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@solairelunaire.bsky.socialSep 29, 2026, 5:30 PM

day 28 - on thin ice

the arcadion lore tidbit on how the simulacra party members are made from your wol's memories drove me feral...i stayed up until 4 AM writing 2k+ words 😭
also got to practice writing new tyrant characterization!

ellipsus.com/read/7Kh2Gxx...

#solairewrites | #ffxivwrite2026

@solairelunaire.bsky.socialSep 25, 2026, 4:58 PM

day 24 - drift
the kid yves torment nexus, continued again from day 13 (bsky.app/profile/sola...). CW: cursed gridanian childhood emotional trauma, harm to animals, themes of animal death

ellipsus.com/read/Vyh3rZJ...

#solairewrites | #ffxivwrite2026 | #yveslore

There should have been something Yves could say to Father to make him stop, if only he were more clever, more strong, more like the sylphs of Little Solace or the robins nesting in the trees above. But he had pleaded for the summer to never end, and still winter came. He had pleaded for the elementals to say just one word to him, and still they remained silent. No one else was here except for Fig, whose glossy black eyes widened in alarm when Father lurched towards him. The chubby ram could never hope to outrun a man who tracked and chased antelope for a living. His father yanked the sheep to the ground by the scruffy wool of his neck and rolled him on his side. With every bleat, a vice squeezed tighter around Yves's head. "I..." Fig's bony little legs flailed in the air. "I don't." Yves could hardly hear himself over the grunts of the karakul, while his father pinned it down with a knee astride the body. Father's hand wrapped around Fig's curled horn with the same firm confidence as he would pick up any chisel or axe. Its width fit perfectly in his tensed palm. "Please!" Only when Father's masked face tilted towards him did Yves realize he'd spoken aloud instead of mouthing his silent prayers. "What is it?""W-what if we go to the rites this month and it's not enough?" The ground beneath him seemed fuzzy and indistinct, as if he were staring through a heat haze. "I don't want to look—I don't want the elementals to be mad at me, they'll hate me even more. I don't want to do this any longer...!" Yves's eyes clamped shut. His body tensed and shrunk and he wanted to keep shrinking until the sound of his father's voice was as vast and meaningless as thunder. He braced himself and kept bracing. But instead of the lash of words he expected, Father laughed. It was how the Guardian Tree might laugh, if trees could laugh—a low, groaning chuckle that raised in pitch as he let out more dry wheezes. Yves had never realized that Father could even make such a noise when the closest he ever came to laughter was letting out a few exhaled chuffs in conversations with other woodcutters. Yves blinked and he was still there, stooped over Fig's fluttering belly, looking up beyond the sky. When his shoulders stopped shuddering, Father twisted to face Yves again. "Do you think I wanted to do this at your age, boy? Do you believe that you or I have a choice?" It had not truly occurred to Yves that there was a time that Father did not look or sound or act like he had for all of Yves’s short life. It had also not occurred to him that Father could have wanted not to look or sound or act like Father does, and still ended up this way. When Yves could not answer, the man hunched over Fig's head once more and pulled it back by the horn. The way that Father’s right hand drifted over the grey skin of the sheep’s neck was gentle yet searching, fingertips sweeping for an unseen point.
@solairelunaire.bsky.socialSep 19, 2026, 3:45 PM

day 18 - reason
i'm sorry unhinged haunted yves/tyrant teaser snippets just overtook me after the short story. i remain down with the sickness

ellipsus.com/read/Xqfh5dq...

#solairewrites | #ffxivwrite2026

“Even my work as a hunter became…tedious. Trivial. Merely dispatching beasts could never test my limits and grant the fulfillment I sought. And it was not until I dedicated myself to the Arcadion that I found satisfaction in my reason for—” At the sight of Yves, Arkose pauses. “How do you remind me so much of him?” Yves doesn’t ask the question so much as he sighs it, the words fading into a gauzy, dreamlike stupor. If Arkose’s eyes were closed he would assume by tone of voice that Yves was making some uncharacteristic romantic overture. But his eyes are not closed, and before him is the wide-eyed, unblinking stare of a bird of prey about to strike. For all his formidable presence in the arena, the unenhanced warrior never reached the point of desperation in combat—not as Arkose and the heavyweight fighters were to create a worthy champion and a cure, not as Black Cat and Wicked Thunder were to save their family’s souls. In this moment, Yves looks starved for something of even greater weight. The realization that he is looking at Arkose to sate that hunger does not fill him with excitement, but with enough dread that his hand instinctually twitches for his scythe. “I…never mind.” And in the next breath, whatever reverie had taken hold of Yves is gone, leaving only a withdrawn Eldite man curled up on Arkose’s couch. Common sense dictates that Arkose should cast the image of the eternal grand champion ready to apparently rip out his windpipe aside, and move on to more pleasant affairs. Why pry further into the man’s past when Arkose has all that one could ever desire from the savior of the Arcadion— “Who is this ‘him’ that you speak of?”
@solairelunaire.bsky.socialSep 14, 2026, 4:18 PM

day 13 (make-up) - ignorance is bliss
a direct continuation from my day 11 fill.
CW: discussion of hunting, animal death
(i worry that i'm overplaying my hand with so much build-up but we love traumatizing tension in this household)

ellipsus.com/read/6X1HtmZ...

