All of us Fluffs crowded into Jay's tent that night- say what you want about him being nosy and obnoxious, he's definitely got a soft spot for creatures in need. We were all pretty cramped in there, but he wouldn't hear a word about any of us sleeping outside or finding someone else to stay with. So it got a little claustrophobic but otherwise...we were all warm, at least. We woke up to awfully loud yelling from the Captain to get up and eat in the next five minutes or we'd have to starve until lunchtime. I was pretty hungry, but I wasn't sure if I felt like being around so many people after spending such a cramped night, so I went to the spot I'd eaten at last night. The spinach leaves I'd thrown out into the open were gone. I ate most of mine and threw a few more out there just because I was curious. Would they be gone when I came back later, at lunch? What was eating them? I got a funny prickle. I sure hoped it wouldn't attract any monsters...

I ran and found Jay's friend, who had also finished his breakfast early...or maybe he hadn't eaten it at all. He had a shadowy smile that made me wonder if he was laughing at me somewhere in his head...but he went into his tent anyway and brought out the practice swords. He was gentler this time, walking me through the steps instead of running me through them like a battering ram...I felt like maybe I actually learned something. I still sucked though.

I'm sure you did.

After a couple of panicky sparring matches that ended with me stinging a whole lot, he took my practice sword.

"I've checked out what monsters are in this area, and it's not very likely you could survive an encounter with one, even with my help. So we'll have to wait until we get back to the mainland, there are some weaker monsters there, I think."

My face fell. "Wha? But..."

"Unless you want to die, you stay here in camp. Trust me...this isn't a good place to start."

If I had doggy ears, they would have drooped. As it was, I felt like wilting. "How long until we go back to the continent?"

"A couple more days, maybe. It all depends on how many Zeio nuts we can get within that time."

I whimpered and shuffled over to where my parents were watching Yuffie, Cait Sith, and Reno having a three-way play fight. My mom smiled at me.

"How was your time with Jay's friend?"

Jay's friend...don't people ever take the time to ask people for their names anymore? Not that I do, but Fluff's ARE supposedly polite, right?

Uh...it just never came up. I dunno. I STILL don't know his name.

Huh.

"It was good," I beamed, even though I still stung all over from the thwacks I hadn't been able to duck away from or block.

"Good."

...What a boring conversation.

You're right. I should skip over this part.

Does anything amusing happen? If so...

Too late. I'm skipping! HA! Watch me skip! One two three!

You're so childish!

Thank you! Anyway...on to the next part.

DIVIDE

Thanks to Jay's friend, who was really the only really good fighter in the whole camp, we got enough Zeio nuts so we could head for the continent within a couple of days. So it was back on the ship with everyone, and things were even more cramped, not to mention smelly. My poor Fluff nose could hardly stand it. And then we ran out of spinach. I got kind of sick of fish. But I just remembered...I forgot to tell about the day we left.

Every day when I went to go eat between those two tents on the edge of camp, my spinach from the day before was gone. I wondered what creatures here would eat spinach- not the other members of the camp, I'm sure. Probably not the goblins. Maybe the lizards? I didn't know. Except nobody saw any monsters approaching camp. The only hint I had was that someone had said they saw a reddish thing on their watch one night, which quickly disappeared into the trees.

We were boarding ship early in the morning. It was misty and cold. I was just finishing my spinach, and tossed the last of it into my usual spot. I was tired so I sat there a minute longer than I usually would have, eyes feeling tired and like I couldn't open them much more than halfway. I scrunched them up in a yawn and when I opened them again my spinach was gone and I saw something hovering just on the edge of the trees. My heart jumped like Yuffie on a sugar high and I hopped to my feet, only to stop just as I was about to run.

She was staring at me. Her fur had turned a darker shade of pink...almost red. It wasn't as pale anymore, and it was dirty too. She was skinny and her eyes looked wide and scared. I wasn't even sure if she was who I thought she was. But I thought she could be, and it made me so I couldn't move.

