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fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

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fearne @almandines.bsky.social · Dec 25

thank you for the share and for including writers 🥺 I'm fearne and I write ffxiv fic! lots of wolnpc and lately a decent amount of npc-centric stuff!

you can find me on ao3 here: archiveofourown.org/users/almand...

here are a few snips! 💜 (with links below)

For better or worse, G'raha Tia had been a historian. Of all things from the distant past, it was this to which the Exarch clung the tightest.

Deep in the bowels of the Tower, the Ironworks had left him a library stocked full of every text they could find, from cookbooks to grimoires to schoolchildren's notepads, and from it he had carefully curated his own private collection: a single shelf of rare, esoteric, and mostly handwritten tomes preserving a history it would be his life's work to erase. He'd obsessively read every page that even so much as mentioned the Scions of the Seventh Dawn in passing, committing them to his mind so thoroughly he could still recite many from memory if asked.

"Thancred Waters" was a name he knew only in ink. He was a ghost who haunted the margins—a handful of words in the dark and little more. This, the Exarch had long surmised, was by design.

But no name on a page could be a suitable substitute for meeting a man in the flesh. No written account could have possibly prepared him for the volatility, nor for the instinct to hold his breath and brace himself in his presence, to dig in his heels and stand his ground. He'd been prepared for an Archon, an academic from his homeland, but instead he found callused hands and a shadowed sneer. The similarities between them ended at the Sharlayan marks on their necks, and the Exarch's had long been consumed by crystal.

Cahciua’s bedroom had always been cluttered. An organized mess, she had called it the times Erenville asked her how she could ever hope to find anything she was looking for. Shelves of trinkets and overgrown potted plants obscured piles of loose paper wherever he had looked.

He remembered the chaos spilling throughout the house, having to shove aside a stack of mail or a new package of seeds to make space on the dining room table to eat his meals; rarely having a place to sit because every chair held a new fern or ivy specimen.

His own room had been sparse, entirely by choice. There, he could retreat from the chaos to a world that was clean and orderly—organized without the mess. In cleanliness there was harmony, a peaceful escape from his mother’s fondness for dissonance.

Some decades ago, the Crystal Exarch had taken to standing before a mirror each morning and repeating to himself his own name. He did this as he raised his hood, restored his shadowy facial glamour, and prepared to step into the endless scorching daylight as someone else. It was, at first, an affirmation that even as he walked alone in an unknown world, he still had a name. Later, it became a desperate mantra—a rhythm burned into his mouth, lest he fall silent and forget it entirely.

It was a name that did not belong among those who had come to see the Crystal Tower as a shining beacon of hope, for whom it would always provide.

But the more the tower gave to those around him, the more of him it consumed. He could live with it taking his flesh, his aether, his very lifeblood, but he could not stomach the thought that it might one day consume all of who he was. Thus, he held tight to this small ritual, meaningless to anyone else, in hopes that he could keep his name of all things so tightly guarded that it would somehow remain his even as everything else slipped away.

And so when it came time to share his name with another, it was a practiced sound, a familiar rhythm, worn into his teeth and tongue the way footsteps wore grooves into the stairs of an old family home.

The last time Thancred prayed to the Twelve, he was in Ishgard.

Even in the dingy shadows of the city's depths where he'd be hard-pressed to imagine the eyes of a god could reach, they'd cobbled together a tiny shrine to their Fury, built of ice-chipped stone and a broken, likely stolen statue. A handful of rusted and bent gil coins lay atop it, next to a stale loaf of bread that would have done a lot more to answer prayers were it kept in a Brume family's cupboard than offered to Halone.

Desperation, more than devotion, drove him to his knees in the midnight snow with the fire of a middling whiskey still burning in his chest.

He'd never paid much mind to Halone before, having always been stretched too thin between the Navigator and the Scholar. He'd belonged to both of them and neither, a soul adrift upon the waves. He'd had two homes but no roots to show for them, given a god the moment he'd been given a name.

But Halone was here—well, insofar as he could imagine the prayers of the lowly could reach her ears when those who lived in luxury atop soaring spires had an advantage so much closer to her halls—and she would do.

The prayer was an amorphous thing, an amalgam of thoughts and pretty words while he tried to force his silver tongue to dance around the truth. "Bring her back" felt rather profane when it really meant "Take her from Hydaelyn." None save himself, god or otherwise, would dare oppose the Mothercrystal—a thought proven correct when the only thing he heard in response to his silent plea was the crunch of unfamiliar footsteps on the snow.

The stranger passed him by without a word. That was how it was in Ishgard—crowds enough that he could never find a moment to himself, but he was still never anything but alone.

It wasn't worth it, he resolved as he stood and brushed soot and snow from his knees. If ever he were to whisper the name of another god, the Twelve would have no place upon his tongue.

Reposted by fearne

Red Saidi

@redsaidi.bsky.social

tw suicide

This is a little hard to write, but I had a realization a few days after my 34th birthday last January 26: sepuluhkupang.bearblog.dev/10-life-less...

