II
-the ballad of sleeping beauty
She's lost in coma where it's beautiful
Intoxicated by the deep sleep
Deep sleep
Do you wonder what it's like?
Living in a permanent imagination
Sleeping to escape reality, but you like it like
that.
Guilty by design
She's nothing more than fiction.
- Fiction (Dreams in Digital), Orgy
***
Seifer Almasy hated alot of things. Like
Fujin Asher, and feta cheese, and Hyneforsaken sinners.
Hate, as they say, is a powerful emotion. Blahblahblah..
opposite of love... blahblahblahblah.... corrupter of souls ... blahblahblah...
route of all strife.... blahlblahblah.. Evil. They say alot
of things. And really; they're not at all ones that should talk,
that viewing public. That gaggle of holier-than-thou heretics with
sparks in their eyes for all things of good and tolerance. Oh, yes,
they're quick enough to denounce hate. And probably they should,
if the emotion in question is that vague, ephemeral rejection of an everyday
object that most of the things Seifer Almasy hated received.
Alas, however, they make a cruel miscalculation.
They assume that hate destroys. Well that's not so, now is it?
They assume that hate destroys instead of sustains, and that in providing
nourishment for the soul it can only warp and bend and twist. That's
what they say in the fields, in the houses, at the shops, in the offices
and schools and colleges. But what they don't say is that they're
never really hated themselves, oh not really. Though
they'd probably like to think that in some deep dark corner of their mind
they have, and that they (of all people) have righteously exorcised a part
of the soul they've never bothered exploring. Doesn't that make for
a nice tale? It certainly provides a moral majority.
If Seifer Almasy hated alot of things, it wasn't
because he truly wished them the most creative and fashionable tortures
of the bowels of hell. Nor was it that he did not hate, and was but
a poor, misunderstood, lost soul (lost souls are usually ignoring the road
signs of their own accord - and seldom are they found through anything
other than a walloping with Common Sense).
Screw that, as the Knight of Fire might have said
in one of his most lucid of moments. Fuck it. Fuck them.
Fuck the world, and leave it the happier for having spend time in the conjugal
bed.
He might have hated alot of things, that blonde
avenger of the new improved generation. But some things - some things
he truly loathed. Abandonment, injustice, scorn, insecurity... the
types of things worth hating.
Being a proactive man, he had to make it right.
Good evening, fairytale prince. Why aren't you charming? Your smile
makes the blood evaporate, and your white horse illuminates those wretched
stables that stink of blood, sweat, and shit.
Destroying, eradicating,
forcing the good
in the world to stay by his side and everyone else's by proxy. That was
his Crusade. A genocide of imaginary proportions that had taken shape
in the corners of his mind like some dream castle on a down-grey cloud.
Those sylphlike qualities that had stuck in his craw for so long that they
had been absorbed into the general anatomy of the beast.
Most of all, perhaps, Seifer hated that his hate
had not consumed him. That he had yet to revolutionize the world,
that he had perhaps never changed a thing with yet another war for
students to write dry essays on in fifty year's time. That the world
would continue pointlessly buttfucking him out of anything resembling what
is supposed to be a decent existence like it had for all of his
remembered life.
A diamond in the shit.
And diamonds are forever. Shit is not.
Shall we make a diamond from that shit? A Sorceress could.
And that was why Seifer Almasy hated the Estharian
Border.
"Fuck.. pansy-ass cowards. That damn border
stands for everything that's wrong in this world, d'you hear me?
Frigging relic cowards holed up in their..."
See? From the man himself the words flowed
in a torrent of highly-combustible kerosene. The Balamb Garden deck
crew had learned to ignore this, and they had learned to ignore a good
many things. Namely fear, the urge to go to the bathroom on duty
hours, any liking they might have one had for now-rationed lunch meat,
Sorceress Rinoa's strange predilection for wandering out at all hours to
look at the sea from the observation deck, and anything even remotely involving
the world 'Trabia'. Nobody liked to think about Trabia. And
nobody liked to disturb Seifer Almasy when he was off on one of his inspirationally
paranoid rantings.
Seifer Almasy hated. Knew that dark siren
like a lover. The mistress that supported him through all his conquests,
the one safe bed he could fall back into. Perhaps he was one of the
only people in the world to truly feel its contours; the conflict with
that one bright spot of blood that just won't rub out.
Clouds are temporary. Not forever.
How offensive.
"Labs! Progress report!"
Esthar. Esthar. Esthar. Destroyer.
