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It’s been too long.
Aloy traverses the wooden docks of Legacy’s Landfall. The rolling sea behind her is thick in the air, salt and seaweed and a misty chill.
Before Aloy’s departure from the Burning Shores, she checked in with Seyka multiple times. She offered to fix up Seyka’s Waterwing, or to override her another, but Seyka had grown fond of hers in specific. She asked about Seyka’s sword. Did it need shining? Sharpening? Seyka answered by whipping it out, startling her with it. She even wondered, aloud, if Seyka could make it to the mainland on her skiff, and all Seyka did was bark a laugh.
Indeed, Aloy gave Seyka all she had to give, but all Seyka actually took was a focus. A focus with which they spent hours on, talking, sharing pictures, calling late into the night.
Aloy was clingier than she should’ve been. She acknowledges that now, as her boots clunk against a wooden, sodden baseboard. As she marches instead of walks. As her eyes dart wildly. Aloy was clingy, and loud, and overly affectionate.
She tries not to think on it. She doesn’t have the time. In the West, the green, lush trees that flourish in a summertime’s heat have started to brown and wither and fall. By the coastlines and waterfalls of the Isle of Spires, the climate has shifted—just for Aloy, it feels like—into a blissful fall, into dry, easy air, cool breezes, and vibrant skies. Even here, in a Quen encampment, there’s a tint of autumn, of rose red or golden brown, everywhere Aloy looks.
Or maybe that’s just her.
Because it really has been too long. She’s had enough of daydreaming, which she never does; of losing sleep, which she’s never liked; of waiting on calls and pacing around her room and thinking. Which she’s doing now.
She almost runs into someone. A sailor, trying to haul cargo, but stumbling around with it instead. They swear at her like, well, a sailor. She skips away.
Alva’s holo appeared before her not a day ago. The fleets are ready to set sail! She had said, chipper as ever. Then, without missing a beat, her expression turned deadpan and she begged, so desperately Aloy thought she’d get on her hands and knees, Please come get us.
And so, not a day later, she’s here.
Aloy’s never been a fan of the Quen. Having only heard of the Empire in passing was more than enough for her. It seemed like, every time someone spoke of it, the colors, the ones she’d been chasing, drained so drastically from their face, they could be an ancestor, too. She thought that traversing Landfall, where all of the Quen had gathered at once, would drain her, too.
Instead, it’s invigorating. Her blood’s pumping. And color is truly everywhere. There aren’t just sailors at Landfall. No, an Empire needs moving parts to stay an Empire, even away from home. There are street vendors; farmers sell exotic fruits and vegetables, and traders wave spices and bottles of liquor. There are fishermen, with nets upon covered nets of flopping, half-alive catches. There are freedivers, made obvious by wet hair and coral adornments and surprisingly advanced headgear. Aloy doesn’t see any diviners, but they’re here, too, probably tucked away in some corner to watch the chaos.
She weaves in and out of alleyways and sandy mounds. She doesn’t know where she’s going—she didn’t think to ask for coordinates—and there aren’t any signs. She wonders if the Quen can somehow navigate by how sticky their skin gets when the wind picks up.
She makes good progress, but finds a crowd, still forming, around something she can’t see no matter how far her tippy-toes extend. So she ducks to a small, side dock, likely used for maintenance, where the crowd literally can’t fit lest they slip on the wet palettes.
Above her hangs the belly of a massive ship, the likes of which the Carja would start another war for. Aloy sprints to the other edge of the dock and rounds the corner. She eyes its height, but before she can pick through its working crew, she notices the windows. The thing is big enough on the inside to have windows.
She reaches to her temple and taps her Focus alight. With everyone talking over each other like thunder and waves in a storm, it’s too loud to call Seyka. Instead, Aloy pings her location. Aloy told Seyka she would come; Seyka accepts a minute or so later, taking the form of a small, blue, pulsing dot on a long, geometric plane.
A thrill runs through her. Something like a shiver, though it’s far from cold; goosebumps raise on her arms and pinprick up her shoulder.
She takes off, watching her own little dot from her peripherals, so focused on how it moves alongside her that she doesn’t watch the floor. A puddle sweeps her off her feet. A sailor tying one of the many ropes hanging from the nearest ship throws his arm back, ready to lasso Aloy in before the sea can claim her, as if he’s done this before.
She grabs the end of the rope, shouts a quick “I’m fine!”, and takes off again.
There’s a second ship. And a third. The docks are grids themselves, wide and long, entrapping the vessels that the Quen will use to voyage home. All but her Quen. All but the one that has brought the seasons to her doorstep, to the Base’s snowy mountainside, to her heart (not as frozen solid as she remembered); Seyka’s marker moves in circles and figure eights on the deck of the fourth ship.
