NAVIGATE:↣ CONTENT WARNINGS
↣ ANATOMY
↣ FUN FACTS
↣ ARCHERY LESSONS
↣ INVENTORY
↣ LAST WILL & TESTAMENT
↣ PLAYLIST -----CONTENT WARNINGSHayame's canon is one that deals with a variety of very difficult issues, including but not limited to: slavery, forced amputations, sexual abuse, violence, pseudo-cannibalism, and honor suicide. As tight-lipped as she is it isn't likely she will discuss these sorts of things openly with other characters, but they will potentially crop up during logs.
If you are uncomfortable with any of these topics, please don't hesitate to notify me through a comment or PM and I will either avoid them as best I can with your character or avoid tagging altogether. Thanks! -----JINBA ANATOMY
-----FUN FACTS↣ Hayame can run up to 44 kilometers per hour
↣ As a jinba, she has two sets of most organs
↣ Hayame is only about 16-18 years old
↣ Jinba life expectancy is between horses and humans, so she's considered 25-30 in "human years"
↣ Jinba have breeding seasons; do not approach when PMSing
↣ Hayame is largely illiterate, though she's taking lessons
↣ She has a younger brother named Yubari, and he's The Best
↣ Do not attempt lifting without superpowers, she's weighs ~1 ton
↣ Despite her desire to recently, it is not easy to get drunk at all
↣ MORE TO COME WHEN I AM LESS LAZY -----ARCHERY LESSONSAfter this poorly worded post, Hayame is now offering archery lessons to those interested while in Oska. She teaches medieval Japanese archery, primarily using the daikyu sized bow. For those who express interest, you can assume that your characters get:
↣ instruction on how to make a simple bow, arrows, and bowstring
↣ tips on proper stance and concentration exercises
↣ guidance through firing standing, while moving if advanced
However, that is only if you survive Hayame's extremely violent tsundere teaching style. At the slightest hint of tomfoolery, not taking things seriously, or messing around, she will come down hard. If it's childish... she comes down physically. Expect:
↣ verbal abuse for first time offenses
↣ smacking for 2+ offenses if you are teeny sized or a woman
↣ potential hoof kicking for 2+ offenses if you are strong sized
Feel free to contact me any time via PM or in comments below if you want to know how certain things might have gone, or want to thread something out. If a student takes things seriously and seems to be trying Hayame will occasionally give a bit of praise and continue to teach, but she will attempt to expel anyone who she judges is not dedicating themselves to the work. Join this class at your own risk... ?
-----INVENTORYNOTABLE WARDROBE:
✖ ALASTAIR Uniform
✖ Sleeveless Top
✖ Deer Hide Wrap
✖ Leather Harnesses
✖ Leather Armguard with Crest
✖ Zymandis Uniform
✖ Zymandis Armor
✖ Dress Kimono [from Hanabira]
✖ Casual Kimono [from Hanabira]
MAGICAL:
✖ Magitek Jewelry [worn in hair]
✖ Human Shapeshifting Ring (1/5 uses remaining)
WEAPONRY:
✖ Bow (Japanese, Daikyū)
✖ Quiver of Arrows
✖ Katana [made by Koltira]
✖ Shiv
MISCELLANEOUS:
✖ Wood Carving (Bear)
✖ Jar of Konpeito [gifted to Majima]
✖ Misc. Pelts
✖ Last Will & Testament [on paper, carried at all times] -----LAST WILL & TESTAMENTLast will and testament of Hayame of Guild Ophelia.
I hereby declare that this is my last will and testament and revoke all wills made previously by or for me in any form. I declare that I am of legal age and sound mind at the time of dictation and that this document expresses my sincere wishes without undue influence or duress.
On the event of my death, I direct that my body should be laid to rest within the earth, either by means of burial or cremation, on a planet rather than in space. Should my body be recovered in human form, I direct that the transformation ring be taken off my person proceeding any funeral rites, so that I may leave this world in my natural form. If possible, I wish to be interred with my bow and arrows.
