Chapter Text
As far as her memory goes, Aloy was four when she saw another girl for the first time.
It was right in the middle of the summer. Of this, she is sure – she remembers the hot dampness in the air, the sort that sticks to your skin when the woods seem to breath in, breath out in unison. The soil was warm with soft leaves against her bare feet. She had managed to slip past Rost’s watchful eyes somehow – or so she had thought – and wandered to the nearest spring. She just wanted to cool off a bit. That was when she saw her.
Even as an outcast, Aloy had met other people. In the distance, at least. She had met imposing bearded men, walking in groups with spears always a little too close at hand. She had met women, gray-haired and stoic or white-haired and frail, such as Grata, picking berries and herbs and – once Aloy had even watched one of them shoot down a bird from a branch with a single arrow.
Somehow, she had assumed people always came in these two types – and always tall and staunch and complete with lives. She knew they were like Rost, of course. But she had yet to realize they were like her too.
The girl was just across the river.
She was kneeling on a bank of sand and rocks, filling a leather canteen. Pale and short. The sunlight pouring from the canopy of trees reflected on her golden hair. She seemed just like Aloy, maybe a little bigger. It probably had rained the day before because Aloy remembers the violence of the current, the only thing keeping her from getting closer.
Aloy watched unnoticed as the girl filled and emptied the canteen, again and again, chirping words to herself in a rhythmical cadence that Aloy recognized as a song. Her voice was pretty, even drowned by the noise of the river. The girl seemed relaxed and happy, and something without a name started growing roots inside Aloy’s chest.
She thought, She is just like me.
And then, Does she like pink summer berries too?
Well, did she? Did this girl like her enjoy watching the colors blend and change in the sunset, how the clouds themselves soaked on them like cloth on wet dye? Would this girl like her be amazed by the fuzzy black and yellow caterpillars that sometimes appeared outside her window, only to disappear in a little house for weeks? Did this girl like her wondered what forces made a machine move, what invisible cogs allowed them to run even when no one was paying attention?
Tall people such as Rost didn't understand these little things, but Aloy was sure this girl would.
Soon the questions started travelling backwards: Could she, Aloy, learn the song the girl was singing? Aloy didn’t know many songs – Rost taught her only a humming worship melody to the All-Mother that didn’t sound at all like what she was listening now.
Could Aloy learn how to wear her hair in a long, thick braid like this girl? Could them talk?
Someone called the girl by name – a raspy voice, lower in tone than Rost’s – and she raised her head. That was when the girl noticed Aloy watching her.
She straightened up her back, eyes curious across the river. Aloy smiled and the girl did the same. The rush of excitement that followed could drown her faster than any river. No stranger had ever smiled to her before, and certainly not with this easiness. Aloy felt suddenly shy. Should she say something? The girl opened her mouth…
…and closed it shut when the man appeared on her back. One glare. It was all it took for the moment to be over.
He pulled the girl by the wrist, so brusque that she dropped her canteen, spilling water all over the ground. He exchanged angry words with the girl, who managed to glance at Aloy one last time – her eyes just as curious but now somewhat unsure – before disappearing forever in the woods.
Aloy stayed on her spot for a long time after they left. Part of hers hoped that the girl would come back for the canteen. She didn’t.
Rost found her eventually. She didn’t mind the scolding that day. She couldn’t stop thinking about what she had just discovered.
To this day in the quiet moments, Aloy still finds herself thinking about that morning. She never caught the girl’s name, and her features soon became too blurred to be recalled. But the feeling, it stuck with her.
Exhilaration and levity and a sense of belonging.
She was thirteen the second time she felt something similar.
Rost had been away for two days in a winter-stock hunt and Aloy found herself bored to death, since she wasn’t supposed to leave the cabin until he came back.
(Which she totally ignored. She was not going to neglect her training to the Proving just because Rost wasn’t around. He never knew better anyway.)
That night, though, was a dark one. And so cold and windy she needed to cover the tiny crevice under the front door with old cloth to keep the warmth trapped inside.
That night, she laid on the fur carpet close to the fire pit and scrolled mindlessly through her Focus. By that time, she had learned and read and watched most of the content on her own device, but in nights like that Aloy always tried to synchronize it with others devices that might be nearby, so she could gather more data. She didn’t know what whims made her Focus sometimes work and others not so much – she didn’t even know if what she was doing was actually synchronizing it with other devices. But she had seen machines talking among themselves before - this must be something similar, no?
Someday, when she became a Nora and an adult and was allowed to do whatever she wanted without receiving dirty looks from everyone, she would look for more devices, just so she could open them up and study exactly how they made their magic.
