FFVI - Celes
Sep. 6th, 2010 02:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lirillithTitle: Uncharted
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Character: Celes Chere
Length: 943 words
Summary: After Kefka's cataclysm, the whole world is uncharted territory.
Warnings: None
****
Nothing looks the same now.
It's not just the landscape, not just the dry, brown stubble where there used to be fertile farmland, desolate plains or mountains jagged as a row of broken teeth where there used to be gentle hills. She used to know this area like she knew the feel of an ice spell in her hands; she knew stands of trees where guerillas placed themselves, farmsteads where they were always likely to be attacked and others where they were safer. She'd been over maps and the countryside itself, trying, over and over, to find a route that would be more or less safe for the supply convoy, because they couldn't spare enough magitek troops to guard it adequately - they could barely spare any infantry.
The stands of trees are gone. She found one spot, a former orchard, where the remains lay, flattened to the ground as if by a giant fist. The trunks and stumps were splintered around the outer edges, but most had simply been uprooted. The branches had all been stripped, but if anyone had thought to chop up the trunks themselves, they hadn't had the chance yet. The houses are collapsed or simply vanished - she found no trace of farmhouse or outbuildings or even fences near that blasted orchard - and the destruction is relatively fresh, more recent than the traces she'd seen as she left Albrook for Tzen in her Imperial days. Furniture is still in place, in some of the houses, though others show signs of looting. She hasn't found much by way of unspoiled supplies, which suggests that people fled rather than being struck down magically. That's good, she supposes, but she's growing tired of wolf meat and the hardtack she brought from the island.
And when she gets to Albrook, it's stranger still. Some of the buildings with freshly-boarded windows also have more weathered patches on their roofs, or scorch marks from the invasion on brick or stone walls. The market square is still crowded, though the people are unsmiling, tired-looking, and the talk is subdued. She doesn't see much haggling, and doesn't try it. No one seems to recognize her, to her relief; in Tzen they'd know her better, but even there, they always saw the uniform more than the woman wearing it, and now she's dirty, tired, dressed in a man's ragged, baggy clothing, her hair in a messy braid. She listens patiently as the mapmakers talk of their travels, hoping they'll mention someone who sounds familiar, and buys five different maps, thinking ruefully that Locke would be thrilled. She takes them to a pub, where she manages to find a table, wipes it clean with her hands, and spreads the maps out, one after another, weighting them down with the pepper grinder and someone's empty coffee mug.
None of the maps match. None of them look anything like the older map she'd found in Cid's chest, the one from before Vector's expansion started, when the southern continent was a patchwork of colors, five or six shoulder-to-shoulder, Vector itself a little blob of red in the middle, ringed with mountains. It's not the national boundaries - the new maps don't even have those - it's the change in shoreline and mountains, the differences of opinion about where, precisely, Maranda went, about whether or not Narshe still exists. Figaro palace seems to be gone, on all the maps, and she thinks of the way Sabin laughed when she asked for more water after pretending the rice wasn't too spicy for her, of the maids, giggling, gossiping about Edgar to her as if she was just a normal girl and not forbidding or cold in the least, of Edgar's pride as he took them down into the engine room.
The brothers might well still be alive - they weren't in the castle, at least - but the maids and the guards and the shopkeepers who tried to give Edgar things for free, they would all have needed to escape, and they might not have made it. If the destruction was Kefka's personal pique, there might have been no time. The engines Edgar was so proud of would be under the sand now, ruined. She thinks again of Cid, of a small group on that island going, one after the other, to the cliffs, and again it's too large to take in. She looks up, grateful, as the barman brings her the mug of weak beer with her meal.
"Most order something stronger," he says.
"I'd been isolated," she said. "I hadn't realized till now how much things had changed. I may order something stronger, though it's a bit early yet."
"Who worries about that anymore?" he asks, with a wry half-smile. "We've still got some Gunpowder Stout from Narshe."
"It's still goood?" she asks, hoping that's not a foolish question. She'd never liked to drink much, just because she hadn't liked giving up that much control, and knows little about it.
"It was yesterday," he replies, and she says "A pint of that, then." He nods, turns to go, but then turns back, and taps a finger on one of the maps.
"Have you tried Ashlock on Stationer's Lane?" he asks. "He's personally been as far as Kohlingen - my wife's brother can vouch for him. His maps of the north are better than most. A lot of them just get secondhand word from merchants and wing it from there."
"I was beginning to suspect that," she says. "Thank you." He nods, turns away again, and she sips her beer and wonders how to find her friends in this altered world.
