Conversations with Lorelei
Author's note: All right, my friends, this is a weird one. This story's been bouncing around in my mind for over a year, and I've decided to finally give in and write it. This story takes place a full seven hundred years after the end of Final Fantasy VII. Yup, you heard me right, seven hundred. Needless to say, I've done a great deal of waving around my poetic license. This story will include the tales of the deaths of nearly every one of the heroes of the game, so if you can't take it, don't read it. Also, please acknowledge the fact that I DO NOT own Final Fantasy VII. If I did, Aeris would not have worn pink, and there would have been a sequel to the game by now. (Other than Kingdom Hearts. It doesn't count, in my eyes.) That said, please enjoy.
***
Prologue
The mansion had stood in town longer than any citizen of Nibleheim could remember. The wooden planks that composed it were as faded as many of the ancient photographs that great-grandmothers had taken in childhood, but, by some miracle, remained upright. No light ever shone through in the windows at night, no smoke ever emerged from the chimney to betray a fire. Its windows were not boarded-up, but many looked it after seemingly-countless decades of neglect had left dust and mud against glass panes, with only the rain to clean them, occasionally, leaving them a mess of dirty brown streaks no more transparent than they had been before the dust was disturbed. Hailstorms had shattered most of the windows on the mansion's east side, but they were covered only by drapes of rough fabric, faded nearly to a pale tea-rose, though they had been crimson long ago. The wrought-iron gate was rumored to have once been black, but was now a mass of rust that would not fully open nor completely close. A pair of ravens had been nesting in one of the barren trees for twenty years, though whether it was always the same pair was the subject of some debate in the uneventful town. Some said the door was never locked. None had ever dared to test the theory.
A cold October wind whistled sharply as it blew across every draft it could find in the boards of the mansion, rustling the drapes of the east-side windows as a lone figure stared at the gate. The figure was draped in a heavy woolen coat of charcoal gray, a thermos of hot coffee clutched in one gloveless hand, a small volume with a worn leather cover in the other. She had seen the mansion, heard and shivered at the tales of it, listened to the ravens' cries, all her life. As all the other children of the town, she had received dares to set foot on the unkempt weeds of its yard, and had always declined them. There was something about the place that not even the most arrogant child of Nibleheim could conquer, an eerie and cold aura that even the pride of a fifteen-year-old boy could never have overcome.
Today, it was different.
Lorelei Calldrick was fourteen years old, and had never left the Nibleheim in those fourteen years. Really, she had never wanted to. She had lived in a white stucco house on the outskirts of town with her older brother, Ian, since her mother had died years ago, and had always been content to simply look at the mansion from her bedroom window, waiting for her brother to return from his day of mining mithril in mount Nibel.
The previous evening, he had not returned from work. Lorelei had told no one; she simply went to bed, awakened at dawn, made a pot of coffee, threw on her coat, and walked to the gates of the mansion. She couldn't tell the people of the town of Ian's disappearance. If she did, she would have to listen to people whisper as she walked by, knowing perfectly well that they were saying.
"Such a shame, the poor child all alone..."
"Someone really ought to take her in."
"Isn't it terrible that Ian's passed away like that?"
Her brother wasn't dead. She couldn't believe he was.
She could feel eyes watching her, as she brought her free hand up to the rusty gate, trying to push it open enough to squeeze through, and getting only a slight creak of protest in return.
"There's no way you're gonna go in there," a self-assured voice jeered, "'cause Little Lorie's too scared."
Lorelei turned to look at the perfect, freckled face of Renate Terrings, the most sought-after girl in Nibleheim. Renate seemed to have a particular hatred for Lorelei, and had always made it perfectly obvious. Seeing Renate's luxurious red curls, her flawlessly-done makeup, and her flattering, expensive clothes made Lorelei horribly conscious of her own appearance. Lorelei's honey-blonde hair was pulled into a haphazard ponytail, and she wore patched and faded black jeans, along with an oversized green sweatshirt that she had found in Ian's closet.
"You haven't got the guts to go in there," Renate taunted, "Even if you were strong enough to open the gate."
Lorelei narrowed her deep-blue eyes, and rammed the gate with her shoulder, grating her teeth at the sound of screeching metal.