A few more slips, trips, and almost-falls later, Aloy is back in shallower water, where she thought she’d have a better vantage point. She thought the docks would extend to the land—past the blistering sand to the cold, hard dirt. They don’t. They must have been built in low tides; the activities of the bustling tribe continue into the ankle-deep slosh.
Seyka’s marker is right in front of her.
Aloy stops so abruptly a sailor nearly walks into her. For the second time today.
A whole line of them march up a long slab of hard wood. Aloy shoves past bystanders to, almost, lay her claim to entry, to cut her way into line. She finds the board’s end sight unseen, buried deep in the sand. It barely flinches under the next sailor’s footstep.
And the next.
They carry rope, tools, barrels, crates—anything and everything the fleets will need on their way home. And she’s not a crate. She’s not even Quen. She realizes her and Seyka’s markers are overtop each other and is about to shove herself into a crate—
“Aloy?”
Seyka’s voice, from on high.
Aloy’s head lifts, until she’s blinded by the light of a midday sun. Her forearm meets her forehead to block the rays, the mist, whatever else dares keep her from the ship.
She doesn’t even like ships.
Seyka’s hair is tied up, per usual, but decorated excessively with pearls, dried corals, and whatever else she could successfully stick in her locks. Her garb is simple and light, fitting for a long day at work, though her cape still billows behind her. She looks nice and neat and put together, and her silhouette is luminescent against the skyline.
And Aloy is covered in water.
“Aloy!” She calls again when Aloy finds her, waving with the length of her whole arm, bouncing on her heels.
Aloy can’t blame the redness of her cheeks on the heat of the day when even her hair is damp.
“What are you doing down there?”
She looks to the sailors at her sides, feeling like a sardine in a woven hold. “Trying to… Not be. Down here.”
Seyka leans so far over the ship’s edge that Aloy thinks she’ll fall off. “Are you scared of the plank?”
“You mean the plank of wood—?”
“I know, I know, it’s so high,” she shouts, “but you can do it!”
And then she pushes herself off the bow’s edge and reaches for the nearest pillar, where the ship’s sails meet palm-burning rope and tall, ample construction.
Aloy gawks.
All that, and Seyka’s going to go back to work?
Water splashes up Aloy’s legs, past her knees, as she runs to the plank’s edge. The sea works against her, dragging her back with each breaking wave, but she’s out of the surf before she can stumble.
Next it’s the sailors. She can’t blame them; she’s pushing and shoving them out of the way, and the plank isn’t exactly wide. The more distance she closes, the snappier she becomes, because any distance is too great. But they don’t see it the same way. They grumble and groan. One of them yelps and falls to their knees, hoping to grab the wood before they can tumble over the side. Aloy pauses to lift them back up by the collar of their shirt—but only because of the potential domino effect.
She’s breathing hard by the time the top deck squeals under her boots. Her tongue is sticky in her mouth, her throat dry.
Seyka is walking another sailor, noticeably younger, through a knot that they should probably know how to do. Seyka’s hands are deft, and her smile is wide, and her skin is the lilac of the afternoon before it fades into dusk.
Maybe she hears Aloy’s footsteps. She glances over her shoulder, just once, before shooing the little person away.
She’s too slow.
Aloy barrels into Seyka’s back with her arms outstretched and her heels digging into the deck, just in case. She wraps herself around Seyka’s waist like a swell, the ones Seyka would call home, the ones Seyka might compare a person to; Seyka falls back into her with a squeal, a barely registered variation of Aloy’s name, hitched at the base her throat.
Aloy lifts her up with a painful flex of muscle (though Aloy doesn’t care) and twirls her around, fast enough for her voice to pitch even higher. Aloy thinks to compare it to a whirlpool, or a desert wind, something natural but a little displacing. And when the feeling finally settles in Aloy’s chest, when Aloy manages to catch her breath, she buries her face in the crook of Seyka’s neck. She breathes in fresh brine and burnt coffee and some form of flower, though hard to pinpoint.
“See?” Seyka’s voice is muffled beneath Aloy’s tight hold. “It wasn’t so bad.”
“What wasn’t?” Aloy asks, without pulling away.
“The plank!”
“Wow.” Aloy shoves Seyka’s shoulder with an open palm. “How about, ‘Hi, Aloy, it’s—‘“
Seyka’s lips crash against hers before she can decide what the rest of her sentence is. It lasts longer than either of them intend, and for a split second, Aloy is grateful for the Quen Empire and the voyage across the sea, and the busy days that both warrant.
“Hi, Aloy,” Seyka giggles against her mouth. “It’s… Good to see you?”
Aloy nods, though she would’ve no matter what Seyka said.
“Nailed it.”