Final Fantasy VI - Daemon AU

[lirillith]

Title: Even Here We Are
Fandom:  Final Fantasy VI
Characters: Ensemble
Word count:  ~5k words
Rating: PG
Warnings:  Mentions of violence
Summary:  A handful of vignettes from an alternate version of FF6's world in which everyone has a daemon, an external embodiment of the soul.
Notes:  This is a Daemon AU, essentially a fusion using the concept of daemons - embodied, external souls - from Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Everyone has a daemon, which in childhood can take any form but settles, generally around the time the child reaches puberty, into a fixed form that in some way reflects the individual's personality and identity.  Additional notes on Tumblr.

Magpies are highly intelligent birds with a reputation for collecting shiny things that may or may not belong to them.

    They’d been traveling for nearly a full day when Locke realized that Terra’s daemon hadn’t settled.  When he’d found her in the cave, it had been a small, rabbit-like creature, its ears poking out of the bag at her side, and it had stayed that way, hidden in the satchel, for their first day of travel.  But when they stopped to make camp, it emerged from the bag, shook its ears, and changed into a wolf-like dog — like the dogs the Narshe guards used, Locke realized — and came over to rub up against her side as she helped him set up the tent. 
   
    She could be younger than she seemed, he thought, but she was definitely into her teens; that should be old enough for it to settle.  Was it her amnesia that caused it, he wondered?  Not that she’d have an answer, either.  When they were done with the task at hand, she settled onto the ground and wrapped her arms around the daemon.  Sarah came down from the branch just overhead to rest on his shoulder, and he stroked her head as he asked, “What’s his name?”
   
    “Casimir,” she said.  The daemon licked her face.  “I know I’m old enough he should be settled,” she said.  “I know it’s not normal.”
   
    “Who’s to say what’s normal?” he said.  “I’ve heard some actors’ daemons can keep changing all their lives, to fit their roles.  Mine settled when I was ten, and that seemed weird to everyone, too.  It was years earlier than any of the other kids.”  She lifted her head from Casimir’s fur, looking at the bird on his shoulder.  “Sarah here is a magpie,” he explained, because for once someone wouldn’t assume anything about him from that.  Sarah hopped off his shoulder to his hand, and took off from there to land on Casimir’s head.  Terra examined her closely, but, he noticed, never touched her, even shying back when Sarah turned her head abruptly.  Some things went deeper than memory, he supposed. 

Edgar’s daemon, Cecilia, is a blonde capuchin monkey, with a prehensile tail that leaves her hands free to help him tinker.

    “…brother?” Locke repeated, incredulous.  “You’re his twin brother?”

    “You blended right in with all the bears,” Terra said, in that tone of hers that was either genuinely innocent or perfectly deadpan.

    Sabin and Edgar and their daemons all gave up trying to talk over each other, though Edgar’s monkey daemon Cecilia remained perched on the pale brown shoulders of Sabin’s bear.  “You thought I was a bear?” Sabin said.

    “It’s a compliment,” his daemon said, in her surprisingly sweet, deep voice, and Sabin laughed. 

    “That’s how I’m taking it,” he said, but his laughter faded quickly enough.  “Anyway, Edgar, what are you doing here?”

    “We’re heading for the Sabre Mountains,” Edgar said.  Locke glanced over at Casimir, who’d taken on the form of a surprisingly dainty-looking bear with a slight greenish cast to his fur. 

    “To join the Returners?” Sabin asked.  “So the wheels are finally turning…” 

    “A means of striking back has presented itself,” Edgar said.  Terra didn’t seem to notice the way he glanced at her, but Locke did, and not for the first time, he worried about what meeting Banon would mean for Terra.  It was one thing to keep her safe from the Empire, another to treat her as a ‘means,’ as a weapon.  “There will be no more playing lapdog to the Empire.  I’m through with that act.”

    “Think you could use a couple of bears?” Sabin asked, and Locke wasn’t too worried about Terra to miss the way Edgar’s face lit up.

Sabin’s daemon is a blonde bear named Amalia. 

    As they made camp that evening — they were finally on the descent — Locke gave in to his curiosity.  “A bear and a monkey, for a pair of twins born in the desert,” he said.  “I know we’re all just limited by our imaginations, but it’s still a little unusual, right?”

