The Daily Inconveniences of an Au Ra - Kei_Cordelle (2024)

Chapter 1: Mugs

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Eorzean mugs were not designed with horns in mind. And truly, who could blame them when the entirety of the native populace did not have to trouble themselves over such things?

I could, Keshet thought, cursing as skewered his hand on the steel-capped point of his horn. The damnable handle jutting out from the side meant he was sure to stab himself if he tried to hold it as he was supposed to, and even if he held the bottom and tipped the handle skywards so it for between their narrow gap, the grip was awkward, the added bulk getting in the way of his fingers.

That was to say nothing of the size of the mugs themselves, which tended to be dwarfed in his hands, making it all the harder to drink from. And this despite the presence of the gigantesque roegadyns who called this land home, and who tended to be the most sympathetic with his plight, aside perhaps from lalafells, who, Keshet judged, was the only race less suited to life in Eorzea than himself.

And naturally, there was etiquette to drinking from a mug. Unspoken rule demanded that he hold the handle as was intended, and the judgemental looks he'd received for holding it from the bottom scratched at his scales. He had half a mind to just start carrying around his own mug in the style of the Steppe, just so he could avoid the issue entirely. And what was so wrong with cups without handles anyway? You could hold them just as well without any, and then you didn't risk burning your tongue on the liquid within, because you could judge the temperature through the pottery. Even Eorzeans used them sometimes, though Keshet hadn't quite been able to parse the distinction between the various drinkwares he'd seen. Mugs seemed to be acceptable for hot drinks as well as ale, but wine was instead served in a long-stemmed glass that was much more amenable to his anatomy. Nhaama forbid he ask for the requisite Ishgardian tea in such a glass though - he'd thought the Fortemps manservant would faint dead away the first time he'd supped with their hosts and made such a request.

Sighing and rubbing at the sore spot on the meat of his thumb, Keshet twisted the stupid mug until the handle pointed upwards and he could drink without too much trouble. Maybe I'll just quit drinking in public.

Chapter 2: Last Names

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"It's an honor to stand in your presence, Lord Dotharl!"

Keshet sighed, weighing if it was worth trying to explain for the thousandth time that 'Dotharl' wasn't a last name, as Eorzeans had, but an indicator of his tribe. He should never have used the bloody name on his paperwork with the Adventurers' Guild, but he hadn't known better then. He did now. It had been a matter of minutes before the "of the" had fallen away and he had come to be known across this continent as Keshet Dotharl. A thousand thousand times he had corrected people, asking them to simply call him Keshet, and a thousand thousand times he had been ignored.

It's a sign of respect, Alphinaud had explained one day, and he had just snorted. A sign of respect that they misused his name? The first several months he'd been in Eorzea, he hadn't even recognized 'Master Dotharl' as referring to him, frequently missing others' addresses when they tried to speak to him because the appellation simply didn't register. Over time he'd grown accustomed to it, but it still grated at him.

"It's not actually a name," he sighed with the long-suffering weariness of one overused to giving the explanation. "My name is Keshet, the Dotharl are my tribe."

"Oh!" The lad jumped, green eyes wide with concern over his apparent faux pas. "My apologies, Keshet! I'll be sure to address you properly in the future."

Startled but pleased at the boy's unusual receptiveness, Keshet offered him a small smile of appreciation. Maybe Eorzeans weren't all so stubbornly inflexible after all.

Chapter 3: Kissing

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"So how do you kiss?" Alisaie asked, eyeing the points of Keshet's horns jutting sharp and dangerous past his jaw, narrow enough to hamper access to his mouth.

"Alisaie! You can't just ask something like that!" Alphinaud's tone was scandalized, but Keshet could read the intrigue he was trying to suppress in his eyes.

"I don't," he answered Alisaie simply.

Even all of Alphinaud's tact could not prevent him from reacting to that. "You don't?" he repeated incredulously, rocking back a half step in surprise.

Keshet shook his head. "I can hardly fit the span of my hand between my horns, let alone someone's entire head."

"So you've never kissed anyone?" Alisaie asked.

He shot her a rueful look, shrugging broadly. "No, I haven't. But kissing isn't much a part of auri culture anyhow. Where you might kiss to show affection, we rub our horns together. I understand it demonstrates the same level of intimacy."

"What do you do if you're with someone who doesn't have horns?" Alphinaud asked, curiosity overwhelming etiquette.

Keshet hesitated. "I'm not sure. I don't think I know any Au Ra in relationships with non-Au Ra. I suppose you'd have to content yourself with other touches. Or hope your horns don't block so much of your mouth."

Alisaie had her hands clasped over the sides of her face, wearing a vaguely horrified expression. "I can't imagine what it would be like not to be able to kiss anyone ever. I think I'd cut my horns off if it were me."

Keshet recoiled, tail lashing as he gaped at her, fighting the urge to cover his horns with his hands. She doesn't know any better, he reminded himself, fighting for his composure as the twins started at him. Clearing his throat and straightening, he said, "I assure you you would not. It would be rather like cutting your own ears off." He assumed. If a bit tougher to actually accomplish.

"Oh," she said, flushing. "Perhaps not then. But still, I can't imagine never kissing anyone." She eyed him then, mischievous grin on her lips. "That means Keshet has virgin lips!"

He groaned. "Please don't say it like that."

Chapter 4: Linkpearls

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"Here." The blonde-haired hyur held out her hand, and when Keshet reached his palm under her fist, she dropped a little bead into it, shining white like a pearl. "It's a linkpearl," she explained, taking in his blank expression. "So we can communicate over long distances. You just fit it into your... ear..." She trailed off, eyes fixed on where his horns jutted out from his head, right where his ears would be if he were a hyur. She opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. It reminded him rather of a freshly caught fish, though it was rude of him to think so. "Do you, um. That is..."

"Do I have ears?" he finished for her, trying not to be amused by her obvious discomfort. Or at least not to let it show outwardly.

She fidgeted awkwardly. "Well, yes."

"Not in the sense that you're familiar with." His voice sounded strained as he fought back a fit of laughter. "But you'll notice..." He knelt so they were of a height and twisted his head so she could see as he lifted the linkpearl and fitted it into the hole under his right horn. "I can still hear, after all."

Her face was as red as a gulo gulo's fur, and Keshet couldn't contain his laughter any longer as she stumbled over her excuses in her fluster.

Chapter 5: Tailor

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Buying clothes in Eorzea was a pain in the ass. The only silver lining was that miqo'te had tails as well, even if they were furry and lacking in adornment, so at least the idea of tail loops was not entirely foreign to the land's tailors. But it was certainly not like Keshet could simply buy clothing meant for miqo'te, considering he was two and a half fulms taller than the tallest miqo'te he'd ever met, and rather broader besides.

That meant every piece he bought had to be custom tailored, and while the weavers' Guild had been more than happy to point him in the direction of a few who might be able to fulfill his request, it was still very nearly more hassle than it was worth.

When he entered the shop of the first on the list, he was heartened by the assistant's claim that her master had worked with an Au Ra before - an emotion that was shattered when the girl returned with the tailor in question, whose eyes went wide as saucers as she looked at him, tracing a path from his feet and up and up and up his body. "I take it your last auri client was a woman," Keshet observed drily.

"Indeed," she agreed, but shook herself free of her shock to address him with a professional air, rhyming off with the air of a slogan oft used, "But never you fear. From roegadyn to lalafell and everything in between, we'll outfit you to suit your needs!"

Despite Keshet's lingering misgivings, she turned out to be as good as her word, and though his input was required throughout most of the process, they managed to settle on a design that accommodated his demands. The waist tied at the back to loop around his tail without catching on its spines, the top clasped at the shoulder to avoid widening the neckline to fit his horns, and the fabric was soft enough to avoid chaffing at the places where skin met scales. Neither did she quibble over his preference for exposed skin, as the Dotharl style favored, though in light of the scantily clad miqo'te women he'd seen in the city, perhaps that shouldn't have surprised him overmuch.

"Thank you!" she chimed when he handed over his coin (a decidedly hefty sum) and turned to leave. "Come again!"

After working so hard to adapt her designs to his needs, he was not like to abandon this shop and have to start the process all over again. "Don't worry, I will."

Chapter 6: Dressing

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"It seems your clothing did not survive the battle. Pray permit me to loan you something to wear for the moment."

Even ignoring the fact that it sounded like a line from a bad romance novel, Keshet grimaced at the prospect of borrowing clothing from Aymeric, but as his prospects were that or nudity, he just nodded and let the other man dig out a simple blue sweater and woolen trousers.

"At least blue is your color too," he joked as he passed them over. "Would you like some privacy?"

Keshet shrugged. "There's not much more left to see." As soon as he'd spoken the words, he wished he could take them back, staring balefully down at the fabric in his hands: pieces that had been designed for an elezen, not an au ra. While it was true that he cared little and less for how much of his flesh was on display, he sensed his pride was about to take a rather big hit.

He shucked his tattered clothes, weighing the borrowed articles in his hands as he tried to decide which was less likely to embarrass him. He opted for the pants, if only because he could go without a top if needed, and nodded along half-heartedly with whatever Aymeric was saying as he shoved one leg into the hole. His thighs were more muscular than the fabric was designed to accommodate, and the hem of them sat high enough that he looked ready to set to work in the rice fields of Yanxia, but he got them up his legs without too much trouble.

That was where his good fortune ended. He held his tail in one hand, contemplating the merits of trying to stuff it down one pant leg, but that would be incredibly uncomfortable, and the spines were liable to tear a hole in the clothing that way. Plus, he'd really like to be able to sit at some point tonight. Perhaps Aymeric wouldn't mind if he bored a hole into the back of the pants to feed his tail through. That would be an unfit way to repay the man's kindness, though, even for someone as known to be ornery as him. And in any case, he'd have to make the hole so wide to get the spines through that he might as well just cut out the entire backside. Which left him with only one option, really. Sighing in resignation, he dug a tattered strip of cloth from his old clothes to feed through the belt loops and simply cinch the pants tight below the base of his tail. It left far more of his rear exposed than was proper, but hopefully the sweater would cover it.

Aymeric's speech had paused, his lips pressed tightly together as he watched Keshet's conundrum. Keshet scowled at him and then down at the sweater he held, then ducked into the stupid thing before he could think better of it. Sure enough, the points of his horns caught on the weave no matter how carefully he manipulated it, and when he finally managed to find the neck hole, the fabric got tangled on his horns. He let out a stream of curses, each one more inventive than the last, and Aymeric at last lost his composure, clutching at his sides as he laughed himself hoarse.

It took another two minutes of careful manoeuvring before the sweater was seated properly across his torso, the corners of Aymeric's eyes wet from mirthful tears. Keshet glared, though it held little heat. "If you breathe one word of this--"

Aymeric held up a hand, gasping for air as he vowed, "On my honor as a knight, none shall know of your struggle."

"Good. I'd never hear the end of it from Alisaie." A heartbeat later, his lips twisted in a grimace, and he plucked at the fabric stretched tight over his chest.

"Is something the matter?" asked Aymeric.

Keshet sighed, positively despondent. "I just realized I'll have to get it back off... You may not be getting this shirt back."

Aymeric bit his lip, shoulders shaking as he responded, "That's quite alright. You do what you need with it."

Chapter 7: Hair

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There was one question everyone always asked Keshet. Well, there were several, actually, but among the less offensive of them, he heard this one the most: how does your hair stay like that?

It was one of Alisaie's favorite things to pester him about, and had become something of a running joke among those who knew him well -- particularly because he never offered a straight answer.

The typical auri styles were more dramatic than most anything he'd seen since coming to Eorzea, all fluffy spikes and gravity defying locks. So he indulged their questions, his answers becoming increasingly absurd with each passing iteration.

"How does it stay up so well?" Alisaie asked as they picked their way through the desert brush.

"Luck," he answered flippantly, and she snorted but knew she wouldn't get a different answer even if she pressed. Not today, at least.

The next time she asked, they were fording a river in a downpour. She eyed him critically, noting that his hair seemed to resist even the weight of the water that gathered on it. "Is it magic? Is that why your hair stays so fluffy?"

"Yup," he agreed easily. "I pay a moogle to sit invisibly on my shoulders and hold it up for me with their sneaky magicks."

She stuck her tongue out at him, and they trudged on.

The next time, it was Lyse who asked. "How does it stand so well like that?"

"I sold my soul to the void, and in exchange they opened a dozen void gates on my head. It's really void-hair."

She blinked at him, weighing his straight expression and flat tone for a moment before he grinned and freed her from her uncertainty. But for a moment, she had wondered.

Later, even Urianger got in on the joke. "I prithee, wouldst thou deign to reveal the secret of thy coiffure?"

"It's auri tradition to submit to a test of courage as a rite of passage when we come of age, and I was so frightened during mine that my hair just stood up straight and never laid back down," he answered blithely.

"Ah, but of course. I ought to have divined such a reasoning on mine own," Urianger noted, and they shared a quiet laugh.

They tried sometimes to trip him up, asking when he'd just awoken or when he returned victorious from battle, but his answers, though ever changing, never strayed close to anything resembling the truth. Static. Divine intervention. Reserved gravity on his scalp only. He couldn't rightly share ancient auri secrets, now could he?

And as for the truth? If you were meant to know, you wouldn’t have to ask.

Chapter 8: Beds

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Keshet was halfway convince that Eorzean beds were actually Au Ra torture devices. He twisted, trying to find a position that even remotely resembled comfort, before giving up with a heavy sigh. It promised to be another long night, and he was sure to wake up with a half dozen kinks in his muscles in the morning. He swore he ended up more sore from sleeping in these damned beds than from all the battles he fought daily.

The hard mattress meant he couldn't sleep on his back, because the spikes on his tail either dug into the bed and ruined it if it was soft enough, or else drove themselves back in his flesh in a screaming fit of pain if it was more solid. Of course, laying on your tail was not comfortable at the best of times, so even if he didn't care about the state of the bed when he was done with it, sleeping on his back was still most uncomfortable.

Yet he couldn't sleep on his side either, as he'd seen other races do, because of his horns. Even if he could somehow balance his head on the rounded edge of one, the reverberations of the pillow against it as he shifted in the night would keep him awake. Which was to say nothing of the horrible angle his neck would have to be at to facilitate such a position. Sleeping suspended from the ceiling was likely to be less painful than that.

He encountered a very similar problem if he tried to sleep on his stomach. The jut of his horns drove into the pillow, piercing through and preventing him from pressing his face into it -- and he was still left with a kink in his neck from the extra length.

So no, unless he were to suddenly become a master contortionist, there was no comfortable way to sleep in an Eorzean bed. And that wasn't even taking into account the fact that unless he was in a region with a high enough roegadyn population, his feet were like to hang off the end, sometimes all the way up to his knees. Perhaps he should just be grateful that no city in Eorzea catered particularly to lalafell.

Groaning in displeasure, he finally gave up trying to find a comfortable position and just dragged the blanket and pillow from the mattress, wrapping himself in the in his best approximation of a Steppe bed. There wasn't enough fabric to make a decent nest, but if he sat mostly upright and leaned against the wall, at least he wouldn't be awoken every ten minutes by sharp pains shooting down his spine. Hoping he wouldn't wake up sore but knowing better, he shut his eyes and tried desperately not to think of the comforts of home.

Chapter 9: Facial Hair

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Urianger was speaking, and Keshet was listening - really, he was - but he couldn't keep his eyes off the elezen's mouth. Or rather, the hair that surrounded it. It was grey, but it didn't seem like the scraggly, weathered grey of age. It shone with a certain amount of lustre, healthy and natural, and though he'd never actually seen the hair on Urianger's head, he suspected he'd find it the same color. It seemed that on those races who could grow hair in more places than just the top of their head, the colors tended to match from one patch to the next.

He wondered if it would be soft. Although it looked to be thicker than head hair, so maybe not. And Cid's facial hair was dense and curled together, so perhaps they were different textures? Maybe Urianger would let him touch it if he asked. The enigmatic elezen was fond of the pursuit of knowledge; maybe if he phrased it like a desire to learn more about another culture...

"Keshet?" He blinked at the sound of his name. Damn, he'd stopped listening after all. "Thine thoughts appear to have wandered. What hast captured thine ardent attention?"

"I, uh." Well, only one was to find out. "Can I touch your face?" Urianger's mouth dropped open in surprise, and Keshet hurried to correct himself. "No, I didn't mean it like that. That is, you have hair growing out of your face." Yeah, ‘cause that was better. Blessed Dusk Mother, just swallow me whole. "Sorry, it's a bit of a novelty. That's not something Au Ra can do." He gestured to the hard scales and spikes that lined his jaw, as if in imitation of facial hair.

Urianger's mouth closed, lips pursed in thought. "Dost thou suggest thou art devoid of body hair altogether?"

Keshet's eyes widened. "You mean to say you have hair in other places on your body? Where? Why?"

The two of them blinked at each other (or at least, Keshet assumed Urianger was blinking back at him behind his goggles, since the usually voluble elezen had gone silent), both uncertain of quite what to do with this discovery. Would it be improper to ask more?

When had propriety ever stopped him from doing anything? "I suppose I have seen hair on the legs and arms of some men," he offered, eyes flicking down to Urianger's sandal-clad feet below his robes. A downy hair covered his shins, sparse and altogether foreign to an Au Ra. "Is there more?"

"Indeed," Urianger agreed. "'Tis rather standard for... most races to bear growth beneath the arms and in the groin besides. Some men even produce hair along the entire length of their chest and back. 'Tis thought to conserve heat and offer some measure of protection to the skin."

"That seems ineffective," he observed, stretching out one leg and considering his scales, which were clearly superior on both counts. "Is it soft?" he asked after a moment, eyeing Urianger's beard. Was it even called a beard if it didn't touch his chin? His fingers itched to touch it, and he curled them under his palm to avoid the temptation.

Urianger scratched at the hair, and Keshet watched it shift under his fingers, so unlike the hard scales that lined his own jaw. "Nay, not as such. 'Tis rather more coarse than one's tresses." He hesitated, and for a moment Keshet thought he was going to offer to let him touch it, but he remains silent, face contemplative. Ah well, perhaps another time, as he was quite sure his curiosity would not abate until he'd had the chance.

When Urianger finally cleared his throat and spoke, a hint of embarrassment colored his tone. "Ah, pray forgive me, but I have quite forgotten the topic of our discussion. It seems your wandering thoughts have led us both astray."

Keshet, who so often struggled to keep up with the erudite’s flowery verbiage in what was not his first nor second but his third language, was not altogether certain he could have recounted a word the man had said since the start of their conversation. And that definitely had to do with the language, and not the way he'd gotten lost imagining how unpleasant it would be to have hair growing out of his face.

Chapter 10: Language Barrier

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Keshet cursed as a blunted training sword slipped past his defenses and his concentration on his spell fizzled. The sounds of combat paused, three sets of eyes falling on him.

"What was that?" Alisaie asked, fighting back a chortling laugh.

He frowned at her, scanning the others who stared at him. "A curse?"

"I dunno, I've heard just about every vulgar word from Limsa to Ala Mhigo, and I've never heard that one before," Thancred quipped, rising from his fighting stance and flipping one of his daggers in his hand.

"I would’ve been surprised if you had. It's from the Old Auri language, and as far as I'm aware, it's only spoken back home."

Alphinaud blinked at him, book forgotten in his hand. "Do you mean to say you don't speak Common on the Steppe?"

Keshet shrugged, uncertain why this came as a surprise. "Not amongst ourselves. I thought you knew that."

By the time he made it to Eorzea, Keshet was already more or less fluent in the Common tongue. At the very least, he could understand it fairly well, even if he couldn't always find the right words when pressed. Even on the Steppe, they learned the language these days, though it wasn't used often unless they were forced to deal with outsiders. Otherwise, the tribes spoke the Old Auri dialect, which was really nothing like Common at all.

Nor was Eorzean Common his second language, for the Eastern Common tongue was still spoken around most of Othard, and proved to be much more useful to the tribes of the continent than the western language, especially given their insular nature. When they did have to deal with others, it was usually Doman traders, not people from Eorzea. But the Common dialect was becoming more universally recognized, and so many of the larger tribes had taken to teaching their children all three languages, including the Dotharl.

That did not, however, mean his education had been flawless. Even his brief journeys across Yanxia and Hingashi had not been enough to fill all the holes in his instruction. His first meeting with Urianger had been quite the experience. Squinting at the shrouded elezen with the goggles that hid most of his face and the prominent tattoo on his cheek, Keshet had been fairly certain no amount of practice could have prepared him for the outpouring of words coming from the man. He’d been pretty sure he was still speaking Eorzean Common, though only every other word was intelligible.

Time and exposure had helped his vocabulary, and these days he only missed one word every couple sentences, and usually context was enough to fill in the rest. When it wasn't, he had learned to just ask; his companions were more than willing to help fill in the blanks for him, and they never made him feel foolish for not knowing a definition. Urianger had even asked Keshet to teach him Old Auri, and he delighted in the chance to share his culture, even if he couldn't always answer the Archon's questions about grammar and syntax and linguistic variation.

His speech had become more facile too, though he still occasionally found himself at a loss for the right word or phrase, and too often he spoke in literal translations of familiar idioms that left people staring as if he'd grown a second head. But no longer did he feel anxious when called upon to speak, as he had when he’d first arrived on the continent, resorting to taciturn gestures and stoic nods to convey his intent. His accent faded until it was a pleasant undertone rather than a clumsy hindrance, and he'd even received compliments on it.

But sometimes he couldn't help but slip into his mother tongue, like when he took a blunted blade to the ribs in training.

Alphinaud was still looking at him strangely, and Keshet wondered if perhaps the boy had thought all along that he simply wasn't very bright and that's why he so often needed help with his words. "I've never heard you speak it before."

Keshet considered. Outside his discussions with Urianger, he hadn't had much cause to speak the language in many moons. He supposed it was entirely possible the other Scions had been altogether unaware that he struggled with a language barrier. "I thought the honored scholars of Sharlayan knew everything," he teased.

Alphinaud flushed and looked away, but Thancred was grinning, stepping in to reach up and clap Keshet on the shoulder. "Well now that we know, you'll have to teach me some of those. To think, a whole ‘nother language worth of curses just waiting to be thrown around."

Keshet returned his grin, nodding at him. "You buy me an ale and I'll teach you as many insults and expletives as you want."

Chapter 11: Motion Sickness

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The tribes of the Steppe had no need for airships or boats, beyond the smaller vessels occasionally used to ford rivers. The Dotharl in particular rarely had cause for even that much, given their permanent encampment in the desert of Nhaama's Retreat. Those who had proved their mettle in Bardam's challenge rode yols, children sometimes used the karakul they bred as mounts, and horses were put to use when they needed to travel vast distances, but by and large, the Xaela travelled by foot.

Which meant that Keshet did not discover until after he ventured forth from the Steppe how much such travel disagreed with him. The lurching of the ship was mirrored by the lurching in his stomach, and he swallowed hard, trying to focus past the torment in his belly to listen to what Alphinaud was saying.

"... and as I'm sure you know, the effects of- Keshet, are you alright?"

He was fairly certain moisture would be beading on his brow if he'd been capable of sweating. "Fine," he bit out. Perhaps if he sat down and tucked his head between his legs, he'd been able to keep down the bread he'd eaten for breakfast.

"Are you sure? You're looking a little... green." The boy's hands fluttered as if looking for some way to help.

"Yeah, I'm-" The ship tossed on the waves and Keshet lurched for the railing. He just barely made it before he was revisited by everything he'd ever thought of eating.

A gentle hand came down on his back just above the base of his tail, a trickle of aether radiating from it to stabilize the churning in his stomach. He spit bile from his tongue before looking back to find Alphinaud's steady presence behind him, the glow of healing magicks reflected on his face. "You should have said something sooner," he said sympathetically.

