Unexpected

Chapter 3: Trepidation


On the field of spring flowers, a brown-haired girl laughed, spinning herself in the unusual light drift of petals that had fostered the delightful play setting she now reveled in.

“Matron!” she squealed, calling out in her unaltered innocence.

From over the hill came a blond boy, at first stumbling as he mounted the small steeple of earth before slowing down to descend toward the girl.

“Selphie!” he yelled. “Hurry up,” he called from afar; he was out of breath. “We’re going to get in trouble!”

The girl giggled to herself as she watched the boy approach her, still too far.

“I mean it!” He was breathing harder and the lines that wouldn’t come for a long time mock pretended to plaster his face like he had already been victimized a good sum.

“Okay, okay. You don’t have to complain about it,” she jealously cried, sticking her tongue out to inadvertently provoke the boy.

“Shut up.” He was closer to speak normal now. “And Irvine wants back his truck! So you better go tell him. You’re lucky I didn’t tell him you broke it.” He leaned forward, both arms at his hips.

They began walking back, the blond ahead of the girl.

Selphie suddenly remembered something and a tricky smile broke out. She silently stared at the blond boy’s moving back. “I don’t care,” she spoke after the excitement from the bickering completely faded. “I know something you don’t know,” she teased, but either the boy hadn’t heard or didn’t care.

As they neared the orphanage, a surly brunet boy emerged from the back entrance. He descended the flat rock steps spiraling down to the sand the two now walked across. The boy glowered at them.

“What is it now? Ooh—I’m so mad!” the blond shouted to the boy. The boy had crossed his arms in a show of disapproval.

“Shut up Seifer! I had to come get you because you took so long.”

“You shut up!” he yelled back. “A yucky crab thing chased me, and Selphie kept moving—and I had to climb a hill!”

The brunet didn’t reply and turned back to carefully climb the steps.

“Seifer.”

Seifer didn’t answer when Selphie said his name.

She scurried a little to catch up and dawdled by his side. “Seifer, didn’t you hear me?”

“What?!” he yelled, surprising the girl enough to shut her up.

~<>~

His head hurt. He softly groaned and sighed when he felt he was waking into a predicament for the second time since a short period of time.

“Mister Squall?”

Again, he recognized the address although he only knew she was somewhere close by “It’s Squall. Just…Squall.”

She waited before she repeated his name. “Are you alright?”

Somehow, the question annoyed him and he didn’t care keeping his thoughts anymore. “Does it look like we’re okay? Where the fuck are we anyway?” He wanted to go home and had the sudden desire to kill something….

But he was easily distracted. He heard rustling of bunched hay and turned its way. Their situation was instantly obvious when he simply moved a few steps to see that light filtered through a gate-keeping entrance—the end of an obscured dirt path that built its way from where he stood to ascend toward what must have been level ground; they were in some type of containment cell that held stacks of rolled hay.

“We’re back in the forest…,” the woman said. “But at least you’re alive.”

He looked at her then. Though they were held captive in some underground keep, the faded light of day provided better vision than cloistered sources of night light; he hadn’t been wrong about the woman when he realized his rather blunt inaction at merely staring. Her face was smeared with traces of dried mud, her nappy hair slightly scrunched and sticking out in odd angles that he acquitted to sleep and their general situation. Her outfit was easier seen, as well, and the glistening black he’d seen from the night prior was caked in hints of dirt and mud to match the woman’s face. Intense green eyes startlingly contrasted everything else.

“What are you staring at?” But the question was somber and tired.

“…what do they want with you?”

She raised her shoulders. “But…” She walked to a hay stack in the farthest corner a few meters away and sat on it, hunched. Her palms sunk into the poky edge she sat on. She seemed mildly anxious as she stared at the ground. “I have the feeling I should be to blame for all of this….”

The once brazen woman was gone, but he knew better than to let her character slip from his mind. “Does it have to do with that GF you have?” He remembered. How could he not have for the detail itself?

She shook her head frustrated. “I…I know I know him. But so do you.” At that she looked up to stare at him. She passed a hand to get a strand of hair out of her face to place it back on the hay. “How do you both know each other?”

There was already too much to consider and the last thing he needed was a trip to the past. “I’ll answer when you tell me who you are even if…you don’t know why you’re here or how you know Seifer Almasy.” He had the distinct feeling the woman suffered amnesia when she first mentioned her ordeal.