That night, though, she found herself watching a long projection.
Aloy didn’t care much for these. When she was little, it took her a while to realize that some of these very realistic projections she was watching weren’t supposed to be real, so she had a really intense experience with a rather adventurous one. She eventually figured everything out, when the same guy whose head she had seen being spectacularly split in two suddenly reappeared on the next projection, thanks to some miracle magic. Aloy knew the old ones had pretty impressive healing technologies but this was a bit too much. Ever since then, she found the idea of people pretending to be who they weren’t – acting in ways they wouldn’t – pretty silly.
This projection though, it caught her attention.
It was about a girl who owned a cursed sword that was bound to follow her wherever she went. She had to complete a series of murder contracts to get rid of the damned blade, which brought pain and loss to anyone who spent enough time with her. So the girl started traveling around, never staying in the same place for too long. When she is about to begin her last contract, the one that will finally free her from a life of isolation, she meets her mark on unsuspected circumstances. Only to fall in love with her.
Aloy knew a thing or two about love. Literally a thing or two.
Most of her knowledge on the subject came from other holo-projections such as this (or from the odd and highly moral tale Rost reserved for when she was being "too rebellious"), but from her point of view, love was confusing. And sort of unappealing too. Which was why she was so surprised when she caught herself engrossed by the story.
It had some good moments of action – which she favored –, with fast-paced combat sequences and one chasing scene in a big animal the old ones called a “horse”. For the most part though, it was a story about two girls meeting in unfortunate circumstances, first as rivals then as reluctant friends then as something else. Half-way through the projection, Aloy realized it was the first time she was seeing a story about two girls falling in love. She wondered why.
The main character was tall and stoic and strong, with short blond hair and expressive brows. It was a stark contrast with her love interest, with her curly wild dark hair, brown skin, and an easy-going smile. Aloy could see why the cursed girl would fall in love with someone like her. She was beautiful and kind and fun to be around. Most importantly, she helped the main character remember there was more to life than duty and survival. Aloy hadn’t even noticed how she was holding her breath in the dramatic final scene – the love interest stabbed in her stomach by her own volition to set the main character free, only to be brought back to life by some magic mumbo-jumbo. When they kissed – finally – Aloy's own heart skipped a beat. And as the credits started rolling, she was still smiling like a fool.
Maybe she was wrong about love being unappealing, after all. The stories she had seen before were probably bad anyway.
Lying on her back, staring at the ceiling as she started to slip into dreams, Aloy's mind seemed to fixate on a particular scene, just before the ending. The girls were pulling apart after the kiss, and the projection focused on the love interest face as if we were seeing her from the main character’s perspective.
The girl is still breathless, her hair messy and a splotch of blood stains her face. But her eyes… they are limpid as a lake on a spring morning. Her two hands disappear toward the camera, as if she is cupping the main character’s cheeks. Aloy couldn’t help but to imagine how would it feel, to have someone you loved looking at you with such eyes, touching you with such tenderness.
She could almost feel it.
As she drifted into sleep that night, she felt once again a strange sense of understanding and belonging, even though she didn’t get what she understood or where the hell she was supposed to belong.
Aloy only wished she had a friend to share this with.
She made a friend the day before the Proving.
Or at least it felt like that. Aloy couldn’t know for sure – she was still trying to wrap up her mind around this whole situation. The girl wasn't an adult duty-bounded to act like guardian and begrudging father figure, nor some guy with a sort of debt of gratitude for a good deed Aloy had done years ago.
Vala was simply there. She was considerate, strong, brave.
When that jerk Bast got on Aloy’s case for being an outcast, Vala danced with grace on the perfect intersection between supporting someone and not trying to imply they were weak. When it was time to sleep before the grand day – the day Aloy had been dreaming and preparing for the last twelve years – Vala took the time to ask her how she was feeling. Feeling. That girl, whom she had never seen before. Why did she even care?
Between Vala's friendliness and Teersa’s gentleness and Teb’s gratitude, Aloy was having a lot of new experiences that day.
They made her few uneasy.
She fought against the desire to enjoy this newfound warmth way too much. It was a distraction, probably meant to destabilize her. And until she became a Brave, she couldn’t allow herself to be distracted.
But…
It didn’t hurt to imagine. Just a little bit.
Hunting with a small group instead of alone for once. Vala quirking her eyebrows in that funny way when she realized that Bast, the idiot, messed up with his own traps – again. Telling her about her own mother, maybe giving her a few combat tips. Sharing stories.
Yes, Aloy could see that happening.
When the lights went out in the lodge, Aloy promised herself that the next day would be a great day.
The very first of the rest of her life.