[Homecoming - Part One]
Home? Â They say it is where the heart is. Â But, in truth, how difficult it can be to define. Â To some, it is obvious. Â A place of birth, of coming-of-age. Â A place of loyalty and frustration - of every facet and exuberance of love. Â
It can come naturally. Â With thoughts and memories: recollections of family, of friends. Â The place of timeless moments joyful and heart-breaking. Â For others it is more than remembrance: it is duty, obligation, and hope.
What of Aya? Â An Ala Mhigan washed up on the shores of Thanalan's desert expanse by way of the Tower City. Â Her path unwound through the many roads and tracks of Eorzea. Â
Could it be found at the beginning? She did not even know where to start. Â Where to begin. Â Opening her eyes she saw only the reflection of flickering candle-light off tile and the rippling surface of warm bathwater. Â This was her place of ultimate reflection. Â Of quiet solitude where only her thoughts could penetrate the steamy thickness of the air. Â
The beginning? Â She could hear the tune - echoing through the hollow chambers of aural memory. Â The sounds of the manor - the family keep. Â She carried only the faintest sense of the place, the land over which once flew the crow banner of her ancestors. Â
What of that heartland city? Â Ala Mhigo. Â To her it meant the sound of longing pipes echoing through the mountain pass. Â Could she recall the faint outline of the city's towers against the setting sun - or was that the effect of the tiny painted landscape that was the most prized possession left by Enna's doomed mother to her only daughter?
The bonds of nostalgia did not connect Aya to these places, too strong with the scent of strangeness. Â What only infant eyes had spied could leave no strong impression.
What of nostalgia? Â To what place could she attach such feelings? Â Was it really a place that could be nostalgic, she wondered? Â For her, a refugee child, the exactness stung with the certitude of loss. Â There could be no return to those places she remembered with sepia-toned heart. Â They were the transitory stopping-points of an itinerant family. Â
Thanalan was grit. Â Vylbrand was sea-salt and the friends whose brief fraternity seemed a life-time in hindsight. Â The Shroud, the scent of pine and the gentle tones of the forest realm. Â Intermingled with all: family. Â Mother, father, brothers, and sister. Â The feeling of their voices, and the warmth of their proximity. Â While she was still too young to truly understand their hardship.
Was she blessed? Â Others could not help but feel a longing for those places of their youth, when all still seemed fresh, warm, and whole. Â Many unknowingly sought to embrace their past, to dwell in the nostalgia of a home which they had never truly left behind. Â But even for them it could only be a faint facade of what once had been. Â She possessed the sure knowledge that hers could never be reached: no physical place could capture those feelings. Â Only a place and a time long since washed away by the intervening moons. Â All they were, all they could ever be, were in her mind. Â
She closed her eyes. Â Submerged her thoughts in memory. Â And touched that home that no others could love.