The woman stood up and began to slowly pace. She touched her slender fingers to her chest and appeared a long distance away by the fogged expression in her eyes. The sound of birds tweeting and squawking clamoring with other forest noise in the short distance made everything seem okay at the moment, even if for its small deception. “It’s not that I don’t recall at all…when I came to…I was scared. So scared—I…” She furrowed her thin eyebrows. “I remembered…yelling at that man…—you called him Seifer…Almasy?”

He nodded.

“I remember Mister Almasy. I think…I believe we were…in this forest by that time. Other than that…I ran away from home—I must have met up with the crude gent somehow.” She looked up at Squall. “You want to know my integrity…? I am Princess Yaever, third aeon enthroned to the Shumi crown.”

~<>~

“Hey boss, what are you going to do with them pretties,” Snakes asked.

“Don’t mind what I do with the pretty man. Just keep your head straight until we get the money.”

Snakes watched Almasy suspiciously. He wondered if the trip to the city included the newly attained ‘pretty man’; he wanted a taste of him and hadn’t bothered with the princess earlier.

“Rumi! Hurry it the fuck up!” he yelled into the trees overhead. They were standing at the base of a steep climb and waited with a few others of theirs.

Many steps away began the camp the group had established into more open forest though the abundance of tall trees hid them well with the lighting perfect. Men were scattered about. Some gathered wood, some cooked. Others bawled freely and passed time with other scanty preoccupancy. It was already late afternoon.

~<>~

He merely stared at her. “Why did you run away from home?” He tried telling himself the answer would wind its way into the situation and hopefully produce useful answers.

“I…was sick of my father,” she stated. “He had a husband lined up for me pranced with a stool load of ‘queenly’ plans I’d rather no mind to,” she driveled to a high pitch, bored.

Squall was annoyed by the ‘rather’ lame reasons. “…it must be your GF then…You healed me, so Almasy probably knows…also…your royalty.” He began pacing, too. “Ransom...,” he spoke to himself. “…?” He caught the princess’s eyes again. “Let’s hope they don’t know.”

The princess shook her head. “No, no…. Who am I to cheat? They already know. At least Mister Almasy.”

“Then we have no choice. You have a GF. You have magic. Fire? Ice?”

The princess shook her head, not understanding.

And then he connected why they were locked up. Why did she have one at all? “How did you obtain the GF? Do you even know its name?”

“Of course I do. Um...” She supported an elbow to hold her chin with a finger. “Phoenix, I believe it was. And I’ve had it since I can’t remember.”

He wondered what damage the creature had already done, unable to help the pity he suddenly felt for the princess. It was plain the GF occupied her mind for a time now and she never knew its potential. With her obvious use of it, he imagined even the innate fire spells had degenerated to be filled with potent curative magic. He needed definite answers, however. “Do you…trust me?”

“Why?” She eyed him through the curtain of her dreggy hair, her head bowed slightly. But something swayed her and she continued before he could. “I’d have thought you knew when we were still in the village…” she spoke quietly. A faint red burned at her cheek bones.

He ignored her embarrassment. He only had a vague recollection of what had transpired while he’d been out for most of it. The distant shouting and ghost of a pain at his back and Almasy’s blow to his head was there for the most part, although his head felt fine now.

The barred metal door creaked open and he wasn’t surprised to see who’d stepped in; he hadn’t expected the blond.

~<>~

“Don’t touch me,” a stern voice spoke from a faded distance.

He looked up the hill and narrowed his eyes.

Leonheart.

The brunet still looked the same, but Seifer saw the minor change in the way the brunet carried himself.

Not as stiff…. Marriage must have done it.

He laughed at his own joke.

He kept his gaze on the brunet until those greys finally noticed.

Rumi remained behind the two captives, the shotgun poked uncomfortably into the brunet’s back—Seifer could tell by the scowl on the brunet wore.

He sneered at the typicalness when the trio stopped before him. Both Leonhart and woman’s hands had been bound at their backs. “Funny ain’t it; how I do win in the end?” He stuck his face uncaring into the brunet’s, close enough to make his breath felt.

“…”

Seifer snorted, backing away to give his ex-rival a once-over. “And this is the penalty you’ll pay for thinking you can play hero forever,” he gloated before he sharply turned his eyes back to Rumi. He cut the air with his arm ordering, “Take him away.”

Rumi jabbed the shotgun barrel once more at the brunet’s back, and the brunet flinched, openly irritated.

“Squall!” the princess shouted as the redhead escorted the brunet back.

“Forget him. We’ve got more important things to deal with right now.” He brusquely stared at the princess. Snakes had grabbed a hold of her, and Seifer said nothing more when he turned, headed to his tent, the princess in tow.


End3