Keshet opened his mouth to respond, but had to duck his head back over the side of the ship so as to not splatter the contents of his stomach on the deck. Air ships, ocean vessels... If I never have to ride another one again, it'll be too soon. I don't think Au Ra were meant to travel the sea - that's why all the bloody smart ones stayed on our own damned continent. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't one of the smart ones, and he had another three weeks left at sea to show for it.

Chapter 12: Tail

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Having a tail was really not all it was cracked up to be. Keshet cursed as he untangled a woman's skirts from the spikes on the end of his, which had gotten caught on the poor stranger's clothing while he tried to slip past her. He apologized, smoothing out the fabric and hoping she wouldn't notice the minute tear from one of the barbs. He'd thought he'd kept it tucked responsibly, close to his body and as still as he could make it without walking funny, but apparently he hadn't done as good a job as he'd intended.

Story of his life, really. Not a day went by when he didn't catch the damned thing on the overly-bustled skirts and flouncy coats the Ishgardians favored, or smack it into a passing traveller who didn't seem to realize he was large and that meant he needed space, or have it trod on by a hapless drunk while he was sitting in the tavern. At least miqo'te tails were soft and fuzzy, and who could really complain if they got slapped by one such as that? Keshet's tail was long and scaled and adorned with spikes and points, and could easily pass as a weapon if he were inclined to attempt such a thing. (He wasn't.) No matter how well he tucked it against himself, inevitably it snagged something, or he forgot and it wandered, or someone startled him and it lashed out before he could contain himself. Thank Nhaama he'd never injured anyone with it beyond some light bruising and maybe a scratch or two.

But it was hardly practical to walk with his tail tucked between his legs, which was both uncomfortable and unbecoming, and ran the very real chance of knocking him over into someone anyway, since his equilibrium was utterly shot without its swishing counterbalance behind him. So he tried his best, and prayed no one would get overly distraught to find a lizard tail wound in their clothes if they dared stand too close.

All of which was to say nothing of the other trials that came with a tail. He'd complained often and loudly of the wardrobe difficulties he faced, and far too much furniture was not designed to accommodate the extra appendage: chairs with solid backs and arms, narrow carriage seats that forced him to sit precariously on the edge, and even saddles for mounts were largely inaccessible unless he made alterations.

And it showed his emotions more clearly than his damned face, no matter how many times he'd tried to school it into stillness. Watching his tail was a more effective method of discerning his thoughts than if he were to just scream them aloud. A boon when dealing with members of his own race, where the playing field was level, but a curse here in Eorzea.

Not to mention the number of people who thought it was completely acceptable to simply grab him by the tail. He was starting to think the appendages on miqo'te were not, in fact, connected to their spines, if so many Eorzeans failed to realize it bloody hurt to yank on someone's tail. He'd heard rumors miqo'te found such gestures pleasurable, which still didn't explain the wantonness with which his comrades grabbed his, because unless this continent was a lot more open about such things than he'd come to believe, they couldn't have held any sort of indecorous ideas in mind when they snatched his tail to halt him.

He yelped when pain shot up his spine, Lyse's hand wrapped halfway down his tail and jerking him backwards. Between her, Alisaie, and Thancred, it was a wonder they hadn't ripped his spine straight out his ass. Usually he was fond of those who spoke through their actions rather than words, but every time they tried to tear his tail off, he rethought his stance on that. He supposed he could see the appeal, since his size put them at the perfect height to grab for tail rather than a shoulder or arm, but if he could stoop to grab their shoulders, then by the Dusk Mother, they could stretch for his.

Keshet whirled on her, pausing to pull his tail from her grasp. "You people need a lesson in etiquette," he ground out, lips twisted in a pained grimace. "Not only does that hurt, but in my culture, pulling someone's tail is just about the most disrespectful thing you can do, tantamount to spitting in my face and pulling down my pants in public. So please, please stop doing that."

At least she had the good grace to look sheepish. "Sorry." Though given the way she launched immediately into the subject she'd stopped him for, he suspected the reprimand wasn't going to stick. Maybe there was some magic concoction out there that could be used to make them all grow tails for a day so they could find out first-hand what it was like. Sighing and rubbing the base of his tail as he listened to Lyse speak, he shook his head. If only.

Chapter 13: Recognizability

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Being an Au Ra in Eorzea meant that, by definition, he had no anonymity. Oh, people feigned not recognizing him sometimes, offering him half-hearted comments like, "You don't look like you're from around here," or "Do you happen to know anyone who might be strong enough to...". But, as he'd encountered only a handful of other Au Ra in his time in Eorzea, and most of them living as discretely as possible, he really doubted that anyone on the continent hadn't heard his description. "Seven fulms tall with horns and a tail" was rather hard to miss, he judged, no matter the polite games strangers played.

Sometimes it worked to his advantage. He hadn't had to pay for an ale in many moons, and he was pretty well guaranteed work any time he needed it just by showing up somewhere. But most of the time... Most of the time his uniqueness was a burden.

Most problematic as an adventurer was that it made espionage and subtlety absolutely impossible. He couldn't blend in with a crowd if his life depended on it - and occasionally it did. Any enemies could pick him out a mile away, and forget trying to surreptitiously inquire about anything. No one was likely to forget that a giant lizard had come to ask about their boss's comings and goings, and it wasn't like he could pretend to be an inhabitant of any city on this continent. He could maybe have gotten away with it back in Othard, where at least Au Ra were relatively common, so long as no one thought too hard about the fact that his horns were black, not white.

At least it let him pretend that people were afraid of his reputation and not his alien appearance when they shrank from him at first meeting. The wide-eyed stares and pointing fingers of children in the streets were obviously because he was a great adventurer and not just because he was big and pointy and scaled. No matter that after years of relative isolation on the Steppe, several of the other races were equally unusual to him (what even was the deal with Miqo'te? Why did their tails have fur, but nowhere else on their bodies seemed to? And Viera, who had the ears of a rabbit but no other shared traits that he could see. Did they have little cottontails tucked into their pants?). At the very least, it made him far more willing to work with the so-called 'beast tribes' than any Eorzean he'd ever met. So what if they looked and acted a little different? Everything over here was bizarre anyway, and most would say the same about him. The main difference between Xaela and Amalj'aa that he could see what's the number of scales on their bodies - and that the latter had an even worse time blending in than he did. At least his stature was still within the realm of reasonability in a land where Roegadyn also flourished.

"Keshet?"

The sound of his name in the middle of a bustling street in Ul'dah should not have surprised him, but he still jumped. Sighing, he tugged off the hood that he'd pulled down over his face in an attempt to achieve anonymity and twisted to face the white haired Elezen who'd called out to him. "Hello Alphinaud."

The boy took in the cloak that covered his usual outfit and the tail Keshet had tucked under its folds and winced apologetically. "My apologies, were you attempting to disguise yourself?"

"Attempting and failing, it would seem," he responded wryly.

Alphinaud offered him a sympathetic smile. "Your horns leave quite an imprint against the hood, and the base of your tail juts out against the fabric. And I'm sorry to say that even without any of that, your gait will always give you away to those who are familiar with you." He co*cked his head. "Why were you trying to hide your identity anyway?"

Cheeks heating, Keshet looked away. "I didn't want to be recognized while standing in line for the release of the new Wind-Up Scions toys," he mumbled. "I'm still missing Urianger."

Alphinaud coughed to cover the bark of laughter the admission elicited. "You- Ah. That is. Understandable. However, I think your disguise unlikely to succeed."

Taking a deep breath, Keshet rolled his shoulders and stripped off the cloak. "Then if I cannot hide, I shall simply have to be so unabashedly confident that none would think to question my presence." Ah well. In truth, hiding and subterfuge never became him anyway. And maybe his reputation would be enough to let him skip the line and finish off his collection.

Chapter 14: Limbal Rings

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The dusky interior of the cave was a relief after so long spent in the bright sun. Keshet much preferred to operate at night, when the inimical sunlight didn't set his eyes to burning, but alas, primal summonings weren't known to accommodate his schedule. He rubbed at his eyes, blinking until the light-induced afterimages faded and he could see clearly once more. Even the paint beneath his eyes had not been enough to counteract the brilliant desert sun, and the muscles of his face were most pleased to finally be freed from their squinting.

He strode deeper into the cavern, until the glowing mouth vanished around a corner and he escaped even its hateful glare. Surprised there's not more guards, he noted, scanning the empty, rough-hewn tunnel that stretched before him.

"Uh, Keshet?"

The bewildered tone of Alphinaud's voice made him turn to look back at his companions, who stood only a few steps past the bend, peering uneasily into the cavern. Their gazes scanned blankly over the walls, and he frowned at them. "Is something wrong?"

Their eyes sought him when he spoke but did not find their target. "Do you not think it would be wise to light a torch?" the boy continued.

"Not especially."

"Are you... Can you see, right now?" He sounded dumbfounded, and Keshet's frown deepened.

"Of course."

"Of course, he says, as though that should be obvious," Alisaie griped, throwing her hands up. "As if we're the odd ones."

"Should I not be able to see?" he asked, only to earn an exasperated sigh.

Alphinaud cleared his throat and picked up the explanation. "'Tis nearly pitch black any deeper than we are," he said. "Your night vision must be very good."

Oh. He stepped towards them until their eyes focused on him and he knew he was within their range of vision. "I've never had any trouble with darkness," he offered, shrugging. "Those of us with limbal rings can see better in darkness than daylight."

"Are your eyes actually glowing in the dark?" Alisaie asked, her tone caught somewhere between awe and mirth.

"Er, well, yes."

"I always thought I was imagining it," she murmured, biting her lip against a laugh.

Keshet huffed. "I can see just fine in the dead of a moonless night or in the bowels of a cave" - the 'unlike some people' was left unsaid - "but too much bright light will hurt my eyes. Which, before I came here, was not a problem I encountered overmuch."

"Fascinating," Alphinaud breathed, looking a touch too intrigued for Keshet's comfort.

He shifted uncomfortably, tail lashing behind him. "Yes, well, it's rather more useful when not travelling with a group who are not so endowed. I suppose we'll have to light a torch after all. Too bad it'll cost us the element of surprise."

"With your eyes glowing like that, they'd probably see us coming anyway," Alisaie snickered and he rolled his eyes.

One torch later, they were on their way, their entire party able to see comfortably at last. They made it around another handful of twists in the tunnel (still no enemies; Keshet was starting to think they were in the wrong place) before Alphinaud spoke again, his tone almost hesitant but desperately curious even so. "Can you see color?"

Keshet sighed, adopting his best put-upon tone. "Yes, I can see color. Better than you, I'd wager."

The fascinated hum that came from Alphinaud in response spoke of at least two dozen more questions that he planned to ask ere the day was through, and it was only the sudden appearance of their quarry before them that offered Keshet a reprieve. Somehow, though, he would be willing to bet good gil that the topic would not be forgotten once their task was completed. Another night to be spent playing 50 questions. Ah well. There were worse ways to pass the time.

Chapter 15: Height

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Keshet was just vain enough to be pleased with his height. Standing over seven fulms tall, there were only a handful of people in all the Steppe who could rival his stature, and none who exceeded him, of that he was sure. He had gotten very used to looking down on people - literally, not figuratively, because Sadu would surely bite his tail off if she ever thought he was looking down on her in the abstract as well. For the most part, that meant living with a perpetual kink in his neck and grumbling about the fact that auri women only came up to his waist, if they were lucky, but that he never had to look up to any of the other tribes’ members was a point of pride for him. His body was imposing, and he very much liked it that way.

It wasn't until he left the Steppe that he encountered someone taller than him, and it wasn't an experience he particularly enjoyed. The Roegadyn man piloting the boat he rode into Hingashi seemed to tower over him, though in truth he couldn't have been more than three ilms taller. It was enough to cow Keshet, who was not at all used to dealing with other races yet and spent most of the trip as far from the captain as possible.

Kugane was a lesson in humility. Roegadyn were almost as common as Hyur and more common than his Raen cousins, and the men and women alike could reach heights taller than him. Though he drew comfort from the fact that most people were still shorter than he, it was the first time he'd ever wished to be taller. Even so, it was nice to be able to look people in the eyes without stooping. His neck was grateful every time he got to speak with someone his own height instead of staring down at his conversation partners all the time. And there were enough Au Ra around to make him feel relatively comfortable, even if they weren't Xaela.

It wasn't until he got to Eorzea that he realized just how lucky he was to be in his own body, with its seven plus fulms of height and muscular physique. As he stumbled off the boat in the pirate city of Limsa Lominsa, he very nearly walked into a woman so tiny he legitimately hadn't noticed her. He'd never so much as heard tell of a lalafell before, this miniscule race whose tallest members didn't so much as reach his knee, and yet they were everywhere in Eorzea. He'd thought straining to look down at his female tribemates was bad enough, but he had to kneel if he wanted to be able to talk with a lalafell for any length of time - which, he quickly gathered, was considered wildly disrespectful. Half the time they stood too close for him to look comfortably down at them, his scales resisting the movement of his neck and the spikes on his jaw catching against his collar. Which was to say nothing of the problems in trying to keep pace with one. No, it was better to simply avoid them if at all possible. (He discovered very quickly that this was not at all possible, and simply resigned himself to some measure of unintentional disrespect whenever speaking with one.)

Keshet had thought that was the end of his experiences with height differences. It wasn't until many, many moons after he'd grown settled in Eorzea that he learned that there were those who dwarfed even the mighty Roegadyn. Never before had he had to crane his neck to look up at someone, not even the tallest Roegadyn he'd ever met, but standing in Rhalgr's Reach with the unconscious forms of his comrades at his back and the heir to the Garlean Empire before him, all he could think was, "Nhaama preserve me, he's tall." Keshet was entirely unused to feeling small, but as Zenos yae Galvus looked down at him with bored disinterest, he felt positively petite. And as the Garlean prince left him battered and bruised and walked away without so much as a glance back, Keshet's vow that they would meet again was mostly the oath of a pissed off Dotharl determined to best a ferocious enemy or die trying, but he couldn't prevent the niggling of intrigue from taking hold as well. Someday, I'll make him look up at me. One way or another.

Chapter 16: Stride

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"Keshet, I hate to be a bother, but would you mind slowing down?"

"What?" Keshet looked to his side only to discover that Krile was not there. Spinning, he found her a dozen or so yalms behind him, dashing to catch up. "Oh, sorry." He drew to a halt, allowing her to pull even with him, and when they set off again, he was careful to clip his pace to better match hers. How Lalafell got anywhere in a timely manner with their stubby little legs, he would never know, but the least he could do was try to accommodate them while they were together. Even if it made his stride awkward.

Still, having longer legs than any Eorzean race was more blessing than curse, particularly in his line of work. He could outpace just about anyone who sought to run from him and cross battlefields in a fraction of the time it took his comrades. If there was an emergency, he was easily the first on the scene, which was great, since he was usually the most suited to handle it anyway. So long as he wasn't restricted by the speed of his companions, he could sprint as fast as an adolescent chocobo.

Of course, problems arose when he had to match his pace to others, which resulted uncomfortably often in him tripping over his own damned feet. If only he could just pick up the smaller folks and carry them on his shoulder, like he'd seen Raubhan do with Nanamo, but the first time he'd tried that with Alphinaud, he'd let out a high pitched shriek and spent a good half bell scolding him about propriety.

The only other circ*mstance that made him lament the extra length to his legs was when it came to mounting stairs. He had yet to encounter a step that was not absurdly shallow - Nhaama forbid that he had to climb anywhere in Ul'dah, where the stairs were even shorter than Eorzean standards to accommodate lalafellin legs. Even in Ishgard, where his height was less an outlier than elsewhere, he still had to take them two at a time to walk comfortably up them, and boy if that didn't earn him some scornful looks. Ramps. They should just put ramps everywhere.

"Thank you," Krile said, more magnanimously than was warranted, considering he had been the one at fault.

"No prob-" His words cut off as his toe caught on the back of his heel and sent him sprawling to the ground, just narrowly missing spearing his horn through his hand. He sighed, peering up into Krile's shocked face. "-Problem," he finished, and she laughed merrily while he picked himself off the floor.

Chapter 17: Writing

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"So if you could just go and write down what those three say and bring the transcripts back here to me, that would be a big help."

Keshet looked at the little leather-bound journal and pen the man held out to him, brown and battered and thoroughly unassuming, and grimaced. "Is that really necessary? I could just tell you want they have to say, and then you don't have to hand over your book."

The man frowned at him. "I'd really like to have their words down exactly. Is something the matter?"

"I- That is- No," he ground out, snatching the offered implements with perhaps more force than was kind and stalking away in the general direction of his first target. He thumbed through the book, squinting at the spidery cursive the filled its early pages. It might as well have been meaningless squiggles for all the sense it made to him.

Dragging a hand down his face, he let out an angry sigh that turned into a growl, and didn't notice the person before him until he'd run right into her.

"Keshet!" Lyse exclaimed, sounding far too delighted for his current mood. Sensing the aura of gloom that surrounded him, she paused. "Is everything alright?"

"Just peachy. Some historian wants me to record what the survivors have to say, that's all."

She co*cked her head. "And you're angry about that because.... it means you don't get to hit anything?"

"No, I- Well, yes, but it's not just that." Tail lashing in aggravation, he glanced to either side to ensure his admission wouldn't be overheard before beckoning her closer and leaning down to confide, "It’s just... I don't know how to write."

Lyse blinked at him. "You- what? Of course you do."

He glared, the spikes on his tail suddenly looking a lot more pointy than usual as it sliced through the air, and she cleared her throat. "Or rather, you had to have signed your name when you joined the Adventurers' Guild. And I've seen you read letters before."

"Have you?" he asked pointedly, and her lips pursed as she considered.

"Maybe not."

Keshet raked a hand through his hair. "I can sign my name, and I can recognize enough words to get by. Inn, tavern, things like that. But..." He shrugged. "We didn't have a writing system on the Steppe. Our traditions and histories are all passed down orally, so we never needed one. Look, just don't tell the others, okay?" She shot him an appraising look that he didn't like. "I mean it! I'd never hear the end of it from Alphinaud. And Nhaama forbid Urianger ever find out..."

"I think you're selling them short. I bet Alphinaud and Urianger would love to help you learn to read and write!"

Keshet's lips twisted. "I'm not sure which sounds more painful: them finding out in the first place, or having them as teachers..."

Chapter 18: Cold

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Keshet's body felt sluggish as he trudged through the Coerthan snow after Alphinaud. He flexed his fingers, rubbing his hands against his arms to try to fight off the cold that had seeped into the very marrow of his bones, but that mostly just seemed to make him more tired without really warming him up any. The coat Tataru had procured for him didn't seem to be helping in the slightest, and his scales chaffed against the woollen pants he wore. The hole in the back for his tail seemed to let in every breeze that blew through the valley, and as he had not succeeded in finding a tail warmer (probably because the every-present Eorzean miqo'te had no need of such things, given their fur), he had long since lost all feeling in the appendage. All in all, he was miserable.

"I suggest we make camp here tonight- Keshet, are you alright?" The alarm in Alphinaud's voice suggested his condition was even worse than it felt, which was actually a rather terrifying notion, because he felt liable to keel over at any moment.

"A-a-a-au Ra were not m-m-meant to live in the c-c-c-c-cold," he forced out between chattering teeth, his tongue seeming unwieldy in his mouth.

Alarm sharpened to full-blown panic as Alphinaud stared at him. "Are you cold blooded?" he asked, the horror in his voice as thick as Keshet's tongue.

"N-n-no." Alphinaud relaxed visibly at the denial. "But we're almost h-halfway to it. Our systems are s-slower than yours. We-we-we're built for the heat, and the c-c-cold affects us worse than you if we're out in it t-too long. I m-miss Thanalan."

"If I start a fire, will that help?" The young healer's voice was all business, anxiety shoved to the side as training took over and he focused on seeking out and addressing the problem.

"Y-yes."

"Very well then. Don't move, I'll collect some wood. Or rather, do move, it may help. Do some squats, perhaps."

If trekking across the Western Highlands hadn't warmed him up, he suspected a few squats weren't going to be much help, but as it sounded preferable to freezing in place, he set about it anyway. Because being unable to feel your legs was surely the best time to exercise them.

Alphinaud had a crackling fire set up in no time, and Keshet huddled before it, practically sitting right in the flames in his bid to warm himself. "You ought to have said something," the boy scolded, once he was reassured that his companion wasn't about to turn into a Keshet-cicle.

Keshet brushed off the comment, and Alphinaud was quite certain he did indeed see his tail wave lazily through the fire. "A little cold isn't going to kill me."

"It might! It is entirely possible to die of cold exposure, and that's even without the anatomical differences in play in your case." Keshet flexed his fingers, listening half-heartedly to Alphinaud's lecture on the dangers of cold weather and just generally rebuking him for not asking for help when he needed it. He dragged his tail back through the flames, contemplating the merits of climbing bodily onto the fire. How anyone could voluntarily live in these climes was beyond him. Blessed Nhaama, next time there's some world ending catastrophe to deal with, let it be in a desert.

Chapter 19: Warmth

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"How are you not dying?" Alisaie demanded, pulling her shirt away from her sweat-drenched skin to fan herself.

Keshet lounged on a rock, tail flicking lazily as he sunned himself, the warmth sinking all the way down to his bones. "I like the heat."

"This isn't heat, this is the seventh layer of hell," she complained.

He cracked an eye to look at her. "You know you don't have to stay here, right? You could go play in the water like the others."

She scoffed. "And listen to my brother explain the dangers of melanoma? Please." She was silent for a long moment, and Keshet let his eyes drift back closed, relishing the comfortable embrace of the hot sun on his scales. He'd just about drifted off when Alisaie's voice startled him back to alertness. "And you really don't sweat?"

"Nope."

"How do you avoid overheating then?" She peered at him as if trying to spot the shine of perspiration, but all she found was smooth dark skin and thick black scales.

"We release heat through our scales," he answered without bothering to open his eyes. He tucked an arm under his head, the picture of relaxation despite the sweltering heat that threatened to overwhelm his elezen companion.

She squinted at him, trying to determine if he was lying, as he was known to do when he didn't want to answer their endless questions about his anatomy. "Are you teasing me?"

"Nope. One hundred percent serious."

He jumped to feel her hand come down on the scales over his thigh, eyes opening to find her leaning over him. "Wow, that is warm."

"I do believe I told you that," he responded drily. "If you don't want to swim, why don't you come lay in the sun with me. I promise I won't lecture you about melanoma - mostly because I don't know what that is."

She snorted, but released his leg to haul herself up onto the rock. As soon as her hands hit its surface, she yelped, yanking them back. "How are you laying on that? It must be a million degrees!"

"Like laying right in a frying pan," he agreed, stretching out and turning over to sun his back. His skin was hardly even scorched where it had touched the scalding stone.

"How do you- You know what, maybe I will go risk my brother's lectures after all. This is one contest I'm willing to let you win," she declared. She retreated back to where the others splashed each other with sea water and huddled under the shade of the umbrellas they'd brought, leaving Keshet to bask in the warmth in peace.

That had been a contest? Shrugging to himself, he let his eyes fall shut again and dozed under the blazing sun, feeling the closest to home he had in a long time.

Chapter 20: Hamburger

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Keshet eyed the juicy burger in Thancred's hands with longing. Stacked high with crisp lettuce and onions, succulent tomato, and sour pickles, the bun squished beneath his fingers, juices and condiments dripping from it to plop onto the plate below. The scent of the meat and the seasonings used on it made him salivate, ambrosia for his nose.

"If you want one so badly, why didn't you order one?" Thancred asked, licking mustard and drippings from his finger.

