isleofavalon | In like a lion! Or dragon. Whatever.

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final fantasy dimensions: barbara

In like a lion! Or dragon. Whatever.

🧙 WHO: Barbara and anyone who comes along
⚔️️ WHAT: Training, exploration, camping, farming.
🕒 WHEN: March
🗺️ WHERE: Various places around and about Avalon.
⚠️ WARNINGS: Possibly some animal violence with the hunting prompt.

a. FarmQuest

[Barbara remembers farming. She didn't actually do much of it, because she was Abel's daughter and spent many of her hours as a child learning how to poke things with pointed sticks, but she remembers how she would help with certain tasks to build her strength, and her stamina, and how everyone--even the dragoons--helped out when it came time for the harvest.

So there's a strange sort of feeling in picking up a hoe--a sense of warmth that's almost sad. She's trying to investigate this mood as she tears up the weeds or hauls sacks of seeds out or chases away birds, getting bits of field all over her and in her hair in the process.

If you catch her at this, she'll acknowledge you with a look, but you're going to have to start the conversation yourself. Or maybe just help her pick up sticks.]

b. Training

[Mostly, Barbara has gotten used to the idea that her magic has been replaced by something that belongs to this world, but there's something that she can't abide losing--the signature skill of the dragoon, jumping. But she has elemental magic. And that means control of the winds. So surely she can use that to recraft her ability.

Her moogle is patiently standing by as she makes use of a fallow field outside the city limits. Taking a deep breath, Barbara summons her magic, crouches, and--UP!]

Hyaaaah--!

[--not so up wait wait no CRASH.]

c. Hunting

[The City of Camelot is full of places that sell food ready to eat, that sell food ready to make, and that sell the raw ingredients of food. Barbara has investigated them. Barbara has even bought some fruit and also, a bunch of carrots. But she doesn't like the look of the raw slabs of meat that they sell in that unnatural clear film. It's cold and dead and strange, totally divorced from the creatures that made it.

That's why this morning, she's in the outskirts of Dusklight Woods with her spear, quietly waiting for prey. She's not about to take anything as big as a deer; she doesn't need all of that, but pheasants and rabbits and other such-sized animals should be careful. She's being very quiet--but a twig snap will make her whirl into view to see just what snapped it.]

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[ It would have been impressive if it hadn't ended the way it did, with a crash landing that has Karma burst out laughing even as he trots up towards her to see how bad the damage is. ]

Wow, you really took off! Were you trying to fly, or what?

[ It looked a little to him like the height startled even herself, and there's been more than one person around here who could manifest wings. ]

[Oh. She had a witness. Joy.

She picks herself up off the ground, ignoring Moogle's nervous fluttering around her--it's fine, it's fine, dragoons-in-training get mugged by gravity all the time. but usually that happens at the start of their training, not when they're full-fledged like she is.]

Not fly. Humans not fly. Jump.

Name?

Are you?

[ Human, who doesn't speak as if she were around humans very much, but he doesn't ask more than that, hands in his pockets and grinning as he approaches. ]

My name's Karma. What's yours?

[ He nods a chin towards her, but also the Moogle, because some people name their familiars. ]

Barbara human.

[People look weird and have weird magic powers here and some of them have pointy ears and animal tails, and her armor's got wingalings, so she's not offended by the question.]

Familiar, Moogle. [and Moogle waves, with a friendly kupo!] Why you here?

[Farming brings to mind both warm and sad feelings for Hendrik, even with his limited experience with it. Zwaardsrust was known for its fields of wheat and flowers, after all, and his earliest years were spent in wonderment of the fields in which family and friends worked and played.

For that reason, the chance to help out and try his hand at farming as an adult is treated as a fortunate one. He approaches the opportunity with more gusto than the quests he had undertaken last month, eager for the instruction in clearing the fields and tilling the soil.

He's crouching in a small area cleared of weeds when he hears the sounds of agitated birds taking flight. He lifts his head to watch one of the other volunteers, a young woman, chasing the birds, and continues watching for a while before speaking up.]

Have the birds been proving a nuisance?

[The man who spoke--he captures all of Barbara's notice immediately. His height, his build, his stance. Warrior. Like her father. Like Ricard. Like the other dragoons.

Maybe that's why Barbara stands up a little straighter to answer him. Her father was not a man you spoke to with anything except respect.]

Lots of seed on ground. Lots of bird. Barbara chase.

Name?

[Brushing his gloved hands together and working up a small cloud of dust in the process, Hendrik blinks at the unexpected structure of the reply. It's not necessarily strange, considering the (sometimes pun-filled) speech patterns he has heard from monsters in his world. And not to mention the speech patterns of people in his world.]

