Sorry it took so long everyone! I won't take as long next time, I promise!
"Please, please reconsider, y-you just arrived here- a-and the journey back is so long-"
A leather hand rose lazily, "Enough of your grovelling, Father. You're wasting the breaths God blessed you with," Sephiroth elegantly turned from the window and sat in the chair of the inn room that Father Hojo had arranged for them at the tavern- the village's largest and reliably warmest building.
Father Hojo was sweating like a sinner in church, his hair a mess as he tugged at it over and over, his rosary had worn a red line into his neck as he fidgeted with each glossy bead. "Forgive me … is there nothing I can do or say-"
"You can say nothing for a change," Sephiroth drawled once again, lifting a glass to his lips to drink. Kadaj put the wine bottle on the table when Sephiroth took his drink, the lesser agent stood back to watch the proceedings. Sephiroth tilted the glass form side to side, "I must say you are fond of your own voice more than we ever will be," he remarked, appearing and sounding bored. "We did not come out here to have our time wasted by listening to you and your suspicions."
Thankfully, the Father was silent.
"By telling the town that we could see nothing, and that we will be spending no effort, was a strategic move." Sephiroth appeared stern, "Though, I am tempted to make good on the bluff, Father, your insistence that your village was plagued with demons does not live up to your vivid descriptions; your letter is most misleading."
"B-but-"
Sephiroth set his glass down sharply, "Did I not say; be silent!"
Hojo sunk back into his seat, thoroughly chastised.
Aggravated, Sephiroth sighed and smoothed the lines of his forehead with a gloved hand as he took a slow breath, "Your insistence is fast becoming boring, and you've been insisting all evening. If you had been silent I would have had time to explain our strategy and our arrangements before you insisted on parading us before your jurisdiction."
Loz drifted away from Sephiroth's shadow and stood by the door. He looked down the hall of the tavern, the room was near the drinking tables. There was no noise from the building, as the tavern had been closed all day. Regardless, Loz he squinted at the shadows suspiciously … then shut the door behind him as he stepped out. The door creaked as his weight leaned against it.
Sephiroth continued when the new arrangement of the room, "Father, unless you can make this trip worth our time we do not intend to stay long."
Hojo blinked, confused, "W-worth your time? But is not fighting God's enemies a worthy cause? I-I have provided intelligence on a stronghold of heathens, and I brought you here as I feared we as a people were too blind to find the Witch amongst us-"
Yazoo drifted across the small bare room while the Father stuttered, and the silver haired man produced two small books from their boxes of belongings, Yazoo's tall form barely made a whisper on the creaky old oak floor.
Sephiroth leaned back in his seat as his brother looked through one of the small books, the eldest explained: "We fight God's fight wherever we are ordered to go by the Vatican. And do not accuse us otherwise, or you will quickly find yourself no longer Sheppard of these sheep you give you sermons to."
Father Hojo was speechless.
Never had he been threated to be thrown out of office before! Never had the threat been real.
"Now, allow me to tell you how our operation works." Sephiroth indulged in another sip of his wine while the Priest stewed in confused frustration opposite him, "The Vatican receives reports of Heretics, the Demonic, the Witches and all other important matters of Religious order. The frontline of God's crusade, so to speak. Then, they commission us, their able and worthy Agents, to act as their sword and their shield. We set froth and follow a specific path to the source of the reports, and on to the next ones until our route is complete and we return to the Holy City to confess our findings, our failures, and what needs additional attention."
In bewilderment, the Father raised his shaking hands; "Have I not done as the Papal have? I have given you your commission-"
"Ah, but you misunderstand, Father. Your request is not a holy order, neither is it a commission." He accepted the book his tallest and most willowy brother gave him, and presented the open pages, "As you can see here, this is the record of all the missions the Vatican orders and commissions of us. Take your time to read, there are a lot of notes here, but it pays to be meticulous," he drank from his glass again, leaning back into his seat with more confidence than most Princes.
Father Hojo looked at the pages, leafing through with a raising alarm. Carriages, horses, horseshoes, feed, inn rooms, food, the odd medicine … it was a long list of expenses underneath the titles of towns and the names of suspects. There was a price by each name, each town, each item. Down to the length of rope used, the amount of firewood purchased and the price of washing out bloodstains. Nothing was too small a detail on these meticulous lists. Many pages were stuffed with more pages for cases that went on and on- ink and dates showing the progressive age of each extended investigation record.
