Blessings of Eos
Chapter 4
Disclaimer: Don't own Final Fantasy.
The rain wound up catching them between the shop and the diner. Prompto was not happy. "Are you sure you can't make the rain stop? I really don't like being wet."
"You didn't mind being wet when you exploring around the haven." Aerith pointed out.
He considered this. "Okay, I don't like being wet when it's cold like the rain." He declared, shaking the water out of his hair much like a dog would shake water out of its fur.
That drew a laugh out of the diner cook and owner, Al. "What'll it be today Miss Aerith?" He asked as the pair sat down at the counter. "Traditional breakfast or fruit?"
"Some of both today." She told him. "With milk."
"Be right up." Was the response as Al started up the bacon on the grill.
Prompto raised up on his knees to watch the happenings. He scarcely noticed the chocolate milk arriving with the fruit salad. At least, until She stuck a grape in his mouth. Somehow he managed to stay on the stool. "Huh? What was that?" He asked, considering the taste.
"Red grapes. We also have orange pieces, apples, and watermelon." She gave him a piece of each to try in turn. "Well, any rejects?"
He thought about it. "Nope." He finally noticed the chocolate milk. "Are you sure this is milk? Isn't it supposed to be white?"
Al laughed again as the bacon came off the grill on to paper towels to soak up a little of the grease. "It's chocolate milk." The scrambled eggs hit the grill with a sizzle. "Its regular milk with chocolate syrup mixed in. When I was in school there would practically be a riot if the cafeteria ran out of chocolate milk."
After a tentative sip, the rest quickly disappeared. "That didn't taste like the chocolate I had before." He said, eating more of the red grapes.
"Chocolate comes in a bunch of forms and tastes. Chocolate bars, chocolate milk, chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake…" His eyes grew huge as She listed off the ways one could enjoy chocolate. "…Can we have any of that now?" He asked breathless.
"Tell you what," Al told Prompto as he set down two plates of scrambled eggs with bacon and a slice of toast. "Eat the whole plate and there may be chocolate ice cream waiting at the end."
Prompto dug in with gusto, driven by the thought of chocolate ice cream. Aerith just shook Her head before starting Her own plate at a more sedate pace. Al was great with children, and She always made a point to stop here if She was traveling with any.
Soon all that was left on Prompto's plate were crumbs. The promised chocolate ice cream replaced it, two spoons in the bowl. "There's one thing you have to do to have the ice cream." She told him.
He looked worried at that statement. "You have to share it with Me." She declared, claiming a spoon for Herself.
Prompto smiled, and it didn't take long for the pair to be fighting over the dwindling amount of ice cream using their spoons as impromptu swords.
She did, however, let him have the last spoonful.
The meal finished, She directed him over to an empty table, spreading open the map She had picked up at the store with his new wristband (tan with a green stripe in the middle) and began quizzing him.
He was able to read a fair amount of the map, mostly tripping over the words that were derived from Old Lucian. Based on his comment at the haven the other day, he knew in general where Niflheim and Lucis were in relation to each other, even if he didn't really have a sense of the true distance between the two. He didn't have trouble with the basic addition and subtraction questions she posed using the grapes either.
The gaps that were there were a result of his restricted life up until a couple days ago and his lack of experience with how people generally interacted. Satisfied that he shouldn't be terribly behind his classmates, Aerith began to trace out their route. "So we started down at Cape Caem here, going to the Taelpar Rest Area, stopping at the Fallaughns Haven last night, bringing us to the Cauthess Rest Area." Tapping a finger at each place they had stopped.
"From here, it's to the Wiz Chocobo Post tomorrow, then the Longwythe Rest Area, Hammerhead, ending up at the Crown City Checkpoint." Tracing out their projected route. "Truthfully we could go through the Alstor Coernix Station and the Prairie Outpost to Hammerhead, but Longwythe has a motel while the other two just have campers."
"Campers?" Prompto asked.
"They're more like movable, miniature houses. They are set up at various gas stations and outposts that don't have motels so people who either don't feel like camping at a haven or won't be able to reach one before nightfall. It's pretty cramped though. Since you can hook it up to the back of the car it can't be any wider than the road lane." She explained.
He had seen cars passing by them on the roads while they had been riding the chocobo, so She didn't need to explain what they were.
