A seed, planted in a run-down garden, grew into a beanstalk that climbed to the land of giants in the sky. That is what the old tales tell. The seed was magic, the magic to create the ladder. The ladder was ascension. The land and sky were time.

Who will climb the ladder? There is no brave youth that wants to scale eternity. There is no young man so enamored with heaven to risk the climb and fall. The beanstalk will never die, but nor will it ever bear fruit.

But who is the giant to plant it?

-

The nightmare began in the same way it had for centuries.

She was walking along the beach--always the same beach, with always the same waves lapping against it. And she knew it was a nightmare, much though she couldn't say why.

To her left was a crumbling ruin--some ancient site left untended, plants growing wild and feral in the heavy fall air. To her right was an expanse of blue ocean, stretching off farther that the eye could discern. And above her--

--above her--

--above her hovered a great looming darkness, a draconian gargoyle, a monolith of black stone and massive wings. It did not sway in the wind--but the wind tore at it, tearing it into trails of smoky fog that only seemed to erode it.

Once, rumbled a voice so deep and strong as to almost require a dream of its own, this place was beautiful.

Once, this place was alive. Once, the field by the ruins had been filled with flowers. Now it was filled with stones and bones and withered grass.

Once, I could walk these paths and never be ashamed. Once, it was green and fertile. Now it is a desiccated corpse, the dead remain to blight the living. Do you know why, Sorceress?

It was the same question that had been asked so many times before, to so many Sorceresses, in the deep of so many nights.

Because Sorcery cannot save the world. That is not within its potential.

The ocean was blue and waving and dead. Nothing lived beneath that gentle surface.

The ruins were crumbling and dirty and dead.

The flowers were wilted and trampled and dead.

The wild vines that grew so lushly were feral and wild and frightening, consuming every last vestige of the past to make way for its own unruly future. They writhed and grew like living things,

(Who are you?) she asked, as so many Sorceresses before had asked. And always, the response was the same.

I am he who comes to they who grieve and grieves with them that find me. I am the Surrogate.

The nightmare ended the same way it had for centuries. She looked up at the Castle, bleeding away into time.

The wild vines grew around her.

-

Seifer returned to his apartment, several thousand gill richer and with a renewed hatred for Toramas, to find a note slipped under his door.

He gave serious consideration to killing everyone.

It was written in the same hand the other one had been--and it was unsigned. Cursing under his breath--and then realizing that there was no one around and cursing louder--read it.

You are my one and only love, Osan.

Seifer stared... then crumpled it, and threw it into a trashcan. He felt better, really--it was probably some kind of innocent mix-up, and the letters hadn't been meant for him at all. He didn't know of an Osan who lived in the same apartment complex as he did, but it was a large building and he hadn't exactly tried to get to know people.

For a while he considered putting up a sign on his door that said quite plainly that no one named Osan lived there, but he decided not to. Let whoever left the notes figure it out on their own time.

He was heading toward the small bedroom when the phone rang--and he jumped. He wasn't used to being called.

He wasn't used to Estharan phones, either, so it took him a few rings to figure out how to answer it. "What?"

"Seifer?" The voice on the other side was clear--perfectly clear. It was Xu. "You may want to come back to the Presidential Palace. We've found something."

"Good for you. Why should I come back?"

"Because you might be interested," Xu said.

"I don't know where you keep getting those ideas," Seifer snarled. "Did you know I just got home?"

"I suspected it was something like that," Xu responded tersely. "I've been leaving messages all morning."

Seifer glanced down at the phone pad, whose blinking display read 12. Without thinking that they might not all be from Xu, he hit the DELETE ALL command. The number reset to 0. "Sorry that some of us have to make a living," he said.

Quistis might have responded to that. Xu ignored it. "Odine pulled his head out of the clouds long enough to remember your Crystal Pillar report. He thinks he understand Griever's presence--and what's going on with the Lunar field."

"Okay. So?"

"You should listen to what he has to say."

