Miranda Shadowind
"Got nowhere left to hide...the fight in me has died...So I must wait for the sunrise.." -Richard Marx, "Wait for the Sunrise"
Locke Cole groaned from both physical and emotional pain. It was cold and damp around him, but where was he? Was he dead? Had the fall of the Blackjack and the end of the world been only a dream? No...nothing that devistating could be merely an illusion... He tried to sit up, but pain shot up his left leg and he yelled.
"Easy there, Laddie. Yer not quite healed yet," a soft Irish-type lady's voice told him.
"Celes..." Locke murmered, though he knew right away that it wasn't her at his side, accent or no accent. She'd slipped from his grasp and fell from the Blackjack's broken edge on that fateful day the world's balance was shattered.
He felt a cold, wet cloth being pressed on his forehead, and another on his left leg. Slowly he opened his eyes, meeting the gaze of a kind-faced old woman. Beyond her, he could just make out the half-lit inside of a cavern.
"Oh, so yer finally awake are ye?" the woman asked him.
Locke slowly nodded. "Where am I? How long have I been out?"
"Quite a few months, good sir. We found ye half dead two miles to the west of here. That be where Nikeah lies. Can ye remember anythin'?"
"'Name's Locke....'We'?!" Locke struggled to sit up, and a young man propped him up against the cave wall. "Did you find anyone else? Around my age?"
"Nae. 'We' be myself an' a few others of Sedaia, a town that now be gone since the destruction..."
Locke looked down. "They're really gone...Terra..Edgar...Celes..." The wet cloth on his forehead slid down into his hands. It was his trademark dark blue bandana that he wore to keep his sandy blonde bangs out of his eyes. He groaned softly, wrung it out, then tied it around his forehead.
Again, he tried to stand, but his left leg still hurt badly. He put his right hand on it and mumbled "Cure..." Immediately, his leg glowed and the pain stopped.
Locke then stood up and headed outside, where the land ended in a beach. He looked up at the cave cliff, considering jumping off to end it all...It would stop the torturous pain inside, and he would be with his friends again...with Celes and Rachael...His will to live hanging by a thread, he started climbing up the side of the cave.
"You're the Great Locke Cole aren't you?" a male voiced called out behind him.
Locke turned his head to face the voice's owner. It was the same man who'd helped him sit up minutes before. "Was...Doesn't matter now...all my friends are dead...I might as well join them.." He turned his head back around and continued to ascend the cliff.
"You know, there might be a way to bring them back...at least one of them anyway..."
Locke, now standing on the edge of the cavetop/cliff looked down. "Don't say that just to try and get me down. It won't work!"
"No really, I mean it! You've heard of the legendary Phoenix, haven't you?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"They say somewhere there lies a treasure that holds the same power the phoenix used to rise again from the ashes. Surely a master treasure hunter like you could find it, if you're up to it.."
Locke sat down on his perch and thought this over. The power to restore life... It might not save all of his friends, but then again, he didn't know where their bodies lay. Rachel's on the other hand, he did, all too well. That settled it. He would find the Phoenix treasure for Rachel's sake, or die trying.
"You got a map?" Locke asked the man as he climbed down to the ground with slightly renewed hope.
"Won't do you any good since the world's changed."
Locke nodded and re-entered the cave. He found his backpack near where the old woman had tended his wounds and slung it over his shoulder. To her and the man outside, he simply said, "Thank you", and headed off along the beach for Nikeah.
Along the way, Locke found a small bird dragging its wing along the shoreline. He knelt down and scooped it up. "Easy there little fella.." Locke stroked the bird with one hand and put a makeshift bandana sling around its injured wing.
"There ya go." It chirped as Locke put it down and continued his treck.