites now than when they started, and a new layer of snow has begun falling.]
Still wintry... [She makes her way back towards the dead aetheryte (it's not the nicest landmark but it is a useful one) and looks around for her tall-enough-to-be-his-own-landmark companion.] Have you found anything out, Drividot?
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Can a dead aetheryte be salvaged? Is it even worth trying?
When Krile calls out to him, he sighs softly before straightening up from the crates he'd been inspecting. Nothing was left in it but long-broken glass bottles, their edges worn away by the elements, their contents sprouting such massive frost crystals he can't distinguish them.]
I don't want to return to Aymeric empty-handed.
[That's a "no, I haven't."]
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Okay. [She looks up past the aetheryte. The sky up there is the same as it was before the freezing, surely--it's the same planet, it just got hit by well, a meteorite of sorts, and surely things started to grow in the tracks of the ones she and Grandpa and their comrades left?] It's the same planet as it was before it got walloped... I'm not an expert on lesser moons and what they're made of, but the earth is the earth, and it's still there to come back.
[She looks back down to the abandoned camp and the lights of the sprites and--wait a second.]
Hang on--I think I saw something green?
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So when Krile says she sees something green, she immediately has Drividot's full attention.]
Where? [He's peering over her shoulder almost instantaneously, looking down into the dirt, squinting for sprouting leaves or buds.]
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[As she says that, she becomes a little unsure. Sure, it's the first one she's seen, but it's not like she's a world-expert in Coerthas.]
But I haven't been all over the highlands like you. Maybe it came here from the mountains or the gorge.
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A wind sprite.
Wind sprites are not unqualified blessings, he quickly reminds himself, for the rising wind can mean destructive galestorms as well as the wind that turns the mills. It could simply be spun off a bluster, or, as Krile says--]
The closest land where wind sprites roam free is Dravania, [Drividot says, voice barely above a whisper.] To have been blown so far is... not impossible, but almost...
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So maybe there's something going on in these highlands that isn't all about ice. [She smiles.] Is this the sort of thing your friend Aymeric was looking for?
[Because even if the wind sprite gets blown out by the ice, it's still a sign of something different still existing beneath that.]
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[Smiling, he gives the wind sprite a longing look.] If only there was some way to...to preserve this sight. So it's not only my word. [Not that Aymeric would doubt his word--sometimes he thinks indeed that Aymeric should doubt him more than he does, he isn't perfect... but anyhow.]
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[A chilly breeze across the camp makes her shiver, though--still plenty of the non-wind element about.]
Is this enough of a sign?
[she refuses to complain about the cold! but. she's just interested.]
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I wish I had more, but--this will have to do. [Wishing one had more was, after all, a common state of being in Ishgard, after the freeze. Surely Aymeric would understand.] Can't promise I won't be back tomorrow, though. With more coats.
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At home... we always kept a close eye on monster season. How many there were, how ferocious they were, year after year. When you looked at just the year after last, it wasn't so different, but all of them together--it was starting to get less bad. So maybe there'll be another wind sprite here next year.
[She smiles, and shivers. he said it first so now she can too.]
I like the idea of more coats, though. Maybe with some fire crystals stitched into the pockets, since you've just got so many here.