The rain had eased up again as She folded the map back up and retrieved the poncho. "Ready to go?"
Prompto was less shy about waving to Al as they left, getting a wave and a smile back. "We'll stop for the day at the next haven, Turncouth, so you'll have plenty of time to explore while I gather things for dinner." She told him as they got underway.
"What kind of things?" He asked.
"Whatever is close by. It depends on what's available and the kinds of animals in the area." She answered.
He frowned at that. "…does that mean you'll have to kill an animal?"
"Only if there is one near the end anyway. And it will be quick." She promised.
They lapsed into silence. "They had the units use animals to learn how to shot moving targets…at least at first. After that, it was people. They told us that the people had been bad, so they had to die." His head was hanging down. "We got vanilla ice cream if we got at least five kill shots in a row without hitting a nonvital spot. I didn't like it, but I had to try harder to not get a kill shot than to get one."
She had a sudden vision of him, years from now, drenching a bowl of vanilla ice cream in chocolate syrup and pecans before mixing it up, proclaiming to the others that plain vanilla ice cream was boring, while fighting down the memories. Smiling because the only other option was to cry.
The memories would lose the sting with time, at least until something brought them up. Like snakes, or vanilla ice cream.
"I won't kill any animals for dinner, okay? Not if it would bother you too much." Aerith told him.
He shook his head. "I'll be fine, as long as I don't have to watch any of it." He looked back at Her with a confused look. "But how can you kill anything? You don't have a gun or a sword."
"If an animal is near death already, I…can speed it up, so the animal experiences the time it would take to die in what appears to be a second to us. It…doesn't realize what happens." She didn't like using that power, but given the other options, it was the quickest. "There's no guarantee that any of the animals will be near death anyway. Life is unpredictable like that."
"Couldn't you have done that to that thing last night? The tonberry?" He asked.
She shook Her head. "No. Daemons aren't a part of the natural cycle of Life. They aren't born and they don't die from natural causes. They can only be created when a person is infected by a daemon-by the blackness-and they can only be killed. Most of the time, a person gets a massive dose of the blackness, so the change is in an instant. They do something different with the units, to make sure they get the kind of daemon they can use."
Prompto nodded at that. "If there wasn't any people to have us shoot, it would be daemons."
Wanting to distract him, Aerith turned the conversation to chocobos. "Well, we can spend at least one day and night at the chocobo post."
"Really?!" He exclaimed, excited.
"Yup. Wiz has a big flock of chocobos there, since he breeds them to be rented out to people to ride. I think we'll be there in time to see some chocobo chicks hatch."
"Hatch?"
"Chocobos lay eggs that have to be kept warm for three months before the chick inside is ready to come out. When it does, it's called hatching."
"Those weren't chocobo eggs at breakfast, right?" He asked, panicked.
"No those were chicken eggs. Female chickens, called hens, lay eggs once they are old enough. Chocobo eggs are bigger, and they're more useful to be hatched and raised rather than for food. A chocobo egg would in both of My hands, with egg to spare." She answered, smiling.
His eyes widened at that. "And they get big enough for people to ride?"
She nodded. "Also I want to work with you on your Sight-how you can See My sparkles."
"Didn't you say some people are just born with it? Why would I need to work on it?"
"It's like any kind of skill; you get better at it with practice. Plus by working on it, you'll be able to turn it on and off, so you don't get overwhelmed." She decided to start now by explaining the Sight in more detail. "It's called the Sight mostly because there's no good word to indicate a difference between it and regular sight in the language people speak today. Regular sight-how everyone sees the world around them-is through the eyes. The Sight is what your mind perceives, and interprets it as visual information."
"Is there words that can say which one you're talking about?" Prompto asked.
"No. About the only way to indicate a difference is using tone of voice."
"So, when you see, it's with your eyes, and when you See, it's with your mind?" He asked, making sure he understood what She was saying.
"Yep. Some call it a sixth sense, because most of the time, if it's not very strong, most people just have a feeling about something. If someone were to encounter us, most of them would just have a sense that's something different about Me, even if they weren't able to explain why they feel that way. The guys we've encountered so far know there's something different about Me, but part of that is because they've seeing Me for many years and I've never changed. If that someone had the Sight, then they would be able to See My sparkles. If their Sight is really strong, or they've had a lot of practice with It, then not only could they See My sparkles, they would see a glow around you and the chocobo."