Imprisoner of Sorceresses. Defier of the natural order. The
nation that had drawn his mind like a moth for years with it's first failed,
prototypical Crusade to save the world from it's damnation to mediocrity.
The notion that the world could be something better than what it was, that
is was stupid to settle for second best... that had been them. And he did
not so much resent being sacrificed to that war, one might assume, as he
minded being sacrificed to it's failure - a specter that could not
be allowed to walk the halls of this grey matter gain under any circumstances.
"Professor Odine reports that he has the implant
prepared, but he still needs to do more tests to ensure that..."
Esthar. That yammering boy had it splayed
up on screen for Seifer's perusal. All shiny and bright in the technicolor
light; surrounded by a pearl force shield powered by Hyne knew what.
The Knight had no need for shields. Defense and isolation -
standing by while the world drowned - that was for pansies. For honorless
heretic cowards. Like Esthar. Esthar. Esthar.
Esthar. The opalescent sheen that had dripped along his psyche for
the past few weeks like something out of a manual for water torture.
Esthar refused to fight, Esthar refused to fall, and Esthar was not
playing this game properly.
Barrier. Barrier. Barrier. He's
been staring at the fucking barrier for three fucking months because
fucking Laguna Loire couldn't fight like a fucking man instead of the girlfaced
pansy fairy fuck he was.
"He's already had two goddamn weeks. Tell
the doctor to hurry the fuck up!"
"Sir! Yes, sir!"
Pace.
Ignoring the lividity of his scar, the young man's
fingers went strait through his clipped blonder hair. Just once.
Before he turned his hands to better use, and his mind to other things.
***
It was for the best, all in all, that Quistis
Trepe possessed the singular sorcerous ability to be many places at once.
Physically, the Sorceress of the Day was suspended
in a hydraulic lift of a bed in the former secret chamber of one Gardenmaster
NORG. NORG was dead - his remains jettisoned quite neatly from Waste
Disposal Chute #3425-ad5 to feed the lampreys of the Trabian Sea.
And as he was to have no epitaph, no one had bothered to ask what the initials
stood for. But Quistis.. Quistis was alive, and in the living bowels
of the best of the best military creations of the current century.
The refuge for hermit evolved past his prime - so opulent and yet so spartan
- had made for more than enough room to accommodate equally luxurious medical
equipment.
The soldiers that had taken Balamb for the honorable
Cross Knight... they only wished they had it this good.
Wrapped in her artificial coma, the former professor
appeared to hold secrets. Thoughts unbidden under lashes that writhed
with the tides and eddies of an REM-signified dreamscape. And in
a way... well, in a way she might have. Kept some secrets, that is.
Just not ones that really mattered to anyone in this room but her.
The others were in the possession of a good twelve
medical techs, and the genius known as Klaus Odine.
The wan blue glow that blanketed the merely
adequate sheets warming her rapidly thinning body only pretended to leave
something to the imagination beyond her fevered dreams. Wires, tubes,
and flashing lights - all formed a sort of growth around the sleeping beauty.
One that no prince could have awoken her from without at least minor knowledge
of medical technology. The translucent plastic vines slipping nectar
into unsuspecting veins. Fluids of all sorts nourishing and mapping
the meandering of the blood vessels; then pooling in her cerebrum
for one very interesting cat scan.
The others, hooked to the myriad monitors, showed
the doll-like body's secrets as if they'd come written on the back of the
box. A light for pulse. A line for brain activity. A beep for
oxygen level. A console for fifteen different ways to map the peculiarities
of of hear endorphins. X-rays, suspended over the lights that sterilized
her frail form, mapped every inch of strangely ordinary bone structure.
And the spawn of polished steel gurneys could probe where they might with
impunity thanks to an unhealthy amount of sedative.
There were needles in her wrists.
Where the veins had collapsed over almost four
months of intravenous sustenance and research, they'd pricked their way
up to her elbow joints. Klaus Odine had only needed two weeks with
her - which was good, because the other researchers were running out of
room.
And as the pumps and the monitors and the activity
of the room beat in time with her carefully observed heartbeat, a man approached
her. Alas, poor sleeping beauty. A keeper of secrets surely
cannot be the Handsome Prince.
Slowly, carefully, a skinny old man with a strange
accent and bags under his eyes removed his third bone marrow sample from
her fibula. A rise. A bob of the head. A swig of coffee
and a glance at the schematic on his clipboard, and he was toying with
a small, blinking implant made from a cannibalized power-dampening bangle.
