A/N: Chapter 50, here we go... hope you enjoy.

Tangerine Dream - A Matter Of Time

Vube's Desert

Night

...

— ...We must go back, before the sand loses the heat at the peak of night. – I said, after I took care of that Black Mage creep with my own hands... same hands that I'm using to lift Bart, who recovered slightly, yet not enough, seeing how that wound left by that knife, still stuck on his skin, I better be careful to not remove it, or else... I know what happens.

But I don't want it to happen again. Many things that have already happened before, I do not want them to be shown anymore, in front of me. That's why I had to take care of these two men, in two kinds of ways.

I was very kind to both, yet I do regret of my manners with the one who stood, laying in the sand, awaiting, because of me, and my actions, for the desert, home of Antilions and nasty scorpions, to kill him instead, before his own body, suffering from dehydration, does. These are both painful ways to kill someone, I know. More painful than the known, it's the unknown. Many fear the unknown, as much as many fear those like us. Me, Bart, Clyde... Mainly men of our kind.

— So, Prescott... – I heard Bart, saying his name. He's currently being holded by me, my back is holding me, in a way, as his right hand can be felt atop my right shoulder, his head lying above my left shoulder, and that left hand had been left numb, unlike the pain of his.

Many shed a tear when they felt pain, but Bart seemed to feel nothing, yet I knew how he was feeling. Not only feelings, or doubts about the knife, as it seems –

— A-Are you a Cleyran? – He asked me, as we walked closer to reach our tent.

Before, I had been watching the sandstorm that secluded my home from this world in the distance. Like a spinning plate, it kept twisting, for what seemed to be an eternity. And I wished, from the moment I saw such a familiar place, that the sandstorm were kept on the way it was, and luckily, still is.

— Of course I do. – I only said, truthful to myself. – Yes, I am a Cleyran, or used to be. Still I am, yet the rain and these clothes say otherwise.

As I keep moving my feet throughout this sand, pigs don't sweat, but horses do, feeling the heat of the dusk, and the sweat flowing into my body, refreshing my skin with the breeze, these and other things makes me feel in a kind of home. A home I used to stay, unlike the Libers and the Cleyrans.

— You don't seem to be that much of a Cleyran to me. Where's your peach dress? – he said, laughing with a dry mouth.

Bart may have heard from Clyde about my past life. No, I guess he heard it with a single sentence I uttered to that assassin, whom I'm not that bothered with, unlike Bart, who keeps watching me as if I was a stranger, more than I was on our first sight. I do not speak that very often about my past to other people, so it's understandable for Bart to carry on this doubt, of many.

— The rain and these clothes do make me into another person, don't you think?... – I said.

From that and many other moments, I am still wondering to myself why I had gotten outside the sandstorm that used to protect me, to walk into the rain that protected me too… just why.

.I may be a little confused about who I am today, with the who I was back into the life I've spent at the settlement found atop the Yggdrasil, known as Cleyra, or the 'city of Illusions', though Cleyra ain't big enough, or even share of economics to be called by 'city'. So... am I a Highwind, or not? Maybe. The Highwinds from the legend can be related to me, this if I had some document to prove that.

My words, alone, aren't that much of a document. I'm am an only person, unlike the many Kings who reigned over Burmecia, whose story is mixed with the history, both who had been mainly made by words, and only a few documents, written in archaic symbols, not words belonging to the standard alphabet, as they were translated centuries after, into compact books.

From a thousand parchments, came an only book, with a hundred pages, and this book is a collection of manuscripts written by Gizamaluk, when he was a Burmecian. Our warrior code, written in a book, once gross enough, heavy as double swords on both hands, can now be compacted enough to be fit in our pockets. If many rolls of ancient parchments can be later revised into two hundred fifty pages, then why not can't I tell my story in a single sentence?

No, maybe not. A sentence isn't enough. To share my history while I walk isn't a good option either. The memory also counts, as I can only remember a few things.

