Title: Candy Stars
Author: Koi Lung Fish
 Disclaimer: Based on characters and situations from Final Fantasy VII (© 1997, 1998 Square Co., Ltd). Used without permission. Text © 2002, Koi Lung Fish (Mark of Lung. All Rights Reserved.)
Subject: A character vignette on Tseng, his parents, and his reasons for leaving Wutai.

            Summer night swathed the market place in fine linen, swaddling stiff limbs and curtaining gaping windows. It draped a quilt of humid air over the quivering susurration of flies that twitched upon the rotting feast in centre of the square. Chicken in pineapple sauce. Sticky white rice. Sliced melons, gemmed with sweet juices. Spiced pork on bamboo skewers. A roasted calf, garnished with spring onions and mushrooms. Steamed fish, wrapped in fig leaves. Bowls and dishes, flowers and fruit, tenderly prepared and thoughtfully arranged upon an expensive tablecloth: a propitiatory offering to a hungry demon.

            Hiding under the altar, a human sacrifice.

            The soldiers came into town with the dusk, hauling their dry dust-cloud up from the wasteland that, three months before, had been a green and golden land of fields and jungle, an emerald goddess with a thousand life-jewels in her black hair. She was raped and scarred, withered to a husk - drained by the General's unending hunger. Nightly, the mosquito war-machines stabbed her soft flesh, feeding their cannons on her blood and infecting her body with dry pestilence. Nightly, the General's hand stretched across the land, and stars fell from his palm like blossom from spring saplings, raining cold light upon the aching body of Mother Earth.

            Candy stars for a child's eyes.

            The sky is filled with sherbet powder tonight. Little white flecks, sweet and bright in a firefly-green sky above this iron bowl of filth, this Midgar. This city stinks of war: the smell of mako, the smell of Wutai's death. I remember the brightness of the cannon stars, green and writhing, blotting out the sherbet sparkles as they sought to return to birth, the womb of earth. That is what Midgar smells like: the power of death.

            Of all my family, only I have looked into the eyes of the hungry demon and not seen Death grinning there.

            When the SOLDIERs found me, in that humid night filled with the stench of corruption, they took me like a lamb to slaughter, into the presence of the ravenous one. Wrapped in night's fine linen, perfumed by decaying sweetmeats and the sweet incense of the forest in flames – the General, his eyes cold and green as cannon muzzles belching planet-blood.

            Eyes as bright as candy stars.

            I bowed before him, and offered him my little sword. He returned it to me, on my honour. He was the death of my country, and Death is a gentleman. He spoke to me, beneath the blanket of night air, our voices soothed by that thick fabric. I told him all my truths.

            I am Tseng, son of Komo - Komo, brother of Godo. I am third in line to the throne of Wutai. I am a traitor to my country and my family. I am the most powerful Wutaian on the Planet. I am a Turk, a sworn servant of the Shinra. Once I was weak: now I am strong.

            I am extraordinarily patient.

            The General – I, superstitious child of a ghost-ridden land, I dared not speak his name – he was every inch a demon: bloody and strong as War, cold and ravenous as Famine, indifferent and cruel as Pestilence … he was not like death: he was Death. His power was greater than that of Godo – for Godo is human, and he was a demon - and it was a part of him, as his reaping sword was a part of him; not like Godo, who wears his power like an ill-fitting coat, that he puts on reluctantly and takes off in haste.

            I saw them battle, on the last day of the war, the four-faced Lord and the demon who ate Wutai. I saw strength meet strength. I saw the light of death cleave through the darkness of seclusion. I saw the claws of Shinra reach out and puncture the heart of Wutai. I saw Lord Godo, prince of Wutai, fight without hope – for he could not win the battle, no, not had he been given a thousand years to prepare – and I saw Sephiroth, the Great General, the ravenous devil-man who drank the blood of Wutai, I saw his soul gleaming white in the shape of a blade. It was as pure and as beautiful as the divine Leviathan.

            Candy star eyes, alight with godhood.

            Godo falls.

            The weak shall die. The strong shall survive. Be strong, or be as dust.

            What had he thought, my darling father, when his son ran into the arms of the hungry demon? Had he understood the cannon-bright logic of his child's mind? I have done all this for Wutai – did he ever know? He is gone, now, into the arms of the brother of the hungry demon, and I shall see him never more.

            What thought my mother, delicate petal from a noble bough? Does she cry to know she bore a murderer? Does she grieve for her traitorous son? Does she hate this half-demon, this changeling that I have become?

            Weep not, mother.

            Shinra are strong, but each day their strength flows into me. I am mightier than all but the General himself, for I have chosen to be strong. Wutai chose to be weak, to bite with toothless jaws upon the mailed fist of Shinra, to struggle in the grasp of unrelenting iron fingers that would have raised us up to mighty heights. What good to be weak, when one can be strong? Why let your land die, when you can make it live? Why dam the river to Leviathan? Where is the logic in fighting a battle without hope? Bow, and acknowledge their strength, and in their arms be made strong. I cannot defeat the hungry demon, but I can follow him, and for my service, he will repay me with the blood of my enemies.

            Gods and demons go where they will: mortals can only stare at their footprints.

            Godo is Lord of a broken Wutai; a barren land shrivelled to an amputated village adrift in a sea of monstrosity and plagued earth. An old man sits upon the Leviathan Throne, and the Mighty Gods sleep in their pagoda. I am strong, and young, bloody as I am mighty, and I have the inscrutable patience that the pale men of Midgar ascribe to my countrymen. I will wait.

            I am Tseng, prince of Wutai. I have seen Leviathan in the eyes of a demon. I have betrayed my land to save it from itself.

            Soon, father, you will understand. Soon, mother, you will weep no more. The glory of our homeland will dawn once again, green and golden under my rule - then you will see: I have bought Wutai with my blood-debt to Shinra. You, my uncle, and you, my cousin - you will see a man as mighty as the demon, a prince of Wutai, a Lord worthy of the Five Mighty Gods.

            I am no traitor to Wutai; I am her saviour.

            Godo sits upon the Leviathan Throne. Rest you uneasy, old man my uncle, as you dream of eyes as bright as candy stars.

            One day I will come home.

Author's notes & addenda:

            Gift vignette for Xue, who correctly described the Egyptian sun-gods. This piece can be read as a companion piece to "For the Love of the Jewels." Feedback excruciatingly welcome.

Email: spacepriest@dial.pipex.com