This is what I've wanted to do all along. This is what I wanted to begin with. The story of the three friends: Sephiroth (Crescent), Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. Now I finally do. Whoever may want to laugh or cry or get hurt or comfort each other together with us, welcome on board. Here we go!
If you want to know how the chants sound, I recommend you the movie 'Nell' with Jodie Foster. The little girls' chanting there is how I envisioned the thing.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of FF7. Then again, I own nothing whatsoever. But hey, „nihil habenti, nihil deest"!
(Still, Iarba - the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis - is MY creation and nobody else but Glau is entitled to use her apart from me)
NEVERENDING SONG
Prologue: Elemental
It was night already and they were all alone. Four small kids trying to hearten themselves, all gathered in one bed, scarcely lighted by a nightlamp that was casting more shadows than rays of light.
And mom wasn't there. She had said she would return before getting dark, but she hadn't so far.
Crawling beneath the comforter, playing hide-and-seek, they pretended they didn't care. They merrily messed up the bed covers, worming their way through the warm and cosy layers of soft material, they battled with pillows and tripped in their cheerfully colored nightgowns, decorated with moogles, that even the boys were wearing.
They seemed to be around the same age of four or maybe five and they looked completely different one from another – one of the boys was kinda sturdy, with pitch-black locks of hair falling straight to his shoulders, another one was small and lean, with unruly hair glistening with an auburnish hue in the sparse light and the third had a long mane coming over his face and eerily floating around him like fine threads of quicksilver. In the cold moonlight pouring through the window, he seemed to have descended with the pale moon's silver rays, like an aerial little being. And there was also a girl, with seemingly dark hair, sometimes looking like a bundle of burnt grass, slightly waving around and sometimes deceptively seeming to lengthen into long waves, fugitively reflecting the light with a rusty hue.
Brothers they were, all four of them, though as different as the elemental forces of the world – the silver one the ice, the reddish like the fire, the black-haired as the earth and the girl was hard-to-get and tricky like the wind.
They knew and thought nothing of that. They were just a bunch of small kids trying to support each other and fight the sorrow and the fear over being alone, without their mom to protect them against the terrors of the night.
They knew there was a certain one – the greatest of them all – and it would come again tonight. The woman with long white hair swarming around her like a nest of snakes, staring at them with dead eyes through the window and sticking her bluish face to the glass, like a spider silently watching its prey.
They would have to face the horror all alone. And the house would not protect them. While still outside the walls, the woman with cold lifeless eyes would try to crawl inside their minds to turn them into aliens like herself, to swallow their very own souls, the gossamer of light that were their inner beings. They couldn't let this happen. They had to fight. It was important.
Four kids in their brightly colored nightgowns, four elemental forces at the centre of the world. They ran outside, holding their tiny hands and darted through the bushy garden. Dark trees obscured the moonlight everywhere around and tall weeds waved over their path, but at least they were friendly and didn't try to block their way.
In the farthest corner of the enclosure stood the carousel. There they ran – small barefoot silhouettes, their feet trampling the grassy ground.
They used to call it ‚carousel', but it wasn't the usual kind with little animal figures to ride and all the stuff. It was just an obsolete-looking cage of rusty metal bars with faded paint, mostly peeled, that spinned around an axle – the kind of thing still to be found on older playgrounds – but they knew very well that in fact it was a magic carousel to ride between the worlds.
So they sneaked in, each one of them taking a place in front of one of the four larger bars that were the main frame of the globe. They took their hands again, all four of them making a circle and started to balance on their feet, setting in motion the slightly stiffened mechanism.
On and on they rocked and the carousel went spinning faster and faster, until everything had turned into a blur – the dark night, the pale stars like tiny points of light and the moon, large and white, turned into a magic ring encircling their magic vessel. Their mother had taught them so many old songs and soon they started to utter them, one by one, answering to each other, singing in canon, then chanting all together, then starting all over again. Children's refrains, seemingly banal and childish – powerful ancient chants in fact.
Chick-a-bee, chick-a-bee,
Don't cry, little bumblebee!
If we hold onto the light
We will carry through the night.
Small soft voices rose ceaselessly into the night air, uttering ageless words, levers to move the worlds hidden in riddles.
...if we hold onto the light
We will carry through the night –
Everything will be alright.
The little one with moonlight hair shook his long strands and a thick ice barrier seemed to extend in all directions as far as the horizon went.
One, two, three
Make the world stand still with me...
The other one with blazing mane rose his hands, still clutching at the others' on both his sides and a wave of fire erupted, amazingly only adding to the wall of ice instead of shattering it, while the third one with dark straight hair threw his head backwards gazing at the sky and clusters of planets rushed to gravitate around the swirling carousel, gathering in a tight circle to let nothing pass beyond them.
Fire red, fire red,
Got no place to lie your head...
Dust and sand, earth and stone,
Caught and hardened to the bone.
Then at last came the girl, largely stretching her hands as if to open some huge gates or maybe to embrace the world, starting with her three brothers...
Chase the darkness, clear the skies,
Let the sun come back and rise –
Let the light open your eyes!
... and suddenly furious swirling winds brushed over the frail-looking cage and roared whirling like mad, until everything melted in a green blur, stirring like an ocean with them caught inside in their bubble, while they rose their voices together:
Throw the quoit, throw the quoit,
Which of us is more adroit?
Find the needle in the hay,
Make the green grow up from grey!
Each of us we're strong but sole,
All of us we make a whole.