Hendrik. My name is Hendrik. And your name is Barbara?

[He does cast a glance upward at the birds. The more persistent ones are already circling again.]

[She gives a sharp nod.]

Barbara.

Hendrik not look like farmer.

[It's not a compliment or an insult, just a statement--she doubts she looks like one either. She follows his gaze and frowns, crouching down to pick up some clods of earth and rocks. This is not a case where persistence is going to be rewarded, if you're a bird.]

[He hums at her observation, nodding thoughtfully as he averts his attention back to Barbara and ... uh, the rocks she's starting to pick up. He can't fault her for that dedication to her work, though.]

Mm. Back in my country, I am a knight. Are you, perhaps, a warrior or hunter?

[It's not her particular way of chasing off the birds that makes him ask, but her mannerisms as she seemed to size him up.]

[Barbara lifts her chin proudly.]

Barbara dragoon. Great warriors of Deist.

[and then there's a rook swooping down a lil bit too low, so WHOOSH goes a chunk of dirt towards it, making it flap away with a lot of bird cursing.]

Dragoon...?

[The term itself is unfamiliar, but it doesn't take much to find a familiar word in it. Attach that to the comment about warriors...]

Dragon riders, perhaps? There are no "dragoons" where I come from.

[He casts the unlucky bird a bemused look before glancing elsewhere on the fields. There are no scarecrows nearby, so he has to think of other ways he remembers seeing farmlands being protected.]

[Good guess, Hendrik. Barbara gives a nod.]

Dragoons fight on, alongside dragons. In fair fight, dragoons always win.

Where Hendrik?

In a fair fight.

[There's something amusing about the thought of a fight being fair with a dragon by your side, but he has to remember he doesn't know the differences between all these worlds.

Barbara's question gives him pause. He's not sure what she is asking.]

Where? The kingdom I served was Heliodor. At most, our knights would ride horses. No dragons.

[Barbara catches the tone he uses to repeat that phrase and she doesn't know what to make of it. Is he... amused? Disbelieving?]

Dragoons honorable warriors. Defend lands, not conquerors.

Hendrik lead Heliodor knights?

[She thought so.]

[There is faint surprise to Barbara's astute question; Hendrik would never have thought that something like his role back in his world would be so ... observable, so to speak. Still, he eventually nods, thinking on her other comments as he walks over to a dried bale of hay not too far from their cleared section.

If the birds were so persistent, would a scarecrow even work? They probably could build one, but maybe spreading hay would work just as well.]

A defending force. It sounds like your dragoons would have been excellent partners with my knights.

[He allows a wistful quirk of the lips.]

[Yes, that was what she thought. He has that feeling around him.]

Yes. [Barbara has never fought alongside knights on the ground, but she has fought alongside someone who has Hendrik's responsible air--only younger--and she respected his abilities a good deal.

Hay... what is he looking at the hay for? Wait... no... yes, she remembers. She pulls loose a handful and fluffs it, scattering it a little haphazardly on the ground.] What Heliodor like?

[As she thought. Lethe had worried that this place was making her lose her edge; it was all too easy to become complacent when light came on with the press of a button, and clean water was just as easy to find. Even the food--ever present, usually wrapped in that odd film that kept air from reaching it and stored in those iceboxes everywhere seemed to have.

So the laguz had come out here to train as well; though she still couldn't transform, the skill of creeping close to the quarry was still something she could do. The tailfeathers of a wood pigeon stuck out of the game pouch belted to her waist; she'd had a little success. But that wouldn't be enough to even feed a kitten.

But hunters could always make mistakes; Lethe had foolishly set her foot down too fast, rustling the leaves--and snapping a dry stick underneath. Her ears immediately tilted back in chagrin, but before she could do much more about it a blur of movement caught her eye. The laguz snapped her head around to look--

--oh. This one she knew. And Lethe wasn't too surprised to see Barbara out here. The laguz' dulled senses and the lack of a breeze made finding her before harder.

Lethe didn't stand out of her crouch right away or speak first, though her ears straightened. It was rude to disrupt someone else's hunt, after all. She gestured first to herself, then circled her fingers about as if miming turning around; should she leave?]

[...Ah. Not an animal, but Lethe, the cat lady from the fight on the beach. Seems like she's here on the same business, judging from the feathers sticking out at her waist.

At Lethe's inquiring gesture, Barbara shakes her head. Though she's still unused to hunting with others, Lethe is obviously good enough at it to have had some success already.]

Lethe hunts too?

[It's said in an undertone, so as not to disturb anything that might be near their position.]

[Lethe nods, keeping the gesture small and her whispers free of hissing siblant noises that might give them away.]

