With each passing year she seemed to be a bit taller, her tail would start to grow out—the growth spurts were the worst. Sometimes she’d lay curled in bed wondering if she’d die from it. 

When she wasn’t in enormous bursts of pain, she found herself actively running around the Isle of Val. Her parents had allowed her some space to practice and train, even offering a chance for her to learn different skills.

That morning she had been practicing with a quiver of arrows and a bow. She stood at the range, steadying her aim as she fired her hundredth shot. The impact of the arrow smacked into the target that laid five feet from the bar.

Behind her had been her friend from the orphanage, he had been sitting on a bale of hay waiting for his turn to shoot. “Nice, now if only you could hit the targets past five feet.”Azlyn rolled her eyes to the boy, finally giving him his turn. “Who says it’s wrong to practice my stance?”

“Nothing’s wrong with that.” G’raha Tia smirked as he lined his shot. He and her had been challenging one another to different things. He fired an arrow, and the thump of the impact echoed in the range. “But I still have three points more than you.”

“Yes, yes—you win.” The girl shook her head as he triumphantly took his last shot. She watched it hit the next target adjacent to the one she shot at. “You had an unfair advantage, what with you already knowing how to shoot!” She pouted, crossing her arms.

He grinned to her, setting the bows back down. “Yet I know how you get when you’re determined to learn something. You’d just spend every waking hour in the range until you perfected it, you monster.”

She stuck her tongue out to him as her own response.

Although she wondered if her knack for perfection came from her own drive—or the will of another. She closed her eyes, thinking about the motherly voice that would chime in her mind occasionally.

Whenever she put her mind to something, Azlyn found herself picking up the skill. Although she couldn’t say it was the same way with crafting or weaving. Whenever she attempted to make something like a doll, it’d turn into something… entirely different.

One time she tried to make a plush dog, and her mom confused it for a dead fish.

Her skill in crafting had been abysmal at best.

Yet she did better with martial arts and casting. Her mother taught her the basics of spellcasting the previous year, giving her a general run down of how it felt to channel aether and expend the force into what she was using. She did however find it comforting to know that she was decent with a sword and shield, lance, and now archery. She enjoyed casting the basic pattern from one of the geometic books, and she enjoyed the cool sensation whenever she casted with a cane or rod. She still had much to learn about each. 

“Azlyn? You there?” The girl stopped thinking deeply as she saw a hand wave up and down in front of her. “You zoned out for a second!”

She gave G’raha Tia an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, lost in thought.” She went to clean up the range now that they were done with their shooting competition. “Looks like I owe you some baked cookies.”

The Miqo’te grinned to her, “I want the ones your mom bakes—the ones you make get burnt on the edges.”

Azlyn snapped her head to him. Her eyes, the brilliant purple and red limbal rings flared to him. “I swear by the Twelve, by the Dawn Father, the Dusk Mother—and even to Hydaelyn that I will punch you.”

G’raha Tia dashed out the open hanger doors at her threat.

“Get back here!” She shouted, forgetting about their clean up entirely. She chased the boy through the fields, down the winding paths past the chocobo stables, past several of the towering archivist buildings where the Scholars and Archons worked—and she found herself precariously scaling one of the tall walls to chase down the Miqo’te. He easily jumped up to the next ledge, ignoring what would soon be a twenty to twenty-five-foot drop if they fell.

Azlyn continued her pursuit, yanking herself up to the next ledge—seeing G’raha Tia perched precociously on the end. “You can’t run forever!”

He chuckled. “You do know you’re like twenty feet in the air right now.”

Her feet seemed to freeze upon the realization brought to her. She turned her attention back to the ground, and she paled at the sight. She hated heights. 

G’raha Tia seemed to notice her apprehension to the massive height, and slowly approached. He lifted his hands up to show he meant no harm. “I’ll help you back down—I didn’t even think you’d follow me up here.”

She found her eyes glued to the ground. “I—I wasn’t paying attention.” She quivered, frozen in place.

He shook his head, slowly directing her back. He helped her down the first ledge, and then the next—and then the next. By the time they made it to the partition where it stood five feet in height, G’raha Tia motioned to one of the few steppingstones off the side. “And we’re almost safely to ground.”

Azlyn stared down at the five-foot jump, and awkwardly lowered herself to sit on her bottom. She let her feet dangle out to kick as she tried to calm herself.

G’raha Tia sat down next to her, staring up to the sky. “What do you think about the new girl?”

She found her thoughts interrupted by G’raha Tia’s question. “New girl? Oh, do you mean the brown haired Lalafellin?”

He nodded.

“She seems nice. Kind of quiet. We could invite her to study with us!” 

“Do you think she’d want too?” He got excited at the thought of another learning the language. “I didn’t think of it like that… I just assumed she’d just be like any other Lalafellin child.”

Azlyn chuckled at his enthusiastic response. “I don’t know, but it’d be fun making more friends.

“That’d be nice.” He chuckled in return. He immediately jumped topics, as something reminded him about it. “Oh, guess what! Archon Baldesion said he’d let me have access for some of the forbidden tomes if I went to the Studiem. Of course, I would also have to do the Forum dissertation, but I can do that easily enough.” The Miqo’te boy’s eyes glistened in excitement. “You should go to the Studiem with me!”

“Dissertation…? Isn’t that like two hundred pages or something?” She hadn’t thought about anything about going to a school, much less learning. She wondered what she could even study. “Eh, who am I to worry. I know you’d be nose deep in the Third Astral Era; I can’t get you to stop talking about it. You’d fill an entire archive about it.”

