Shadowed Heart--Part 2

See disclaimer in Part 1

Carefully, I opened one eye, being overly cautious. For one thing, I had no idea where I was. For another, I didn't know what condition my body was in. No point in being stupid and getting hurt if I didn't know, right?

The cold shocked me. Really shocked me. It was freezing! It was never this cold in Ivalice...

Ivalice? What? Where was that? Where had that thought come from?

It dawned on me as I tried to rack my memory as to what kind of place Ivalice was. I had no memory of it. No memory of anything, really. Except for my own name. And what kind of knowledge was that?

As I tried harder to think, a few more things started to come back to me. Some kind of fight... I'd been badly hurt. And a strange bluish sparkling thing. Weird...

Slowly, I came to realize that I wasn't alone. I was lying on... a bench...? on a town street. No... city. Lots of people were bustling past, and wearing the most ridiculous clothes I'd ever seen. Big, puffy colored tunics that only came down to one's waist! Strange, rough blue-colored breeches kept tight against the skin. Flimsy little slipper-shoes that wouldn't survive a trek between towns for anything. A waste of gil. And everyone was human. Human! Where were the bangaa and vieras, the nu mou and moogles?

What? Gil? Bangaa? Moogles? What was I thinking? Uggh. These half-remembered things would be the death of me!

I took a deep breath and slowed myself down. It would do no good to get frustrated. Okay. So I'd lived in a place called Ivalice. There were other races besides humans there. The currency, or whatever, was called gil. And it was pretty warm there.

I could just vaguely remember a deep, potentially serious wound in my side. Carefully, I probed my ribs with one finger. No trace of a bone break or even a cut--just, apparently, a really big bruise. Which hurt like heck and would probably be turning green and purple soon, if it hadn't already. Still, fine by me. Bruises were really quite preferable to hemorrhaging.

I also took the time to inspect my clothes. A pair of those same coarse blue breeches I'd seen on a lot of the people around was also on me. My own shoes, though made pretty small, were constructed from tough leather. My shirt, made of thin material, faded from pale red to white, with spiraled patterns on the shoulders. Another white, shirtlike garment was tied around my waist. I knew without looking that I was still wearing my favorite hat (it was the only piece of clothing I was wearing that was familiar).

Carefully, I got up, ignoring the ache in my side and my collarbone. I was cold, but movement would be able to help that. Also, I could find a place to stay--without somewhere to call home it would be pointless to go on living, and I would go on living. I wouldn't just lay down and die without putting up a good fight first, that much I knew!

I looked through the glass windows of the nearby stores. The crowds milled, dispersed, and gathered to buy goods and to look at wares. I didn't see anyone I vaguely recognized... but that was to be expected, as I was in an unfamiliar place.

Passing a dark building, I caught sight of two glowing orbs. I turned slightly and scrutinized the boy I saw there--my reflection. Ragged blonde hair with bangs that fell into my face... pale brown eyes with the slightest hint of yellow-ochre. Almost delicate features and deep shadows scored under my eyes. The deep sadness and confusion I felt in my heart burned in my face. Somehow the frailty of my body came as a surprise. I guess that wherever I'd lived, I'd been used to being strong.

I headed on, shivering and instinctively wrapping my arms tightly together against my chest to keep warm. My breath rose in a fine cloud of mist before me every time I exhaled. If I didn't find somewhere to stay, I would probably freeze to death in the night. And it was already evening. I'd have to hurry...

Feeling a sort of tug at the corner of my soul, I stopped. As if I was drawn by a chain, I looked up into the window panel of the nearby store. I couldn't resist it--I was compelled to do so.

A group of four children, all roughly in the same age group as me, were gathered by the counter, making their purchase together. Three boys and a girl, with the smallest boy supported by a pair of crutches. My heart started to pound at double its normal rate as my eyes were drawn to one of the boys; a quiet kid with slightly frizzy brown hair and hooded, smoky blue eyes. He was dressed in a deep green, heavy-looking shirt and (once again) those seemingly very popular blue breeches. (In fact, all of the gathered kids were wearing a pair.)

Although my memory was still choked in haze, there was no possible way in the entire world that I wouldn't recognize that boy. Breathlessly, I whispered his name, keeping the sound locked deep inside my chest as though it were the only treasure ever worth protecting.

Mewt.

---

The queen left me alone with the prince after introducing the two of us and dismissing their attendant, Babus Swain, to escort the royal Judgemaster out of the palace. She knew, as every mother or creator knows, that we would get along just fine. Mewt took me back into his spacious quarters and invited me to flop down on the bed with him.

"How come Mama sent you here?" he asked curiously, cupping his face in his small hands, which just barely peeped from the lacy sleeves of his yellow tunic-shirt. Just seeing the way that the prince dressed made me feel a little uncomfortable. After all, my own clothing was toughened and scarred from numerous battles, and I wasn't exactly in the most presentable order.

