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echoes of truths that one rang clear
May. 5th, 2025 03:53 am
( in the waxing gloom, did wane the lover's moon )
Accused. Accused and just this morning he had gazed upon his mother's engagement ring in his father's study and thought that, in a few days, he might be returning to ask for it.
Imagine if she had returned a few days hence—
It sickens him. How he has to feel about it. Disdain. Disgust. That he feels that way about her at all. Her father never showed a single sign. It cannot be true, but if the Heavens Ward has pursued it and he has fled is it not admission? It means the system fails them if it is wrong and it cannot, it shall not, they will outlast. It would have been a blight upon the Foretemps name, and he—
He is trying, shrewdlessly, to make it better. Systematically unmaking himself and his preferences until he is moulded into the perfect son of Ishgard, who will sacrifice to uphold her eternally as She is.
For NaNoWriMo last year, I wrote about Estelline, and a retelling of Heavensward from her perspective. Estelline was a member of The Order of the Knight's Dragoon who, whilst engaging the Horde alongside the Azure Dragoon and their fellows, on the return home via Falcon's Nest discovers her father has been accused of heresy. With her father fled and her mother taking her own life, it falls on Estelline, the sole surviving member of House Maylis, to answer for his crimes; and knowing she would win a trial by combat at the Tribunal, the overseeing inquisitor espies an opportunity, and suggests she might not have survived the engagement with the Horde after all. Estelline is cast out into the wastes, where she finds her way to the Convictory.
I've written about significant moments in several of my wol's lives prior to this for Ai and Khlip, but Estelline's was by far the longest and most extensive. First and foremost it is a love story, about falling apart and falling back together and falling, falling, falling, in love with other things and ideals and that love itself endures in unpredictable, unexpected ways. I should free more of it, eventually. It's got good vibes and good Artoirel character study moments and Prih is having a whole time missing Minfilia and Rehn is there and I love Estelline dearly.
This is not the entirety of my 2024 Nano (far from it!) but as I reached this particular quest, of Artoirel and the WoL travelling to Riversmeet in the pursuit of heretics, in my playthrough of MSQ with her, I've been thinking about it. And seeing as what I'd written required little to no edits or changes at all, here it is.
( The heretics are dead. Two people stand. One as a knight and the other a mystery. )