My father, Richter Highwind, was a Burmecian, a warrior like I am disguised into, same for him. Yes, my father was not a warrior in any traditional sense… Before he became a soldier, father threw away the youth to become a street rat, roaming in the kingdom for some fights. He was not that good of a person, and neither a puke to be thrown into the street. It was then that he became a member of the army, as much as I, and my uncles had become soldiers as well.

How ironic, seeing how much father despised soldiers, even went to trouble with some Royal Guards once, and now, from that moment onwards, he had become one of them. Father also never committed murder on his scoundrel days, until he came to be a member of the army, where any enemy killed by his became more ratio to his bowl.

It was then that, during an expedition, training on this same Vube, that father got lost in the middle of a huge sandstorm. Many who had gotten lost on that same day disappeared as well, only for their bones to be found near the Antlion's traps, or some alive, in the middle of the dunes, or what they thought to be a sort of oasis, with their mouths filled in by sand, same who took away their throat's moistures, and hope as well, until other soldiers came to their aid.

A friend of my father, who shared a few close ones, ended up on that path, unlike Mr. Highwind himself. That reckless behavior of his became his salvation, somehow. At first, it was a single trunk, but when his sight recovered, father was in the presence of the City of Illusions, also known as Cleyra, the settlement secluded from the main world by that huge sandstorm I saw before, and so many times I had, inside and outside.

As the sun settles down, and the sky turns orange, I recall the days I used to live inside the sandstorm. A thing Cleyrans usually does is to lift their heads to look above, where they can see the day, or the night. On a same way a stranger in Burmecia awfully notices the rain falling into their clothes, father must have felt the same as many who lived outside Cleyra must had felt as well.

I said live, because many who stay for a week enough, they also turn into Cleyrans as well. Even with the secession, and the ties severed with our Kingdom, the Cleyrans accept those souls who came there, no matter from where any kind of people who came across such place was born, or lived into.

Negotiations between the Kingdom of Burmecia and Cleyra usually happen year after year, King after King, Priest after Priest, and their results don't seem to be that optimistic. Although the people of Cleyra still hold the same intent to purify the disturbance of the wandering souls, who ended up on those sacred grounds, like their father. That's their kind of nature, unlike the one belonging to the Burmecians soldiers, many of those who would be later converted into Cleyrans after a few days they stood in that settlement. Same also happens in Burmecia, as it happened with me, and the first contact I had with the Baptism of the rain who blessed my body, and changed more than my wardrobe.

Prior that, father stood on that place for two weeks, where, besides knowing about the main fountain, whose water is pulled from deep beneath the underground reservoir to those heights, the observatory, who is able to see the main desert through the sandstorm, the chapel, where the people pray for the sandstorm and its strength, and, more than the air that made his lungs a bit breathless, Rhiannoa, or the woman that later would become my mother.

For my father, many kinds of women were candidates to be his wife, but none of then shared of the same to be compared with mother. She was the maiden whose task consisted on watering the plants, all kinds who resided into the settlement, even the poison ivies that causes of many rashes around the skin. That's part of their belief to accept all the things, no matter how hard they say otherwise, but there's always a way to give a second chance, instead of apologies.

The Cleyrans accept both nettles and ivies to grown in their gardens, as much as they accept the presence of Burmecians on their grounds. Their ancestors were also filthy Burmecian rodents as well, who shared of the taste of war whom the holy Cleyrans deny solemnly, to all living beings. Their only protection against the enemy, if there's one to them, is the sandstorm, who keeps then hid from the main world, full of good people, and assassins as well.

Those who stood at Cleyra always return to the same place someday. To make that happen, father became one of them when he married Rhiannoa, for whom he felt more than love, in a sense that stood before he met with Rhiannoa, and the dance of Pales executed by her, and others like her, but he only paid attention to her, and the way she danced, waved that hair, inside the chapel, with the sound of a harp playing its chords.

