Chapter Text
After the hurtful revelations from the dragon Hraesvelgr, Ysayle had sadly and reluctantly decided that the dragon’s cause could no longer be her own and that she must return to the world of Men where she belonged. Ysayle had returned to Tailfeather, where her foster-father Marcechamp had greeted her with open arms and thinly veiled relief that she had at last given up her lost cause and come home.
It was safer for her in Dravania. The Inquisition would not bother with hunting down one lone, rogue Heretic and her former comrades-in-arms among the other tribes of Heretics wouldn’t bother with her either. She’d blessed her former, dramatic self for taking on a new (overly dramatic) name to use in her new persona as “future leader of the Heretics” (or so she’d thought), so none of her people knew “Ysayle Dangoulain” was the same Lady Iceheart who’d founded Dragonvale and was known as the Daughter of Dragons. Thus, Ysayle was free to live under her own name, hidden from persecution in the Chocobo Forest.
:Now that my old purpose is laid aside, I must needs find a new way to live my life,: Ysayle thought to herself.
She’d spent so much of her time and energy before devoted to her cause of trying to expose the lies of the Holy See, that she had a hard time imagining a new path for her future to lead towards. Always before, Ysayle had thought she’d had a destiny, a set course that her life was fated to run. She would expose the lies of the Holy See, end the war, broker peace once more between Man and Dragon and live out the rest of her mortal days mimicking the fate of her former incarnation Shiva, living with Hraesvelgr as his dragon-bride in his lair at Sohr Kai. But now that her supposedly inevitable course of her life was destroyed, Ysayle was faced with a mortifying freedom of choice, and she was not certain at all what she wished to do with it.
:I could be anything…: Ysayle mourned to herself.
She’d always found a steady comfort in the fact that she had a destiny. She was special and chosen. That knowledge she carried in her heart had seen her through many a difficult or nigh impossible situation with confident equanimity. There was always the unconscious reassurance that it was all fated. Now however, Ysayle found that her formerly closed horizon had opened up, and she could travel wherever she wished, do whatever she wanted, and it was not settling well with her. Gone was the confidence of having a set course to her life, and she missed it. The freedom to be anything she wished was not so wonderful when she had no idea what it was that she wished to be.
:For now I suppose I’m just spinning my wheels in place,: she thought to herself.
Currently Ysayle split her time between helping her foster-father hunt down new birds in the Chocobo Forest (as well as training already caught birds to accept bit and bridle well enough to send them on for sale in Bentbranch Meadows in Gridania or to noble houses in Ishgard) and raising her personal fortunes by taking on Marks for Clan Centurio.
:Though turning a profit with Clan Cen is troublesome,: Ysayle acknowledged.
Clan Centurio only paid in scrips, and those scrips were only redeemable for the hunting gear, armor and other miscellaneous sundries they offered from their stores. It was all top of the line gear that made even knights look longingly at it, but it was still troublesome to save up scrips, buy the gear, travel to another town and try to haggle the best price she could get for it off-Market. Plus the teleportation fees ate into her profits.
:Even with all the fees, I’m amassing a more than sizeable chunk of wealth,: Ysayle thought a bit proudly.
She was spinning her wheels, unable to decide where to take her life next, but that didn’t mean that Ysayle was idle, lazing around and making her depression worse. Marcechamp advised that there was nothing like work to help a body through a rough patch (and her parents had often said the same) so Ysayle was splitting her time between “breaking and backing” (that was, training wild-caught chocobo’s to become tame mounts) fresh caught chocobos to enable them to be sold on to Bentbranch, and running hunts for Clan Centurio to cash in her scrips for armor and then sell the armor for a profit. Her foster-father was scrupulously fair, and paid her as much as he paid a regular Hunter for her work in Tailfeather, even though she was basically living under his shelter for free. Because of this, the pile of gil in her Item Bangle was growing fatter by the month while Ysayle continued her soul-searching.