"This is …" he set down the book and looked at the front page. A document of expenses for the Vatican. Expenses that the holy city would pay back for each commissioned journey. Plus, the fee for hiring them in the first place.
This was not a holy crusade of selfless men, it was a business agreement.
Sephiroth nodded once, "All of the things we chose to spend our own gold on, the Vatican is most generous at paying back. With their guaranteed agreement to pay back our expenses we take great pride in carrying out their work, it pays, and they get our attention to detail they need to root out Heretics and Sinners. God couldn't have given us a finer purpose." He sounded proud, "It is our own deal, of sorts. They put us back in the position we were at the start. We lose no gold on daily living, accept a small fee for witch-hunting, and they lose no followers to the Devil's evil."
Father Hojo sat forward in his seat, eyes widening; "I see! Then if you record all that you spend here the Vatican-"
"Just a moment, Father," Sephiroth smirked, shaking his head in amusement with one hand raised. "Do no assume that this little side-track to your village come under the same category as the Vatican's commissions. We were not ordered to come here by the Vatican's Cardinals. You asked us here."
The implication made Father Hojo feel scared. It was his doing asking them to come here, and so he would have to pay their commission. I can persuade the village to provide for these men in exchange for their help! If they do not have to spend a single coin, like their Vatican agreement, then surely this need of payment can be met in kind. Hojo started sweating like a pig, "I … I can provide everything to you for no cost, the-the village will listen to me- you don't have to spend a single-"
"Father … look at this second book," Sephiroth handed him a plain black book and opened it to a random page. "Pick any number you wish, look at the details. Here, upon these pages are the records of all our stops and activities not on our predestined, commissioned route by the Vatican. Do you see where you are failing?"
Father Hojo saw all right; there was no such thing as payment in kind. Hojo paled so much he felt faint, "God have mercy …"
Prices upon prices were listed by towns, and cities and other hovels with no notable names; 'just outside of,' or 'next to,' or 'north of.'
There were long lines crossing neatly through names too; those that did not have a number of coin recorded next to them. Those that did, Hojo Found as he continued to leaf through the book, had little reports of names of Witches and their results, their payments, their findings. But most importantly: The Witch Hunter's profit.
Those who paid ultimately got the Witch Hunter's time.
This is but a humble village, we do not have coin in excess like this! Hojo despaired. The funds that I have are under the protection of our common law; for emergencies only. In the past they had spent their collective fund to buy food, salts, sheep or other such supplies from nearby towns when times of shortages hit the village.
If I spend this before the winter is over then the people will be in danger of starvation, we will not have a reserve to draw upon.
Hojo implored one more time: "Merciful, Godly, Sephiroth and Brothers- please, we are but a humble village, we cannot provide you with the coin you seek-"
"Then we shall take our leave," Kadaj smoothly interrupted.
"Yet!" The Father shouted in desperation. His heart freezing at the thought of the Brothers not seeking out the demons that haunted him. The fear of God made his decision.
He stood up and made several flustered, bowing gestures to each member in the room, a seedy smile on his face. "Please, I-I have only just become aware of your necessities, surely it is not too unreasonable to ask you to stay here a while as I gather and count the payment you require?" he squeaked, squirming, and sweating like an animal at slaughter. "You can admire the village an-and rest here in the inn for free, a-and I can investigate gathering these funds for you."
He frantically glanced between them all, looking, begging for a shred of approval.
Loz snorted on the far side of the door. Hojo flinched and grasped at his rosary while Yazoo and Kadaj stared off into different corners of the room, utterly disinterested.
"Is that enough?" he weakly prompted as the silence stretched on.
Sephiroth exhaled and topped up his glass with the rich dark wine.
"Three days, Father," Sephiroth said calmly. "We will rest here for two nights. Should you change our minds, should something about this place change our views of its uninteresting nature by the third morning then we shall stay. Then our meticulous, unrivalled attentions can be applied to your predicament in full." He folded the book away into a pocket that Hojo hadn't noticed. "Are we clear."
Father Hojo lowered his head. "Amen …" God help me, God save us all …
Waking to an empty hut wasn't unexpected for Edea. But it was hard …
She sat before her fire, glowing with warm embers. Squall had clearly laid, lit, and fed the fire into a lasting slow burn, her hearth was cheery warm. Then, when satisfied that Edea would be warm, he went to walk where she was too scared to follow. Edea reached her hands out and sighed deeply, her thoughts heavy.
