Gifts and Treasures
prologue
In the distance, there's a black castle that glistens in the sunlight, a thick wet shine in the surface of dark stone. It's especially pretty at sunset, when it stands out against a painted sky.
(in the distance, there's a tall red building with a glittering green roof; water sparkles beneath her feet and she looks up toward it)
She slips out of the town, across solid gray stone that's smooth as milk beneath her bare feet. Makes her silent way through the bailey and across the dried-out motte that might once have been the Falls.
(she walks along golden stone and red wood. white paper lanterns and blue-green-red-gold silk banners flutter in the breeze and somebody's olive hand holds tightly to hers; when she looks up from their entwined hands she never sees a face, only gray eyes and short black hair and a smile every bit as wicked as her own)
She passes through the cavern, only stopping to touch the crystal that comprises its walls. It's cool to the touch, as if it's not really crystal but is actually ice, the ice that made up the floating, rising, sinking pathways she took to return home, that final terrible year.
(but home's doors are painted bright colors to ward away bad luck; its walls inside are white paper and she pulls her shoes off. somewhere in the house, water gurgles even louder than the dragon-god-river who twists through her city)
Barefoot, she picks her way across the rock-salty barren Field, all the way to the End. From here it's a rock-sharp climb down a cliff face that cuts her with every careful movement. Seconds, minutes, hours slip past, slick with her sweat, but the sun hovers just above the horizon, burnt gold in a field of kaleidescopic color.
(there's a pond, and two lazy koi swimming through it. her companion stops moving, but she bends down to touch the water, wondering what they're thinking with their second-hand minds)
The cliff-face ripples, distorted rings radiating from one central circle, but she turns her back on it. There's a forest entirely of dead plants, with huge thorny vines as thick around as her waist. Skeletal briar roses and blackberry bushes, their blossoms and their thorns fallen and scattered all over the ground, block her way just as sternly as any living thicket ever could.
(the koi look up at her, mouth their answers silently, and she realizes that she is the one holding on to the other: she has been leading the other person here this whole time)
The small thorns of the blackberry bushes cut her feet, while the big thorns of the towering vines cut her arms. She makes her way through anyway, her own blood shimmering behind her in the night's angry rise.
(there is something wrong with the water. she cannot see her reflection; only gray eyes and a smile that is too cruel to be hers.)
At last she comes to the castle walk, takes slow, painful steps across the drawbridge. The vines are thickest here, winding around the chains and the walls. They embrace cruel-looking black gargoyles, whose gazes she ignores as she crosses into the courtyard.
(she looks up from the koi pond and back at her companion, but the other has already turned her back, slipping soundlessly through hallways that she could swear she knows)
The courtyard is a mass of thorns and vines. Wind blows through, whisper-soft, and she could swear she hears the hiss of entangling snakes. Somewhere, a choked fountain burbles in a tinny, half parched voice. In the center of the garden, she can just barely make out the dusk pink shape of a giant closed rosebud. The bud's color is only so pale and lifeless, she realizes, because it is sick.
(she catches the last flicker of her companion's path through the house, chases her through white sliding walls and under a curtain. it's like going down the rabbit-hole and into the wonderland someone once told her about, because the curtain leads to a cramped passage so dark she has to feel her way through, and the passage leads to a room that's bright with candlelight. the air is close with thin smoke and a smell she recognizes but cannot name.)
She threads her way through the vines with convoluted motions, ignoring the new cuts and the way she has to stretch hurts the old ones. Every step through this garden is like stepping out of her own skin, but at last she reaches the center, and touches her hands to the rosebud.
(a golden statue, inlaid with jewels, takes up most of the opposite wall. her companion stands facing it, her head tilted up to look at its face, and she, too, looks up, watches the lifeless eyes that glitter with knowledge)
The bud stays closed, stays as cold to her touch as the ice-crystal cavern walls. Worse, when she looks to the sky, she sees the sun finally beginning to dip below the horizon. The bud has to be opened before all the light is gone; it cannot survive another night, with only the cold pale distance of the stars to sustain it.
(the smoke drifts lazily through the air, and she watches it, her gaze turning to the plaques that surround the statue and decorate the floor. she can almost read them.)
No time for subtlety, not that she'd take the subtle way even if she did have time. She turns, wheeling hastily in a circle, before closing her hands aroud a thorn as long as her arm. She jerks down, hard and fast; hears the vine creak. After a few more attempts, she severs the thorn from the vine and, turning again, plunges it through the bud's soft skin.
(she feels the weight of her companion's gaze, and almost looks over. but not yet. it isn't time yet.)
The flower flesh parts silently beneath her knife. Her breath comes in gasps as painful and jagged as the cut she's making in the bud; the noise drowns out the wind's mumbling through the vines.
(wake up, says her companion, but rather than rise from this dream-within-a-dream, she watches the golden statue fall open with the sonudless, perfect grace of a chrysanthemum blooming.)
There is a person at the center of the flower. She catches only a glimpse of silken black hair and olive skin before—
It was dark. She was falling. Even that barely registered while she twisted and flailed. One leg was tangled up in something soft, where the hell was she and why—
Her upper arm and shoulder thumped against something hard.
Yuffie struggled against her sheets with quick, angry movements. She finally squirmed out of their stranglehold and pitched them back onto her bed.
The plaintive wail of a teenager roused from sleep for no good reason (and a ninja who hadn't fallen out of bed in ten years) filled the night: "What the hell was that?"