#solairewrites | #ffxivwrite2026

Yves's father put his foot up on the lower rung of the fence and pushed himself over it. His boots landed with a dull thud against the dried soil. The thick leather apron he wore flapped against his body, its pockets weighed down with something inside. "You come inside the pen as well," Father said, stretching his hand out to Yves. Father's hands were always calloused—often, Yves would reach for them and feel the grit of sawdust or a spot of wood stain or dye, transferred to his own fingers. He'd never seen them look so clean before. The fence took longer for Yves to climb over, and Fig the karakul grew more agitated as they both towered over him. The rotund sheep stomped on the earth and grumbled at their presence. "Father, I don't think he knows it's me with this mask on." Yves scratched the back of his head, and his nails traced the leather knot holding the wood in place. "Can't I just—" "No." His father's voice cracked through the air, as urgent of a warning as an arrow flying by his cheek. "No matter what happens, you are not to take off that butcher's mask until I tell you to! Do you realize how much woodsin will leech into you if you don't?" Yves jerked back, pulling his hands to his sides. The sudden movement startled Fig and with every bleat and rapid blink of the sheep's black, shining eyes, Yves's chest constricted. "W-why would we do something to him that made the woodsin worse? Fig's just a karakul, he didn't hurt anyone!"Father sucked in a slow, hissing breath through his teeth, and Yves winced. That sound was the thunder before a levinstrike in any of his father's moods. "In all that we do in the Twelveswood, we bring woodsin to ourselves. Whether I chop wood, or your mother harvests from the garden, the elementals remain impartial to our intent. They only know that we have cut something down. That is why we all attend the cleansing rites every moon." Father took a step closer. Yves had no hooves or horns, no way of stomping or voicing complaint, and so he could only arch his neck up to meet the man's eyes. "Taking an animal's life...is much the same. What the sheep, and the antelope, and the squirrels do for us is a great honor. Without their meat and bones we'd waste away. So we must send it off properly, and use every part of its carcass." "But even if I can't hear the trees and plants, I can hear him," Yves whispered. "I can talk to the karakul and they 'baa' at me..." "Son." His father knelt down and the immediate closeness of his deep brown mask—its surface noseless and mouthless—was more unnerving than if he'd towered ten fulms above Yves. "We will treat it well. It's lived a good life at Etienne's. The karakul were born for this purpose, just as every being in the wood has its purpose to play in the Matron's design." Did the Hearers tell Father that at the rites? Could the oldest ones, like the Padjals, speak to Nophica or the Twelve as well? Yves tried to grasp for the words to a question, but before he could open his mouth, Father stood back up and pulled something from one of his apron pockets: a honing steel grasped in one hand, while the other held a fulm-length knife. "I will handle the sheep in the beginning. Just watch to begin with, and follow my instructions." He swiped the knife's blade over the steel, and between the sound of wind and birdsong a metallic scritch-scritch-scritch rang out in the grove. "You don't have to worry about him feeling pain. It'll be too quick to realize." That was the closest that Father came to giving reassurance before he pocketed the knife and steel, and walked steadily towards Fig. "What if…" Yves coughed, his throat dry and tight despite trying to swallow his spit. "If we just eat the plants, or just hunt the bad animals like the jackals instead? I don’t want to—" His father turned back and stared. His dark brown eyes blended into the shadows behind the mask, forming lightless holes. "Then you will be without supper today, and the next. You cannot fill your stomach on wishes."
@solairelunaire.bsky.socialSep 12, 2026, 6:00 PM

day 11 - oblivion
i ran out of time before getting into any of the graphic bits, but here's a rent-lowering shotgun blast of yves's gridanian childhood pt. 2.
CW for allusions to animal slaughter

ellipsus.com/read/3bt56Lo...

