A-little-bit-more-than-six-sentence Sunday!

The newly-wakened Sphene convalesces in the Backrooms - but common ground can raise spectres as well as opportunities.

#zeffic #sixsentencesaturday

This is a little piece I wrote for ffxivwrite2024 focusing on G'raha in his Forum Speaker days. I'm planning on going back and giving it a tidy up one day - it could do with another editing pass - but it's one that I'm overall very proud of.

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/586299...

#zeffic #zefraha

It is a heady baptism, to rouse in the arms of a slumbering storm. He has slept but a moment - so tells the still-slick salt on his skin and hers, and her chest still heaving gently in quiescence. Yet he awakens renewed; body tingling with the pleasant ache of exertion - even his deadened limb of crystal seems to pulse faintly with the rhythm of her breath. Some lost fool’s pathetic fallacy, perhaps - but he cleaves to it like a mariner devout to his own superstitions, for he never thought to be so blessed. Here at the calm center, he drifts, drunk on sensation, and charts the subtle movements of her body in repose. The delicious tremble of long limbs, sheened and spent. The drift of her unbound hair tangled about them, matted and damp with exertion, pale ends brushing against him in a kiss of careless spray. The rosy flush of heated blood aglow beneath the seastorm of her skin - how could a mere blush, chased across cheeks and chest, be so profoundly erotic to him? And yet more than all of these it is her dreaming smile that draws him - slight and tremulous, unpractised…but with a hint of pride in its satisfied, bruised curl.

Sure as any storm, she has no sense of her own power. Least of all that first time, days past: she had broken the lashes of her own self-despite and reached out her hand to him - and truth be told, he had almost failed to grasp it; his mind and body racked and frozen at the fathomless impossibility of such a thing: breathless, awed. With skin turned stone, that had not tasted rain for a hundred long years - of course he stood at bay, fearful that a single drop might shatter him entire. Of course he drank deep, regardless, and was swept away.

Distant thunder licks from her throat as she stirs. He answers in kind, leaning in to breathe the sultry scent of her; heavy and heady and maddening, elusive as petrichor. The brush of his lips rouses her like the careless whistle of a sailor, and her eyes meet his at the challenge: a flicker of argent lightning on a dark horizon, pregnant with immanence. He bathes in the lambent fulgur of her gaze, his body pliant in willing paralysis as she rolls him on to his back: enfolding, immersing, her hair streaming about him like a curtain of fog. Her every movement is deliberate as the recitation of an ancient lay; she scarce knows the words, but the rhythm is writ into her - the slow roll of an ocean swell. There is no tact; no subtlety, no skill in her grasping hands and chasing mouth; only instinct, squalling hunger, and a desperate need to pull him closer, pull him under. Which is as well, for his only wish is to drown, with her and in her, again and again and again; a twined tempest, from which they might both emerge reborn.

Tempest
September 2024

Mature, wc. 499

I forgot about this! A fragment from ffxivwrite2024. It's very small (& maybe a bit on the similar side to 'Cutting Corners') but it is a Thing I Wrote™, so I'm just dropping it here in its entirety 🥰

#zefstory #zeffic #wolgraha #ffxivwriters #ffxivfanfic

Title card: Zefiris and G'raha in the Pendants, viewed from the shoulders up. Laying on top of her, G'raha cages her with his hands; Zefiris reaches up to stroke his hair. His forehead is pressed against her cheek, but despite their proximity, their intimacy, he looks away from her with an anguished expression, lost in his own thoughts; she stares at him, barely a breath between them as she tries to reach him through his reverie. 'Cutting Corners' sfw, wc. 856 Experience counts for little, under the thrall of that ocean swell. The seasoned drown as swiftly as the novice. But they navigate together, now.

Cutting Corners
September 2022/August 2023

Mature, angst, character study.
wc. 856.

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/49520773

#zefstory #zeffic #wolgraha #ffxivwriters #ffxivfanfic

Title card for a fic. The Exarch stands in the Ocular, hand raised to his chest, as though reaching for something concealed under his robe. Text: 'Bolt', sfw, wc. 4352 ...a dull ringing sound, loud in the empty silence of the site; she'd caught something with the toe of her boot, kicking it across the floor. 'Wherever it's come from,' she thought, 'I hope it wasn't an essential component.' A tale of a misplaced token; a token of a treasured tale.

Bolt
September 2022/August 2023

Gen, fluff.
wc. 4,352

A tale of a misplaced token; a token of a treasured tale.

