Chapter Text
Tilla doesn't know what Szocha is talking about when she asks if she's ever heard of her home city, of Ves-Ell and its mages high in the sky.
Is that where you're from? How did you end up in the Shroud?
I don't know. I just remember falling.
Dalamud fell. Do you think your Ves-Ell was part of it?
No. I've never heard of this Dalamud, I think.
The air is too heavy in her lungs, moist and clinging with every breath, but Tilla tells her that's just what summer is like here in the Shroud, and laughs incredulously when Szocha tells her that the councilors kept the air in Ves-Ell carefully controlled for ideal living conditions. Everything is too bright, all lush greens and deep browns, much wilder than the carefully curated parks and gardens she grew up knowing, and so humid in a way she's never known.
She misses her lessons on healing magic and spending hours in the library, she misses the sweets stand in the park with the owner that would always sneak her an extra piece of lokum, she misses the public baths and her bedroom in her aunt's house and her guitar and paint set and the portrait of her father on her bedside table and sitting for breakfast with Resza on the days when she was able.
Now all the books she borrows are printed in a frustrating script and the food is bland and hardly anyone she sees other than Tilla and her mother have scales and horns and even though she had woken up able to understand Eorzean, both in script and in speech despite having spoken a different language in Ves-Ell, the letters confuse her. She gets curious gazes but at least they're not pitying and there's no badly-hushed whispers comparing her to her mother, curious questions about her accent and where she's from because oh isn't it lovely, curious touches to her tail because apparently Vessians au ra here don't conserve excess nutrients in theirs.
But it's not to say she doesn't enjoy herself or that everything is bad and weird. Buscarron is nice to her and Tilla’s mother gives her pointers on healing magic and all the flowers are lovely, in the Shroud and also in La Noscea, when Tilla insists that their first outing as Adventurers, after everything is rebuilt in the wake of the calamity, be to board an airship bound for Limsa Lominsa. They make it to Costa del Sol to sate Tilla’s curiosity about the upcoming Moonfire Faire, and Szocha can't help but to sink to her knees in the sand at the first glimpse of the sun rising over sparkling blue water. Hot tears run down her cheeks, a sob ripping through her chest because this is something she never would've ever been able to see, sand and salt and sea a distant myth only spoken of in passing school lessons on the forbidden dangerous unknown world outside of Ves-Ell. Tilla sinks down beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she stares out across the ocean in her own amazement, and no, Szocha thinks with a sniffle, this isn't bad at all.