Chapter Text
Prompt 3: Talisman
***
Fordola was slowly getting used to the way Phina and Jherr could just materialize out of fuck-nowhere with nary a sound, and that worried her on some level. She shook off the concern, though, as the scent of rye bread struck her nose. They approached the table she'd grabbed for them all, and set down their burden: bread, jam, butter.
“You don’t have to feed me every time,” she mumbled, shoving the smorgasbord of conflicting emotions aside in her heart.
“Maybe we want to. So there.” Jherr sat down, looking smug. Fordola sighed.
“So,” she said, “you told me you had an idea about - this.” She gestured to her Resonant eye. “This, and what came with it. To help?”
Why they’d WANT to do so was still beyond Fordola, in spite of Adellinde’s explanation - namely: Jherr And Phina Are Like That.
She’d tried to beat the piss out of Phina’s partner (one of them, anyway; Fordola envied that fearless love a bit). She’d tried to shank Jherr (and failed, because even to her Resonant eye he was a nighttime hallway shadow). And yet, and yet, and yet.
…Phina had a jar of kumquat jam she was opening. Jherr was slicing bread. There was a little pot of butter sat on the table between them all now.
Fordola’s train of thought switched tracks, and she let it for now.
Once the bread and butter and jam were doled out, Phina spoke up again. “We do have an idea about how to wrangle your Resonance. It’s similar to the way we handle our not-exactly-Echo, and it’s half-technique and half-accessories.”
Fordola blinked, then said, “Accessories? If it’s got spangles on, I’m not doing it.”
Jherr snorted softly, his tail quirking into an amused squiggle. “There’s no spangles. We know what a butch is.”
Fordola (who now felt her cheeks warming) looked up at Jherr, and then Phina. They were smiling; the smiles were real. When they said ”we know”, they DID. They knew, and meant it, and Fordola was slowly getting used to that too.
“It’ll take a bit of time to get the details right,” Phina said. “We’ll be working with you, and by ‘we’ I mean me and Jherr and Eirianedd, since she’s the jewellery superstar of this travelling roadshow of eccentrics.”
“Eir—? Oh! Ah, Spooky,” Fordola said, recollecting Eirianedd’s nickname amongst the Garleans stationed around Castrum Velodyna. “Are you sure she’s not about to just curse it into next year and be rid of me once I put it on and…catch fire, or summat? It’s not like she’s fond of me.”
“That doesn’t come into play here,” Jherr said. “Eiri’s fondness or lack thereof, I mean. We asked her to do it, and she said she would.”
Fordola stared.
Silence reigned.
Phina nibbled her bread and jam.
“People LIE, you know,” Fordola said slowly, after the silence became too awkward to bear. “A lot of people lie, and they lie constantly. Neither of you bother with that, so I know you might not expect others to be full of shite, but…”
“Eiri doesn’t either,” Jherr said. “Lie, I mean.”
“In this case, we’re her clients,” Phina added, brushing crumbs off the table. “Thus, she’ll do what she says she will.”
“What’s stopping her from not?” Fordola asked, taking the slice of bread and jam Jherr slid over to her. It was very good bread, and very good jam.
“She’s devoted to the Traders,” Jherr said. “She’s DEVOTED-devoted. Dishonesty and bad deals are fuckin’ anathema to her.”
“Even AFTER about a fucktillion years of living, and her friggin’ city sinking, and all…she’s like that?” Fordola blinked. “She’s the most stubborn person I’ve ever breathed near, if that’s so.”
“She’s stubborner than that, and it’s so,” Phina laughed. “Anyway, we asked her to help, and she will. We’re going to give you something like we’ve got.”
She reached into her undershirt and pulled out a round black pendant. Fordola had a vague memory of having seen it before, when they’d fought.
“It’s a bulwark, kind of,“ Phina said, “or a paling, or a ward. It filters out much of the background memory-and-emotion noise, so it’s easier to understand it and endure it. It doesn’t STOP it, but it makes it more bearable.”
Jherr pulled his own pendant out of his shirt, and let Fordola hold it in her palm. The black stone was warm, as was the silver backing and bezel. “People are fuckin’ NOISY, as well you know. This…turns it down some, like you twiddled the volume lower on your linkpearl, or your Garlean transmitter.”
Phina flipped her pendant over and held it closer, so Fordola could see it too. “There’s things on the setting - engravings and spells - that work with the stone to weave the spells together. They have to be personalized, else we’d each give you half of the stones in these to hold until yours is done.”
Fordola wasn’t sure she’d just heard what she thought she’d just heard. She looked up suddenly from the fine engravings and filigrees and whorls on the bezel of the pendant, letting the one in her palm drop back into Jherr’s open hand.
“You what,” Fordola finally said.
“Share ours,” Jherr said.
“What the fuck for?”
“Because it hurts to have no protection,” Phina said. “Because we don’t think you deserve that kind of pain. Because we’d still have our halves to work with in the interim.” She paused, then looked seriously at Fordola, then said, “The pain won’t go away ENTIRELY, mind. Nothing can do that. But we can make it easier to bear. So we will.”
The matter-of-factness and practicality and that’s-that in the twins’ voices never stopped giving Fordola pause. Even if they LOOKED only a bit older than her, they were what they said they were: reborn living-clockwork-and-alchemy Knights, with hundreds of years of thoughts and experiences and memories borne in their hearts across lifetimes. They weren’t just mad, or liars, or any other fucking thing that frightened Garlean troops insisted they must be.
They were what they said they were.
And…
And.
They’d do what they said they’d do.
Fordola exhaled, slowly.
“You don’t have to do this, and I don’t know that I deserve it,” she started, then held up a hand for quiet as both Uaithnes’ ears went backwards at the same time and they both inhaled to get the wind to speak up in protest. “I’M NOT FINISHED YET, HOLD ON. THAT DON’T-KNOW ASIDE? I’m grateful. I owe you. I owe you for a lot. …Thank you. You’re daft. Thank you.”
Jherr handed the last of the bread to Fordola, and beamed. “We are daft, and you don’t owe us, and you’re welcome.”
Phina was purring so loudly that Fordola could hear her across the table. “We’ll get the information Eiri needs, and she’ll get started. When it’s done, you’ll have much less hideous headaches, and you’ll be able to work with us and others without vertigo attacking your entire skull…”
“And then said skull and the floor making sweet, sweet love all of a sudden.” Jherr made a face. “That shite’s inconvenient and embarrassing, and we’d rather prevent it for others as we do ourselves.”
Fordola almost spat bread. She started to laugh. “Oh, what. What!? Fuckin’ HELL, are you two trying to make me choke on this!?”
“Sorry,” Jherr said sincerely as Phina patted Fordola’s back. “But - let’s be serious now. We’re going to do this.”
“You don’t owe us anything,” Phina said. “This is just doing what’s correct. If people want your help, they need to give you the tools so you CAN help. We’re helping you get ‘em. Does that make sense?”
“As much as either of you ever make sense,” Fordola said, smiling back at the two of them in spite of herself. “So! When do you want to start with this talisman business?”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Jherr replied.