The look Keshet shot him was downright plaintive; Thancred had seen the man with broken bones and stitching up his own gaping wounds, but never had he seen him look so pained before. "I can't. Well, I could order one, but I can't eat it."

Thancred stared at him, uncomprehending. He sounded perfectly sincere, saying something so irrational. "What do you mean you can't eat it? Are you allergic?"

Keshet blinked at him. "What? No. I can't fit it between my horns."

Thancred started. That was not an issue he'd ever considered before. "Couldn't you, like, slide it under?" The look that earned him bordered on scathing. "Or cut it into bite-sized portions and eat it that way?"

Keshet shook his head, looking vaguely insulted by the suggestion. "It's not the same."

He was familiar with this quandary already, of course. He'd been dealing with it ever since puberty, when his horns grew into their final shape and curled inwards to block much of his jaw. Even on the Steppe, his plight was not ubiquitous; there were plenty of Au Ra whose horns did not impede on their faces quite so much. So he'd had a good many years to grow accustomed to watching as his comrades ate things he could only long to taste. Slices of melon, sweet breads, and dzo meat pies were all just out of reach unless he bastardized their proper forms. And it only got worse when he landed in Eorzea, home of sandwiches and pizza and, of course, hamburgers.

Thancred was watching him sympathetically when Keshet forced his attention away from his forbidden longings and back to his lunch companion. With a concerning suddenness, that gaze sharpened. "Hmm. I have an idea that just may help you."

And so it was that Keshet found himself blindfolded at a table in the Rising Stones, uncertainty etched into the lines of his face as Thancred finished whatever he was doing in the kitchen. The amount of banging and clattering going on did not instill confidence. Finally, he heard the distinctive sound of a plate laid on the table before him, followed by Thancred's chipper, "Alright, you can look."

Keshet tugged off the blindfold to see what appeared, at first glance, to be a sausage laid before him. He reached for it, eyes widening to discover that it was in fact a specially formed hamburger, the meat shaped to fit the narrow bun. The toppings had all been lovingly sliced so they conformed to their new confines, the red edge of tomato and crisp leaves of lettuce peeking out from under the bun. "You did all this for me?"

Thancred nodded, chest puffed out with pride. "Go on, try it."

Keshet took up the burger, and for the very first time in his life, was able to actually take a bite. The explosion of flavor was every bit as good as he'd dreamed, and all the more so for being able to eat it with his hands, as intended. His eyes felt positively misty when he swallowed and looked up to where his friend watched him excitedly. "This is amazing. Thank you."

Thancred affected an air of nonchalance, one shoulder lifting in a shrug, but he was grinning as he said, "Hey, what are friends for, if not to help you overcome your hardships and enjoy life to the fullest?"

Chapter 21: Death

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Keshet did not fear death. He had no reason to. As a Dotharl, he had lived and died time and again, and so long as he met a valorous end in fierce combat, his death would not spell the end for him - which, given his vocation, was nearly assured.

He knew, rationally, that others were not so lucky. The Dusk Mother only saw fit to reincarnate those who died fearlessly - and though very rarely Xaela from other tribes were so blessed, they were only ever born to the Dotharl. Most who died by his hand stayed dead, their short lives ended by the cruel twist of fate that had placed them in his path.

But in truth, Keshet spared little thought for the entire concept, knowing that he would be spared such ignominy. Every battle he faced, he threw himself into with the characteristic Dotharli audacity, staring down men, beasts, and primals all as thought taunting them to kill him or die trying. Even with the flames of Ultima licking at his back or Zenos's blade poised to plunge through his chest, he felt not fear but unbridled glee, to have found a worthy opponent.

It wasn't until well after he'd arrived in Eorzea that he truly understood what death meant to others. That it was permanent, inevitable, like a candle burnt down to nothing, never to flicker again.

Keshet channelled every onze of strength he could summon into the auracite, lips twisted into a feral grimace as he fought the exhaustion that threatened to drag him under, and still it was not enough to fell the captured Ascian before him. He had not the Blessing of Light to draw upon, and the Dusk Mother's crepuscular power would not aid him in this fight against such an ancient darkness. Even his near endless well of aether had reached its limit, and still the stone demanded more. I will not yield!

Minfilia's prayers went unheard by Hydaelyn and Keshet alike, so focused was he on the internal battle he waged, but sudden movement caught his eye. The fallen warrior had gained her feet, her face twisted in brazen determination and pain, but no fear shadowed her eyes as she approached the beam of light step by shuffling step. "In death... there is life..."

And then she was gone, vanished into the light without so much as a body to mark her passing. After the fact, Keshet would swear he'd felt something shift in his soul at her death, this Roegadyn who reminded him so much of home, who did not have the luxury of being born again no matter how courageous her final moments. She was gone, every trace of her gone to wherever those who were not reincarnated went after death - and where did they go? He didn't even know. Had never before bothered to wonder. Had never mourned the passing of another, for he had always known they would return.

But not her. Moenbryda was gone, and Keshet could feel the hollowness in the world where she ought to have been. He wanted to rage at the world for the injustice of it all, at the impotence of Eorzea's Twelve gods who would allow such a noble soul to be lost, yet he could do naught but cling to Urianger's shaking shoulders and nurse the hollowness in his chest.

Keshet had never feared death, for he'd had no reason to, knowing he would ever be safe from its sempiternal grasp. Now, he had a reason. Now, Keshet feared death - not for himself, but for his friends.

Chapter 22: Relationships and Parenthood

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To say that Au Ra as a whole viewed relationships any differently than the other races did would be a grand oversimplification. The Raen, as far as Keshet had been able to surmise, maintained the same beliefs as the cultures they integrated with; they tended to find one partner to stay with for as long as they could, and mixed-race pairings were frowned upon. The Xaela, on the other hand... While they largely ascribed to the taboo on mixed couples, that was pretty well the only thing the Steppe dwelling tribes had in common - with the outside world, and with each other.

There were twice as many mating customs as there were tribes among the Xaela, and no two could ever agree on the ideal way to seek a partner - or multiple. From the Oronir and their deep-seated belief in their one true soulmate, to the Bayaqud's polyandrous harems, to the Goro's horse-spouses... Keshet made no claim of being able to understand them all. (The Goro in particular he thought were absurd, and took pains to avoid any social encounter with one of their ilk, lest he have to look a horse in the eyes and treat it as an equal.)

But full well did he know that many looked upon the Dotharl's own practices with a mixture of confusion and scorn. Though the warring tribe made no attempt to dictate who its members could or couldn't love, their diminishing population and reincarnations meant replenishing their numbers was always a chief concern. After all, a soul could not be reborn if there was no host to offer it passage back into the tribe. And so every member of the Dotharl was expected to contribute to the furthering of their tribe in some fashion, irrespective of their romantic prospects. The custom made for a rather unique coming of age ceremony, a more clandestine counterpart to the combat trials widely known to be a Dotharli right of passage. Plenty saw it as a great honor to create new life, that their loved ones might be reborn. Others did their duty when it was required of them, and returned happily to their lives once it was through.

Keshet found himself firmly amongst the ranks of the latter group, and couldn't help feel the guilty twinge of relief that he'd been born a man in this lifetime. As far as he was aware, he hadn't fathered any children (and that seemed like something someone would have mentioned), though he'd helped raise more than a few, given the tribe's communal child-rearing practices. Despite the depths of his devotion to his clan, he had no particular desire to personally further their numbers, particularly since his preferences in such matters tended rather in the opposite direction from the child-bearing type.

"Papa!" Keshet's blood ran cold as two tiny arms wrapped around his calf, the joy he'd felt at being home at last leeching from him as he glanced down at the toddler wrapping himself around his leg. The boy looked to be two or three years old, his horns just barely starting to grow in from the tiny black scales on his face. That would be a feasible timeline...

"Keshet! You're back!" He looked up to see Budan jogging towards him, wide grin splitting her face, and he gathered his wits enough to lift a hand in greeting. Though young, the boy was the spitting image of her, and Keshet barely managed to contain his sigh of relief. He'd never lain with her - the child wasn't his.

She drew even with him, kneeling to scoop up the tot at his leg, and said, "Don't mind him, he's in that phase where everyone is either Papa or Mama. Still can't quite wrap his tongue around all the names." She slung her arm through his, veritably dragging him through the camp to its center. "I'm so glad to see you! I'm sure everyone else will be too. We've missed you. You know, Koko and Suke have..."

Budan chatted happily away to him, and as glad as he was to be in her company after so long, he couldn't stop his thoughts from drifting back to that moment of panic. Had he truly spent so long away from home that the thought of fulfilling his duty to his tribe didn't just disinterest him, but actually frightened him? Had he grown so accustomed to the Eorzean way of life that his own traditions disquieted him?

The trilling laughter of playing children drew his attention, and his gaze slid over the familiar landscape and colorful tents to the small cluster of kids at the waters edge, splashing each other gleefully as they practiced their combat stances. A lightness he hadn't felt in three years suffused his heart at the sight, the sense of rightness and homecoming unmistakable. No, he decided. He was proud of his tribe, and happy to be amongst his kin, and it was precisely that feeling of 'home' that was the issue. It had been hard enough to leave once; to have to do so again knowing he left a tangible part of himself behind? Whether he wished to be a father or not, that would be too much to bear.

Lyse jostled him with her elbow as Budan left them to fetch Sadu. "I didn't know you were a dad," she teased with a grin, and Keshet grimaced.

"I'm not," he said, low voice perhaps graver than the puckish remark warranted. "But I could have been."

Chapter 23: Rebirth

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If there was one thing the Dotharl were known for - well, it was probably their bloodthirsty desire for battle. But if there was a second thing always associated with the warring tribe, it was their belief in the reincarnation of those souls that died in the glorious flame of combat.

It was a concept that outsiders seemed to ill comprehend at best, and openly deride at worst, but Keshet had been born into it - dozens of times over, even. He harbored no doubt as to the validity of their beliefs - how could he, when he had watched friends and loved ones die in battle, only to see their eyes staring back at him moons later in the face of a fresh born infant? He had heard the stories of past incarnations of his soul and found himself within the tales. He had grown into exactly who he was meant to be, who he had always been, and rekindled relationships from his past life.

He could, however, understand why some doubted them. It would be easier to prove if they retained the memories of their previous lifetimes, but with each iteration they started fresh, required to learn again the skills they had once mastered. There were even those among the tribe who doubted; poor Mauci had never felt quite right with the name he'd been given, and he was not the only late bloomer, about whom rumors circulated around late-night campfires. So too was it perplexing that their skills were not always exactly the same from one life to another. A master swordsman might take up an axe or daggers upon reincarnation, but undoubtedly his technique would always reveal the truth of his identity.

Nor was it easily accepted amongst outsiders that their bodies did not always reflect their souls. Skin color, eyes, hair, horns, even sex changed from one lifetime to another, but the soul was constant, and it was exceedingly rare to uncover that a Dotharl had been misnamed. Whatever method the Khan used to determine whose spirit inhabited a newborn was exceptionally keen - Keshet had always wondered if it was some sort of magic Sadu employed, but he'd never received a straight answer when he asked.

So it was that Keshet had little trouble wrapping his head around the concept of the Minfilias on the First, the same soul reborn over and over again to fight on. Even the method seemed much the same: they died fighting, each and every one of them going out on a flame of glory on the battlefield after a short and brutal life, only to be reincarnated in short order as an infant, bereft of the wisdom she had garnered before. That she was a hyur was the only unusual part of the whole situation, though the Dusk Mother - Hydaelyn, if you preferred - was known to bless others with such gifts on occasion, and Keshet was more than willing to accept that his old friend, once the Oracle of Light, had received such favor.

Alisaie, it seemed, was not so willing, deprived as she was of a Dotharli upbringing or familiarity with their customs. She rocked back on her heels as they listened to Moren recount the tale, as surprised as if she were hearing it for the first time (although given her penchant for tuning out while people lectured, perhaps she was). "I don't even know- how can that be?" she demanded, doubt written plain in every line of her body. She glanced at him for support, lips parting when she found him utterly at ease with the prospect. "You're taking this in stride," she observed, crossing her arms.

"Why shouldn't I? It's no different than the many times I've been reborn." Her jaw dropped, and she blinked at him, words failing her. Keshet grimaced at the multitude of questions he saw swirling in her eyes, heading them off before she started in on him with a hurried, "But we don't have time to get into that now."

Though, as he made his was back down the stairs to consult with the twins away from prying ears, he found a new worry blooming in his chest, one he had not even thought to consider until the story had be presented to him: if he were to die here, on the First, what would become of his soul?

Chapter 24: Transgender

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"Transgender" was not a term Keshet was familiar with. His lexicon of Eorzean Common vocabulary grew with each day he spent in the West (and twice as fast on days he spent with Urianger), but this one had never come up prior to the meeting with the green-haired miqo'te. He looked to Urianger for clarification.

"'Tis a term for when one's body does not reflect their gender," the scholar explained quietly, and the miqo'te's eyes narrowed as she peered up at Keshet, perhaps expecting him to recoil or judge. He did neither, merely nodding and accepting the information, and after a moment, she relaxed, tail drooping back to swish comfortably behind her. "Dost there not exist a phrase for such a thing in Old Auri?" Urianger asked, observing the silent interaction.

"More than one," Keshet answered easily. "It's a fairly common occurrence among my people. The Dotharl in particular are often reborn in bodies that don't match the gender of their soul from one incarnation to the next. I myself am usually a man, but only two generations ago, I was born as a woman."

The miqo'te's eyes widened, and Keshet suppressed a grimace, worried the talk of reincarnate and rebirth would fluster the poor woman, but instead her ears flicked in what he judged to be excitement as she leaned in. "And everyone is just alright with that?"

"Well, some people struggle with being in a body they don't feel suits them, particularly given the strong size difference between male and female Au Ra, but not all. Plenty of us are content with the lot we're given, knowing that we'll inevitably be reborn as our proper gender in the future. It changes little." He shrugged before continuing, "But I've heard there are plenty among the other tribes who experience the same phenomenon, even though they're only born once. Some do what they can to feel more at home in their bodies, others are merely accepted as they are."

The girl's eyes shone, and Keshet started to realize it was with unshed tears. "They're not judged?"

He frowned. "Why would they be judged? It's not a big deal. Most of us are more concerned with survival or warring than the form of our tribesmates' bodies anyhow."

A tear slipped over the edge of her eye, and Keshet looked to Urianger in panic, but instead of seeming concerned, sympathy lined the elezen's face. The girl sniffled, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry. It sounds wonderful."

At a loss, Keshet reached out to lay his hand upon her shoulder, wishing he'd so much as asked her name (though how could he have known the turn her request would take?). "I get the impression your experiences have not been similar to my own. Just know that somewhere out there, there are people who will accept for who you are, no questions asked and no judgement rendered."

She blinked up at him, those wide teal eyes still misty as she offered him a watery smile. "Thank you."

Chapter 25: Sexual Dimorphism

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Keshet rolled his shoulders, craning his neck to stretch out the kink that had formed after an hour of staring down at Yugiri as they chatted. He was devout as any Dotharl, but whichever god decided to make female Au Ra half the size of their male counterparts needed to have their head cracked against a wall. Or maybe be cursed with permanent neck pain.

There were, near as he could tell, very few benefits to the differences in their forms. Alphinaud had gone on and on about evolutionary improvements and how many of the characteristics present in modern people provided some sort of biological advantage, and while Keshet couldn't pretend to understand even half of what the boy had said, it had left him wondering about his own race, where the women came up only to his hip and he worried constantly he might break them in half if he squeezed them to hard. It certainly didn’t seem like an advantage to dwarf your reproductive partner, though in truth, the proud Au Ra didn't see any advantage to being short in the first place. Their women were no less savage than the men (and Sadu would surely cut the tail off anyone who even tried to suggest as much), and though the added bulk of a male body lent itself to physical strength, he had never met a Dotharli woman who was not fiercely strong as well. Perhaps the other tribes were not so equal.

Of course, while the size difference was the most obvious incongruity between the men and women, it was far from the only. Even their scales were different, slimmer, often coming in in thinner, snaking patterns instead of the broad coverage that protected Keshet's skin. Their horns were slimmer, even given their smaller proportions, and were often less intrusive to their daily life than their male counterparts. And Keshet had met more than one woman with a blue tinge to her scales and horns, a feature much rarer among men. This was, of course, to say nothing of the more common differences, shared by most gendered races, like their sexual characteristics and voices.

Naturally, as with most things, Keshet hadn't realized there was anything unusual about the dramatic differences between the sexes until after he'd left the Steppe. In the rest of the world, the line between the sexes was so much less pronounced: sure, the women tended to be a few ilms shorter than the men on average, but never by multiple fulms, and if they were slimmer, it was generally only by a small amount. He'd had a fair bit of trouble telling men and women apart for the first few weeks. Though it had just been poor timing that he'd meet the twins so soon after arriving in Eorzea - he'd been convinced Elezen shared the same dimorphism as the Au Ra, and that Alphinaud merely bore a male soul in a female body. His readiness to accept that meant it had been an uncomfortably long time before he learned that no, the two of them were simply children and had not yet reached their full height. It was a funny story now, but he'd been mightily embarrassed when Urianger had set him straight after a stray comment wondering why he'd seen so few female Elezen.

Still, Keshet found he rather liked to see women the same size as men, be they both petite or both tall. (And no great surprise there, since he'd never felt much interest in the small forms of auri women in the first place, preferring to surround himself with those of a similar stature to his own.) It had been so long since he'd seen another Au Ra that by the time Yugiri appeared, he'd almost forgotten the pains that came with their size difference.

Rubbing as the base of his neck, he watched her dart off to talk to Gosetsu, seeming lighter for having someone of her own race to commiserate with. Ah well. There were few enough people of either gender in Eorzea that he didn't have to look down at anyway, and her small stature certainly helped her blend in amongst the ranks of Miqo'te and Midlanders so long as she wore her shroud and tucked in her tail. Perhaps there were benefits to being small after all - even if he still wished the size difference wasn’t such a pain to deal with.

Chapter 26: Scale Itch

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As a general rule, having scales was a wonderful thing. They protected Keshet from all sorts of injuries, they helped keep him cool in the sun, and they identified him immediately as a proud Xaela. There was, however, one thing he didn't like about them...

Tataru was speaking, he was aware of that, at least, but he could not for the life of him have repeated a single word of what she'd said in the last five minutes. The crawling sensation along his shoulder had stolen his entire focus, his fingers inching closer to the plate of scales that covered the area before he caught himself and snatched his hand back, crossing his arms over his chest. He would not scratch. He wouldn't! It wouldn't help even if he did. He knew that. Rationally. But ration bore little weight when his scales itched so bad he wanted to leap from his own skin.

"Keshet, is something the matter? You look rather like you've tasted something sour." The sound of his name drew him from his own torment long enough to look down at the diminutive woman before him (when had he looked away from her in the first place?), her features pinched in concern.

"I'm fine," he answered, losing his internal battle of wills and reaching to scratch at the scales on his shoulder. "Just... itchy, that's all."

She frowned up at him. "Did you brush against some poison oak by mistake?" She watched as his composure unravelled, his hands darting to other patches of black scattered over his exposed flesh - did they seem less vibrant than usual? "Or are you sick? Is it chicken pox? If you see spots on your skin, you should stay in today and rest instead."

"No, I-" He stooped to scratch at his ankle, scales shifting beneath his fingers, the dull rub of nails against the thick plates not nearly enough to soothe the itch. No matter how hard he chased it, it fled his touch, only to return with a vengeance as soon as he shifted to scratch elsewhere. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to stand and recross his arms, curling his fingers into fists for good measure. "It's not that. There's nothing wrong with me, really. It's just shedding season."

Whatever explanation she'd been expecting, it hadn't been that, and she blinked at him, momentarily nonplussed, but she recovered quickly. "Oh. I didn't realize that you shed your skin. Er, scales. Is there... anything I can do to help?"

He shook his head, the grimace twisting his lips looking downright pained. "It'll pass. Eventually. It just might take another day or two." Two more days of feeling like his scales were trying to crawl right off his skin without a moment's relief. His tail lashed, the itch crawling down its length to settle at the tip, and he fought the urge to raise it to his mouth and chew on it. Maybe if he retreated to his own quarters...

Tataru was speaking again, and he'd missed it. "...important, but if you need to stay in for a few days, I'm sure everyone would understand."

Slowly, reluctantly, he nodded, scratching at his arm again without noticing. "That might be a good idea." Much as he might want an outlet for his frustrations, the only thing worse than suffering the itch of shedding was suffering the itch of shedding while trying to fight for his damned life. Then again, a solid blow to the head might be just what he needed to distract himself from this infernal discomfort.

Chapter 27: Beauty Standards

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Keshet was aware that he was an attractive man, by auri standards - they had mirrors in the East too, and he was not blind to his own reflection, even if his appearance mattered less to him than his skill at arms. With his lustrous black scales, prominent horns, long spiked tail, and overwhelming height, he was fairly used to being propositioned by men and women alike on the Steppe.

He just hadn't expected that interest to follow him over to Eorzea.

The first time Haurchefant suggested they get to know each other better, he passed it off as a friendly overture. After all, it was clear from the first moment they'd met that the Elezen was gregarious, and it made sense that he'd wish to become acquainted with a capable warrior like Keshet. They had lunch together with Francel after saving him from an untimely death at the bottom of Witchdrop, and he figured that was that.

The second time, the request was a little more overt, but still nothing so obvious that Keshet picked up on it. After all, Elezen did not have horns or tails, and surely the things that marked him as striking among his own people meant little to a race that were effectively long-eared hyur (though he'd found out the hard way not to make such a comment in front of one). And the invitation to work out was innocuous enough, even if the interest in his muscles seemed a little unusual. Then again, it was a perfectly reasonable comment between close friends - Keshet reckoned he'd probably made similar remarks himself back home - and perhaps Elezen simply bonded more quickly than Au Ra did.

The third time, though... The third time, there could be no doubt that Haurchefant's suggestion that they go back to his room together was anything other than a proposition. Keshet recoiled, more in shock than disgust, eyes flicking down from Haurchefant's easy grin all the way to his iron-clad toes and back up to the top of his silvery-blue crown. There wasn't a single scale on his body, he had no tail or horns, and not a single visible scar to counter these shortcomings. His only real physical appeal was his height, which, while short by auri standards, was still enough to satisfy, and the breadth of his shoulders, which seemed to hint at a strong build beneath his bulky armor. In short, by Keshet's standards, he was really not very attractive at all, and more than a little presumptuous to boot, to ask so directly when they hardly knew each other.

And what did Haurchefant find attractive about him anyway? Surely his kind did not value the same features as the Au Ra, when they did not even sport horns and tails. Surely they must judge beauty be the length of your ears or some such metric. Keshet didn't even have ears! Or at least not visible ones. Perhaps, he decided, glancing over at the shirtless men doing squats by the fireplace, perhaps Haurchefant was merely a deviant. That would make sense, and, satisfied with this explanation, Keshet relaxed and recovered from his floundering enough to turn down the offer. (If only that had deterred him.) Later, he was relieved to learn from several others than Haurchefant was known for his peculiar proclivities, and he did not need to fear fending off such propositions from every Elezen he met.

A hope that was dashed when he met Aymeric, who, within a few conversations, insinuated he'd like to take Keshet back to his place and get to know him better.

"What is it with Elezen men?" Keshet grumbled to himself after he'd politely refused. Aymeric had taken the rejection in stride, seemingly unbothered and no less friendly after than he had been before. "Why do they all seem to want to get in my pants?"

(Fortunately, after several moons spent in the company of the Ishgardians, he leaned that this was not, in fact, a universal trait of Elezen men, and that it was his stature and his strength that attracted those who did, which made his stay in Ishgard significantly less uncomfortable than it might otherwise have been.)

