A/N: It can be drabble timez nao? This, as some of you may have guessed, is totally riffing off Neil Gaiman's series of drabbles for Tori Amos's album Strange Little Girls. (The collection is in the book Fragile Things. Buy it. And Ms Amos's album. Seriously.) The drabbles are in no particular order, the order I played the games in. More may or may not be forthcoming.
I don't own Final Fantasy.
Strange Little Girls
9. She didn't know who she was, really, she'd never given it much thought, when all of a sudden the world started changing around her and she had to find out. Maybe once she knew, that'd give her a basis, a rock to build her house on; some sort of stability in her life. There weren't many answers, though; all the questions spawned more questions. Mysteries that pupped. Even when answers were found, they weren't always simple, or kind, or easy to digest.
She looked in the mirror but couldn't see her face, it was too dark to see anything, she was stumbling, but he was golden in his self-assurance like a shard of sun. Maybe if she followed him, some of that would rub off on her; by his light, she could get a glimpse of what she was becoming.
She took off her name once, left it by the roadside. I picked it up there, put it on, wore it for awhile till I grew too big for it. These days I wear it like a bead in a necklace, as an optional ornament, for nostalgia value mostly, and the way it gleams. Someday I'll probably take it off altogether too and leave it in some other high and windy place, to wait for the next wanderer who needs a new set of emperor's clothes.
8. Bitch, they called her. Also slut, whore, cow, cunt, and too many other nasty names to count. Bitch was always the favourite, though, perhaps out of some recognition of her affinity with canines, perhaps simply due to lack of imagination. The general consensus was that the story and the world could have done very well indeed without her.
I liked her, though. Out of perversity as much as anything, at first. I wanted to believe she wasn't what they said she was. Not just a spoiled princess; not just a bitch.
She was, though. That was her glory. She was bitch, bitch to the core, spoilt bitch, ungrateful bitch, troublemaking bitch, foolish bitch. Hunting bitch, fearless bitch, leaping from the roof of one train carriage to the next without turning a hair, fearful bitch, whining and whimpering at the feel of the wingworm eating her from the inside-out. Rutting bitch, aware of her body, the youth of it, the charm, manipulative bitch, using that charm, using any weapon she could lay her paws on. Joyous bitch, baying to the moon, singing her song loud and harsh, impertinent and cacophonous, asking no permissions, making no apologies. Her name was a ring, and she chased her tail; the beautiful bitch of the unfettered heart.
7. There were two of them, and he had to choose between them. Of course, one ended up dying, which solved that little problem neatly enough, once the blood had been wiped away.
They were both strong, stroppy, assertive girls. But one was a pebble, and one was a jewel; one was a dandelion, and one was a rose.
Don't think I'm insulting the first one by describing her like that. It's not as if everyday weeds and stones can't be beautiful, after all, and they're a whole lot tougher than brittle faceted gems or cultivated flowers that need delicate care. They exist outside of boundaries, they don't follow the rules. Of course, diamonds are more useful than gravel-wonderful useful things, diamond-edged cutting wheels and diamond-impregnated drill bits are. And rose petals can at least be made into Turkish Delight, and many other delectable sweets. Vanilla comes from an orchid, too, and cultivated apples are so much better to eat than wild yellow crabs. There's plenty of beauty and usefulness in tame things. Of course there is. They were made that way; or maybe they made themselves, shaped themselves to be useful, beautiful, wanted, loved.
Wild things don't care about whether they're wanted or not; they laugh in the face of that sort of thinking. The wild girl, she was an existence more pure, more elemental, closer to the grit and dirt of life; she was something from an older time. The wild girl was a memory of when the great forest covered the country from coast to coast and wild wolves and wild bears and wild boars and wild men roamed it, and she was a memory of a time before that, when the planet's blood was hot and bubbling and spurting up, when continents were crashing into each other from sheer youthful exuberance, when the sea was boiling chemical soup and acid rain really was acid.
Really, it was no wonder that she made her home in the bitter crooked city; everyone knows that in such places the law of the jungle holds sway. Feral cat, urban fox, nettle and thistle pushing their way up through the pavement-all of her flowers had thorns. Really, it was no wonder that other one, that crooked would-be Messiah, hated and feared and killed her. He wished to make a garden bare and poisoned to the glory of his Mother, and she insisted on pissing on his gateposts, clawing open his rubbish bags, seeding daisies in the lawn, growing moss on the rocks in the Zen garden. Letting in life; letting in the wild.
10. Clothes make the man, they say, and baby, what made that woman was boots.
First glance at her, you'd see a demure little shrine maiden, no-coloured hair, placid, timid face. Flower-patterned obi and modest long skirt; Little Miss Milky-Tea, brown toast with butter, mochi powdered with sugar hiding each beneath its own green leaf. Oh so wholesome, sweet and nice, and about as interesting as watching paint dry.
But then she'd shift, and if you were paying attention, your eye would be drawn downwards, through the slit to the calves, under the skirt to the feet; black leather.
Black leather boots, not delicate little slippers, not vulnerable naked toes, but black leather boots, knee-high, with just a bit of heel; dusty from the road, worn from walking, good boots for walking in, old boots, boots that fit her feet. Boots you could stamp in, boots you could dance in, boots you could kick in, and kick out hard. Not thigh-high buckled fetish boots, no, boots for work not play, plain boots of sturdy black leather, good for not showing the blood. Boots made for walking, sirs and maesters, and that's just what they'll do; and one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.