I shrugged. "Well... the queen wants me to protect you. And keep that kid Marche, or whatever his name is, from making you go home against your will." Besides the sense that I was a little out of my league fashion-wise, I felt entirely open and trusting towards Mewt Randell, who I'd just barely met. "But, as for me... I want to be your friend."

Mewt's eyes widened a little. "Why... why do you want to be my friend...?" he asked, a little unbelievingly.

I sighed, the familiar stab of loneliness resurfacing in my heart. "I don't really have any. Most people think I'm kind of weird, and avoid me. I've seen some of them give me weird looks in the corridors, and stuff. And whenever I go into the palace guards' mess, where I'm supposed to live, people always stop talking to each other and go off somewhere else. It's as though... as though I scare them or something. I don't understand. But the queen told me that you didn't really have it easy in your other world either, so I thought that maybe..."

"I don't think you're scary."

I looked up. Mewt's hazy blue eyes were exploring my features, catching all the little likenesses between us. Besides our hair and eyes, we pretty much had the same delicate facial features and body structure. That was part of the reason that Queen Remedi had had to lay a special law on me that kept me from ever getting hurt in battles, called a fortune law. Although my power could be downright incredible, I didn't have very much stamina and could be easily knocked aside by a powerful blow. With invincibility as well as the strength of Omega with which I had been gifted, I could protect the prince with ease.

"I think you're like me." Mewt's gaze was open and honest. "You have the same look in your eyes that I always had, after... after people picked on me, back there. I think you can understand. I haven't had many friends either... only three..."

"Three?" Lucky. "Who...?"

Mewt smiled. "Ritz Malbeur had always been my best friend. She always told all the bullies off for picking on me. And Doned Radiuju. He knew what it was like to have hardships in your life. And... and Marche, too."

I couldn't stop the slight rise of my eyebrows. "But I thought that your mom said he wanted to send you back to the other place, the place he thinks you belong in. And that he didn't really care what you thought about it. Now I'm confused..."

"Okay, I'll explain," Mewt said happily, glad for a chance to tell his own side of the story for once. "Marche and his brother Doned had just moved into the town of St. Ivalice, where we lived on the other side. And everyone always picked on him like they did me..."

---

The memory faded as soon as it surfaced in my mind long enough for me to know where I had seen Mewt before. He was my only friend, my charge, and my prince. So he was here too.

The boy with crutches looked out the window and stared at me, his eyes going wide. He tugged at the sleeve of the leader, who had blonde hair and a long rattail. The leader, who looked freakishly familiar, waved one hand absentmindedly as if to say, In a minute, wait for me. Instead, the boy poked at the shoulder of the sole girl in the group, a nonchalant-looking young lady with long, crisp white hair that fell luxuriously to her waist. The girl turned, looked out the window at me, and let out a cry of surprise and indignance. She came storming out the door before I could even begin to coax my freezing body to react, grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me inside.

"Stupid kid!" she cried, fixing me with a piercing emerald-eyed stare. Although her voice had an exasperated tone to it, I could also detect a little bit of rough concern. "What do you think you're doing, standing out there without putting your sweater on? You'll get sick, idiot!" She then paused, stared at me a little bit more, and gasped as though something in her mind had suddenly clicked. "Guys! Guys, get over here quick! You aren't going to believe this!"

The others all turned, and the boy with crutches began laboriously moving over to us. Mewt's eyes widened in recognition and he took a few steps forward.

"Llednar... How... it's really you...?" He sounded completely bewildered. We just stared at each other for a few seconds, and then he ran to me, giving me an awkward, one-armed hug, letting go only after several moments had passed. "I thought... I thought that you'd...!" Mewt could barely complete a single sentence, he was so amazed at seeing me.

I looked at the others again. "Doned," I whispered, finally recognizing the blue-eyed, brown-haired kid with the crutches. Turning to the girl, I searched my fragmented memory until a clear image came up. "And Ritz. You too... and Mewt..."

The blonde leader was the only one who hadn't yet come to greet me. He was only staring, shocked, a tear beginning to well in the corner of his eye. My hand went to the badly bruised wound on my side as I remembered that his was the hand who had wielded the sword inflicting it. Marche.

Marche squeaked and ran over to us, laying an arm around my shoulders and looking as though he'd rather hug me half to death but respected my wish to be a little untouched. "You're okay!" The relief in his voice was almost painful to hear. Okay? Huh? "You're alive, and you're here! I didn't... you're not... you're still okay, and nothing seems to have happened to you! How? How did you get here?"

I suddenly felt very small, and looked down at the ground. "Marche... Mewt... you guys..." They waited expectantly for me to speak. "What is this place...? I-I don't even know how I got here... I can barely remember anything... but I know that I know you... and..."

