Work Text:
Sedah sits in her room at the Pendants, on the edge of her bed, going through her most important morning routine. She’s dressed only in her underwear, the better to expose her skin to aethereal flow. Slowly, carefully, she runs a hand down the full length of her arm. The telltale shimmer of active magic hangs in the air around her as she gently adjusts her body’s energies.
Aetheric realignment is a complex and difficult technique, and one only practised by a few specialists. A skilled practitioner can very gently tilt the balance of aether within their own body, or that of a willing third party, allowing it to resettle in a way that feels more comfortable. Over time, this can produce subtle but significant shifts in the shape of one’s face and body, regulate one’s mood, and do more besides. It’s a very helpful technique for someone like Sedah, who was not especially thrilled with the body she was given at birth, nor the social expectations that came with it.
That’s why she learned to do it in the first place, and why these days she’s something of an expert. Lately, though, it’s been getting harder for her to sense the subtleties, to feel the flow of the aether the way she needs to. It’s as if all the Light in her body is blinding her, obscuring everything she needs to see. It’s a little troubling.
“What a pitifully primitive technique,” says a voice from near the window.
Sedah looks up. It is, of course, Emet-Selch.
“Didn’t feel like knocking?” she asks.
“I thought I’d offer you some company,” he says.
She looks away again, eyes on her work. “So you sneak into my room while I’m undressed, and then you insult me. Good work. Top social skills. Take me, Emet-Selch, I am yours to ravish.”
Emet-Selch rolls his eyes. “Please. You’re not capable of consenting to anything I could do to you.”
“Big talk.”
“I mean it. The whole concept is distasteful. You’re like a child compared to me. Or an animal.”
“See,” Sedah says, “this is what I don’t get about you. You act like you want to be allies, friends even, and then you throw out judgements like that.”
Emet-Selch crosses the room towards the dining table, hunched over as always, the weight of millennia on his shoulders. He turns a dining chair around and sits facing Sedah, hands clasped together.
“I want to believe you can be more,” he says. “Truly, I do. I just haven’t seen the evidence – yet – that you are so capable.”
“And what exactly would that evidence look like?”
He stares silently for a moment – not at her, but through her, lost in thought. Finally, he nods, as if he’s come to a conclusion in his mind.
“Take for example this realignment you’re attempting.” He spreads his hands wide. “What I was trying to say before is that you’re working with terribly limited tools. Not just practically, but conceptually.”
Still maintaining the aetheric force, Sedah raises an eyebrow.
“In my age,” Emet-Selch continues, “we had no need of such crude mechanisms. We could reshape our bodies at will: fully realise our ideal selves with little more than a thought. Without restriction, without…” He gestures vaguely at the shimmer of aether around her. “Without interference.”
“That must have been very convenient for you,” Sedah says.
Emet-Selch runs a hand through his hair. “For some of us more than others, of course. I was always quite satisfied with my own appearance.”
“I’m sure you were,” Sedah says. “I happen to like mine, too.”
It’s true: she does like the way she looks these days. It feels right. It makes her happy on a profound and fundamental level to understand who she is, to express it to others and to see them recognise it back. It’s an eternal work in progress, and it took a great deal of trouble to get even this far, but that’s a fundamental part of who she is. If she hadn’t had to make that effort, she wouldn’t be her. She’d be someone else entirely.
“But you strive towards an ideal you will never reach!” says Emet-Selch, the pitch of his voice rising in frustration. “This ridiculous incremental technique will never give you the whole of the form you want. And you waste precious years working towards the few changes it will grant you, when you have so little time in your fleeting so-called life to start with. How can you, of all people, be satisfied with that?”
He’s starting to get on Sedah’s nerves, now; she can feel her concentration slipping. She stops channelling for the moment and gives Emet-Selch her full, undivided attention. Her eyes narrow, and her ears flatten themselves against her skull.
In a flat and final tone, she tells him: “I like my body. I like it because I made it myself. With effort. And, sure, I reserve the right to make whatever further changes I choose. But I will not be told that I am somehow lesser, just my shape doesn’t match what other people expect.”
He scoffs. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew how much easier, how much freer, it could be.”
“Maybe not. Maybe if change was easy, I wouldn’t appreciate it as much. Maybe that gives me a perspective you don’t have.”
“Rationalisations and denial.” He shakes his head. “You’re as stubborn as you ever were.”
Before Sedah can interrogate exactly what that means, the door to the room bangs open and Sedah’s girlfriend Wiltgeim strides in, carrying a paper bag in one hand and a jug of coffee in the other.
“I’m back!” she declares loudly and self-evidently, her accent as broadly Limsan as ever despite a full year living in the Crystarium. “Saw this place what does something called coffee biscuits, they looked good so I got four. Morning, Emet-Selch. You do not get a coffee biscuit and you’d better have me girlfriend’s permission to perv on her like this.”
Emet-Selch stands unhurriedly. “I’ll leave you to your breakfast. Think about what I said. You are capable of so much more.”
And with a dismissive wave, he’s gone. Wiltgeim puts her foraged goods on the table, grabs a coffee biscuit and eats half of it in one bite. Through a mouthful of crumbs, she asks, “What was that about?”
Sedah shrugs. “Ascian stuff. I don’t know.”