A.N.: HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN?

Sorry. Very sorry. Was too busy finding other things to mess with. But just recently I've been playing FFIV and now I have TONS of devious ideas again! This chapter's not too big and not too interesting, but it gets the ball rolling again, and with any luck I'll be back with another by the end of the week.

Huge thanks to all readers…all people who sign anything! both here and at the FFOnline fic club, but especially to AmethystFleetFoot, Ambassador Garnet L Alexandros and Mith Galtirglin. Couldn't have done it without you…


#5: The Path

Library

"...We can't."

"What?!"

"We can't do it. It's insane."

"You want us to stay here? Is that sane?"

"It's saner than charging off into the desert. We're not about to die or anything -"

"You sure -?"

" - and we can't just give up our posts! That's wrong!"

"I'm going mad here, Mogryo, I can't take this for a year!"

"Live with it." I glare at him, hoping to convey some of my aggravated pessimism, and maybe one of the headaches whilst I'm at it. "Write about it, it's what you're here for."

"Is that what you're doing? Trading sense off for duty -"

"It's not duty, Mene, it's life." He stalks back to the bookcase, pompom twitching in annoyance. Gods, he's crazy. I can't believe he wants to stay here just to write his crappy poems, couldn't he do that someplace else? He stands with one shoulder resting against the case, looking at me levelly. "Mene." I stare off sideways, picking loose nut fibres out of my teeth with my tongue. If I didn't feel so woozy I might just think of a way to talk him into it, but... "If we run away, we'll lose our contracts, we'll have nowhere safe to stay, and we'll die of thirst before we can care. You know that, don't you? And if we stay here, we'll be warm, fed, alive, and -"

"- stark, staring bonkers within a fortnight." I insert.

His eyes narrow. Well? Admit it, you cowardly line-toeing fuzzball, we can't stay in the Palace - not if it keeps phasing in and out like this...fuck...

His impatient gaze becomes suddenly calculating. "Mene, how many kupo nuts have you eaten today?"
I mumble a response, hoping he won't care.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Six, okay!" So, I'm not quite sober right now, but it's not like I wasn't planning to leave when I was! He walks up and grabs my wrist. "Hey!" So, I'm a little dizzy, it doesn't help that you're trying to cut off my blood supply! "Mogryo!" So maybe I went a little bit past the healthy intake limit - no, I'm swaying, you've made me go light-headed -

"Come here." He trots off through the tall arch into the stairwell, dragging me after him. "You need water."

"What?!"

"You've had far too many, if you don't get rehydrated you'll get ill." He pulls me down a flight of curved stairs, not doing any good to my ringing head. The huge room flies past my eyes in swirly, demented glory. A stained-glass picture catches my eye - a woman, clothed in midnight-blue and crowned in silver, holding a girl-child in one arm and a sword in the other. The mood I'm in, it seems almost meaningful, but I bet you anything it's just another sick joke. He leads me into a low corridor and pushes open a simple wooden door, far and away the most basic fitting I've seen in the whole Palace so far. "In here."

Well...It's small, snug, the sort of room that the lord of the manor wouldn't know about but everyone else would. It's simply panelled in bare white wood, simply furnished with little cupboards and chairs and tables, simply carpeted in odd patchwork rugs... There's something about it that screams 'kitchen', it'd be obvious even without the spit in the fireplace and the water-pump and drain in the far corner. It'd be obvious if it was just a bare room, it's that kitcheny. He settles me onto a hard chair, and draws me a mugful of water. I gulp it down, but the nausea only increases. I think he knows that; he pats my shoulder softly, saying

"Wait a minute, you'll feel better once that's got down your throat."

I chew on one lip, acutely feeling my stomach's quite creditable Southern Ocean impersonation. Mogryo's hovering nearby, just past the cloud of black fog, and he's looking disapproving, to say the least. That's not fair - at least he didn't get put in the torture chamber! Maybe if he had've been I wouldn't have had to -

"Don't blame me," he snaps, suddenly. "No-one told you to drug yourself, you know."

Oh will you just quit reading my mind and go away?

He sighs, raking one paw across his forehead. "Look, Mene..." He thumps down onto a chair. "I think it'd be easier if we stopped fighting. There's no need to be so angry –"

"I have a lot to be angry about, thanks!"

He sighs (oh don't patronise me), moves away, and a moment later I hear water running...or maybe just some very creative tinnitus. "Mene," he says patiently, "one can only ever be truly angry at oneself. All else is merely passing sorrow."

"I don't need your platitudes."

"It's not a platitude, it's religion." He's rummaging in a cupboard now... So, religion. That's what's meant to turn a silly proverb into a universal truth. Mogryo, do you want a kupo nut? I know I do... "You're not thinking about it, are you?"

No. "No," I mutter. "It – it's only words, Mogryo. It's not going to help me survive a year living in that Rack."

"But that's what religion's for – it makes sense of everything, Mene –"

I know my vision's clearing, because I'm glaring at him.

He takes the empty mug from my hands, sets it by the stove. He's hung something over the – er – the magic fire, dunno what, dun care what... "Well...each to their own, Mene, but I think it's not too late for you to find the Path. You liked it when I showed you the Stellai –"

" – evangelist –"

He scowls. Well, he might. "I'm sorry, I suppose I was just lucky enough to be born in Cleyra." He glances into the cooking-pot, and stirs it with a wooden spoon – yes, I can nearly see again now, though my head is killing me.

I try to collect a few thoughts together, in the hope that it'll detract from the sensations. "I thought...that we don't have homes."