The revelations last night could not be gotten over so easily: Her boy was going to leave her. The childless Mother sniffed, wiping one tear from her cheek, chastising herself for getting worked up. Squall was no longer a child, he was an independent young man, he had left her house for one of his own years ago. She had not cried when he moved out from their family home in the woods.
But to not know where he would be going … to face the horrible fact that she may not see him again; the child she raised, and loved, and took in from the cold when no one else would …
Edea half smiled, recalling the day Squall came to her with a joyful beat of her heart.
The storm that had battered her house had passed while the small family slept, the sounds of the waking forest was all around their home. The noises creeping into the house with the dawn light between the cracks, slowly waking the Mother of the home. She lay awake, and relaxed into wakefulness, content in her soul as she watched her children sleeping peacefully next to her. However, there was a series of noises that the sleepy Edea did not expect to hear:
First there was the unexpected hush of the woodland creatures, they were not silent entirely, but the voice of the forest had quietened noticeably. The first indication that something was disturbing the morning.
Secondly, and more obviously, there were odd sounds that came through the crack under her door. Quiet as they were, they tugged on her heartstrings, and woke her from her doze.
Edea sat up, and as she became more aware she realised what these noises were, and why she was suddenly so moved to help: there was a baby whimpering.
Edea tugged her blanket off herself and quickly opened the door. She looked outside and saw, on her doorstep, a newborn baby wrapped in a thick crimson bundle, wet on one corner.
The sight of the strange babe on the floor, in the mud, had Edea panicking! She scooped the child up at once and held it to her, lightly bouncing the baby to ease the whimpering sobs.
The baby's weight felt right in her arms. She had no children of her own; her young ones were all adopted from the village as she desired a family so much and could not turn the orphans away. They had no Mother, she had no children, it was a perfect match.
However, they were all children, though, when they came to her. At least a year of age, and well on their way to development: Irvine was three, Seifer was two, Zell was just about to turn two, as was Quistis her only girl. She had missed so many moments of their lives, their first words, their first steps, their little misadventures.
She'd never had a child so young … never held a child this small.
The baby's warmth, its weight, the way it snuggled into her for comfort tugged at her heart in ways she had not known. A painful, happy, wonderful, terrifying way. She had held this baby for just a moment and her heart had been stolen.
Edea looked about; left and right and all around her house but could not see a sign of a Mother … just the paw prints of a large animal. They led up to her door and then away, back the way they came, Edea shivered; what if it had come to sniff out the baby when it's Mother left it here?
She did not think that the absence of human footprints was strange- as the village leader would when Genesis came to inspect later that day, in the hopes of reuniting him with his family and finding out why he was abandoned- Edea was just thankful this baby was safe.
No family in sight, Edea turned her attention to the infant. She pulled away the blanket to see the little pink face and tears rushed to her eyes, he was so tiny. "Who on Earth could leave you, darling?" she whispered to him, wrapping him up again once she discovered the infant's gender. He was perfect, no deformities, not small enough to be a premature birth, not too big to have caused the Mother birthing difficulties; what Mother could have given him up?
Edea couldn't.
The little baby boy opened his eyes, and she realised with a gasp of surprise that they were a beautiful grey, like the silver shine off ice and coins. He was …
She decided, then and there, that this child was meant to be hers, that God had chosen her to raise him. She kissed his forehead and cradled him against her chest as he cooed, happy tears rolling down her cheeks as her unspoken prayer had been answered; a child of her very own …
Edea had named the infant Squall after the stormy night he had appeared after. She had kept him by her for as long as she could to keep him safe. She gave him his cloak of crimson when he was old enough- made from the blanket he arrived in. She knew his story through and through, was there for every day that mattered, his first steps, his first words, his first hunt, his misadventures, all of it; they had a bond stronger than the rest of her children as she had been the only Mother he knew. Even young Selphie was older than him when she took in her second daughter.
She loved all her children, but Squall was truly hers.
As the woman reminisced … she wondered if that was still the case. Was Squall still hers? Yes, he would always be her son, her gift, but … there came a time in everyone's life when they owned themselves and chose their own destinies …
Squall had chosen Cloud. He had chosen love, as Edea had.
The herbalist smiled, recalling her own choices that gave her this wonderful life. She chose Cid, she chose to leave her family home and live here in the trees against all protest and warnings. Edea dried her eyes and smiled; "Hmm. He really is my son …"