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“The stranger seems quite taken with her, doesn't he?”
Koana’s tone was low and studied, arms crossed across his chest as he watched the impromptu celebrations on the beach below. He and his unmatchable sister had been crowned as Heads of Reason and Resolve a full day prior, and the celebrations weren’t showing any signs of flagging. The streets were full of dancing and music, faces lit up with laughter in a way that warmed the private, secret recesses of his academic heart.
These were the people that Lamaty’i had been speaking so warmly of all along. These were the ones that she had been willing to grow for, to fight for and to love, unconditionally.
He was immeasurably grateful that he hadn’t taken too long to see what she had. That his own stoically intelligent and research-driven path had been set astray by his intrepid sister and her enormous, beautiful heart.
He wasn't sure where he would have been standing on this day had things gone differently.
(The echo of a brother lost had yet to lessen its sting.)
This particular gathering had ebbed and flowed with the tide that it bordered. In the city's languid summer mornings, the party would fall nearly dormant. Most people had stumbled home before dawn, and the few remaining sleepy-eyed dancers would be yawning over their delicate cups of extraordinarily strong coffee, and newly formed couples stayed drowsing beneath the shade of brightly coloured, billowing canvas above.
Things would stir around somewhere in the late afternoon, with food stalls set up anew with fresh supplies, and music starting to move from the slow picking and tuning of strings to a melody a little more intentional, a little more tempting. Eventually, the sun would begin to dip below the distant horizon, setting the rippling sea alight with golden fire before making way for the cooling balm of night. By then, guests had returned by the dozens, refreshed and rested and ready for another jubilant night of revelry.
Reasonable as he was meant to be, Koana couldn't quite find it in his heart to want to be the voice that called for caution, or for regrouping into the serious business of what ruling Tural would look like.
There was joy, here. And joy, he had learned, was in far shorter supply than he had at one point wanted to admit.
The people needed this, needed a joyful celebration to come together with, to unite them under their new Dawnservants, forging a camaraderie that would stretch into the days and weeks to come under their new rulers.
All of this, Koana knew.
But that wasn’t his focus tonight.
Tonight, under the pearly glow of that overly bright moon, Koana's attention had been snagged and held by one particular participant of the celebrations. By her, and by her…unexpected companion.
The champion that his sister had chosen to accompany her across the Salt was an infrequent visitor to these ongoing parties. Koana had spotted her now and again in the crowd, distinct simply by her manner of walking; crowds melted out of her way wherever she went, her every step assured and fearless. Far from being swarmed by those who recognized her as the Head of Resolve's Eorzean champion, she skirted the edges of the revelry instead, perfectly content to be slipping beneath the radar of the city's collective notice, when they were all so focused on their new Dawnservants.
He was realizing, watching her now, that she hadn't been alone in those moments, either, but Koana supposed he was permitted missing what was right in front of him, this time. After all, who was another stranger from across the Salt?
But that had been before that stranger had danced with her.
In the warm summer night air, with the light of dozens of coloured lanterns dancing bright across her skin, the Eorzean hero moved with a quietly assured lightness of foot that was without fanfare or calling attention to herself, a manner with which Koana had already begun to associate with her in battle. Her hair, previously twisted up off her shoulders in the scorching heat, had since begun to fall in distracting tendrils around her transluscent ears, her elegant bare neck. At this distance, he couldn't see her eyes, but he liked to think that they were bright, and sharp, like he thought he'd seen once before when their paths had finally crossed during the Rite.
He didn't know when he'd started searching for her in crowds like this, or noticing her eyes.
He didn't quite know how to stop.
Below, the drums and strings were heavier, thicker, with the disappearance of the sun. Bodies pressed closer together under protective darkness, and liquor flowed a little more freely from the open-air bar nearby. The tempo was slow and seductive, beckoning the sway of hips, the wandering of hands and linking of fingers, the lithe bends and dips of backs.
The warrior didn't dance in a way that could be categorized, but she was mesmerising nevertheless. She was lithe and refined, far less exuberant as the crowd around her, and Koana's gaze traced shyly along the form of her as she moved. He was distantly annoyed to find frustration welling up in his chest when his eyes followed the line of her arm to find her fingers entwined with those of her unknown partner. Koana tightened his shoulders, steeling himself against the sensation as he watched.