"Watch me," she said simply, resisting the temptation to spit on the popular girl's undoubtably-expensive patent-leather shoes, and beginning to wade through the thickly-grown weeds.
She took some satisfaction at the gasp she heard from Renate, but did not look back, even when the redhead spoke up again.
"I'm going to go tell everyone you went in, because you're never coming back! I bet someone'll throw a party 'cause of that!"
"Yeah, sure!" Lorelei laughed, "I bet you'll actually invite me to this one!"
As she came to the mansion's battered wooden door, Lorelei seemed to loose some connection with the real world. It was as though all her life had been a dream, and that, upon opening that simple portal of wood, she would be, for the first time, opening her eyes. She found the wood strangely smooth and cold beneath her hands as she forced the door open, like the feel of a piece of glass lost in the ocean for years, its every sharp edge worn away by an endless caress of current and sand. There was no creak as the door swung open; its hinges might well have been in perfect repair. Instead, it seemed to simply brush the air with a sound like a mournful sigh. For several minutes, she slowly made her way across the floor, taking in the sight of the place, amazed, not noticing that the door drifted to a close behind her.
She was surprised to find that the place seemed not quite so unkempt as she would have thought. There was lingering dust on some of the floorboards, but it was not nearly so thick as she might have believed, and, when she went to investigate a window, she found that, while its outside was caked with years of dirt and dust, on the inside, its glass was without so much as a fingerprint.
"This is impossible..."she murmured, "It looks like someone actually cleaned this sometime in the last century...hell, it could've been done yesterday...either this place isn't haunted, or it has some majorly obsessive-compulsive ghosts..."
Lorelei stood at the window for several long moments, as though staring at the glass would somehow reveal the answer to the mystery. The only change that occurred at all, in that space of time, was a scent that made the young girl wrinkle her nose.
"Eww.." she muttered, "What I wouldn't give to know why this place has the ability to suddenly take on the smell of rotting pumpkins."
Her blue eyes were wide, indeed, as she turned and spotted the answer.
In the air before her floated the three strangest things Lorelei had ever seen in her young life. They seemed to be jack-o-lanterns, smartly dressed with white collars of starched ruffles, and pink bows near their stems. As though that had not been odd enough, one of them seemed to somehow wink its carved-out eye at the girl, making its maddened grin seem all the more eerie. In that moment, there was only one plan that came to her mind.
"...shit!"she exclaimed, running as fast as she could toward the door.
Her pace slowed, then, as a purple-pink mist seemed to wrap around her. She could smell something sickly-sweet, though she could not quite tell what the scent was, and breathed deeper, trying to identify it. She felt suddenly dizzy, and her vision became a blur; all she could see were faint splashes of orange and pink and white all about her. There was a loud, sharp sound that seemed to echo in her mind, and, after several seconds of thought, she realized it was a gunshot.
"...these things have guns?!" she screamed, a sudden terror gripping her.
Any capacity for rational thought she had left fled in that moment. She could think of only one thing: she had to fight her way out. She rushed for one of the creatures to her right, forgetting that she was entirely unarmed, forgetting that she had never been in or even seen any fight save for those that young children might get into with their peers. She felt her fist connect with something hard and cold, that gave a dull thud, as though she had simply punched a suit of armor that happened to be in use, at the time. Another gunshot sounded, and she tried once more to beat on what appeared to be the creature's jack-o-landern face, answered only with the same unyielding metallic ring, accompanied only by a faint sigh of annoyance, and the sound of another shot.
She felt a slap across her face, not overly harsh, but certainly sharp enough to make her flinch. She was about to protest, but found that her vision had cleared.
The girl looked up at a tall man with long, raven-black hair framing his pale face, or, at least, what she could see of it, for everything below his nose was concealed by the high collar of a crimson cloak. She backed up a step, when she realized that its fabric matched perfectly with his eyes, and that his left arm seemed to be a claw comprised of metal that was a dull golden color.
"I-I'm sorry..." Lorelei stammered, "...I thought you were a pumpkin."
No emotion was visible in the man's red eyes, as he looked down at the girl, nor was any apparent when he spoke, though his voice was quiet and smooth.
"You are lucky to be alive... or perhaps not. I advise you to tell your parents that they have been quite negligent..." he told her.
