“I know,” she answers, head bowed.

“We wanted better for you,” her father says. The La Noscean wind doesn’t reach this place. What waits outside the window is dry and wrong.

“I know,” she answers, voice cracking.

“I miss you,” her mother admits, the warmth of one of her hugs suffocating her in its grasp.

Something in her breaks. The ghosts press down on her little shoulders, digging their nails into her flesh. “I—I can’t come back home.”

“Lios,” his father said. Uncertain. Confused. “What are you waiting for?”

The white splotch stared tauntingly at her.

“Alright, then,” Lunya exhaled, stirring Reese out of her internalized anxiety gauntlet. “Let’s be barbaric about this.”

“Aw, does that mean you actually worry about the rest of us?” Lunya cooed, cupping her cheeks in her hands and batting her eyelashes at her.

But Cid clearly had no reason to do so, with her trapped under his hand like this. Instead, he turned to look at their historian accusingly.

"You were the one who thought it'd be funny to place crabs—an established favourite food of a certain someone I don't think I need to name—in Rammbroes's bedroll?"

"Indeed, ’twas I," G'raha said, smoothly taking the fall for Eorzea’s champion. Only the slight twitch of his tail gave away that it wasn't the truth. "You're welcome to join us next time. We were considering moving Nazyl Duzyl's tent an ilm to the left every night."

"We're really testing the limits of this scaffolding," he dared to pipe up when he climbed high enough to comfortably rest his upper half and elbows on the scaffolding, tail still casually swaying to and fro in the air as he balanced upon the rickety ladder. "Lunya, I'm afraid even I am not normally so bold as to climb this high after a round of drinks."

You stubborn idiot. You sweet boy.

(The years he spent fixated on Allag feel like nothing, now, compared to how fascinating he finds her.)

(It is funny that he calls her his guiding star and that the family she has built from the ground up are lodestars and balefires and they are all as beacons in the night, bringing those who are lost home, and now she is the one chasing a familiar light—)

G'raha blinked at her, his face a wonderful shade of pink and his confusion so endearingly evident. The tip of his tail twitched across her bare thigh. "We’re married, Lu. Twice, as a matter of fact. And this is our wedding reception—I surely hope you do."

Why was it that they had to keep looking at each other like this? Hadn't they suffered—sacrificed—enough?

“Raha,” his wife replied, the disarming effect of her sweet voice and shining eyes long lost to him, though she was of course as lovely as ever.

“You’re much more skilled at carpentry than I.”

“You could say that,” said the woman who personally crafted 90% of the furniture in their own house and possessed more delicate touch in the tip of one of her Lalafellin pinkies than his whole self ever had in three lifetimes.

Coco sighed, seized with affection. Even before she had confessed to him at the edge of the universe it'd been hard for him to deny her anything she wanted. Krile would understand. Or she would complain that one set of lovey-dovey friends around her was more than enough and they didn't need another.

“No, ew.” Mama cringed as she tugged Nynya closer. “Absolutely not. I’ve only ever had eyes for your father. Thancred isn’t even a fraction as cute and you may tell him I said that the next time you visit Zaya’s house.”

But Nynya refused. “He climbed the scaffolding above the Find and jumped into the middle of their conversation!!!” Lunya nearly screamed. On her right, G'raha went completely still. “I thought he was gonna break his legs!”

“Of course you are.” She patted his cheek with one hand and pressed another empanada into his own hands with the other.

Y'shtola started maining Black Mage during the last expac after a seven year streak of playing White Mage and White Mage only, but he hadn’t realized she was keeping WHM geared up too. Skeptical, Alphinaud asked, “Really? What’s her ilevel?”

“600. Good luck.”

“Hello, hatless PS5-having Cutscene Skipper Jr.,” Lunya sniffed, clearly not above swooping down to the level of pettiness required to sass a sixteen year old with an attitude problem as she gathered them all into a party. “I hope you’re ready.”

“THESE STILL HAVE A CATCH RATE,” Babycorn howled as she ridiculously stomped one foot in the dirt and shook her fists in the air with an aggression that had scared most of the wild pokémon in the area into the bushes and tall grass well over three bells ago. “WHY SHOULD I SPEND MORE MONEY?!”

“I offered to buy them for you.”

He'd never been able to hide from her. Not really.

"Ah, well," G'raha said with a sheepish wince, the first thing he'd actually said since he handed her the vase. He really wasn't anything like the seductive wizard who'd eat your heart all the girls in town had gossiped about, honestly. In fact, beneath the confidence that he radiated when he walked her in the sky or boasted about his magical abilities, he was actually kind of an awkward, eager sort of man with a surprising streak of timidness, and came off as endearingly cute rather than devilishly handsome. There were also times when he could be a little brat, causing mischief and trouble for the other residents of the castle, and occasions where he was melancholic and wise, sitting in silence in a room that was decorated so flamboyantly as if to drown out his own thoughts.

“Totomi Tomi,” she gasped, absolutely apoplectic. In the background, her game went forgotten, the DDR machine jeering miss! Miss! Miss! “Only toddlers get stuck in claw machines.”

Amid her sea of Vocaloid plushies that probably weren’t officially licensed, Mint’s gasp was muffled by the wall of glass between them. She raised an offended hand to her heart. “I’m not stuck. I can get out of here whenever I want!”

A chuckle slipped from G'raha’s lips as he appraised the stardust fae again. “And should I count you among the ones to be wary of?”

Lunya’s smile grew into a grin. It was equally charming and pointed, like the bared teeth of a predator. “Normally I would say yes. But if Il—if Queen Titania would have me help you, you may place your trust in me, silly one. For a price, of course.”

Sitting cross-legged with his back against the stone fence that separated their apartment complex from the street, G'raha accepted that the curtain of white waves that spilled from the wall behind him and over his shoulders was going to bother him as much as it did its owner in the morning heat. Craning his neck, he looked up into the face of his meister, who stuck her tongue out at him when the magazine she was balancing on his head slipped away with the motion. OUR TOP TEN HOTTEST DEATH CITY STARS, exclaimed the big double page spread it flipped to when it hit the ground next to him. LITERALLY, BECAUSE WE’RE IN A DESERT! NUMBER 7 WILL SURPRISE YOU.