THE SCRAP HEAP
Updated on February 16, 2021 (♒︎)
Author's Notes: Here's a collection of pieces that didn't develop into a longer work, that I felt a little iffy about publishing, and/or that contain headcanons and characterizations that I ultimately decided to toss.
FOOTNOTE
Written on June 14, 2019 (♊︎)
Content Warning: Implied Incest
Author's Notes: A weird attempt at imagining a Ramza/Delita Unwitting Incest AU wherein the Hyrals are also Balbanes' bastards. I made things somehow both more and less scandalous by filtering events through poor Alazlam and his footnotes.
Despite rumors that witchcraft was among the sins twining about Alazlam's family tree, he had no power to divine the unrecorded past. When he stood amidst the brambled and overgrown orchards that spread from the ruins of Igros keep down towards the distant sea, he could certainly imagine their appearance in days past, how they might have looked when Gallione was flush with wealth and people. There were accounts enough of the city's former glory to give fire to his imagination. He had no ability, however, to see the sticky summer afternoon when two young squires ran down along the hard packed earth, laughing at private jokes and talking through daydreams before stripping in the dappled sunlight. He could not discern or measure those secret hours spent in exploration of their bodies against the carpet of apple blossoms. He could not penetrate the veil of history and catch that moment when old Balbanes Beoulve, looking for his errant son, caught a glimpse of the boys' tawny limbs tangled in the grass and turned as colorless as the lime-washed chapel in which he was to spend that evening given to a penitent's tremulous prayers.
He did, however, in Appendix D of The Enigmatic War of the Lions, make an observation that might have shed light on the resultant rupture in family harmony that followed in the weeks to come: a strange turn that no players at the time—save one—had any means to explain. Footnote 47 on The Early Life of Delita I reads:
"While Hyral's age at the onset of the war has typically been given as seventeen, the year given for his birth varies between records. Church registries regarding his receipt of various Glabadosian sacraments seem to suggest that he may, in fact, have been as old at eighteen or even nineteen at the time he became involved with Goltanna's faction. Placing him at this older age not only lends slightly more credence to contemporary accounts of his talent for political strategy, but it also creates a unique opportunity to theorize about the circumstances of his strange adoption. While there are no firsthand accounts remaining of the early life of either Delita or his sister, there was a writ of divorce (grounds: infidelity) obtained by one farmer with the surname Hyral A.A. 1248; this same man was later recorded as having died of plague at A.A. 1253, which was when the earliest records of the Hyrals' presence at Igros. While we are rapidly delving into the realm of fiction, I think it is worth considering that placing Hyral at an older age would make it possible that the adulteress cited in the writ could have been the same enigmatic and unnamed woman mentioned as the mother of Balbanes' two illegitimate issue. Both women were mentioned as being of Lugria lineage.
That young Beoulve and Hyral might have been brothers is wholly unsubstantiated at this point, but even the possibility casts a decidedly different light on several elements of their relationship."
EXCHANGE
Written on June 22, 2019 (♋︎)
Author's Notes: Another episode where I was establishing some ideas about the older Beoulve brothers' relationship; I initially decided not to archive it after writing Let Your Curse Be On Me, which developed the characters' much more thoroughly in relation to a captivity narrative.
Time had taken on new shapes and structures during his three months at Vaseria. Even as Zalbag saw the glare of the promised signal fire, it seemed as though the term of his hostageship was both unbegun and already ended—that he was simultaneously cold and bloody on the Zelmonian plains and already rushing ventre a terre back toward Lesalia. As they escorted him through still dark streets towards the docks, he took a keen and morbid interest in the city to which he hoped never to return. His eyes traced over and over the red lines of the hexagonal flagstones beneath him and the black figure of the great Yudoran basilica that towered over them like a dead giant. From time to time he glanced at the men surrounding him, wondering how many he could drop if he managed to wrest away one of their bronze-pommeled swords.
Mostly though, when his thoughts did not wander elsewhere, he prayed.
When they finally parleyed with the Ivalican envoy, he did not register any surprise at seeing Dycedarg there. He had not picked up enough Ordallian to make out each detail of the agreement, but it became apparent that a fairly sizable contingent of men had seen safe passage out of Warjilis in exchange for his return. Despite being at the center of negotiations, he remained very much detached from the proceedings until his brother turned to him and spoke two words in terse Ivalician:
"You're unhurt?"
