FFXI belongs to Square-Enix. My characters there belong to me.
Daggers
She flipped her dagger into the air and caught it from behind, blade pointed back at her, hilt still angled skyward; the way she'd been told (time and time again) not to catch it.
It was sharp and, as daggers went, fairly long, and if she brought her elbow out and the blade in, she could easily impale herself with it. She'd bought it in Jeuno before heading to the Elshimo jungles and Kazham - home, she'd thought as she stepped off the airship, though she'd never been there before.
"You will," they all warned her more than once, "at the very least cut yourself one day, you know." A new friend, and fellow adventurer, had said it, too, once when they were sitting outside her Mog House, wasting time, talking, mending armor. She'd only smiled and shaken her head and cut off the extra thread from the far-from-perfect stitching. Better than when they'd started, though.
She brought her arm down and twisted her wrist and watched the light - natural, of course, though the window needed washing - gleam across the just-cleaned blade. Blood, pain, fear, happy memories, too, built over by new adventures, but some of the deeper ones were still there. She rubbed at the mark with her thumb, more a habit than anything.
A passing shadow stopped and hovered, and she glanced from the weapon - ears up, ready for anything because letting one's guard down was a death sentence - to meet her moogle's curious face. "Master?"
"I was told once that I'd neverrr be an Adventurrrer. Too weak to make the frrront lines, not enough focus forrr a mage." Her moogle flapped around in a circle and she caught the sunlight on the blade again and grinned, laughed, but not bitter.
She flipped her dagger into the air and caught it from behind, blade pointed back at her, hilt still angled skyward; the way she'd been told (time and time again) not to catch it.
Because she knew she could.
end
Thanks for reading!
A little on the premise: I role play my characters, and one of the things my main does sometimes is toss her dagger in the air and catch it. I was wondering the other day why, exactly, I chose thief for her. It's fairly weak, it can't do much except stab things from behind, no magic spells. Most skills learned are defensive... This is where it led.