A response to "A Challenge to Fandom" from my fellow writer SasukeBlade. With a visit to Conall Curach for one last drop of myrrh to herald the end of my motley caravanners' eighth year together, things have gone terribly wrong, and it's hard to tell whether Anais Nin or Khetala is the unhappier of the two for grief over a terrible loss or fear of further misfortune to befall the caravan as a result.
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles or any characters or locations within, only my own caravan from Tipa.
Sorrow and Doubt
In all my sixteen years as a crystal caravanner and my ten years as the leader of the caravan from the tiny peninsular village of Tipa, I have never doubted the convictions in my heart. I have never doubted the words that the crystals have spoken to me, that I would have the Yukes' hand in the Great Revival of prophecy. And I have seen my fellow caravanners weather every storm and fight every monster that the demon Raem has sent to hinder us. They all of them—the Clavat brother and sister, David and Lydia; the brash green-eyed Lilty Dimo Nor; and the cheerful Selkie Anaїs Nin—are perhaps the best people that a Yuke like me, Khetala, could fight alongside to protect a village from the miasma. What has happened, what has come, we have prevailed.
Save once. We made one visit to the marsh of Conall Curach before the end of the recent myrrh-gathering year. We eventually left the marsh with one last drop of myrrh at the top of our crystal chalice, but one of my comrades lost something dear, and I fear now that it may be the downfall of our ultimate quest for the Great Revival.
Anaїs Nin has lost her heart in the marsh of dead dreams.
Although it was I who decided that we should go to Conall Curach for our last drop of myrrh this year, I made the decision on Anaїs Nin's behalf, for a mail-carrying moogle had brought to her a package of the utmost importance.
"That's blue silk—and a really nice shade of it too," Lydia had pointed out when Anaїs Nin opened the package to reveal that it did indeed contain a bolt of silk in the hue of a cloudless daytime sky, or a crystal newly purified with myrrh. "Just think—you could make something incredible with it!"
Anaїs Nin, however, seemed astonished beyond belief to receive such a gift, and I was almost certain of who had sent it to her even before she picked up the letter that came along with the package. The flourish of Old Selkic on the envelope only confirmed my anticipation: the researcher De Nam, who shared a romantic attachment with Anaїs Nin since their first meeting in the Yuke citadel of Shella five-and-a-half years ago, now bade her come to Conall Curach alongside the Tipa caravan. Seldom did Anaїs Nin speak of Selkic customs, but I knew that blue silk was traditionally a Selkie's betrothal gift to his beloved. I could only suspect, therefore, that De Nam intended to ask Anaїs Nin to marry him when we brought her to Conall Curach. And I could almost be sure of their affection for one another from the letters and gifts that they exchanged, how after all these years Anaїs Nin still waxed poetic when she spoke of her far-off sweetheart, and now I harbored no trace of doubt that De Nam loved her in return.
I, too, for my part, was looking forward to seeing De Nam, for in his letters to Anaїs Nin he chronicled efforts to find a way to adapt to the miasma and be able to survive outside the crystalline auras that protected towns and caravans. Had he finally found his success, that soon all our peoples could be free of dependence on the crystals?
A great foreboding crept into my heart as I heard a taunting voice in the miasma stream dividing the plains of Fum from the plains of Rebena: "The demon sends his messengers for a Selkie who has become a threat," it told me, similar to how the crystals would sometimes speak to me. At those words, the first possibility of meaning occurred to me that Anaїs Nin was the threatening Selkie; I had come to suspect long ago that she must be the Selkie daughter chosen to march with "the motley" and return from death "to bear the light of golden dawn." The demon Raem, therefore, must have monsters waiting to attempt to destroy her.
I should have known what it meant. Four days after our crossing of that miasma stream, we were but two miles away from the myrrh tree in Conall Curach, and still we saw not a trace of De Nam. Anaїs Nin showed no sign of being disheartened even so. It was her very anticipation of seeing him that moved her to plod onward; no Selkie had ever entered Conall Curach with a heart so full of hope.