He nodded his head with what felt like honesty. The Ordallians untethered his wrists, and he was free to leave.
He did not speak to Dycedarg again until they were several hours onto the Limberian sea, having not had anything else asked of him by any member of the mission. They stood on deck, watching the grey rolling of the waves that seemed to stretch towards a clouded nowhere.
"I do not know it was a sound decision: one soldier for that many."
Dycedarg looked slightly irate. "It wasn't your decision."
"My decisions haven't been particularly sound as of late, I suppose."
"If you're talking about the ambush, you can blame an informant." Dycedarg spat. "He's feeding crows outside the capital now."
He paused, watching a look of mild shock spread over Zalbag's features.
"Also, you aren't 'one soldier.' You're a Beoulve."
There was much unsaid as both men let the conversation lapse into the unrelenting sweep of the water surrounding them.
"How soon until I can return to the front?" Zalbag asked after what seemed a long span of silence.
"We're in the midst of a momentary truce. Viura initiated talks this time."
His voice softened.
"You are unhurt, right?"
As Dycedarg laid a gloved hand upon his shoulder, his mind came unbidden to the prickling sting of a healer's magic—of the cold burn of light that re-knit sinew and bone no matter how many times it had been broken. He closed his eyes and did not flinch.
"I'm fine."
They spent the next several months in the capital, subject to all manner of enthused interest and hushed speculation. The truce broke and Zalbag was back on the field before word began to spread of singular outbreak of plague: that a whole Ordallian company fleeing out of Lionel had taken ill at sea and made it to port with barely a man alive, raving of poison and curses in the midst of their fever.
DAMSELS
Written on November 16, 2019 (♎︎)
Author's Notes: If you read all my depressing AUs, you'll notice that I'm really hung up on Wiegraf's pact at Orbonne. This was a short piece hammering home the parallels between Tietra's kidnapping and Alma's kidnapping and Wiegraf's degree of complicity in them both. The basic ideas from it eventually wormed their way into "Fetters."
The talonfalls of Izlude's steed faded into the unrelenting rush of rain, and as the corners of his vision bled to black, Wiegraf felt them melt into the whirring of windmill gears rattling overhead. He lay there—teeth clenched, fingers dug into his belly as he tried to hold it together—and realized that the waning cry of the girl galloping away from him was one he'd heard before.
"Help me!"
Had the first one even spoken to him? Had she spoken to anyone? It was such an awful thing to try to recall. The sun was dimmed. The earth smelled of spring. Golagros had been as pale as his hostage, both of them looking at him with dark, desperate eyes as the air turned chill. She couldn't have spoken. He would have remembered something spoken to him at that instant—particularly by anybody else's sister. Somehow, though, she must have—she must have, unless he had fallen to some place where maidens were interchangeable. It could not be that that voice should pierce him through with a memory so sharp he might die upon it.
He either closed his eyes or lost his vision as another voice and another memory threatened to intrude upon him—a maiden he couldn't rescue and who would never have pleaded for aid. It was at that instant that the world burnt suddenly with a nimbus of blue flame, and he heard a sound that finally promised to drown out all others.
"Stone bearer, with me now do treat."
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
Written on June 12, 2019 (♊︎)
Author's Notes: A very early sketch from when I was still playing around with how precisely the Beoulve family dysfunction played out with regards to the two oldest brothers.
Two years. The old man had been two years at dying. Dycedarg paced the hall outside of the sickroom, wondering if this was truly to be the final decline. His brother sat, saturnine and still, on a long bench that hid the frayed bottom of one's of Igros' less impressive tapestries. He imagined his thoughts must be drifting back to the Zeltennian front, for all he knew Zalbag took his filial responsibilities with the utmost gravity.
"He's called for us all before," Dycedarg said with a well-practiced smile, "Perhaps he will rally again."
"I have prayed as much."
"I too have found myself praying more and more these days."
Neither had met the other's gaze. It was always so much more difficult with Zalbag than it was any of the rest of the court. Ruvelia was easy to flatter and her brother easy to blackmail. Goltanna was transparent, Elmdor detached, the king well on his own way to heaven. His brother's weaknesses, however, needed to be more delicately approached. According to Zalbag's confessor, the devout man through whom Dycedarg remitted many of his numerous gifts to the church, he possessed the rare gift of a sincere piety. He did not act on his temptations, for all it haunted him that something hotter and darker than ice water ran through his veins.