The stranger had arrived quietly a few mornings prior, without fanfare or formal announcement. Since he’d come from across the Salt, he’d apparently been taken in to speak directly with Gulool Ja Ja not long after his arrival. Their audience was private, and remained a question mark in everyone's mind, but the fact that the stranger had been summoned at all was buzzed about throughout the markets and residences. His name was on the tongues of many — and not in small part because of the newcomer's supposed good looks.
While Koana had been watching their champion, there were many eyes, unquestionably, on her tall, dark-haired dance partner.
Koana watched him with a critical eye, sharp on the two of them despite how they kept to the fringes of the crowd, private except for those who thought — discreetly, surely he was more discreet than some of those others — to watch.
He’s nothing out of the ordinary, Koana reassured himself, feeling foolish and extremely young even as the thought crossed his mind. He’s certainly far more…shoulders than the scholarly types in Sharlayan.
Scholarly types, he refused to admit to himself, that he hoped the champion would lean towards, rather than the sort of looks this salted stranger had. She had never struck him as the sort who sought out good looks over good humour, a sound mind, a sharp set of skills. This stranger, for all Koana knew, possessed none of these things, and it disappointed him, somewhat, that she of all people had tripped and fallen into the wiles of his kind. The kind that all the young girls of Tuliyollal seemed to already be fawning over, despite him, oddly, never looking twice at a single one of them.
From his perch above the beach, he watched the warrior move absently to the rhythm of the drums, her bare feet sinking into the cool, dark sand. There was something delicate and forbidden about her bare ankles, pale and lovely in the moonlight, that made him want to look away.
But her fingers were still laced with the stranger’s. While Koana watched, the man pulled her gently towards him by the pressure of those fingertips alone.
And she didn’t resist, even when they pressed palm to palm. She let him draw her near, ensconced in a world that contained only the two of them, with eyes only for each other. She turned his face upwards towards her partner, and the expression on her face caught thickly in Koana’s throat.
Gone was the cold, impassable stance that he had grown so used to on her; the one that he so enjoyed puzzling out. Gone was the guard in her eyes, the hardness to her lips. Koana couldn't pinpoint precisely when the transformation had happened, but now that it had, he realized that where she had been lovely and untouchable before…in that moment, looking up at her unknown partner, with the drums thrumming low around her, she was damn near ethereal.
If she hadn’t known this man before, she knew him now, and in his presence she softened like a flower, blooming into a sort of loveliness in the rising moonlight that the Head of Reason couldn’t tear his eyes away from.
Damn, damn, and double damn.
He couldn't have calculated for this kind of inconvenience.
Wasn't sure what to do with it, now that the problem had presented itself.
By then, he’d forgotten he’d spoken aloud, but his sister — bright and cheerful and polite in ways that came to her effortlessly and he had never been able to master — wasn’t one to let a conversation linger and rest in silence. At his side the entire time, her feet tapping endearingly off-beat to the music, she peered thoughtfully down at the pair. Her ears twitched in consideration as she examined the sight before her, her nails drumming rapidly on the railing before them. She had new rings, he noticed, clearly fashioned by children, and so charmingly Lamaty'i that he was nearly able to drop the rough, uncomfortable feeling that had started building his stomach as he'd watched the newly formed couple dancing below.
“I like him!” Lamaty'i declared brightly after a moment, arching back as though to stretch, her grin spreading wide. “He looks at her the right way , you know? Maybe she’s finally met someone.” His sister's smile was bright and cheerful, unburdened by the cloud that was rapidly forming in her brother's countenance. “It would be good for her to relax, I think.”
At her side, Koana made a quiet, noncommittal noise. His eyes never left the hero’s face, even as she let the stranger lean close to her cheek, blocking her from view as he whispered something close and intimate into her ear. Even as he watched the man's hand slide up and down her bare arm, bold and sultry in a way that demanded privacy, despite the fact that they were in public. Even as he could see, at this distance, the way her fingertips flexed where they rested on the man's shoulder, possessive.
Even as the sight of it all made Koana's stomach plummet, dizzying and upheaving, with a disappointment that he didn’t know how to name.