Disclaimer: If I owned FFXII, Balthier would have been the main character, we'd have seen a lot more of Arcadian politics, and Ashe would have suffered a mishap of the permanent variety along the way...

Greenfire

The Jagd Difor is an unforgiving place. All of it. The Golmore Jungle is guarded jealously by the reclusive Viera; they allow none through their woods despite all the sweet words and subtle threats the Empire might bestow. The Feywood, well, you'd have to be a fool to brave the fell fiends of that accursed place.

But of course the most famous was the Paramina. A desolate rift valley, swamped with Mist. Once it had held its place as a jewel of the Galtean Alliance. Under the ancient King Raithwall, temples had been carved into mighty cliffs and enchanted cities had sprawled throughout the serene valleys. They say magicks unimaginable today flew commonplace from the lips of the people who lived here.

No longer. No, the Paramina's glory days have long passed, crushed under centuries of ice and snow. Frozen and bleak, the Paramina Rift has become a place only the daring and the desperate attempted to trespass. Snowdrifts were known to swallow whole caravans if and when they gave way. Ice shelves shattered unexpectedly, dropping the unwary into deep chasms or frozen rivers, never to been seen again. The mountains seemed caught in an eternal winter, bound and determined to kill everything in its wake.

But, oh, fools. If Winter in the Paramina were not cruel enough, do you dare imagine the horrors of Spring?

o.o.o

Relj sat perched in the bows of the Greyline Cypress that towered throughout the Wood. Her duty as wood warder bid her patrol the borders of her home, even in this dreadful season. Chill rain plopped through the thinning leaves, here at the forest's edge. It was not cold enough to freeze any longer. No, this rain would still steal all the warmth it could before turning it's power to the ground below. The ever present snow of the Rift beyond slowly melted under the barrage, turning to a dreadful sludge. The Wood alone kept purchase in the onslaught of mud, and Relj had the duty of keeping the encroaching humes out.

Ears pricked, she could hear the faint echo of screams brought in on the wind. It had begun. Humes had been trespassing ever more frequently the past few years, and there were always some utterly stupid enough to think these mountains safer in the spring.

'Senseless humes!' Relj disparaged in her mind.

The screams increased in their terror, and Relj could hear the guttural moans of the Paramina's darkest fiends join the morbid chorus.

Her ears folded back, and she clenched her bow on instinct. Sometimes the fiends of the Paramina wandered into the Wood. Wolves were no trouble to the arboreal Viera. The occasional skeleton was easily vanquished with enchanted arrows and she could call the other wood warders if a Yeti did decide to hunt here…

But no one wanted to deal with the undead corpses that rose from the muck when the Rift deigned to thaw. Every year, the Paramina Rift claimed countless lives. Some the wolves scavenged. A few fell into the watery domain of the lizards. But most lay trapped under the snow. Imprisoned by the magicite of the rocks below and the fell mist above, the bodies twisted under the influence of the perverse magicks. Imbued with toxic strength and the burning desire to leave, the zombies of the Paramina were among the most terrible in all of Ivalice. The ice usually kept them at bay…

Relj shuddered.

Sluck. Clatter. Groan.

But in the spring it was another game altogether. The screams were growing closer, and Relj resigned herself to dealing with the fool humes who drew the fiends into her woods. The Green Word was resolute on the matter. The fiends were not to enter the Wood, no matter the cost. Buoyed by the affirmation gracing her ears, Relj drew her bow taught. Eyes and ears focused on the peak where the raucous humes were about to come into view. The Wood was sacred, and they would not violate it.

Delicate claws brushed the arrow's soft feathers, and Relj's eyes widened as both hume and fiend came into her field of vision. A cry of despair tore from her lips and she jerked the arrow up too late.

TWANG!

It struck her target true, but missed the hume's precious cargo. Unthinking, Relj dove from her treetop vigil. Into the snow, out of the Wood, she ran. A dagger came loose from silver boots and plunged into the side of the zombie's skull. Relj didn't stop, didn't slow down. She plucked the young hume up from her mother's dying arms and fled back to the safety of the cypress bows.

Gasping for breath and clutching the squalling child to her breast, Relj stiffened in horror as the realization of her actions slammed home.

She had left the wood.

She could feel the Green Word recoil. She heard it draw back, hissing in distress at her betrayal. She heard it call out to her sisters, painfully distant. They would know. They knew already.

She had left the wood.

However brief her departure might have been, it was still forbidden. Viera were meant for the Wood and the Wood alone. She had left; she would not be welcomed back. Worse still, Relj looked at the sobbing girl clinging to her, she had brought a hume. Relj numbly carded her nails through sodden hair. She had loved taking care of the young Viera that her village was blessed with, hoping to perhaps be blessed with her own when the Calling came in a moon's time, but now…

The hume child had exhausted herself crying before Relj dared to move from the bows. Gently, she carried the sleeping girl through the treetops. The Wood was silent in her ears, and the path bereft of her sisters. Still, Relj pressed on to the village Menat. She was met, expectedly, with the sad gazes of her sisters even as they barred her entrance.

"The child…" Relj tried to explain. But her tongue felt heavy and cold as her heart. "…She is only a child."

The head of Menat, in surprising kindness, brushed her fingers along Relj's cheek and nodded. A few others came forward in silence and Relj desperately held back her tears. All her belongings were brought forward. Her second bow, a pair of long knives she kept for hunting, spare garments… even the few coins she collected (along with a few she suspected she did not) were placed before her. The village often burned the belongings of the Departed in a silent effigy of a funeral. But she … she gulped at the implication … she would be allowed to keep them.

Relj stood solemnly as the Viera of Menat slowly turned and left her in silence. Alone on the path, Relj carefully tucked the hume, who had awakened but remained wisely quiet during the encounter. Relj quickly tucked everything away into a satchel she knew was not hers. Her own bow already slung about her shoulders, she gripped the second in her left hand and held her right out to the child. She had started this path of her own volition, however unintentionally, and thus she would have to see it through to the end.

Relj guided the girl back through the Wood, back to the Greenswathe, and halted nervously at the edge.

Nervously, the girl clung to her hand and looked out at the snow. "Please," the child whispered. "Don't leave me here."

Relj gulped and took her first deliberate step out onto the snow. She looked down at the child. She was skinny, and filthy, and her clothes hung in rags about her shivering frame. Relj regretted many things about the day, would likely regret them for all her days, but she refused to regret this.

"We are going to Bur-Omisace," she stated firmly.

And the girl followed her out into the Rift.

Author's Notes: When you meet Relj, you have to wonder why she would bother to leave the Wood when she cared so little for humes. She's so detached, yet ... she offers unexpected aid. She hates humes, but she remains on Mt. Bur-Omisace among the refugees while other Viera travel to see the world. She's a puzzle, and I thought she needed a few extra pieces to flesh her out. FFXII has so many minor characters, it's kind of fun to imagine their histories.