I Was Never Going to Be a Lalafell

Let me be honest about who I used to be, because none of this lands otherwise. I was neutral on Lalafells. Politely neutral, the way you're neutral about a food you've decided you don't like without ever really trying it. Push me and I'd have admitted I leaned towards not a fan. And I would never, under any circumstances, be one of them. I said this out loud. More than once. People heard.

─── ✦ ───The Hugging

The trouble with Lalafells is that once you start noticing them, they're everywhere, and I started noticing them. They hug. Constantly. Someone logs in: hug. Someone clears a dungeon: hug. Someone is simply standing by the aetheryte looking a bit lost, and three of them appear out of nowhere and hug them too.

And they have squads. Proper little gangs, running roulettes together, lining up for screenshots, sitting in a neat row on a bench like someone arranged them there. They were always, very visibly, having a better time than whatever I was doing. I told myself that was a coincidence. I got curious anyway.

─── ✦ ───Tiny Hats in Frontline

Then came the moment I can actually point to. A Frontline match, a proper mess of one, and over the ridge came a pack of Lalafells on chocobos, hats bouncing with every stride, absolutely wreaking havoc. Tiny hats. Bouncing. In a war. I laughed so hard I forgot I was meant to be fighting, and I'm fairly sure that's how we lost the base.

It was the best thing I have ever seen in PvP, and something in me gave up quietly after that. I started noticing the tiny outfits. The little run, all legs and determination. The way a hat that would look perfectly ordinary on anyone else becomes, on a Lalafell, an event.

❝I didn't choose the Lalafell life. It hugged me first.

─── ✦ ───A Fantasia in the Drawer

I'd had a Fantasia sitting in my inventory for longer than I'd like to admit, saved for a special occasion I had never actually defined. Staring at it one evening, I realised this was the occasion. I didn't want to watch the fun from across the plaza anymore. I wanted to know what it felt like from the inside. So, why not?

I'd love to tell you I agonised over it. I did not. I drank it, made the smallest version of myself I could, and logged back in considerably shorter and not even slightly sorry.

─── ✦ ───That's the One

The body was sorted. The wardrobe was not. A few days later someone ran past me in the Fuath Attire, that plumed hat, that swallowtail, the whole fairy-tale look, and I stopped dead in the middle of the road and said, out loud, to nobody: that's what I want.

Not wanted. Needed. There is a difference, and I have never felt it more clearly.

To whoever you were: I never caught your name, and I'm genuinely sorry I can't credit you here, because you deserve it. You ran past for about two seconds and rearranged my entire wardrobe. Thank you.

─── ✦ ───Twenty Pieces of Glass

The Fuath Attire lives with a vendor called Ose Wyd in Il Mheg, which is exactly where a fairy-tale outfit should live. I didn't need the whole set, just the two pieces that had stopped me in the road: the plumed hat and the swallowtail, at ten Illumed Aetherpool Glass each. Twenty glass. How hard could twenty glass be? The glass comes from Pilgrim's Traverse. I would now like to say a few words about Pilgrim's Traverse.

Actually, I wouldn't. It was a nightmare. Floor after floor, run after run, the kind of grind where you start measuring your evenings in glass. There is at least one run I'm still not ready to talk about. But every trip the count went up, and every time it went up I pictured that hat.

Things Pilgrim's Traverse taught me:

• ✦Patience. Eventually. After some shouting.
• ✦That a very small person falls into a trap exactly as hard as a tall one.
• ✦That twenty is a much bigger number than it looks on a vendor screen.

And then one night the number said twenty, and I ran, little legs and big feelings, all the way to Il Mheg.

─── ✦ ───The Look

For anyone who's asked, and a few of you have, here's the whole glamour. Only the top half is Fuath; the rest I pieced together around it. And yes, it is half angel and half demon, which is honestly the most accurate description of a Lalafell I have ever heard.

• ✦Head: Fuath Plumed Hat
• ✦Body: Fuath Swallowtail
• ✦Hands: Demonic Gloves
• ✦Legs: Angelic Slops
• ✦Feet: Demonic Thighboots
• ✦Dye: Pure White, on absolutely everything

A little bit angelic, a little bit menace. Much like the Lalafell wearing it.

─── ✦ ───The Gang

Here's what nobody told me. You feel faster. I have checked, and I'm fairly sure I am not actually any faster, but the little legs go so quickly that my brain simply refuses to believe it. Every trip across a city feels like a sprint. Every sprint feels like a win.

And the squads? I'm in one now. I get hugged when I log in. I sit in the neat little row on the bench. And when a pack of us goes thundering past on chocobos in Frontline, hats bouncing, I know for a fact that somebody on the other side is laughing too hard to fight. I hope, with my whole tiny heart, it's someone who was never going to be one of us.