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/49453096

#zefstory #zeffic #wolgraha #ffxivfanfic #ffxivwriters

A title card, showing a long shot of the Crystarium under a night sky. 'Triptych' I. Homecoming 2. Veracity 3. Break a Leg Three tales from the Crystarium, on the Scion's return from the Tempest.

Triptych
Sep 2022/Apr 2023

Gen, character study

Three linked tales from the Crystarium, following the Scion's return from the Tempest.

I. Homecoming wc. 4241
2. Veracity wc. 2765
3. Break a Leg wc. 1358

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/46222519

#zefstory #zeffic #wolgraha #ffxivwriters #ffxivfanfic

Title card for a fic. A post-apocalyptic scene showing four figures, battle-ready and wearing facemasks. G'raha Tia stands in the foreground, raising a bow of allagan make. Behind him stands Biggs III, Ironworks chief; in front of them kneels a white-haired auri woman, and further back, a highlander man gestures forward with a blade. Text: 'Quarry' Mature - wc. 4842 - Dark Future series 'Might have known it would be this lot,’ Farah sighs, as she straightens out the body. G’raha bends to assist. Whatever life he’d known in the past, he hadn’t shied from the fouler work that fell to the Ironworks crew - and that was just as well. In the 8th Umbral Era, attacks on the Ironworks are frequent...but one raiding party in particular earns G'raha's attention.

Quarry

September - December 2024
wc. 4,842

Mature, CW: violence, mild gore.

Part 3 of my 'Dark Future' series
🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/61561042

Link to series so far:
🔗 archiveofourown.org/series/4420735

#zefstory #rahastory #zeffic #darkfuture #grahatia #ffxivwriters #ffixvfanfic

G'raha Tia sits propped against a rock, book in hand - taking an unwise nap in the full glare of the afternoon sun. A figure, viewed from behind, approaches him. Title Card text: 'Turn a Blind Eye'. 'From the corner of her eye, a flash of bold colours - instantly she is poised, ready for an attack by a great lake cobra, or a rutting hippogryph buck...but a second glance tells her, to her dismay, that it's nothing near so manageable as that.' sfw, word count 1803.

Turn a Blind Eye
September 2023

Gen, wc. 1803.

The Warrior of Light encounters a problem on her afternoon patrol. Takes place in the same period as 'Friends', before the assault on the Labyrinth.

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/49947874

#zefstory #zeffic #ffxivwriters #ffxivfanfic #wolgraha

Missed a tag on this one 😅
#zeffic

Tataru and Minfilia in the reception area of the Waking Sands. Minfilia, cup of tea in hand, gives Tataru a look of appeal. Tataru, her arms folded, looks away, perturbed. Text: Reticent Gen, wc. 1562 ‘In the end, we have no choice. We need her abilities. But I would prefer if our relationship were as painless as possible...and she seems very alone.’ The Antecedent and the Receptionist discuss the Scion's newest recruit.

Reticent
October 2024

Gen, wc. 1,562.
Written for FfxivWrite2024.

The Antecedent and the Receptionist discuss the Scion's newest recruit.

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/60090958

#zefstory #zeffic #ffxivwriters #ffxivfanfic

An image of a road through the deep forests of the Black Shroud, evening sunlight falling through the trees. Text overlay: Gen, wc. 2,012, character study. The birds are content in their rolling gait, needing no instruction, so he risks an instant’s glance away from the road, over his shoulder towards her. Face veiled by a tumbling fall of lank hair, the obscure reflection of her glasses is her only feature. Not that her face often tells a tale he can easily descry - but he tries. He tries. A trader reflects on his relationship with his daughter.

Steer
(Sep 2024)

Gen, wc. 2012, character study.

A trader reflects on his relationship with his daughter.
Written for FfxivWrite2024.

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/59873716

#zefstory #zeffic #elezen #duskwight #ffxivoc #ffxivwriters #ffxivfanfic

Zefiris, looking to camera, with the city of Amaurot as a backdrop.

Zefiris and G'raha, in his Exarch's robes, sitting nestled together in the shade of a tree on a bright afternoon in the Crystarium.

Zefiris and G'raha, present day, looking toward the horizon hand in hand.

Hi all, Zef here! Please check out the tags below for:

🍃 #zefstory for Zef's story! All VNs will be under this tag
🍃 #zeffic for prose fics only
🍃 #zeflore for qotd/quiz/etc answers
🍃 #zefAU for AU VNs/fics
🍃 #zefspice for nsfw (rare but it happens!)

🔽 Zef-feed! 🔽
bsky.app/profile/did:...