:I’ve enough to afford a grand-sized plot with a farm and enough to build a good sized house on it just about anywhere in the Western Highlands,: Ysayle calculated.
The notion had it’s appeal, mainly because she came from a small village in Coerthas herself. The main problem was that with the climate change, farming in Coerthas was becoming ever more difficult as the growing season shortened year by year, and all the land worth growing on was already snapped up by Lords or their Vassals. Ysayle didn’t fancy buying a large plot of land and a nice house only to starve on it!
:I could even probably buy a flat in Ishgard if I wanted to, where the price of rents and real-estate is unbelievable!:
She could buy a double-flat, live in one and rent out the other for a profit and live off that. The problem there was that then she would be surrounded by Ishgardians! Not to mention, people would definitely notice, and talk, if she didn’t set foot in Church and Ysayle would first have to find a way to get rid of her Heretic Mark rather than just deactivating it (neutralizing the magic in it so that the Inquisition couldn’t use it to track her down) as she had.
:I don’t want to leave Coerthas entirely, but there must be something I can do. I can’t stay here living of Marcechamps generosity forever, and I don’t want to spend all my days as a Hunter.:
Coerthas might be a frozen over hell but it was her frozen-over hell. She loved Dravania, yes, but Coerthas was home!
:Add to that, I still might find someone, someday, and settle down and have a family,: she thought wistfully.
Ysayle had lost her home and her family in an avalanche when she’d still been quite young herself. Ever since then she’d always been (somewhat) on her own. Tailfeather was a fine enough place for a rough frontier camp and Marcechamp had taken her in and very clearly cared for her, but it still was not home to her. Anyx Trine and her dragon-friends that she’d made there had been the place where she had been trained in Dravanian magic by Vidofnir, but it, too, was not home. Deep in her heart, Ysayle longed for a place of her own, a place where she could feel that she belonged. Most of all, deep down, she wanted a home and a family of her own! She wanted a loving husband and to be surrounded by children of her own flesh and blood. She’d been alone in the world for so long, and she longed deeply and dearly for someplace where she might feel the warmth of companionship.
:Then again, with everything else… it’s equally hard to imagine someone, especially a Coerthan or an Ishgardian, being able to take everything that I am and still be in love with me.:
Ysayle wasn’t just a Heretic, she was the former leader of a whole settlement of heretics, which was sort of a point-of-no-return kind of deal so far as the Church was concerned. That wasn’t even mentioning all of the other unusual things about her; she’d been raised by dragons (essentially), she had Visions granted by the Echo (which every village-wife in Coerthas knew only showed up when bad things were about to happen in the world), she was an unrepentant Heretic who wouldn’t recant.
:And that’s not even mentioning the whole… Shiva… thing.:
The little bit she knew about Primals (and it was a very little bit because Dravania was isolated and the Church of Ishgard did not like to talk about Primals) said that they were all ancient gods worshiped by the savage beast tribes that dotted the land. There was a camp of Ixal near the border however they kept to themselves mostly, and any Primal-summoning-type quarrel they had with humans was directed at Gridania.
:As interesting as I find the notion of being able to transform into a Primal if I have access to enough concentrated aether, if I like living I’d better never tell anyone else about what I can do.:
Ysayle didn’t know exactly what anyone would say about it, but she did think that none of it would be viewed in a positive light.
:Not by the Church, certainly,: Ysayle thought.
A heretic who could turn into a Primal? They wouldn’t bother with the Witchdrop, they’d burn her at the stake to make sure the job was done! Ysayle knew well she’d used up most of her good luck for her next several lifetimes when she’d encountered that blue knight and he’d had enough decency in him to spare her life because she’d been unarmed and helpless at the time.
Ysayle sighed a little bit to herself. She longed to settle down to a peaceful life of some sort, with a good, strapping Coerthan man, but she just couldn’t imagine what her future life was supposed to look like, nor what kind of man she could settle down with who would be able to accept everything that she was!