I do. Should we join forces? Or do you hunt alone?

[She assumed that was what Barbara was here for. There weren't any bigger enemies about that she could be hiding from.]

[Barbara considers it. Alone has been how she's hunted almost since she started having to do it (moogles do not make great hunting partners) but since traveling with the Warriors of Light, she's become--well, she's realized that friends with two arms and two legs aren't so bad. Lethe isn't human, either, and in a way, that's also helpful.

Also, they can actually talk to each other now. Which, hunting isn't a very talky activity, and Barbara isn't a conversationalist anyway, but it's still an improvement over uncanny enchanted silence.]

Can join.

[With that she lapses back into alert quiet, searching the ground. Ah, there--bird tracks. She taps them lightly with a finger, looking at Lethe significantly, and starts quietly to follow them.]

[Lethe glanced at the tracks and nodded, resuming her quiet stalk. With the forest waking up and farmers starting to tend to their fields, there was quite a bit of bird activity. Those pigeons Lethe had flushed wouldn't be the only ones around, let alone pheasants or quail.

She kept pace with Barbara, though drifted off to the left somewhat so they'd have a better chance of trapping prey in a pincer between them.]

[Barbara notes Lethe's movement and matches it by drifting off to the right. There's more signs of bird activity as they move along, feathers, bits of down, a few tracks in damp ground.

And then Barbara spots it--a pheasant. Excellent. Barbara moves suddenly, startling the bird into bolting, right towards Lethe.]

[It was over quickly; once Lethe spotted movement in her peripheral vision, identified what it was--she lunged. With a puff of feathers and a cut-off squawk, Lethe neatly snapped its neck with a practiced motion. The laguz could hear the panicked whirring of other birds taking off; maybe time for a break.

Once she was sure the pheasant was dealt with, she offered the bird to Barbara.]

Here. Your kill, too.

[Hmm. Barbara will have to keep this part of the forest in mind next time she goes hunting.

She gives a nod of thanks to Lethe as she takes the bird, thinking about the process of plucking and dressing and roasting the bird. There's plenty here for two.]

Barbara cook. We split.

[She starts back towards her camp. It's comforting to be around someone who knows fighting and hunting in this kind of raw, instinctive way. Barbara still isn't one to trust new people quickly, but Lethe being like this, and visibly not human, makes her feel more at ease.]

[The jump is what makes the whole picture click in Irhya's mind. She sees the armor, noting its similarity to certain other pieces of eld from Ishgard, and the polearm on her back, but it's the jump that makes her realize she's got to be a dragoon. An otherworldly one, but a dragoon all the same.

She has met some before, in other worlds. And she knows of her own, of course, but it hadn't occurred to her to use magic to try and replicate the same ability, where gravity is so strong it would otherwise have her planted firmly on the ground.]

...Barbara?

[She recognizes the face (and the moogle) from the network, peering over a bush to see what has become of her.]

Didn't quite stick the landing, huh?

[Familiar voice... oh, right. That other cat lady. Barbara dusts herself off, trying not to look like she's as embarrassed as she is to be caught eating the dirt like that.]

Yes. Barbara recognize face from phone window.

[She frowns at the air.]

At home, Barbara jump fine. New magic here, try use wind element. [.....] Difficult.

Glad you remember!

[Jump... it must be something like that, then. Irhya smiles, putting a hand on her hip.]

You're a dragoon, right? Perhaps landing will be easier if you use the wind under you to soften your descent, like a parachute. It seems we're at the mercy of gravity without our abilities, but I think you might be on the right track with that.

[Barbara doesn't hide her surprise when Irhya uses the word dragoon.

The technique she suggests seems sound, too--sounds like what Alisaie did to cushion their landings when they were hopping from shelf to shelf in the library--but the first matter is taking precedent in Barbara's thoughts now.]

You know dragoon?

Yes. There's a bunch of them in my world, though they seem to have turned out very different than most other worlds I've heard of that also have them.

[She smiles a little, having expected a bit of surprise there. Perhaps the whole "war against dragons" thing was the exception rather than the norm for otherworldly dragoons...?]

So, tell me about the ones in your world! Are there a lot of them? How did you get to be one?

[Her eyes widen. When her father was alive, the dragoons had been the pride of Deist, but she wouldn't have said there were so many of as to say a bunch of them.

And after the Empire's first betrayal? Well.]

Barbara last dragoon of Deist. [and as upsetting as the loss of her father was, there is a certain pride in the way Barbara declares that.] Father's drake raise Barbara. Wind drakes, Barbara family.

Oh... the last one?

[Her ears perk up.]

So that's why they're so precious to you, huh... I'm sorry to hear about your father, but I'm sure he'd be proud of you. Having to re-engineer your jump is tough under these circumstances, but you're making good progress!

