"What are you doing way over here? We're getting ready to eat."
Edea found Selphie on an ancient tire swing, kicking heavy clods of clay with her heels as she spun faster and faster underneath the pretty blue sky. She had left Quistis in charge of the basket of food, hoping that she would somehow manage to keep Zell out of the carefully prepared goodies until all of her children were assembled. The playground just outside of Balamb proper had proven to be a bad spot for a picnic, as Irvine had already started flirting with a bouncing bevy of frisbee-tossing co-eds and Seifer was almost ready to punch Squall over some flag-football infraction. She had figured on trouble from the boys, but she hadn't really expected any from the girls.
"Just spinnin'." Selphie spit a few strands of hair from her mouth and kicked harder. The world was starting to look super-swirly and she hadn't even had to try Irvie's whiskey this time! Neat!
"Well, it is a good afternoon for it."
"Yup." She leaned backwards and watched the spotless blue above melt with the sickening green of the leaves of her tree. For a moment she wondered if those mean ol' elves Quisty used to talk about in her stories were in those branches, ready to leap on her and bite and pinch and tear. Things that lived in trees did those things, after all, especially to cute little girls with big green eyes.
At least, that's what Quisty used to tell her so she wouldn't spend all night in the wilds of Centra. It had been hard to keep Selphie indoors at the best of times, but once she heard Quisty say that there were mean ol' monkey-bird elf people that actually bit people living in the woods? Oh yeah, she totally had to find one and bring it home in a jar.
Of course, that was until she realized that an arid area like Centra simply couldn't sustain the growth of ancient oaks and willows necessary for elf farmin'. Stupid Centra and its..stubby tree…landscape…thing. No respectable elf would be caught dead in one of those stunted excuses for trees. Pfft! Honestly!
However, still enamored of those spiteful spirits, she had once jumped from the roof of the tiny orphanage and tried to bite Seifer, but he had punched her in the eye and ran to tell Quisty that her scary stories just weren't working with the child of the devil.
"Are you not hungry?"
"Naw, not really. Ate some super awesome cereal with marshmallows shaped like chocobos and tonberries. It was totally awesome. It even made my milk turn blue!" The need possessed Edea and she wanted that second, that instant when little Selphie would have shown her pink tongue to her, just to prove that it really was blue at one time.
"Hm. Well, you never were a big fan of my cooking. Zell once ate an entire bag of flour before I could stop him, but you? I had to bribe you to eat."
"Mebbe that's why I'm so short. Not enough whatchmajiggers…" Selphie thought she might vomit and giggled at the thought. She hoped it would come out of her nose. That was always fun. Sometimes it even made her cry. "…vitamins."
"It's a beautiful day, isn't it? Have you ever seen the sky so blue?"
"Is it?" Slowing her spin, Selphie looked at Edea. All six of her. "Huh. I guess it is."
Edea looked at Selphie and wondered why she was so hesitant to join the others. "The sky was the same shade you brought me that caterpillar. Do you remember that?"
"The what?"
"That fuzzy little caterpillar. The green one with the pretty yellow spots. You remember that, don't you?"
"Green one?" Dizzy recollection and the thought of a chocobo marshmallow getting stuck in her nostril made Selphie's mad spinning come to a stop. "Oh yeah! Iggy the Magnificent! The successor to Martin the Tyrant!"
Edea tried to recall the names of Selphie's seemingly endless tortured menagerie. There had been the twin kittens, Pete and Pete, the muddy little terrapins O'Banyon and McCorker, and last but not least, Kaboom the three-legged piglet.
"Stupid Martin the Tyrant, turning into a butterfly…traitor…"
Edea laughed quietly at Selphie's child-like anger. "Quistis was rather excited to see Martin turn into a butterfly. She kept a daily journal on his growth, didn't she?"
"Yeah, well, she would have. She's kinda nerdy that way." Graphs and charts done in red and blue crayon, dull ol' numbers, and that chipped ruler she used to measure that sleeping bag Martin used to hide…stupid old smartie-pants Quistis and her thinky stuff. "Ugh. He was so boring when he did that thingie…that cocoony thing."
"Is that why you brought Iggy to me? Because you were bored with Martin?"
The more Edea talked about it, the more Selphie remembered. There had been feather-light touches and strangely thin skin, fine hairs on his body and a sticky feel when he crawled over her hands. Good ol' Iggy! "Well, kinda…"
"Kind of?" Ah! Excellent! Selphie was acting more and more like herself! Edea mentally patted herself on the back for reaching the sad girl on the swing in her time of need.
Selphie licked her lips and started spinning again, laughing brightly when Edea stepped back to avoid a blow from her clay-caked boots. "Well, I liked to watch Iggy squirm. He was so cute when he was a squirmy-wormy squirmworm!"
"Yes, he was rather cute, wasn't he?"
"Oh yeah, he was totally cute, 'specially when I got 'im near somethin' warm."
"Warm?" That was odd.
"Oh yeah! Like when I stole those matches from Seifer and showed Iggy how to dance!" Selphie grinned and started to spin faster, faster, faster. "Stupid Seifer, thinkin' he's so cool just 'cause he stole one of Big Daddy Cid's pipes…"
"Wait." Edea tried to reach for the swing, but the thin chain securing it to the tree would have lopped off her fingertips had she managed to slow the motion. She wondered briefly if Selphie would have helped her gather her shorn fingers or giggled to see the pretty red mud. "I'm not worried about Seifer and that vile habit of his. What was that about teaching Iggy how to dance?"
Selphie spun faster. "Oh that! Yeah, it was awesome! I could light one, hold it under his jar, then he'd start wigglin' and dancin'! It was the cutest…"
Faster.
"Thing."
Faster.
"Ever."
Fool. Edea had been a fool to be frightened of the spirit that once raged in her mind. That was a power that simply sought to exist. She fiddled with a seam on her sleeve and stepped back from Selphie, away from the leveled madness and shifting sorrow that smelled of dirt and electricity and bubblegum. "Um, well, I fried some chicken and made some potato salad…"
"Tater salad?! For real?!" The swing stopped.
"Yes, if Zell hasn't finished it all before we return to the tab…"
Grabbing Edea's arm, Selphie dragged her almost-mother back towards the comforting chaos of their little family get-together. "Then what're we doin' jabberin' over here?! Come on Matron! Hurry! The sooner we eat, the sooner I can grab Quisty to play WAR! We gotta beat the boys this time! There's more of 'em, but me and Quisty? We know things that they'll never know, even if they live to be like, super old."