10 - life lessons at 34 that I probably needed when I was 24

you have to live

sepuluhkupang.bearblog.dev

February 3, 2026 at 6:02 AM

Reposted by fearne

eld🐺

@eld-creative.bsky.social

Minerva for @riaminime.bsky.social
#eldpersonal

Sketchy portrait of a long haired woman in military uniform, with shining purple eyes and earpiece going down to her mouth; she's smiling at the viewer and removes bangs from her face, splashed with quite an amount of blood, with a gloved hand

February 1, 2026 at 1:50 PM

Reposted by fearne

The Comfy Dude

@2house2fly.bsky.social

The best genre of computer error messages

"An error occurred. The Wizard must be stopped."

February 3, 2026 at 4:09 AM

Reposted by fearne

Stevoisiak

@stevoisiak.bsky.social

I made a filterlist for uBlock Origin to remove Generative AI features on websites. Includes blocks for
* Google AI Summaries
* YouTube Ask button & chat summaries
* GitHub Copilot
* Facebook AI chat
* X's Grok buttons
* Deviantart DreamUp
* Booru AI images
* And more

github.com/Stevoisiak/S...

February 3, 2026 at 12:30 AM

Reposted by fearne

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

pre-ShB thancred/exarch
12.4k
mature
tags below

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/75525016

#fearnefic

Liars' Dance
almandines

Summary:
Thancred sometimes fancied himself a man of many secrets, if only because an air of mystery went far when it came to drawing the unguarded attention of many a fair maiden, and he thought himself equally adept when it came to insight. It took a liar to know one, after all, and he knew them well. But the Exarch's secrecy felt different somehow, and it left a bitter taste on his tongue.

alone in a new world, thancred's only guidance comes from a regrettable source: the crystal exarch

December 10, 2025 at 2:52 AM

Reposted by fearne

(tiny flea voice) 🦌🌊 @ comms open!!

@bunnythermos.bsky.social

GOODNIGHT EVERYONE !

( #ffxiv #wolcred #thancred #nsfw )

thancred knelt on the ground grinding on missy's extended boot. his brow is creased with desperation, hands gripping her foot in place, sweating, trembling, panting. missy's mostly offscreen otherwise, though you can see a hand lifting her skirts over her crossed legs.

the speech bubbles read:
missy: heh
missy: pervert.

February 3, 2026 at 5:53 AM

Reposted by fearne

chilly milly ❄️

@mischiefmilly.bsky.social

that clasp is uh. doing a lot of work there, huh

My Xaela wol Irie wearing a black leather body suit with sheer cutouts on the sides with a white long sleeved cropped long sleeved

January 30, 2026 at 1:40 AM

Reposted by fearne

arden💭

@wakingnaturally.bsky.social

cuties....❤️

wren, an oc with black and white scales, wearing a red and grey cardigan. she poses with one hand near her belt as she smiles at her silver dasher, a black and white bird with a red teardrop on its chest

February 3, 2026 at 2:59 AM

Reposted by fearne

banana chip

@mjjii.com

cat

digital art. cat with their head under a faucet sticking their tongue out trying to get a taste of some running water. the water is hitting their head in a funny way

cat with their head under a faucet sticking their tongue out trying to get a taste of some running water. the water is hitting their head in a funny way

February 2, 2026 at 7:47 PM

Reposted by fearne

Slurms MacKenzie

@slurmsmackenzie.bsky.social

Whole lot of you following Neil Gaiman, and I assume it's because you forgot you did so and he stopped posting when it was revealed he is a rapist.

Since he's trying to make a return, do yourself a favour and check if you're following @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com and if so unfollow and block.

February 2, 2026 at 9:20 PM

Reposted by fearne

bay 🌙 @ NEW DESIGNS ON KO-FI

@baydews.com

being a harry potter fan in 2026 is fucking embarrassing, I'm not even sorry to say

February 2, 2026 at 11:20 PM

Reposted by fearne

bri 🕊️

@floralchemies.etheirys.social

i know i have mutuals who also use finch so i think it would be good for us to leave feedback

you can do so here

February 3, 2026 at 3:15 AM

Reposted by fearne

juno 💫 @ 7.4 spoilers!

@arcanecrest.etheirys.social

— in every life.

w/ @nastvrtiums.etheirys.social 💘

[ #miaka ⟡ #basmiaka ⟡ #gpose ⟡ #GPOSERS ]

a gpose of my oc, miaka (fem model viera, he/they pronouns) and worm's oc, basileus (masc model midlander, he/him pronouns). they are locked in a dance, wearing white shirts covered in blood. at their feet are the dead, bloodied bodies of themselves across different lives, across different timelines. in every life, they will find each other, and betray each other.

February 3, 2026 at 3:43 AM

Reposted by fearne

Jenny Hamilton

@readingtheend.bsky.social

"actually his stuff was very Derivative and not Original" like, you don't have to do this. it is good for us all to sit with the cognitive dissonance that a very bad person can make very good art. it is good for us to work through the moral ramifications of that.

February 2, 2026 at 9:50 PM

Reposted by fearne

nids

@geminid.bsky.social

starting w this i guess #ffxiv

drawing of ryne walking across the empty. she's a bit far from the camera and facing away from the viewer, leaving footprints behind in the white ground. in the far background there's eden floating in the sky.

February 3, 2026 at 1:23 AM

Reposted by fearne

Jenny Hamilton

@readingtheend.bsky.social

one thing that would be cool, when prominent creators turn out to be terrible people, would be if we didn't have to go through this performative dance of insisting that their work was never good in the first place.

February 2, 2026 at 9:48 PM