I have no express wishes regarding the rest of my personal effects.
Finally, should the circumstances of my death not fulfill the terms of my contract with Hathaway, my next of kin, Yubari, must inherit my duties. I beg that he be allowed to cleanse the dishonor my failure has borne, and that he be given the opportunity to succeed in my absence
To those who have possessed my regard, I can only hope that you forgive this.
Signed Hayame of Guild Ophelia, witnessed and transcribed by Violet Evergarden, on this day XX/XX/XXXX.
速魚 -----PLAYLIST
Let the Flames Begin
Paramore
3:18
This is how we'll dance when they try to take us down / This is how we'll sing (oh) / This is how we'll stand when they burn our houses down / This is what will be our glory
Some Die Young
Jocelyn Scofield
4:05
I will tell your story if you die / I will tell your story and keep you alive
the best I can / I will tell it to the children / If we have some / But I've always had the feeling we would die young
Where we're going we don't need no breaks / Can't wait to see your face / When your front windows break / And I come crashing through / The lovers need to clear the road / Cause this thing is ready to blow
Woken up like an animal / Teeth ready for sinking / My mind's lost in bleak visions / I've tried to escape but keep sinking
I'll Be Good
Jaymes Young
4:09
My past has tasted bitter for years now / So I wield an iron fist / Grace is just weakness / Or so I've been told / I've been cold, I've been merciless / But the blood on my hands scares me to death / Maybe I'm waking up
Saturn
Sleeping at Last
4:50
You taught me the courage of stars before you left / How light carries on endlessly, even after death / With shortness of breath, you explained the infinite / How rare and beautiful it is to even exist
Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken
P!nk
3:22
There's not enough rope to tie me down / There's not enough tape to shut this mouth / The stones you throw can make me bleed / But I won't stop until we're free / Wild hearts can't be broken
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Post Futuro Fic: Odinson
She usually tries not to think about the year she’d spent with Hathaway. It was a different life. A life too removed to even begin to integrate with the one she was supposed to live. A life too strange to even begin to explain to those around her, no matter how much she wished they’d understand.
But sometimes… she can’t help but stretch out her hand, fingers curling uselessly around the raindrops that wet her palm. She still remembers. For a moment, it feels like if she just turned her head that he might be there, standing beside her like he had that day that he’d called the rain down. That he might smile, and brush wet hair from her face before he kissed her. That her hearts (no, it had just been one heart, then) might beat wild in her chest when he whispered her name-
“Hayame!”
A flash of white light, and she doesn’t even have time to react before the lightning strikes a nearby tree, branches shattering with a deafening crack before the thunder follows suit, leaving her half-blind and frozen in shock, knees locked and coat fairly crackling with the hum of electricity in the air. Ah… that was right. She didn’t stand beside a god of storms any longer. They were dangerous again. Had been for years.
“-yame!” Somewhat stunned, she finally turns her head. It isn’t Odinson, there beside her, but Matsukaze, pushing his way recklessly past smoking tree limbs over to her as the half-dream fades away, hands quick to find purchase on her shoulders, to begin looking her over for injury with concern written all over his face.
“What are you doing out here? I told you to take it easy, but Koume said you’d gone out hunting-“
That’s right. It all comes back to her as the overbright echoes of lightning strike fade from the corners of her vision, as her knees finally unlock and her hooves adjust the way she stands, compensating for the rounding of her belly. She should say something, she’d had something before- Something about how he was a fool if he thought something like that would turn her into some sort of domestic, like she’d be of any use lying with the village mares watching colts, mending furs, or weaving baskets, that she could take care of herself, that she was a warrior-
But as the roiling thunder grows distant, the late summer storm as quick to leave as it had been to arrive… all she can do is take his hand. Slowly, reverently, press it to her cheek as she lets her eyes close, focusing for a moment only on the warmth there, on the way his thumb slides along her damp skin, on how similar their hands were. On how she had missed him, there in the black amongst the stars… and now finds that she sometimes misses another still.
