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[FIC][FF4][Incomplete ;_;] "The Blue Planet"

Posted: 15th May 2007 02:53

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I love FF4 -- it's my second-favorite game in the world -- and I always think I've written something for it besides a crappy couple of poems that are long since buried deep out in the hinternets. I never have, though, and this one piece that I've been "working on" for five years will, I really must now admit, never be finished.

And I liked it, too. Liked it enough to write a beginning and and end, but I just ran outta steam when it came to the middle. sad.gif I do like KluYa's voice, though. Maybe I'll do something else with it someday (besides use it as my website theme, hint hint plug).

Anyway, here it is, not quite in time for Earth Day.



The Blue Planet

It is a silent winter night -- the coldest yet, this year. The snow began hours ago, at dusk, and has since spread across the land. Steadily it falls into the cold dark waves of Dragon-Mouth Bay, and steadily it blankets the fir trees of the eastern wood. In Mysidia, it rests thickly in the streets and on the roofs like the heaviness of sleep. And on all of Mount Ordeals the snow is softly falling, on the crests and ridges and the sharp deadly peaks.

And on the summit, under a luminous gray sky, the snow is falling, faintly, thickly. On nights like this, even Mount Ordeals falls into quiescence: the snow absorbs sound, envelops it. The cosmos itself seems wholly hushed. And on nights like this, with the world lulled to silence -- I awake.

It is the cold that brings me back to consciousness: a delicate chill to the air, thin and crisp, like ice. It is snowing, out there in the night. It's winter. I remember, for a flash of a second, the place where I was born: artificial, humming, seasonless. And that one flash is enough.

After that, I am aware, as much as I can be; aware of the world around me, its deep, cold quietness. The cold seeps, seeps. I can feel it here, in this crypt; and then, like a struck crystal, the cold resounds outward and I can feel further, through the snow, as if each falling flake were an extension of my senses. Beneath the snow, there is a planet. I remember it.

Then at once I can remember myself. I remember my life. The click to complete memory is sudden and absolute; after so long, it stuns. I know it will not stay this way for long. The snow, falling so steadily, will end, and this night, the fragile frozen balance of it, will be lost. And so will I, left again to fall into limbo.

It is such a short time to be. The same ache rises in me now -- to see those I've lost, to atone for the faults of myself and my people. But above all, I wish to tell someone, anyone, of my story, and how this all came to pass. I feel that if I relive it, even in thought, some part of me could survive these long, twilight years. Some ghost of me might greet my son the day he is delivered.

***

The beginning, so long ago, has faded now. I had my childhood, my years of schooling and study, my memories of learning and growing. But I do not remember the planet we lost. My people had escaped destruction only months before my birth, and so I never knew the strange land my parents and brother called home, now just a loose ring of fragments and dust. The Lunaria was where I lived.

That was our name for our ersatz home, that foreign red moon you see in your sky. All throughout my life was it being built. Ever around me was it remarked what an extraordinary achievement it would be: a humanity's lifetime of knowledge distilled. We were not gods, no. We could not build another earth. But we could build a moon.

And it was extraordinary. It was colossal and immaculate; it was efficient and precise. It was magnificent. It was all I had ever known. But it was not mine.

As I grew older I, too, began to build. I experimented and constructed; I failed, and built again. Later, when the debates and arguments raged, I stayed behind to work. When finally the Lunaria was completed I watched as, one by one, my race withdrew to their millennia of sleep. Only I chose a life awake, a life alone. For I was never meant for the Lunaria. It existed for me only as an origin, only as a vessel, to a destination I had known since my sixth birthday.

On that day my grandfather had come for me. He told me it was finally time to see what we would wait so long for. Up he took me, past the storehouses of music and art, past the self-sustaining horticultural gardens, all the way up to the grand Lunarian palace that stood in tribute to our lost world. There, alone, we walked a winding stair to the very highest tower, and there, he lifted me, so I could see without straining the flawless sphere, silent and half-shadowed, in the distance.

I'd never seen -- I could not have --

How blue it was. How could anything have been so blue.


(... ... ... ...)


...You people here may fight for it. You might seek to save it. But I think no one here knows like I do the beauty of what you are saving.

Can you understand? In a fathomless black sea, in a night that never ends, in cold that cannot possibly be fought, still, somehow, there it lies. That living place, that softly shining blue world, rests -- quietly triumphant, surviving. Can you possibly understand that miracle like I can?

Can you ever truly feel alone, you children of the Blue Planet?

This post has been edited by L. Cully on 15th May 2007 02:57

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Some ghost of me might greet my son
the day he is delivered.


Eternal Sleep, Track 1-1: The Blue Planet
Post #149946
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Posted: 15th May 2007 05:11

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Wow! That was beautiful.

I'd say finish it, but I'm not sure what you could possibly follow up with. Or perhaps you were going to expand on the (... ... ... ...) area?

Still, I love it, even if it isn't complete.

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"Some fight for justice. Some fight for law . . .
. . .Cecil, what will you fight for?"

~KluYa
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Posted: 15th May 2007 19:33

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Wavey Marle!
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This is intresting. The characterisation here feels spot on, and the unfinished nature of it it does naturally leave me wanting more.

You should really write more FF4 fics. biggrin.gif

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.
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Posted: 15th May 2007 21:46
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Quote (Del S @ 15th May 2007 12:33)
This is intresting. The characterisation here feels spot on, and the unfinished nature of it it does naturally leave me wanting more.

You should really write everything ever written...ever. biggrin.gif

*Fixed.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 15th May 2007 21:47

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Posted: 16th May 2007 02:06

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Oh, jeez, you guys are way too nice. (I'm lookin' at you, NW)(but you can keep it up if you really want)

Quote
I'd say finish it, but I'm not sure what you could possibly follow up with. Or perhaps you were going to expand on the (... ... ... ...) area?


That's exactly where I was going to expand it. It was going to be KluYa's life story in the middle there, more or less, which took me a really, really long time to research/extrapolate and was part of the reason I was so reluctant to give this up.

But I kept writing and erasing and writing and erasing. Because the thing is, KluYa's life story is really not that interesting. At least not in the way I wanted it to be, which I had pretty much covered in the first section. Anything else would have just been a lot of repetitive thuddy sentences.

... or, jeez, maybe not...?

NO, I HAVE GIVEN UP ON IT, I AM NOT LOOKING BACK

NOT LOOKING BACK

!!!

This post has been edited by L. Cully on 16th May 2007 02:08

--------------------
Some ghost of me might greet my son
the day he is delivered.


Eternal Sleep, Track 1-1: The Blue Planet
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