The incisions would have to start this afternoon,
or there'd be hell to pay.
***
When the clock struck twelve, her hands were buried
in rose petals.
And they were coming.
Her skirts were a heavy crushed velvet - the part
in her hair ragged and hot under the cover of a stifling veil. They were
coming. Coming for her. The corpses of one vibrant flowers
could not muffle the fall of their footsteps on that bitter garden path.
The dead leaves were crushed in their wake like a thousand biting shards.
This way, men! The poison drew her out!
She did not understand them. Their words
sounded foreign - so alien to ears that had wearied of sound long ago.
It had been years since she'd bothered with conversation, or music which
did not play from the branches or the depths of her mind.
Why would they kill her roses?
The rest she could understand, face hidden in
a cascade of hair that had silvered with age. As if the curtain could
hide her, somehow, from their wrath.
And maybe it could
Burn the witch!
Or maybe it couldn't.
Call the exorcist! Call the Bishop!
There was no wind - the wind was partly her domain,
as were the tendrils of life networking all around her. A slow, pulsing
green that had settled into her veins decades ago, when she had become
the Hermit of the Wood. The Hag. The Earth Mother. The
Gardener.
She had many names.
Witch! Witch! Come out, Hag!
Her garden... why did they have to kill her garden?
The Garden was not unnatural. Though sap might flow with a spark
of magic, or the blooms might turn their heads to the sun for one day longer,
she was no great power. Not the witch among the hedges - hidden in
the bramble and the bush. The garden did not deserve to die because
she created it.. not her poor lilies, her hyacinths, her orchids from the
east. None of it. Why....
Burn!
But she was unnatural. And so must this
place be to them; one unbearable speck of greenery suspended in the blight
of winter.
Witch! Bring the torches!
This was not their world. Not their garden.
This was her construct, her creation, her rules.
And oh, she was so weary... arthritis, was it?
Not something she could knit back together. A start to run lanced
pain through her knees like firecrackers. The air was so cold.
So cold. Her roses... the must not kill her...
Witch! Surrender yourself! Your
unnatural power must be cleansed by Divine Law!
Raising withered hands, the tattered old woman
raid eyes clouded with cataracts to the winter sun. Cold air was
coming in. her poor babies. In the darkness, she could see
them wilt. That mustn't be allowed. Was it time she slept,
then? She could feel the earth below her. So solid, unlike
her frail bubbled bones. It was turning for the first time in a century.
Was it time she invoked the ancient law?
Indeed.
FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VINOSEC.
No! you can't....
Someone help me!!!!!
The trees, oh God...
No! They burn! They burn!
Don't touch them! They...
The petals.... make them stop falling, please,
I beg you, make them stop...
Dead. And sleeping now together.
The Sorceress Quistis Trepe was there with
the Sorceress Imogen DesJardins. Somewhere other than a metal slab
in a metal room.
Remember.
Live.
Do you know the words yet?
Then sing, girl. Sing.
***
Hell.
Selphie Timlett wasn't totally sure what hell
was, but this had to be pretty damn close. Like how margarine is
just enough like butter that you can eat it, but not so much like butter
that you'll get all fat and stuff. Except this was making her fat.
So maybe it really was hell after all.
Her first thought had been abortion, you understand.
Abort. Withdraw. Blow that sucker out of the water.
"Irvy..."
But it wasn't that easy, was it? Things
are never easy for you, Sephy Timlett. Not for you. So just
keep breathin', and maybe a silver lining or two will filter into your
lungs and...
"Jus a sec..."
On second thought, she was bloody hungry.
And didn't feel much at all like being happy either.
"Irvine, NOW!"
This pregnancy thing - it totally had her moody.
Totally.
Kinda like stealing this jeep, right? You
knew it was kinda wrong to be feeling what you were feeling, since babies
are small and tiny and cute and stuff and aren't you supposed to be happy?
Right. Of course she'd be happy without a jeep too, but with a jeep
life got easier since you didn't have to walk and stuff. Except that
didn't work either, since babies cry and whine and feed and take your life
away.
She'd known. Oh, yeah. She'd totally
known. All those nights in the foster houses, with the colic taking
nasty lil' vampire fangs to any semblance of sleep in that cold night (It
wasn't night. Irvine was driving her away in the jeep. Some
man from the military checkpoint was chasing after them - wheels of his
motorcycle unnaturally fast on the cracked earth. The sun was too
lazy. Her skin was so warm. Why wasn't she thinking about that?
Keep your eyes on the road, Timlett. Blow 'em all to hell.)