"Well...seeing as I've never met my father, and my mother drown when I was nine, I think they have an excuse," she shrugged, with a bit of a nervous smile.
"...that is none of my concern..." he said after a moment's pause, his cold, detached tone unchanging, "It is time for you to leave."
"But I can't!" she declared, "If I leave now, everyone will think I got scared!"
"...and they will be correct," he replied.
"I don't see why I can't stay," she pouted, crossing her arms, "I mean, you can protect me-"
"I'm capable of doing so," the man interrupted, "What makes you believe that I would wish to?"
"Well, you already have," she said with a shrug.
"Lightning once struck the roof of this building. That does not necessarily mean it will do so again."
"Well, aren't you just Mr. Sunshine," she said, rolling her eyes.
The man raised an eyebrow at that, though he showed no other change of expression.
"You seem to enjoy coming up with unlikely titles for me," he remarked.
"Yeah, well, I might stop coming up with them if you told me your name."
"The same would hold true if you left this place."
"No..." she said with a thoughtful expression, "I think I'd still come up with names for you if I was bored. Might even make a list."
"A list I would never have to read."
"Maybe we got off on the wrong foot," she said, "Let's start over. I'm Lorelei Calldrick. Thanks for saving me from the pumpkin-things."
"You should leave now, Lorelei Calldrick. You're unwelcome here."
"You're mean, Mr. Sunshine," Lorelei told him with an exaggerated sniffle, "How come?"
"...life..." was his only reply, a touch of bitterness seeming to come to his voice.
Lorelei stood, blinking, for a few moments, unsure of what to say.
"Look..." she awkwardly began, after while, "Just...tell me your name, and I'll leave. Alright?"
"...very well..." he murmured, "...Vincent...."
"Neat. I always liked that name," Lorelei said cheerfully, beginning to half-skip toward the door, "I'll be going, then!"
She couldn't help but smile, as Vincent followed her to the door, and, even as she opened it, and heard him close it behind her, she began to whistle a jaunty tune. She sat down on the front step, took out her thermos, and sipped her coffee.
True, she had said she would leave.
But she hadn't promised not to come back...
Author's note: All right, my friends, this is a weird one. This story's been bouncing around in my mind for over a year, and I've decided to finally give in and write it. This story takes place a full seven hundred years after the end of Final Fantasy VII. Yup, you heard me right, seven hundred. Needless to say, I've done a great deal of waving around my poetic license. This story will include the tales of the deaths of nearly every one of the heroes of the game, so if you can't take it, don't read it. Also, please acknowledge the fact that I DO NOT own Final Fantasy VII. If I did, Aeris would not have worn pink, and there would have been a sequel to the game by now. (Other than Kingdom Hearts. It doesn't count, in my eyes.) That said, please enjoy.
***
Prologue
The mansion had stood in town longer than any citizen of Nibleheim could remember. The wooden planks that composed it were as faded as many of the ancient photographs that great-grandmothers had taken in childhood, but, by some miracle, remained upright. No light ever shone through in the windows at night, no smoke ever emerged from the chimney to betray a fire. Its windows were not boarded-up, but many looked it after seemingly-countless decades of neglect had left dust and mud against glass panes, with only the rain to clean them, occasionally, leaving them a mess of dirty brown streaks no more transparent than they had been before the dust was disturbed. Hailstorms had shattered most of the windows on the mansion's east side, but they were covered only by drapes of rough fabric, faded nearly to a pale tea-rose, though they had been crimson long ago. The wrought-iron gate was rumored to have once been black, but was now a mass of rust that would not fully open nor completely close. A pair of ravens had been nesting in one of the barren trees for twenty years, though whether it was always the same pair was the subject of some debate in the uneventful town. Some said the door was never locked. None had ever dared to test the theory.
A cold October wind whistled sharply as it blew across every draft it could find in the boards of the mansion, rustling the drapes of the east-side windows as a lone figure stared at the gate. The figure was draped in a heavy woolen coat of charcoal gray, a thermos of hot coffee clutched in one gloveless hand, a small volume with a worn leather cover in the other. She had seen the mansion, heard and shivered at the tales of it, listened to the ravens' cries, all her life. As all the other children of the town, she had received dares to set foot on the unkempt weeds of its yard, and had always declined them. There was something about the place that not even the most arrogant child of Nibleheim could conquer, an eerie and cold aura that even the pride of a fifteen-year-old boy could never have overcome.
