Glimpses of Normalcy

"Just remember, the same as a spectacular Vogue magazine, remember that no matter how close you follow the jumps: Continued on page whatever. No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice. None of this matters. We're just warming up."

Chuck Palahniuk

I was fifteen when I lost my virginity, two days before my life as I knew it ended. Before the fire, before the massacre, and approximately seventy-two hours before the cover-up, all the years that led up to that single moment had smoldered away into ash and lies like they'd never even been, and before I saw my father's body prone and bloody on that hard metal floor, I'd come unglued then in society's coil. Sometimes I like summing up my life as nothing more than series before, each long moment a breathless pause of nothingness before tragedy.

In the three years leading up to that day that stood apart from time, I'd divided my time between mouthing off to my pa and training with Zangan. Each day, Zangan and I would pummel away at Nibel wolves and whatever else was native to mountains honing my skill. He told me that I was his star pupil, that my training was almost complete, and that I'd travel with him abroad next month. It was the best news I'd heard in years.

I'd always done pretty well in school especially with music, but after my mother died, my pa started drinking heavily, and the bills started collecting, I knew I wouldn't be going to that fancy conservatory in Midgar. Thank god for Zangan. He started coming around the village on his travels and training me when I was twelve, back when Cloud was still around. I hadn't really taken the martial arts seriously then, but near my thirteenth birthday after Cloud went to go become some famous soldier like Sephiroth, I spent each day almost killing myself on those high peaks with Zangan. Sometimes when I sit on the beach outside our villa, I remember the sun beating down on my back and the cold mountain wind in my hair; it was as if being alive was an adrenaline rush in itself. What happened to that feeling? Hell, if I know.

It wasn't fair in the least that the village recluse had a chance to make something of himself. I was the smart one, pretty and talented too. If anyone had deserved a chance to become anything famous in town, it was me. I don't know…I really went crazy with it then, building up myself to a point where I was stronger than most of the boys in town. I did anything I could to surpass Cloud. Pa wouldn't hear a word of it when I'd begged him to join SOLDIER; he'd waved it off saying only rejects and poor folk with no prospects joined. Who the hell did he think we were? If you looked in the dictionary under poor, you'd find a picture of Nibelheim, some grim little scratching of ramshackle homes tacked together with wood and mud, some place so damn primitive that we still used outhouses. Our town square wasn't even pretty and cobbled like some in the villages down south. There was no arguing with him, and that was probably the point where my wild-eyed teenage rebellion kicked in.

In a town of about sixty people, everyone knew everything about everyone else, but we kids were determined to carve out our own little space of privacy, to experiment like the kids in the big cities. I was out with Johnny and some other kids from town, sitting around one of the creeks in the mountains back before the reactor was built and when it was still safe to go up into the cliffs at night.

Me? I was wedged between Johnny and someone else, if I could remember his name, I'd tell you. My feet were bare and muddy, and I kicked back and forth in that icy creek under a sky full of stars, and there we were, all sitting around and looking like little unruly country kids off of some quaint greeting card. The stars that night were something you never saw in Costa del Sol, Midgar, or any other city on this planet, and sometimes I think that I really miss those stars, and I know I miss that night.

I must've been thirteen, almost fourteen, by then. We were passing around a bottle of whiskey, taking sips out of it and thinking aloud about our own lives which we'd barely lived. Out on the frontier, we really considered ourselves grown. I mean after all in a town that was as small as Nibelheim, your job was staked out for you by the time you hit ten.

Johnny Costello was one of the lucky ones. His folks had saved up a little mountain of cash, and he was getting the hell out of town the moment he turned sixteen for schooling in Midgar. Me, I was going to be the next mayor; it was already expected seeing as my pa was mayor and all. The job wasn't much more than a title with a paycheck, your only duties being to report the village's census whenever someone kicked the bucket or even more rarely was born and to write the occasional letter. The pay was awful; it barely kept the lights on which flickered anyway depending on how Shinra felt about supplying power that day, and it was definitely one that I didn't want. God, even the town baker was more important than the mayor in town.

A girl chimed in about taking over her mother's general store; I knew the one she was going on about, after all there was only one in town. Another kid whose name I think was Bill, between big black gobs of spit and chewing tobacco, chattered on and on about how he was going to be a farmer like his pa. I hated that kid. He was never too bright. That kid had this way about him, a certain sort of complacency and a dull look in his eyes like some sort of damn cow; it was a look I'd seen before in every other damn adult in this village, but he was the first kid I'd seen with it. Just fucking nauseating. I flashed Johnny a look. He knew exactly what I was thinking: surrounded by people like that, we knew we had to get the hell out of there.