:I think what this means is that I'm either going to take my chances with a heretic-boy and live my whole life on the run dodging Temple Knights and Inquisition blood-hounds. Or. I’m going to find a nice quiet village somewhere, find a nice, quiet village lad, and never ever share with him who and what I really am.:
Both of them sounded equally bleak to her, but Ysayle didn’t see any other choice.
:And out of the two of them… I think it would be best if I chose the latter,: she thought with a certain feeling of resignation.
Yes, it would mean hiding everything about herself; her past, her abilities, even her own dearly held convictions, but there was no way in the world some properly raised, Halone-fearing village man was going to be able to be okay with having a curse-sighted dragon-wife who was also a Heretic and that was just the end of it.
While Ysayle had been chewing over her choices for the future as she hunted (same as she had been for the past month) Ysayle had been continuing to track her Mark through the hills and valleys of the Dravanian Forelands. The tracks were growing clearer and fresher as she went, but it was still slow going on account that bandersnatches in general were twice as clever as foxes when it came to finding ways to hide their trail. She was having to use her dragonsight a lot more than with ordinary prey.
Ysayle had just passed a large thicket of brambles when she heard a small and plaintive sound come from within it. Curious, she turned her head to look and immediately spotted a large, fluffy white blotch thrashing about in the hedge.
:Did one of the Moogles get stuck again?: she wondered at first, then a second later she shook her head. :No that can’t be it, whatever is in there is waaay too big to be a moogle!:
Her next thought was that, judging by the size of it, it must be a chocobo. It wasn’t yellow, but there were other variations in color in the wild. Thinking that she’d lucked upon an easy pile of gil from her foster-father if she brought him home a fresh new chocobo to sell, Ysayle redirected course towards the thicket where the creature thrashed about, readying her lariat to make the capture. The creature in the hedge thrashed about even more violently as she approached. However it had gotten in there, it was now stuck in there good!
:And that’s good news for me, easy prey!: Ysayle thought cheerfully. :I might not even need to lasso it, just come up on it and slip on the noose.:
When she got closer to it and started weeding through the thicket, her legs protected by her thigh-high boots, she paused and looked at her prey in puzzlement.
:That’s certainly not a chocobo,: Ysayle thought, uncertain what to make of it. :Is that a sheep?:
It looked like a sheep… sort of. It was covered, not in fur but in a fluffy wool-like fiber that very much looked like a sheep, but nothing about the rest of the creature looked like any sheep that Ysayle had ever seen before. The noise it made was close to the sound that a sheep made, except instead of being a flat-sounding bleat, it was more like the noise made by a harmonica played by a raw beginner.
:And also, isn’t it too big to be a sheep?: Ysayle puzzled over it. :Why is its neck so long?:
She was no shepherdess and she hadn’t spent much time around sheep, but she was pretty sure that they were smaller, and shaped differently than this creature.
:Maybe it’s just some kind of oversized, Dravanian variety of sheep!: Ysayle thought, now fully prepared to have a large hunk of roast mutton for dinner.
Then she got close enough to see the creature’s face… it looked up at her with the widest, deepest, most soulful eyes she’d ever seen. It’s fluff, even with leaves and twigs in it, was the fluffiest fluff she’d ever seen, even more fluffy than a Moogle. It was the most adorable thing Ysayle had ever laid eyes on.
“S-S-So cuuute!” Ysayle exclaimed, her cheeks flushing and her heart going pitter-pat in her chest as she looked at the adorable creature thrashing about in the thicket.
“By the Fury’s flaming knickers, this is the cutest, most fluffy and adorable thing I have ever seen in all of my life!” she murmured to herself, heart filling up with avarice and a sudden need to cuddle its fluffy head to her bosom. “It’s so fluffy, I think that I shall perish of it!:
Ysayle, entranced and enraptured by the adorable creature, and really wanting to bring it home with her, naturally tried to help it free itself from the thicket. All thought of eating it for dinner had promptly fled upon seeing just how cute it was. It kicked and thrashed and bleated in a panic, but Ysayle was used to that sort of behavior from the entrapped chocobos in Tailfeather after they’d been freshly caught from the wild. After a few adjustments made for the unusual dimensions of the creature’s mouth and head, she had expertly slid the muzzle over its head and attached the lead which she anchored to a tree nearby. After she had the creature secured, she set to work on extricating it from the thicket. It was determined not to help her with that, of course. Once it was freed, it tried to bolt, springing away with a velocity Ysayle hadn’t seen in some time.