Chapter 28: Gods

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Eorzea had too many gods, Keshet decided, staring up at the symbol that clearly marked this building as the purview of one of them. If only he could remember which one.

There were twelve of them, that much he knew. Or at least, most of the time there were twelve. Sometimes there seemed to be thirteen, if you counted Hydaelyn. Unless you were speaking with an Ascian, who seemed to add another to the mix - not that they considered Eorzea's Twelve to be gods, or at least Keshet didn't think they did, their focus seeming to land fairly singularly on Zodiark. In any case, no matter how you counted, there were a great deal too many, and Keshet could never remember all of them.

Some were easier to place than other. Halone was the most memorable; all it took was a half day spent in Ishgard to lodge that name firmly into the mind for the rest of your life. Goddess of war and conquest, he thought, and ice, probably, given the state of her patron city (and why was it that these Twelve picked favorites in such a way? Nhaama loved all, even those wretched Oronir who scorned her grace). Her symbol was three spears - he knew that much, because he'd seen it inscribed in every statue of her likeness around the Holy See, which was pretty well half of the statues they had - which meant this building was not dedicated to Halone.

It didn't help either that some of the gods had more than one name. Halone, the Fury, not to be confused with the Destroyer, Rhalgr, who Keshet only remembered because of the lengthy explanation he'd definitely been listening to when he and Lyse had first made it to Rhalgr's Reach, dominated by the towering statue of its namesake god. Keshet thought Rhalgr was associated with fire, but that might have just been because he lorded over the desert, and his symbol was curiously similar to that of the black mage's, which ruled out Rhalgr too.

In truth, they probably all had multiple designations, and Keshet just didn't know them all. He knew of Nophica only because he'd heard the name in a common Gridanian farewell, but he knew nothing about her domain. Then there was... Thal? He'd heard Thancred curse using that name a number of times. He wasn't fully certain if Thancred was referring to some sort of orbs the god was supposed to carry, or if it was just his, well, anatomy that was meant as a condemnation. And then.... Try as he might, Keshet couldn't think of any others.

Why did they have to have so many sun-blighted gods, anyway? Two were perfectly sufficient to create the Au Ra and watch over them, why did Eorzeans need twelve? How could anyone keep them straight? And they all had relationships and conflicts between them, like some sort of overly isolated tribe destined to collapse in on itself. And the more he thought about it, the less they sounded like gods at all, what with all that squabbling and those distinct areas of power. They seemed more like saints or even primals than true gods. And how exactly was Hydaelyn supposed to fit into it? She seemed like more of a god than any of Eorzea's Twelve, even if her domain was Light instead of Dusk.

Arg! Keshet drove his fingers through his hair, frustration swelling and threatening to spill over. Fortunately, a well-timed comment from a passing sailor saved his scales - and his sanity. "Llymlaen's teats, that was a rough storm. Fer once, I'm actually glad we're on dry land."

Llymlaen! That was the name of the goddess of Limsa and the seas. Blessed Nhaama, why did they have to make it so complicated? He had half a mind to set them straight and explain the virtues of Nhaama and Azim - expect somehow he suspected the only thing that would accomplish would be turning Twelve into Fourteen.

Chapter 29: Child Rearing

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"Some day I'm going to be an adventurer just like you! Will you teach me how to fight like you do?"

Keshet looked down at the small hyuran child, the delicious flood of adrenaline slowly fading from his system now that the corrupted treants that had wished to do harm to the kid had been defeated. He had the time - he wasn't due back in Gridania for another bell at least - so he supposed it couldn't hurt to show the boy something.

"Alright," he agreed, and the boy brightened. "What sort of weapon do you use, and how far are you in your training?" If he was an archer or a healer, Keshet was screwed, but even the most skilled bowman ought to know the basics of how to wield a blade, and at the end of the day, a mage was a mage, right? If he judged the boy's age right (which, he would admit, was a skill he was only slightly more adept at than curing maladies or firing arrows, at least amongst the hornless and tailless youths), he couldn't have been more than ten years old, and therefore only recently started in on the more complex techniques of his trade. There was probably still something Keshet could show him for any vocation. "What have your parents taught you so far?" (Keshet was more proud than he had any right to be for remembering that most Eorzean children were raised by “parents” and not by the communal efforts of their tribe. The practice confused him enough to have caused some, ahem, amusing miscommunications shortly after he'd landed in the West, but he was finally getting the hang of this cultural difference, at the very least, and he preened internally at the small victory.)

"Uh... I don't know how to use any weapons. Mom and Dad won't let me learn. Dad says I'm going to be a fisherman when I grow up, like him, and that I don't need to know how to fight."

Keshet frowned down at the boy, who quailed under his gaze. "Why should a fisherman not know how to fight? Does a karakul not know how to graze simply because its trough is filled?" The child blinked uncomprehendingly up at him, and Keshet suspected he'd bungled the translation somewhere. He waved a hand. "No matter. I'll show you what I can in the time I have. Here, I have a knife that I think will fit your grip somewhere..." It was a hunting knife, suited more to carving up carcasses than creating them, but it would have to do.

The kid grinned brightly as Keshet handed him the knife and walked him through the basics of how to wield it. Between his unbridled exuberance and his utter lack of training, his motions were sloppy and slow, and even the youngest Dotharli child could have bested him in a true fight, but Keshet could hardly fault the boy for it. Clearly his parents had dropped the ball on his upbringing. Poor kid.

Or perhaps not, he discovered a half bell later, when a matronly hyur smelling vaguely of fish cakes rushed up to them. The look of relief that had smoothed her features when she spotted the boy transformed into righteous indignation as she took in his fighting stance and the blade in his hand. "Theodore! What are you doing?! Drop that knife this instant!" she demanded, grabbing him by the wrist and forcibly disarming him before he even had a chance to obey. Keshet winced as his knife clattered against the ground. "And you! Who do you think you are, teaching warfare to a child! He's just a boy!"

Somehow, Keshet didn't think responding with his first thought of 'Ma'am, when I was your son's age I had already killed a half dozen men in battle' would win him any favors, and he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. Of course, what came out instead was hardly better. "If you had done your duty to teach him, he would have been better prepared when he was attacked. His training clearly lags behind his peers."

That was, naturally, the wrong thing to say. The woman drew herself up to her full (if unimpressive) height, jabbing a finger into Keshet's sternum. "I don't know how things work in whatever barbarous land you're from, but around here, we don't train our children for war!"

"Oh." Keshet considered this for a moment, yet another difference between his people and this foreign land. "That seems... impractical," he said mildly, frowning down at the woman.

She huffed, turning her back on him and snatching her son up by the wrist. "Come along, Theodore, it's time to go home."

Keshet watched them leave, rubbing absently at the place on his chest where the woman had poked him as he bent to retrieve his knife. I don't think I'll ever understand this realm's customs.

(He did, however, feel somewhat vindicated when he later discovered that not all Eorzeans shared the beliefs of Theodore's mother, and that some Eorzean children began learning the arts of war as young as ten years old. It still seemed late to Keshet, but he was comforted in the knowledge that not every child in the West was a helpless babe - and it inspired hope that perhaps there were more similarities between Eorzea and his homeland that he simply had yet to uncover.)

Chapter 30: Identifying Features

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"Oh, Alphinaud, I'm glad you're back already. Tataru asked me to give you this scarf. She said she knitted it herself, and that it should 'help to fend off the Coerthan cold better than a necktie'."

The boy blinked up at him. "Um, Master Dotha- Keshet, I'm Honoroit. I'm afraid Alphinaud is still out at the moment."

Keshet let out a rough sigh that was almost a groan, peering down at the small Elezen. Yes, the hair was brown, not white, and shorter than Alphinaud kept his, now that he looked. "Sorry," he grumbled, dragging a hand harshly through his hair.

The better part of a year already he'd been in Eorzea, and still he couldn't tell the differing members of their races apart. At least he'd finally gotten the hang of identifying a person's race before addressing them - there had been more than a few awkward moments at the Waking Sands before he'd learned to look to the ears first, where he'd mixed up Minfilia and Y'shtola, or worse, Thancred and Y'shtola (who had not taken well to that particular mistake, and had glared daggers at him and Thancred both as the rogue laughed so hard he fell off the crate he'd been seated on). Fortunately, the ears tended to give away a person's race, at the very least, though the distinction between Hyur and Roagadyn still escaped him. Within the Scions, at least, that had cut down on the number of mix-ups fairly significantly; it was only Minfilia and Yda, and Tataru and Papalymo who took the brunt of what they named his "face blindness" from there on out.

The problem with Ishgard, of course, was that the entire city state was filled with Elezen, and every damned one of them looked the same to Keshet. How was he supposed to tell them apart when they didn't have horns or scales? He couldn't just glance at their face and go "Oh yeah, scales across the nose and brow, flared horns pointing down, ah, it's Horkudagh." He was sure there were identifying features he was meant to be looking for, but he wasn't entirely certain what they were. Hair was the only one he could make use of, once he remembered to look for it at all, but people could change the style, the cut, even the color of their hair as much as they wanted, so it wasn't really a permanent fixture of identification like horns and scales were. And Nhaama preserve him from the number of people who had the same hair color, or worse, who modelled their own appearances off someone else's. And as soon as family resemblances entered the picture, all bets were off. Within the Fortemps household alone, he regularly mixed up Emmanellain, Artoirel, and Edmont. Haurchefant at least stood out around here, with his brightly colored hair and unwavering optimism, but if he ever dyed his hair, Keshet would be twice damned.

The only non-Au Ra he'd never struggled with were Urianger and Alphinaud, and he guessed the latter was now out the window. The tattoo on Urianger's cheek served just as well as a pattern of scales over his face, and so long as he maintained his habit of covering only the top half of his features, Keshet was unlikely to mistake him. But it had been Alphinaud's small stature that had preserved him from Keshet's fumbling, since there were few enough Elezen of a height with him - except for Honoroit, he now realized. Really, it was a small miracle he hadn't mixed them up until now.

"It's alright, Master Keshet. I'm sure that once you've had more practice, you won't have so much trouble recognizing people," Honoroit consoled him. Keshet sure hoped he was right, because if he had to listen to one more offended litany for having mistaken Emmanellain for the House Fortemps manservant, he was liable to launch himself off the edge of the city.

Chapter 31: Scale Pattern

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The Coerthan cold bit at Keshet's skin, but he was too stubborn and prideful to put back on the bulky coat Tataru made him wear to keep his tail from freezing off. The lalafell would surely skin his hide if she found him out here, stripped to the waist as he trained, but he was far too used to the freedom of movement granted to him by his usual attire to swing a sword as long as he was tall and half as heavy with his movements so constricted by a half dozen layers of furs and fabric. Besides, the exercise was good for him (even if it didn't keep him strictly warm), and the time spent in the company of another Au Ra was even better.

"Your scales are different than mine," Sigurgu observed from where he was warming up by the fire a half dozen fulms away.

Keshet glanced up in surprise, nearly cleaving off the end of his tail when he forgot to pull it out of the way of his swing. "What do you mean?" He couldn't exactly see most of Sidurgu's scales to compare, but he hadn't noticed anything about the other Au Ra that would lead him to believe he had some sort of scale abnormality... Then again, he supposed there probably weren't too many medics in Ishgard well versed in auri anatomy, so if he did have some kind of problem, he may not have known about it until now.

Fortunately, the truth was much simpler than that. "Their pattern. They don't cover the same areas that mine do."

"Oh. Of course not," Keshet responded easily, heaving his sword once more as he returned his attention to his training, his worries dismissed. "Every Au Ra's scales are unique. Like... birthmarks, I guess, on an Elezen." He paused, frowning. "You didn't know that?"

Sidurgu grimaced, tail lashing. "There aren't many Au Ra here to compare myself too. And once my parents were killed, there was no one to teach me such things."

"Oh." Keshet's motions slowed then halted as he considered that. What a horrible life that must have been, to lose your people so young that you never even learned about your own kind. Resolved, Keshet abandoned his training, driving his sword into the snow and making his way over to stand next to Sidurgu at the fire.

"Most Au Ra have scales covering the majority of their joints," he explained, tapping the dark patch over the back of his wrist. "The spine, too, is very common, though I know plenty of people without. The throat seems to be fairly universal, I don't think I've ever seen anyone with their throat fully exposed..." He tilted his head, considering for a moment, before giving it a decisive shake. "No, definitely not." Urianger would probably say something like that it was an evolutionary advantage for Au Ra to have their necks protected, but all Keshet knew was that it had saved his skin more than once and he was grateful.

"The rest tend to be variable," he continued, feeling rather like his scholarly friend for once, instead of the weary science experiment he was often reminded of when Alphinaud peppered him with questions. "Some have scales spread across their chests, like a breastplate." He traced a pattern over his bare skin, arching down from his throat and between his nipples down to the base of his sternum. Sidurgu nodded along in recognition, tail quirked behind him. "Others are protected over their sides or stomach, or lower, over their groin." He gestured to where the pointed edge of scales peaked out over the tops of his shorts, leaving Sidurgu to infer how much of his hidden skin was covered.

"They can come in in any number of patterns, from the winged points you see on me to the more delicate spiral shapes some women sport, to blocky, heavy sections and everything in between. And the pattern can change as you age. I'm sure you've noticed that your scales filled in more as you grew up. They'll continue to spread as the years pass. Eventually, the slivers of skin you can see on your neck" -Keshet paused, realizing for the first time that he had no idea how old Sidurgu was, and tilted his head to examine Sid's neck and ensure he did still have skin visible (he did)- "they'll vanish as the scales grow denser and spread across more of your body. You can guess an Au Ra's age reasonably well like that if you know what to look for, but everybody's different, so it's not foolproof."

Keshet drew himself up short, clamping his lips against the next bout of words that threatened to spill forth as he realized he'd crossed the line from helpful friend to brotherly mentor mode, well-honed from years of explaining to the younger children of the tribe. It's a miracle I've never slipped that far into lecturing in front of Alphinaud - though I bet he'd be thrilled. Never let me have another evening to myself though.

"Hm. I see," was all Sidurgu said when it was clear Keshet was finished, but the quirk to his tail belied his interest.

"Er, sorry for the lecture. You didn't exactly ask."

Sidurgu grunted noncommitally, and Keshet reached for his sword, content to return his attention to the actual purpose of their snowy sojourn and leave auri anatomy lessons for another day. It took him by surprise to hear Sigurgu say gruffly from behind him, "Thanks. I never thought much about this stuff when I was a kid, and then it was too late to learn."

"If ever you have any questions..." He left the offer unfinished, and Sid nodded to him. He returned it, and that easily, the bond of kinship was solidified. "Now come on, let's see just how well my scales hold up against your sword."

Chapter 32: Intimidation

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Keshet could not help the set of his face - no more than he could help the spiked black scales or viciously pointed horns. His lips pulled down naturally into a permanent frown, and the sharp angle of his eyes and heavy brow made him seem to glare at all who crossed his path. His was not a face given to jovial smiles and kindness - which had been fine, when he'd been nothing more than a Dotharl fighting for his tribe. Even as an adventure, it had given him an air of competence: he looked mean and imposing, and more than capable of destroying whatever man or monster was wreaking havoc.

Now though... Now he was a hero. And heroes were supposed to be friendly. "A symbol of hope," Minfilia had once called him, but how could he instill hope in the breasts of the people when he couldn't help but look pissed off. Not that he'd ever wanted to be a symbol of anything, except maybe the imminent death of his enemies, but now that he was here...

"Maybe try to smile more?" Thancred suggested as the young boy who'd approached them darted away to hide behind the skirts of his mother.

Keshet grimaced, which did nothing to help lessen the harshness of his face, glancing at Thancred before carefully rearranging his mouth into a smile.

Thancred winced. "Seven hells, no, that's not better at all. What is wrong with your face?"

Keshet let the awkward smile drop, scowling at his comrade. "There's nothing wrong with my face! I can't help it if I look a little frightening, that’s just the way I look!"

"Resting villain face," Thancred muttered, and Keshet shoved at him. Thancred stumbled, rocking on his heels before he regained his footing with an easy grin. "At least we're not in Ishgard. I bet that's just a treat. 'Ahhh, a dragon-man!'" he japed in a high falsetto, pressing both hands to his cheeks and trembling in mock fright before dissolving into a fit of laughter.

Keshet groaned. "You laugh, but I lived it. But come on, do I really look like a dragon?"

"Well, you do have the horns..."

He rolled his eyes. "Don't bother. At least back home, I knew if people were intimidated by me it was just because of my skill. Here..."

"I don't doubt there are plenty of people who are intimidated by your skill here as well. Slayer of the Black Wolf, Warrior of Light, Conqueror of Dragons..."

"No one calls me that," Keshet protested with another scowl.

"Y'know, maybe if you smiled more and scowled less, you'd get more practice and your face would stick that way," Thancred suggested jovially, only to laugh as Keshet's scowl deepened. "And it couldn't hurt with the ladies too," he added with a wink.

Keshet snorted. "I would've thought you'd want to keep them all to yourself."

"I'm a benevolent sort," Thancred replied easily, waggling his fingers at a group of passing women.

"Uh-huh." Keshet contemplated sticking a foot out in front of him just to see how he'd maintain his suave charm after falling on his face, but thought better of it.

"Ah well, there are certainly merits to being intimidating instead of charismatic," Thancred said, getting back on track. "Maybe we tell Tataru you're not suited to this sort of public display, and send you out to strike the fear of death into convicts and bandits instead. You can loom over them and glower, it'll be great. Just make sure you do that tail lashing thing you do, and I'm sure we could cut primal summonings and petty crime down by half within the week."

"Leaving you to be the public face of the Scions?"

"Naturally!" he agreed, and they both laughed.

So maybe Keshet couldn't change his features or his "resting villain face", but that was fine. There were worse things than frightening children with his sharp points and sharper glare, and he consoled himself with the knowledge that they'd probably react the same way to any Au Ra anyway. And there was something to be said for staring down your enemies and watching them realize that they looked upon not a benevolent hero, but the avatar of their own death. Intimidation indeed. He wouldn't change it for the world.

Chapter 33: Snow

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There were parts of the Steppe that saw snow, up in the north, where mountains speared into the sky and white was said to blanket the ground more often than green. Nhaama's Retreat was not one of them. The only white that covered the ground around the Dotharl's territory was the sand that spread as far as the eye could see, and even that was only in the glow of the moonlight, when Nhaama's grace turned the expanse of gold a gleaning silver. In fact, none of the Southeastern Steppe saw snow, at least not as long as Keshet had been alive, and the Dotharl did not roam the way many of the tribes did, to see lands under winter's frigid grasp. And so Keshet had never seen snow until the day he crossed the border from Eorzea's Northern Shroud into Coerthas.

Fat flakes of white drifted lazily on a winter breeze bitter enough to bite at Keshet's exposed flesh and send a shiver down his tail, but he hardly noticed the cold, too enchanted by the shimmering snowflakes like a thousand grains of sand sifting from the sky. They seemed to fall with an unearthly grace, nothing like the heavy ice chunks he'd been expecting from the stories he'd heard from others of Coerthas's frozen lands. Everyone he'd talked to always seemed to lament the "blustery hellscape" the region had become in the wake of the Calamity, but this... This was magical.

He lifted his face, squinting into the sky as the flakes landed on his skin, dusting his cheeks and catching on his eyelashes. Solitary flakes like intricate lace glimmered against the silver caps on the ends of his horns, and he peered at them, admiring their unique charm as more gathered in his hair and on the scales over his shoulders, melting almost as soon as they touched the rough black plates.

More snow crunched - crunched! - underfoot as he turned, drifts of it piled to either side of the road in a half-hearted attempt to keep the main thoroughfare clear. What might they feel like, these mounds so unlike the sands he'd grown up with? The delicate flakes that were more wet than cold, really, piled high until they reached his waist. Such serene beauty couldn't possibly be the awful menace Yda had claimed, could it? It looked so soft, like it was just calling to him to lay down in it...

He grinned, his breath puffing from him in a cloud of mist as a little laugh escaped him. (It couldn't possibly have been a giggle, since Dotharli warriors do not giggle, but some confusion could perhaps be forgiven just this once.) Delight tugged at his lips as he crouched, pausing just long enough to revel in the childlike excitement that tingled under his skin before he leapt forth, launching himself into the snowbank with the same vigor and aplomb with which he usually launched himself into battle.

Displaced snow proofed up around him as he landed, the fluffy flakes surprisingly dense as they cradled his body, frigid wetness almost immediately seeping in beneath his clothes and slicking his skin. He laughed, nestling deeper into the bank (which was, as it turned out, really quite comfortable if you looked past the cold and the wet), and this time there was no denying that the sound was filled with joyous wonder rather unfit for a warrior of his calibre. Oh well, to hell with it. There was no one around to see the break from his public image anyway.

Giggling merrily to himself, he waved his arms and legs, swiping his tail through the snow and rolling through the powdered white until the imprint he'd left was more of a crater and he was soaked through and shivering from top to tail. Almost by accident, he found that he could squeeze it into a ball or build it up into a wall and it would stay in that shape (more or less), and immediately he began constructing himself a fort, and then some miniature replicas of Magnai and his stooges, just so that he could crush them underfoot. (He thought that his idea to use twigs as horns was truly inspired.)

Eventually though, no matter how much he delighted in this unexpected joy, he couldn't stave off the cold that ate at him and slowed his movements, and with some reluctance dragged himself free from the snow. The melted snow seemed to have refrozen into icy crystals at some point that clung to his scales and bit into his skin, and his sopping clothes had forfeited whatever little protection they had granted from the once-gentle wind. By the time he made it to the Observatorium, he was downright miserable, the wondrous magic of his first snow worn down into pitiful woe. The knights when he arrived took one look at him and bundled him off to sit before a fire with words like "hypothermia" and "frostbite" on their lips, the meanings of which Keshet didn't know but sensed boiled down to "Don't frolick in the snow until your tail falls off, you moron." But they were kind, and more worried than aggravated, and they brought him a blanket to wear while his clothes dried (after taking one look at him and determining he was not likely to fit into any of the spare clothes they had lying around).

Alright, maybe Yda has a point, Keshet conceded to himself as feeling began to prickle its way back into the tip of his tail. But I'll be damned if the snow isn't at least as fun as it is wretched.

Chapter 34: Horn Jealousy

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The megalotragus was, by all accounts, a very nice creature. Well, alright, Keshet wasn't really sure about the species as a whole, but this one in particular had always seemed rather polite, as far as giant, primordial goat-creatures went. Not once had it tried to eat him or even chew on his hair, and he was pretty sure it had bowed to him when he'd first stepped before it. And yet...

"Absolutely not. I refuse to sit astride such a beast." He knew it was irrational, but he couldn't help the way his lip curled up, baring his teeth at the creature in an unfriendly snarl.

"What do you mean you refuse to ride it?" Zena turned back from where she was untangling the beast's bridle, and Keshet hurried to rearrange his face into something a little closer to polite indignation. Apparently he wasn't fast enough. "This is about the horn thing again, isn't it?" she asked wearily but with no small amount of amusem*nt, arching a teasing brow.

"It's not- Well, I mean, I- It's not my fault, okay?" he groused with a grimace.

"Keshet, it's a goat."

"I know that."

"It's not another Au Ra. The fact that it's horns are bigger and shinier than yours does not mean you are inferior to it in any way," she told him, struggling to bite back her laughter as he recoiled.

"Its horns are not shinier than mine. Just look at it! It's got-" Keshet shook himself, visibly forcing his attention away from the taunt and back on track. "Look, horns are a big part of our culture, okay? They’re a key feature, and having nicer horns than someone is a big deal to my people. I can't help that that sometimes spills over in irrational ways."

