Title: Obscurior
Rating: SFW (oblique mist sex)
Wordcount: 1727
Summary: The mist is the village is the dragon is the god is the girl.
Note: Written for jack_of_none for the August 2013 round of FFEX's Chocobo Down, for the prompt "Summoners aren't typically linked to their eidolons so strongly. Except if they fall in love."
You will always remember the first time you watched white fog spill out of the emptiness where the air used to be. Like a waterfall, you thought at first, but slow and silent and gentle; where water broke, the mist flowed, thick and curling, smelling of rain. It danced around you, first so thinly that you felt as if your world had been wrapped in gossamer, then denser and denser until you glimpsed horns, claws, the sinews of a serpentine curve. It cooled and thickened your breaths. When you finally found your voice, it dissipated.
It was the first time you'd summoned anyone. For days you could think of nothing but the scent and the silence, and the way the light scattered through it.
You're told that a whytkin usually answers a novice's call. You're told not to let it go to your head.
(Every breath passed through your head; you couldn't help it.)
Everything is a struggle. Struggle is the summoner's way. You fight because you will die if you do not, because the Eidolons know it would be no mercy to spare you. Those who are not chosen by the Eidolons think it fearful, but you cannot imagine what it is to trust someone you have not fought to the brink of death. What good is any bond without blood?
The mist is different, though less so than you first think. You have never torn each other apart, and still it comes to you; you have never bested it, and still you call. There has been no violence between you, yet you feel the pull of it in your blood, and its chill seeps into your scars. When you ask your elders, you're told that Eidolons sometimes test their summoners in other ways. You remember your joy; you remember that you were unafraid.
(Your blood has mingled without ever leaving your veins.)
Struggle is the summoner's way, but not every struggle is blood and fire, and not every love must be dug out of ashes. You let a boy wear you down with words.
You think of it when you see your breath in the coolness of the morning. At any moment you could whisper its name and hollow out a place for it in the air, and you would not be alone. There are holes inside you, thin as threads.
(Sometimes he pulls away, as if he loves you better with distance.)
It fills you with each breath and lingers after you exhale; your lungs are chilled and your throat is thick. You condense it to droplets upon your skin and send it gliding down the curves of your flesh, mingling with your sweat. You cannot afterward say, This is only mine or This is only yours. In the fog all edges are soft and lost.
Long after you release it, you remain slick with it. Somewhere below, your scent permeates it.
(He cannot touch you so deeply. He can so easily wash you away.)
You never thought to ask yourself what you were expecting. You never thought anyone else expected any different.
You remember the morality tales of your childhood, especially the illustration of a woman frozen to death, face locked in a rictus of ecstasy. Draw too close to Ifrit and burn to ash; linger too long among the sylphs and wither to a husk. It is not love, you are told, no more than it is love that whispers "jump" at the edge of a cliff. It is not love that draws the moth to the flame.
But you know that any true summoner is more flame than moth. The summoner's way is fire that blackens the bone and claws that pierce the heart. The summoner's way is inside out and torn apart, and how could you ever be satisfied with less?
The mist is gentle and cool, and always on the verge of drowning you.
(I can't do this anymore, he says. You have expected this, as surely as the waning of the moon. Without hesitation you reply, Then don't.)
The fog wreathes your swollen belly. Anyone who saw you in this moment would not know that you carry another life inside you, as quick and vibrant as the mist that twines your every breath. The air grows thicker, heavier, almost solid, cupping the weight of your womb. Your body thrums with overlapping heartbeats.
(The child is his, but when you are deep in the fog, you can feign uncertainty.)
Blood of your blood and flesh of your flesh. You wonder if it is true that you will ache with worry when she grows restless in her skin and issues her first challenge. You wonder how the mist will come to her when she first calls its name.
Moisture trickles in cold rivulets down your back, and you ask yourself what you expect.
You read again the cautionary tales of your childhood, pore over engravings of summoners who valued a lifetime less than a moment's absolute communion. You are struck by how a different angle changes a familiar pattern.
The village is named for the dragon, or the dragon is named for the village. The details are shrouded, but the truth is simple and timeless and so vast that you cannot see it all at once.
The truth is that your daughter comes tearing out of you, blood of your blood, born to struggle, and you love her. She has left her mark on you inside and out; you will never be as you were before her, and she would not be at all without you. The truth is that she will someday be all that is left of you in this world, and you will echo, ever more faintly, through her progeny. The truth is that she grows so quickly, and the seasons rush past you.
The truth is that you are small and overwhelmed. When a stream flows into the sea, it is not the sea that is swallowed up.
The truth is that you have heard stories about villages sacrificing girls to gods, but never the other way around.
Summoning has never been about the meeting of equals. Any true summoner is indeed more flame than moth: bright, hot, brief. She shapes the shadows as she burns, but in the end the darkness is eternal, and she is only a breath away from smoke.
What drowns you cannot be drowned by you. Your devotion is a leaf already blushing into autumn. Your forever is the blink of an ageless eye.
What you mistook for warnings about an untimely death were just as much about a timely one.
Deep in the mist, you have never needed words. You have always communed below language, raw hearts open to each other. But today you shape your muddle of feelings into sounds and send them marching out your mouth: How many before me? How many after?
You regret them once they hang in the air, because they don't make sense outside and in between.
(When your daughter's first calling draws a whytkin through the veil, you tremble with relief.)
What you have will never be equal. The mist will never dim and fade; you will never take yourself apart and put yourself back together at its beck. For now, however briefly, it is the moth that orbits you, frantic for your light. Someday you will be a pattern of soot on its wings.
Today you still burn for it. You breathe and hold it in the furnace inside you, then let it tickle, warmed and changed, through your nostrils. You breathe and breathe, and the resentment softens out of you.
(Someday you will tell your daughter about the voice that whispers at the edge of the cliff. It is not love, you will tell her, because the truth is that love pales before it.)
Deep in the fog, all edges are lost. How could you ever be satisfied with less?
The mist is the village is the dragon is the god is the girl. Everywhere the mist is now thick and alive, but only through you does it breathe. You are wreathed in it always, and it in you. Within it you go beyond your skin, from the cave to the mountains to the desert's edge. You're not told much of anything anymore.
You love like a fire; everything that would not be caught up inside you must keep a safe distance. You are loved and feared and needed, all at once. This is your village, your dragon, your tangled heart. This is the mist's home; you can no longer imagine it slipping out of you to return to the world below. You wonder if Eidolons tell their own cautionary tales.
(You wonder if your daughter will ever wish her call had gone unanswered.)
Deep as you are in the valley, you curl in deeper still. You are light between mirrors, layering clouds, a cry in a cavern. This village is your home; you are the mist that cools her skin, the fire that warms her bones. When you face inward, you are soft and soothing; when you face outward, you are solid and sharp.
Your daughter fears nothing and can't see the future past the end of her nose. You don't know what to expect for her.
Miles apart, you are still woven together. The sun on the grass is torchlight on stone, scattered into iridescence; your daughter's fist in your skirt is your opponent's spear in your solidness. You could not disentangle yourself even if you wanted to, and you do not want to. Only your mist and your flesh stand between your home and those who would bring her harm. You love like a fire, relentlessly.
Your daughter clings and shakes. You should tell her so many things, but you have never been good with words, and your throat is either insubstantial or clogged with growls. The summoner's language is struggle. You curl your fingers in her hair, rake your claws through a man's armor.
Miles apart, you come undone. The mist untwines from you in sharp snaps; you are riddled with intricate voids; you gutter and flicker. The wind blows the candle out but only blows the moth away.
(You are smoke and ash and patterns of soot, a scar across the valley. You expected no less.)