It's interesting that, in Burmecia, and in other countries as well, except Treno, the full exercise of prostitution is harshly condemned, due to its nature be against the public morality, and, considering Burmecia, because it deviates from the main purpose of reproduction, and besides being a banal and improper way to feel plenty of pleasure, it also contributes for many cases of sterility, diseases, and children without fathers, thought the same couldn't be said centuries ago, even prior the foundation of same Kingdom.

Before the monotheism of an only God, the civilizations that came before Burmecia shared many gods. A god tasked for anything; the sun was the god who brought them the heat, the water was the God who brought the oasis, and so it goes on. Idols that represented the image of gods were also made by other tribes, who also shared their rituals, and their gods.

Mainly the women participated in the same rituals, due to their attractiveness, varying from tribe to tribe. While some women belonging to a tribe were attractive to the male ones due to their fat, unlike today, others had their nipples mutilated, alike how the Vastitas belonging to their kingdoms used to do on their temples, same place where the act, the contact the devadasis had with the goddess, and the mortals, used to happen. Same kind of ritual, now deemed as prostitution, used to happen in Burmecia as well, before Kain and his descendents successfully eradicated and prohibited of same cults, mainly made by those who once were Vastitas, or so that's described by the many pieces of well-preserved codices and manuscripts left from that century.

Besides the codices, the clothes and dances the devadasis whore back in those days persisted as well, with the Cleyrans. Richter Highwind decided to stay at Cleyra, until his wife gave birth to two of his only children: Me, and my sister, Niamh. When infant, I was raised in the outskirts of this settlement, until I turned 7, when father came back from Burmecia, to retrieve me from that place, the heat of the desert, to the cold brought by the rain, or so I felt that cold, before father changed of my clothes, and name as well. You can give Kain as the name of your son; though he won't be remembered by anyone else, besides his family, the family he created to be his own, alike the friends of his when alive. But if you are a King, and the Prince's name becomes Kain, that's another story.

But, you know, legend is legend, but unlike legends, people do change with time. As much as Cleyrans are kept hid by the sandstorm, Burmecians are kept under the rain; the others above the Mist, and the Mist keep our world hidden from our sight.

Once, I had been called by Hyuuga, but since there's no ounce of sunlight around Burmecia, unlike the one I used to see at Cleyra, I became Prescott since then, as my father became a Priest on the way back home. When Cleyrans come to Burmecia, they are forced to change their names, some luckily still maintaining the original meaning, yet all their names are spoken in full new words. When I grew up, I decided to return to Cleyra, my first home. Mother may have passed, unlike my sister, who grew up as much as me, and how she had grown up, like that hair.

Since children, the female Cleyras learn to comb their hairs. If their hair isn't grown up already in youth, then she ain't a woman, but a girl. As they grow up, they start to wear less clothes, until they reach maturity, when they wear those dresses, peach like the fruit, gentle as the petals of a flower. Other garments include jewels wrapped, instead of an only neck, in both feet, a circlet around the neck, like the bracelet in both arms, but those are details, unnoticed for those who only perceived their dance, their dresses, and hair as well. The Cleyrans wear those dresses when preparing, or when they do the ritual dance, although many wear the same dress like today's clothes.

When pregnant, or older, these women hid their bodies, on a same way they used to when children. Naturally, the hair and its strands tend to fall at such age, as their remaining task left is to make a girl's hair belonging to her offspring to grow down, as the child grows up, until she truly becomes a woman...

— ...Yes, yes. You already told me that before. Isn't there anything else you might share with me, instead of bad news? Or a bad wound left on my brother?

— I'm sorry about that. – Prescott said, looking at me while sipping on warm tea. The sand outside sure was that hot, seeing how a bit of sand poured down to his tea. He didn't bother, as if the sand was part of his life, and why wouldn't? He's a Cleyran, after all. Half-Cleyran, to be fair, and also half of what me, and Bart, are, since birth. – I didn't want that to happen with Bart. I failed once again, didn't I?

— Of course not, Prescott. You had the bones to carry on of such weight others wouldn't do instead. Black Mage, what the actual hell was that? You mean you fought the black shadow thing on your own? I must report Sigurd, but first my brother. I'm glad that you brought Bart safe, at least, not in the arm...