"Like during the Starlight Festival?" Zena needled, broad grin splitting her face.

Keshet flushed, looking away. "You're never going to forget that, are you?" he grumbled.

"It was a reindeer, Keshet. You know, magical deer filled with the spirit of giving, meant to bring joy and laughter to children?" She held her hands up to her head and spread her fingers to mimic its antlers, waggling them at him. "Oh, sorry," she continued, her grin growing sly as she dropped them again. "Wouldn't want you to think I was threatening your status as the hornie*st one here."

Keshet groaned, rolling his eyes and kicking at the ground. "You're not as funny as you think you are. And it wasn't that bad."

"First off, I'm hilarious," she countered, winking at him and making a gesture with her thumb and forefinger that he couldn't parse. "And second, you headbutted the reindeer."

"I did not headbutt it, I just knocked its horns with my own. Gently." For the most part.

"There were children watching."

"There was a child watching. And he was more than placated when I let him play with my staff," Keshet retorted, crossing his arms.

"Yeah, which is also bad, while we're at it. You do see how that's bad, right? I mean, I would have done the same thing, but still. Bad." Keshet huffed in exasperation, but she was grinning at him, mirth twinkling in her emerald eyes. "In any case," she added, tightening a strap on the side of the megalotragus's head, "reindeer have antlers, not horns."

Keshet scowled at her and she roared with laughter, delighting, as ever, in his embarrassment. He rolled his eyes at her as a slow smile spread over his own face, a chuckle rumbling through his chest despite himself. "I'll try to remember that." A pause as they both caught their breath, and then, "I'm still not riding that beast though."

She sighed, shaking her head in weary fondness and raising her hands in surrender. "Alright, fine, you can ride you own monstrous bird." She leaned into him, arching an almost conspiratorial brow as she whispered loudly, "And if it helps, I think your horns are nicer anyway."

"You're damned right they are." No giant, primitive goat-monster, no matter how polite, was going to outclass his horns. Even if its were bigger. And maybe shinier.

Chapter 35: Espionage

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Adrenaline surged, singing sweetly through Keshet's veins and setting his tail to lashing. His fingers tightened on the shaft of his staff as he stepped forward, determined to track down the villains who'd stolen away his friends and show them the might of a vengeful Dotharli warrior.

"Wait." Fingers closed around his arm in a firm band, drawing him to a halt. He twisted to find Thancred looking up at him, the same defiance that seared through Keshet reflected in his eyes and the set of his jaw. "Where do you think you're going?"

"To flay the fiends that took them from us. Why are you stopping me?"

"You can't just charge in after them half co*cked, you'll get yourself killed!"

Keshet stared down at him, unblinking and menacing, and Thancred was reminded very suddenly of just how much shorter he was. "Who do you think I am?" Keshet rumbled, his tail lashing menacingly. "I have more notches on my staff than you do your headboard. This is not where I will meet my end."

"They'll kill our friends," Thancred corrected, steeling himself against that luminous glare and holding his ground. "Let me go in. Give me... Two hours. If I'm not out by then, you can storm in and raze the damned place."

"What can you do that I can't?" Keshet demanded.

The subtle smell of ozone tickled his nose as Thancred let out a breath, and then he vanished before Keshet's very eyes. If it weren't for the hand that remained tight around his bicep, he would have been certain he was alone, his eyes sliding impotently over the empty space where his friend must still be. A moment later, he reappeared, and Keshet might have said he looked smug if the set of his mouth hadn't been so grim.

"Alright, yeah, I can't do that," Keshet conceded. "How can you...?"

"Violence isn't always the answer. When you need subtlety and subterfuge, that's when you come to me. There's more to my skills than just stabbing enemies in the back, just like there's more to my liaisons than just adding another notch to my headboard," Thancred said sourly. "But isn't the Far East home to the fabled ninjas? Shouldn't this all be familiar to you?"

"Maybe Hingashi is, but on the Steppe, it's your strength that counts - strength of arms or of magic, whichever, so long as it kills or maims your opponent before they kill you. Anything else is unnecessary." He paused in contemplation before adding, "Except maybe among the Moks. But I'm not sure they really exist."

Thancred didn't know what Moks were, but didn't really want to waste the time it would take to explain. "Just wait here. Two hours. I'll prove to you that might does not always make right."

So, although it went against his every instinct (and the vast majority of his rational thoughts, too) Keshet stayed back as Thancred ventured forth, cloaked in his mysterious invisibility. He worried his lip with his teeth, the lash of his tail keeping time like the pendulum of a clock as he paced the same restless path over and over again.

Precisely seven hundred and twenty-six tail swishes later, Thancred reappeared, their captured friends at his side and a triumphant grin twisting his lips - and not so much as a single scratch on any of them. Keshet rushed to greet them on a flood of relief, more than willing to concede that he'd been wrong. There was something to this concept of stealth and espionage after all. Maybe not enough to convince him to change his own ways, but at least Thancred would always have his back. His friends had a wonderful way of filling in where he was lacking, he decided, pulling them to him into a tight hug that left everyone squirming uncomfortably. He'd best be careful not to lose them again.

Chapter 36: Hygiene

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The life of an adventurer was messy, dirty, and grimy - which generally suited Keshet perfectly well, since the life of a Dotharl could also be described by these three terms, as a general rule. Sand had an infuriating tendency to end up in places you'd really rather it not be, and it took an awful lot of practice to be able to kill something without spraying yourself with its viscera - and even with his years of experience, Keshet could only manage it half the time. Bathing was a luxury rarely afforded to the Au Ra of the Steppe, unless they lived particularly for to running water, like the damnable Oronir. It didn't bother Keshet overmuch; he kept himself free of blood and gore, and washed his hair once or twice a moon, and that was all he needed. The habit meant he was perfectly prepared for life on the road, where the opportunity to bathe was even rarer than in Nhaama's Retreat and your hygiene was determined by the heavens' willingness to rain.

People in Eorzea, Keshet discovered, were a lot more tied to the concept of cleanliness. Some people even bathed every day. It was horribly wasteful, in Keshet's opinion, even if he was willing to grant that indoor plumbing made the process much more enticing. He'd still just as well take a stream running through the woods as he would a Lominsan bathtub, but the ability to select the temperature of your water without having to rely on your own magic was fairly novel. He took advantage of them on occasion, relishing the easy heat, and even conceded to washing himself once a week when the option presented itself.

But the life of an adventurer was the same no matter what continent you were on, and that meant being very comfortable with mud and muck: a rule that few enough of his companions were willing to accept. Alisaie complained at length any time she was forced to go more than two days without a shower, and somehow Alphinaud was even worse, lamenting in his flowery language the perils and pitfalls of exploration. Thancred was not so bad, very used to the reality of adventure from his exploits in espionage, but he was clearly less than comfortable with the irregular hygiene habits forced on him. Urianger and Y'shtola had both circumvented the problem altogether with some sort of magic, which was certainly better than the alternative, because if listening to Alphinaud complain tugged at his tail, hearing Urianger's plaintiful soliloquy would probably make him bite it right off.

Estinien, though, made for an ideal travel partner. The two of them were of a mind in this as in so many other things, each one utterly unbothered by the lack of access to a bath and perfectly content to keep travelling for weeks on end without having to run into town to make use of their facilities. There was usually some stream or pool they could use to wash up if they got overly bloody and when mud stuck to their legs, and that was good enough for them. Usually.

Keshet wrinkled his nose, sniffing at the air. A sour smell had been teasing at his senses all day, carried off by the wind often enough that he hadn't been able to place it, but the breeze had grown still, and the scent remained. "What is that smell?" he asked with a frown.

Estinien inhaled deeply, tilting his head as he paused before giving it a shake. "I don't smell anything."

Keshet sniffed again, lips parting to let him taste the air, trying to follow the scent back to its origin. His sense of smell was not as good as a miqo'te's, but it was serviceable (and apparently better than an Elezen's), and he followed the foul odor back to his companion. "It's you! Why do you smell so bad?"

Estinien lifted an arm and sniffed at his armpit, making a face at the scent. Dropping his arm back to his side, he shrugged. "When's the last time we stopped to bathe?"

"Uh..." He couldn't remember. "Maybe two weeks ago? But you don't smell like rotting blood, you smell... Sour?"

"Aye, that tends to happen when you go long enough without a bath. Do you think you smell any better?"

Keshet mimicked Estinien's gesture, sniffing at his underarm. He didn't smell any different than he usually did. "Yes?"

Estinien leaned in doubtfully, nose already wrinkled as he sniffed at Keshet. Surprise and confusion splashed across his face as he pulled back. "You haven't bathed any more recently than I have. Why don't you smell worse?"

"Because I rinsed that dragon's blood off of me the other day instead of letting it fester until it stinks?"

"It's not old blood, it's body odour," Estinien corrected gruffly. "It happens when you stew in your own sweat for a few weeks."

"Ah. I see. Well at least that finally explains this land's fascination with hygiene. No sweat, no stench, no need to compulsively wash head to toe every day," Keshet mused, gesturing down the length of his body.

Estinien grunted at that, silently accepting the implication that Keshet didn't sweat without so much as a word. Yet another reason he's the perfect travelling companion: no deluge of questions.

"Well, no wonder we weren't able to catch anything for dinner last night. With you reeking like that, any animal with half a brain would be long gone before we could find it."

Estinien rolled his eyes, but it was on his suggestion that they stopped at the next pond they passed for a thorough bath.

Chapter 37: Bloodhempen Chestwrap

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The sharp sting of the needle puncturing his flesh as Keshet stitched up his wounds was so familiar as to be a comfort. The pain meant he was still alive to fight again tomorrow, and the ritual of tending to his own injuries after a fight helped shake away the last jitters of adrenaline; for all the merits and practicality of healing magic, it's soothing glow and instant relief just couldn't compare. The only thing missing was a stiff drink and the desert heat on his scales - but he'd settle for a flask of ale and the roaring flame of the campfire.

"You know, this doesn't really offer much in the way of protection," Thancred said, plucking at feathers of Keshet's discarded top, shucked so he could stitch a particularly wicked slice across his ribs.

"You wear a leather choker in place of a gorget," Keshet pointed out dryly, not bothering to look up from his task. "And be careful with that, I just fixed the beading last night and I'd rather not have to redo it again quite yet."

Thancred continued to turn the garment over in his hands, but he did at least seem to be handling it cautiously, and Keshet was sufficiently satisfied he wasn't going to bend any feathers that he refrained from protesting further. "You realize you would end up with fewer injuries if you wore something more protective, right?"

He was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question, but he answered anyway. "I am aware of that, yes."

Thancred frowned at him, at the scratches and old scars that covered his dark skin. "Then why...?"

"It is the garb of my people," Keshet explained simply. "We fear no strike against us; we laugh in the face of sword and sorcery both, and death holds no sway over the Dotharl. And so we proudly bear the marks of each battle fought and each victory hard-won." He tied of the thread of his stitches and severed it with his teeth before levelling a bellicose grin at his companion. "You shouldn't fear the enemy who enters the field well protected - you should fear the one who wears nothing to guard their flesh and still charges in to the slaughter." He let that comment linger in Thancred's mind for a moment, delighting in the vaguely horrified expression on his face before taking mercy on his concerned friend and adding, "It helps when you have scales to block the worst of the blows, too." He tapped the thick black plates on the back of his wrist, and Thancred had to admit that the scales there appeared unblemished despite the blade he'd watched Keshet block there not a half a bell earlier.

"It still seems like an unnecessary risk..."

Keshet lifted the top from Thancred's hands, fastening it into place before responding with a light shrug. "It has cultural significance too. The number of scars you bear is a point of pride among my people, and the more skin that you reveal, the more scars you can show off. The feathers come from the beast that we hunt during our coming of age ceremony - though they often have to be replaced." He ran his fingers over the plumes stitched into his outfit. "These I collected from my yol after I tamed him. The feathers you sport bear a great deal of significance to us: the mightier the beast they come from, the better."

He shrugged again. "It might seem impractical, but this garb is important to me. It's one of the last pieces of home I carry with me. It's no different than your collar or the twins' earrings."

Keshet trailed off, expression as casual as ever as he packed away his medical supplies, and Thancred tried to pretend he did not hear the wistfulness in his tone, the longing to return to a home that would not be the home he remembered, even if he could return to it. It was a feeling Thancred knew all too well, and he cleared his throat. "The skewers look to be just about done. Here." As far as attempts to change the subject went, it was a poor one, but Keshet seemed grateful. The two of them ate in contemplative silence, each reflecting on a past that had left them sentimental and scarred. Thancred's fingers strayed to his throat as he stared into the flames, dipping beneath the choker to brush against the tattooed skin below. Everyone wore their past in different ways. Maybe Keshet's impractical attire wasn't so irrational after all.

Chapter 38: Skin Color

Chapter Text

Keshet had known, of course, that the people in Eorzea wouldn't look like him. But he'd expected a lack of horns and tails with fur rather than scales. He hadn't expected to find that even the parts of his body that could pass as 'normal' in Eorzea were still different.

Everyone in the West was so pale! He'd been startled enough to see his pale-scaled cousins in his brief sojourn in Kugane, as if the pigment had been bleached away from their horns and scales to leave nothing but a bone-like white in its place. He'd heard the stories about them, of course, the lost children of Azim who had left their homeland to become one with the foreign cultures outside the Steppe, and he couldn't help but wonder if the pale horns were perhaps a sign of their treason. Or maybe they were just a sign of Azim's favor, the sun cruelly blasting away the darkness that ought to be the purview of the Au Ra. (He liked that theory in particular, because it would serve as proof that Magnai and his louts were not, in fact, favored by the sun-god, and he would certainly take a vicious satisfaction in watching the Oronir mooks contend with that realization.)

But at least in Hingashi, there had been a familiarity underscoring that oddity. Pale scales layered onto dusky skin, and even among the Hyur and the Roegadyn, he stood out more for the color of his scales than his skin. In Eorzea, the overwhelming majority of people not only lacked scales and horns, but their skin was bleached as though they had never basked in the blessings of dusk. Hyur, Elezen, Roegadyn, Lalafell, every race seemed to tend towards light tones, and Dusk forbid he see someone with skin of deep red or the midnight blue that was so common amongst the Dotharl. Some of the Roegadyn tended towards green or grey tones, which was a relief even if he couldn't recall a single green-skinned Au Ra. At least they added some variety to the otherwise shockingly ubiquitous cream of the West.

Which was not, of course, to say that he was the only dark-skinned person in all of Eorzea. Meeting Raubahn was a relief - even if he wasn't auri, his skin was nearly the same shade as Keshet's, and that familiarity alone was enough to endear him to the general even before learning of his battle prowess. Carvellain, too, in Limsa, who had skin even darker than his own - and, he later learned, most of the Durendaire line in Ishgard and a handful of the Dzemael. Travelling to Ala Mhigo was like a homecoming, both for the return to the desert and for the people with their dusky brown skin (though the number of blonde haired, blue eyed, and pale skinned Ala Mhigans he knew seemed oddly high for a country with so many darker folks).

He was fairly certain, at least, that it was not the color of his skin that made people wary of him. The horns and scales accomplished that well enough on their own, but no one seemed to treat Carvellain or Raubahn as particularly exotic, or at least not because of their skin. He would almost have said that no one even remarked on such a thing, if not for the way the Gridanian's treated the Duskwight. He hadn't even known of their existence until he ran into one in the markets one day - rather literally. Keshet glanced down, apology already on his tongue, and blinked in surprise at the navy-skinned Elezen before him. "You're not a Wildwood, are you?" His lips moved without his mind directing them, and he could have kicked himself for what slipped past them. Now he was the one drawing too much attention to another's appearance. And judging by the look on the woman's face, she did not take kindly to that.

"What's it to you?" she demanded, glaring at him. A distant part of him was impressed by her nerve - so few strangers were willing to look him in the eyes without a hint of hesitation or caution - but given the whispers he could overhear from the nearby shop owners and the surreptitious looks he now realized were not directed at him but at the woman, he could guess that she was overly used to people reacting poorly to her mere presence.

"I'm sorry," he said, cramming as much earnesty into his tone as he could manage. "I thought you were one of my people at first. I'm not from around here; I've never seen an Elezen who looks like you before."

She seemed mollified by that, her irritation shifting from him to their onlookers as she cast a displeased glance around them. "Not surprising. Like as not, you won't see many more of us either. My kind aren't very welcome around here."

"Oh," he said, following her gaze to an uppity looking man behind him. "Is there anything I-" He turned back around to find she had vanished, lost in the crowds and probably returned to wherever her people came from.

But though she had disappeared like smoke on the wind, the encounter lingered in his mind, and he asked Urianger about it the next time he saw him. His scholarly friend told him all about the other subset of Elezen and the discrimination they faced, which was perhaps not entirely due to the color of their skin but was directly related to it in a way that chafed at Keshet's scales.

Ultimately, there was little enough even someone in his position could do to change the opinions of the people, but he took it upon himself to advocate for the Duskwight from then on in his dealings with Gridania and Ishgard. Of all the features that set him apart, the color his skin was hardly the most notable, but though he couldn't rightly say he could relate to the trials the subterranean Elezen faced, he knew all about people judging him based on his appearance. And maybe, if he was lucky, someone else would look at him and see his otherness amongst the group of pale, white-haired Sharlayans, and feel the slightest bit of comfort to know they weren't alone.

Chapter 39: Eggs?

Chapter Text

Yda co*cked her head curiously, and though Keshet couldn’t see the direction of her gaze, he could guess what she was about to say before she said it.

"You have a belly button."

Alright, he hadn't expected her to say that. "Erm, yes? Should I not?"

She frowned. "But didn't you hatch from an egg?"

Dumbfounded, Keshet blinked at her, and he chose to believe she was blinking back behind her mask. "No?" he answered, confusion turning it into a question. "Where in Nhaama's grace did you get that idea?" He wasn't sure if he should be amused or offended, but Yda carried such an air of innocence that he found he couldn't help but laugh, reaching to tug on the shock of blond hair that had slipped out from her headscarf once again.

"But you're all..." She waved a hand up and down, encompassing his entire body. "Lizardy."

Keshet choked on his own laughter, teeth sinking into his lip to try to hold it in as his brows drew up in bewildered mirth. "So you see scales and a tail and you think I came from an egg? What, do you picture little infant Au Ra knocking on the insides of their shells when it's time to hatch?"

"Well, no. I assumed you used your horns to break free." That sent Keshet into another fit of laughter, and she pouted at him. "It's not that ridiculous! Besides, wouldn't those horns hurt your mother?"

"Our horns don't grow in until after we're born," he wheezed in answer. "We most certainly don't use them to peck our way free of eggs. I was born just the same as you, umbilical cord and all," he said, gesturing to the naval that had been the source of her confusion.

"Grr, Thancred!" Yda whirled, storming off to chew out the rapscallion rogue, who had presumably been feeding her falsehoods for his own amusem*nt. Keshet shook his head in bafflement as she left, still chucking to himself over the image of a tiny Keshet sitting in a freshly cracked egg shell. Damn, maybe he should have played along and seen how long he could keep up the ruse; surely he and Thancred could have had some good fun teasing her until she finally realized the joke.

Although... As he watched Yda beat harmlessly on Thancred's shoulder, he had to wonder. Thancred did mean it as a joke, right?

Chapter 40: Tongue

Chapter Text

The twins request to go out for ice cream ought to have been innocuous enough, but he'd spent enough time in their company - and answered enough of their questions - to recognize the shifty look in their eyes as they glanced eagerly between each other. Someone was about to win a bet, and he suspected regardless of who it was, he would be losing.

Still, he was content to humor them, more to spend time with them than for any penchant for the sweet treat. Alisaie insisted he order something for himself (and none too subtly at that), so he contented himself with an ice pop, which was thin enough to fit comfortably between his horns (a concern, he noted with some amusem*nt, that had not occurred to either of the twins in their scheming), and which offered a mild sweetness that was much less likely to make his stomach churn than the sugary cream the two of them ordered.

It didn't take long to figure out what their game was. They peered carefully at him as he licked at the ice, watching his mouth with a hawk-like focus. If it had been anyone else he might have been uncomfortable with the scrutiny, but it was the twins, and undoubtedly their focus was nothing more nefarious than some new curiosity they'd cooked up between them. So he let them watch, their own ice cream melting in their cones, confident they'd eventually figure out what they were after or, more likely, just ask.

"See, I told you it wasn't forked," Alisaie declared in a hushed voice, elbowing her brother. Keshet arched an inquiring brow that went unnoticed.

Alphinaud glared at her, scooching further away. "Yes, well, neither does it appear to be blue, unless you now seek to propose some sort of two-toned argument."

His second brow rising to join the first, Keshet gave into his own curiosity. "What are you two fighting about this time?"

Alphinaud flushed, jumping as if he'd forgotten Keshet was there. "I'd hardly call it a fight. Just a... debate, of sorts."

Alisaie huffed, taking a bite (a bite!) out of her ice cream before answering, "Alphinaud thought your tongue was forked."

"You thought it was blue!" Alphinaud protested in return.

"My tongue? Why do you... You know what, never mind, that's hardly the weirdest thing you guys have wondered about." He stuck out his tongue, which was a perfectly normal pink color and not forked in the slightest.

They both squinted at it, leaning in as though they might divine his secrets if only they were an inch or two closer. "It is rather long though," Alphinaud observed, and Keshet shrugged, returning to his ice pop as Alisaie stuck her own tongue out to compare.

"Why would my tongue be blue?" he asked, baffled.

"Some lizards have blue tongues," Alisaie asserted with surprising confidence for someone who'd just been disproven.

"Ah. You guys realize I'm not actually a lizard, right? Just lizard-adjacent."

"We know. We simply delight in determining wherein lie the similarities," Alphinaud said.

"It'd be cool if your tongue was blue though. Or forked. Either or," Alisaie added, biting off another mouthful of ice cream.

"That would be cool." Oh well. He'd just have to settle for "slightly longer than average", he supposed.

Chapter 41: Cooking

Chapter Text

No one really liked it when Keshet was on cooking duty. That was fair, he supposed, because he didn't really like it when anyone else was on cooking duty.

It wasn't so much that the food the others made was unpalatable - although if one more Sharlayan tried to convince him that that disgusting bread was all he needed to eat during the day to stay healthy, he was going to strip them of their kitchen privileges. It wasn't even that none of them were particularly good at cooking, although that was certainly an undeniable fact. Keshet would rather eat month old travel rations than whatever Alphinaud had cooked up the last time they'd been on the road together. It was just that he couldn't stand to see how much food they wasted every damned time they set up that cooking pot.

Keshet grimaced as he watched Estinien butcher the turkey they'd hunted down, both eager for some fresh meat. Meat that was now being wasted as he dug forth the entrails and let them splatter to the ground at his feet, discarded.

"Stop grinding your teeth, I can hear it from here," Estinien said without looking up from where he fished around inside the bird, looking for more perfectly good parts to waste.

"If you'd just let me-" Keshet started, but Estinien cut him off.

"I am not eating another bowl of your chicken feet and gizzard soup."

"There is nothing wrong with gizzard soup! And if you didn't waste so much of the bloody bird, we could be eating fresh meat for days instead of that awful hardtack." His throat went dry just think of the damned stuff. If he had to spend another day choking that down because Estinien didn't know how to properly butcher a bird...

Estinien scowled at him when he voiced the thought. "I know how to butcher a bird. You're the one who doesn't know what parts are inedible. Seriously, who eats the brain?"