“Oh no!” she cried out in alarm.
Too late. The strength and velocity of its sudden spring to freedom was brought to an abrupt and final stop as the muzzle and lead she’d anchored to the nearby tree, sadly, twisted the unfortunate creature's neck. Ysayle looked down in sadness and a little horror at the adorable thing she’d wanted to make into her new little pet.
:It was so cute, all I wanted to do was help it. And maybe bring it home with me. And dress it in some ribbons, and comb it’s pretty fluff…:
Ysayle felt sad and disappointed to be so suddenly bereft of her newfound and delightful pet. She was sure that, if she could have gotten it back to camp, she could have tamed it down in no time.
When she dragged it out to get a closer look at it she could only cock her head to the side and frown in puzzlement.
:What the hell is this thing?: she wondered to herself.
It was larger than a sheep (a bit more than half again the size of a good-sized ram). Its legs were much longer, putting it further off the ground, and its body was longer too. It had a really long neck, but the head was shaped similar enough to a sheep that Ysayle thought that maybe it might be some kind of mutant Dravanian variant of sheep after all. She reached down to lift its body and that was when she felt its coat.
:Oh. My. Fury…: she breathed in quiet wonder.
Even as a wild specimen with no grooming whatsoever, this creature (whatever it was) had absolutely the most softest fluff she had ever touched in all of her life! It was like if wool and silk had had a baby! Unable to quite believe that it was as soft as it felt, Ysayle brought her cheek to it and rubbed against the fiber. It was incredible!
:I need to make this into a pair of mittens, right now!: she thought in amazement and delight.
Then she paused and the world seemed to slow down as an idea occurred to her. What if this creature was not the only one of its kind? What if there were more like it? What if there were more fluffy creatures with wool that was softer than anything she’d ever felt before? What if… what if she could get more of them, like a whole herd of them, and raise them like sheep?
:This wool is… incredible!: Ysayle thought, unable to stop petting the creature even though it was definitely deceased and so therefore that was a little bit weird. :Normal wool is so harsh and scratchy that its many other benefits, like the water-wicking and warming insulation, are all but outweighed by how unpleasant and itchy it is to actually wear on your body. What if I sold a wool that had all of the advantages of wool plus it was soft and delightful to touch as well? A wool with all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks?:
Coerthas had just recently gotten harsher, colder, much longer winters because of the Calamity two years ago. As a result of this climate change in Coerthas, the market for winter goods had exploded. Ishgard in particular was renowned for having a very wealthy upper class that liked to spend obscene amounts of money on fancy new clothes that they wore for a season and then never looked at again.
:I know for a fact that the price of wool in Ishgard has shot upwards, especially among the nobility. They don’t even try to stick up their noses about wool being “for commoners” everyone in Coerthas, from the highest to the lowest, wears wool in the winter if they can get it! What if I introduced this special silky type of wool as a completely new product on the market and aimed it at the wealthy Nobles with too much money?:
Ysayle was no merchant, but her foster-father kind of was (he had to sell his birds to Bentbranch and often on to the Alliance Companies as well). Marcechamp had always told her that new things, if they were talked about enough, always excited interest, in part because they were new and in part because of a perceived rarity. That was partly why he was always on the lookout for rare variants of chocobo in the woods, and paid an extra bonus to hunters who brought back birds with new colors and conformations. She was no merchant, but she’d bet her whole savings that this lovely silky-soft wool would not take long at all to catch on in Ishgard, and furthermore, if she were the only one selling it and thus possessed a monopoly on the market for it…
:I’d make an absolute killing!: she thought.
