Author's Note

This chapter takes place 25 years before the events of the main storyline of Final Fantasy XII. Fran is then working with Clan Atma full time, specializing in rare game. This chapter is rated 'M' for adult content and sexual imagery. Porom and Palom are new (old) characters not originally from FFXII, but still Copyright Square-Enix.

Chapter 1 - Das Nebregold

By this time, Fran read enough picayune novellas during her years as a caravan rider to know all the common clichés. Countless nautical metaphors describing repetetive motion, slick surfaces, sheets and shirts billowing like sails at full mast. Hah. She allowed herself to make a little pun right there. It had become natural to her; pity that her sisters rarely entertained the simple pleasantries of wordplay.

It was also fun to use vulgar words and slang. Take "cock" for instance. It's the first part of "cockatrice", so you can always change the subject towards animal husbandry if anyone raises an eyebrow. "Fuck", "Asshole", "Bloody Cuntrag": all fine expeletives, and what fun they were all fun to volley back and forth while trudging wearily through waist-high weeds where waiting within were wiggling Wildsnakes and Wary Wolves... Gods, she was doing that alliteration thing again. In her head, with no one around to appreciate it.

Except Porom. But she couldn't interrupt him, as he was just getting into the swing of things.

Porom and Palom were the twin wonder mages in Clan Atma. As the token Nu Mou in the bunch, Porom used to joke that with the addition of Fran they were the most race-diverse Clan in all of Ivalice (and this was probably true). She appreciated how hard he tried to make her feel welcome and so they became fast friends. And there was something about Porom specifically that she was drawn towards, but she couldn't understand the root cause. Both brothers had the courage to work in a Hume-dominated field – that might explain her initial attraction. But it couldn't explain her current situation; there was no map that could chart the path their relationship had taken. Perhaps it was more interesting when you didn't try to understand it, perhaps...

She opened her eyes and adjusted her head, just to check that it wasn't some mist trance or Garif peace-pipe, shamanistic vision-quest of a ... how long has it been now?... month-long dream.

No, he was still there. He didn't look nearly so short from her position. She propped herself up on her elbows to get a better look.

"Uh, is there a problem?" He said as he stopped, and brushed an ear back from the front of his face.

"No. I'm just - watching."

He didn't reply, and instead adjusted her thighs, straightening her out on the mat that passed for a bed when on hunt. She closed her eyes as he continued, and imagined each thrust was like a wave of tropical ocean water, lapping over her; when he accidentally hit her cervix, a flash of lightning over the rolling seas. A few more nautical miles, she thought, and the heavens will burst forth - or something like that. She opened her eyes again and calmly watched as his cock (she chuckled quietly to herself at the word), as thick as her wrist, appeared and disappeared inside of her in a motion swift yet gentle. Or perhaps he was just getting lucky that the range of his thrust was limited mechanically since he was on his knees, against which she braced her buttocks. Technique or luck, it didn't matter in the end if it felt good.

She imagined she could hear him replying to her thoughts with the Green Word no longer filling her ears. "Is she always this distracted during sex?" No, not the first time. That was more little more than fucking anyway. And not the second time, which might have been called "making love", in that she was concentrating quite hard on getting it right. Even when it became routine, they'd think of sweet little nothings (such an awkward phrase) to tell each other that kept them focused.

Tonight... he appeared while she was diving for pearls, so she invited him to take over, and he hadn't said two words since. He grunted and moaned a few times but was otherwise quiet; he didn't even ask her to switch positions. Maybe he was tired from tracking that damned rogue Slaven. A shame that all he had to show for it was a nick out of his ear.

She sat up, and crossed her legs behind his back, pulling his head close to her chest. She tried to kiss him on his forehead but found it awkward to reach without scooting around on the mat, so instead she grabbed handfuls of his ears. He looked up at her with eyes that pleaded, "Don't use those as reins." The idea was tempting, but she wanted to see if she could try another tact to get him to lighten up... the whole encounter was animalistic lust epoused with industrial purpose and while it felt wonderful it left her mind distracted.

"Hey, remember what you called me while we were waiting to cross the Nebra?" Fran asked in the best dulcet tone she could manage between increasingly ragged breaths. He didn't reply right away, so she kneaded his ears as if to massage his attention straight out of his head. In the process, she realized something wasn't right with his left ear. She unfurled it and saw that the end had already healed. That's odd.

She felt him stop, and he screwed up his face at her. Gods, why did he have to stop? "I'm confused," he finally replied, "We never went anywhere today. I was out running messages to clan headquarters, remember? I don't know what you were-"

Fran's heart leapt out of her chest like a mutineer being thrown overboard into cold icy waters.

