#fe1/11 was definitely Not his first rodeo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sennokao · 3 years

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Fòdlan.

"Man does Lady Luck have it out for me,” Xane says to no-one in particular.

Mean grub, unfriendly faces. Four tall walls and no way out. At least the scenery this time is different enough.

Above his head, a leaking roof with a single noisy dribble of water doing its best to make like rain. Confidently below him, a vast sea of the unknown likely choked with sharks, water dragons, and all manner of other boy-eating beasties. Unfathomable depths, unwise to chance a swim. One look through the steel bars of the porthole kills every idea of escape.

So for a long time, Xane sits. And waits.

He’s a long ways from Archanea, that’s for certain, with little for his comforts besides the single dry bale of hay he’s managed to scrounge together below the galley deck. In his cell. He wiggles around and a few straws poke him through his clothes. The bridge of the young man’s nose crinkles with a scowl.

A tiny thought pokes at the back of his mind that maybe he should have taken sounder advice. Maybe he should have waited patiently to take the next available merchant ship, rather than sneak aboard the first one he saw. Maybe. He’d likely have been treated better—turns out the crew running things above deck weren’t maritime traders, but a band of globe-trotting pirates—but hey, what’s a minor inconvenience to a grander dream?

Xane wants to see the world!

He’s just not seeing it in the way that he wants. Yet.

He’ll get there.

...That’s the same old mantra he’s been telling himself for some time, anyway. It’s been starting to get boring. For once, by his foot he notices a more interesting joggle of motion and centers his attention on it: watching as a shivering black rat noses its way out of the hay. Ramping up the population of his jail cell to exactly two.

Sweet, company. “Hey there, little guy, you in the same boat as me?”

Hearing his voice, the rat teeters on its hind legs and sniffs the air. Appraising him with uninterested beady eyes. He thinks they look friendly enough despite their allospecific differences. Either it knows humans far too well, or it knows that human is something he’s not. No matter how the wind blows, Xane is glad to have someone.

“...Nah, I guess this is where you make your home,” he says conversationally, pushing onto his back with his elbows crooked behind his head. “Probably spent your whole life down here, huh?”

Unlike this ship rat, he doesn’t really know. Whether the time he’s spent here translates to days, or weeks. Or months. It hardly mattered to a dragon whose feeling of time has faded out, like a human’s sensations of warmth from hypothermia. But, still; with a long lack of conversation like he’s had, it’s easy—and welcome—to pretend like they’re brooding over their miserable circumstances together.

“Pretty depressing pad if ya ask me,” Xane continues cheerfully, lifting his eyes to the ceiling. “Smells like the baked back-end of a fire dragon. Just as warm, too.”

No answer. Not even a sad squeak to help wheel the illusion along. Xane is pushing their conversation uphill on a great deal of effort over here! Rude. The shapeshifter rolls again, propping his cheek on a hand to look at his new friend better anyways.

“Don’t have ta’ tell me twice! I’d have to get outta this cell first. Plus ship’s too small for two of the same guy ta’ be walkin’ around. See the arms on those pirates? Get caught and I’m a goner! I ain’t got a tail to lose no more, but I’d definitely lose it if I still had it...”

Silence, again. Xane blinks as the critter regards him for another moment, then brushes past his elbow to scurry out of view. Abandoned nearly as quick as he’d been joined. He sits up suddenly in an aimless fly of hay stalks as the reality finally sinks its teeth.

“...King Naga’s heiney, what am I doing? Makin’ chummy with a rat?”

Yeaaap, that’s most definitely the last straw. Who said dragons couldn’t get cabin fever? And speaking of dragons, Gotoh and King Naga would be proud of him. That he hasn’t forgotten totally how to be one.

“Let me out! Let me oooooout!” the manakete youth roars angrily over the roll of waves, reaching the limits to his patience—

Until the door to the galley’s cellar block opens, culminating in a series of steps that lead up to neighboring cells, then soon to his. The only one that matters. Xane bounces to his feet with renewed energy. “Finally! Kept me waitin’ long enough! I ain’t gonna run, so why don’t ya let me out of here? Pinky promise I won’t jet.”

...Wait a moment.

He squints, taking his measure of the smartly appareled individual. That didn’t look like a pirate. Far from one, in fact; the fellow was decked in stainless armor from head to toe much like a knight. A bit like the ones serving under the princey.

“Caught up with pirates, were you? Poor thing,” the man says through his helm with a sympathetic cluck of his tongue. “You’re lucky they didn’t pay their toll, else the knights wouldn’t have discovered you. But we’ll get you to where you need to be, lad. Don’t you worry.”

And just like that, Xane returns to the bright and eventful face of a world as it’s meant to be seen. The gulls sing and squabble above his head while the harbor sprawls with unloaded goods. Merchants of untold nationalities and busy humans a dime a dozen, colors numbering more than the drab grays and blacks of a dark cell. Now, that’s more like it! He stretches, then gives a look around, seeing a gap between two authorities just big enough to squeeze through that will set him on the road—

“Don’t stray too far from the group,” announces the voice behind a hand, clapped over his shoulder to tug him back. “The academy is why you have come to Fòdlan, we are aware. Foreigner or not, all attendees of the Officer’s Academy are within protection of the knights of Seiros.”

He makes a face. What’s this ‘bout an Officer’s Academy? Fòdlan? Sounds like high-brow business and Xane only goes where he pleases.

Whatever. He shrugs off the hand and looks for another opportunity to slip away unnoticed, until he catches it in a distant conversation: “...By the accent, kid seems to be Archanean—a few of them already here—Garreg Mach—”

Xane stops in his tracks. Xane grins.

..And Xane stays.

#◦ ☻ : 『 THE NAME’S XANE. 』 drabble.#a lil origin story if you will :')#I imagine over the course of four nearly five millennia #he's encountered this sort of situation before #fe1/11 was definitely Not his first rodeo #but yeah now he can terrorize fòdlan too huhuhuhu

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