2. Sixteen
Eventually the water's chill drove him out of the pool, and he splayed over the quaint beach, vegetating. He didn't have anything to do, anywhere to go... anyone to be. If Milda had a suggestion, she reserved it. She hadn't moved, sitting squarely with her claws tucked in and her neck stretched across the ground, eyes closed. He still wasn't sure how to talk to her without getting frustrated or... eaten or something, so he kept to his thoughts, enjoying the toasty sunlight and semi-privacy while it lasted.
It was like his own little nude beach, he thought with a humored snort. He tried to steal a peek at a nude beach once upon a time, but learned the hard way that the kind of people who go to nude beaches and the kind of people he would like to see naked were not necessarily one and the same. His tail twitched as he realized that his scrawny, moth-eaten shape was no longer easy on the eyes, either.
He spared his discarded clothes another glance. They looked like a pile of washed-up kelp. The only salvageable article was his underpants, but just because he could salvage it didn't make it sanitary (they weren't green like the rest of his outfit, but he didn't remember wearing whatever that color was, either.) Right there he started his to-do list: find new clothes.
He flexed his limbs, savoring the easy throb in his veins and under his ribs. It was weird to be alive... again? Still? He had no idea. His gaze roamed the sundry cuts and marks adorning his skeletal form, trying to pick out which were recent developments and which were old news. He had earned most of his scars in his youth, back when he believed that life was short and should be lived fast and hard. It took many more scars to teach him the real price of life, and no matter how long he suffered this world, he'd never regret the day he turned back to Iifa to save...
He cleared his head with a shaky sigh. He couldn't afford those thoughts. If his mind started down the long road to Iifa, the rest would shortly follow, and he just got out of there. It was funny-stupid, maybe, but avoiding the past was the best way to keep him from running from it. He had to move on, for his sanity's sake.
His stomach snarled. Second on the list: find food, though he wasn't worried about starving. If that was going to kill him, he'd be dead by now. He'd like to look less like a zombie and more like he belonged with the living, though. He felt like an old piece of fruit, tossed out, grown over and baked in the sun. Like a raisin. Raisins are tasty. He sure could go for a piece of fruit right now. Apples are good, his favorite. Apple juice, even better. Or apple cider, or... Beer. He needed beer, like, immediately.
The sun was already slipping behind the trees, and he was dry enough. Time to put his silver dragon to use. "Hey Milda, wanna give me a ride?"
She rose like a wave, back rolling from shoulders to hips beneath the foamy white down of her wings. 'I am ready.'
With only half her grace he found his feet again and approached her, but then hesitated. Would she mind that he's not wearing...? He shrugged. She hadn't said anything about his shamelessness, yet. The dragon likely didn't care. As he scaled the arm she offered and settled on her back, he recalled the time he watched his brother mount a silver dragon and leave his friends wounded in the rain, which triggered a bizarre thought.
Did Kuja ever ride his dragon in the buff? Was it a girl-dragon, like Milda? Would that make it-wow, okay, no. No no no. Bad thoughts, really bad. That was definitely not healthy.
'Your pulse is elevated. You appear flushed. Are you well?'
"W-what?" he sputtered back to the present. Milda was scrutinizing him with one neutral eye. He couldn't say which alarmed him more: that he was getting carried away with that train of thought or that Milda could read his pulse. How could she tell? He was sitting between her wings and the only way she'd notice was... Gods, this was awkward.
He grew aware of the uncouth heat in his cheeks and straightened a nervous grin. "Um, fine. Totally. Let's go look for some civilization, okay?"
Milda complied, prying no further as she took off through the clearing over the pond. She was either ignorant or apathetic, and Zidane was grateful either way.
It was corny, he knew, but the only word he could find to describe the view was "majestic." He nearly forgot about the high winds buffeting his bare skin and how difficult it was to keep a grip around the broad, smooth cords of Milda's neck as they flew over Iifa's side of the continent and towards the mountains.
A rugged desert used to crop Iifa's swarming foliage down to the roots, he remembered, but as the Mist departed and seasons shifted, the Outer Continent's freckles of wood blossomed into vast forests, their long, thorny fingers twining in the emerald fields and sapphire ravines. From above, it looked like Carbuncle's playground, shining and unblemished. The sky teemed with milky blue and mother-of-pearl, like the sun-struck bed of a coral reef, and the way the sinking light hit the orange rocks of the jungle-painted cliffs was like...
("The sunset makes the Eidolon Wall look like it's on fire!")