“… You’ll catch cold.” But Matsukaze’s voice brings her back, like it always did. Brings her back to reality and anchors her in her own world, her own home, her own life. Reminds her that she’s blushing, stubborn, trying to push her wet hair from her face before he does it for her, shivering not from chill but from the way his hand tips her head up, how fingers splay across her jaw and neck.
She’s hardly been able to tell anyone that she had been the lover of a god. Can’t say that she’d once been able to change her shape, and take to two legs as humans did to share his bed. Certainly could never admit that towards the end… she’d not even had to. Couldn’t thank him again for teaching her what he had, for showing her how wrong she had been… nor tell him anything any longer.
They would never truly meet again.
Yet it was because she had known him that she can now kiss without shame, slipping her arms around Matsukaze’s neck to pull him closer, hold him tight until the rain gentled and she had wiped all traces of worry from his face in favor of a smile. One that only grew warmer when she let him press his ear against her belly while her bittersweet gaze moves back to the clearing horizon.
While she treasures the reminder just a moment longer.
Post Futuro Fic: Violet
This woman was someone Hayame would have thought herself better than, once upon a time. An armless mare with a dull roan coat and a slight sway back, good enough for her master’s breeding stables, perhaps, but only just kept off the plow. Despite that… she was all her brother could talk about lately. Tarako this, and Tarako’s smile that, and Tarako was so kind, and had she seen how good Tarako was with the orphans, and-
“Hey, Tara-“ As if summoned by some sort of ill will intent on shaming her further, her brother had the gall to emerge from the washing area out back with his hands occupied redoing his topknot, only to pause in encroaching horror to see Hayame of all people, seemingly threatening a woman… with a comb?
“S- Sister? What are you doing here?” Yubari’s stutter trails off with a hint of instinctive fear for a cuff about the ears as Hayame feels her face getting redder, all the more embarrassed when confronted by the sudden and very belated notice that the robe on Tarako’s rounded shoulders was less tied shut and more gently-placed-over, probably in the aftermath of... Oh, no. No, no, no-
“I asked her to come by. Her mane is always so lovely, I thought she could help me do something with this.” Tarako’s interjection, accompanied by a shift of shoulders and roll of neck that, if she still had arms, would surely have been an awkward brush of hair behind ears drew Hayame’s gaze regretfully back down. As ashamed to be bailed out of her mishap by… apparently her brother’s lover… She found that she wasn’t too ashamed to actually accept it. Once Yubari had beat a hasty retreat, she lay herself down behind the other woman, left struggling for words as she stared down at her hands, holding the comb that she had bought from a merchant in Hanabira.
The silence stretched on, unnoticed at first, as she ran her thumb over the smooth wood of a tree that did not grow in the mountains of Echigo. As she wrestled with a feeling much like déjà vu that she couldn’t quite shake, trying to place it until the other woman’s voice cut through her reverie without even turning around.
“… I suppose the comb is just an excuse, then? If you had questions for me, you could have just asked.” Hayame did actually have questions. Quite a few… and now, after seeing the way her brother had scuttled off with his tail between his legs… maybe more than a few. Actually, maybe less, that wasn’t her business-
The pop of a joint as her grip anxiously tightened on the comb brought the memory back. The sound of metal quietly clacking in a small room, the slight pull on her scalp, the soft, gentle glide through her ink black hair, soothing away the stresses of mind and body both. Violet Evergarden… the woman with the metal arms, who had put her last wishes to paper for her when she could not. Who had written the very same document that, out of habit, she still kept tucked in the pouch on her harness… though no one alive in her world could read it, defeating its very purpose.
For all that she was a strange woman… she’d had a way with words at times. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so poor a decision to borrow hers. Half muttering, Hayame finally moved to touch, gingerly beginning to smooth out the other mare’s tousled mane while valiantly blocking out guesses on how it had gotten so unkempt.
“I just know that… sometimes… it feels nice to have your hair brushed by someone else.”
That would have to do for now.
