Some legends are told...

[raindownhell]

Aerith had been right; it wasn't a quick journey back.

Lea's route, achieved by pressing further into what Fang came to know as the Bancouri border-desert and then backtracking along the river was, indeed, longwinded. It was also safer, that much was clear. Ignoring the infrequent swells and waterholes along the route, the number of monsters was greatly diminished from what they could see roaming in the distance. Smaller plate wyrms, wyverns and helms could very occasionally be seen beyond a haze of wind-thrown sand, all species better left alone.

Desert monsters were typically large reptiles, creatures that didn't crave water like mammals did, or smaller pack hunters who got most of their water from their kills and seldom visited the riverside except to hunt at waterholes. The waterholes, while more dangerous than the fast-moving river, were still something of a boon, for they often saw small herds of prey animals, or larger lone monsters, which were of as much interest to them in terms of food as they were the other creatures that hunted there.

Mercifully, the waterside hunters weren't too dangerous. Weird gators with false, hinged faces had come as a surprise to Fang, but the one foolish enough to pick a fight with her was easily dispatched with a spearpoint to the soft, unarmoured flesh beneath. Gigantoads, though slow, were better skirted around. Unlike the gator, they were not edible. Their poisonous skin saw to that.

The long journey didn't bother her, at least. She'd been on the road for longer getting from where she had started to the Chocobo Eater and travelling with a supply of fresh, flowing water was much more preferable to stopping and filling up heavy waterskins every few miles. It helped that the river allowed them to wash the sand, if not the chocobo, away from them more regularly.

The company wasn't bad, either. She wasn't sure they were hardened Hunters like she was, she couldn't shake that feeling, but if they had only recently picked it up as a job, they were learning remarkably quickly. Where she was from, Hunting was a lifestyle, not a job, something you took to from a very young age to build up your strength and stamina. It wasn't the case here. It was lucrative, apparently, but still something you could just elect to take on or give up as you pleased. She felt fortunate to have joined up with a trio with formidable fighting and healing skills, nonetheless.

Abilities aside, it helped that they also weren't bad people. Lea was more social than Saix, and Aerith was more levelheaded and friendly than both of them, for all Saix attempted to look like a voice of reason for the group. All three had one thing in common. They were odd. The boys were very powerful fighters, but the way they handled themselves, and their weapons, and their elements, just didn't feel normal, not when they seemed almost naive about certain aspects of Chakra manipulation while using it in odd ways otherwise. Something told her that they just weren't normal for the world. Being displaced by centuries didn't make her feel any differently about it. Aerith was just different. Absurdly good at healing, that was for certain, and very in tune with the natural world.

She had a feeling that they probably felt the same about her. Even though they were definitely strange, they knew more about the world than she did. The collapsed city had been her tell, she was sure of it.

As she thought about it, she hardly noticed the warmth gradually leaving the air. Night was falling. Travelling at night would probably have been easier on them all, especially the chocobos, but sleeping in the heat of the day wasn't a viable option. It was time to find somewhere to set up camp.

Comments

[hearstheplanet]

"I hadn't either," Aerith said, with a smile and a conversational tone. "I'd never been anywhere outside of Midgar before."

Her smile became a little sad as she looked into the fire. "There's a whole world out there I'd never seen, or experienced. I'm only just realising how much I'd missed."

She turned her attention to Fang again, smiling softly. "Rabanastre's a big city. It brims with life, of all kinds," she said. "You can see airships taking off and coming in to land, and people of all species. It never really goes quiet, even at night, although it gets cold," she added. "Even though it's smaller than Midgar was, there's a lot more life. The flowers don't like the desert weather much, but they still grow more easily in Rabanastre than they ever did in Midgar. That's why I'm selling flowers there; I'm one of the only ones who can get flowers to grow in a desert, and in the process, I can fill Rabanastre with a bit more of the kind of life it isn't teeming with."

She looked back at the fire, shyly. "I didn't go to Rabanastre expecting to do that," she admitted. "I didn't really know what I was going to do. I was a little lost when I first arrived."

[gotitmemorised]

Lea listened to Aerith tell of Rabanastre, and of her home.

He hadn't spent much time in Midgar, but he had stayed there for long enough to know that it was worlds apart from Dalmasca's desert capital. Midgar was apparently the pinnacle of Spiran modernity, at least on the continent of Valendia. It was a monstrous place, all girders, functional metalwork and pollution below with very neat, very deliberate houses and businesses above. Rabanastre, on the other hand, was an old, old city made from stone, some of it intricately carved and some worn with age, that had been added to over the centuries as the need arose.

They were worlds apart.

[raindownhell]

Fang listened, not missing the sadness in Aerith's voice when she spoke.

"You won't be the only one," she said.

She wondered how similar the cities here would be to those she knew. Were cities really the same the world over, once you got past the architecture? It would certainly be something to find out. The villages she'd seen had been much the same, but also ... markedly different, in subtle, odd little ways.

A bit like her, she thought wryly.

[hearstheplanet]

Aerith looked at Fang and smiled at her. She liked her, even though Fang was a little mysterious, and very strange, Aerith liked her. She didn't feel like a bad person, although most people didn't, but she also didn't feel like someone who was dangerous. Powerful, certainly, but not dangerous.