"First of all, you have no taste. The brain is delicious. Second, where I'm from you'd get drawn and quartered for discarding such valuable meat. Not to mention the feathers and the bones." Estinien hesitated at that, brows rising in what might have been genuine concern. Keshet rolled his eyes. "I'm joking. Mostly. But we do make a point of using every part of our kills. The amount you people waste just because it doesn't match your sensibilities... It's appalling, really."

Estinien sighed, blowing hair from his eyes. "When it's your day to cook, you can do whatever you'd like with the eyelids and the arseholes of the game. But today it's my turn, and we're gonna do this the Eorzean way. And that means no turkey heart hors d'oeuvres."

Keshet grumbled some more about needless waste and uncultured Westerners, but he had to admit that Estinien was at least a good cook. He'd just have to teach him all the flavors he was missing out on by discarding the viscera. Surely then he'd have the surly dragoon singing a different tune. Then he'd just have to convince the rest of the Scions. That might be a harder task...

Chapter 42: Taste

Chapter Text

If there was a second reason his companions didn't like Keshet's cooking, it was that they all grew up on nothing but boring old bread and had the palates to show for it. There were toddlers back on the Steppe who had more refined tastes than this lot of cookie munching Sharlayans.

Well, alright, they weren't all that bad. Thancred could handle some heat, and Estinien would eat just about anything you set in front of him with minimal complaint - at least, when they were in front of other people. He certainly had no bones about grumbling under his breath, and if it were just the two of them he'd make his distaste known, but by and large the three of their palates aligned well enough that if it were just left to the three of them, mealtime would not be a horrible affair.

The rest of them though...

Keshet grimaced at the plate of cakes and confections laid before Urianger, each one sweet enough to melt off his tongue all by itself. Eating a whole plate of them would make him keel over on the spot, he was quite certain. Yet Urianger dug into it with vigor, fending off thieving hands from the twins between every bite.

"Thy countenance betrayeth thy distaste," Urianger told him, pulling his plate out of the way of Alisaie's fingers as she tried to take advantage of his distraction.

"I don't understand how you can stomach so much sugar, but even the slightest bit of habanero makes you hurl."

Urinager flushed, hiding his face behind a cupcake. "Thy lips uttereth falsehoods. 'Twas simply a bout of nausea. ...Intense nausea. Perhaps a spot of retching. But I did not 'hurl', as thou sayest."

"And that was not 'a little bit' of habanero!" Alisaie protested. "I couldn't feel my tongue for three days after that! And don't even get me started on that cactus flower sauce you used last time."

"Hey, that sauce is great. I love the way it tingles through my mouth and all the way down my throat."

"That's because it's poisonous, Keshet. It's not supposed to tingle. That's literal poison."

Keshet rolled his eyes. "We eat that all the time on the Steppe. It's perfectly fine for you. You lot just can't handle a little bit of spice."

"Your upbringing concerns me," Alisaie said, peering at him through narrowed eyes.

"Thy constitution far exceeds our own. Perhaps thy gustatory system functioneth not in the same fashion as our own."

After Urianger clarified the meaning of 'gustatory' for him, Keshet shrugged lightly. "I wouldn't doubt it. Dining with you lot is torture. Maybe we should have a taste test to find out!"

The two of them blanched. "Ah, no, I don't think that will be necessary."

"That is one mystery I am content to leave unsolved."

Chapter 43: Chocobos

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The big yellow bird stared at him, head co*cked in a manner that was far too inquisitive for the dull gleam of intelligence that shone in its great round eye. "Er, what am I supposed to do with it?" Keshet asked, refusing to break eye contact with the bird as he addressed its handler.

"'S a mount, sir."

"But I have a mount." A great, beautiful mount with lush purple feathers and a penchant for violence that rivaled his own. This thing... It was cute, he supposed, if that were the sort of thing you looked for in a steed. Its beak was overly large, and its wings overly small. That bulbous eye tracked him as he moved around it, its wings fluttering proudly. "Can it even fly?"

"Well, with some trainin' it can. Coupla breeds that can fly from the egg, but we breed these because they're better for ridin' and for fightin'. Don't spook so easy."

So it was a bird that was, for all intents and purposes, a horse. Why? "They can fight?" It didn't look like it could fight. There was no savagery to its face, nothing but a vaguely pleasant look as it ruffled its feathers. Its talons were rather long, and perhaps its legs were stronger than his yol's, but without the drive to kill...

"Sure can. Been used as war steeds as long as we've been breedin' 'em."

Keshet peered at it. It peered back. Evidently it liked what it saw, because it preened, its beak opening in what could only be termed a smile. "Kweh!"

Keshet backed away, eyeing those too small wings. Where was the majesty of it? The vicious beak and the wings that could stir up whirlwinds? He shook his head, thumb rubbing along the whistle at his hip in a familiar, soothing gesture. "I think I'll stick with my yol, thanks."

"Suit yerself," the stable manager said with a shrug.

Keshet could have sworn as he turned away that there was disappointment in the chocobo’s eyes. Another reason not to take it. That thing is far too damned emotive.

Chapter 44: Expressivity

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"Boo!"

Keshet leaped, his fingers flexing into claws and his tail lashing as he spun about in search of... Alisaie, right behind him, who'd undoubtedly been hiding for an uncomfortably long time underneath his bed just so she could spring out and send him into a panic. Keshet groaned, shoving at her as she broke down in giggles, arms clutching her stomach as she laughed herself silly.

As if the constant questions about his anatomy weren't bad enough, he also had to contend with his comrades' recently discovered fascination with his "overly emotive reactions." He couldn't help it if his tail gave away his every thought! It lashed, it curled, it swayed thoughtfully (it did not wag, he was a lizard not a dog, thank you very much), all without a conscious command from its owner. As for the rest of his body, well, he couldn't really control that either. It was cultural, he was pretty sure. At least, he had claimed that it was, in the hopes that a quick explanation would dissuade further prodding, but he should have known better. He'd been leaping out of his skin every other day lately as the "Watch Keshet Overreact to Every Little Thing" game caught on amongst the Scions.

It wasn't just fear either, which was probably a good thing considering how much his friends seemed to like this game. Thancred had laughed at him the first time he won big on the mini cactpot and leapt bodily into the air, but now he spent a good amount of time trying to recreate that moment. He seemed to pride himself on his ability to make Keshet shout in excitement, punching his fist in the air or roaring gleefully.

"It's cute," Lyse had told him one day while he lamented his plight to her. "Everyone sees you as this big, scary lizard who spends more time bathing in blood than water - a heroic one, of course! But then you get a little bit excited, and you're like a kid at Starlight."

"Everyone reacts like that on the Steppe," he grumbled, tail swishing despondently.

Lyse watched it in amusem*nt, hiding her smirk as she said, "It's not a bad thing, you know. It makes you more approachable!"

Keshet was pretty sure the only people approaching him because of his excessive emotiveness were his dastardly friends, and they were approaching quietly and from behind in an attempt to scare his tail off of him. "Maybe I should take an arrow from Y'shtola's quiver and learn to reign in my body language. Her tail hardly ever moves." The end of his tail flicked lazily without his notice, proof enough that he'd never manage to rid himself of his habits.

Lyse laughed. "Somehow I think if you tried, you'd just vibrate with pent up energy until your tail fell off."

He followed her gaze to where his tail kept time behind him and stilled it with a snort. "You may be right about that."

So maybe he couldn't help it if he laughed with his whole body and leapt out of his skin any time Alisaie popped up behind him. But his friends seemed to get a kick out of it, and really, that they teased him about it at all was just an expression of love, wasn't it? An irritating, troublesome expression of love, but love was love, and in truth he wouldn't give it up for the world. Even if it meant Alisaie hiding under his bed to scare him.

Chapter 45: Servants

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"Please, Master Dotharl, allow me to carry that to your room for you."

"What? Uh, no thanks, I'm fine. I've got it." Keshet twisted before the black clad servant could pull the tray right out of his hands.

Keshet was no stranger to servitude. Not that he'd ever submitted to such an ordeal himself - the Dotharl did not take slaves from their victims, they just slaughtered them, but some tribes did, like the mangey Buduga. The Dotharl had long held that if you wanted something done, you did it yourself. No task was too lowly for a true warrior; you did not pass off the grunt work onto someone lesser than you. And you certainly did not insist that someone else carry your lunch when you had two perfectly functional arms.

Suffice it to say staying at the Fortemps Manor had been an uncomfortable arrangement from start.

It didn't matter to him that he'd been assured time and again that the servants were fairly compensated for their services. ("They're servants, not slaves, my friend," Haurchefant had claimed with a pat on his back.) Aside from the simple fact that there was no compensation in all of Hydaelyn worth lacing Emmanellain's britches for him (Nhaama bless poor Honoroit's soul, Keshet was fairly certain the boy had more strength of character than he did), it seemed to him that the servants had little choice in their work. Oh, they weren't chained and forced to labor, of course, but what other choice did they have? Either they bowed to their master's whims or they starved. That was not how it ought to be. Your worth ought to be judged by your strength at arms, not some accident of birth that named you a noble or a commoner.

So what if they were born to a goat herder and a shoeshiner, that didn't make them any less capable an individual than a son of the High Houses. That didn't give the Fortemps or the Dzemael or any of the others the right to order them about to do their bidding without half a thought to what they asked of them. He'd heard Artoirel and Emmanellain both command the servants to fetch them tea or biscuits or their coat, to clean their messes and oil their armor, and the servants just bowed and "yessir"ed and did as they commanded. By Keshet's standards, the stableboy scooping chocobo dung from the pens held more worth than the snotty nobles who refused to clean up after themselves, much less their mounts.

He did, at least, have the good sense not to say that to their faces, especially when their presence in Ishgard depended on the Fortemps' generosity. But he'd brought it up to Urianger once, during one of his stealthy visits to the Waking Sands. "'Twas mine impression that much of one's station amongst the Dortharl dependeth on the circ*mstances of their birth," was all Urianger had said, watching him steadily.

Keshet frowned at him, lowering his steaming cup back to the table as he protested, "Just because your identity is known from birth doesn't mean that dictates your existence, though. Your standing is determined by your strength at arms in this life, not in your past."

But it seemed that, while Ishgard was by far the most egregious offender, this same sort of hierarchy existed across much of the West. From the poverty-stricken slums of Ul'dah to the Garlean war of succession, "birthright" was the unimpeachable king.

"Did you want to join me?" Keshet asked the Fortemps manservant - Phillipe, Keshet was pretty sure that was his name. "An offer, not an order. Though you can tell Edmont that I demanded it if you need to."

Phillipe blinked at him for a moment, caught between surprise and puzzlement before his face melded into a mask of polite regret and he said, "My apologies, sir, but I fear I must attend to my duties. Perhaps another time. But do not hesitate to ask if you need anything."

Keshet frowned after him as he scampered away, off to tend to Emmanellain's laundry or fetch a book for Artoirel, no doubt. Another effort to get to know the house staff, thwarted. He would have liked to befriend them; he was reasonably confident they'd make for better company than the stuffy nobles who constantly surrounded him these days, with their elegant sneers and their ridiculous rules of etiquette. Give him someone who could cook a boar or wash the sheets any day.

With a sigh, he retreated back to his room, tray in hand. Given the unknowable duration of their stay, he'd doubtless have another chance. But he refused to grow accustomed to having someone wait on him. He'd fetch and carry his own things, thank you very much, and if any of the servants wanted to do him a favor, they could break bread with him, not for him.

Chapter 46: Horn Caps

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Keshet bit back a curse as he twisted free the cap adorning the point of his horn, careful of the ragged edge where the arrow had sheered through the metal. He almost wished it had hit him in the face instead; it was a pain in the ass to get the damned things on and off, and an even bigger pain trying to fix it this far from home. He certainly couldn't replace it without putting in a custom order, but the marks from his last shoddy solder job were still visible along the underside, and he really didn't want to ruin the finish any further than he already had...

"Wait, those come off?" G'raha's eyes were wide as they flicked from the twisted metal in Keshet's hand up to the naked point of his horn.

"Of course they come off. Did you think they were welded to my head or something?"

The guilty flick of his ears was answer enough. "Um, yes?" he offered tentatively, and Keshet swallowed down a snort as G'raha hurried to add, "They just seem so tight to your horns - they never slip off, even in the deadliest of combats, and I've never seen your remove them before either. So I just thought, maybe, you couldn't?" His face was flushed as red as his hair by the time he finished, his tail sweeping sheepishly behind him.

"It takes a bit of force, but I can get them off if I want," Keshet admitted. He tugged at the other, undamaged cap until it too pulled free in demonstration. "I don't, very often. Only to clean or fix them, when necessary. I've worn them since I was just a boy; they're practically part of my being now. Literally and figuratively," he added with a grimace, rubbing at the scarring on his horn where the edge of the cap usually sat.

"Is there some sort of significance to them?" G'raha asked.

Keshet shrugged. "Not any more than there is to your necklace or Urianger's rings. They carry sentimental meaning, that's for sure, but they aren't like markers that I'm of age or anything like that. They're just adornment. Not everyone wears them, but I like it. Besides, it's not like we can wear earrings, like the other races are so fond of."

G'raha let out a startled laugh, grinning at him. "I suppose that's true." He peered closer at the caps, co*cking his head. "What's that engraved on them? I can't make it out."

"Oh." Keshet flushed, closing his hand around them to hide them from view. "I, uh. Really liked karakul when I was younger."

G'raha eyes brightened, something caught between mirth and excitement shining in their crimson surface. "You wear engravings of karakul on your horns?! That's so sweet!"

"They're just little designs in among the cross. Look, please don't tell anyone about it," he begged, and G'raha stifled his giggle behind his hand.

"Your secret is safe with me."

Chapter 47: Greetings

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Confusion tightened the Twin Adder sergeant’s eyes as Keshet saluted him, and Keshet bit back a curse. Son of a whor*, he must have mixed up the greetings again. A suspicion that was confirmed a moment later as the solider folded his arms and nodded his head - a salute entirely unlike the fist over his heart bow he had offered in exchange.

There were too damned many forms of greeting in Eorzea. Why did every Grand Company need their own salute? Alright, sure, once they were all independent and it probably came from that, but now that they were united under the common banner of Eorzea, couldn't they just pick one and simplify the matter?

As if the three of them hadn't been bad enough, he'd had to learn the Garlean salute too. Thank Nhaama he hadn't messed that one up when it had really counted. Imagine if something had happened to his captured friends for such a stupid reason as that he'd given the wrong salute? Dusk help him. At least he could understand the Garleans having their own greeting - they were a whole separate country an entire ocean away. Though why they seemed to think that a salute and half a uniform was enough to confirm your identity was beyond him. Why hadn't anyone just walked up to them, masquerading as a Garlean soldier, and dismantled the whole organization from the inside out? Well, Thancred had probably done something similar at some point. But still. The city-states ought to just start teaching that damned salute to their people, to use if they get caught by enemy soldiers out in the field. It just might be enough to confuse them.

And then there was bloody Ishgard. Bad enough to learn the Temple Knight salute - although Keshet could grant that he didn't have as much cause to use that one, since he rarely dealt with the lower ranking soldiers in their organization. Any relief that might have brought was utterly obliterated by the insistence on formal bowing at every turn within the Holy See. So he learned to bow like a Westerner, his hand over his heart and his tail arched just so.

Which was not to say that the Eastern bow was any more familiar to him. He'd been at least passingly familiar with the gesture before leaving his home, but the Au Ra of the Steppe had little use for such formalities. Why bother having a dozen different ways to greet someone when a hearty wave would do perfectly fine? Less excited to see someone? Less hearty wave. It was an easy system, truly, and Keshet wished with all his heart the rest of the bloody world would adopt it. Until then, he was stuck giving the Garlean salute to Adder soldiers, apparently. Maybe he'd just start waving at everyone anyway. Surely no one would fault the Warrior of Light for a little breech of etiquette, right?

Chapter 48: Nocturnal

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Given the way the sun liked to shine right on his eyes like some sort of laser beam dead set on blinding him entirely, it should come as no surprise that Keshet preferred to adventure at night. It was, by his reckoning, the ideal time for such things, and not just because he could actually see. Few enemies expected to be assailed in the night, particularly by a foe who could see better in the dark than they could. Only the Miqo'te could rival the luminescent vision of the Au Ra, and Keshet was more than willing to take the chance that he'd find himself up against one of their number in his midnight skirmishes - after all, he had plenty of experience fighting others who could see just as well at night as he. In fact, fighting in the day was far more of a hindrance, his vision limited by the violent stabbing of Azim's rays lancing through his skull. (Well, alright, it wasn't quite that bad, but it did suck.)

The problem, of course, lay in that none of the rest of Eorzea was particularly given to nocturnal operations. Back on the Steppe, where pretty well everyone dealt with the same light sensitivity he did, it was fairly common for inter-tribal trade to take place after dusk. After all, Nhaama's blessing was strongest beneath the light of the moon, and the only ones who would think to spurn such a thing were the sniveling Oronir. The Dotharl often worked under the cover of darkness for the rest of their dealings as well. From launching assaults on other tribes to their daily comings and goings, everything was done beneath the gentle glow of Nhaama's grace and with the stars twinkling far overhead.

Here, though... Shops closed before dusk even fell, mealtimes were all scheduled during the day, and even his fellow adventurers all seemed determined to drag him out under the blazing light of high noon.

Keshet grimaced as he shielded his eyes against the light, the bright sun shining off the golden sands of the desert expressly to stab him in the eyes. It was worse than just getting bloody sand in his eyes. This was a time meant for lounging in the sun and sleeping, not wandering aimlessly around the desert hunting down zombies. Nhaama preserve him from determined Miqo'te. Shouldn't he be able to set his own schedule, if he was the so-called Warrior of Light? You'd think those who'd given him the title would be more willing to accommodate his whims and his needs.

"I don't see anything," the dark-haired girl said. (He wasn't sure if she'd so much as introduced herself before roping him into this quest, but if she had he'd already forgotten her name.)

"I can't see anything past the sunbeams in my damned eyes," he grumbled, but he was pretty sure she didn't hear him. Just as well, really. He missed Thancred. Thancred was always willing to work with him under the cover of darkness. Maybe from here on out he'd just insist the Scions operate at night. Surely his comrades would be more accommodating than the average Ul'dahn investigator.

"Oh! Over there! I see one!" she exclaimed merrily.

Keshet squinted, but he couldn't see anything past the glare of the light. Maybe a big hat would help. Or some tinted glasses. Surely Urianger would know where he could get some that would fit around his horns. "I believe you," he said with a shrug. "Let's go kick some zombie butt, shall we?" And hope that they really were as slow moving as the stories said, because adding flames to the piercing blaze of sunlight was really not the best way to improve his vision.

Chapter 49: Aging

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Keshet peered at his reflection in the mirror, tilting his chin just so until he could see the scales that crawled up his neck and over his jaw. Swaths of skin peeked between the black, brown eddies and swirls of vulnerability tucked between the encroaching plates. Were the patches between his scales smaller than they were before?

Maybe. He couldn't really tell. The spikes on his chin and the jut of his horns made it difficult to see his own neck, let alone try to examine it in detail. He dragged a finger along the narrow patch of exposed skin on the side of his throat, trying to judge if the rough edge of scales rubbed further in along the pad of his finger than it used to.

"Cut yourself while shaving?" a wry voice asked, and if Keshet really had been holding a razor, he would have slit his damned throat with how hard he jumped. He twisted to find Thancred standing in the doorway, hip co*cked and arms crossed over his chest as he leaned in the frame. Laughter twinkled in his eyes as he watched Keshet's reaction, but he was polite enough not to comment.

Keshet grimaced at him. "Of course not. Do you think these scales are denser than they used to be?"

Thancred squinted at his neck, tilting his head and chewing on his lip for a long moment before offering an easy shrug. "I don't know. I'm not in the habit of staring at your neck."

"What about my horns? Do you think they're longer?"

"Uh, no? What's gotten into you? Did you find a grey hair or something?"

Thancred was not actually expecting the muttered, "Something like that," he received in response.

"Wait, really? How would you ever know, in all that hair?"

"Au Ra don't go grey," Keshet explained absentmindedly, poking at the caps on his horns. Was it just his imagination or were they more snug than they used to be? "Well, we do, but not as early as you do. But our scales and our horns never stop growing, so you can judge our age based on how much skin we still have exposed or by the length of our horns. Old Au Ra end up practically covered in scales, and their horns can get so long it causes health problems. Never been much of an issue among my people, since we don't usually make it to old age, but I've seen some of the elders of the other tribes, so I know what to look for."

"Uh...huh. And you're worried you're getting old all of a sudden?"

Keshet looked up from his own reflection long enough to frown at Thancred. "Not worried. Just... noticing. It's been no small number of years now since I came to Eorzea, but I'm only just now realizing how much that time has changed me. Inside and out."

Thancred's expression softened. "Ah. Well, if it makes you feel any better, you'll always be a young whippersnapper by my standards. Hell, I'm another 5 years older than you now than I was when we met! And unless you go spending all your free time on other shards without us, I don't think you're likely to catch up any time soon." Keshet chuckled, a paltry, half-hearted sound, but he didn't look quite as concerned as he had a moment ago, so Thancred counted it as a win. "But... if you ever want to talk, I'm here," he added gently.

"Thanks," Keshet said, offering him a half-smile. After a beat, the other corner of his mouth quirked up as well, and he grinned. "Besides, next to a bunch of white- and grey-haired cronies like you all, I'm bound to look like the youngest forever."

Chapter 50: Funerary Rites

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Death in Eorzea confused Keshet. Not because it was particularly different than death on the Steppe - he was already familiar with the fact that others outside the Dotharl did not return when they died, even if he wasn't used to losing friends to that fact. Hyur and Miqo'te and the rest died just as readily as Au Ra - more so, perhaps, given their lack of protective scales, but the same methods still applied. No, it wasn't the death itself that perplexed him. It was the rituals that came afterwards.

The sun shone brightly overhead, it's cheerful gleam in stark contrast to the tear tracks that glistened on Alphinaud's cheeks and the silent sorrow that permeated the air. The stiff black fabric itched at Keshet's skin and tugged at his chest, the borrowed suit as uncomfortable as the Au Ra who sported it. He shifted from foot to foot as subtly as he could, trying not to draw attention to himself as he tugged at the tie pulled snug around his neck. He didn't really understand why he had had to trade his usual attire for Ishgardian formal wear, but Alphinaud had insisted that it was a matter of respect. Keshet suspected it had something to do with making you as uncomfortable on the outside as you were on the inside.

All around him, others wore the same sombre garb, lace veils hiding tear-streaked faces and embroidered handkerchiefs blotting runny noses. Keshet stared up at Artoirel at the front of the crowd, the great spires of the Vault looming over him, and felt even more out of place than usual. No tears choked the back of his throat, and if his eyes watered, it was only because the cold bit at his face. It was not the response that was expected of him, that much he knew. Everyone seemed to expect him to break down and sob, or to erupt in some sort of sorrowful display, but he mostly just felt lost beneath those stolen glances and murmured consolations. It was like they were waiting for something, but he didn't know what. He felt like he was missing something, like there was some universal truth he'd overlooked that everyone else seemed to understand implicitly and that no one seemed inclined to share. But... Haurchefant was dead. It was tragic, yes, but Keshet didn't see the point to all this ceremony. Haurchefant didn't care if they got all dressed up to cry over him; he was past caring about anything. Why couldn't they just mourn on their own and each remember him in their own way? Keshet could understand drawing support from your community, of course, but it seemed like half of Ishgard had turned out for this funeral, and he knew for a fact that a not insignificant number of them wouldn't have so much as given Haurchefant the time of day a week ago. The ritual was meant to "honor his memory," Alphinaud had said, but Keshet failed to see how any of this honored Haurchefant. If they wanted to honor him, they should avenge his murder - or at the very least carry on his legacy through action rather than this uncomfortable gathering that was more about politics than the man it claimed to honor.