'Cept she'd still decided to steal the jeep -
acting as cover while Irvy held up the nice men with the laser guns who
had been 'mean to Matron'. Irvine was a nutcase. This she knew.
But Irvine was a nutcase with highly specialized targeting rifle, armor-piercing
bullets they'd ripped off some sniper guy out camping on leave (craaaazy
soldier), and the eye of an eagle on speed. That had been a bit of
a stroke of luck, actually - the sniper guy. In her state water was
good. Very very good. And so were rations.
Speaking of which, where had all the pudding gone?
Fingers reaming through the tarp-turned-sac they'd hastily shoved in the
back felt nothing resembling a gloriously full tetra-pac or calcium-fortified
chocolate yumminess.
"Irvy!" the smaller fighter called over a racing
wind. The air was always chasing something here - though given the
barrenness of the place, she wasn't exactly sure what. It's own tail,
maybe. "Where'd all the pudding go?"
"Ummm.. Sephie? Guy shooting at us?
I'm kind of driving here..." their ride suddenly lurched to the left,
throwing the mage up against the edge of the thing. Gawd.. she should've
worn a seatbelt. Dammit, usually her balance was better.
"Right... right! Sorry. Jus' a sec,
Irvy."
Wished she coulda said it felt bad to kill them.
Wished. But it didn't, not really. They lined up nicely against
the blue horizon (oh, she prayed for clouds - cloud with silver lining...
poor ol' Squall). Not that she really had to aim or anything, but
this was for Trabia, you know. And despite the other Gardens thinking
that they were pussies just because they were small, Trabia deserved the
best. Poor Trabia. Gonna make you a funeral pyre, just you
wait.
Right hand cocked like a pistol, the girl perched
in the back of a dilapidated military jeep driving forty miles per hour
faster than the speed limit narrowed her eyes a little. The wind
had taken a liking to the dust, and the trio of bikes that had congregated
behind them were nothing more than motes in the distance now. Her
other hand was white-knuckled from the wear of hanging on to the door.
Three.. feel that glitter in your head.
You know.. that glitter. Siren, your turn to hear. Don'tcha
hear the calling, Siren? Of course you do.
Two. Watch them. Track them.
Closer.. closer... Galbadia. Prey. The blue is gathering around
you now, but you don't' notice, do you? Lightning will make pretty
glass in the sand. A snap decision. And even if it's not pretty,
the dunes will blow over it anyways.
One. The heavens rain down. And you
can't hear them screaming, can you? Just like they couldn't hear
Trabia. All's fair, and all that. Blow 'em up up up!
Blow 'em up to heaven! Blow 'em all to hell.
"Irvy.. we're driving to that forest outside Winhill.
We need food. Loooots of food. Ya like hunting, don'tcha?"
"If you're hungry, Sephie," the cowboy shrugged,
unperturbed.
"Cool! You rock, Irvy."
Settling into the back of the tan colored vehicle,
the girl fought her nausea by watching the scenery refuse to change around
her. Funny, that. Heh. it had been easy killing them.
Always was. No sense getting depressed, right?
Leave 'em all behind.
So she should see a doctor. There was no
doubt about that. See a doc and he'd cut her up and then it
would be revengetime. Irvy wouldn't bring it up - the 'what to do about
IT' thing - but Irvy was a total nutjob, like she'd said. There was
something
seriously out of wack with him. maybe they'd screwed with his head
in the drill prison - those electroshock things could do some nasty thing
to tissue. She should know. Electrical theory had been part
of her magic training, right?
So why did she feel like crying? It had
been so simple, so....
That's what she'd said - that it was simple. 'Cause
it was logical, and believe it or not Selphie Timlett knew just a bit
when
stuff made sense. And she'd crowed with with the rest of the chorus when
the older girls at Trabia got knocked up. Somebody got caught in
the training garden with Teacher? Or someone spent a bit too much
time in the dorm room with that guy in Guardian Force Management with the
strange eyebrows? Get rid of it. Dead weight. What do you care
about killing? Be free. Don't ruin your life. It's just a cut.
An needle and a scalpel. It'll barely hurt at all. And then
everything will be okay, don'tcha see? That's what birth control
is for. You're a soldier, and that bastard won't be around... so
do what's best for all of you. It's not alive yet. It's just
a thing. You're doing what you have to do.. it's right, you know.
It's right. You can't do it at your age - no offense, since you're nice
and all, but still.
