Chrono Trigger is not mine. I rather enjoyed this chapter, but I have to say the next is my favorite... Anyway... a return to Algetty.
They ran in silence until the sun heated the air and they had to stop. Looking around, Janus cursed. Waiting until nightfall to cross the desert was out now, since it already surrounded them. Lyn was standing where she'd stopped, that same broken look still on her face.
"Is this the way?" Janus asked, moving into her line of sight.
"You said I was Human," Lyn answered.
Janus glared and ran a hand through his hair. "I said that a year ago, when you still were Human!"
"You… are Human…" Lyn said.
"Not if I can help it. There's no reason to cling to that, when I can become Mazoku and lead!"
"You… want to be Mazoku?" Lyn asked, a flicker of… something showing in her eyes.
Janus was encouraged by the fact that she seemed to be feeling something. "Yes. I've been asking the Maou to allow it. If we get back on our own, I think he might." Seeing that Lyn had returned to her emotionless state, Janus made one last try to reach her. "He'd allow you to join to." Once more, something flickered in Lyn's ruby eyes, but she gave no other reaction.
With another sigh, Janus started walking east again. After a couple of steps, he realized Lyn wasn't following. Stalking back towards her, he snarled as he took her hand and began dragging her along. "If you don't snap outta this, you're gonna be useless, girl," he muttered.
The heat of the desert was brutal, especially with no water. Janus knew their only chance was to keep moving and hope they found something soon. Lyn had returned to unresponsiveness, silently letting Janus take her wherever he wanted, while he walked stubbornly, hoping he would recognize what he was looking for when they found it. If he remembered correctly, the mountain to the north was nominally Mazoku land, but mostly inhabited by Freelancers, and Freelancers weren't that fond of the other races. They'd work with the races well enough when they were being paid, but if you weren't hiring them, it was best to stay away. He didn't have nearly enough money to hire them, and they wouldn't be of much use to him anyway. He couldn't be sure that even his status as the Maou's slave would convince them to help him back to the castle.
On the other hand, both Slash and Lyn had mentioned a cave, hidden by magic, which connected the Human lands to Mazoku. It wasn't in the Freelancer's mountain, he was sure of that, and he cloudily assumed it was on the east of this continent, in the place Lyn had been leading them yesterday.
As they passed the mountain, the ocean came into view, wide and blue. Janus' shadow was beginning to stretch before him as the sun set in the west when he saw what looked like buildings between him and the horizon. Without wasting his breath talking to the silent girl he led, Janus changed his path slightly to pass closer to the structures.
Coming nearer the shapes, Janus saw that they were ruins, mostly burnt. As he realized this, Lyn's hand slipped from his, and the green haired girl passed him like a ghost, walking into the middle of the ruined town.
"Algetty is burnt," she murmured, turning her head and seeming to look around.
Janus gave a near-silent groan. It seemed he'd stumbled onto the remains of her hometown, and he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Given the fact that Lyn was acting on her own, he tended to say good thing, at least for the moment.
Taking an overgrown path out of town and towards the forest, Lyn stopped when she reached two houses. From the way she looked at the larger of the two, Janus had a feeling that was the house she'd grown up in.
"It doesn't look the same," Lyn observed. "I see colors… that weren't there before." As she spoke, she walked to the door, caressing the handle for a moment before opening it.
The interior of the house stank of dust and musty disuse, but it appeared to be mostly undisturbed. Lyn walked in, her weight creaking floorboards. Scurrying came from the cupboards and cold hearth, but Lyn didn't seem to hear. "Nothing is as I remember it…."
She climbed the steps slowly, Janus following in curiosity. Turning to the right, she opened the door and looked at her room. The bed was still unmade from her flight, and now mice were nesting in it, watching her with glittering eyes. "I had so little," Lyn said, a faint blush of surprise coloring her voice. "I thought I had more."
From the looks of it, she'd had a bed, two changes of clothes, and a wash basin with a comb, Janus thought. He wondered how those three things had changed themselves in Lyn's memories. Two wash basins? Or maybe three changes of clothes?
"Will… you be all right on your own, Lyn?" Janus asked quietly. He didn't want to send her back to her silence, but at the same time he needed his question answered.
Lyn nodded, or he thought she did. That was enough; Janus slipped away, leaving her to her memories. Out of respect for Lyn, he left her house, going the short distance to the other house. There were the remnants of a well-tended vegetable garden by the door, and Janus found himself questioning about the person who had lived here before. Had they been happy here, or sad? Where they a slave now, or dead, or had they escaped?
A harsh shake of his head broke those odd musings, and Janus narrowed his eyes at the door. Whoever had lived here, he hoped they'd left something of value. As it was, he wouldn't have enough to buy fare on a ship to Maou Castle. With that thought, Janus opened the door and began searching.
Leaving her old room, Lyn went to her mother's room. As she entered, Lyn half-expected Shanda's tired voice, telling her to stay out. All she got, however, was a splash of carmine sunlight coming through a window.
Fingering the fabric of her mother's favorite dress, the one that was worn only on festival days, Lyn's first thought was how course the fabric was. For Magician's sake, Lyn was a slave, and her dress was finer. Of course, her dress had been made for Flea originally, but that there was still such a difference…
Dropping the cloth, Lyn sat on the dusty stool before her mother's small mirror. With careful hands, Lyn opened the small, carved box where Shanda had kept her jewelry. She had never been allowed to handle this box, or to hold the adornments within, and so it was with some curiosity that Lyn looked inside.
A small pendant carved from a blue stone, her father's last gift to Shanda before the war took him. A delicate pair of rings, which Lyn knew had never been worn, were the rings her parents had exchanged when they married. And the finest of all, a thumb-sized moonstone set in gold filigree, sent from Dorino as a funeral gift from her father's family.
Driven by a vague impulse to return these to Shanda, Lyn picked up the moonstone pendant and placed it around her own neck. The blue stone was next, shaped into a rough form of the Lady, tucked down Lyn's collar with the moonstone. The rings she left; by tradition they had never been worn, and it was right that they never be worn.
There was nothing more for her here, Lyn realized. Not that she had had much of a life when she lived here, either. She would have married, if she were lucky. No, far more likely she would have remained unmarried, living alone on the edge of town, healing the sick and injured until age and infirmities claimed her.
Leaving the building that had once been her home, Lyn looked about in the post-dusk light, trying to see where Janus had gone. A noise from Widow Marie's house made it very clear where the blue-haired youth had gone. She walked blindly past the over-grown garden, and found Janus on the floor, prying up a board.
"This was Widow Marie's house. Ethrurrion killed her," Lyn stated.
"There's something under this board," Janus said. It was an acknowledgment that he had heard her, as well as explanation of his actions. "I'm hoping it's money, or at least valuable. We'll need to buy passage across the ocean to Maou Castle."
"We could sleep here. The well should be unblocked, and in the morning…"
Janus nodded once, reaching into the hole he had made. "You know where we're going."
"I'll get some water," Lyn said, grabbing a bucket from near the door and running out of the house.
Janus pulled the small package he'd found from the hole, smiling. It seemed that returning here had helped Lyn. Unwrapping the protecting cloth, he looked at what he'd found. "Praise the Liberators," he whispered, a couple gold coins flashing. With those, and offering to work during the passage, he and Lyn should have enough to reach the Mazoku capital.
And Lyn is faced with what she -really- lost. Like it?