Today, it was different.
Lorelei Calldrick was fourteen years old, and had never left the Nibleheim in those fourteen years. Really, she had never wanted to. She had lived in a white stucco house on the outskirts of town with her older brother, Ian, since her mother had died years ago, and had always been content to simply look at the mansion from her bedroom window, waiting for her brother to return from his day of mining mithril in mount Nibel.
The previous evening, he had not returned from work. Lorelei had told no one; she simply went to bed, awakened at dawn, made a pot of coffee, threw on her coat, and walked to the gates of the mansion. She couldn't tell the people of the town of Ian's disappearance. If she did, she would have to listen to people whisper as she walked by, knowing perfectly well that they were saying.
"Such a shame, the poor child all alone..."
"Someone really ought to take her in."
"Isn't it terrible that Ian's passed away like that?"
Her brother wasn't dead. She couldn't believe he was.
She could feel eyes watching her, as she brought her free hand up to the rusty gate, trying to push it open enough to squeeze through, and getting only a slight creak of protest in return.
"There's no way you're gonna go in there," a self-assured voice jeered, "'cause Little Lorie's too scared."
Lorelei turned to look at the perfect, freckled face of Renate Terrings, the most sought-after girl in Nibleheim. Renate seemed to have a particular hatred for Lorelei, and had always made it perfectly obvious. Seeing Renate's luxurious red curls, her flawlessly-done makeup, and her flattering, expensive clothes made Lorelei horribly conscious of her own appearance. Lorelei's honey-blonde hair was pulled into a haphazard ponytail, and she wore patched and faded black jeans, along with an oversized green sweatshirt that she had found in Ian's closet.
"You haven't got the guts to go in there," Renate taunted, "Even if you were strong enough to open the gate."
Lorelei narrowed her deep-blue eyes, and rammed the gate with her shoulder, grating her teeth at the sound of screeching metal.
"Watch me," she said simply, resisting the temptation to spit on the popular girl's undoubtably-expensive patent-leather shoes, and beginning to wade through the thickly-grown weeds.
She took some satisfaction at the gasp she heard from Renate, but did not look back, even when the redhead spoke up again.
"I'm going to go tell everyone you went in, because you're never coming back! I bet someone'll throw a party 'cause of that!"
"Yeah, sure!" Lorelei laughed, "I bet you'll actually invite me to this one!"
As she came to the mansion's battered wooden door, Lorelei seemed to loose some connection with the real world. It was as though all her life had been a dream, and that, upon opening that simple portal of wood, she would be, for the first time, opening her eyes. She found the wood strangely smooth and cold beneath her hands as she forced the door open, like the feel of a piece of glass lost in the ocean for years, its every sharp edge worn away by an endless caress of current and sand. There was no creak as the door swung open; its hinges might well have been in perfect repair. Instead, it seemed to simply brush the air with a sound like a mournful sigh. For several minutes, she slowly made her way across the floor, taking in the sight of the place, amazed, not noticing that the door drifted to a close behind her.
She was surprised to find that the place seemed not quite so unkempt as she would have thought. There was lingering dust on some of the floorboards, but it was not nearly so thick as she might have believed, and, when she went to investigate a window, she found that, while its outside was caked with years of dirt and dust, on the inside, its glass was without so much as a fingerprint.
"This is impossible..."she murmured, "It looks like someone actually cleaned this sometime in the last century...hell, it could've been done yesterday...either this place isn't haunted, or it has some majorly obsessive-compulsive ghosts..."
Lorelei stood at the window for several long moments, as though staring at the glass would somehow reveal the answer to the mystery. The only change that occurred at all, in that space of time, was a scent that made the young girl wrinkle her nose.
"Eww.." she muttered, "What I wouldn't give to know why this place has the ability to suddenly take on the smell of rotting pumpkins."
Her blue eyes were wide, indeed, as she turned and spotted the answer.