Madain Sari was around the northern coast... Last he heard, it was an outpost for moogles and rogue fishermen. He had no purpose there. Milda carried him west, through the mountain pass. An hour later the roughshod structures of Conde Petie unfolded below, still clinging to the petrified roots of their Sanctuary. On the plateau beyond he could descry square lines drawn in the grasslands, each pasture dotted with a ranch house, and a gravel road sloping all the way down to the coast. The watchtower of Fort Ivan was a pinprick on the horizon, and if he drew closer he'd see freighters and passenger ships flocked around it like ducks.
'Shall we stop at this city?' Milda interrupted his sightseeing.
"Ah..." He considered it. The dwarves of Conde Petie were always hospitable, if eccentric. His gaze drifted southward, to the pine forest that filled the canyon where... "No. Let's head down to that forest over there. I want to check it out."
Milda tipped her wings obligingly, and by dusk they were touching ground near the road that led to the source of the canyon. The first time he set foot in these woods, they were dying, owls haunting the peaked trees like vultures. Since the Mist was dispatched and Iifa quit draining the blood and moisture from the continent, the forest began to flourish like the rest of the landscape, and he was glad to see the results, generations later. Every time he visited, the scent of thriving evergreens filled him with an odd sense of hope.
Soft ferns tickled his legs and pine needles pricked his raw feet as he waded through setting shadows towards the torchlight in the distance. He suddenly remembered the mushrooms with poisonous spores that possibly still grew in the area, and he made a break for the road, taking his chances of being spotted by a traveler. Luckily, no one passed his way before he reached the Black Mage Village.
It was a little bigger than he remembered-more of a town than a village, now. Colorful lanterns were strung between the pumpkin-shaped cabins, the red, blue and green licks of flame burning on enchanted oils. Wooden planks supported the clay shingles of rooftops once thatched from straw. An expansive chocobo stable adjoined to a stone windmill sat on the edge of a brook that branched across town. A bonfire crackled in a clearing past the round corners of storefronts, where the silhouettes of pointy hats bobbed and bustled. The smell of roasting meat and baked bread rekindled a hungry fire in his belly, and he squatted on a leaf-strewn hill outside the open gates, hatching a plan.
He couldn't just waltz in naked and expect to be welcomed. He needed to get dressed before anything else. If his luck held, he could snatch a pair of pants from an unattended clothesline and...
A spurt of hot breath grazed his neck, and he whirled off his feet and onto his backside with a start. "Gah! Milda, don't sneak up on me like that."
The dragon tilted her head quizzically. 'I was not trying to conceal my presence.'
"Well you could start," he huffed. "I need you to stay here while I scope the place out. I'll come back for you later."
'As you wish.'
Zidane prowled around the village outskirts, avoiding the houses stacked like ripe squash and lit from within like jack-o-lanterns. He finally encountered a solitary dwelling between the bank of a stream and the fringes of wilderness, where a short picket fence boxed in a cabbage patch and a private well. A few candles cluttered the windows, yet no sound or sign of occupancy otherwise deterred him, so he hopped the fence and investigated the string pinned between the eaves and the post of the well.
Drat, nothing but clothespins. He was too late to catch the laundry, so he'd have to sneak indoors to find what he needed. The door on the back porch was helpfully ajar, and he minded the creaking of the floorboards as he tiptoed into a poorly lit den. There was a vase of flowers on the table, a pot-bellied stove by the window, a crate of tin kitchen utensils in the corner next to a broom, and a blackened lamp hanging by a nail from the rafters. The front door was likewise wide open, and a shaft of night-light beamed in from the street.
He checked a door to his right and entered a dark bedroom. Twilight his only guide, he nearly stumbled over the chest at the foot of the bed that held his prize. He sifted through linens that smelled of cedar, lye and ash until a white shirt and a pair of trousers emerged from the lot.
Mission accomplished, he dressed in a flash and boldly skipped out the front door. His bare feet bounced over the stepping stones that led out to the main street, a wide track of dirt surrounded at odd, circular angles by idle shops and sheds. Not a soul was around, and judging by the source of the barks and chatter, all the people must have been in the commons. That wasn't strange; every time he visited he observed the local tradition of sharing supper in the heart of the village with everyone else. Black Mages were a very friendly, communal folk, despite their malicious origins.
He stopped under a strand of lights and inspected his attire. The pants were a boring brown color, and definitely not cut for a Genome; he had to tuck in his tail just right to keep them up. The shirt was also as plain as a potato, though the ruffles at the sleeves suggested it was more of a blouse... He rolled his eyes. Great. He took girl clothes.
"Hello there."
He swallowed a startled squawk and snapped to meet the speaker-a woman by the sound of her. She was clad in the modest coat, pants and wide-brimmed, steepled hat of a Black Mage. A basket of vegetables was held under one arm, and in her other hand was a gnarled wooden staff with a crystal ball embedded in the talon-like tip.
