FFVI - Terra
Aug. 30th, 2010 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lirillithTitle: Eschatology
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Character: Terra
Length: 1285 words
Notes: For theme #1, Prophecy, at 30_fantasies
Terra measures out her scant free time in pages and paragraphs, snatching chances to read whenever she can - not for pleasure or even escape, but because it's the only way she'll ever know more about the lost world she can't remember.
After they buried the dead of Mobliz, they looted the houses, gingerly, speaking to each other in whispers about the very good reasons they had for doing it. They started at the edges of town where the water was rising, brought boxes and bundles into the center of town and went back for more, losing their cautiousness and guilt as the time passed. Now all the books that survived the destruction from the blasts, and the fires they caused, and the rising waters, sit in stacks in the house they live beneath.
She knows more than she realized. The fairytales and fables the children want at bedtime, or whenever they see her reading for herself, were familiar the first time she read them, though if asked before she'd have said she'd never heard of the stories. Some of the plays and poems have the ring of lost memory, too, and even though it's not the same as recovering her own past, she treasures whatever she can recover.
The religious books have the ring of familiarity in a different way. The cloudless sky will be dark at midday and the sun will grow cold, the seed will not yield and the sea will cover the land, one called "The Book of the Sun" says, in a chapter or section called "End Times." And in another, just called "The Four Gods," a section titled "The Last Days" says dragons will climb from the depths of the earth and summon storms and flame, and the sea will roll back from the depths and the mountains will crumble.
Terra doesn't know anything about mountains crumbling, and doesn't know how she'd find out. They've had a few visitors, lost travelers and one merchant, but only a handful over the months, and their arrivals are unpredictable. None have stayed. Some of them have mentioned that the Serpent Trench, that used to be under the ocean, is dry land now, a long strip of desert that links them to Nikeah. She and Duane and Katarin talked about trying to travel there, once, but nothing came of it.
"Phunbaba's not a dragon, is he?" she asks Katarin once, as they're both bent over their washboards. "I mean, he's green and kind of scaly, but... Isn't he from a fairy tale?" It's not one she's read, but there's a half-formed memory she can't pin down.
"Yeah, he's from a fairytale. An ogre," the younger girl says, and sits back to rub her neck. "I hid all the books I could find that had that story. It gave me nightmares when I was little, so imagine how much worse it'd be now."
Terra nods, and doesn't explain, but her imagination's caught, now, and she goes looking for more from the same corner. "The Visions of Ranulf" says the world will end when there's a winter that lasts thirty years and a hero will have to find the sun again, which seems to be stretching the definition of the world ending but at least has comfortingly little to do with the present. "Millennia" seems to be a book of poems that don't rhyme, but the title page calls it "the foretellings of the fourth High Priestess of the northern abbey of Figaro," and so she holds onto it just for the name she knows. When she reads it, she finds at the end there are more mentions of dragons and bones and fire. Poems on end speak of battles, of a man born in another world with the powers of the gods, a long winter and dead gods being reborn. It doesn't make any sense, but she sleeps restlessly and has bad dreams.
"The Book of the Sun" says that demons long laid to rest will awaken and sealed forces will be found again. It also describes war between cities she's never heard of, and the gods, who hadn't appeared at all before, suddenly band together and a tower falls and the land is renewed, now that the unrighteous have perished and the false king has been defeated. She wonders if that could be Kefka, but she doesn't like that thing about the unrighteous, not when she doesn't know what's happened to all her friends, not when what's left of Mobliz is half graveyard and she's reading a book she stole from the home of someone she buried. "The Book of the Sun," though, seems to end with everyone dying, the stars falling from the sky and the moon falling into the sea. And then it says the gods will remake the world and raise six hundred from their graves, but there's nothing about fighting, nothing about fixing the world they have.
"You aren't turning into a religious fanatic, are you?" Duane asks, when he finds the books by her bed.
"I'm just reading the parts about the end of the world," she says.
"Why?" he asks, sounding genuinely curious. "What good's it do? They're all wrong."
"They are?"
"Well, yeah. Here we are, it's pretty much the end of the world, and the gods didn't do anything, did they? You said it was Kefka."
"But all those things about... about sealed forces and demons, and the land changing? That merchant said something about sealed monsters from a thousand years ago. I mean, one will say one thing and another says the opposite—"
He shrugs. "I'm not going to worry about it. Even a stopped clock's right twice a day, right?"
"Maybe Kefka read them," she says, only half to herself, but he's already on his way out of the curtained-off nook they call her room.
None of them say anything about people living their lives while the rivers run with blood and gods battle demons. They say that people die - three of every four, two of every three, the fourth part of the world - but until the very end of "End Times" it sounded like someone was still alive. They all make it sound as though there's a happy ending, things getting better; Terra doesn't believe in gods and she knows Kefka did this, nothing else, but it's still some comfort. Their travelers all spoke as if everything was over, but they never seemed to care that they were still alive. Calling it the end of the world makes it sound as though the world itself is gone, but the world's not gone, and none of Terra's books even say it will be.
None of them say the same things. Duane's right, she thinks, it's foolish to take them seriously, but some part of her can't shake the idea that things fit. That Kefka might have arranged it that way.
"The Four Gods" says that death is a fearsome warrior in bone-white armor and he rides in a crimson chariot pulled by skeletal creatures - unnatural beasts with six legs and two heads, and flame where living creatures would have eyes, it says, and they trample people beneath their feet. But "The Book of the Sun" says that death is a beautiful woman with pale skin and dark eyes, black wings and red robes, and that she'll walk the land in the last days attended by fire and shaking of the earth.
Kefka wore red every time she remembers seeing him, and her first memories of him were all of flames. He dressed her in red, too, but she's free, and at least part of the world is still here.