Neither of us said anything. Neither of us moved. I jumped and yelled when Reno poked me in the back with his nose, and grabbed my shirt to drag me backward.

"Stop daydreaming, s'time to go!" he said around a mouthful of my shirt.

I yanked my shirt away from him. "No, Reno- there was...it was her!"

"Hmm?" he blinked. "What?"

I pointed at the trees, but she was gone. Reno blinked at me.

"Who were you talking about, Seph?"

"Uh...um..." I said, distracted by the weird feeling in my stomach. "Nothing. Nobody...I guess I just imagined it!"

"You sure?" Reno said uncertainly.

I shook my head and started walking toward the ship, not sure if I was just suffering from lack of sleep...or if I was really hungry...or why the heck I felt so weird. I sniffled and felt like crying.

Reno blinked at me funny, and kept asking me questions, but I just ran ahead so I could pretend I didn't hear him. We got on the boat and I hid in Jay's cabin for a while until I figured Reno wasn't thinking about asking me questions anymore before coming out.

The trip took a long time. Not as long as when we were floating around on the table, though. Yuffie got seasick on the second day. Everyone made sure to give her plenty of room! She was a little better by the time we reached land, but she was glad to get off the boat more than any of us anyway. Then it was another long trip on foot to the Chocobo Farm. I got into my first fight while we were going there. Jay's friend lent me a sword (well, it was a little small...not like the long impressive one he used) and I came out pretty battered but I got at least a couple hits on that mandra-whatever-it-was. I was pretty pleased with myself, even though I dropped my weapon once and it was really embarrassing.

The Chocobo Farm is a cool place. Jay showed me around. They had a blue chocobo, a green chocobo, a black chocobo, and a yellow chocobo. I'm not sure I remember all their names. I was pretty impressed.

"I didn't even know chocobos could be any color except yellow!" I said. Jay did something SORT of like a giggle...

"Naw man. Blue chocobos cross rivers, Green cross mountains, and the Black one here, he can cross mountains AND rivers! Man, he's a beauty. Took us forever to get him a nice gal chocobo. Now that we got the Zeio nuts, we're gonna get 'em both together and hope that they give us a Gold baby Chocobo. And if they don't, well, we'll just have to try again once we've raced 'em a bit."

"Huh? Racing?" I blinked.

Jay chucked and knocked me on the shoulder. "Man, ya really have been living under a rock! Don't ya know about Chocobo Races at the Gold Saucer?"

I shook my head. "Nuh-uh!"

"Dang! Ya gotta be kidding!" He looked absolutely shocked.

I laughed. "No...what's the Gold Saucer?"

Jay rolled around so loudly the Black chocobo warked and ruffled its feathers. It looked mad. I ran away from it so it wouldn't peck me. I wondered if I'd ever know everything a normal person knew about the Planet and all the things you could do on it. I realized that Round Island sure was out of the way if nobody but the Fluffs knew where it was, and we really didn't know much about the outside world. It made my brain hurt to think that I was miles and miles from home on a continent.

Jay stopped rolling and ruffled my hair, something my mom said she disliked him doing. But she never likes it when my hair's messed up. When we finally got to the Chocobo Farm she ordered everyone to search for a brush, since nobody in the camp had anything more than a comb, and a comb just didn't cut it.

"Heh, we'll get ya there one of these days. Maybe even ride in one of the races, yeah? Oh boy...can' t wait to see the look on your face when we go! You won't know what to look at first!"

I blinked. "Heee...is it cool?"

"Is it cool? It's the greatest fun place on the Planet! Man, I'd say it even beats Icicle Inn...you can snowboard any time, but the races, the battle square...heh, that's more his area-" he nodded toward his friend "...the arcade...the rollercoaster! There's something there everybody'd like!"

I didn't even know what snowboarding or arcades or roller coasters were either but I just nodded and said "Sounds great!"

"Man, if only you knew."