G’raha Tia smirked, “I can’t see why you can’t get behind it—the stories, the legends, the ballads and songs written! The Third Astral Era had such a strong empire that to this day can never be rivaled by the previous others!”

“Here we go again.”

“No, not ‘Here we go again’, you can’t deny you like some of the legends—the other day you were thoroughly enthralled by the passage of Princess Salina, and how she managed to survive!”

That was one of Azlyn’s favorite stories though.

Hear…

She looked over her shoulder, as the whispers started to grow within her mind. She could never tell why or for what reason the woman would speak to her.

Feel…

She could see G’raha Tia had been talking, his lips were flying at twenty words per second as he spoke passionately about one of his favorite stories.

Think…

Her attention turned to the ground, as she stared at the difference in height. She didn’t know why she felt herself starting to fall. She didn’t register her name being yelled, or really anything beyond that. All she could see was darkness.

She felt herself floating. What laid before her had not been the open courtyard of one of the many Plaza’s on the Isle of Val but instead an empty expanse with twinkling stars in the black shrouded skies. She looked down, around, behind, and ahead of her—seeing a glimpse of a bright singing orb in the far distance. She attempted to move closer, but something kept her in place.

She opted to watch the orb, seeing the fiery orb drift closer.

An explosion of pain shot through her, arching over her entire body. She could see the light threatening the darkness surrounding her. Azlyn looked up to the bright sun—or what she assumed was a sun—witnessing it explode into cascading meteors. She watched this with a mixed sense of horror and fascination.

Her small form felt the resistance holding her back disappear, and the horrid image of the explosion shifted to nothingness. She looked to the fiery orb floating to her and tried once more to approach it. Yet before she could reach it, she felt a firm grip upon her forearm.

Azlyn looked to the source and found herself staring up to a tall cloaked figure. Their face had been shrouded in a red haze of symbols, while their hood obscured their visage. She couldn’t resist against their grasp, as she tried to pull away, and felt herself stuck.

They seemed to speak to her, a strange language that didn’t quite make sense to her, before she was thrust backward.

She assumed she would hit the ground hard from the toss. Only her body couldn’t stop it’s thrashing and tumble through the empty space. It finally appeared to her that gravity started to work. She felt herself falling, crashing down, the absence of air seemed to somehow take her voice away as she silently screamed at the descent into darkness.

She thought once more of the motherly voice which called to her before—the same three words that echoed in her head.

Hear. Feel. Think.

She gasped for breath greedily, springing up from the large futon. Azlyn hadn’t realized where she was, but she appeared to have frightened the chirugeon administering first aide to her. She could see her parents both standing at the side of the room, eyes wide at her sudden awakening.

“By the Twelve!” The chirurgeon gasped, falling back from the girl. “Did that hurt?”

“Azlyn, are you alright?”

“Do you feel any pain?”

She hadn’t expected a barrage of questions from all of them.  “I feel fine?” She reached up to her chest, wondering why she felt winded. Maybe it was because of the residual feeling of falling.

Her father knelt beside her, grabbing her hand in a slow motion. She recalled where she had been last time. She had been sitting on the wall’s ledge with G’raha Tia. From there... she couldn’t remember how she got to this point. 

The chirurgeon completed their examination upon her, checking her for any injuries or damage. Azlyn didn’t really know how best to respond, so she silently waited for them to finish their check up. 

“She doesn’t exhibit any signs of external or internal injuries. The fall from that height probably just shocked her.” The chirugeon patted her atop her head. “But just to be on the safe side, you should rest today and keep an eye on her.” 

Her mother nodded, “We shall. Thank you.” 

Azlyn waited until the chirugeon left. Her mother had escorted him out of their house while she sat with her dad in silence. She bundled some of the comforter into her hands, feeling the strength in her grasp. She could tell her dad was worried, as his red eyes remained trained on her. 

“Hey... dad?” 

He reached out, rubbing a hand through her hair. She closed her eyes feeling more the comfort of his hand. “Does anything hurt?” 

She shook her head. “No,” she paused, trying to think of the right thing to say. “Do you remember my friend? The one you and mom say is my imaginary one when you think I’m not listening?” 

Her dad seemed surprised by that revelation she gave him, but answered her with a firm nod. “The black cloaked individual?” 

“I remember speaking with Raha—we were on the wall—yeah, I know we shouldn’t be climbing the walls—but we were just talking about different things. In the middle of it though, I—well—I heard a voice in my head.” She looked to the comforter wondering if bringing it up would really do anything. “Hear. Feel. Think. It’s always the same voice, a kind voice I think. Sometimes it even leads to strange dreams.” 

Her dad seemed concerned when she mentioned the voices. “What dreams are that? Does the voice say anything else?” 

Azlyn shook her head. “The voice—she doesn’t say anything else. And the dreams—they are mostly the same. A dark sky, lots of stars, and sometimes someone joins me to watch them. It’s the black cloaked individual.” 

She explained her recent dream as best she could. How she saw the giant star explode, how she was flung away when she tried to reach out to the fiery orb, how she felt that the black cloaked figure wasn’t the same one that she’d played with when she was younger. 

It all seemed confusing, but by the end of her explanation she could tell she worried her dad. 

“Tell me if the voice—or the dreams continue. Alright, Azlyn?” Her dad moved onto the futon, sitting next to her and pulled her into a hug. He was holding her tight in his arms as he sighed. 

She nodded, closing her eyes. She wondered if maybe something might be wrong with her after all.