A Quiet Mind
FF12: Fran considers rage and the Viera. Spoilers up to the end of the Golmore Jungle.
Rage is not Viera.
Violence is not Viera.
There is no need to protect oneself, in the embrace of the Wood; not only is She mother, sister, friend and mentor, She is also guardian, protector, all the violence and power the Viera do not need to express. When the very roots that hold the world together rise up to your defense, you do not need to learn much in the way of protecting yourself, of deflecting blows, of the hundred tiny lessons that every other thing that lives and dies already understands from the first struggle to draw breath: how to survive.
The Viera do not even understand the pain of birth, the most visceral aspect of living-- the Wood bears them, and the Wood raises them, and they forever remain elegant and beautiful and fey. Death is nothing but a return to whence they came, to be one with the Green Word and the Wood, and have their voices forever twined with Hers.
And there is no fear in that.
Rage is for those not of the Wood, for those who live their lives with their back turned on Her arms and Her love. Rage begins with the first scream a child makes, its fury at being pulled from a world of warm, wet safety into the noise and bustle of one that could care about it less. Rage continues as the child grows older, learns more about the savagery of those around it, the lengths the greedy will go to to obtain what they desire.
For those who have not lived in the Wood, such a life is ordinary. For a Viera fresh from Her safe embrace, it is as if she is a newborn herself, and must learn to be full-grown in less than a quarter of the time most Humes ever have. It is overwhelming-- but it is either learn, or perish, and Fran has left behind too much to fail.
And so she has learnt rage: learnt to swallow bitterness down and take (like the Humes) what strength she can from it.
Rage, Fran thinks, is why she (like the Humes) can no longer hear the Green Word.
Gunfire has dulled her ears, as has hearing her share of insults and filthy curses (and she thinks wryly that if she ever spoke a few of those, perhaps the Wood would cease to hear her too). Her hands no longer move in the slow, peaceable sway of her peoples' chants; now, when she casts spells, it is hard and rapid, not particularly elegant to look at but enough to get the job done. Her movements resonate with a tension she does not always feel, but has borrowed from others until it dictates the twitches of her muscles--that is the benefit she reaps in return. The ability to turn at a cue and summon all her anger into a blow that could mean everything between victory and defeat.
She thinks she might understand why those not of the Wood form friendships. It is the closest thing they have to connection, and it in some ways it is better, how trust must be earnt instead of taken for granted.
Fran can lend her strength to those she counts as allies, and in that knowledge, she is satisfied-- but aware, all the same, that she is still incredibly alone.
And that, in the end, is why she tells her sister to turn back.