Persistent Illusion

Sable Xane

Rated M

Disclaimer: Warnings: Summery: See Chapter One as I don't want to inflate my word count any more than it already has been.

A/N: Time moves faster from here for a while. I have a rather detailed time line I am working with. The pure narration is almost over and the plot is about to thicken…

Chapter Four

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself."

― George Bernard Shaw

XXX

Harry had learned the hard way that it did no good to dwell on things that he could not change. He had a vague recollection of a song in an old movie that tried too hard to get that point across while still making it seem like a bad idea. In all honesty, though, he had little other choice.

His first encounter with humans since escaping that nightmare left him with the knowledge that this place was completely alien from anything he'd ever known. It wasn't just in the sense that it was a different culture, no this was so much more.

He would never claim to be as studious or intelligent as Hermione, but neither was he stupid or ignorant. He knew enough about his world to know that this was not it. At least he didn't think it was.

Everywhere he looked there were little things that were just wrong. They way people moved, interacted, and spoke could have been dismissed as simply foreign, but other things…

At first it was hard to put a finger on.

The tiny village obviously made its living from the sea. There was an unmistakeable smell of fish and seaweed that permeated the town. Women stood at long wooden tables sorting the fish that men were unloading from nets and boats. Children and animals played under the watchful eye of the adults. It looked like something that could have been found in history book, only it was too ordinary to have ever actually appeared in one.

He knew that there were places that still existed this way, but… There was no sign of modern influence. Even in older documentaries you could see children in this type of village running around in super hero t-shirts and men wearing ball caps. There was no trash along the shore line. He hadn't spotted a single bottle or can. The water was too clear, and the air too clean.

Had he somehow ended up in the past? No. That wasn't right either. While he doubted it was the best on the market, the computer he'd seen at the warehouse had looked more advanced than the one Dudley had owned when they'd been kids.

The village was on the north side of a relatively sheltered cove. South of that the ground grew swampy for several miles along the coast where a shallow river flowed into the sea. He didn't travel far in that direction before turning around and heading north.

He followed the coastline for several days. He passed a few more fishing villages and considered following the dirt track roads that headed further in land, but dismissed it and continued on.

He'd been attacked by precocious creatures who'd apparently thought him to be an easy meal. This hadn't been an issue in the forest or along the plains. Not that they'd posed any real difficulty, but he'd not been expecting it either. He didn't know what made the animals along the coast more interested in him, but it seemed that the further north he went the more frequent the encounters became.

These creatures where also completely different from anything he'd ever seen. Some of them obviously had some kind of magic as they could cast elemental spells. He should have heard of at least one of them before.

He several days later he came to a strange sight. There was another fishing village here, but it stood in the shadow of some great monstrosity of a construction site. The people of the village seemed to be trying to go on about their normal lives, but very few fish seemed to be coming out of the water, most likely scared off by the loud noise or driven away by some unknown pollutant.

He was uncomfortable going near the water in that village, the whispers seemed to grow louder.

North of there the shoreline turned sharply back eastward. A several days walk saw him growing close to a forest sitting high on a ridge. He had a strong sense that he'd come almost full circle. Luckily the cost ran along a strait or cove that was narrow enough he could see the opposite bank. With few options he took a chance and turned on the spot.

It would be a very long time before he tried apparating again to an unknown location.

XXX

There was something about this strange new world that he was in that made it seem both larger and smaller than the world he'd known before. There were far less people which made the miles between villages, towns, and outposts stretch endlessly. At the same time there seemed to be less land altogether. The differences in cultures was far more subtle from place to place, but the rural ares seemed to be a thousand years removed from the urban.

There was a common theme though. Two words seemed to linger most lips, "Shinra" and "Mako".

Several years had passed, and Harry had become very good at blending in. It helped that, though there was a strange overtone of mixed Asian features to almost every face, there were still every imaginable combination of hair, eye, and skin color, and some unimaginable ones as well. His dark hair and pale skin hardly warranted a second glance, but his eyes caused more than one double take. He'd taken to tinting the lenses of his glasses to make them less noticeable.

The language had been a pain to learn. There was the odd familiar sounding word or phrase, but for the most part he'd had to start from nothing. It didn't help that he didn't feel comfortable getting close enough to someone to get help either.

Time, patience, trial, and error were all good teachers.

He didn't stay in one place too long, and had managed to visit most of the major settlements.

It was in Wutai that he found the first real deviation from the cultural norm and a distinctly more Asian feel than the muddled mix that the rest of the world seemed to have. It was in a small mountain town, that was only really distinct because it was the home of the first fully functional Mako reactor, that he really realized that there were still many languages and what he'd been learning was more of a "common" tongue. It was in a canyon full of what Uncle Vernon would have called "tree huggers" that he met a sentient creature.

The strange feline/wolf/fire spirit creature had been very young. It had been drawn to him for some reason and he'd had to return it to it's home several times in his short stay.

He didn't stay in one place too long… if he did... the whispers got louder.

XXX

On his way across the vast savannah that surrounded the Corel Desert and headed back toward Costa Del Sol, he was startled awake.

The silent whispers that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to prickly had suddenly decided to start screaming.

It was all he could do to not fall out of his bunk. The shrill cry resonated in his very soul. When it finally subsided some time later he was in too much pain to move.

He hadn't known was the whispers dogging his footsteps had wanted before. He certainly didn't know what they wanted now.

When he broke camp the next morning there was a distinct feeling of duplicity. Part of him wanted to go south. Something told him that there was something important there. At the same time he wanted to go northwest, and that seemed almost more urgent.

It really only left in one choice for the time being. Northwest would take him straight to the Nibel Mountains. There was no safe or easy passage that way. He would have to go south and then west around the southern edge of the chain before being able to head back north up the river. That would be the shortest, but by no means safest, route in that direction.

He picked up his gear and started walking, inwardly debating the paths he could take.

XXX

TBC