"A glow?" He asked.
She nodded. "Everything that's Alive has what's called an aura. It's kind of hard to explain exactly what an aura is, but the best explanation I've found is that a person's aura is an expression of your Life energy. Daemons, like the tonberry, appear as a black mass to the Sight. Ardyn, the man from the restaurant, he uses illusions to appear normal, but his true appearance is the way you've described the changed units, with the blackness leaking from his eyes and mouth. Only by Looking deeper would I See him as a black mass like regular daemons."
He thought about that for a moment. "So if he's not a regular daemon, then what is he?"
"I'm not a hundred percent sure." She couldn't explain what Ardyn was without explaining how he came to be that way, and it was not Time for that.
"…So if everyone's been seeing you for a long time now, then how old are you?" Prompto asked innocently.
"Now that, is a question that won't be answered." Aerith told him.
"Why not?"
"Well for one thing, many women take offense to being asked how old they are. And for another, I don't really know how old I am."
"You don't? How come?"
"Well…" She sighed here. "I've been the way I am now for a really long time, and after a while, it…just wasn't important anymore."
"What about your family? And your friends?" He asked, concerned.
She smiled sadly. "My family and friends are long gone. But, as long I remember them, then in a way, they still live on."
"What do you mean?"
"When a person dies, they live on in the memories of the people they cared about in life. As long as someone remembers you, even occasionally, then you can still live, if only in memory. The same thing when years pass between two friends meeting. As long as they think of each other, then it doesn't matter how often they see each other in person."
"Well, I'm never gonna forget you Miss Aerith!" He declared with a firm nod, the chocobo kweh-ing in agreement.
"I won't ever forget you either Prompto."
He hesitated before asking, "Can you tell about them? The friends you once had?"
She nodded, saying, "I'll tell you stories about them over dinner, okay?" Looking ahead, She said, "We're almost at the haven. Once the tent is set up, we'll explore and look for food, okay?"
"Okay!"
The tent set up didn't take very long. With the chocobo in tow, the two set off exploring the surrounding area for dinner.
Prompto was wide-eyed as he asked question after question about the things they passed, like the rock formations resulting from the meteor, the herd of bulettes they passed, the remains of the Old Holly Ranch, why the birds were singing… Aerith patiently answered and explained every one. They hadn't found much so far, mostly wild onions. Wiz included canned goods in his chocobos' saddlebags, along with the tent they had been using, the sleeping bags, and basic cooking utensils, but She had been hoping to find more. It had been while since She had been in the area, and even longer since She had a mouth to feed. The Old Holly Ranch had been abandoned thirty years ago, where She had used to get food, so that option was out.
She was debating the merits of heading to the Swainsmere fishing spot and trying to catch a Crag Barramundi or two when Prompto suddenly stopped, frowning. "What is it?" She asked.
"Do you hear that? It's doesn't sound like anything I've heard before." He said, cocking his head in a way that reminded Her of a dog perking up an ear to hear a sound better.
Now that She was paying attention, She could hear it too. He took off running in the direction of the sound, with Her and the chocobo close behind.
He hadn't run very long before he came across what was making the noise. A young fawn, with one of its hind legs caught in a hunting trap. "What is it?" He asked, pointing at the trap.
She knelt down next to the fawn before answering. "It's an old hunting trap. People set them out and leave them sit for a couple of days, hoping that an animal wanders into it."
"So they can eat it?"
"Sometimes. Other times it's for the animal's pelt, since fur can be very warm compared to normal cloth." Eyeing the trap, She said. "This trap was forgotten about by the looks of it."
"How can you tell?" He asked. The fawn had fallen silent after they arrived. Animals were aware of what She was, and it appeared to realize that release was at hand…whichever form it took.
"You see the orange-red stuff on it?" At his nod She continued. "That's rust. When something made of iron or steel is out in the elements for a while, with the rain and snow, the water starts to react with the iron, creating the rust. If left long enough, the whole piece of metal can just collapse into rust. No one using traps like this would allow this kind of rust build up, so either the person who placed the trap forgot where they left it, or they can no longer come back for it."