He caught his composure and waved at her. "Um, hi!"
"Are you new here?" she asked, voice brimming with innocent curiosity.
Zidane scratched his head and laughed. "Heheh, I guess so! I was just, um..." He skimmed his surroundings for an affable lie.
The lady spared him the trouble. "Would you like to come inside my house? I can give you something to eat, if you like."
The very offer incited another rumble in his stomach, and he couldn't refuse it anymore. "Oh man, that would be great!"
"It's this way." She bowed politely and strolled ahead, back the way Zidane came... and into the house he just looted. He cursed under his breath and followed, trying to play it cool. If he didn't say anything, she wouldn't notice, right?
"My name is Cica," she offered, talking over her shoulder as she set the basket on the table and tapped the staff twice on the floor, igniting every magical wick in the house at once. The room filled with cozy, warm colors. "What's yours? You can have a seat at the table, there."
"I'm, ah, Zidane," he recited warily as he pulled out one of the two chairs. Something deeper than hunger knotted in his gut as he said it. He didn't like what that could mean.
Cica lit the stove with another flick of her staff and began to sort her groceries. "Nice to meet you, Zidane. I'm going to fix some radish and potato stew. You like radishes?"
"Oh, I'm starved. I could eat a whole chocobo cart of radishes!"
"Hehe, good!" she tittered. She seemed pretty young. He thought to ask how old she was, but her presuming nature was quicker than his. "Not to be rude, but you're a Genome, right? You're hiding your tail, but I can tell."
"Yeah, I am. I wasn't trying to hide it, I just..." He flinched at the faux pas. Go and tell her why and where he was borrowing these trousers, why don't he? "So are there other Genomes around here?" he quickly changed tack.
"No," she said with a touch of surprise, and started dicing her ingredients on the shelf next to the stove. "We haven't seen a Genome here in a long, long time."
His heart sank. "What? Why?"
"You don't know? They all left, after Grotsen became the mayor. There was some kind of debate about, oh..." She waved her knife in circles, as if trying to conjure the memory. "I can't remember. I think the Genomes wanted their own village. So their chief got in an argument with Grotsen and they all packed up and left. That was so many years ago, though. I haven't seen a Genome since, 'til you walked in."
"What?" he uttered breathlessly, dumbstruck by the tale. Since the two races were introduced to each other, Zidane had never known Black Mages and Genomes to be at odds, and as their leader (by default, to her mild vexation) his sister would never allow the Genomes to...
Would have never. Past tense. Mikoto was gone. Whoever took her place was responsible for the feud that broke up the village. He clenched his fist with a sudden urge to find that person and break his nose. Mikoto never had a son or any sort of heir (he never understood her spinster disposition, one of many notes they quarreled on), but she once mentioned a guy named…
"So where do you come from?" Cica queried, her pleasant tone snuffing his spark of rage.
"Oh, well... I grew up in Lindblum," he evaded. He hasn't technically lied to her yet, and he'd like to get through supper without doing so. It's bad enough that he's stealing from her.
"Really? That's so interesting. I've always wanted to go to the Mist Continent. Been too lazy to get up and do it, I suppose."
"You're still young, right? Plenty of time," he consoled her.
She tossed her head and chuckled. "Goodness, how old do you think I am?"
Disarmed by the loaded question, he shrugged and attempted to study her profile. He could see her eyes simmering like embers and the slope of a small nose through a shadowy black veil. Usually a Black Mage's face was an impossible mask, not meant for a man to look at directly-like a sun in a black hole. "I dunno... fifteen? Eighteen, maybe?"
She then did the last thing he expected: she took off her hat. Zidane stiffened in his seat, alarmed by the gesture. A Black Mage's hat was practically a part of one's anatomy, like an ear or a hand. Despite his cajoling he could never get Vivi to remove his, and whenever he did see a hat sans Black Mage, it was grim news. A graveyard behind the village full of hats on stakes could attest to that. Mikoto once briefly explained (with words that confused him such as "exoskeleton" and "imbued magical resonance") that a Black Mage's hat (and most of one's outfit, in fact) was more of a binding than a covering, designed to withhold the condensed black magic that made up the being's flesh and blood.
He had figured that her head was going to pop and steam like a tea kettle or something, but when Cica took off her hat, he didn't see a Black Mage-not the kind he was used to, anyway. The dark haze around her countenance evaporated to reveal an ordinary woman's face-an older woman, for that matter, with her grey hair packed in a bun and her fiery eyes dimmed to a surreal glow, like molten glass.
"I'm forty-two, but thanks for saying so," she laughed, perched her hat on the back of the other chair and then tended to the pot on the stove. "You're right, though. I still have time, and no good excuse not to get out more. It's never too late."