Contrary to my expectations that monsters would abound in the marsh, they were relatively few early on: mostly sahagins and hell-plants, with a few snow-mus and gigan toads, even an abaddon shortly before we reached the part of the marsh where we knew that behemoths roamed. We knew to be on our guard, behemoths were worse than abaddons to an unsuspecting band of travelers, even without the ghosts and stone sahagins that usually lurked near. We killed one behemoth and dispatched the surrounding flock of ghosts without incident, but nothing could have prepared us for what happened at the end of the next skirmish.
It all happened so quickly; I hardly know what else to say. One moment David shouted a warning that stone sahagins were leaping up out of the earth, and we also had another ghost on our trail. The next moment, before we knew it, the dust of battle lifted as Anaїs Nin, having just fatally bludgeoned the last stone sahagin, knelt to retrieve the thing that her enemy dropped: a torn piece of purple-and-grey cloth with some broken Old Selkic characters. I will never forget the way my friend's silver eyes widened in disbelieving horror as she recognized all that remained of her beloved: De Nam had perished at the claws of these monsters, probably long before we arrived. For all we knew, it might have even been the moment of his sending the letter that bade Anaїs Nin come to Conall Curach to meet him.
"To those who follow," I heard the change in Anaїs Nin's numbed-sounding voice from Old Selkic to the Continental tongue as she looked at the Selkic-engraved stone a few feet away from where she knelt. "I am the only one left. I can build the road no more."
"Be steadfast in your path," I quoted, remembering the other part of the translated message, "find a place that we Selkies can call our own! We're too close to the myrrh tree, Anaїs Nin, we've come too far, we can't give up now!"
At the spawning of two more stone sahagins and another gigan toad, Anaїs Nin's numbing shock gave way to the sort of murderous anger that I never expected to see in one whose nature was normally so kind. I never even bothered casting Gravity as my Selkie friend stuffed the worn bandana into a pocket and turned her rage on the stone sahagins, monsters that bore the same form as the messenger that bore the dreadful news. All any of the rest of us did was follow, Dimo Nor bearing the chalice, as Anaїs Nin sprinted in the north-easterly direction of the myrrh tree. The dragon-zombie infamous for slaughtering wanderers in the forsaken marsh was the only thing able to slow her, forcing her to divert its stone-sahagin lackeys while the rest of us wailed on the greater monster, Lydia and I combining our magic to cast Holyra and David casting Clear whenever one of us became poisoned or petrified by the dragon-zombie's breath.
Anaїs Nin never saw the gentle glow as we approached with the crystal chalice to claim our drop of myrrh; she collapsed in tears beside the myrrh tree, sobbing her heart out and lamenting brokenly in a combination of Old Selkic and the Continental tongue. She barely even had the heart left to return Dimo Nor's comforting embrace as the Lilty lay beside her and pulled her into his arms. I might have cried with her had I not been a Yuke and unable to shed tears; hers were not the only hopes dashed into oblivion that day.
As we now lay but a day away from Tipa with a full chalice, I find myself grateful to return home, but at the same time I dread our return. I thank the Lady Mio and the angels for our safe return because I know that the comforts of home will alleviate my Selkie friend's grief. I dread the return to Tipa because I fear that it may be the last crystal caravan that I lead with Anaїs Nin as one of my companions. I fear that even with a month at home, perhaps two, to rest from the road, Anaїs Nin may not have the heart to rejoin the caravan when we depart again in quest of myrrh.
An even greater fear lurks in my heart at the thought of my friend remaining as a crystal caravanner. "The demon sends his messengers for a Selkie who has become a threat…" I begin to suspect that the demon Raem may have had a purpose in sending monsters to Conall Curach to kill De Nam: perhaps he hoped, by so doing, to kill Anaїs Nin by breaking her heart, that she would lose her will to live, and our next battle would end her life. If our motley caravan is the chosen of Lady Mio to bring about the Great Revival, as I believe it to be, not a one of us can die before we fulfill our shared destiny, and if Anaїs Nin died in battle now, I could not bring myself to revive her with the magic in my power. If she followed her beloved De Nam into the next world, I would not be the heartless soul to divide them again. I pray the Lady Mio will give Anaїs Nin the strength to persevere in her time of crisis; I pray for the strength in us all to triumph over Raem.