"It helps if you're not alone," she said, softly. Fang was, she suspected, or had been, but even if she didn't stay with them for long after getting to Rabanastre, they could at least help her find her feet. "We could help?"

She smiled again, a trace awkwardly, and glanced back at the fire, looking into the flames. "It's," she hesitated, "it's hard, feeling alone. I know that better than anyone."

[innatelunacy]

Saix turned his head, looking over at Aerith. His mouth twitched into a frown and he darted his eyes to Lea before he looked back out over the landscape again.

They'd all been alone, at one point or another. Axel had abandoned him, and their plans, in the Organization, leaving him floundering with no idea of what step to take next except to carry on into the emptiness and his eventual confrontation with the keyblade bearer. Lea had landed here on this world all alone, in an abandoned city, and been traded and conveyed like a parcel, with no idea of where he was, how to return, or whether he'd ever escape.

He didn't know much about Aerith's past, but she'd mentioned bits. He suspected that she had a problem with taking in stray puppies just as Lea had, and maybe some of that was borne out of whatever was fueling this now.

[raindownhell]

"Yeah, maybe," Fang said, non-committally.

Accepting help in the city would make her life easier but, on the other hand, she was ever-aware of the fact that by doing so she would be revealing the depths of her lack of knowledge about the world.

She could get away with some things, like current events or intricate historical facts probably taught in every schoolhouse, by claiming to be from some small village out in the Bancouri Wildlands, but other things, the basics, such as currency, wouldn't fly. Even traders dealt in money sometimes.

She gave a small laugh. It would be easier for her to survive indefinitely out in the sticks than a city in this world. That didn't help her case with looking weird, did it?

[innatelunacy]

Saix's frown deepened for a moment, and he stared, fixedly, at the silvery ripple of the river nearby.

"We know you're not normal for this world," he said, addressing Fang without looking at her, and cutting to a point that Aerith seemed to prefer to dance around. "Rabanastre is a good place for those who are different to blend in, with a little assistance."

They'd received enough of that themselves, and it was true. With a little guidance, most weirdness went by without much comment in Rabanastre. The place was populated by enough different cultures and species, and saw enough mist mutants and other oddities that one person's weirdness simply merged into the colourful background of the city.

[hearstheplanet]

Aerith looked sharply at Saix and his butting in. He really did lack patience sometimes.

"Saix," she said, her tone scolding, and then turned back to Fang and sighed. "We all have our secrets," she said. "You don't have to tell us anything if you don't want to, but," she shrugged, gently, "we might be able to help at least a little, if you let us."

[gotitmemorised]

Lea stared at Saix for a moment, open-mouthed.

They had all been thinking it, of course. They had been thinking it since they met her and she failed to know what Midgar was and what had befallen it, but he still hadn't quite expected him to just ...come out with it like that.

He should have known better. Isa had always been direct, and in a different way to his own straightforwardness.

[raindownhell]

Fang laughed then, properly. It wasn't a scathing sound, or a self pitying one, but it wasn't quite bare amusement either.

"I can't even fool you three," she said, shaking her head. "All right, it's cosy enough to be sharing secrets, I guess."

She looked at all of them and cocked her head to one side, almost critically, but not confrontationally. There was something nearly gentle about the look.

"But what do you say we all share?" she gave Saix a bit of a smile. "Because something's not right about you three either."

[innatelunacy]

Saix raised an eyebrow at the word 'even', turning to look at Fang with a look that wasn't sure whether to be amused or offended. He seemed to lean towards amused because he cracked a small smile afterwards.

"It takes one to know one," he said, "where unusual people in this world are concerned." He glanced at Lea before he turned away again, looking down at the ground and the dancing shadows as he spoke. "Ours is a long story," he said, "but it begins on another world entirely. Here they call us 'Ryoka'."

It meant 'traveling evil', someone had said. Saix had been intrigued that there was a word for the phenomenon, but it was also an unfortunately appropriate term for their kind. Every world they had visited had been befallen by something unfortunate.

He hoped this wasn't the case for Spira. He was getting used to life on Spira, and didn't want it to become another Radiant Garden.

[hearstheplanet]

Aerith felt the flicker in Saix's reiatsu when he spoke. There was something sad about what he said, something that bothered him. She knew, from talking to Lea, and from what little Saix did say about their past that their friendship had only recently been recovered, and that Saix, well... had been a bit of an ass, and still could be, sometimes.

She hadn't pried, though. She was curious, nosy even, but it wasn't her place to stick her nose in, and so she hadn't.

"We thought at first you might be as well," she said, looking to Fang with a smile, "but you know too much for that to be true." But she also didn't know things she should, which was what made her so strange.

[raindownhell]

Fang listened, watching Saix more than the others, though she did look at Aerith as she spoke. Saix seemed uncomfortable. She knew him not to be much of a talker from the time she'd spent with the group, but discussing his origins on the world apparently made him feel awkward.

"Another world?" She asked, firelight reflected in her eyes.

She had never heard the term "Ryoka" before.