Someone mentioned Cloud, the girl who was taking over the store maybe…I can't remember, and with another passing around of the whiskey bottle and a little gagging and choking on the strong amber liquid, our talk turned to SOLDIER. It was probably one of the first times I'd heard of Sephiroth after Cloud left dreamy eyed to go be like him; he was a specter in my life- a ghost of mine far off and removed, isolated like the big city, Shinra, and the president. All of those terms had little bearing, providing nothing more than distant paychecks which had little bearing in a town where everyone was poor. Zangan mentioned him a few times too, talking about how it was a damn shame what was going on in Wutai. Zangan was a Wutaian first and a martial artist second and quietly denounced Shinra every chance he got when we were alone up in those mountains. To hear about some Shinra man wiping out whole clans of old Wutaian families, centuries old techniques and schools of martial arts snuffed out like old, stubby candles disgusted him, and in turn disgusted me. That feeling only lasted so long.

Cloud's first letter came a week later, and he talked about how glamorous everything was in Midgar, the beauties of the SOLDIER life, and I was jealous, so bitterly jealous. I started voraciously watching the news, after having worked my body and fists to their limits then collapsing into a sweaty heap. Often, Zangan would have to carry me down the steep craggy passes only to dump me on the couch in the living room in front of the house's old black and white TV set.

I'd flick back and forth for any mention of SOLDIER on the news between the two stations we got up here in the mountains, weakly thumping the TV every time the signal dare go out. That's when I saw him- Sephiroth, dressed in his most formal of uniforms, hair pulled back beneath a black cap. Gold stars lined his shoulders signifying some rank I didn't know, and his chest was so covered in metals that he dazzled like some sort of god underneath the studio lights on the screen. So this was the man that was holding Wutai hostage? Shinra's new hero? More importantly, this was the man Cloud said he knew personally? I was breathless, dragging myself in front of the screen, pressing my face onto the glass paneling. As he walked past the camera to some sort of Shinra event, one bold reporter kept sticking out his microphone trying to get in a word with the man. Sephiroth turned ever so slightly, never really stopping, quirked a brow, and continued on his way, seemingly oblivious to the sea of reporters lunging after him like sharks on a strong wave. My SOLDIER fixation zeroed in on him, the epitome of everything I aspired to be. His image stood strong and immobile at the back of my mind every evening as I'd fall back upon hard stone, my every limb raw, busted, and bloody but incalculably stronger.

Two years passed in the blink of an eye; the reactor went up, and my pa's pay from Shinra was augmented a little. Something funny began happening up in the mountains near the reactor; at first it was only at night. People started complaining to pa about strange growls and scratching against their windows in town too, and a week later, ten men on a hiking trip in the mountains went missing, a number the size of a family gone with no explanation or anything. Even the wolves lurking around the mountainside weren't that bold to hunt men with guns, and three days after that, half starved and half crazy, a nearly dead survivor dragged himself into the village screaming about monsters unlike any he'd ever seen before. Suddenly, my pa had a job to do; the only driver in town fired up his old truck and drove him down to Rocket Town. He was back within the hour and made a call up to Midgar; Shinra's best were on their way.

In every house, in our only store, in our only bar, the only name you heard was Sephiroth, and I hung onto every rumor, every little farfetched story. Outwardly, I was indistinguishable from the other handful of teenage girls in the village who'd sit and swoon over tiny imported newspaper clippings emblazoned with his face; my obsession couldn't have been more different.

Sitting at the doorway on our dusty porch, I sat with my pa a full week before they arrived; watching the horizon swallow whatever was left of the sun. I would've been training, but Zangan forbade me, saying that he couldn't protect us both against these monsters. My pa and I, we hadn't spoken really for years after my mother died when I was eight; we'd always just more of talked at each other and definitely never heard each other. I remember that evening as clear as day; he wasn't staggering around drunk for once, all of whiskey sat undisturbed behind our big old wooden bar counter in the basement beneath the wooden boards under my feet. I suppose the mess in the mountains had him spooked. He was rocking back and forth in ma's old rocking chair just staring up at Mt. Nibel. Me, barely able to keep still for all the fidgety anticipation that had been building up since he delivered the news, shucked boiled eggs, tossing fragments of white shells into the grass just beyond the steps.

