embellish
#wordoftheday #prompt #drabble #ffxiv #postmsq #felstel #wolship #rosie #fluff
“Then what happened?” Rosemary watches her da’s face in a state of rapt focus only attainable by the tiniest children.
“Well then ya’ ma said,” Felcy’ra’s voice rises into a breathy falsetto, a terrible imitation of his wife, “’Oh won’t some han’som hero save me from this terrible, disgusting chigoe?’ An’ then she gave a great swoon—”
“She what?!” Her ebony ears fly back in surprise, disbelieving eyes sliding across to Stelmaria, who works quite determinedly at her embroidery—head down and lips thin.
Rosie can’t imagine ma ever swooning.
Fel grins in unrepentant glee. “—Ya’ ma went swoonin’. Pay attention sweetroll, this is gettin’ to tha good bit.”
The small kit stifles giggles with her dove gray hands, amethyst eyes shining, “Aye, da.”
“So I come leapin’ into the clearin’, strong lance arm ready to bring down this foul beast—”
“What did it look like, da? The chigoe?”
Chigoe sometimes lived in the tree outside her bedroom window. Rosie could hear their gentle chittering on quiet nights before she drifted off to sleep, but she’d never seen one.
“Huge. Three or four yalms tall at least, giant slaverin’ mandibles click-clackin’ away thinkin’ of its’ next meal. To this day I’m deadly sure it meant to devour ya’ ma whole righ’ then an’ there—jus’ snatch her up all in one big gulp.”
Rosie, ever the appreciative audience, gasps. Good thing indeed that the ones in her tree couldn’t possibly be that big, or she might worry they planned to eat her too.
“So I come leapin’ over the hedge, then manage to jump up on one log, then over to another—up an’ up an’ up until—”
“Until?”
“I snap on my lucky goggles,” he demonstrates, ”an’ I come down off the bough like the wrath o’ the Twelve. Jumpin’ wi’ all my might—an’ ya know ya’ da, wee Rosie, I got a lot o’ might. The wind was whistlin’ in my ears an’ sending my hair all flyin’ any which way. I tell ya I was very glad I had my goggles for protection.”
Rosie’s da only takes his blue-lensed goggles off to sleep and take baths. She’s allowed to wear them herself for a single bell on her nameday, to make the next twelve moons happy ones.
They are that lucky.
“Anyway, the point o’ my lance pierces right through the monster’s crispy shell an’ brain an’ deep into tha dirt. All twenty of it’s long, spindly legs go twitchin’ an’ flailin’ as it dies, an’ so I twisted my lance jus’ ta be sure it was dead.”
“Was it dead?”
“Aye. An’ I was so lightnin’ fast I managed to kill it stone dead an’ catch ya’ ma ‘afore she hit the ground.”
“Ma fell!?” The little girl’s mouth hangs open, eyebrows almost hidden under her sweep of jet black hair.
“She caught a swoon, Rosie, remember?”
Rosie may be just six summers old but she’s learning that her da sometimes fibs in his stories. She loves them though, and loves her da and ma, so she lets da think that she believes him, even when she doesn’t.
Besides, if he goes too far ma will stop him, like always.
“An’ there I was: covered in sticky, green gore, hair a right mess, my lance stuck in a dead chigoe, and with the most beautiful miqo I’d ever laid eyes on laying helpless in my arms. All well an’ good—‘cept she was out cold.”
“No!”
Ma knocked out? He is definitely telling tales.
“Aye. So I kissed her to wake her up.”
“Like in the stories?”
Da puts his broad hand over his heart and assumes an earnest expression. Pity it’s completely ruined by the quirk at the corner of his mouth.
A rustle of skirts before ma’s clipped tones ring out, “—That’s enough nonsense for tonight, I think. Time for kits to trot away to bed.”
She rises from her rocking chair and tidies away her things, making ready to take Rosie to her room for bedtime.
“But ma—,” whines Rosie.
“But Stel—,” whines da.
“No buts. Bed.”
With a petulant grunt, Rosie pads down the hall ahead of her ma, tail hung low.
Da clears his incomprehensible metal thingamajigs into a basket he keeps by his chair. All traces of his former protest have vanished, replaced with his usual fanged smirk.
“I don’t swoon. I’ve never swooned,” quips Stel, without heat.
“I beg ta differ. I could make ya swoon right now if I wanted,” murmurs Fel, wrapping his wife in his arms and chuffing warmly into her ear. He traces the shape of her jaw with one scarred thumb, calluses rasping on her smooth skin, before pressing his lips softly against her carmine mouth.
She smiles against his kiss. “Hush.”