DIVIDE

I don't remember exactly how long it took, but one day I was walking around looking at the wild yellow chocobos in the fence, and Yuffie pounced on me and said "SEPHI SEPHI! The birdies laid an EGG!"

She giggled excitedly and practically dragged me over to the stables to see. The mother chocobo looked nervous when Yuffie bounced over so loudly, but after a while, the Captain calmed it down enough and used some greens to get it to stand up so we could see the egg it had been sitting on. It was really big. I'd only recently been introduced to eggs- chicken eggs, of course. The owners of the Chocobo Farm had been feeding them to us for breakfast almost every morning.

I forgot to tell you something else, too. The first night here, the guy who runs the Chocobo Farm just whipped up some homemade hamburgers for us all. He was talking about how he had cows once and how he tried butchering one once when food money was scarce, and how after that he decided it was too much trouble and he'd have Chocobos instead, since you don't have to kill Chocobos for food because they're useful in a whole lot of other ways. For some reason, the thought of Floofers ripping Fluffs up and eating them, and the thought of how Reno had looked after they attacked him came to mind and I asked if I could be excused from the table. After that I couldn't eat meat anymore. Fish was alright for some reason. But other meats I just couldn't eat without feeling sick. For the first month it was really hard. I didn't eat much. Then finally people started noticing and it got a little easier.

Anyway, the Chocobo egg was really big. Yeah. I tried to imagine a little gold chocobo curled up inside it, but I'd never seen a baby chocobo so I didn't know what to imagine, exactly.

Everyone was excited for the weeks when we were waiting for it to hatch. Jay's friend took me out for practice fighting weak monsters alot. He gave me half the money we got off the monsters, because, he said, "I'll have plenty in a while if this all works out". That month I pretty much exhausted the poor chocobo farmer's supply of potions. The doctor eventually decided to take the blue chocobo over to Kalm to restock. I kept the money Jay's friend gave me but never spent any of it- I mean come on, there's no shops out there! And I'd never really bought anything before in my life anyway. Eventually I asked my mom about it and she told me I should send an order to the nearest town for some clothes, since Jay's were a little big for me. So with Jay's help, I sent in the order, and one for a brush, too.

Finally, the day came. I was lying on my little bed in the barn with the rest of my family curled up around me. It was summer now and the nights weren't really cold, but it made us all feel safer. It had been a long time since we'd all slept apart anyway. Most of the crew slept in the barn- there just wasn't enough room in the chocobo farmer's house. The first thing I remember was getting hit on the head with a bouncy ball Jay had bought off the farmer's kid for a couple of gil. I sat up and blinked, straw in my hair and my eyes all sleepy.

"Huh...?"

"Get up, get up!" Jay was pretty much bouncing up and down like Yuffie. I realized now why they got along so well- energy likes more energy, haha. He threw the bouncy ball at me again and I ducked.

"Whyy? It's still dark out..."

"Man, Sephi...if you don't get up early you miss EVERYTHING that's going on! The egg's hatching, come on!"

I rubbed my eyes, feeling a little jumpy excited feeling inside. I got up and stumbled over, trying to pick the straw out of my hair as I followed the beaming Jay over to the yellow mother chocobo's stall. There were already holes in the egg- the baby was just trying to break its way totally free of the shell. I blinked. There were a few other people here, too. Jay's friend, and Captain, and the doctor. I stared at it sleepily as here was a soft cracking sound and the shell fell apart. The mother chocobo spread its wings protectively over the baby, also kind of stepping over it so we couldn't see very well. It made a tiny little wark that didn't really even sound like a wark and walked clumsily over to its mother's side.

"Wow..." I said. But Jay was shaking his head sadly.

"Not a gold, this one. That's just our bad luck. Now we wait till it grows old enough to be set free, then race the mama and try again."

"Why do you race the mom chocobo?" I blinked.

"The higher the class of a chocobo, the more likely you are to get the right kind of baby chocobo. You make their class higher by winning races."

"...oh." I nodded slowly, crouching down to watch the baby chocobo walk around slowly.