****
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Character: Celes Chere
Length: 943 words
Summary: After Kefka's cataclysm, the whole world is uncharted territory.
Warnings: None
****
Nothing looks the same now.
It's not just the landscape, not just the dry, brown stubble where there used to be fertile farmland, desolate plains or mountains jagged as a row of broken teeth where there used to be gentle hills. She used to know this area like she knew the feel of an ice spell in her hands; she knew stands of trees where guerillas placed themselves, farmsteads where they were always likely to be attacked and others where they were safer. She'd been over maps and the countryside itself, trying, over and over, to find a route that would be more or less safe for the supply convoy, because they couldn't spare enough magitek troops to guard it adequately - they could barely spare any infantry.
The stands of trees are gone. She found one spot, a former orchard, where the remains lay, flattened to the ground as if by a giant fist. The trunks and stumps were splintered around the outer edges, but most had simply been uprooted. The branches had all been stripped, but if anyone had thought to chop up the trunks themselves, they hadn't had the chance yet. The houses are collapsed or simply vanished - she found no trace of farmhouse or outbuildings or even fences near that blasted orchard - and the destruction is relatively fresh, more recent than the traces she'd seen as she left Albrook for Tzen in her Imperial days. Furniture is still in place, in some of the houses, though others show signs of looting. She hasn't found much by way of unspoiled supplies, which suggests that people fled rather than being struck down magically. That's good, she supposes, but she's growing tired of wolf meat and the hardtack she brought from the island.
And when she gets to Albrook, it's stranger still. Some of the buildings with freshly-boarded windows also have more weathered patches on their roofs, or scorch marks from the invasion on brick or stone walls. The market square is still crowded, though the people are unsmiling, tired-looking, and the talk is subdued. She doesn't see much haggling, and doesn't try it. No one seems to recognize her, to her relief; in Tzen they'd know her better, but even there, they always saw the uniform more than the woman wearing it, and now she's dirty, tired, dressed in a man's ragged, baggy clothing, her hair in a messy braid. She listens patiently as the mapmakers talk of their travels, hoping they'll mention someone who sounds familiar, and buys five different maps, thinking ruefully that Locke would be thrilled. She takes them to a pub, where she manages to find a table, wipes it clean with her hands, and spreads the maps out, one after another, weighting them down with the pepper grinder and someone's empty coffee mug.
None of the maps match. None of them look anything like the older map she'd found in Cid's chest, the one from before Vector's expansion started, when the southern continent was a patchwork of colors, five or six shoulder-to-shoulder, Vector itself a little blob of red in the middle, ringed with mountains. It's not the national boundaries - the new maps don't even have those - it's the change in shoreline and mountains, the differences of opinion about where, precisely, Maranda went, about whether or not Narshe still exists. Figaro palace seems to be gone, on all the maps, and she thinks of the way Sabin laughed when she asked for more water after pretending the rice wasn't too spicy for her, of the maids, giggling, gossiping about Edgar to her as if she was just a normal girl and not forbidding or cold in the least, of Edgar's pride as he took them down into the engine room.
The brothers might well still be alive - they weren't in the castle, at least - but the maids and the guards and the shopkeepers who tried to give Edgar things for free, they would all have needed to escape, and they might not have made it. If the destruction was Kefka's personal pique, there might have been no time. The engines Edgar was so proud of would be under the sand now, ruined. She thinks again of Cid, of a small group on that island going, one after the other, to the cliffs, and again it's too large to take in. She looks up, grateful, as the barman brings her the mug of weak beer with her meal.
"Most order something stronger," he says.
"I'd been isolated," she said. "I hadn't realized till now how much things had changed. I may order something stronger, though it's a bit early yet."
"Who worries about that anymore?" he asks, with a wry half-smile. "We've still got some Gunpowder Stout from Narshe."
"It's still goood?" she asks, hoping that's not a foolish question. She'd never liked to drink much, just because she hadn't liked giving up that much control, and knows little about it.
"It was yesterday," he replies, and she says "A pint of that, then." He nods, turns to go, but then turns back, and taps a finger on one of the maps.
"Have you tried Ashlock on Stationer's Lane?" he asks. "He's personally been as far as Kohlingen - my wife's brother can vouch for him. His maps of the north are better than most. A lot of them just get secondhand word from merchants and wing it from there."
"I was beginning to suspect that," she says. "Thank you." He nods, turns away again, and she sips her beer and wonders how to find her friends in this altered world.
****