    Edgar shrugged.  “There actually are some bears in the desert, but our grandfather kept a menagerie in the castle,” he said.  “All the animals have died or been sold by now, and we repurposed that space, but it was fully populated when we were young.  Plenty of exposure to animals we’d only have seen in books otherwise, and I always loved the monkeys.”

    “Truth is, Amalia always used to be desert creatures when I was a kid,” Sabin said.  “Foxes, wildcats… kangaroo rats when I needed her to hide.  Those damn leaf rabbits when I wanted something scary.  Lizards…”

    “Lizards!” Edgar exclaimed.  “I really thought she’d settled as a Figaro lizard by the time you left.” 

    “I thought so too, but nope,” Sabin said easily.  “Guess I was a late bloomer.  To make up for you.”

    Edgar laughed, and Locke glanced Terra’s way, hoping she’d heard.  “You were, what, sixteen?” he asked.  It was a little late, sure, but not so much you’d think there was something wrong.  He wanted her to know that without coming right out and saying it, like he’d had to do earlier when they’d found out about her magic. 

    “Yeah, just turned sixteen.  Then we headed up here, and all of a sudden she was shifting on me again.”

Celes’s daemon is a snow leopard named Florian.  Snow leopards are solitary creatures, adapted to living in cold, mountainous climates like Vector’s, and generally non-aggressive.

    Locke watched the guard nod, jerk awake, and get up and walk around the room.  His dog daemon, meanwhile, turned in a circle, once, a second time, a third, and then settled down, head on its paws; the guard chuckled, made a comment under his breath, and finally settled back into the chair and tipped his head back against the wall.
   
    Locke waited, then busied himself about jimmying the the lock on the cell door.  No sooner did he enter the room than her snow leopard daemon was on alert, bristling, a low rumble threatening to turn into a growl — or worse, a roar — at any moment.  Locke made a frantic shushing gesture, looking from the daemon to the sleeping guard in the chair and his dog daemon curled at his feet.  The daemon didn’t go silent, but didn’t escalate, either; as Locke approached the woman, the daemon paced back and forth in his pen.  Sarah stayed with Locke, perching on his back as he knelt at the woman’s side, thief’s tools in hand.  The locks on her cuffs were simple enough. 
   
    Once she was free, he took her right hand, trying to rub some life back into it.  She let him for a time, then pulled it free, flexing her fingers experimentally, and he started on the other.  With that done, he went to the daemon’s pen, working nervously at the lock on its door; he wasn’t entirely sure the big guy wouldn’t tear his throat out when freed, but General Celes was in no shape to pick the lock herself. 
   
    When he opened the door, the big cat ignored him completely, bounding out of the cage and straight over to the woman on the floor.  He butted his head up against her chest, insinuated himself between her back and the wall, and then took to licking one of her chafed wrists.  She murmured something Locke couldn’t make out, and the daemon rumbled a reply.  Locke looked away from their reunion, focusing instead on the sleeping guard and his daemon; no indication of wakefulness from either of them. 
   
    “And you are?” she asked him, her voice hoarse but strong. 
   
    “I’m with the Returners.  Name’s Locke.” 
   
    “The Returners?”  She coughed, then continued, ruefully, “I used to be an Imperial general.  Now I’m just…”  Her daemon switched his tail against her leg, silencing her. 
   
    Locke took a step towards her, watching her daemon for a reaction; although he stayed watchful, he didn’t raise any objections.  Locke held out his hand.  “Let’s get going,” he said. 
   
    “You’d take me with you?”  She reached for his hand, then pulled hers back; she pushed herself up, using the floor and her daemon’s shoulders for support, and he could see from her face that the process was painful as well as slow.  “No,” she said.  “I can barely stand.”  Her daemon moved underneath her hand, large enough to help support her as she took one faltering step, then another.  “I’d only slow you down.  Better to stay here and face my execution with some dignity.” 
   
    Locke shook his head.  “You’ll be fine!  I’ll protect you.”  Sarah nipped at his ear, as if to caution him, just as she had in Narshe when Terra had spoken of amnesia, but he ignored her.  It wasn’t like he could leave her here to die.  “I’ve got potions, bandages — we’ll have you patched up in no time.  Once you’ve shaken out some of the stiffness I bet you’ll be fine.  Let’s go.” 
   