"Any reason you can't just tell me over the phone?"

"Yes."

Seifer waited for her to elaborate. When she didn't, he snorted and asked "And what's that?"

There was silence.

"Hello?"

After a few more empty seconds, he hung up. Disconnections weren't exactly common, but they weren't unheard of, either.

He took a step toward the bedroom, and the phone rang again. Aggravated, he snatched the receiver.

"What is it?"

"Osan?" asked the voice on the other end--pretty and feminine, familiar but not placable.

"Wrong number."

"You'll come with me to the Tear's Point," the voice on the other end said, and hung up.

Seifer was left holding the receiver, and gave the thought of killing everyone a bit more consideration. Irately, he put it down--waited a few moments to make sure it wouldn't ring again.

When it seemed as if it would remain silent, he went into his bedroom with the intent to lie down for a while.

Five minutes later, he was on the road to the Presidential Palace.

-

Squall had been nervous and edgy all day, and he couldn't figure out quite why. Dismissing it as best he could, he chalked it up to too much time spent with Odine--the man would drive anyone to adopt new neuroses.

Still, it was... distracting.

He had been pacing through most of the day, checking over things that he didn't need to check on, and pestering people so much that Xu had very nearly had Kadowaki order him off on vacation. (After that narrow miss, he had avoided the Garden Administration and settled for driving the Estharan scientists to drink.)

He ran into Rinoa in one of the many, many halls in the Palace, and she looked almost as edgy as he was.

"Squall?" she asked. "Let's go to the Lunatic Pandora."

"All right," Squall responded.

"I mean, I know that people were worried about the weird things going on, and they say it's not safe there, but I think we can probably handle it, and I don't see why we should have to work on conjecture alone when we could be collecting hard data," Rinoa said, spilling out a perfectly rehearsed chain of reasoning that she was sure Squall had to agree to.

"I said all right," Squall repeated.

"And besides that, there's--what?"

Squall made an offhand gesture. "Odine's given his report, but he needs more information that he can't obtain without another party sent out."

"I didn't mean send another SeeD party," Rinoa argued. "I meant us. You and me."

"All right."

"It would only make since, given that--" She trailed off. "Squall? Are you all right?"

Squall made the exact same offhand gesture once again. "I'm serving a pretty dismissible function here," he said. "And your Sorceress power should provide us with insights we wouldn't have had access to before. It's a perfectly valid plan."

"Yes, but...." Rinoa stared at him, eyes flicking over his face for signs of sickness, drunkenness, or demonic possession. "You're normally not this... agreeable, especially not when I try to suggest something as a plan of action."

Squall shrugged. "This one makes sense."

Rinoa digested that--then smiled. "Well. glad to know that I have good ideas some of the time." She walked neatly up to him, tucking her arm through his elbow and pulling him off down the hall. "When do we leave? How will we get there?"

"We can take the Ragnarok," Squall said amenably. "And leave now."

Rinoa ground to a halt, pulling him with her and turning him to face her.

...he was smiling. Not a lot, but a little.

Rinoa frowned. "Now? Isn't there some kind of obscure protocol you have to spend days going through or something?"

"It can be handled from the Ragnarok," Squall told her.

Rinoa shook her head. "Are you sure you're feeling all right? You're smiling an awful lot."

"I haven't had a chance to see you much," Squall responded.

"Our Palace rooms are next to each other."

"I've been busy with other things," Squall apologized. "And anyway, I'm glad I can be out there doing something instead of helping Xu with paperwork. It's good to be on assignment again."

Rinoa put a hand on his forehead, but didn't feel a fever. Then she smiled back. "I guess you would look forward to that, wouldn't you?"

He responded by slimming an arm around the small of her back, pulling her in, and kissing her gently on the lips. Then her released her, walking down the hall as if no exchange had taken place. "Come on. The Ragnarok's been ready for use for days, now."

Rinoa didn't ask questions. She just followed him, smiling happily to herself.

It was going to be a good day--she could feel it.