Post Futuro Fic: Majima
“Why can’t we learn more about hunting or something exciting?” One of the younger foals, (a terribly chatty one), mutters in frustration after she’d swatted his behind with the butt of her bow for drawing bears instead of spelling. “Why do we have to learn these anyway?”
“Because we’re not animals. We can write just like humans do.” Her rebuttal was strict, accompanied by a glower and an irritated stamp of her hoof, but the cheeky thing wasn’t satisfied with the answer, still grumbling even as he bows under her pressure and began scratching characters into the dirt.
“We don’t even talk to humans, so what does it matter-“ It mattered because she said it did, damn it, and though it took far more effort than she’d like, trying to explain to a child that age why one had to prepare for a possible future, for the worst case scenario that they’d come into contact with humans again, she is eventually allowed a return to blissful obedience, perusing the students with a critical eye, walking amongst them and fixing what she could, advancing the more clever ones on to kanji characters where feasible. Until Kohibari pipes up around the stick in his mouth as if he were a child still himself, even with his firstborn son playing idly with his tail.
“Who taught you, Hayame?” Did he know? Did he suspect? She finds herself frozen for a moment, staring down at him and trying to recall every time they had crossed paths in their master’s stables. He would know that their master had only taught his charges basic symbols for the possibility of needing to communicate via bird, would know that to be able to read wasn’t even something many humans could do. At least, not humans the like who caught and trained jinba.
Majima could have passed for one of the stable hands if he tried, with that long tail of hair and eye patch, rough around the edges yet possessed of a steady hand. But he was educated. A good teacher, in his way. The source of a bundle of papers covered in useful words and characters he had written down for her to copy once upon a time, hidden carefully along with most of the other things she had brought home from Hathaway. Hayame recalls in that instant the sight of Hanabira’s mountain lands, covered in cherry blossoms and viewed from the hillside over a casket of spirits. That damned troublesome goat. The sea hawk feathers she’d found outside her door on Headquarters. A dinner of “crabs”.
Too much time passes in her reverie. More of the children began to look up in anticipation of the answer, began to lose their focus in the silence, to crack a joke or play fight with their sticks instead of write.
“Were you not the one who said just yesterday that not all humans were bad, Kohibari? There is your answer. Now, set an example for your son and actually focus on your work for once.” A few snickers from the younger students, a huff from the eldest… and the moment is forgotten without the name “Maijma” given.
… After all. She had told him she would not do him the dishonor of naming him as her instructor, poor at writing as she had proven to be.
But that level… it would have to be good enough for this village. For the future.
Post Futuro Fic: Ninurrta
But it was the only way she’d ever see any of them again.
“You cannot leave my side, Hayame.”
It had felt so warm, there in his embrace. No one had ever held her like that- not once. Fiercely, tightly… like they truly did need her. Enough to make her abandon her blade, abandon the attempt to slit open her belly rather than live through disgrace. To clutch and anchor herself, to weep…
“I need you. Please—”
But in the end, he was the one who had left. Returned to his duties, his world, and left her behind. She’d known he had to, she’d understood… because when her time came and she had been offered the trip home, she’d had to take it for the exact same reasons… despite who she’d had to abandon in the process. But in the dream she struggles, unable to follow him when he turns his back no matter how hard she tries, when he gets farther and farther away, her back legs tied as they’d been that day she’d trussed them up to leave a decent corpse-
“Hayame-“
She wakes in a sweat, legs kicking, instinctively trying to shake off what she realizes now was Matsukaze’s hand on her shoulder, breath stalled as she readjusts. This was her world. Her… her village. Her room. Her life. Awake. Anchored, and slowly her breathing evens out as her eyes adjust and reality seeps back in past fractures of memories. Ninurrta smiling. The blood of the minotaur splashed over his shoulder. His hand resting warm on her flank. The sound of his voice when he’d been forced to apologize for her. His sigil, embroidered on the archer’s glove she’d had made in Leramzen that now rested in a box buried in the dirt of the very room she now slept in.
“What is it?”
