Chapter Text
A lopsided, jagged cross glints in the firelight, raised and red and roughly carved into her breast. Thyme murmurs “How did you get this one?”, letting her lips graze against the sensitive skin— X marks the spot, sealed with a kiss— Roe huffs out a laugh with her head tipped back toward the sky, her fingers idly laced in the hair at the nape of Thyme’s neck. They are tangled together in a bedroll made for one, next to a low-burning fire. Overhead the sky is clear and smeared with stars. This part of the woods is safe, and they are alone.
“Was a stupid mistake,” she starts. Her voice is a low, drowsy rumble, befitting the late hour. “Back when I was new to Eorzea. Me and a couple other treasure hunters I met through the Guild thought it’d be a good idea to check out this old ruin in La Noscea, out by Bronze Lake.”
She pauses, thinking. Her golden eyes catch the firelight. “Do you know what tonberries are?”
Thyme shakes her head, and then rests her cheek against Roe’s shoulder. Her warmth is soothing in the crisp nighttime air. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“I didn’t think you had anything like them in Norvrandt,” Roe says, “not that I saw. They’re these little green guys in cloaks, ‘bout three fulms tall, that live in the Wanderer’s Palace— story goes they used to be citizens of Nym back during the Fifth Astral Era, before some disease mutated ‘em all and drove ‘em crazy. And they stayed quarantined in the Palace for centuries after. Kinda creepy looking, but they’re friendly. These days.” She pauses. “Back then, they weren’t.”
She begins to recount the tale, and Thyme listens; intrigue and drama and horror, the promise of gold. Cobblestones slippery with mold. The echoing laughter of brave, glory-hungry fools where they ought not to tread. Always stick together, be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, you can’t get rich if you’re dead. She’s learned her lessons since.
Plodding, heavy footsteps always just behind, their owner cloaked in shadow. Screams, howls of pain, losing her fellows in the dark. Her voice is steady—the story doesn’t frighten her now, though it used to.
Her fellows all dead or vanished, their bodies pitched into the pools, dead men floating. A chase, blind with terror, hurtling around dark corners. The bite of a rusted knife. A narrow, lonely, terrifying escape, dragging her body across stones slippery with blood, far too much of it. The birds that screamed overhead as she stared up into the flat blue of the sky, out, but dying, and alone, until someone happened by who whisked her away to safety.
Silence descends. Thyme watches her face. Solemn, thinking of the friends she lost.
“Was lucky it missed my heart,” Roe murmurs. “If it’d gotten the left side instead…”
Thyme gently traces the scar with a fingertip as she kisses her.