Ritz gave my shoulder a gentle shake. "Before that, though, you'd better put that sweater of yours on, kiddo. You're really cold, and you'll get sick if you don't put on warm clothing out here." Seeing my confusion, she untied the shirtlike thing that I'd had around my waist and held it out to me. "Okay, just slip it on over what you're already wearing." I obeyed her instructions. Even though I could barely remember Ritz, it was easy to do something she told you because she just had that big-sisterly air that let you know she was concerned in her own gruff, formal way.

"Okay then, what do you remember?" Marche asked, leading us off to a corner of the shop so that we wouldn't be overheard. "No matter how vague it is, tell us... if you're having trouble remembering things, then..."

I curled up into a half-sphere on the wooden seat. "Not much... I have some impressions of meeting all of you before, but I can only really remember being with Mewt. But... I can kind of remember a fight..." I curled tighter, hissing a little as it squeezed still more pain out of my aching side. "I was really, really hurt... dying maybe..." Marche looked at the ground, a shamed expression on his face. I shrugged helplessly. "I just know that there was this blue thing... and then the next thing I knew, I was waking up on a bench here."

Everyone was silent for a long time. Finally, Marche spoke up. "We need to find out if you can stay over at someone's house tonight. I'm guessing that this is your first time ever being in St. Ivalice, so I don't think you'll really have had somewhere to go."

"Why don't we all hang out at your place?" Mewt suggested. "If we're all together, we'll have a better chance of figuring out what's going on." The way Mewt said "all together", I knew that he was including me. It was a good feeling to have a friend like him.

Ritz got a dubious look on her face. "I have no idea if Mom would even let me stay over at a boy's place all night. I mean, we are in high school, even if Mewt skipped a couple of grades to get in."

Doned poked out his tongue at her. "I'm still in fifth grade! You can't forget me!" I stared at all of them blankly. What in the world were they talking about?

"I think we just lost Llednar again," Marche commented lightly. "I figure we'll have a lot of explaining to do when we get back to my house. And Ritz, my mom is around, so wouldn't that be okay? Even if it isn't, then you should still stay for a while. Good idea, Mewt."

"Sorry," Ritz offered to me as she dug in a little purse strapped to her waist. She pulled out some kind of rectangular black thing with little colored spots on it and a wire sticking out of one end. Ritz poked some of the colored spots in a pattern and then held the thing up to her ear. She waited for a few seconds, then began to mouth, "Pick up, pick up, pick up..."

I stared blankly and blinked. I didn't understand this place at all.

"That's a phone," Mewt explained to me in an undertone. "You can use them to talk to people over long distances. I'll explain more later."

"Yeah, hi?" Ritz was talking into the black 'phone' thing now. "Hi, Mom, it's me. No, nothing much. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah, I know. Thanks for getting that for me. By the way, the guys want to know if I can stay over for the night...? Yeah, at Marche's. Mewt's going to be there too, and another friend of theirs." She paused, flicking her hair over her shoulder. "Marche's mom will be there... you know, she'll be sort of a chaperone. That okay? Fine... I'll just come back tomorrow morning." She pushed a different colored symbol, then handed the 'phone' to Mewt. "Here. Call your dad."

Mewt took the object and used a different pattern of spots to contact his father. "Hi Dad..." he said softly. "I'm with Marche and Ritz and Doned. They want to know if I can stay over with Marche for the night... thanks. It's important, really really important. It's Llednar. He's here, Dad. I mean really here." A pause. "I know. I know... I remember too, but he's alive and he's standing right next to me." I remembered with a jolt that Mewt's father was the royal Judgemaster of all of Ivalice, whose subordinates took care of refereeing most engagements. Judgemaster Cid was reknowned. He was here, as well as everyone else...? Was this the 'other side' that Mewt had referred to so often when we talked together? "I'd put him on, but he has absolutely no idea how phones work... he's pretty confused out here, and I think he's got some kind of amnesia... yeah..." Mewt turned to me and covered part of the 'phone'. "Dad wants to know if you'd like to stay with us after tonight. What do you think?"

"It's an honor..." I nodded. "Sure. I have no place better to go."

"He says he'd love to," Mewt reported into the device. "Thank you so much, Dad. Okay. Bye." He pressed the same symbol Ritz had to end her conversation, handed the 'phone' back to Ritz, and put a hand on my shoulder. "So for a while now, your last name is going to be Randell like ours, okay?"

I shrugged. "I guess." No harm in that. And on top of everything else, I'd gotten a place to stay, a place to call home!

"Let's get back to my house then," Marche said, leading us back outside. "And... Llednar, I'm really, really glad that you're okay... I thought I'd..." I stared at him, scrutinizing his relieved yet shamed expression. He thought he'd what? "No... never mind. We can talk when we get back." And for the rest of the walk, he was silent.

I could just barely remember a conversation with Mewt about Marche's greatest wish being to never harm or kill another living being.

He thought he'd what? He thought he'd killed me? Had... had it really been that bad?

I felt an echo of the deep, shattering pain in my heart and shuddered.