Story:Green Tea Eorzea/Evon's Story/Chapter 1

Thwack!

Evon pulled the hatchet away from the tree, and with a muffled thud, the tree, covered with bright blue buds and easily as tall as he was, dropped to the ground. He knelt down and started hacking off the branches. Although he was native to Ul’dah, having left Ala Mhigo to practice botany so that he might have an income of his own with which to help the refugees of his birthplace, he had been recommended to an examination by Fufucha of Gridania, head of the Botanist’s Guild and the supposed Best Damn Botanist of the Three Nations. After an eternity of what felt like harvesting crystals and basic lumber (the marriage of which gave rise to his self-taught carpentry skills), a chance to show off his botanical prowess to someone who could really appreciate it excited him. Using his axe as a makeshift hacksaw, he steadily turned the length of lumber he had procured from the tree (it had taken him most of the morning to find the right one) into a neatly carved mountain range, the greenery represented with thanalan tea leaves he had harvested and dried himself a fortnight prior, and the spires of Ul’dah symbolized with aged rolanberries poking up over city streets of sage and seeds. From the blue buds of the discarded branches he extracted ice crystals and shattered them over the scene, the aether within exuding and freeze-drying the entire setup into place.

It was at this point that Evon noticed high noon had turned into dusk. In the scarlet glow of the low sun, he admired his tiny, botanical Ul’dah replica, and imagined the long shadows the spires of the city cast over the plains of Thanalan now. Hopefully it would be enough to impress this Fufucha, he thought. He carefully picked up the model, wrapped it, and gently stored it in his satchel, then with a trained flick of his wrist, summoned a sigil and dissolved into the aetherial stream, his essence headed towards New Gridania. He would stay at the Adventurer’s Guild that night so that he could add the finishing touches to the model in the morning, when Fufucha’s introductory exam would take place.

~

“Good morning, my dearie-wearies!” the leather-clad lalafell chirped. Evon cringed hard.

“Oh, I’m so excited to see what you all have brought me!” Fufucha continued, the squeakiness of her voice, to Evon’s dismay, not diminishing as she spoke. Standing with Evon in the garden outside the Botanist’s Guild in Gridania were six other recruits, all of varying races and features, but all with the same hesitant, slightly terrified smile Evon had seen dozens of times before by his fellow classmates during thaumaturgy exams.

“It’s always so wonderful to see just how each new recruit expresses their own personal connection with nature!” He wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

“Who wants to go first?” Evon embraced the silence. A female miqo’te towards the front hesitantly raised her hand and stepped forward.

“Oh, lovely! Umm… Dehyo, was it? Just lay it out on the table here for everyone to see!” With some small hesitation, the miqo’te stepped forward and unwrapped a collection of green-leafed stalks with small white berries along its length, in groups of three. The recruits took a step forward.

“Oh my, this is wonderful!” Fufucha squealed. “Matron’s mistletoe!” The others nodded, clearly impressed with her harvest. Evon stared in near disbelief. She just cut down a bunch of mistletoe and turned it in…?

“Did you know that you can make these into powerful healing potions?” the overzealous botanist instructor continued. Dehyo shook her head.

“Not like that,” Evon thought. It took him a couple seconds of turned heads to realize that he had thought out loud.

“Er… Evon, was it?” Fufucha asked. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”

“Uh…” Evon started. “I mean,” he pointed at the stems. “The oil you extract to make the potion comes from the base of the stem, not the leaves or berries. The base here is all shredded up. There’s no oil left.” His analysis was met with a tense silence.

“Um…” Fufucha started, then looked back up at the miqo’te. “Well, that certainly doesn’t mean they’re worthless! It takes a very promising young botanist to be able to harvest such fine specimens of mistletoe!” she consoled.

"You know, you wouldn’t shred them if you sliced against the grain up the-”

“Who wants to go next?” Fufucha cut in, her smile still wide, if not slightly more forced this time. An elezen, shorter than Evon and with fairer skin, stepped forward, and lifted several chopped logs onto the table. Fufucha clapped her hands.

“It’s yew,” the elezen explained. “I chopped it down just last-”

“Oak,” Evon muttered almost absentmindedly, his eyes on the logs. The elezen stuttered silent.

“Actually, it’s diseased oak,” Evon corrected himself. “You can see the trails of borer wasps along the grain, which are exclusive to-”

“Evon, dear,” Fufucha chided, “in this guild, everyone’s contribution is important. It’s not right to go raining on others’ parades just for the fun of it.” She spread her arms out. “Everyone here is special, and worthy of respect!”