    Her fingers disappeared into the ruff of fur at her daemon’s shoulders.  He leaned heavily against her legs, which must have been more of a comforting gesture than anything; it didn’t seem to unbalance her.  She considered him for a moment, which meant he had nothing to do but look at her face, too; dirty, smeared with sweat and what had to be dried blood, and one of her eyes was starting to swell shut, but she didn’t look afraid, of him or the death she wanted to wait for.  She was about his height, slender and wiry, and the one eye he could see was blue.  Her hair was tangled and matted, but it had to reach nearly the small of her back, and it was blonde.

    There was nothing about her except the color of her eyes and the feline at her side to remind him of Rachel, but he was thinking of her all the same. 

    Nothing on her face gave away whatever decision she’d reached, but she nodded briskly, and then she began to walk, slowly, leaning on the daemon.  “Check the guard’s pockets,” she said, as she passed him.

Cyan’s daemon, Callista, is a Tosa Inu, a Japanese fighting dog breed.  The core traits of a Tosa Inu are listed as patience, composure, boldness, and courage.  

    “No name,” the boy said, scratching the daemon’s fox head behind the ears. 
   
    Sabin saw Amalia and Cyan’s dog daemon Callista exchange looks.  “We can’t have that,” the dog said, in her motherly voice.  “Shall we help you pick one out?”

    The fox brightened, sitting up, ears perked.  Sabin met Cyan’s eye; the older man looked sad, and he nodded in acknowledgment.  The boy might simply never have learned his own name, but if his daemon had no name, he’d been orphaned or abandoned so young his parents’ daemons hadn’t had the time or inclination to name her.  Sabin had an image of a newborn daemon making itself into something bigger, the most ferocious thing it could, defending a human infant from any threats.  But eventually the boy must have been saved and nursed by a mother animal of some kind, if he’d been left on his own when he was that tiny. 

    “Go for it,” Sabin said, his voice rough.  “Everybody ought to have a name.” 

    “We’ll want some privacy to confer,” Cyan’s daemon said, rising to her feet and walking some distance away, out of the firelight’s radius.  Amalia got up and lumbered after her, the little fox daemon running in circles around her.  Gau’s daemon had been taking that form a lot lately; Sabin wasn’t sure if she was close to settling or just sticking with what worked for now.  She had changed into an otter earlier that day, when they’d taken a dip in a stream, though. 

    “I need name?” Gau asked.

    “Thou hast one, lad,” Cyan said.  “It matters not who gave it.”

    “You like Gau, right?  That’s fine by me,” Sabin said.  “You picked out your own.  Daemons just do things a little differently.”

    Gau nodded, drawing some kind of pattern in the dirt with the stick he’d been holding.  “She older.  Older me.  No give her name.”

    She was the same age, no older, but Sabin knew what the kid meant.  You couldn’t give your daemon a name, though he could see it going the other way around.  “Did she call you Gau?”

    Gau shook his head, nodded, shook his head again.  “She help me… learn sounds?”

    She’d helped him learn to talk?  “Interesting,” Cyan said, voicing Sabin’s own thoughts. 

    “What if… name hard?” Gau asked.  “Hard sounds.”

    “Hard sounds?” Sabin repeated.

    “Like Mr. Thou’s bear.”

    “What, like… oh, you can’t say Amalia’s name.”

    “Hard sounds,” Gau repeated, nodding in confirmation.

    “Worry not,” Cyan said.  “I have no doubt the two ladies will choose a fitting name for thy own comfort and thy spirit’s.”  Oops, Sabin thought.  He’d forgotten Domans thought the word ‘daemon’ was a little rude. 

Gau’s daemon is depicted as a fennec fox here, but she remains unsettled for the duration of the game, typically shifting to match the setting or activity (an arctic fox in Narshe, a fennec fox in Figaro, an otter at the seashore or by a river.) Initially nameless since daemons are named by the parents’ daemons, she’s dubbed Hannah by Amalia and Callista.

 

    Locke hadn’t really intended to bring anyone.  He’d spoken of Rachel, once, to Terra, so indirectly the story was barely recognizable.  Edgar knew the whole story, but had never seen Rachel himself.  But they were in Kohlingen, the eyewitnesses were all very clear about the direction Terra had taken from here, and it was too late in the day to set out after her.  That left very little to do except lounging around the inn, and when Locke wanted to take off on “personal business,” he was ready to stonewall Sabin, and he knew Edgar would tactfully leave him to it, but Celes was curious, and he wasn’t able to stonewall her.  Not with Terra missing, off hell-knows-where, alone and scared; not with Celes here in Kohlingen, and the buildings all rebuilt here, and Rachel asleep at the other end of town.  “Come along if you want,” he said, so she did, and only Edgar’s hand on Sabin’s shoulder kept him from coming along too.