Hmm... and to hear you have such a close relationship with dragons... that lines up with everything else I've heard of other worlds, too. But Ishgard's dragoons are a little different, at least up until very recently.

[Barbara wasn't expecting that response. Though, thinking about it, she's never had a response to expect. She's never had cause to tell anyone about the fate of her father and the dragoons before, even the Warriors of Light knew it already when they sought her out.

Irhya is still essentially a stranger to her. Her saying that Abel would be proud, and being encouraging is... something? It feels--well, it feels kind of nice.

She's not sure how to respond, so she gives a short nod.]

How Isghard different?

[She can't help but be curious about what dragoons of other worlds are like, after all.]

They engaged in a war against dragons, for about a thousand years of their history. All over a betrayal by those mortals the dragons had come to trust, no less. The techniques and battle styles of the dragoon were developed while fighting upon the backs of dragons, yes, but they eventually were turned against them in their crusade to conceal the truth.

[Irhya looks off into the distance, thoughtful.]

Dragons in my world are effectively immortal. So the conspirators killed one of members of the First Brood, hoping to partake of her eternal life. Her murder shattered the peace between them and incited the rage of her brother, who vowed a never-ending vengeance upon them for many generations to come.

And to think, the eternal life thing didn't even work out in the first place. It just made everything worse for their descendants.

[A war against dragons?!

Barbara's lip curls in disgust. She thinks of Avalon--not this place, but the Avalonian empire of Luxendarc, coming back ten years later to destroy the wind drakes after having wiped out the dragoons.

And to hear that the dragoons of Irhya's world were the ones to betray--that they turned against their own allies, used their skills against them--whatever the motivation, and what use is eternal life anyway, it's--it's--the sound Barbara makes is as close as a human throat can get to what a dragon would say about it. Human language isn't adequate.]

Vile.

[The noise does make her reel a little bit, though knowing what she knows, it isn't surprising. The depths of a dragon's sorrow and fury are like that, too; she can truly fathom neither.]

Yeah. It doesn't make a good bedtime story, that's for sure. The truth about it was hidden from the public for those thousand years, so once it came out, the most noble of them sought to make amends, in whatever capacity they could.

Things have smoothed over a little, and the war is over, but it came at the cost of a lot of blood, both dragon and human. Both of them are slowly unlearning their grudges, and have a stable relationship now.

[If she were to talk about the good aspects -- she thinks of kind Vidofnir swooping to save Maelie from a deadly fall; of Ehll Tou and her insatiable curiosity; of Marcelloix, who had long become a dragon heretic, longing to go home to his family only to eventually be accepted back into the fold.

In an effort to try and soothe Barbara's anger, she reaches out, puts a hand on her shoulder, and smiles.]

If you were raised by dragons, then yours is a unique perspective indeed. Your pride, your abilities, your history -- I hope you never lose those.

[A few sentences to explain a thousand years of blood, betrayal, and vengeance. Barbara both can and cannot picture it--language is a strange thing. But she finds herself curious about it. It will take time for the wind drakes to trust humans again in her own world. She wonders if it will ever be possible to visit Irhya's and see how the dragons and humans manage it there.

But the hand on her shoulder elicits a look of surprise, and Barbara stares at it. It's not an unfamiliar gesture. She would see Aigis give the other three a reassuring pat now and again, Sol jostling Aigis and Dusk, Sarah doing it as a quiet gesture of support after a tiring battle. But it wasn't something they did with her, specifically. They always seemed a little afraid of her, a little wary. Which was fair, because Barbara had attacked them before they proved their intentions.]

Barbara always proud. [Proud of her father, proud of the wind drakes, a justifiable pride in her own abilities and refusal to let the way of the dragoon die.] You--very friendly.

[That doesn't feel like quite the right word? She's not sure how to phrase it. Irhya has asked a lot of questions and given a lot of answers and seems--well, interested, even though there's no pressing reason for her to be. Just, interested because she is.]

[Even so, she gets the message anyway, grinning.]

Thanks. You know, when I first left my home to go adventuring... I wanted to be a lancer, myself. In the end, it didn't work out, so I ended up doing other things. But a part of me still has a little interest in it, I suppose.

[It's part of why Estinien so fascinates her, too, beyond the intensity of his former obsession. His skill with the lance is peerless -- hell, his skill in battle period is peerless. Now if only she could get him to stay in one place for more than a few days at a time...]

I can tell you've come a long way just by having spoken to you like this. If you ever fancy fighting alongside a dark knight, give me a call, yeah? I'd love to see you in action.

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In like a lion! Or dragon. Whatever.

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