"Do you think..." Zalbag spoke hesitantly "Do you think he will die disappointed?"
Dycedarg understood the question as it related to their unseasonably long bachelorhoods. He imagined that their father might well die in disappointment had he not taken the precaution of begetting bastards.
Softly, he knelt before his brother, cupping his face with a tenderness that he was unaccustomed to giving and Zalbag unaccustomed to receiving. There was a moment's hesitation as he looked at the man's grey eyes--a memento of the woman who had been his first kill.
"You know he's proud of you."
The subsequent kiss was in all its accidents chastely fraternal, but some unspoken and uninvoked power transubstantiated it into purest hellfire.
LAPWINGS
Written on September 7, 2020 (♍︎)
Author's Notes: This is a snippet of a Final Fantasy Tactics/Wuthering Heights fusion, wherein it's sort of the eighteenth-century, and Ramza unintentionally casts aside his childhood bond with Delita to marry for reasons of social/financial security. Just a really weird experiment altogether here.
"Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Ramza?"
What answer could he make that had not been made before? Delita had known the same roof and the same brothers; Ramza could not justify himself by claiming the necessity of escape. Delita had been less than a bastard and suffered in due measure for it. If he could cross back over all the paths his life had taken, he would come always to that compact made on Eagrose Heath, where he had lied and lied and told himself a good match would give him means to save them both.
The sickness had carried him back there more than once. Sometimes he awoke in starts, dissolving into the same abject weeping that had once mingled with the fury of a storm. His head swam to think on it even now, and Delita caught him as he swooned.
"If I have done wrong, Delita," he moaned, "I am dying for it."
They said nothing for a while, weeping into the cupped flesh of one another's shoulders, clutching one another as though they meant to press themselves into some chimera of their mingled flesh and bone. Outside, Ramza could hear one of his wife's dogs baying, and he gave a choking cough that he knew would bring up blood. It did not deter Delita in as he wrenched him into another savage kiss.
It was not forgiveness, but in that suffocating embrace, Ramza could somehow imagine the two of them back on the heathen expanse of the moors. They had not been sundered once. They had not been enemies. He had been untamed and unbroken, caring not a whit for family names or their attendant obligations. It had been a grievous betrayal to part them.
As he folded into the darkness of his own body, Ramza saw them as they had been: mud-spattered and laughing, trying to charm the nesting lapwings with the shrill cry of a reed flute.
BEACH
Written on December 25, 2020 (♑︎)
Author's Notes: Part of a series of Christmas drabbles people were writing for one another. Jaydee_Faire prompted "Beach Episode."
"I warned you!" Mustadio breathed deeply as he unclenched his firsts. "It isn't calibrated to make any fine distinctions for context or for the nuances of modern Ivalician."
"I didn't think it was a command..."
"You said 'Everybody.' 'Everybody' is inclusive of all members of the company, and 'Everybody, hit the beach!' is—grammatically—a command."
Ramza kicked at the great sheet of glass that overstretched the strand, sighing as he watched Agrias try to convince other beachgoers not to alert the Warjilis authorities. The steel ball in the impact crater glinted like a giant eye, winking at him in the sun.
WREN
Written on December 25, 2020 (♑︎)
Author's Notes: Another Christmas drabble; this time playing around with the idea of the St. Stephen's Day hunting of the wren.
Izlude had been told there were many wicked things that hid themselves in religion's garments and that saint's days called for prayers and not for pageantry—to go about in costume begging for sweetmeats was as good as to invite all the seven demons of Limberry come dance.
Still, it seemed different with a mask. The other boys joked the devils wouldn't recognize him. He nearly fell in with his fellows' good cheer until it came out the wren they tithed for was real.
The poor bird accused him all night from its cage, singing as though songs could free it.
WISH
Written on December 25, 2020 (♑︎)
Author's Notes: Yet another Christmas drabble; vaguely Ramza/Algus-ish.
When Ramza Beoulve thrust a river stone into his palm without explanation, Algus thought that perhaps he was being made fun of—that it was some game to make a show of his ignorance or gullibility.
"It's a wish stone," Ramza elaborated. "There's an unbroken line that goes around it. Trace it with your finger, and you can make a wish."
He smiled then. He thanked him. He didn't make a wish—of course—because he was not a child who wished on stones, but when he threw it into Igros' moat a month later, he did roll his thumb around its middle.
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