As if it had been conjured by the Mother Crystal Herself, Ysayle suddenly had a vision in her minds eye about a potential new future path for her to walk. Wide, fenced-in fields surrounding the pastures where she’d grow and tend a large flock of her exotic new wool-critters. A beautiful shepherds croft of her own, with a warm hearth to cook at and perhaps a handsome, strapping Coerthan shepherd man to warm her nights with… and someday, a family all her own. A home all her own.
She wanted it. She wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything; more than peace in Coerthas and an end to the Holy See’s lies, more than a place in the world at her dragon’s side.
:Forget about dragons and grand destinies!: Ysayle thought, already sick to death of being toyed with by secret powers and World Crystals.
As far as she was concerned, Hydaelyn had already destroyed her life enough, She could just go pick on someone else and leave Ysayle alone to her nice peaceful life!
:My nice peaceful life with some hot hunk of a shepherd man and a home of my own and a family that’s rolling in gil!: she amended with a smile.
What was a crusade to expose the lies of the Holy See when compared to the thought of a herd of the most adorable creatures she’d ever seen in her life and a lovely home all of her own?
:Nothing, that’s what!: Ysayle thought, as she cast Float on the large not-a-sheep so that she could carry it back to Camp Tailfeather easily.
Her mind did hit on one potential snag, however.
:I know how to hunt just fine, even dangerous Marks for Clan Cen are little trouble to me, however, I know almost nothing of farm life unless it involves chocobos.:
She had experience with training wild-caught chocobos to accept bit and bridle, but she had next to no idea about anything to do with herding sheep, nor did she know how herding these larger (presumably faster) new breed of wooly creatures would be any different from that.
:There’s some that’s sure to be learn-as-I-go, but I should get the lay of the land first before I commit to the hunt,: Ysayle decided. :Hmm… but where would I learn all about herding sheep?:
Well the obvious answer to that question was “from a shepherd” of course!
:The closest shepherds I know of all live in the wool-producing village near the border in Central Coerthas. What was it called again? Ferndale?:
She could go there and spend some coin to have someone show her the ropes for a little while. She could treat it as a training exercise and an opportunity to make an informed choice about what she’d be letting herself in for before she fully committed to her idea of building a shepherd’s croft and making her own herd of these new creatures to herd and produce wool.
:And even if I do decide that the shepherds life is not for me, it’s not like I can’t make money off this creature still, in the same fashion that my foster-father does with his chocobos: Ysayle added to herself.
Marcechamp caught wild chocobos, tamed them just enough to sell them to Bentbranch, who would do all the work of refining their training as well as adding it in as new breeding stock if the bird showed potential. Marce made his money off the original sale, though Bentbranch Stables did make more money in the long run by selling their well-trained, champion-bred chocobo’s to the rest of Eorzea. Marcechamp wasn’t interested in the kind of time it took to breed and refine the birds, he preferred to hunt them and sell them on, even if it meant a lesser profit for him. He just wasn’t interested in being a breeder or in training them any further than the minimum it took to make the beasts transportable. Ysayle could do much the same as her father if she wished; create a market for this new wool, get herders interested in buying these beasts from her, and then simply catch them and sell them on to people who were willing to spend the time tending and shearing them for wool. She’d make less profit overall than if she bred them, herded them, and sold the wool herself, but if she didn’t like herding then this was still a good alternative.
:Herding seems like it would be the best, most profitable thing for me, but that’s only because I know nothing about it,: Ysayle thought cautiously.
Just like life as a minstrel-adventurer seemed like a life of fun and derring do, but in reality was filled with scant meals, hard roads and penny-pinching patrons.
:And before I start counting my chickens before I’ve even seen the eggs,: Ysayle reminded herself. :I’ll need to know if there’s more of these beasts and where I can find them. I’ll go and ask Marcechamp if he’s ever run across them, or failing that, I can always consult Vidofnir. If the creatures are native to Dravania, she’s bound to have hunted them at some point in the last few centuries!: