Tseng's dot.
(A quick story I wrote while listening to APC's "Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the rhythm of the War Drums" that may be an explanation to why our favorite Turk leader has a dot and why he cannot return to his homeland of Wutai.)
The five year old Tseng sat in his room, looking out the window. This was the night he would begin his life's role. He was the Earthen God of his village, a child sent down to live for six years exactly on the earth, and during those six years, he was to be treated as such. He was a legend in his village, the old traditional ceremonial sacrifice that would send a message to the Gods.
For years he was spoiled with nice silks and grand foods, fed to him off silver and golden platters. He was given anything an Earthen God should receive, but he didn't know what awaited him.
The night before his sixth birthday was the night of the Sacred Ritual; were the Elders were to mark him as the Eternal Earth God and ask him to send a good message to the other Gods the following night, when the Blood Sacrifice was to be preformed, as the sun set on the night of his sixth birthday. But tonight was a night of celebration. Young Tseng was dressed in fine silks and jewels and led to the center of town, where the Elders were awaiting his arrival. The Main Elder, the oldest one of the group, placed a red hot poker into a bon-fire of the finest silks and the most delectable foods that the village could prepare, as a blessing for their Earthen God. Then, when the poker was hot enough, the Elder placed it between the young boys eyes, as a way for the third eye to see his way to the afterworld long after his earthen eyes were closed. Tseng did not scream, but his flesh was seared with the mark. It was considered bad luck if the young boy was to yell, because as a God, he did not feel pains, so he bit his tongue and said nothing.
That night Tseng was washed in boiling lye water as a cleansing ritual and put to bed in a bed of pure white silks in a pure white dressing kimono. He was locked into the room, so no one could get in or out. Tseng sat at his window and knew that his whole village needed him to send the message of the people to the Grand God, so he accepted his fate.
Late in the night, his mother snuck into the Main Elder's hut and stole away the key to her boy's prison. She had seen what happened to several of the Earthen God children and she didn't want her boy to know that pain. She remembered the last ritual, where the young girl, granted by the Gods with the powers to heal, or so the villagers thought, was pierced with almost a thousand red hot nails, her fingers were crushed into a drink that the Main Elder drank as a way to become closer to the Gods, then her hair was pulled out in great handfuls and braided into a rope to tie her to the ceremonial pole that then was set ablaze with all of the child's worldly possessions so that she and her items may proceed to the Gods world. That poor girl had endured torture her last day of life, and if Marzapha could, she was not going to let her son see the same fate.
Tseng was woken by the light of the full moon and his mother carried her only living child quietly out of the village. But she wasn't the only one up, one of the Elders saw her fleeing with Tseng and sounded the alarm. Soon, the group of village Elders were rushing after Tseng and his frightened mother. She tore through the brush, the briars tearing into her skin and that of her son's, staining the kimono he wore. She managed to run to the opposite end of the village and shed her son's bloody robe.
The Elders lost her in the darkness, but early the next morning found the boys blood-stained ceremonial robes and thought him to be dead. But the sacrafice could not be preformed and the poor village fell into a war and was all but destroyed.
But Tseng was not dead, with all of her remaining strength, her body torn almost to pieces from the run away from the village, she put her and her son in a small boat and pushed them off, away from Wutai.
Days later, some fishermen on the coast of Junon saw something floating in the ocean. They alerted the Shin-Ra troops, who went to investigate and discovered a dead Wutan woman clinging to her almost dead son. The poor boy was put into an orphange and raised there.
No matter what anyone could do, they could not get rid of the dot on Tseng's forehead, the mark that was to 'open his third eye.'