Chapter Text
He came to her in the spring.
When winter’s chill gave way to soft warmth and seaside breeze, the Haragin would steer their boats north, to shores too inhospitable in the coldest months. They fished as they travelled, guided by the stars. And when they had a surplus, they would take their seafood and other goods west, to Reunion, to trade with other tribes for supplies.
As daughter of the khatun and expected next udgan, Altani was often present on these trips, gazing up at the stars as their pack horses grazed under the night sky. One day, it would be her job to interpret Nhaama’s messages, the spirits of her ancestors that dotted the heavens, and so she took a fascination with the night sky, the constellations that had guided her people since time immemorial as they travelled Othard’s eastern coasts.
She first spotted him amongst the crowds of traders after her father had left her in charge of their stall, having gone to barter with other merchants. He was Raen, tall with blue hair and eyes, and dressed in loose robes and armour with a katana at his side. Young, like her, but with a demeanour that suggested he was well travelled. When he approached, the smell of fish in barrels didn’t deter him like it did some of the weak-stomached Hingan merchants. Instead, he asked if she had any weapons for sale.
“We are not a warring people,” she replied, “but we do have harpoons and spears for trade, if you wish.”
Altani soon learned his name was Kisame, and that he was a samurai of Hingashi, currently living in Doma. Much later, after he had travelled to the northeastern shores her tribe called home with her to barter further, she learned that he wished to free his adopted homeland from the yoke of the Garlean occupation they lived under, and that his aim was to arm the underground resistance that blossomed in Yanxia. And when she left with him, young, and naive, and idealistic, she understood it as Nhaama’s will, the Dusk Mother’s blessing for her newfound love.
The idealism soon faded, but the love and sense of justice remained, even amidst the atrocities the Empire committed. When they attempted to flee Doma to the east, it wasn’t due to lost morals, but rather the Garleans discovering the scent of this first rebellion and quickly crushing it. Kisame was taken from her, as was their unborn child, and as Altani floated their wrapped bodies out to sea in a dilapidated boat she had begged for from the residents of a small fishing village, she wondered if she would one day find them in the stars.
They followed her in the decades since, from the breeze of Kugane, to the muggy jungles of Thavnair and Corvos, remaining hanging in the sky as Dalamud fell, still visible even from the hamlet of Terncliff. They didn’t turn away as a handsome stranger propositioned her in the alleys of Ul’dah, nor when she took in a young man sobbing over the corpse of the mother he had killed, who had subjected him to abuse Altani could not fathom. And they watched, above the biting winds and snow of Coerthas, as she entered Ishgard for the first time, Kisame’s katana hanging across her back.