"You mean they're dead." It was a statement of fact, not a question.
She nodded. "Possibly."
"What do we do? Is there a way to save it?" He asked, looking at Her with pleading eyes.
Aerith brought Her hand to Her mouth, considering. "It has probably been here at least a day and a half. It's too young to survive alone, but the mother isn't here. Either the mother was killed, or she left-"
"Left?!" Prompto exclaimed.
"With animals that raise their young, if something happens to the young, and the mother can't do anything to help it, they'll leave, and try again. It's hard to accept, but…if there is no hope, then the mother will have another baby, which may live long enough to have babies of its own."
He was quiet at this statement. She gave him time. He was learning that the Outside could be just as harsh as where he had been before, in a different way. Finally he said, "So…it would be kinder…to kill it? And make it our dinner?"
"I'm afraid so. Even if we release it and heal it, it wouldn't be long before a predator ate it. This way, it would be quick." She admitted.
He nodded firmly, eyes wet. "I'll…turn around."
"There may be more traps around, so don't move until I'm done, okay?" She told him. He nodded again, turning to bury his face in the chocobo's feathers.
She turned to the task at hand. Placing a hand on the fawn, She silently cast Haste, compressing the time it would have taken for it to die of exposure into a second.
"Prompto." He looked up. "I need to get the meat we'll need, so it will be a few more minutes, okay?"
"Okay." He whispered. He didn't bury his head back into the chocobo's flank, but toyed with the straps of the saddle.
It didn't take long to butcher the fawn, Aerith banishing the remains into a den of voretooths. Storing the meat with the wild onions on the chocobo, She turned to him, crouching down. "Before we head back to the haven, why don't we see if we can find any more traps and get rid of them, so nothing else gets caught in them?"
He perked up at the prospect. Then he frowned. "How do we get rid of them? And how can we find them without walking into them ourselves?"
"First we'll need some sticks. If we jab a stick onto the pressure plate that closes the sides of the trap, then we can pick it up safely. We can leave them in the abandoned car at the Old Holly Ranch parking spot." She told him as they started gathering suitable sticks, the chocobo taking it upon itself to help out.
"But how do we spot them?"
"Mostly by taking our time. Based on this one, they'll probably be rusted, so look for the rust color."
When dusk was an hour away, they started back to the haven. Prompto had found four traps, Aerith two, and the chocobo one. Reaching the haven as the sun dipped below the horizon, She started on dinner, setting up a grill rack over the fire, to grill the venison, flavored with the wild onions and pepper from the food supplies. Setting out greens for the chocobo's dinner, She started the lesson on how to control the Sight.
"Okay, first thing is close your eyes, so you can See with your mind and not your eyes." He did as requested. "You see My sparkles? How bright are they?" She had be careful to orient him facing away from the fire to reduce light distractions. It was also why She had waited for sundown to begin.
"They look like the stars we saw last night, with ones that are brighter and some not as bright. I can make out your shape, but not much else." He said, worry in his voice.
"That's pretty good for your age. Now, the next step is to strengthen it. It gradually improves with age, but I'm gonna cheat and use a shortcut." By flaring Her aura, his Sight would strengthen itself in order to process the information. If She did this every night between here and Insomnia, it should strengthen to the point of being able to See the aura of animals down to the size of an average-sized cat. From there, it would be a matter of practicing what She would teach him. By the time Prompto reached adulthood, he should be able to See the aura of animals as small as a baby snake. That was about the limit for sensitivity for humans. Range was typically about five hundred feet, but people with a higher magic ability (mostly the Lucian royalty and their close descendants, as well as Oracles and their descendants) usually reached half a mile or further. Seeing finer details about an aura like colors that indicated the health of the person or animal, however, largely depended on how observant a person was to start with, but could improve if the person became more observant.
It would be impossible, however, to not see the pulsing red of a person near or in danger.
Aerith explained all of this carefully. She wasn't sure just how much sank in, but there was time to review everything multiple times, before they had to part.
"I'm going to flare My aura now, so the sparkles are going to get bright to the point of merging together." At his nod, She flared Her aura, pulsing with the energy of the Planet as it became visible even to normal sight.