    He barely spoke on the way to her house.  Her father and brother had been conscripted in the invasion, and when he came back to town, her mother had boarded up most of the house, ready to leave to follow them if she could.  The old alchemist, Rachel’s uncle, had his own ideas about how much of the family was left.  At least one person hasn’t given up on her, she’d said when he sought her out.  How did she mean that, he wondered, had she given up on her own daughter?  But he’d caused them all enough pain, so he hadn’t said it then, and he didn’t say it now, as he unlocked the door — one of the few locks for which he used a key — and held it open for Celes. 

    He tried to keep it to facts.  He’d shown her around the caves and ruins, everything he found.  The bridge had given way.  She’d seen it first, and pushed him to safety.  She lost her memory.  They’d all blamed him, including himself; everyone except Rachel, who didn’t remember, but asked him to stop upsetting her parents.  So he’d left, until he heard about the invasion, heard she’d been hurt, and came back.  A friend of theirs had been in the guerilla camp up in the mountains, and told him the rest, about her memory returning, about her message for him just before she lapsed into her coma.

    “I’m gonna go visit her,” he said.  There wasn’t really much to see in the house — dust, some furniture covered in sheets, a family portrait still hanging on the wall — but it had been a place to take her so he could explain.  “Up to you if you want to come along.”

    She shrugged, but she kept following him as he turned down the road toward Malachi’s house, so that must be his answer.  Hell, he’d be curious too, under the circumstances.  He let himself in at the unlocked door, leading Celes in amongst the stacks of dusty books, papers and clutter.  They had to duck bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling, dusty and pungent; sometimes the dust made one or both of them sneeze, but it was better than the cat-piss smell of the upstairs otherwise.  Malachi’s daemon was a leaf-rabbit, but he loved cats, and collected them like books.  Locke was surprised neither of them had stepped on a tail yet.

    At the stairs, Locke drew in a deep breath for courage despite the stench, and opened the door.  Celes nearly pushed him forward in her own haste to get out of the room, and he took a couple of steps in a rush.  He could hear Malachi laughing at his hurry.  “Just can’t wait to see her, eh, loverboy?”

    “Shut it,” Locke said, half under his breath.  Not like Malachi paid any heed to anything he said anyway.  This room was kept almost clear, never visited by the cats, and the only things drying in here were bundles of roses.  He made his way down the rest of the stairs at his own pace, and he could hear Celes’s much slower steps behind him.  She was in no rush now, despite her curiosity; she slowed to a stop as he reached the bottom of the flight, when she must have been at around the middle, just far enough down to see. 

    Rachel lay on a bed in the middle of the room, atop the covers, her hands folded on her chest like a dead woman; but she was perfectly preserved, her cheeks still rosy, and if not for her daemon she’d have seemed to be asleep.  Dorian lay curled at her feet at the end of the bed, and while you could still see his beautiful markings, he was insubstantial, translucent, so clear now you could see the floorboards through him.  Locke could never decide if it was getting worse or staying the same, because in his memory the ocelot was still as solid and vibrant and alive as Rachel herself; not a transparent ghost in an old man’s basement, trying to fade away and not allowed to because of guilt and madness and sheer stubborn determination.

Rachel’s daemon was an ocelot named Dorian. He’s apparently lifeless (he doesn’t breathe and has no heartbeat) and nearly transparent, but still present, since Rachel’s semi-death.

*


    “I’m a general, not some… some opera floozy!  I’m not trained, I’ve never sung on stage—”

    “But you can sing,” Locke said.

    “Everyone will see that my daemon is different from hers!”

    “There’s actually a solution to that,” the Impresario said.  “Haven’t any of you ever been to a play?”

Maria’s daemon is a lyrebird; in addition to striking male plumage and a musical theme in their name, they’re also excellent mimics.

    Apparently, sometimes daemons would serve as actors as well.  Locke’s half-remembered stories of actors with unsettled daemons weren’t wrong, but that was rare.  What was more common was that, if the play called for a specific type of daemon — a bird for Cornelia in I Want to Be Your Canary,  a wolf for the warrior queen in Tale of the Sun — and an actor with the appropriate daemon couldn’t be cast, which was most common in opera, the actor’s daemon would stay offstage and someone else’s daemon would play the role.  Maria’s lyrebird daemon would simply appear onstage with Celes, echoing her at the appropriate moments, while Florian and Maria remained just offstage.  Maria seemed no happier about this than Florian was, and Celes half-sympathized.  Maria was a performer; she wanted her time on the stage, the applause and the opportunity to perform, just as strongly as Celes didn’t want it.  She had to resent having a half-trained interloper take the stage that was hers by right, potentially damaging her reputation in the process.