"Heh. Wow." He grinned, unable to help his amazement. Mikoto wasn't kidding in her letters, when she used to write that the Black Mages were "evolving." Becoming more human must have been the only way for them to reproduce and survive. He laid the "how" of it to rest in the back of his mind-it probably wasn't something Cica could answer, even if he had the gall to ask.
They chitchatted about her house, flowers and odd, unimportant things until the night's first stars were sighted through the window and dinner was served (Cica rapped the stovepipe thrice with the head of her staff and a blizzard spell rattled down the frame, dousing the coals.) Zidane lapped up two bowls of hot stew in a blink, not considering how he might regret it later, or even the spoon Cica offered.
"Hehe, you really were starving! It must have been a long journey for you."
He wiped his chin and then licked his dripping hand, savoring every drop. "You have no idea."
"Oh! Silly me. Let me get something for us to drink." She shuffled across the kitchen and fetched a jug and a pair of mugs, pouring water into each. Cica returned to find her guest wearing an anxious, deliberative expression. "What's wrong?"
He drummed his fingers on the table. "Uh, listen, I could pussyfoot around and use some clever way to find this out, or I could just risk looking like a country bum weirdo and ask: what year is it?"
She crinkled her brow with bemusement, but took his honest question at face value and answered, "It's 1882. Why?"
His face fell, eyes glazing over with calculations. "Sixteen years..." he murmured.
"Sixteen years since what?"
He flinched, not meaning to be overheard. "Ahm, that's how old I must be!" he declared with a dopey laugh. He was doing a good job of embarrassing himself around women today. First Milda, now this... he was losing his touch. To his credit, he was still getting his bearings-he just learned that he had been asleep for sixteen years.
Cica smiled sympathetically over her bowl of stew. "Oh, I know, I get to lose track of time, myself. It's so easy, out here in the country. Why, I couldn't tell you what day of the week it is! Did you say you were from Lindblum?"
"Oh, yeah, but I haven't lived there in a long time."
"Well there you go. I was going to say you must be from one of those Genome colonies, but you don't seem to know anything about them."
"Colonies?"
"Islands, really. All in that archipelago, what's it called... Salvage? Yes. Or maybe they colonized a bunch of those little islands off the coast of the Mist Continent. That's what I heard; who knows where they really went? Like I said, it's been a long time."
"How long?"
"Oh goodness, let me think..." She twirled her spoon in thought. "It had to have been at least ten years ago. Hades and foxfire if I know the year." She finished her portion and glanced to his empty bowl. "Did you like my stew?"
"Oh..." Happy for the change of subject, he sat back and patted his belly with a satisfied chuckle. "Yeah! Best I've had in years."
"Bless your soul. I've never been a great cook, but I try." Cica scooped up the dishes and moved them to the wash pan under the window. Zidane smirked behind her back. He was getting good at this not-lying bit.
"Want help with the dishes?"
"Oh it's all right," she waved him off. "It's a one-woman job, really. You can make yourself at home. I have a spare bedroom, if you need a place to stay the night."
He fidgeted, not wanting to linger at the scene of the crime any longer than he had to. "Ah, I dunno, I couldn't..."
"Oh no, I insist! If you're going to take my clothes, you might as well stay a night."
Zidane's blood ran cold. "Ah, I...!"
Cica flashed him a wink. "You thought I didn't know my own blouse when I laid eyes on it? It's okay, I'm not upset. You could've just asked. Wouldn't let a body go without clothes to wear, goodness to gracious."
He grimaced and sank in his chair, rightfully cowed. The best he could say in his defense was a wobbly, "I'm... sorry."
"I told you, it's all right! You have to tell me what in the world inspired you to raid my wardrobe, though. What happened to your own clothes?"
"They're ruined..." he trailed off, praying she wouldn't ask him to elaborate.
"Well I'm sure you have a good story there, but I won't pry. None of my business."
Zidane blinked. "You're a saint, you know that?"
"Ahaha! I wish I could get you to say that in front of my mother." She set the last of the dishes on the tablecloth to dry and brushed her hands clean. "Now don't just sit there all night looking guilty. I need help with some firewood before I go to bed."
Zidane spent that night on a soft quilt in Cica's guest room, counting dusty constellations in the ceiling. He couldn't sleep, and it wasn't just because he already had sixteen years of it. He pondered his host's hospitality, the nature of Black Mages and Genomes, women's clothing and his own worthless future before convincing himself not to think too much and get some rest. He'd met his two objectives for the day, and he could find Milda and scrounge up more in the morning.
Just before he finally drifted off, he thought he heard a chocobo cry.