In the air before her floated the three strangest things Lorelei had ever seen in her young life. They seemed to be jack-o-lanterns, smartly dressed with white collars of starched ruffles, and pink bows near their stems. As though that had not been odd enough, one of them seemed to somehow wink its carved-out eye at the girl, making its maddened grin seem all the more eerie. In that moment, there was only one plan that came to her mind.
"...shit!"she exclaimed, running as fast as she could toward the door.
Her pace slowed, then, as a purple-pink mist seemed to wrap around her. She could smell something sickly-sweet, though she could not quite tell what the scent was, and breathed deeper, trying to identify it. She felt suddenly dizzy, and her vision became a blur; all she could see were faint splashes of orange and pink and white all about her. There was a loud, sharp sound that seemed to echo in her mind, and, after several seconds of thought, she realized it was a gunshot.
"...these things have guns?!" she screamed, a sudden terror gripping her.
Any capacity for rational thought she had left fled in that moment. She could think of only one thing: she had to fight her way out. She rushed for one of the creatures to her right, forgetting that she was entirely unarmed, forgetting that she had never been in or even seen any fight save for those that young children might get into with their peers. She felt her fist connect with something hard and cold, that gave a dull thud, as though she had simply punched a suit of armor that happened to be in use, at the time. Another gunshot sounded, and she tried once more to beat on what appeared to be the creature's jack-o-landern face, answered only with the same unyielding metallic ring, accompanied only by a faint sigh of annoyance, and the sound of another shot.
She felt a slap across her face, not overly harsh, but certainly sharp enough to make her flinch. She was about to protest, but found that her vision had cleared.
The girl looked up at a tall man with long, raven-black hair framing his pale face, or, at least, what she could see of it, for everything below his nose was concealed by the high collar of a crimson cloak. She backed up a step, when she realized that its fabric matched perfectly with his eyes, and that his left arm seemed to be a claw comprised of metal that was a dull golden color.
"I-I'm sorry..." Lorelei stammered, "...I thought you were a pumpkin."
No emotion was visible in the man's red eyes, as he looked down at the girl, nor was any apparent when he spoke, though his voice was quiet and smooth.
"You are lucky to be alive... or perhaps not. I advise you to tell your parents that they have been quite negligent..." he told her.
"Well...seeing as I've never met my father, and my mother drown when I was nine, I think they have an excuse," she shrugged, with a bit of a nervous smile.
"...that is none of my concern..." he said after a moment's pause, his cold, detached tone unchanging, "It is time for you to leave."
"But I can't!" she declared, "If I leave now, everyone will think I got scared!"
"...and they will be correct," he replied.
"I don't see why I can't stay," she pouted, crossing her arms, "I mean, you can protect me-"
"I'm capable of doing so," the man interrupted, "What makes you believe that I would wish to?"
"Well, you already have," she said with a shrug.
"Lightning once struck the roof of this building. That does not necessarily mean it will do so again."
"Well, aren't you just Mr. Sunshine," she said, rolling her eyes.
The man raised an eyebrow at that, though he showed no other change of expression.
"You seem to enjoy coming up with unlikely titles for me," he remarked.
"Yeah, well, I might stop coming up with them if you told me your name."
"The same would hold true if you left this place."
"No..." she said with a thoughtful expression, "I think I'd still come up with names for you if I was bored. Might even make a list."
"A list I would never have to read."
"Maybe we got off on the wrong foot," she said, "Let's start over. I'm Lorelei Calldrick. Thanks for saving me from the pumpkin-things."
"You should leave now, Lorelei Calldrick. You're unwelcome here."
"You're mean, Mr. Sunshine," Lorelei told him with an exaggerated sniffle, "How come?"
"...life..." was his only reply, a touch of bitterness seeming to come to his voice.
Lorelei stood, blinking, for a few moments, unsure of what to say.
"Look..." she awkwardly began, after while, "Just...tell me your name, and I'll leave. Alright?"
"...very well..." he murmured, "...Vincent...."
"Neat. I always liked that name," Lorelei said cheerfully, beginning to half-skip toward the door, "I'll be going, then!"
She couldn't help but smile, as Vincent followed her to the door, and, even as she opened it, and heard him close it behind her, she began to whistle a jaunty tune. She sat down on the front step, took out her thermos, and sipped her coffee.
True, she had said she would leave.
But she hadn't promised not to come back...