— The arm doesn't matter. The wound will heal by itself. – He said, sipping another drink of the same tea. The smoke came to his face, as much as a sensation of failure came to his as well, even though Bart is alright, unlike that arm.

— Yet, Bart will still feel a kind of pain, won't he? I don't want to hear his moans... – This statement reminds me of the stormy nights, where Bart, afraid as he is, used to hide, not on his own blanket, but mine instead.

Not only he was near me, but that kid also cuddled with his arms onto me, as if I was his pillow, and whenever a thunder struck, with the lighting included as a fear factor as well, Bart hid in the blanket, cuddling me as well. I guess he used to choose me because I was the one who lied to his, yet when I said that 'it'll be alright', followed by a 'brat', 'mice', or a 'dick' in my thoughts.

Yet, I liked him, still I do like him, not only because Bart is my brother, but because, I don't know, maybe it's the responsibility I had with him, since father was gone, and Bart began to piss on the bed as result. I would slap him in the mornings when my nose had found out the smell of his in exchange of my own smell. Damn... I can smell Bart, on that bed, agonizing fear, and I can't do anything. Anything, until Prescott stops sipping that tea.

With that mouth, he could sip an entire bowl of soup and the carrots as well. Bart dislike carrots, unless they're prepared by Lenneth, though any food prepared by that lady is pretty, same goes for my darling, prettier than any pretty, unlike the favor I had with Bart, when young, as he offered the carrots to me, and I had to eat them, only because he disliked them, even though father liked of their taste, or so I told to Bart, who later had eaten them all, whenever mother cooked them to fill in the bowl of soup.

Only because father... how many times I used the name of father to avoid Bart's closure, or to approach that brat next to me as well. He said once, and only, that only stood near me, mostly me and mother, but unlike mom's, Bart said that I looked like daddy. I got fooled by that kindness, as much as Bart when the kid was fooled by mine as well. With a single word, I knew I could make him do anything for me, or as I said many times, for father.

"Father was brave, you see, so why don't cha you climb up that tree, damnit?"; I would say, maybe I said it clearly to Bart, back on that day where we climbed that tree near home, the same tree where Bart had suffered from a pretty incontinence, the same who also happened when he slipped on his bed.

The rain was pretty sour that day, heh... Now that I look at Bart, it ain't funny anymore. Only because he's hurted, I see. When younger, I would be hurted on his place instead, with father, or without his. Mother had her own way to punish me, although the maximum she would do is to ground me, instead of slapping me.

She didn't have this kind of force, physically, and spiritually as well. Since father went away forever, mother felt bad each time she had to punish one of her children, including me. So all we had to do was to behave well, even if our thoughts said otherwise. "That's what father would wish for us"; I had to say it, from time to time, to make them behave well. Only in a few stances, like that one, I used of father's name to do something good, not only for me, and my safety, but for my mother as well.

— I can't hear Bart… – I said, certain that I would be hearing his moans. A word, a tantrum, a scream threw right at the nearest one being... anything, but nothing came instead.

He was still lying there, like a, a... I would say that he looked like a corpse, but at least, I could see him breathing. Pupils kept close, unlike that nose and mouth belonging to his. Since that age when many start to talk, and many teeth start to fall, the monologue has been Bart's favorite kind of discussion. Same could be said of my father, and me, as well. Prescott too, seeing how he just sits there, drinking and drinking.

Many drink to forget, I know it, by proper experience. In the pubs, in the taverns, at home, before the day, after the night... There are even some who drink the water of the rain, though their intent shown is to remember that the rain, blessing thy skin, exists. Instead of beer, those religious people, Devotees of Bahamut, drink wine instead, and eat bread as well; the blood and body of Kain, as they say.

How many times I had been there, in that bakery, only to prepare many of Kain's bodies, whose spirit, they say, would be there, inside those breads. And the wine turns out to be his blood, because the spirit also flows into the liquids. I might be wrong, but maybe that's the reason why those bastards name their own sons after their father's names, because the spirit of the old flows into the liquid. Speaking of liquid, Prescott has finished sipping his tea, and I can see that he's now prepared to say something, instead of thinking it.