"Most of us don't. I just...it just is, Cleyra, it's been a part of me for...too long to explain. We can't help who we are, Mene. That's why we ought to take the Journey."

Hm. Really. "What is it, anyway? Is it that Ophiuchus stuff?"

He dips two mugs in his pot. "He was the first Prophet, yes." I sigh wearily, but he pretends not to notice. "I know he wrote things about the stars and the moon, but it was really all about more important things. Why we're all here, why we need the Prophets, and where we're all going –"

"Well?"

He sets the two mugs neatly on the table. "Well, what?"

"Why are we here and all that?"

"To write it down, of course. We're moogles." He drops abruptly into a chair opposite me, and his pompom sways front-to-back like a pendulum.

"Oh... But wasn't he a human?"

"Yes, but he understood things. That's what made him special. He led the Cleyrans out of Burmecia so they could follow the Path in purity... It's all about Nature, Mene. And knowing what your place is in the world, and taking the Path the Stellai have set out for you. He knew that moogles are the custodians of all knowledge, and said that some of us would be different, more important –"

"More Prophets?" I ask sceptically, sniffing my drink. Herb-laden steam assaults my nostrils...mmm...

"Yes – but also guardians, people to keep us on the Path. They're leaders too, because only they can ever make more Knowledge –" I open my mouth, but, no, it's not worth the pain. I take a sip of tea instead. "And two of the other Prophets were moogles, according to some of the Records. The power descended from Ophiuchus passed later into the Sindai the Truthgiver, and then onto the Chanter, Namingway –"

I splutter through my mouthful of liquid. "I hate it when people do that!"

"What?"

"Make out that Namingway was –" ow, I need this tea " – religious. He was just a good writer! He never asked to be hijacked by anyone."

He looks at me sternly. "But in the Book of Names he wrote about the trail of Art-suh-Taraz through the Two Hundred And Twelve sacred Gaian Ways, and Prophet Sindai said –"

"It's just poetry, Mogryo –"

"You haven't read it, have you?"

I shift uncomfortably in my seat...trying to rock the Headache back to sleep. "No." He raises an accusing brow. "They're just a few weird poems – everyone knows that. Even Stiltzkin thinks so." Hm. That's what glares feel like, then. "Look, it's all very high-minded and everyhthing, but it sounds like...like a big fairy story or something. A castle in the air. I – I'm sure you can learn something from it, though," I conceed, before his pompom can fall off.

He nods, semi-placated, and I sip my drink again. It's sweet and herby – clearing my mind, really. Mogryo holds out a paw. "Truce?" he asks.

I grasp it. "Yeah, okay". It's leathery-smooth, and still warm from the cooking pot. "Let's just tlak, and quit arguing."

He nods. "For what it's worth to you," he shrugs, "I think that the Path would want us to stay here. To write things, like we were made to. I can show you some verses if you like –"

"That's okay!" I say quickly, but I force a tiny smile. "I'll just...take your word for it."

He grins. "Good – I think I'd miss you if you got eaten by sand worms".

I roll my eyes...oh, I'm getting tired now...must be all the tea. "Thankyou." I feel warm now, too.

We drink in silence for a while, watching the dust circling around the fire-glow. "So..." he says slowly, "...where are you from?"

"Nowhere," I reply dozily. "Oh, I was born in Guenita, but I don't –"

"Where?"

I giggle. "It's a tiny village, South Alexandria. Nothing there but mist... Just where my mother happened to be when I was born. I don't even remember it – I think I remember us being in Alex, I must've been three then – then off to old Mog's training school when I was four."

He sits up a little. "You knew Old Mog?"

"Yeah, just about...I was only a kit, though."

"I was a couple of years later – Mogster had taken it over by then. I was in Cleyra all my life before I went to school, and – it stayed with me, Mene. Maybe because the Moon Maidens had already shown me my Path..."

"Where have you been on post, anyway?"

"Just Treno – I had my first two seasons there. It was...well, it's a lovely town, and very ordered, I liked that – but a lot of the richer people were misusing their Paths." Oh...how terrible for you, Mogryo...Stiltzkin told me things about Treno that made my blood curdle, Mogryo... "I was pretty glad to leave, really. You?"

"Summit, Iifa, and two years at Lindblum. You'd hate Lindblum, believe me."

He titters with laughter. "Yes, I think I would. How about Iifa? Namingway seemed to like it –"

"Then Namingway was a nutbar." I say firmly, and sleepily. I stretch out my toes and yawn. "You know, Kuja has a Namingway – in the Sanctum. Must be – really old..."

"Really?" Now he's hovering in religious excitement... "Which one?"

"Just the Book of Names, but...really old. Maybe even...as old as Namingway..."

His eyes seem to be glazing over, hungrily... "Wow. I have to see that! Oh, we have to, Mene!" hm...who's this 'we', then? "I'll make him show us, won't I? I'll tell him that I follow the Path and – oh, do you think he does too?" Mogryo...really...

Something of my lethargy finally starts to register. "Oh. Okay...shall we do it tomorrow morning, then?"

"O...okay..."

He smiles, rises, makes for the cupboard again. "Shall I fix us a bedtime snack?"

I think hazily back on the stuffed sand-snail pie that the tentacled Palace servant brought me last night...er...mmm... "Yeah...good idea, Mogryo..."


…oh. And Thene has been working on the Compressed Realms groupfic on Ffonline, writing naaasty aaangsty things about Dagger. If you want to come visit, do – only I think part of the site's broken right now. Anyhow…usual story – flame at the bottom left, okay? ^_^