Chapter Text
Evrard is not particularly attached to his heritage. He has no great desire to burrow (in fact he feels slightly claustrophobic in any space where he can’t stretch out fully), feels no urge to collect rocks no matter how shiny they are, and has never once entertained any thoughts of drawing on the walls. Alchemy and witchcraft—the pomanders Duskwights are known for—hold no allure for him. He feels only the usual faint unease in Gridania, on account of the obviously grey shade of his skin and whether the Wailers might take offense. (And he will be happy to explain, at length, why they have made an error in judgement. Despite the difference in garb, they are very much like the Temple Knights, and as easily cowed.) He doesn’t even like Mun-Tuy sauce, and the idea of making alcohol out of it makes him feel ill. In short, he’s not a very Duskwight-y Duskwight.
But the moon rises, and night falls, and he leaves the house for a walk.
By now he’s made a routine out of it. Out the door, up the stairs to the landing, a wave to any neighbors who might be out barbecuing or socializing (brief contact only; he never feels like being friendly on these walks), and over the walkway that leads above and behind Vidofnir’s Wings to a block of apartments. If he badly needs to think, sometimes he makes it as far as the pools.
Tonight he doesn’t need to think. Tonight he needs to move, and he isn’t sure why. If it was only ordinary energy—well. Busari is very happy to wear him out. But this is something different, some instinct of the longer nights and earlier sunsets.
We are supposed to be nocturnal. He remembers his father telling him that when he didn’t want to get out of bed on the morning. It had always been a tone that said I don’t want to be awake either, but what can you do? He wonders, now, if it had been the demands of the shop or some primal instinct that had always kept him up long after dusk. (Part of him also wonders if lack of sleep had hastened his parents’ deaths. He pushes that thought away.)
He keeps walking. It’s a leisurely pace, affording him time to study the neighborhood. His gaze roams over the lawns and the houses attached to them (by the Fury, is that entire house shaped like a moogle?) but he absorbs nothing. His mind is a pleasant blank even as his ears catalogue each familiar noise in the night. All he knows is that this—being outside in the night air, the darkness a comforting velvet shroud around him—feels right. It’s certainly a balm to his eyes, which ache in bright light until he must wear sunglasses.
After a thoughtful moment—remembering faintly that it’s been said his people have the sharpest hearing of any spoken race—he closes them entirely, and lets his ears guide him back home. Focuses only on the sound of his footfalls, the crackle of fires, the sighing of the night air, and how they inform the space around him. He can’t see a thing, but noises in the night sketch the edges of his world just as well.
He makes it home unscathed. Maybe he’s more of a Duskwight than he thought.