"Mmhmm. Still cute and fluffy chocobos…" Jay chucked. "But this one won't do us much good when it comes to crossing oceans."

"So you're going to set it free when it's all grown up?" I asked.

Jay nodded. "Yep. There's plenty of room around here, the land's so good. The chocobos around here get kind of lazy. That's why ya can't find a Wonderful, like this mama here, unless ya go to somewhere that it's a little harder to find food at. Chocobos get either really strong or really weak when it's harder for them to stay alive."

"…oh." I said. I felt like I learned something new every day since I joined this crew.

Jay's friend tapped me on the shoulder. "Hey, you ready? I feel like hitting some monsters." He looked kind of upset.

"Uh…sure!" I said hastily, and ran to go get my short sword. He turned to Jay.

"Go tell the farmer about what happened. Tell him we'll be staying a little longer than we thought."

"Yeah man, I'm right on it."

I dug around in the straw and pulled out my weapon, and was just walking away when Reno grabbed my ankle and I fell flat on my face.

"OW!" I said.

"Hehehe…didn't think I was awake, didja Seph?" he laughed softly.

"Nooo I didn't," I whimpered, then giggled. "I think you owe me a new face…" I turned around so I could sit up, and rubbed my nose.

"You didn't tell me it was hatching," Reno scowled. "Meany."

"I didn't think you wanted to watch," I said, squirming to try and get my foot free from his grasp.

"And now I bet you're going off somewhere again without me, huh?"

"Uh…yeah," I tugged on my leg. "Jay's friend says he wants to go beat up some monsters. He looked kind of upset."

Reno growled. "Dangit Seph, you're always going off somewhere with that guy. We never see you anymore. I'm so bored just hanging around this place, it's worse than fleabites. There's nothing to do! And you still won't tell me what happened the day we left."

I felt guilt poking me a little. "Um…well, I'm trying to learn how to fight as good as everyone else!"

"Heh…you still can't beat any of us in a play fight." Reno smirked.

I frowned. "Well…I'm learning my own way how to do it!"

Reno put his head down on his paws and heaved a huge sigh. "Why? I don't think you even like fighting. There's no point in learning how to beat up everything, I mean we're not going anywhere. We have nowhere to go. We'll probably be hanging around with these people for at least the next couple of years, right? They can take on anything that might try and get us. So why bother?"

I squirmed, even though he'd already let go of my foot, because he'd just hit the spot where I wasn't sure. I really didn't like fighting all that much. I felt guilty killing them off, even if they were monsters that had just almost killed ME. I just knew I felt like I had to learn. At first it had been because I was afraid. I was scared that if the Floofers ever found us again, I wouldn't be able to help. And I was afraid that maybe if I'd known how to fight back then, Reno wouldn't have the scars he did now. That was kind of silly, now, or at least, it felt silly. And Reno was right…Jay's friend alone had been able to take on any and all the monsters we'd encountered so far. So why? Why did I feel like I had to learn, no matter what?

Reno's eyes suddenly widened, and he lifted his head. "Hey. You're not thinking…of going back, are you?"

I froze and a prickle like if my nonexistent fur was lifting started, and a funny noise came from my throat. Reno stared.

"It was our home!" I said finally. "Teff said the Fluffs were there to take care of the materia while it grew, but now there's no Fluffs there, the Floofers are everywhere….and…it was ours!"

"Hey, you coming?" Jay's friend's voice made my jump and shook me out of it.

"So. You ARE thinking of going back…huh?" Reno said quietly. He looked kind of scared.

"No…I dunno," I mumbled, hanging my head and shaking it. I stood up and grabbed my weapon.

"Seph…we can't take it back. There's only a few of us," Reno's torn up ears flicked back in a worried look.

I looked at him for a few seconds, but Jay's friend's voice called me again and I turned and followed him out of the stables. The sun was just coming up, so I only caught a few seconds of that bluish silver before-the-sunrise world, but I realized what Jay had said about missing things when you don't get up early, and I decided to try and not miss those things anymore.