"YOU CADDISH FUCKING CUNTRAG!"

Fran pulled her legs up over Palom's head and kicked him as hard as she could, square in his shoulders. He made a full somersault as he flew across the tent, landing face down. Fran pulled her legs up to her chest, gripping her knees with clenched hands in frustration and rage at such childish deception and the poor timing of his admission of guilt. Couldn't he have just waited until after I got off before he answered my question and ruined the experience?

Polom laughed as he gingerly sat up. "(snort) You know, you never said anything. I was just walking by, minding my own business, when you pulled me in here. At first I didn't know what was going on, then I noticed you were here all by your lonesome. So I figured you thought you could replace one brother with the other. I wasn't gonna let you down!" He was still giggling while rubbing his bruised shoulders, quite proud of himself. Fran was seething.

"Do not waste your lies on me," she hissed, reverting to an intimidating, less colloquial speech. "You took advantage of a - uh - situation."

"Damn right I did!" Palom scoffed in reply. He stood and collected his cloak, adding, "Well, I see my services are no longer welcome, so I'll be going." Before he could react, Fran got up and arrested him from behind with a grip on his shoulder.

"I do not remember saying that you could leave."

She felt him flinch. "You're not going to hurt me some more, are you?"

"Oh, there will be plenty of time for that later." Fran let go of him and sat back down on the mat. He nervously rubbed the spot with his hand."Right now I just want you to finish the job." She pulled her knees up and spread her legs in an unambiguous fashion. Palom dropped his belongings where he stood, and kneeled in front of her.

"Only if you promise not to hurt me."

"Only if you make me forget you're not Porom."

Fran never forgave Palom completely for the incident the previous week, and began to loathe the memory of it. She wanted to excise it from her head, as it occupied her thoughts regularly. The guilt of her complacency would not have bothered her so except that afterword she realized how much she enjoyed it. It was exciting and wild, and the memory sat there taunting her, daring her to further experiment sexually. More than once she fantasized about three-ways with the twins; each such thought felt like compounding treachery upon Porom. She yearned for resolution.

Which is why she bought the lone earring from a desert wayfarer. It was a simple affair; she held it up at arm's length and examined it in the noon-day sun. Gold caustics danced across its hammered surface, hallmarks of quick but effective work from the jeweler. She turned to face the rest of the Clan trudging down the sandy embankment, and spied Palom through the center of the ring. A gutsy cockatrice, ignoring her rear guard position, gave chase to the remainder of the party ahead of her. Dust surrounded Palom as he swatted the feisty nuisance away with his fluted pole. Fran gripped her crossbow in her free hand, cocked the draw, and placed a needle-thin bolt in the groove.

As she hoped, Palom subdued the cockatrice easily. Palom whipped his head around to check for further foes, and as he did so she fired the bolt, neatly perforating his left earlobe two inches from its greatest extent. Palom shrieked and grabbed his ear, but in the vale of dust raised by the scuffle, the rest of the party paid him no mind. In the intervening seconds, Fran had covered the distance at a sprint, launching herself at him before he could react. She pinned him to the ground, her knees on his shoulders. He tried to fight her off, and she smacked him across his muzzle in turn.

"What the fuck!" he yelled, protecting his face with his arms. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Fran ignored him, and grabbed his ear. She opened the clasp to the earring, shoved the post through the bloody hole, and closed it in a swift motion. By this time the rest of Clan Atma noticed something was amiss, and doubled back, gathering around the two. Porom grabbed Fran's arm, pulling her away from his brother. Fran ripped her arm out of Porom's grip, ignoring shouts of protest from the rest of her party. Palom likewise ignored offers to help him to his feet - he rose, brushed the sand from his clothes, and examined the earring he had acquired through such untraditional means.

Fran's hair was still in her face from pouncing her quarry. She brushed it aside, and as she did so the gathered adventurers fell silent. "Now I can tell you two apart," she shot at Palom. The clan members looked at each other, dumbfounded. "And if I ever catch you without it, you will spend a few days, or perhaps weeks, dreading when and where I choose to put the next one." Porom hit Palom in the shoulder, gesturing quizzically towards Fran.

"Just forget it," Palom grumbled, and shouldered through the encircled group to continue his trudge down the hill. Her catharsis complete, Fran broke a satisfied smile, and followed Palom through the gap he forged in the party. Porom looked like he wanted to stop her and ask what had just transpired, but he knew better. Maybe that's why she liked him.