Her gaze slips down and finds Matsukaze in the dark, settles on the worried lines on his face, the concern, and tries to find words to explain it. To tell him of the man she’d called her lord, the one who’d kept her sane… and kept her alive, that first half year with ALASTAIR. But she can’t, it sounds too much like madness, and as ashamed as she is…
She feels the damp betrayal of tears on her face as she whispers,
“… It was just a dream.”
The concern eases slightly, but she fears he knows, fears that her excuses and lies aren’t enough and that he must have some sort of inkling that more had happened than she was saying. Hastily tries to wipe the tears from her cheeks before they fall far.
“… About what?”
Hayame had hoped he wouldn’t ask, even as gently as he did, accompanied by a careful run of fingers through over her temple. What can she say? The words she had used to explain it to her fellow ALASTAIR operatives, to explain why she’d served him, what he’d meant to her… they won’t work here.
“… Someone I used to know.”
Let him think it was one of the jinba from the stables, or even her master, let him think anything but that she was mad. She forces herself to lay back down, tucking her legs up close so that she can roll over in the hay and force herself up between his, maneuver herself into the hold of his arms and guide them until he holds her like Ninurrta had in the Asterion prison what seemed so long ago.
He obliges. Didn’t ask her anymore. ... For now. So she just buries her face against his shoulder, like she had that night. Let’s herself clutch his shirt and stain it with tears.
Just until dawn chases away the dreams in which she cannot follow.
Post Futuro Fic: Rey
But here she was now, holding Koume’s hand as the younger mare tightened her death grip on her fingers with a painful squeeze.
“You’re doing well, Koume…” Matsukaze’s voice was steady, even if it was barely audible over Kohibari, poking his head in from outside and constantly asking if everything was alright, if the foal was alright, if Koume wasn’t in a lot of pain, if-
“Just a little more… You’re almost there.” Hayame didn’t have any words to assist Koume now, staring down at the other woman’s head pillowed on her forelegs, the sweat on her brow she couldn’t even wipe way because her hands were held captive, the look of focus and pain on her features as she went through the birth. Supposedly, amongst these sorts of jinba that she had never known, growing up as she had in the stables of humans, only other mares would attend to a foaling… but she hadn’t had the knowledge. Matsukaze had to do it, and she feels annoyed with her ignorance, with her inability to do anything but hold Koume's hand as her brother coaxed her through the process.
It’s only the second woman’s hand she’s ever held, now. She still doesn’t feel like she knows how to do it, just like she hadn’t known back on Drakstaden, in that room with Otaka. Rey. Their hands had been so similar, in shape and in size… in wear and in use. It had stunned her to silence then, that revelation… and it has her silent now. Koume’s hands are shaped so differently… rounder, with short fingers unsuited to a bow as her own were, but the same calluses that came of survival. Of more than surviving, now- of living. Of giving birth to a new life.
She squeezes back. Gives the other woman something to hold on to, as she strove to push. Compares the two hands she has held. Remembers Otaka… and how they had met. All the events that had led to ever touching her in the first place. Remembers how she had met Koume… and what she had threatened to do to her, how she had said, cold as ice, that she could serve well in her master’s breeding stables as a bonus to recapturing the two escaped jinba she’d been sent after in the first place.
Yet here she was now, listening to the sound of an infant’s first cry. Watching Matsukaze smile in relief as he pulled the babe from its mother’s body into his arms. Seeing Kohibari begin to weep, without even the arms to wipe the tears from his face as he stumbled into the room to Koume’s side. Letting go of Koume’s hands, freeing her to take the child to her breast.
She shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t… she didn’t deserve to be a part of this, even after all she’d done to try and make up for the things she’d done, even after what she asked Hathaway for. She moves to leave, tries to do so quietly, to leave those of blood to celebrate together… but pauses, just barely still in the doorframe, when she hears Koume’s voice.
“Thank you, Hayame.” She still doesn’t know what to say, though she’d hoped her experiences with Otaka would have prepared her. But they're different. Everyone was.
For now... She can only nod her head in gratitude… and leave to stand outside and stare at her hands.