And don't even get Keshet started about the box with the corpse in it. That was... He had no doubt his Eorzean comrades would consider his people barbaric for their treatment of their dead, but to him the concept of entombing the body in stone to preserve it and burying it far beneath the ground was abhorrent. Far better to allow the dead to return to nature in peace than to try to stave off the inevitable decay. When a Dotharl died, their body fed the animals of the desert - the same animals that the surviving tribe members would then hunt down and eat themselves. The dead aided their living comrades even beyond the bounds of their mortality. To have your corpse paraded around for others to look upon and wet with their tears... It was macabre.

But Keshet stood there like he was supposed to, staring at Artoirel and Emmanellain and Edmont and just anything he could other than the stone box that held the lifeless cadaver of his dead friend. The endless speeches turned into a wordless drone as strangers who'd once whispered cruelties behind Haurchefant's back spoke of how wonderful he had been and all the good he had done for them. Inside, Keshet’s stomach churned, but he held himself still and respectful against the freezing chill beneath the heartless sun.

Artoirel's voice cut through his silent discomfort. "Would you like to say a few words, Keshet?"

Keshet froze, panic singing through his veins. Say a few words? Words about what? About Haurchefant? What was he supposed to say? 'I'm sorry I got your brother killed'? Somehow he suspected that was not the sort of sentiment they were looking for. But everyone was watching him, and they assumed he knew the steps to this dance even if he was pretty sure he was about to stick his big old foot in his mouth. He glanced anxiously at Alphinaud, but the boy had the same expectant look on his face as everyone around them, waiting for him to say something profound or at least situationally appropriate. Right.

"Uh. Haurchefant died a noble death, and if he were one of my people, there's no doubt in my mind that the next child born would bear his soul. But, uh. He's not, so. The best I can do is avenge his death. And um. Remember him?"

The low muttering that rose in the wake of his words was not particularly reassuring, but Artoirel clapped him on the arm and Edmont offered him a watery smile and a respectful nod before continuing on with his own remembrances. And so Keshet returned to awkwardly shifting from foot to foot and trying not to stare at the corpse of his friend, longing fiercely for the easy death rituals of his own people.

At least if he didn't want to attend any more Eorzean funerals, the solution was easy enough: he just had to make sure no more of his friends died.

Chapter 51: Family Ties

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The Dotharl don't have parents, as such. Of course Keshet technically had a mother who'd birthed him, and he supposed that one of the older men was technically his father, but it was unlikely even the woman who'd given birth to him knew who it was. "Family" in their tribe just didn't work that way.

Keshet had once overheard someone in Limsa say that "it takes a village to raise a child", but he suspected they didn't mean it quite as literally as his people did. Dotharli children were raised communally, with no stronger ties to their birth parents than to anyone else in the tribe. Keshet didn't even know who his "mother" was, and he didn't particularly care. When you were reborn amongst the same people over and over, tracking those sorts of ties was tedious at best and uncomfortable at worst. When you gave birth to the spirit of your own mother or your mate, you didn't necessarily want any sort of parental tie to be at the forefront of everyone's minds for this incarnation. Family ties within the Dotharl, if you were to try to chart them the way Eorzeans did, were messy and complicated, and the tribe was perfectly content to ignore them altogether. So everyone had a hand in raising any children born to their tribe, and it was the soul deep bonds that took precedence over the flesh-driven ones.

Though certainly the Dotharl's rebirth made them unique, they were hardly the only ones to raise their children in such a fashion. Every tribe on the Steppe had their own values and traditions when it came to family. Plenty of them did follow the same customs as Eorzea, where parental lineage dictated how and by whom a child was raised. But more still had their own definitions of family, utterly different from one to the next, as was so common on the Steppe. The Borlaaq raised only their female children, and left the males behind after they were a year old - a heartless practice, even by Keshet's rather callous standards - and their devotion to matrilineal ties was absolute. The Iriq took in any discarded male children, and raised them as a group not entirely unlike the Dotharl, if somewhat less complicated for the lack of an intricate webbing of bonds. Ties of blood mattered little and less to them, and near as Keshet could tell they all treated each other as one large, rowdy group of siblings.

Which was not to say that all of Eorzea was so beholden to the idea of mother and father and child making a family. Just most of it. (Certainly there was more nuance to it than that, since even the very family-focused nobility of Ishgard had slightly broader definitions of family than that, what with their branches and offshoots and bastard children -- and wasn't that a concept that boggled Keshet's mind.) He could certainly see hints of his own upbringing in Eorzea's Miqo'te tribes, though the entire concept of a Nuhn puzzled him. Why should mating rights belong to a sole person? Keshet supposed that, rather unlike the Dotharl solution of simply not knowing who your parents were, it ensured that everyone was very well aware of their relation to one another. It certainly did seem that everywhere he looked outside the Steppe, people valued parental ties far more than he ever could. The communal family of the Dotharl suited him just fine.

So no, Keshet really didn't understand the intense bond that seemed to link parent and child. But he could certainly see the hurt in Alphinaud and Alisaie's eyes as their father turned from them, not a hint of a quaver in his voice as he announced, "Alphinaud, Alisaie. As of this moment, you shall no longer bear the name of Leveilleur. How you choose to live your lives is no longer my concern. If you wish to walk the path of ruin, I will not stand in your way."

Keshet could feel the jolt that went through the twins like levin shot through his own heart, his nails biting into his palm with how hard his fist clenched. The only thing that held him in place was the grief pooling in Alisaie's eyes and the faint tremble to Alphinaud's shoulders.

Perhaps he did not understand the bond between father and child, but he certainly knew what it meant to be family, and this wasn't it. But fine. If Fourchenault wanted to abandon his children, Keshet would be there for them instead. His "family" always had room for two more members, and to hell with the ties of blood. In truth, Alphinaud and Alisaie had been siblings of his long since they'd been stripped of their own family name. And if Fourchenault didn't like that, he could suck eggs.

Chapter 52: Callousness

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For those we have lost. For those we can yet save. If the Scions had an unofficial creed, that was it. Murmured like a prayer before every battle and whispered over silent stones marking those they had failed. A pledge - to do better; to save everyone; to let no soul, no matter how troubled, slip through their grasp.

An empty vow devoid of meaning, Keshet thought. They couldn't save everyone, and he didn't particularly care to try. He didn’t fight to save cities and nations, he fought to kill whatever threat laid itself in his path. That they were generally villainous and their deaths saved countless other lives was, in truth, a happy coincidence. One he was perfectly content with, but helping people wasn't really his goal. He never set out to be anyone's savior.

When the public looked upon Keshet, they saw the face of a hero. A kind man who sacrificed himself time and time again to protect the vulnerable from harm, and who would do everything in his power to ensure their safety. They did not see the man behind the title. They didn't see the bloodthirsty warrior who threw himself into fight after fight just to prove his strength. They didn't see the feral gleam in his eye when an even greater foe rose to challenge him. And they certainly didn't see his willingness to let others die if he deemed situation called for it. Acceptable losses.

That was the way of the Dotharl. They weren't kind, and they weren't anyone's heroes. They killed others indiscriminately, for no reason other than to sate the bloodlust that surged through their veins. Keshet was pretty sure no one he'd met since leaving the Steppe understood that. Not the enemies he fought, not the people he inadvertently saved, and certainly not his fellow Scions.

He knew enough by now to know that his companions would recoil if they learned just how callous he truly was. He'd seen the despair on their faces as helpless strangers fell beneath their enemies’ blades - people they had no connection to, no reason to protect besides the unadulterated goodness that swelled in their souls. A quality that burned bright in each and every one of them - a quality that Keshet seemed to lack entirely.

But when it came down to it, Keshet couldn't help but see his callousness as something of a blessing, both for himself and for the Scions. It meant that when the tides turned against them, Keshet was not afraid to make the call to sacrifice the few to save the many. He could do what needed to be done, and the others could let him bear the burden of guilt. It didn't weigh so heavily on his shoulders anyway. Sometimes death was a mercy, and sometimes it was just bad luck, but it was always, always inevitable - especially when he was at its helm.

It also meant he was not afraid in the slightest to sacrifice every person on this star if it meant saving the people he cared about. Though maybe that wasn't the best quality in a hero. If only the people who looked up to him knew the truth behind their Warrior of Light, they'd know that in truth, he could be the biggest villain they'd ever face.

Chapter 53: Tail Thickness

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"Dude, you're staring."

He was. And well longer than was polite, even by auri standards. But how could he not, with that monstrously thick thing draped over the bench next to him. It was bigger around than his bicep - almost as big as his thigh. Pale and gleaming in the afternoon sun... He couldn't tear his eyes away.

Thancred watched with amusem*nt as Keshet's eyes tracked the idle flick of the other Au Ra's tail, the look on his face caught somewhere between envy and chagrin. His own tail twitched in time with their anonymous travel companion's, though Thancred doubted Keshet was even aware of it - he was focused on that tail with a fervor Thancred had only seen in drunkards presented with top shelf whisky or merchants faced with an overflowing coin purse.

"So are you going to explain the tail thing or am I just supposed to pretend you didn't just spend the last hour gawking at that guy's hindquarters?" Thancred asked later, when they'd disembarked the carriage and parted ways with the Raen in question. If the man had noticed Keshet's staring, he'd been polite enough not to mention it, though Thancred would have sworn he’d seen that tail swish a little more pointedly once or twice after their eyes had met. Had he just witnessed some sort of auri courtship ritual? Had they been flirting?

"I was not gawking," Keshet protested, heat rising to his face. Dusk Mother bless him that it didn't show on his dark complexion. Thancred did not need any more fuel for his assumptions, judging by that sly grin that spread over his face.

"You know what they say: the bigger the tail, the bigger the-"

"No! That's not- I mean, well, it is, but- Where did you even hear that?"

Thancred's smirk was downright devilish, his elbow jabbing into Keshet's side as he laughed. "I didn't. But it doesn't take a scholar to make that leap."

Keshet grimaced, shoving back at Thancred's shoulder. "That's a myth anyway. But a thick tail is something of a status symbol among Au Ra. Like, I don't know, the length of an Elezen's ears. It's said that the thicker your tail is, the stronger you are." Keshet's own slender tail swished behind him indignantly. "As I said, a myth."

But that didn't mean he didn't catch himself admiring - okay, gawking - at particularly thick tails when he happened upon them. Campfire stories or not, he couldn't deny the allure of a tail thicker than his neck. Even if his very existence proved that the thickness of your tail was not a marker of your power - or anything else that Thancred's tall tales might claim it to mean.

Chapter 54: Taciturn

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Somehow, Keshet had gotten a reputation for being the silent and contemplative type, and he wasn't really sure how that happened.

Okay, that was a lie. He knew exactly how he'd earned himself that reputation, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the brooding hero image others liked to project onto him. Really, he rather liked to talk. Okay, so maybe he would rather let his blade speak for him when it came to dealing with his enemies, and he was definitely a "strike first, ask questions later" kind of Au Ra, and admittedly he would rather pull his own scales off than sit through one more diplomatic meeting...

Well alright, maybe it was a reputation well deserved. But when he was in good company - good, casual company - he certainly didn't limit himself to a few grunts and nods like others seemed to think he would. He just happened to know that he didn't have much a knack for diplomacy. To each their own skills, right? And if Alphinaud and Thancred were far more skilled than he in the art of speaking, well, Keshet was more than willing to cede that burden to them.

But in truth, he was fairly certain that he could blame his taciturn reputation on his first year in Eorzea. It wasn't his fault, really. He hadn't intended to give off that sort of image at all. It was just... He hadn't really understood what anyone was saying to him.

Okay, that was an exaggeration. It wasn't that he hadn't understood a word of Eorzean Common when he landed in Limsa Lominsa for the first time. But they didn't really have schools for that sort of thing on the Steppe (they didn't have schools at all), so it was really more of a "learn on the field" sort of an education. Which suited Keshet perfectly well - but it did mean that he only understood every other word spoken to him.

As it turns out, it is remarkably hard to formulate any sort of response to someone's question when you've missed half of what they've said. To say nothing of the fact that he then had to figure out how to phrase his response in Eorzean as well. No easy task for an overwhelmed lizard. If he understood only half of the language, he could reproduce even less, and he ended up spending most of his first year in the West smiling and nodding at what he hoped was the right times.

But now, with several more years of experience under his belt (and more than a few language lessons with a certain erudite Elezen), Keshet was more than willing to take part in the conversation - he just couldn't seem to shake the reputation as "the silent hero" no matter how much he tried.

Oh well. At least it meant no one asked him to mediate between heads of state in his down time. …Much.

Chapter 55: Dislike of Cities

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Buildings loomed on either side of Keshet, impossibly tall and uncomfortably close. He grimaced, his hand tightening on his staff as he hurried through to a lower section of the city, where at least he could see the sky above him. His attempts to convince himself they were just painted cliffs and mountains did not particularly help; no mountain was so disconcertingly straight, and the cliffs of the Steppe did not cling so closely to one another, as if they might collapse in on some unwary traveller below.

It wasn't as bad as it had been when he'd first left the Steppe. That much he could acknowledge at least. He still didn't like dwelling in cities any longer than he particularly had to, and Nhaama save you if you tried to convince him to sleep indoors, but Keshet could stand to travel through the imposing streets of Ul'dah without feeling his breath quicken and his heart race these days.

Really though, why would anyone want to live in a place where walls blocked out the moon? Keshet supposed he could understand the merits of sleeping indoors - the Uyagir had long dwelled in the caves at the northern edge of the desert, and there was certainly something to be said for not having to worry about the elements gusting through your tent when you were trying to rest. But how anyone could stand to spend their whole lives here, within the confines of the city walls, was beyond him.

"Claustrophobia." That's what Alphinaud had called it the first time he'd seen Keshet balk at entering a building. It was not a phobia, Keshet had protested, once Alphinaud had explained what the word meant. He didn't fear tight spaces. He just didn't much like them. And really, who could blame him? He'd spent his whole life on the endless plains of the Steppe, and most of it in the desert besides, where you could see as far as the edge of the star without much more than jagged rock formations and old statues to break the view. His tent suited him perfectly well, thank you very much. Being indoors just made him... twitchy.

Ishgard, though... He thought at first he would like Ishgard. Large parts of the city were open to the air, and even though the buildings loomed large overhead the omnipresent threat of the Sea of Clouds made the whole thing feel breathable. The Pillars were probably the nicest city district he'd ever walked through, and not because of the fanciful architecture and haughty nobles. Yes, staying here might not be so bad, he'd thought. Until...

"What do you mean we have to go down there?" The stairs glared back at Keshet as he peered down their dusky descent - and not the comforting dusk that heralded Nhaama's domain, but the cramped, artificial dusk of "too many people and not enough space."

"Many of the people most affected by the attack live in the lower levels of Ishgard," Aymeric explained patiently, like he was trying to calm a balking chocobo. Keshet chose to believe he was imagining the comparison. He probably wasn't.

Lower levels? There were lower levels to this city? As in, people lived down there, carved into the sides of the mountain and hidden beneath the oppressive weight of Ishgard’s shining spires? Nhaama preserve them. Nhaama preserve him for having to go down there.

Come on, don't be stupid, he counselled himself. His foot shuffled forward, hesitated. He balked at the edge of the steps, bitter copper on his tongue as he stumbled backwards. Nope, nope. I can't. I don't want-

The cool slide of a hand against his distracted him from the pounding of his own pulse in his ears, fingers twining with his to give his hand a gentle squeeze. "Don't worry, I've got you. We'll be right at your side the whole time."

Keshet squeezed back on Haurchefant's hand, and if he clutched at it a little harder than was polite, at least Haurchefant had the good graces not to comment on it. But with his companions at his sides, it was a little easier to breathe as they descended into the depths of Ishgard's lower levels.

(Though you can be damned sure Keshet hauled tail out of there as soon as their quest was complete.)

Chapter 56: Magitek

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"You want me to- to ride the big, hulking steel monster."

"To pilot it," Wedge corrected cheerfully, either willfully ignorant or blissfully misinterpreting the look of horror on Keshet's face.

"I don't-" want to, he was going to say, but he couldn't quite bring himself to shatter the eager optimism on the little lalafell's face. "-know the first thing about magitek," he finished instead.

"Don’t worry about that, we’ll train you how to use it before we send you into combat! We’d never just send you off on your own like that. You’ll be a magitek wizard in no time! The Ironworks crew all came together to discuss while we were fixing her up, and there’s no one more deserving of the honor of being the G-Warrior’s first pilot than you!”

"Don't you have someone a little more... suited to this sort of thing?"

"Oh come now, don't sell yourself short! You did an admirable job piloting Maggie when we sieged Castrum Meridianum!"

That was decidedly not how Keshet remembered that going. He remembered staring at the controls in a blind panic and forgetting everything the engineering troop had tried to cram into his head about how to use it.

Of all the things he had discovered for the first time upon landing in Eorzea, magitek remained the most troublesome. There were no such machines on the Steppe, and certainly no plucky engineers trying to teach him how to use one. Killing them, he could manage. Or destroying them, or disassembling them, or whatever the right word was for something that had never exactly been alive to begin with. But riding them? Why in Nhaama's name would be want to do that? He'd fought the Ruby Weapon on foot, surely he could do it again.

There was something horribly perverse to sitting in a smoking hunk of metal and firing bullets and bombs from its false maw. Well, he supposed it probably wasn't supposed to be smoking if he was the one riding- piloting it, but that was how he usually saw them when he was through with them, and the image stuck. His tribe had already proven when they freed Ala Mhigo from Garlean rule that yols were more than capable of standing against their flying machines. So why oh why did he have to get in one himself?

Before he could form the words to protest further, strong hands landed on his shoulders, pushing him into the saddle (arm chair? command seat?) and belting him firmly in place. It seemed no amount of pleading and protesting in the world was going to change Cid's mind once it was made up. Blessed Nhaama, Dusk Mother, ô fair Matron of Dark, please please please let the other magitek arms blow up and not the one I'm sitting in. If you grant me this wish I promise I'll never ride another one of these cursed things again. Cid's ironclad will be damned.

If the Dusk Mother heard his prayers, she did not answer. It was just as well, really. He'd end up breaking that promise anyway.

Chapter 57: Alcohol

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The whiskey burned all the way down Keshet's throat, a familiar sort of tingle that spread warmth through his chest and made his head feel airy.

"Damn, you can handle your booze better than I expected, to keep up with me this long."

Keshet’s gaze slid over to Thancred, perched comfortably beside him. He gestured with his mug, just barely not splashing them both with its contents when he got a little bit overly animated. "What, do you think we don't have alcohol on the Steppe? And anyway, we invented buuz. And this? This is not buuz."

Thancred squinted at him as if there was some linguistic nuance he was missing, but Keshet decided that was thoroughly a Thancred Problem and contented himself with another swig from his mug. He remembered belatedly to twist his hand out of the way of his damned horn, gouging himself on the point of it and sloshing amber liquid onto the bar.

"Besides," he continued. He was feeling rather chatty, might as well indulge in conversation too. What better time to reveal all his secrets than over a mug of... whatever this was. "Besides. I'm much larger than you. It's only natural I can outdrink you. In fact, I'm impressed you can keep up with me, you little-" Thancred's brow furrowed at the indecipherable word that followed. Something in Old Auri, most likely, and he wasn't entirely sure that it had sounded complementary.

Okay, so maybe Keshet hadn't actually been that big a drinker back home. They had alcohol, that was for certain, but it wasn't really all that like the stuff he'd seen in Eorzea. Eorzean ale was little more than piss water, as far as he was concerned, and though people assured him there were hints of honey in mead, he couldn't taste it amidst the acrid taste of the drink. And it was too weak to be good for much of anything. Proper arkhi would put some shine in your scales; ale and mead were hardly worth subjecting himself to the taste.

But he had to admit that alcohol was simply less common on the Steppe than it was here. Well, he didn't have to admit that to Thancred, but he could admit it to himself. Alcohol was just everywhere in the West. You celebrated victories with it, you signed deals over it, you drank it casually over dinner. Really, maybe it was a good thing ale was so weak. Xaela were known to do some rather peculiar things when soused on arkhi or kumis. On the Steppe, their drink was strong, but you also weren't especially likely to down four glasses in a single sitting. Kumis wasn't exactly rare, but it was a pain to make, especially among the more nomadic tribes.

Of course, once Thancred had introduced Keshet to Eorzea's stronger spirits, all bets were off. Sure, whiskey still lacked the body of the fermented milk he was used to, but it packed a certain punch. Enough to be satisfying, at least. And maybe enough to make his head ache something fierce the next day.

Thancred arched a brow, swirling the amber liquid in his glass, and when he spoke Keshet had to struggle to remember what it was they'd been talking about before he got lost in thought. "Alright, big boy. Let's see if you can keep up with this, then. Barkeep! Bring us two glasses of Mun-Tuy brew!"

As it turned out, size was not everything when it came to holding your alcohol -- a lesson that was deeply engraved into Keshet's mind after he spent the next day fighting Garleans with Azim's foul light trying to crack open his skull. Never again.

Chapter 58: Mixed Race Housing

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Living in the Scion's dorms was... hard. Keshet had never felt his otherness quite as much as when he moved in with his comrades. They were all understanding, and they certainly did their best, but Keshet could never quite shake the knowledge that he was different. Both in terms of upbringing, and of anatomy.

Most people, when they bunked with roommates or in communal lodging, had to worry about things like their housemates snoring or eating their food. Keshet... well, the accommodations to his living space were a little bit more drastic than those of your average hyur.

The low ceilings he had learned to live with, for the most part. He still sometimes smacked his head when entering a doorway, but most buildings across Eorzea were not built for someone of his height, and he'd grown more or less accustomed to ducking. He shared plenty of long-suffering looks with the Boulder brothers, but ultimately, there was relatively little he could do to keep from whacking his head besides just remembering to stoop. Though the brain cells he lost every time he forgot made it harder and harder with each passing day, or so he liked to claim.

And he did like being able to help out the others. Sometimes, when Tataru was baking, he'd sit in the kitchen with her and fetch whatever she needed from the upper cupboards, because the only person who struggled more with the geography of the Rising Stones was her. She'd feed him all the best of her creations in exchange, and he always got first dibs at mealtime - though by then he was often so stuffed full of stolen mouthfuls that he could barely eat the meal he'd helped prepare.

The biggest issue, though, came when it was time to bed down. The snoring he could live with - he was used to sleeping in a camp full of people, with only thin fabric walls to divide them (if that). And he’d grown sufficiently used to sleeping indoors that the inability to see the sky didn't bother him as much as it used to, though he still preferred to sleep outside whenever he could get away with it. The problem was that he slept with a bunch of people from frigid Sharlayan, and that meant he froze his damned tail off every time he lay down to sleep.

Back on the Steppe, he was used to dozing in the blazing sun, sprawled out on a hot rock and basking in the heat, just like a real lizard. Trying to sleep here, with only the blankets of his self-made nest to warm him, was like trying to sleep half-submerged in a river: not bloody comfortable. But it was a shared space and he was keenly aware that he was the odd man out in that regard, so he kept his complaints to himself and tried to soak up as much sun as he could during the day.

He should have known his friends better than that.

"What's this?" The glowing red lamp towering beside his nest of blankets commanded Keshet's attention as soon as he stepped foot into the dorm, scattering all thoughts of the day's training exercises to the wind. Tataru beamed at him from across the room, hands on her hips and that cunning glint in her eyes that always made him just a little bit nervous. It seemed that this time, though, it had been turned in his favor.

Thancred bumped him jovially with his shoulder, urging him forwards. "You don't think we didn't notice how uncomfortable you are sleeping here, did you? Friends pay attention to that sort of thing."