#solairewrites | #ffxivwrite2026

Yves was ten summers of age when his father gave him his first of the special masks. It was carved and sanded to rest perfectly on the bridge of his short nose and over the roundness of his face, covering all but his eyes with maple wood. He raised it toward the sky and the noonday sun shone through the eyeholes. "Thank you...is this a Wood Wailer's mask, father? Why is it painted so dark?" "Helps with any stains." Father nodded in his usual, terse manner—it was more of a sharp jerk of the head he used to dispell any questions. "Put it on and follow me." Yves fumbled with the leather cord on the back of the mask as he walked after Father, finally pulling it taut and tying a knot to keep the mask in place. The grown man's steps stretched so long that Yves trotted to keep up. Eventually Father halted at the side of their hut, where a wooden pen was staked into the ground by the garden plot. A high-pitched bleat made Yves dash to the fenceposts, and he crouched to meet the wide, round eyes of a black karakul standing in the opposite corner of the pen. One of its horns was broken off at the tip, while the ends of its wool had grown shaggy and slightly curled at the edges. "You brought Fig here!" Yves pawed with his hand through the gaps in the fencing. "Come over, Fig.""We're not here to play with it, Yves." Father's voice was always low and steady, like a boat gliding over still waters. The strangely muffled tone pulled Yves's attention from the sheep—only to see that Father had put on a nearly identical mask to his own. "...Didn't Etienne tell you he'd be culling this one soon?" he muttered. "No. He didn't say anything like that when I was over to clean up after the sheep," Yves replied. Father stared at Fig while the karakul ram kept looking between them, its jaw working up and down to chew more cud. Yves rubbed at his wrists and shifted from knee to knee. It failed to make the silence any more comfortable. A quiet huff of breath was the only acknowledgement that Father gave him, until another few seconds passed. "You're old enough now to do more of my work." Father observed this with the same slow, deliberate tone he used when describing the rings in a tree stump, or the passage of the seasons. "So you will help me send this lamb off and butcher it today." Yves knew very well that the things around him had endings—deaths—like a crushed hornet that had entered the hut, or a squirrel caught in the jaws of a serpent. He did not know what it meant to be their cause. "But...Etienne told me that when his sheep go away, they go somewhere they can't come back from. And that's why he always has to trade for more. Because...some day they'll all leave, and never come back." Fig was right there, with the little collar and brass bell he always wore. “Can’t we just bring him to Etienne again? Then he can stay—” "Somewhere is here, and some day is now."
@solairelunaire.bsky.socialSep 11, 2026, 8:51 AM

day 10 - upbraiding
time to uncover more of why yves is the way he is, starting from his cursed gridanian childhood :)

ellipsus.com/read/6w5YsQC...

#solairewrites | #ffxivwrite2026 | #yveslore

“Again. Properly, this time.” The boy’s breaths grew shallow as he forced his lungs to hold still. No matter how his chest grew tangled and knotted with tension, or his knees went numb under his weight, he had to keep listening. Not to his own stubborn heartbeat. Not the dry rasp of the leaves above him, stirred by the wind. Not the shrill whistle of the larks. Not the scratching of squirrel or opo-opo claws over bark, or the snap of twigs. Not the dull buzz of beetles hovering with little wings. The wooden cane in his clasped hands was damp with sweat from his palms. Where was it? If the elementals were in every leaf and branch and flower, then why, why was there so much stupid noise— “Enough. Stop trembling.” Mother’s voice creaked like the crown of an oak in a storm. “You truly…couldn’t hear any of them?” Yves wheezed as he took his first full breath after ten minutes. Trying to stand from where he knelt only led to a radiating sensation of prickling where the numbness used to be, like a swarm of biting ants dancing over his calves. “A-at least you should try to use conjury again. Go on!” Mother stooped down beside him and rolled up her sleeves, revealing a small gash on her right forearm. It was barely the length of his thumb. Yves found it easier to stare at the thin, pink line than to look up at her face. “Hold your cane and focus on the wound. Imagine it whole again, matching my left arm like this.” Her skin was tanned and rough from working the garden, and Yves squinted to blur the edge of his vision to keep looking at the proper spot instead. He pointed the cane lower toward the cut, trying to connect something invisible and intangible between their bodies with nothing more than a piece of wood and positive thinking. The air around them kept blowing in unpredictable gusts. The itch of his bangs being swept towards his eyes was far clearer than any feeling or voice he’d felt that could be called elemental. Not that either—he had to fix it, to fix her, to keep watching until it was fixed. Yves thought any possible change would be better than the waste his attempted communing and conjuring had been for the last six moons. Then, Mother shrieked. “Stop!” Her hand lashed out like a striking serpent and knocked the cane from his clammy grip. “What did you do?!” The thumb-sized cut had swollen outward as if it were encased in a misshapen crimson boil. Instead of knitting together, the skin was reshaped like a pile of melting wax until it blended into the arm again at the edges. “I didn’t—I was trying to do what you told me,” Yves whispered. His useless body shuddered again. The nausea in his belly started to churn and climb. “To use my aether with the cane and fix it…!” “Don’t be daft! What kind of curing spell, even from a child, could go wrong like this?” Mother’s left hand covered the wound as she withdrew her arms. Even out of sight, the inflamed red on her skin remained seared into Yves’s vision. “Every day I’ve prayed to the Matron, every moon we dance the rites and give the offerings, and you still cannot hear nor heal,” she cried. Mother was too small like this, hunched over and wrapping her arms around her chest while she sat before him. “Why, why can’t…?” Yves reached out until his fingers stopped ilms short of the curtain of long, brown hair falling over her face. "I’ll keep trying, I promise, the conjurer at Hawthorne Hut said I could keep tryin—” The whites of Mother’s eyes snapped up and met his own. “How many times will you keep saying that? How many times have you been deaf to their words?” He opened his mouth. No sound came. The din of the woods scraped against his ears, songs and chirps and howls, all signifying nothing.