The Poems of the Clans are grim ones, told to children in nursery-rhyme rhythm with bright smiles and hopeful airs. It is our nature, perhaps, to cloak despair in revelry--to smile and cheer the endings of the world.

In the cradle or the grave, the harshest truths of the world are made known to us--they are our lullabies, our childhood games.

"The Moon is a Lady, dancing Pirouettes
In the bright times and shady, counting our debts."

Do we call Death a Dancer?

-

Squall looked worried.

Rinoa could tell, even though he was trying very hard to disguise it. He had taken one of the Garden reports that Xu was supposed to be looking over, and was reading it cover to cover--presumably to make sure no one would bother him.

He had just come out of a meeting with Laguna--and that didn't bode well. The two of them had managed to find some kind of middle ground in the months since the Ultimecia mission, so Rinoa doubted that the matter was family-related--but the only other reason Squall would be meeting with him was over business, and the current business was something she would be more comfortable with if Squall wasn't worried about it.

Squall was quite adept at ignoring people who tried to make conversation, so just bringing up the meeting would probably get her exactly nowhere. So instead, she settled for staring at him over the top of the report--much as he tried, he couldn't ignore that forever.

True to form, after a few minutes Squall set aside the paper and graced her with a halfhearted glare. "What?"

"You looked worried," Rinoa prompted. "What's going on?"

"Nothing." Squall reached for the report again.

"Squall " Rinoa gave him a stern look. "You can't think you're that good at lying."

Squall sighed quietly. "...it's the early reports from Odine's lab," he said. "They were just released."

"And what did they say?"

Squall drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, glancing out the window. "When we initiated Time Compression, it caused some kind of interference pattern in the world's ambient paramagic--it's the same kind of interference that we see every time there's a Lunar Cry, or enough Lunar Energy buildup to cause a Lunar Cry."

"And...?"

"And the interference hasn't gone away. Instead, it's been increasing--exponentially. And we don't know what's causing it."

Rinoa nodded. "So... what happens if it increases too much? A Lunar Cry?"

Squall shook his head. "It's a symptom of an approaching lunar cry, not the cause. At this point, no one's sure what it will cause--if it will cause anything."

"But you have an idea?" Rinoa guessed.

This time, it seemed she guessed wrong. "Not at all." Squall glanced down. "...but I think if it's usually a symptom of something bad, it may be now, too."

"You said it yourself," Rinoa reasoned. "Time Compression isn't over. Maybe it's--"

"No." Squall cut her off, looking up sharply. "If it's been increasing since Time Compression was initiated, then that would mean that Time Compression itself would have had to keep increasing since then. And it hasn't. So that's not what we're looking at."

"And what is?"

"I don't know." Squall made a frustrated gesture with one hand, scowling. "But it's not Time Compression and it's not a Lunar Cry--and that means it's probably something no ones' ever seen before."

"Well," Rinoa said, smiling reassuringly. "We have the world's best minds working on it. I'm sure we'll figure it out."

"I'm sure," Squall repeated--but he didn't sound at all convinced.

-

Nida was writing tables on the back of his SeeD briefing.

The dip in whatever-it-was had normalized itself, going well back up into normal levels--and then dipped again, falling to .013 before beginning another swing back up. Nida was now checking the numbers every few minutes--scribbling a rough graph as he plotted them.

So far, it was making sense in all the wrong ways.

Selphie, having won the impromptu trivia contest with the number of distinct species of Hexadragon on the Island Closest to Hell, was watching over Nida's shoulder for want of anything else to do. "That's a sine graph, isn't it?"

Nida glanced up. "Looks like one," he said. "Which is pretty weird, if you think about it."

"Why's that?" Zell asked, staring at the detection device with an expression of ultimate boredom.

"Because I would expect to see a sine graph on something determined by spinning things," Nida said.

"Moon has cycles," Zell pointed out.

"And if those cycles had a period of forty-seven minutes, that might be it." Nida glanced up at the moon. "Something around here makes a full circle every three-quarters hour, and is controlling the probability of a Lunar Cry when it does."

"Well, this place was made to control the Lunar Cries," Zell pointed out. "Maybe it broke."

"This place was made to restrain the Lunar Cries," Nida corrected. "I hardly think they'd want to put in something to trigger one."

There was a moment of silence, and Nida sighed.

"Well, we don't have much longer here," he said. "Soon enough, we'll give these numbers back to Odine and he can figure it all out."

"Yeah," Selphie began. "I guess we'll--"

A thunderous chord interrupted her, and the ground began to shake. Nida yelped something and grabbed at the device as it began to skitter madly about, dancing on the quaking ground. "--the hell?!"

"Whoa!" Zell was on his feet in a matter of instants--and very nearly on the ground again as it heaved beneath him. Three more chords followed the first, filling the air with sound.

Nida soon saw what Zell had found so startling.

At the centre of Tears Point, the statues had begun to play.