The heat that radiated from the lamp became obvious as Keshet stepped towards it, nervousness turning to incredulity as he drew near. "Is this..."

"A heat lamp," Urianger supplied for him, scratching bashfully at his head. "We thought it might provide thee some comfort."

"He means that we asked around in the Firmament to find out what the dragons use to keep warm, and Marcelloix suggested this," Alisaie said. "A lizard's a lizard, no matter its scales, right?"

Keshet was too distracted by the warmth that radiated from the lamp to offer more than a half-hearted, "Right," in response. Nhaama, it was so warm. The heat soaked into his scales and eased the tension in his muscles. Gods, he just wanted to... well, that was the point, wasn't it?

He curled up in front of it, uncaring for the half-hidden smirks of his audience as he curled his tail over his thigh and turned his face towards the glow. Less than a minute later, the quiet sound of snoring drifted from the contented Au Ra. Tataru grinned, waving the others away. "Looks like it was worth the effort."

(By the time she returned to head to bed herself, she found G'raha and Y'shtola curled up in front of the heater as well, the three of them cuddled into a comfortable pile before it. Maybe they'd have to get a few more heaters to go around.)

Chapter 59: Sharlayan and Non-Intervention

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Keshet did not have a head for politics. He knew that, and for the most part, he stayed out of it. Everyone liked to have him around for the grand diplomatic talks; it was something of a statement, to have the fabled Champion of Eorzea at the table. Almost an auspicious little superstition, at this point, like everything would go well so long as he sat there and nodded like he was listening - and of course, if worse came to worst and tensions rose beyond the limit of diplomacy, having the hero of the realm there ensured no one got hurt. Well, no one on their side, at least.

But that didn't mean Keshet didn't have opinions, he just knew better than to voice them. Usually. Sometimes that was harder than others. Like when he was staring down a member of the Sharlayan forum - a very important, personally relevant member of the Sharlayan forum - who insisted that his country refused to "get involved" in the end of the bloody world. As if they could close their eyes and plug their ears and the Final Days would just poof and vanish and not swallow the whole damned star and all their precious non-intervening asses with it. This wasn't like the war with the Garleans, where as long as they ignored the problem and refused to fight they might find themselves spared from the wrath of their enemies, at least for a while. These were the Final Days. The end of the end, poof, boom, various explosion noises, you're dead. To think you could sit them out was beyond naive and into straight up malicious - and that was coming from a Dotharl, the clan of "we like maiming and killing things so much we'll do it for literally no reason."

Which was, of course, precisely what Fourchenault was accusing him of. Damn the bastard for being right, even if his logic was faulty. Not that Keshet felt any shame for the way he and his people lived - even setting aside the fact that his warmongering ways had, you know, saved the world a time or three, he was perfectly content to throw himself at any fight in his path with sad*stic glee. But it did harm his argument now more than a little.

Not that Keshet was particularly bothered by Fourchenault's opinion of him. Even setting aside the whole "terrible father who disowns his children" thing (and Keshet most certainly would not be setting that aside any time soon), he simply didn't have any respect for a country with such limp-wristed and weak policies. It was always better to take action than to sit around waiting for someone to save you. For all its vaunted knowledge and impressive citizenry, it seemed the country itself wasn't worth his time. They should thank their lucky stars that so many of his friends were Sharlayan and gave him a vested interest in saving the damned city.

Still. Keshet couldn't help but wish (silently, to himself) that Sharlayan could get a little taste of the Dotharl treatment - because there was no choice to abstain from conflict when conflict came knocking at your door.

Chapter 60: Time

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Time was one of those things that just sort of didn't exist to Keshet. He was aware of the passage of time, of course - he counted the days like any other Xaela, if only to keep track of their more important rituals. But time on a smaller scale was utterly unimportant to him.

Clocks did not exist on the Steppe. If you wanted to arrange to meet with someone, you either did it at dawn or dusk, or you did it spontaneously and just hoped they were around. Maybe if you were lucky you could get away with using high noon as a reference point as well, but the Steppe was vast and the course of the sun varied from one moon to the next, which made it a rather inexact measurement. Unsurprisingly, this meant Keshet struggled with the stricter schedules Westerners were so fond of.

"The meeting with the Seedseers is to occur tomorrow at one. Keshet, are you listening?"

He was! "Yes, Mom," he complained, tail flicking indignantly.

Y'shtola raised a brow at him while Alisaie snickered behind her hand, but she refused to let him sidetrack her. "Your presence is required, and tardiness will not be appreciated. Do try to be on time, for once."

Naturally, he was not on time for the meeting. He was never on time for any meeting. He tried, really, but stopping what he was doing to stare at a clock simply never occurred to him. Either the sun was up or it was down and that was really all he needed to know.

His fellow Scions did not agree. Before long he found himself with an attaché any day he had a deadline, one of his comrades assigned to him to ensure he kept to the schedule. He would have liked to protest it was unnecessary, but sadly it really did help. And in truth, he didn't mind so much having one of his friends shadow him sometimes; usually, it just felt like they were spending some extra time together and less like he had a warden watching over him.

And thus time passed, with Keshet only moderately aware of it, and never in all the years he spent in the West did he ever get the hang of watching the clock.

Chapter 61: Healing Magic

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Pain bloomed along Keshet's side, his enemy's blade tearing between his ribs. He hissed, lips twisted in a snarl as he lurched away, drawing up his staff to block the next strike. Blood dripped in searing trails down his side, sliding over skin and scales in a wet mess. Flame gathered at his fingertips, and he hurled it at the Garlean, watching with bitter satisfaction as the solider went down in a charred heap.

"Keshet!" Alphinaud's worried voice cut through the air before the body even hit the ground, his footsteps hurried as he rushed over. The familiar gleam of healing magic already glittered in his hands, his aether at the ready.

"I'm fine," Keshet ground out as Alphinaud drew up beside him, reaching for his flank. Keshet twisted out of his way, brushing him off. "Go tend to the other wounded." In truth, the gash burned fiercely, deep and ragged along the edges. It had not been a clean cut, rending his flesh in ways that he had to admit would be hard to stitch. Another scar added to his collection.

"Don't be ridiculous. That looks serious." Alphinaud stepped in again, aiming for his wounded side, and Keshet side stepped once more. No mistaking it this time for anything other than a dodge, avoiding Alphinaud's hands and the healing glow that suffused them. Alphinaud frowned at him. "You are the Warrior of Light. We need you at full strength if you are to prevail."

"I'll be fine," Keshet insisted, casting a glare at the boy that usually sent others running. Sadly, Alphinaud had long since learned his tricks and didn't so much as flinch.

Alphinaud's expression hardened, the picture of a no-nonsense healer. "Must I call upon Y'shtola again, or will you allow me to tend to your wound without complaint?"

Keshet blanched, and he held still this time when Alphinaud moved closer, gritting his teeth as the healing spell washed over him. A thousand fire ants crawled through the wound, biting and gnashing and grinding sand into his nerves. He shuddered all the way down to the tip of his tail, fighting against his better instincts to hold still against the tide of magic. Beneath his eyes, the wound sealed itself, muscle and flesh knitting itself together until not even a shadow of a scar remained to mark the spot where his skin had torn. Only the tacky trail of blood seeping into his skirt indicated that it had ever been there at all.

That was the worst part of all, Keshet thought. Healing magic was truly a marvel, there was no doubt about that. But when every wound vanished as if it had never been, it was as though the memory of the fight was erased as well. What good was a fight if it left no lasting impact? His flesh was littered with the scars of a thousand thousand combats - and now, when they counted more than ever before, he was left bare, with nary a mark to mar his skin and his soul. It was unnatural. It went against the ways of the Dotharl.

Keshet much preferred to handle his injuries himself. When death did not frighten you, there was little reason not to simply stitch your still-beating heart back into your chest and carry on. It hurt, certainly, but Keshet had always found the rapid knit of his flesh to be more painful still - although he couldn't say for certain that others felt the same. Everyone around him seemed to accept healing magic as a given, a simple cure-all even to questions that did not need answers. Why suffer from a scratch or a bruise when you could just wish it away?

Call him a masoch*st, but back home, that was simply not how it was done. The Dotharl were not blessed with those proficient in the healing arts - the blood they bathed in was of their own making, and their talents with it extended only so far as rending flesh, not repairing it. Each and every one among them knew how to set bones and stitch wounds - they had to. That, that was how it was supposed to be done. When you fought someone, you should feel it. Or else what was the point.

Except that now, the point was to keep his allies alive. The point wasn't just to fight Garleans, but to save the innocent, and that meant he did not have time to let nature heal his wounds. Like it or not (and he most certainly did not) Alphinaud and his magic were the most sure-fire way of ensuring he could keep fighting, day in and day out. So, grit his teeth he might, but he had to bear it.

And besides, he really, really didn't want to come under Y'shtola's care again. Yeesh.

Chapter 62: Calamity

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"What were you doing during the Calamity" was a common enough topic of conversation in Eorzea, particularly in the months immediately after Keshet's arrival. It wasn't always phrased quite like that, but it was one of those sort of pivotal, society-defining moments that lingered in everyone's minds. It had clearly shaped the lives of everyone he met, and its influence could still be felt over the entire continent.

It was just... Keshet had no idea was the Calamity was.

And no one he spoke to seemed particularly inclined to explain it to him. Too often he was met by harsh laughter and disbelief - and if not that, then it was disapproval that bordered on outright anger that he faced.

"Whaddya mean, what's the Calamity. Yer just yankin' me, ain't ye?" from the red-clad pirate woman whose breath smelled so strongly of ale it nearly made him light headed. He wasn't strictly sure what "yanking her" meant, but given the hearty guffaw of laughter she let out without answering his question, he had to assume she thought he was kidding.

"Do ye think yer funny, lad? I've no patience fer yer jokes." Later, a roegadyn man with thinning hair waved him off, brow pinched with displeasure. "There ain't a soul on the star who didn't lose someone to the Garleans and their blasted Calamity. You'd do well to r'member that afore you go around askin' such foolish questions."

It was nearly two whole months before he finally had a clear picture of what the Calamity was, pieced together one scrap of information at a time from what he'd been able to pick up between derisive snorts and angry rants. The Garleans had plotted to call down the red moon Dalamud, and it's fall (and potentially the dragon who'd been locked inside it? He was a little unclear on how true those reports were) had sent a wave of destruction over Eorzea, reforging the land and its inhabitants and killing droves of people. A tragedy, to be sure.

But it was a tragedy that hadn't touched the Azim Steppe in the slightest. He hadn't so much as heard of a Garlean before he'd left his tribe, and he certainly hadn't noticed any destructive waves other than the metaphorical one that followed anywhere the Dotharl chose to tread. The prospect of a dragon rising from the broken shards of a fallen moon was positively ridiculous.

But the damage that had been left on the face Eorzea spoke for itself, to say nothing of the effect it had had on its people. It was, well, calamitous. Two months in the West was all it took to convince him of the catastrophe that had somehow, miraculously, passed over his people entirely.

Two more months would teach him it was far from the only one.

Chapter 63: Garlemald

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In theory, it seemed like Keshet ought to like Garlemald. They were a warmongering nation, after all, which ought to suit an equally warmongering lizard perfectly well. They valued strength in a way the nations of Eorzea simply didn't, and they'd been fighting constantly for 20 years. You'd think that Keshet would feel perfectly at home amongst them. After all, where would he be more likely to satisfy his bloodthirst than amidst their ranks?

Where else but fighting against them? In practice, Garleans made for great cannon fodder and little more than that, at least as far as Keshet was concerned. They couldn’t scratch that itch for ever more powerful foes to test himself against, but at least felling a legion of magitek soldiers sated his destructive instincts.

Besides, the similarities between Garlemald and the Dotharl ended just about as quickly as they began. The Dotharl might like to slaughter indiscriminately, but their assaults on other tribes were exactly that: indiscriminate. They had little interest in subjugating the other tribes of the Steppe - fervent desire to win the Nadaam aside, which was less about subjugation and more about proving they were the strongest. They certainly didn't force the survivors to join them and fight with them. To a Dotharl, that would have been unthinkable.

But that didn't mean others didn't note certain parallels between Keshet and the people he was supposed to be fighting.

The woman's eyes widened as Keshet stepped out from the smoke, picking his way over the smouldering carcass of some magitek monstrosity. "Please," she begged, terror thick in her voice. She scrambled backwards, dragging herself over the scarred ground of her former village. "I have a family."

Keshet blinked down at her, a glance all he was willing to spare her in his hunt for the remaining Garleans. She was injured, that much was obvious, but there wasn't much he could do about that. She wasn't wearing the telltale black and red of a soldier, and that was all he needed to know.

"Please," she babbled. "Don't hurt me."

Keshet glanced over his shoulder in search of the Garlean that had made her so afraid, but all he saw was smoke and rubble. He frowned, turning back around to face her. He opened his mouth to speak, and she flinched, recoiling - not from some unseen threat, but from him.

Ah. Well. It had been a while since people had flinched at the sight of him in battle. These days, people tended to see him as a savior - or they died by his hand before they had much a chance to see him as anything else. But covered in viscera and radiating bloodlust as he was, he couldn't fault her for her reaction. What did it matter what hand struck the killing blow to a civilian? They'd be just as dead, be it by his blade or a Garlean's.

And then Alphinaud darted through the cover of smoke, hand held to his mouth as he coughed soot from his lungs, and relief washed over the woman's face like a bucket of cold water. Alphinaud, she recognized. And if Keshet was with Alphinaud, he must be alright.

Keshet would have liked to say that woman's face lingered in his mind that night when he laid down to sleep, but it didn't. She was one body among many - one of the fortunate, who still drew breath, but still. He had saved her life, and he wouldn't even remember her come morning. Maybe that, more than anything, was proof that he would have fit in well with the Garleans after all.

Chapter 64: Swimming

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Alphinaud peered dubiously over the edge of the dock, staring into the deep blue water below before looking back to at Keshet. "This is a terrible plan. Do you even know how to swim?"

Keshet arched a brow at him. "Of course I do."

"Don't your people live in the desert?" Alphinaud asked. Desperation crept into his voice in place of his usual curiosity, and Keshet frowned at him, perplexed.

"Well, yeah, but it's not like we never leave it. There are rivers everywhere on the Southern half of the Steppe. Plus, our camp is built around an oasis. I mean, swimming in it is frowned upon, but... It happens, you know."

Alphinaud's lips stretched in what could only be called a grimace. Bordering on a scowl even. "Ah. I see."

"See, even the Warrior of Light knows how to swim, and he's a bloody desert-dwelling lizard!" Alisaie crowed, hands in her hips as she lorded over her brother like she were claiming some sort of victory. Keshet could put together the pieces well enough on his own, and decided swiftly that he did not particularly care to get caught up in another sibling argument. Two months on a boat with them had faced him with more than enough to last him a lifetime.

He turned his back on Alphinaud, who was defensively protesting something about swimming "hardly being a necessity", and silently stripped out of his top, stowing it carefully away. A stretch to the left, another to the right, flex the tail to make sure it's limber, aaaaand splash!

Oh that felt nice. Disgruntled cries rose up behind him, but he paid them no mind. Their voices were lost to him once his head dunked under the water anyway, and then it was just him and the waves. He cut through the sea, his tail swishing through the water as if to steer. It didn't help much, honestly, but the feeling of the water's drag along its scales was nice, and if he was being completely honest, it was just more fun that way.

He'd never really had a particularly strong love for the water. He was a middling swimmer at best, far from the prodigious talents of the Ejinn tribe, but he was alright. He was from the desert, after all, and he hadn't had quite as much chance as most others to put his skills to the test - not that he was going to admit that to Alphinaud. He didn't know much about Sharlayan, but it must be really arid if even Alphinaud, eminent scholar and always eager to suck down knowledge wherever he could, had never had the chance to learn.

After all, there was something freeing about the slip if water around him, supporting him entirely. Ejinn or not, he did rather enjoy the feeling. It made him feel like a kid again, pretending to be a snake or a crocodile as he shimmied up the river, horns carving the way through the water.

Before he knew it, he'd reached the far shore, hauling himself up on the sands to wait for the others to join him. He'd found a nice rock to sun himself on by the time Alphinaud finally climbed out from the sea, looking rather like a drowned rat. He hunched over his knees, panting for breath, before leveling a plaintive look at Keshet. "Why did you have to know how to swim?"

Chapter 65: "Lizard"

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Keshet was proud to be a lizard. He loved his heritage and his culture, and all the quirks and oddities that came with it. He loved his scales and his horns and his tail and how they set him apart from the crowd. He even liked how he stood out, unique and foreign amidst the hyur and elezen dominated nations of the East.

He didn't actually realize, at first, that when other people called him a lizard, that's not what they meant.

People jostled around him in the busy streets of Limsa, a constant stream of bodies bumping into him and catching on his tail. The crushing pressure of the roof over his head already made him antsy - why did they have to put a roof over a market anyway? It should be open to the sun and the stars, not closed away within a cavernous tube of rock. It was like a building outside a building, walls on two sides and just enough air passing through to make it seem like he was outside while still being cramped and tight and uncomfortable.

So maybe he hadn't been paying full attention to his surroundings. He could admit that. It was maybe even his fault when he smacked face first into the hulking form of a Roegadyn. And face-first meant horns-first, so he could even understand the man's displeasure at being run into. Even though it was so busy in here that running into someone was, really, inevitable.

The man turned to see who had crashed into him, frown already curving his lips. They twisted further as his eyes landed in Keshet, a deep scowl furrowing his face. "Watch where yer goin'! f*ckin' lizard."

The derision in his tone drew Keshet up short, as if somehow the fact that he had scales and horns was related to his lack of awareness. Still, he brushed it off with a quick apology and a silent prayer that no one saw the red scratch mark his horn had left on the back of the guy’s head.

It wasn't two days later that he encountered another. Counting coins out onto the table in a tavern, struggling to remember what 57 + 39 + 14 came to while a frustrated waitress stood over him, empty tray tapping an irritated tattoo against her hip. She did not, Keshet noted, offer to help.

"Always heard your kind wasn't very smart. Guess it's true," she grumbled when he finally had the coins counted. "Lizards." The same distaste dripped from her tone as he'd heard from the Roegadyn. She said it like a curse. Like it was something shameful. He frowned at her, not quite sure how to respond. She turned on her heel before he had to figure it out, all too eager to part ways with him. Keshet stared in her wake, the tip of his tail twitching uncomfortably.

Such events, it turned out, were common enough outside the Steppe, at least for his first few months. Eventually, when people started to recognize him, there were fewer incidental comments - but more pointed ones in exchange. More hateful comments from those whose sisters and fathers and children he had not been able to save. More derisive sneers from the enemies he'd made (and there was never a shortage of those).

It didn't bother- it shouldn't bother him. But it did. To hear a term he so proudly used for himself taken and bastardized, dripping with malice from the tongue of someone who'd just as well see him shear off his horns and his tail... Well. It was just a word. What did he care what others thought of him anyway?

"You rotten lizard, get your scaly butt back here! I thought you were busy sunning yourself on that rock, not stealing my snacks!" Laughter rumbled through Keshet's chest as he fled Alisaie's wrath, dodging her grasping hand and shoving the last of her crackers into his mouth. "How dare you!" she trilled indignantly, giving up her pursuit to snatch up the nearby ball and throw it at him instead.

He dodged that too, laughing merrily. "Never trust a sleeping lizard," he advised, licking imaginary crumbs from his fingers.

"Uh-huh," Alisaie said with a snort, rolling her eyes at him despite the grin that curled her lips. "You owe me for that, lizard brains."

"You got it, Red Alphinaud."

Right. It wasn't the word that mattered. It was the intent. And Keshet was a lizard, and proud of it. And when the term fell from his friends' lips, it wasn't hatred in their tone, but love. That made all the difference in the world. He didn't particularly want to hear strangers call him "lizard", but when it came to his friends, that was a different story. They knew what it meant to him. And Keshet was, after all, a proud, self-described lizard.

Chapter 66: Dancing

Chapter Text

The unfamiliar melody slinked through Keshet's ears. Dozens of bodies spun on the open floor before him, skirts twirling and jewels flashing as the nobility of Ishgard showed off their finest dancing skills in one of their ever ubiquitous and eternally frustrating balls.

Frustrating because someone always wanted to dance with Keshet. Usually several someones these days, now that he'd been here a little while and people had started to take notice of him. He was an oddity if nothing else, and his placement in the Fortemps household attracted attention even if he wasn't universally beloved as the Warrior of Light here. So he spent most of his time fending off invitation after invitation to dance, hanging as close as he possibly could to the glass-lined walls and ensuring he had a drink or some little duck-liver-adorned cracker in his hand at all times so he had an excuse to wave them off.

It wasn't that he couldn't dance. He wasn't the best at it, but neither was he known to make a fool of himself when the occasion called for it. It was just that this, this slow twirling and sweeping gestures and impossibly coordinated exchanges... This wasn't dancing. This was... Well, he wasn't sure what it was, exactly. War, insofar as he could tell, based on the terse smiles and thinly veiled barbs he'd seen tossed around the ballroom tonight.

He supposed there was some grace to the flowing motions that seemed fairly commonplace on the dance floor. It was elegant, in the way that Ishgardians liked to pretend to be. Some of the couples had even genuinely impressed him. Aymeric seemed to float across the ground when he danced, large, sweeping steps carrying him through the twisting bodies around him without ever breaking his posture. Even Keshet would be hard-pressed to match those strides, and he had another half fulm of leg on the man.

But for the most part, it was insufferably boring. The black suited servants drifting around with trays of tiny food were by far the highlight of these evenings, even if their snacks were scarcely more than half a mouthful. And there was alcohol, which made the evening both more bearable and less, because it had the unfortunate tendency to leave his head split open and throbbing come morning.

And yet somehow he kept finding himself at these things, visible reluctance or no. Alphinaud was supposed to be chaperoning him, but the boy had twice as many invitations to dance as Keshet did, and he didn't seem to be able to turn them down. Keshet hadn't seen him since some shorter-eared woman had invited him onto the dance floor some two bells prior.

"Come now, my friend! Don't look so put out!" Keshet managed to wipe the grimace off his face before he looked up to meet Haurchefant's gaze. The implacable Elezen was alone, and nary a drink in his hand. That boded ill. "What say you to a dance? I know 'tis not your favorite pastime, but if you spend all your time making friends with the walls, then people are going to start thinking you antisocial."

Honestly Keshet didn't see what the problem was with being seen as antisocial, but experience told him he wasn't likely to get away from Haurchefant's prodding until he gave in. Better get it over with sooner rather than later. "One dance," he declared sternly.

Haurchefant wasn't fazed. "I wouldn't dream of imposing on you further."

They both knew that was a lie, but Keshet took his hand anyway and let him lead him out onto the dance floor. Excitable whispers followed them, and Keshet did his best to tune them out. Better he just focus on the placement of his feet anyway.

The music started, and their dance started with it. It was a livelier piece, thank Nhaama — even if that meant Haurchefant's steps moved quicker than Keshet could comfortably keep up with. But for the first time all night, he could feel the pulse of the music beating through his chest, and his body itched to move with it. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend he was alone on the Steppe, just him and the music under Nhaama's brilliant moon.

When he was asked about it later (and he would be asked about it later, frequently and at length) Keshet could only say that his body moved on its own. It wasn't his decision to stray from the elegant home that Haurchefant had on him. It certainly wasn't his decision to shift from the sweeping steps of a fumbling Ishgardian waltz into the curt motions of a traditional Steppe lunar dance. And it most absolutely was not his intention to crash into the couple dancing three yalms back from them, knocking the woman to the floor and spilling champagne all over her dress.

But on the plus side, no one asked him to attend any balls after that.