Don't kill that bright future now with some crying
ball and chain. Don't be foolish, girl. You were foolish one
time, and look where it got ya.
Oh Hyne.
It made so much sense. Just as much sense as grinding
those Galbadian bones into the dust.
So why wasn't it easy?
***
Stepping through walls was easy if you knew how,
so she did. And no one minded since she was little. And Uncle
Makanesi said that little girls are sugar and spice and everything nice.
'Cept she was magic too, so she was extra special, right?
Right!
Her name was Qu.. no, her name was Nkosazana.
Why would her name be Quistis? She was Uncle's Nkossie. And
she was running through walls.
Pop pop pop. Like bubbles! But they
went back together so that was good. Catch her, catch her, if you
can! The Amazing Nkossie, Miracle Child!
The walls were big and stone, but that didn't
matter. She was the Faerie Princess Nkossie - out on a mission to
kill evil! She was Nkossie the Great - lady of the magical lakes!
Or.. so maybe she wasn't. But she was Magical Dancer Nkossie,
the most gracefullest girl in all the land and all the princes loved her!
And she was too. 'Cause they'd had her dance on the ceiling last time,
and the princes had all clapped. Which was really fun, 'cause when
she danced right side up nobody thought she looked cool at all.
Uncle said he loved her. Uncle was very
very nice - he'd made the lady who looked sleepy give her the powers to
walk through walls. To be Nkossie! Not stupid Nkosazana, that
had no walls to run through and had had to haul lot of water aaaaall the
time which was really mean and unfair and hard too, since she was small
for her age. Stupid Nkosazana had been nothing but a water girl who
danced with the maid sometimes, but Nkossie was a STAR!
"Nkossie.. I thought I told you it was time for
rehearsal? The act starts soon."
"I said I was coming, Uncle!
"I wish you wouldn't hang halfway through the
roof like that. And I've told you about knocking. Now
come, child, we're performing for Lord Akataas tomorrow. You have
to practice the fire trick with the musicians."
"Yes uncle."
Nkossie ( NOT Nkosazana) slid slowly through the
final wall between her and her Uncle in the big granite theater they practiced
in when they weren't wandering around with all the ponies touring.
FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VINOSEC
She liked to sing that rhyme sometimes, even if
the other kids didn't know it. Maybe her Mama had sung it too her
when she was little before the cholera took Mama and Papa and Ikemefune
away. It made Nkossie feel all scrunchy inside.
FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VINOSEC
Pop!
D'you wanna play now, Quisty?
Come on. Anyone can learn it! It's fun! Go on...
Remember.
Live.
Sing!
***
While pacing, Seifer Almasy did not see her blink.
This was probably a good thing. He, unlike the lab tech, would not
have upped the anesthetic.
"Is it done, yet?"
"Almozst, Zir Almaszy," face to face with the
man himself, Klaus Odine looked smaller than he did when looming over the
twig of Quistis Trepe. Insignificant in the shadow cast by a utility lamp.
"Almozst. I've modified zee deszine of zee equiptment I szold Krahmer.
I should have..."
"Should is not a word I like, Professor Odine.
It grates on my ears. Do you understand me?"
"Yes szir. It eez ready. If you'd
juszt allow me to test.."
"How fucking stupid do you think I am?"
Oh, he loved this. Justice. The gunblade at this scrawny little
waste of space's throat. Like the rat hadn't' designed something
of the like for that shemale Adel years ago. Adel? A Sorceress?
Hah! If Adel was a Sorceress, Seifer Almasy would east his goddamn
trenchcoat. Sorceresses did not look like that.
"Yes. That's right. I'm going to let
you, some whiny-assed pansy of a scientist, sic a Sorceress with several
cerebral implants to control her powers on me. Riiiiiiiiight.
I'm sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone who is NOT RULING HALF
THE WORLD."
And then he was dead. Ho hum. This
was getting so old. And the elderly had thin skin - so cuttable.
A grin infected the young knight's face.
Now this was the Sorceress he needed. This, until a suitable replacement
was found, would do quite well. Would do forever, if need be.
There was no way that this one could up and run. No way in hell.
"Oh, you're going down."
Why, he almost felt giddy. Buh-bye, Esthar!
It's been a great game, but Seifer Almasy now officially owns your sorry
ass and your girly shiny barrier wall.
"With my Ultimate Weapon....."
Quistis Trepe? No, that wasn't right.
Quistis Trepe was a whiny co-dependant neurotic. This was not Quistis
fucking Trepe.
***
Fithos.
Lusec.
Wecos.