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Character: Terra
Length: 1285 words
Notes: For theme #1, Prophecy, at 30_fantasies
Terra measures out her scant free time in pages and paragraphs, snatching chances to read whenever she can - not for pleasure or even escape, but because it's the only way she'll ever know more about the lost world she can't remember.
After they buried the dead of Mobliz, they looted the houses, gingerly, speaking to each other in whispers about the very good reasons they had for doing it. They started at the edges of town where the water was rising, brought boxes and bundles into the center of town and went back for more, losing their cautiousness and guilt as the time passed. Now all the books that survived the destruction from the blasts, and the fires they caused, and the rising waters, sit in stacks in the house they live beneath.
She knows more than she realized. The fairytales and fables the children want at bedtime, or whenever they see her reading for herself, were familiar the first time she read them, though if asked before she'd have said she'd never heard of the stories. Some of the plays and poems have the ring of lost memory, too, and even though it's not the same as recovering her own past, she treasures whatever she can recover.
The religious books have the ring of familiarity in a different way. The cloudless sky will be dark at midday and the sun will grow cold, the seed will not yield and the sea will cover the land, one called "The Book of the Sun" says, in a chapter or section called "End Times." And in another, just called "The Four Gods," a section titled "The Last Days" says dragons will climb from the depths of the earth and summon storms and flame, and the sea will roll back from the depths and the mountains will crumble.
Terra doesn't know anything about mountains crumbling, and doesn't know how she'd find out. They've had a few visitors, lost travelers and one merchant, but only a handful over the months, and their arrivals are unpredictable. None have stayed. Some of them have mentioned that the Serpent Trench, that used to be under the ocean, is dry land now, a long strip of desert that links them to Nikeah. She and Duane and Katarin talked about trying to travel there, once, but nothing came of it.
"Phunbaba's not a dragon, is he?" she asks Katarin once, as they're both bent over their washboards. "I mean, he's green and kind of scaly, but... Isn't he from a fairy tale?" It's not one she's read, but there's a half-formed memory she can't pin down.
"Yeah, he's from a fairytale. An ogre," the younger girl says, and sits back to rub her neck. "I hid all the books I could find that had that story. It gave me nightmares when I was little, so imagine how much worse it'd be now."
Terra nods, and doesn't explain, but her imagination's caught, now, and she goes looking for more from the same corner. "The Visions of Ranulf" says the world will end when there's a winter that lasts thirty years and a hero will have to find the sun again, which seems to be stretching the definition of the world ending but at least has comfortingly little to do with the present. "Millennia" seems to be a book of poems that don't rhyme, but the title page calls it "the foretellings of the fourth High Priestess of the northern abbey of Figaro," and so she holds onto it just for the name she knows. When she reads it, she finds at the end there are more mentions of dragons and bones and fire. Poems on end speak of battles, of a man born in another world with the powers of the gods, a long winter and dead gods being reborn. It doesn't make any sense, but she sleeps restlessly and has bad dreams.
"The Book of the Sun" says that demons long laid to rest will awaken and sealed forces will be found again. It also describes war between cities she's never heard of, and the gods, who hadn't appeared at all before, suddenly band together and a tower falls and the land is renewed, now that the unrighteous have perished and the false king has been defeated. She wonders if that could be Kefka, but she doesn't like that thing about the unrighteous, not when she doesn't know what's happened to all her friends, not when what's left of Mobliz is half graveyard and she's reading a book she stole from the home of someone she buried. "The Book of the Sun," though, seems to end with everyone dying, the stars falling from the sky and the moon falling into the sea. And then it says the gods will remake the world and raise six hundred from their graves, but there's nothing about fighting, nothing about fixing the world they have.
"You aren't turning into a religious fanatic, are you?" Duane asks, when he finds the books by her bed.
"I'm just reading the parts about the end of the world," she says.
"Why?" he asks, sounding genuinely curious. "What good's it do? They're all wrong."
"They are?"
"Well, yeah. Here we are, it's pretty much the end of the world, and the gods didn't do anything, did they? You said it was Kefka."
"But all those things about... about sealed forces and demons, and the land changing? That merchant said something about sealed monsters from a thousand years ago. I mean, one will say one thing and another says the opposite—"
He shrugs. "I'm not going to worry about it. Even a stopped clock's right twice a day, right?"
"Maybe Kefka read them," she says, only half to herself, but he's already on his way out of the curtained-off nook they call her room.
None of them say anything about people living their lives while the rivers run with blood and gods battle demons. They say that people die - three of every four, two of every three, the fourth part of the world - but until the very end of "End Times" it sounded like someone was still alive. They all make it sound as though there's a happy ending, things getting better; Terra doesn't believe in gods and she knows Kefka did this, nothing else, but it's still some comfort. Their travelers all spoke as if everything was over, but they never seemed to care that they were still alive. Calling it the end of the world makes it sound as though the world itself is gone, but the world's not gone, and none of Terra's books even say it will be.
None of them say the same things. Duane's right, she thinks, it's foolish to take them seriously, but some part of her can't shake the idea that things fit. That Kefka might have arranged it that way.
"The Four Gods" says that death is a fearsome warrior in bone-white armor and he rides in a crimson chariot pulled by skeletal creatures - unnatural beasts with six legs and two heads, and flame where living creatures would have eyes, it says, and they trample people beneath their feet. But "The Book of the Sun" says that death is a beautiful woman with pale skin and dark eyes, black wings and red robes, and that she'll walk the land in the last days attended by fire and shaking of the earth.
Kefka wore red every time she remembers seeing him, and her first memories of him were all of flames. He dressed her in red, too, but she's free, and at least part of the world is still here.