She knew it had worked when he suddenly exclaimed, "I'm glowing! And the chocobo's glowing!" His eyes still closed, he frowned as he looked at his right wrist, where the barcode lay under his new wristband. "Is it supposed to be black? And there's like little trails of black, like how the rain looked as it slid down the window at the diner…"
"It's the Star Scourge, the blackness they were exposing you and the others to." She laid Her hand over the barcode. "When a person's aura has more blackness in it then they have of the green glow, they turn into a daemon. You're no where close to that point. With the way you were being exposed, you would have to have years of slowly increasing exposure to reach that point. It will gradually fade, fading faster if you spend most of the day outside. Within ten years, those trails will gone." She Looked at the barcode, where the blackness was densest. "I'm not sure about the barcode. That's where you were infected, so the blackness here will linger longer. I don't know how long it will take to fade away completely, if it does."
He opened his eyes at that, squinting against the brightness of both the fire and their auras. "Won't people with the Sight See it? What if they know what it means? That I-" He looked down, unable to voice it.
"To someone with the Sight, it would tell them you survived a daemon attack." She told him gently. "Scars left by daemons have blackness clinging to them for many years after the injury. Some people who survived daemon attacks as children and died seventy years later still had blackness clinging to the scars. They wouldn't think that it meant what it means to you."
"Are you sure?" Prompto pressed, still worried. "Yes." She told him, knowing that even if his mind accepted it, his heart probably never would.
She took a deep breath. "Okay, now I want to imagine you have a piece of glass in front of your eyes, like the windows in the stores and diner. But it's a special kind of glass, that keeps out the light of the auras and My sparkles, and will keep it out until you take the glass away."
It didn't take long for him to get the hang of it. Teaching how to 'turn off' the Sight was hit or miss, given how the same technique didn't work for everyone, but the one She had used was the most common, though She had substituted window glass for the sunglasses most envisioned.
Looking at the fire, he frowned, asking "Is it supposed to be smoking like that?"
In a flash She realized that more time had passed then She thought, and dinner was on the verge of burning to the point of being uneatable. Slightly panicked, She focused back on the food.
The venison turned out decent, if slightly charred on one side. "Are you okay to eat this? There's some canned food if you're not." Aerith asked.
"Yeah…if I don't, then it would be kinda pointless, the fawn's death."
Prompto was yawning as She cleaned the dishes and banked the fire for the night. What they were doing was mentally exhausting, and She had half-expected him to fall asleep before She finished preparing the camp for the night.
There wasn't any protest as Aerith got him into the sleeping bag. Tonight She had opted to zip the two bags together to form one, so they would share. She kissed his forehead as She told him good night, receiving a good night in return that was more yawn than words.
With him down for the night, She turned to what She had realized She needed to do after what he had said regarding the shooting lessons.
It hardly took effort to send a fragment of Her consciousness back to where to She had found him, to retrieve every scrap of information relating to him, and the specifics of exactly what they were doing to the units.
That task done, She let Her conscious mind drift asleep, floating in the Lifestream.
She saw images of what could be. Empty, lonely days, alive but not living, a chance encounter leading to a fire being lit, a drive to change and leave the rut fallen into.
She wished for better, but the images had an edge that meant they were likely to come to pass. The final image was of two teenage boys, each lonely in different ways, finally manifesting a desire that grew for years, each waiting for one of them to make the move.
The sun was high in the sky when Prompto awoke, drawing Her conscious mind back. "What time is it? It feels like I've been sleeping for ages." He declared, sitting up.
Aerith giggled. "It's nearly noon. What we were doing last night is mentally exhausting, so it's no wonder you slept so long."
"Well, now I have to go." He scrambled out of the tent to take care of business.
She followed him out a few minutes later, stretching as She took in the day. Yesterday's rain had passed, leaving behind a freshness to the air She always associated with the aftermath of rain.
She was digging through the saddlebag for the protein bars She knew She saw last night when Prompto returned, the chocobo joining them.
"Huh?" She looked up at that, finding Herself echoing the question.
"Huh?"
I swear the characters are doing what they want. Eventually this will turn into my fix-it universe, but I'm undecided on whether to have one big story under this title, or divide the segments up with a Blessings of Eos prefix. Should anyone have a preference either way, please review and let me know.
Is my explanation of how the Sight works coherent and makes sense?