“Yeah, but… if you don’t show them where they’re wrong, how can you expect them to get better? People learn by correcting their mistakes.”

Fufucha’s face contorted. “Everything isn’t always about training hard and never having fun, you know.” The voice still retained its skull-piercing squeakiness. “The art of botany is about enjoying nature and respecting its contributions to our society!”

“Pity. I came here hoping to learn.”

“Well, then!” she exclaimed, a hint of squeaky indignant anger in her voice. “Let’s take a look at what you gathered! I’m sure there’s plenty to cri-” she started, but froze when Evon revealed his miniature botanical Ul’dah model. The other recruits leaned in to get a closer look.

“Wow, those spires are so detailed!”

“Are those windows!?”

“I think I can see my house-”

“That’s enough!” Fufucha’s face contorted. “Fine. So you think you’re so good? You want a better teacher, then? Someone who can challenge you?”

“Um… yes?” Evon tried.

“Hmph!” The lalafell botanist marched back into her storage hut, and emerged, just as indignantly, with a small card, on which several names were written in script.

“Take this to Ishgard. This will get you past the Gates of Judgment. Then follow the directions to…” she smiled, “a friend’s place.” Evon raised an eyebrow.

“A friend?”

“Someone who will…challenge you,” she repeated, grinning. Expecting a bit more of a reaction from the elezen, Fufucha frowned as Evon silently nodded, wrapped up his botanical Ul’dah model, and, with a nod, started slowly walking away. The others watched his departure in stunned silence, as though they had just witnessed a natural disaster take place.

“Mm-hmm!” Evon heard Fufucha faintly clear her throat as he made his way back to the Gridanian aetherlyte plaza.

“Well then, who would like to go next? Oh, those are beautiful rolanberries…!”

~

After some thought on the matter, Evon found the prospect of visiting Ishgard increasingly exciting. They had closed their gates to outsiders, so the prospect of seeing a city unwitnessed by most people in the Three Nations was interesting enough - the fact that he had heritage there and that he had a chance to visit one of his ancestral homes only added to that. After the shipwreck that was his botanical experience with Fufucha, he did not hold high hopes that the botanist she recommended would be of much higher quality (or even of quality at all), but that had become a secondary point to him now. Using the funds he had built up from his botanical work in Ul’dah, along with commissions he had taken up with a representative of the Gridanian Carpenter’s Guild, he pooled together what he hoped would be enough money to gain a temporary residence in Ishgard while he explored, and possibly studied.

But by the twelve, he thought to himself, the bulky silhouette of Camp Dragonhead barely visible behind him in the blustering snowy winds, why would anyone live somewhere so freaking cold? He muttered a prayer to Oschon for warmth as he hugged his long leather coat tighter around his spindly elezen frame, and continued on. Eventually the snow under his feet turned to clay that then turned to stone, and he found himself at the walk of the Gates of Judgment. A pair of burly-looking guards in gray armaments, each with a cobalt blue gauntlet adorning their left arm, wordlessly blocked Evon’s path, like strange sentinels of another world. He presented the papers given to him by Fufucha, and after thorough review, a chain of guards was alerted, and the massive pair of magenta metal gates creaked open.

The Holy See of Ishgard. The home of his parents, before they left for Ala Mhigo to perform their missionary work, and ultimately give birth to him. And yet, as he walked the wartorn Steps of Faith, his mind vivid with imagined scenes of draconic conflict tha could have led to this ruin, he found himself feeling more and more isolated from this place, even as he walked along this raw scar of its open wound that was the Dragonsong War, still raging with the same fury that powered both sides for the past thousand years. Evon was no longer concerned about whether or not he would be welcomed here - it was clear, considering how deep the conflict and strife ran here, that he would not be, so he banished that concern from his mind. Rather, he wondered what role this new land would play in sculpting him, how it would change him and his view of the world. A child of missionaries, he had learned independence at a very young age, and had since traveled amongst all Three Nations for work and education, studying botany in the field on his own, and picking up a knack for carpenting as a result. His entire life, he had felt as though the forces of the world were instruments for him to manipulate to his own ends. But as he approached the two statues of the Azure Dragoon flanking the final gate of the Steps of Faith, he realized that sometimes, the forces of the world are too great to be manipulated - sometimes, they shape you into a new person instead, and that alone can change how you see the world.

The gates beckoned him in. With the same crisp, solid steps that had led him his entire life, he walked into the Holy See of Ishgard, his head held high.