Elena had to hike the last twenty kilometres to Nibelheim. The truck driver she'd hitched with from Costa del Sol wasn't going out of his way for her, so she got out and walked with her backpack on and her sports bag draped over her shoulders.
She didn't mind the walk; it was beautiful country. Ahead of her rose the mountains, wrinkled grey rock with snow packed on the tops. She kept her mind busy counting birds in the sky, looking out for the little lizards that darted around under the dry tussock.
She thought about what she'd do to keep herself occupied when she arrived. She didn't think about the dark place.
By the time she set eyes on Nibelheim her shirt was wet with sweat under the pack, and a wind had sprung up to sting her eyes with dust. She felt kind of itchy, irritable.
Nibelheim struck her as almost unbearably quaint. The old fashioned houses with their matching red roofs were gathered around the water tower like old women at a card table. And everything penned in by this postcard picket fence.
Elena thought, You'd never guess all the awful things that had happened here. And maybe that was the idea.
But when she came through the entrance arch and into the central square, unease scuttled down the back of her neck. It was late afternoon and windows were lighting up, the first thin tendrils of smoke creeping out of chimneys. People were doing ordinary things – tending gardens, chopping wood, filling buckets at the water tower – but they all looked tense. Tight-mouthed, hard-eyed. And trying to look like they weren't staring at her.
Elena slapped a grin over her face and strode over to a boy splitting wood outside a house.
"Excuse me," she said. "You mind telling me where the inn is?"
The boy froze with the axe over his head and looked at her, frowning. The pose lifted his shirt up and Elena could see a line of spidery black hairs crawling down the skin between his belly button and his pants. He looked about sixteen and was missing a tooth – one of his canines.
He brought his axe down and buried it in the round on his block. It wasn't a clean split; the axehead got stuck halfway into the log.
The boy let go of his axe and straightened up.
"Over there," he said, pointing. "Can't you read or something?"
Elena followed the line of his finger to a two-storey building on the opposite side of the square. The word "Inn" was written on a sign at its front.
Annoyance – at herself, at this kid - pinched her gut.
"You're splitting the wood wrong," she told him. "Bend your knees, not your back."
Elena had never cut wood in her life, but she knew better than just about anyone how the body moved, how to get the most power out of it.
She left the boy to his glaring and walked over to the inn. She could almost feel the eyes of the townspeople creeping over her back.
She thought, That wasn't exactly the warm welcome Rude promised, was it? Maybe she should have gone to Wutai after all.
Inside, the inn was cold and empty. Wood and paper were stacked in the hearth but nobody had put a match to them. Elena dumped her backpack and rang the bell at the counter.
Nobody appeared. She looked around the room. Behind the counter rows of bottles glittered in the dull light, spirits Elena recognised from her days behind the bar in Wall Market. There were tables scattered around the room, each one immaculately set but obviously unused for quite a while. Dust had gathered in the spoons.
She waited a moment and rang the bell again. A girl slouched in from the kitchen and looked Elena over. She looked about the same age as the boy from before.
Great, Elena thought. Another sullen teenager.
She said: "I have a room reserved. Name's Elena."
"Okay," the girl said. She opened a big book on the counter and flicked through the pages. Her fingers were thin and white, like sticks of chalk.
"Found you," she said. "Room Three."
The front door opened. Elena turned and saw a man come in carrying a bag of apples. His eyebrows rose when he saw her and he smiled - a pleasant smile, but somehow fragile looking.
"Ah," he said. "You must be Elena."
He came over and shifted the apples to his left arm to shake her hand. His eyes were sunk deep into the flesh on either side of a big, crooked nose.
"I'm Raymond," he said. "I run the inn. Sorry I wasn't here to welcome you - I wasn't expecting you until later on. I hope Phoebe's made you comfortable?"
"Yeah," Elena said. "Everything's fine."
"Excellent," he said. "Why don't you go upstairs and settle in, and I'll get started on dinner. Phoebe, could you please get that fire going?"
"I'm busy, Dad. I was about to go out. Light it yourself." The girl was scowling.
"Phoebe, for Shiva's sake, I'm not asking much, am I?" He turned and appealed to Elena. "Am I?"
"Shit, don't get me involved," Elena said, backing off.
Phoebe threw her hands in the air and stormed out the front door, slamming it behind her. Dust drifted down from the ceiling.
"Don't mind her," Raymond said, letting his breath out. "It's just the hormones talking."
Looking at him, Elena saw someone trying desperately to be happy when he didn't have much to be happy about. She could almost see the muscles in his cheeks straining to hold up his smile.
"Don't worry about it," she said. She lifted her bags off the floor and lugged them up the stairs.