— You won't hear anything, Clyde. – Prescott told me, as if that wasn't obvious.

— I wish I could... – I said, a futile, meaningless sentence, like my face which's dull like a rock.

Prescott couldn't describe if I was sad, upset, or even happy, due to Bart, and the suffering that knife brought to him, before Prescott came to his aid, because I couldn't. All I am doing is complaining, instead of Bart, who should had been complaining about the pain on that arm, as naturally the things should have gone, or not. Maybe I'm a bit too upset, see, Prescott? Of course, he can see it.

— Well, if you can't hear your brother and his complaints, then that means the sedactive has worked. – Prescott said, turning to me, after he came near Bart. – You see, the seeds I had put on the tea I prepared for Bart to drink before were poppy seeds. Don't worry, because I recall I had administered a small dosage of this drug before.

— Yes, we did it one of these days. – I remember how pleasant it was taking a few poppy teas and feeling an awful lot better. The pain went away like the feces out ot my intestines.

— Your brother, and the brothers of many may have felt its effects before. – Prescott referred to the drug's side effects he was deeply worried about. – He couldn't even understand what we were talking about, could he? You see, all soldiers and their legs had been tired later that day, the one that came before our departure from our homeland. After all that walk, and fights along the way, against their own kind, among themselves as well; some small injuries, others bad ones. Painful aches in the head, a few slight cramps in the feet, we all missing our families, our friends, that was a shock that happened so suddenly, like the pain felt by the hands, the feet, the arms, the body as a whole.

— ...Oh, I see. You don't need to say that again. – I said, sure of myself, instead of Bart, whom I knew was in good hands. Not mine, but, at least, there was someone other than me who was worried about him, and also cared for his safety. Someone who's near him, unlike the homeland so far from there. – It was his first time, wasn't it? It seemed so, seeing how his head wasn't right that day. I thought he was fine, because, you know, that's how Bart is.

— I see. His first time numb like that... I should be careful with the dosages, but Bart felt a lot of pain so I had to give him more poppy seeds. It reminds me of the day your father stood in the same way. Then, he stood like that, for an eternity... – Prescott sat on bed next to Bart. I thought, for a moment, that he was about to complete his own words, but none were uttered as that look of his went on that knife.

Silence, breath... Prescott just stood quietly, like Bart, like me as well. He looked at that wound, we could not take our eyes out for a second. Prescott stood near that arm, and that wound seemed to be very close, like it was alive and about to eat him alive, or ready to spread into the Burmecleyran's own skin. 'Burmecleyran'… funny word. I'm amazed by my capacity for making fun at the most tense and serious moments.

When he looked at that wound, it seemed as if Prescott blamed himself for such to happen. I also did the same, but Prescott blamed himself more, since he was near Bart, unlike me, who stood inside this tent all along.

I didn't even had a chance to protect Bart, even though my brother grew up already to protect himself, but the Highwind was there, near him all time, and he had the chance to protect Bart like how he protected our father in the past. Then, that knife and its tip were pulled out of that arm, and... Red. That's all I can say about Bart's blood. Red alike the coat wore, or used so, by his wife.

My brother felt nothing. Just nothing. Even when I squeeze a pimple, I do feel a sort of pain, no matter how big such is. Well, that's the effect of the poppy, though, each effect has its cost. And I know about them so damn well. As much as there are walls to protect the boundaries of a Kingdom, each individual has a self-defense mechanism. In order to secure themselves from a fear, for example, they just forget what happened. Though, this sort of thing usually takes many years to happen. For example, the same happens when someone, at the end of a year, like when my wife Cynthia usually says that the same year lasted so quickly, because they compare a whole year with the last day.

Yet, this doesn't seem to work with some of us, like Hyuuga, or Prescott. It's the same person anyway, Burmecian as me, or not.