Vinosec.
~FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VINOSEC~
The truth of the words is that they make no sense.
A revelation lying not only in their reality, but in the understanding
that they were never meant to be subjugated to fickle definition.
Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec. No language, no tune - just rhythm.
No proper pronunciation or chains of style and conjugation. No message
to be sent nor moral to the story.
They can mean whatever you want them to mean.
That was what they were trying to tell her. That was what she needed
to learn, before the lights came on and her limbs resumed the wear of everyday
pounding in Balamb's youth-worn halls. But you can't communicate a message
when the message is that there is no sum encapsulation.
Hyne.
Fithos. Lusec. Wecos. Vinosec.
Repeat.
~FITHOS~
They talked to her in dreams. Were they
dreams? She wasn't sure. She wasn't sure of much of anything
anymore, except for Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec. She could not
see the world beyond the eyelids that she assumed where there. Somewhere.
Somewhere that was not the void where the heir apparent floated all her
days.
She did not know what the pain was, when it cast
cobwebs down her back. She did not know that.
She did not feel the grim metallic fangs sink
through her neck and into the hypothalamus, amassing their electrochemical
armies to bind the cerebral cortex.
~LUSEC~
She knew that they where trying to tell her something,
melded in their Great Gospel. A cacophony of triumphant voices dacing
from this void to the dawn of time and the Living God herself. She
knew she was one of them. And that there was no melody. No
counterpoint. No harmony. No beginning and no end. No
purpose but Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec that time had compressed to teach
her.
Which was.....
~WECOS~
Was....
~VINOSEC~
She was not a self. She was nowhere.
She was everywhere. She was on the smoke-stained pulpit of a mobile
altar - sacrificed instead of revered on her pedestal. There was
a bullet in her heart. And she was in a ballgown, dancing, while
her knight presented her with the head of a dragon. There was blood
on her hands. She had healed a small child. There was blood
on her hands - seeping in to the miniscule in light cocoa skin, tinting
her fingerprints as her chipped nails trailed down a stone wall.
She had fired a cannon from the aft of the ship. She was ordering
them to fire a cannon from the walls of the palace, dressed in a long wrap
and multitudes of peacock feathers. She was tending to the children
in a hospice - angel white. She was walking in the rain. She
was burning in the fire and the ashes. Bound. She was an old woman
making poultices to heal, and a young child making poultices to kill. One
of them had used a pestle, the other pludding in a blender. She was them
and they were her and time meant nothing was compressed so she could learn
her place in the chain in the life in the moment and FITHOS LUSEC WECOS
VINOSEC.
Make the rules. Define the meaning.
Shape the world. Grasp the power. Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec.
Reality is yours.
~fithos~
Wh-what? Where where they going?
She didn't understand. FITHOS LUSEC WECOS
VINOSEC. Why where they leaving her alone?
No. No, don't stop speaking. She wanted
to be anywhere but...
~lusec~
Where had all that screaming come from?
Down, down, down... are you anything, if you can
feel nothing?
Down, down, down.. if you can't hear, are they
still singing?
~wecos~
Where was pain? Where was it? Someone
prick her, someone tear into her skin...
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Whywhywhywhywhywhywhy........
~vino...ssssssssssssss~
Where had they gone?
Where where the voices? Sound, feeling,
though, rage, hate, anger, love, cold, technicolor.
Where?
Where where the words of ultimate power?
Where was the defining factor - no plot, no point, no principle but theirs?
FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VINOSEC.
~ssssssssssss~
Would they not sing with her?
She understood now. She did. She did.
Fithos. Lusec. Wecos. Vinosec. Your own words.
Your own rules. She knew. She... was this supposed to.. no
...
Numb.
Was she then sleeping?
Numb. There was no screaming here.
She still was chained from singing by the blood. The blood.
She had blood? Oh Hyne, where had they...
Come back. Come back. You're supposed
to... someone help her...
She was waking, not sleeping. Wasn't she?
Squall? Grieve with me.
~ssssssssssssssssss~
***
"With my Ultimate Weapon. Ultimecia."
--------
The shit has officially hit the fan. To
be continued in part III - world wide war.
A note: I am pro-choice. Selphie is Selphie,
not me, and Selphie is having a dillema about something she's probably
never really thought all that much about before. I respect whatever
descision a woman makes when she gets pregnant - wether she gets rid of
the child or keeps it, I'm sure she has good reasons. All I
am trying to portray is that it must be a very hard descision to make;
one which is different in every circumstance.
