Prologue- Lost Child
Author's note: This is a little story I started about one of my Final Fantasy 14 characters on Diabolos server. (And if you have read my other stories you might recognize the name, but I recycled it ) I am still working on my Mass Effect story, but this is a little side project. Hope you enjoy!
A Child of the Calamity- That's what they called me, always with a breath of pity. I was child born into disaster and ruin, and my parents fought to save our world from said disaster and ruin. No one even had the decency to tell me my parent's names, since I only knew them as Mom and Dad. They just kept saying they were heroes, they were our saviors. I was only three, I didn't know what that meant, I just wanted my Mom and Dad but they were gone. If they had saved everyone, why didn't they return to save me? Theirs and many other heroes' stories would be told for generations, but no one ever knew they left behind a little boy.
I remember when the news hit. Everyone in the city of Ul'dah was shouting their praises, singing songs and cheering the night away. I also heard many people say me and all the other "Children of the Calamity" would live out their lives in fame and riches. We'd never have to want for anything so that the bloodline of their heroes would live on. They were going to build us all a big house and have the city of Ul'dah support us until the day we died. They were, but they never did. Eventually, the consequences of war took their toll. People started losing money and resources the more refugees came in. Eventually everyone forgot us. They certainly remembered our parents, but the children of their heroes were lost amongst the hundreds of other refugees. At age nine I was forced to leave the orphanage as they had to make room for younger newcomers. I had nowhere to go, but they didn't care. I found myself wallowing in sadness with the other homeless and starving. I made my home in an alleyway with an old dark-skinned Roegadyn man who could only talk jibberish and a boy Lalafell who was also a Child of the Calamity, just a few years older than me. His name was Poyo Raloyo. Unlike me, he could remember his parents and often claimed that being a child of a hero was nothing special.
"I mean, what did it give us? Nothing! That's what," he would rant on. "I would think that if you have a child at home, your priority is that child right? Maybe I'm just an old-fashioned person I guess."
Poyo couldn't live with the fact that his parents chose the war over him. It was hard for me too, but I didn't complain about it every day.
"What about you Leo? You don't care?" He asked looking argumentative at me from his roll out cot made of discarded cloth from the Weaver's Guild.
He called me Leo, though my name was Leonith. I couldn't remember my surname. I didn't mind the nickname though. I turned to him and replied sharply, "I don't remember."
His light grey eyes rolled and he shook his round head. "You're lucky." He murmured.
I didn't think I was.
Poyo lay down on his cot and covered himself with a moldy cloak until he was nothing but a sprout of spikey black hair sticking out from underneath.
I turned to the Roegadyn, who always slept sitting up against the hard stone wall. He was staring at me. His mouth moved when I looked over at him, but the only thing that came out was, "Bayurl led lerg ta her kahdah."
"Goodnight, Mumble," I replied softly, calling him by the nickname Poyo and I gave him, since we didn't know his true name.
I curled up on my own cot with a scrap of cloth shielding me from the cold. Ul'dah was scorching during the day, but nights were always chilly. I stared up at the sky that was riddled with glistening white stars as my bronze-furred tail wrapped around me to escape the cold. It was times like these where I thought of what to do with my life. I had no sort of skill that would give me any sort of profit. I once considered becoming a botanist, thinking that it wouldn't be that hard snapping off branches and flowers, but it turned out to be way out of my league, much like everything else. I couldn't sew, couldn't leatherwork, and fighting? That was a joke. All I wanted to do was to live my life, find out what I was put on this world to do. Little did I know, I was soon to find out.
To be continued...