Maybe the dark hours of night have passed in the blink of an eye or maybe they kept on crawling as usual – they didn't get to know. For them it seemed as if everything only happened in a few minutes, nothing more – and yet as if an era of neverending fight and pain swept over their frail forms and made them so much older and wiser all the same. On and on they went chanting their seemingly childish refrains, shattering the world with their powerful magic, changing it forever.
Chick-a-chick-a-chick-a-bee,
Don't cry, little bumblebee!
We can hold onto the light,
We can carry through the night.
Everything will be alright.
At long last, dawn erupted from its other plane and poured over the wild garden again. When sun emerged from the horizon and shone above the trees, they stopped their chant and each gazed at the others. Again, they were just four small kids in long nightgowns and barefoot on the metal floor of the carousel, still chilly from the night. The magic globe had turned again into a rusty enclosure with large discolored surfaces. The red-haired boy let out a high-pitched giggle, showing his sparkling teeth through a lopsided grin; the sturdy one with raven locks smiled quietly gazing at the sky with blue irises seemingly stole from it, while the girl silently leaned on the bar behind her and closed the eyes letting herself be bathed by the warmth and the shine.
The child with silver hair gazed at them, while still holding their small hands in his own. The redhead and the girl were on each of his sides, the black-haired right in front of him. They were his family and he knew he loved them and they loved him back. They were a whole, all four of them and they could turn the world together. He would never let go of them.
A sturdy little boy of maybe five, no more, stirred in his bed and lazily opened sleepy eyes, brushing a hand through raven locks. He yawned and stretched, then tried to snuggle again beneath the comforter. His elbow hit a warm soft mass and promptly a muffled wail was heard. He sat up startled, quilt sliding down his waist while another cry of protest at the loss of warmth resounded next to him. In a glance he took in the sight of the open window with the curtains slightly waving in the crispy morning breeze, then he looked beside him and watched the small bundle laying there in his bed. Another child with soft white skin and a mop of auburnish hair falling over his eyes was cuddled there right next to him, his narrow face partly buried into the large pillow and his thin-looking body, what little could be seen of it, clad in a bright-colored pajama with purple apples and some broadly smiling froggies. He too stirred under the thick covers and raised his ruffled reddish head, blinking sleepily into the haze.
„Morning already?" he mumbled dazedly.
„Uh-huh.", nodded the other. „You had some nightmare again, Genny?"
The redhead rubbed his eyes with one small hand, scratching his mop of hair with the other, while the raven-haired child wondered again how he could do both things at once.
„Um... don't remember.", the little one yawned. „But now I dreamed again about us and the magic carousel!"
The other threw him a wary look, biting his lip. Genesis had again that dream. It came to him every now and then and each time the thread would break before the end, leaving the dream loose and unfinished.
Genesis tugged at his sleeve impatiently, almost startling him.
„Angii, this time it hasn't stopped. I saw it all!", he almost whispered excitedly, gazing at him with shiny eyes. „And the night was over and we were there in the carousel, all of us. And we did it, we chased the dead woman away and we stayed together, us and Tonberry and Sephy. We stayed together!"
Angeal only put his arm around Genesis' shoulders and squeezed him reassuringly, closing his eyes with a quiet smile, while a bright ray of sun sought its way to their bed, minuscule grains of dust dancing in the light.
Somewhere else, far far away on another continent, in a cubicle with a glass wall, not even half the size of their sunny bedroom, another small form stirred and blinked disoriented, gaze slowly focusing on the scarce sight. White empty walls, save for the glass one. A pale-looking child sat up on the thin mattress, reluctantly rubbing still closed eyes and brushing silver locks away. No bright-colored pajama, no funny-looking imprints on his bed cover. There wasn't even a bed in fact, only a mattress with a plain white sheet, the paperlike use-and-dispose kind mostly utilized in labs and hospitals.
He gaped at the wall across him with a blank face. He had just had that weird dream again. It kept coming back for some time now, always the same. And it kept breaking at some point, leaving him longing and confused. He saw himself together with three other kids and seemingly they were all brothers. He saw trees and the sky – with stars and clouds and everything – and they were living in a real house and wearing clothes with many colors. They were his family and loved him, all of them.
. . .
And there even was a mom...
. . .
It was all just a nonsense.
Why did he keep having those stupid dreams in the first place?...
He wasn't a real boy. He wasn't even human. So why dreaming of that?
He was just a lab specimen. An enhanced one perhaps, but that was that. He had never set foot outside the labs and there were no windows there, to see the sky through them. He didn't even know how the sky or the trees really looked like and if they existed to begin with after all.
He lowered himself back onto the mattress and closed his eyes again, trying to ignore the cameras silently pivoting to prey on his every move.
It was just nonsense, really.
A/N: Come on, now, make my day! Come with me in this journey. Too bad we can't select more genres when we post a story, cos for this one I should've chosen not only friendship, but also humor, drama, hurt, comfort and so much more. Cos life is each and every one of these AND much more. And this goes for selecting more of the characters too, cos we talk here about all three OWAs: Seph, Gen and Angeal. And whoever else's around them. Hojo included. (At least I can promise you he won't like it!)
Me, I'm gonna like writing this. I just hope you're gonna like reading it. But whether you will or won't, please let me know.
P.S.: Woops! For whoever has fried his brains over the Latin quote from the disclaimer: 'Nihil habenti, nihil deest' means 'He who owns nothing, lacks nothing'
And another thing: If some of you wonder what was with little Genesis waking up in Angeal's bed, I definitely think you should read my 'Any other day', gahaha! Cos you see, my fics work together usually, even if you can read them separately.