The room wasn't much: a bed, a wardrobe, a rug over the floorboards, a cramped bathroom out back. She opened her backpack on the floor and kept busy for a few minutes hanging her clothes in the cupboard. When that was done she threw the limp bag in a corner and sat on the bed, staring out the window.
Well, here she was. Let the vacation begin.
She didn't want to sit here by herself. She knew that if she was left alone with her thoughts, nothing to distract her, it was only a matter of time before her mind was dragged into the dark place with the bone-white trees and the pain, the pain that never -
She stood up, shaking her head. A distraction. That was what she needed. Something to keep her mind occupied.
Downstairs the fire was still unlit so Elena decided to do something about it. She found a box of matches on the mantelpiece and crouched down to set one to the balls of scrunched paper.
The flames slithered up into the kindling and the aroma of woodsmoke drifted into Elena's nose. She sat back and closed her eyes, basked the heat and the crackle.
"Oh, no, I won't have that," Raymond said.
He was standing in the door to the kitchen, wearing an apron and his brittle smile.
"I can't have a guest doing all the work," he said. "Please, sit down. You're embarrassing me."
"It's fine," Elena told him, getting to her feet. "I hate just sitting around. Can't I help you with dinner, or something?"
"No!" Raymond was beaming. He dried his hands on his apron and came into the room. Sweeping an arm along the row of stools at the bar, he said, "Take a seat. Let me pour you a drink."
"Sure," Elena said. A drink sounded like a good idea. She perched herself on a barstool and asked, "So I'm the only one staying here, am I?"
"I'm afraid so. These are tough times for Nibelheim. Not so long ago this place was full almost every week."
"Reactor scientists?"
"Yes. Shinra people were always coming and going. I had all the locals in at night too, drinking. Back then people had money. Plenty of jobs servicing the reactor. What did you do, if you don't mind me asking?"
"I was with the Turks."
Raymonds eyebrows rose, but then he shrugged and leaned back on the wall. "Well, I won't hold that against you. We all did things we weren't proud of, in those days."
"I didn't," Elena said.
The innkeeper's mouth opened but then he shut it like he'd had a better idea. "How about that drink?" he said.
"I'll take a whiskey."
"Great." Raymond turned to the shelf behind him and reached up to choose a green glass bottle. Elena recognised the label; it was good stuff.
"Shiva, it's been so long since I did this," he said, selecting a tumbler and spilling in two fingers of the thin blonde liquid. "Poured a drink, talked to a customer while they sat at the bar. I didn't realise how much I was missing it."
He set the glass on the counter before her. "So, what's brought you out here?" he said.
"I'm on vacation. Boss is making me kill two weeks," Elena said, taking a sip, savouring its sting. "Actually, I was thinking about climbing some mountains."
Raymond' brows shot up and he sucked air through his grimace. "I don't think that's a good idea, right now."
"Why's that?"
"There's a gang of bandits hanging around up there. They turned up last week some time."
"Out here? Shit." She should have known about that. Elena wondered if her colleagues had been keeping intel from her. Didn't they think she could keep her mouth shut, any more? "Has someone told the WRO?"
"Yes, but they're spread pretty thin right now," Raymond said. "Trouble up in the Fort Condor area, apparently. They said it would be a couple of weeks before they could get a squad out here. Hopefully the bandits will be gone by then."
"You don't think the town's in danger, do you?"
Raymond shrugged. "Hard to say. I'm not sure how many of them there are. But I think if they were going to raid us they would have done it by now, before we knew they were there."
"How did you find out they were here?" Elena said. Her mouth felt swollen with questions. This was just the sort of distraction she needed.
"They came into town last week – a small group of them, anyway. Said – well, I'm not going to bother repeating what they said."
"Hasn't anyone been up to scout around?"
"Shiva, no! Talk about prodding the sleeping death claw. What is it you tell your children to do if they're being bullied? 'Just ignore them. Walk away.'"
"So you're just going to pretend the bandits aren't there, is that it?"
"We had a town meeting about it." Raymond paused, frowning like he was considering his next words carefully. "Look, I was a corporal with Public Safety before we moved out here. I've dealt with people like this before, and I can tell you right now our best bet is to sit tight and wait for help to arrive."
"I could go check it out for you," Elena said.
"Come on now. Remember what I said about guests doing work?"
"I'm serious. I want to help. I want – I want to do something. I'll go crazy sitting around here for two weeks."
"But we don't want to provoke -"
"They won't even know I'm there. I'm a Turk, remember? I'm good at this shit. You'll sleep better knowing how many people are up there, where their camp is, what sort of weapons they have. Won't you?"
Raymond's smile sharpened and but the light in his eyes died. "That depends on what you find out," he said.
Thanks for reading! I feel like this is moving pretty slowly, so I hope nobody's bored (let me know in a review if you are, though!). It'll pick up eventually...