Setzer’s daemon, Ersilia, is a gyrfalcon; one of the fastest birds, but not quite as fast as the peregrine falcon, the form taken by Daryl's daemon.

    The abduction had dissolved into a fiasco, and Celes wasn’t entirely sure why Setzer had bothered continuing his ascent with her — and her large, angry, growling daemon, who’d pounced on him the moment he alighted onstage — into the rafters.  “You’re not Maria,” he said, when they both had their feet on one of the beams.  “Come with me.”

    She didn’t argue, since that was the point of this whole exercise, but she wished she had time to get to the dirk she’d strapped to her calf.  He could change his mind at any moment, and she didn’t know where they were going; it proved to be a small passageway leading out onto the slate roof of the opera house, but it could have been a sheer drop.  “If you’d hold your daemon, madame?” he asked drily, reaching out for the grappling hook dangling from his airship. 

    So she held Florian in the most ungainly way possible, her arms looped under his forelegs, and this Setzer held her around the waist, and his daemon wheeled around them, utterly silent and still giving the impression of poorly-concealed mirth.  She didn’t just feel that this bird was laughing at her; he was pretending not to and failing in the pretense. 

    “It would have been much easier with a bird, of course,” he said, once they were inside the airship, the hatch shut beneath them.  Florian was grooming himself, like a giant housecat restoring his injured dignity, and the gambler’s falcon perched on his wrist.  “You’ll have to explain all of this to me later, but for now, I have other business.  Come.”

    She had to memorize the path, figure out where they were in relation to the ship’s workings, so she could get the others inside.  Whatever his “other business” was — that distraction Edgar and Sabin had been planning, which had sounded infinitely more interesting than her libretto — it was purely a diversion, and the shorter its duration the better, since they hadn’t had any inkling of the ship’s defenses. 

Leo’s daemon, Manon, is a lioness, fittingly enough.  Unlike Celes’s snow leopard, lions are social creatures.

Shadow’s daemon, Delilah, is an all-black snake.

    What Terra had gained from the magicite — from what was left of her father — wasn’t as coherent as a story, though she tried to shape it into that when she spoke to the others about it.  What she’d received was memories; carefully chosen and presented to her, but memories.  She now knew her parents’ faces, her father’s caracal daemon Romilda and her mother’s fluffy orange cat, Dorian.  She remembered the sight of herself as a baby, born with blue eyes and brown hair that both soon turned green; she remembered her mother yelling for him the first time that Terra had shifted to her Esper form in her cradle, just before she started crying.  She’d done that a lot when she was hungry, it seemed.  Casimir had always been at her side, a kitten, a caracal cub, a baby bird whenever she was hungry; he started exploring as a butterfly, a kitten, or a baby dragon, when she was still figuring out how to lift her head. 

    Her father’s memories rocked her to sleep every night, except when they didn’t, and she rolled out of bed with the ship’s rocking to pull on a coat over her pajamas and walk onto the deck.  She nearly retreated when she saw someone else on deck — it was stupid of her not to expect it, of course there’d be people around, doing things that needed to be done on a ship — but the form turned, and she heard General Leo’s voice asking, “You couldn’t sleep?”

    She stepped out onto the deck, shivering a little as the breeze hit her face.  “I hear your emotions have returned,” he said.  She wondered if he’d known her, before, or simply known about her, and she wondered how much he’d known. 

    ”It’s strange, isn’t it?” she said, letting Casimir down to touch noses with Leo’s lioness daemon.  “The Empire used me, controlled my very thoughts… and now here I am, cooperating with the same people.”

    ”People are people,” he said.  “Not everyone in the Empire is like Kefka.”

    She remembered Banon, his own lioness daemon roaring at Casimir while he talked about the fifty dead soldiers she didn’t want to believe she’d really killed, remembered Locke’s hands squeezing her shoulders while Banon, standing too close to her, told her the story of Pandora, his voice low and intense, his eyes blazing.  “What about you?” she asked. 