[gotitmemorised]

Lea looked down at his hands for a moment, but decided to join the conversation. It did concern him, after all, and it seemed to be a little difficult for Saix, so he figured he could use the encouragement.

"Yeah," he replied. "Saix and me..." he hesitated. "We're not from Spira."

[innatelunacy]

Saix murmured in response to Lea's contribution to the conversation. He hesitated for a moment, deciding whether to explain about Radiant Garden, and what had happened to it, but that was a conversation Saix didn't feel like getting into right now. Maybe some other time he'd be able to talk about their past with someone other than Lea, but here and now it felt a little raw to be exposing to a stranger, as companionable as she was.

"We arrived on this world a couple of years ago," he said, instead. "It was a while before we found each other again, and in the meantime we had to learn about this world, quickly." This part of the explanation came more easily, at least, and Saix seemed more relaxed as he elaborated. "Everything here is different for us; chakra, reiatsu, the wildlife, the class system for fighting, we've had to learn all of it from the beginning, and quickly. There are those who would hunt us if they knew of our existence, and those who do know of us and seek to profit from it."

Lea had told of his own encounters with the latter when they'd first been reunited, bitter and angry as the explanation had been at the time.

[gotitmemorised]

"We try to blend in," Lea said, giving a bit of a shrug. "But it's not easy. There's a lot of seemingly insignificant stuff that we're unaware of that people can pick up on if we're not careful."

Idioms, common sayings, well-known bits of history, even any knowledge of the pop culture of the past thirty years that had seeped into the consciousness of the natives, much of it was lost on them. Organization XIII had been different. They hadn't tried to mingle with the people of the worlds they'd visited. Here, they had to survive in amongst the natives, and even not knowing some famous single that came out ten years ago and took the world by storm set them apart from everyone else.

"And that's not taking into account that we fight differently to everyone else," he said.

Being here was like learning another language. Even if you learned all the formal stuff, there was so much slang and casual nonsense that you'd struggle to blend in even if you attained technical fluency. The unspoken was easier, but not perfect. It almost the same, but not quite. A jerk of the head could as easily be an invitation to settle your differences outside as a request to repeat something you had said. It was getting easier, but it was by no means perfect.

[raindownhell]

"I think I'll get a fair bit of that myself when I get to the city," Fang said, running her fingers through her hair to push it out of her eyes.

So the boys were from another world entirely. That was not a new concept to her, but the terms were different. She decided to mention that later, when it made sense in the context of her homeland. Aerith... wasn't included among the "ryoka", then.

"So what about you?" She asked, turning her attention to the party's mild-mannered healer. "You seem more normal than those two, but there's still something odd about you."

Something odd, yes, but in a familiar, normal way. A way she could recognise, if not quite put her finger on.

[hearstheplanet]

Aerith looked at Fang with a bright smile, "Oh, I'm native all right," she said, cheerily. "I'm also the last of my kind," she said, more softly, her bright smile fading to become a sadder one. "I'm the last of the Cetra. The Ancients, people call them. My birth mother died when I was young, and she was the last pure Cetra, and I'm the last one left with the abilities of the Cetra."

And when she was gone, there'd be no one left.

She looked up at the night sky, with the moon and the glittering stars spattered across the darkness and wrapped her arms around her knees. "I can hear the voice of the planet," she said. "I can feel it calling me, like the sky is trying to suck me in, and I can hear the others in the lifestream, the ones that haven't completely merged with it yet." She frowned, biting her lip as she looked down. "Not everyone that dies joins the lifestream; some become Hollows, or Unsent, but I can hear the ones that do."

She looked back at Fang. "I'm a bit more sensitive than most, and you feel a little different. So," she said, brightly, "now it's your turn."

[raindownhell]

Aaah, close to the Lifestream ... that would explain it. She had never heard of the Cetra, or the Ancients, but she was familiar enough with a group, or race, of people who were closer to the Lifestream and the Goddess than most. The Planet wasn't really mentioned by them, probably owing to the position of their continent, but the Lifestream was a common factor.

"All right," Fang said. "Since all three of you would be hunted if people knew what you were, I guess I've got nothing to lose."

Ryoka, strangers to the world and often considered cursed by the superstitious, and the last of a near-dead race of people who, if she was right about those she'd known, were equally revered and feared for their abilities... it didn't seem too much of a stretch to throw her lot in with them.

"I'm a l'Cie," she said. "From Gran Pulse."

[gotitmemorised]

Lea watched Fang as she spoke. She was a survivor, clearly used to judging whether her actions would have dangerous reactions, and what those might bring. He saw her weigh up her options, putting their secrets up against her own before she answered.

She seemed used to being secretive, or at least she had good reason to fear what her admission might bring.

He listened to her, over the background crackle of the fire, and blinked when she confessed what she was.

It meant nothing to him.

He didn't know what a "l'Cie" was, or what Gran Pulse was, either. If she wasn't a Ryoka, Gran Pulse was clearly part of Spira, but that didn't make him any the wiser or shed any light on why she had been cagey about it. If she was part of the world, why did she know so little? He sat, silent and confused, waiting for what would come next.