"You know, girl," he began, his voice always unusually light for a man of his stature, "You're like your ma. You're smart like her. I always wanted to send you to the city, but I ain't never have the money. And, that sort of place eats folks like us alive."

I dropped the egg in my hand, its shell halfway gone, and out of the corner of my eye watched it roll down the dirt road into a neighbor's yard. I turned and looked up at him, sucking in a breath like we'd never spoken before in our lives, and honestly, I couldn't remember the last time we had. My own wine colored eyes stared back at me from his face, and I whispered, "What do you mean?"

"I mean you're tough enough for Midgar, tougher than the rest of us. Hell, if you can go up there on them mountains everyday and do what you do, then by all means when these folks get here, you have my blessings to leave, girl. There ain't nothing here for you, we both know that. You ain't never really been one of us, and I ain't gonna keep you chained up here no more. No one could never pin down a tiger no way. You know I ain't never had no money like Johnny's folks, but I got a little something for you. Just come and ask," those were the most words I'd ever heard from him in my life, and though he was never ever eloquent, I was struck silent and had to look away. I don't remember if I'd started crying or not, maybe I only sniffled a little. In the end though, I think his words were all the nudging I needed.

At fifteen, after having done and seen everything that a country bumpkin could do and see and after having faced real life and death situations multiple times, I felt more like a woman than a girl with each passing second. Four days before SOLDIER arrived, I started trying to dress the part, and there's nothing more funny and tragic than a little girl trying to be sexier and more mature than what she was. I had tucked into some of my promised money early and paid a visit to the general store, scanning through rough homely dresses, pants, and shirts- clothes that sat alongside fifty year old pharmaceuticals and rusty second-hand electronics.

Nibelheim was a town of plaid and denim, clothes ugly and durable enough to last you a lifetime. You could never escape that cross stitch pattern, a tartan of stained blues and whites no matter where you went. Then a diamond amongst all that coal sprang up, a little cowgirl number, tight corseted tank, brown vest and mini skirt, hat, and boots all soft cotton and cured leather, an import from the city. I bought it and fled back to my bedroom across town to try everything on.

I fingered trail of silver buttons that stopped just above my navel, and looked at myself and for the first time felt glamorous. It was like glimpsing into some forbidden future, feeling like I was taking part in a sacred rite of passage, a part in some play in which every girl eventually became the star even if only for a fleeting moment. I reached for the last thing I had of my mother's on my vanity, a tube of deep red lipstick and rubbed it against my lips, transforming into some new creature entirely, and so it was, there sat a kid, more girl than woman, on a worn wooden stool carved with flowers, playing in her dead mother's makeup trying to make up for years of dysfunction with a waxy tube of pigmented chemicals.

Giddy. I don't think I'd ever felt that way before, but I felt giddy then looking at this beautiful woman in the mirror, this girl of high society. As I rushed down the stairs, my pa caught sight of me, shook his head, and began to say something that I didn't quite catch; I was already out of the door running over to Johnny's. He and the guys were sitting on his porch playing cards; Johnny was the dealer, and he dropped the full deck the moment he saw me. I strolled up to his front gate, grinned, and puffed out my chest, my arms clasped behind my back.

Look at me.

He couldn't look away, his mouth hanging open.

"Aw, shit, Johnny," one of the guys ducked beneath the table to start picking up the cards, "What the hell is wrong…" he never finished his statement, following Johnny's gaze to me. I grinned even more broadly and tipped my cap.

"Woah…you're really somethin', Tifa," that was all Johnny get out as he sheepishly ran his hands through tufts of his rusty hair. The others were just silent, and I stood there for a good and long time, them staring at me and me looking back, showcasing my newfound womanliness to the world. Then, I tipped my hat again, wiggling my hips as I sauntered away, a borrowed strut from some model I'd seen on TV.

I marked each day that'd passed on a calendar, never being sure when they'd show up. Seven days passed like water in through a sieve. On the eighth day, out of the mist on a particular rainy day in Nibelheim, four ghosts from the big city glided in on the fog, and a village in the middle of nowhere sucked in its breath and held on tight for three whole days, and that's how it was.

How it'll always be for as long as I can remember, my eyes shut tight as I lie in Johnny's bed wondering just what I've done…what I was thinking. Yet, that regret that should be eating away at me isn't there, and there's something more…something that I've been reaching out for that I can't quite grasp, but it isn't Johnny, and it certainly isn't Cloud. I think it's time…time to go back to Nibelheim.