    ”I knew that you were half esper,” he said.  “It wasn’t widely known, but I knew.”  His lioness flopped down on the deck, and Casimir sat next to her, grooming his whiskers like a real cat.   “And I knew you were being made to suffer through horrible experiments, even before the Slave Crown.  Yet I did nothing.  I’m no better than Kefka.”

    It should mean something to her, but all she could think was another puzzle piece, one that fit in between birth and slave crown.  She didn’t remember them; they might as well have happened to someone else.  Maybe never remembering was best.  “My daemon… what forms did he take before?  Do you know?”

    ”He wasn’t settled.  He spent a lot of time as a rabbit or a mouse, and sometimes a dog — the animals he saw in the lab.”  His voice sounded heavy, as much as it had when he said he was no better than Kefka, and it occurred to her that he probably wasn’t enjoying this conversation.  That was a shame, since he seemed like a decent person, but if he was right and he wasn’t any better than Kefka, she supposed he deserved it, too.  His lioness daemon nosed at Casimir, then licked him like he was a cub.

    ”So it wasn’t like he… settled, and then changed back, after the Slave Crown.”  She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but she’d crossed her arms, folding them over her body, as if to hold part of herself in.

    Leo shook his head. 

    ”Is it true daemons settle when you fall in love?” she asked.

    ”For some people, I’m sure that’s true.  For others… no.  It’s not universal.”

    ”So even if I can’t love…” 

    ”Of course you can love!” he said.  “Don’t ever doubt that.”

    ”But I’m not… human.”  She watched his daemon grooming Casimir, smoothing the hair on his head back.  “I guess if an Esper and a human can love each other…”

    ”Exactly,” he said.  He’d come a few steps closer to her, and he lifted his hand as if he might reach out to her, then let it fall.  “You’re just young.  Someday you’ll know.  I’m sure of it.”

    Their eyes held for a moment in the moonlight, the first she’d been able to see his since she came out on deck, then his gaze dropped.  “It’s late,” he said.  “We should both get some sleep.”  She nodded, and he said, briskly, “Manon, come.”  His lioness got up and followed him belowdecks, as Cas sprang back up to perch on her crossed arms until she could rearrange them to hold him.

    She stood there a moment, listening to the engines, the waves, and Casimir’s purring, wondering what he’d been about to say or do, and why he’d suddenly noticed the time, but there was some other sound, maybe a footstep, that roused her from her thoughts.  “Who’s there?” she asked.

    Shadow was a darker shape in the darkness; it was true what Locke had said, that all-black clothing didn’t blend in.  But he also had the blue and red and gold on his clothes; true stealth wasn’t his goal.  He stepped out of the shadow by the stairwell.  “I thought I’d sleep under the stars,” he said, with that quiet, ordinary voice that sounded so odd coming from his shrouded form.  His snake lifted her head, as if in acknowledgment of Terra and Casimir.  She knew others found snakes sinister, but liked it when Cas took a snake form, the way he could wrap himself around her, all smooth scales and no claws.

    ”Did you…?”

    ”I didn’t mean to listen in,” he said.

    She wasn’t embarrassed, she found.  He was one more person who might have an answer for her, or at least an insight, some other way of looking at it.  “Do you think—”

    ”I can’t help you,” he said, interrupting her.  “You’ll have to find those answers for yourself.” 

    No one could help her, and suddenly she was so tired, and so sick of it.  All she wanted was to be like everyone else, to love people and understand them and stop worrying that she never would.  Leo had said her emotions had returned, but if she didn’t even love anyone, how could that be true?  What were emotions good for, anyway, just letting her be angry sometimes, and scared?  She just wanted to be alone with Casimir, where she didn’t have to think about how alone she was.  She squeezed him tighter, turning toward the door, refusing to turn her head to look at Shadow as she passed him. 

    ”Terra,” he said, and she hesitated, her hand on the door’s handle.  “There are many in this world who’ve killed their emotions,” he said.  “Remember that.” 

    Her eyes stung as she fumbled her way down the steep stairs in the darkness.  Was that supposed to be comforting, the knowledge that others were like her by choice?  What did he mean by it?  People were too confusing.  Why did she even want to be like them?

*

    Why did they want to be like her? she wondered, two weeks later, placing the flower at his grave. 

    There were too many dead for the tombstone to be ready yet, but they had a simple etching of a lioness’s head to place on the earth by his sword.  It was all they could do.