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| [The strangest thing about being in the First is still the sensation of having a home to return to. Aster didn't have that, even in the Source. All of Eorzea was his home, one way or another, and the flip side of that was that he didn't have any place that he called home in particular. The Scions are his family, in a way, but the Rising Stones was no more personal to Aster than his rented bed at Cloud Nine in Ishgard, or his room over at the Carline Canopy in Gridania.
His suite in the Pendants is different, though. Oh, it had been uncomfortable, at first. Too sumptuous for a man like him, and too grand a gesture coming from the Exarch, who was at that point a stranger who didn't feel like a stranger. But now, as Aster returns to his room after a long day of investigating how to get to the Tempest, per Emet-Selch's invitation, he lets himself think, for the barest moment, that it feels like home.
He lets himself finally acknowledge how incredibly sick he's been feeling.] | |
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| [their journey isn't anywhere near done — they have a lightwarden to slay on the morrow, when they enter the qitana ravel at long last — but for now, right now, it feels like everything is going right for once. they've fought off the eulmorans, at least for the moment. those blessed that were poisoned in the conflict are now cured. y'shtola is alive. y'shtola is alive.
he'd never admit it out loud, but it's a weight off aster's heart to know that the scions are back together again. it was lonely, in a way, without them. together, they're a cohesive unit, an organization, no longer splintered at different corners of the world. it's not a family reunion just yet, aster knows; krile and tataru and the others are still on the source, waiting for them in the rising stones, and time apart has driven wedges between individual scions that he never expected. (were thancred and y'shtola always so distant with one another, or had he just been blind to it all this time? they lost something when minfilia left them, aster muses — a kind of glue, a central axis, someone to welcome them home.)
even so, this is a victory. he won't let anyone make it anything less.] | |
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