FF7 Daemonverse -- Breon settles
FF7 Daemon ficlets archive.
Tifa is 13. 800 words long.
--
Breon doesn't settle especially early -- two of Tifa's agemates have settled already, a butterfly and a prairie dog -- or especially late -- three more are waiting their turn, Johnny and Lily and Cloud. Nothing important is happening -- it's not the anniversary of their mother's death, they haven't gotten into a fight, no one has dropped any actual wisdom on them, nothing.
They just go up to the pastures with the draft chocobos, Breon plodding along as a fourth chocobo himself, and they sit there in the sun and the brisk breeze coming from the shadowed Mount Nibel.
Breon flips eagle, as well, dips and sways in the wind, until he gets bored and lands on her knee. Tifa watches the chocobos patiently scratch roots out of the earth, watches the sheep come down from the higher slopes a bit. They feel safer surrounded by the bigger, protective birds.
The thing is, people don't chat about what they want their own daemon to be -- might jinx it -- but they do about what they think it'll reasonably be, even if they try not to be too hopeful, too unrealistic. They talk a ton about what they believe other people's will be.
Tifa apparently would be just perfect with a sweet, soft-furred, lop-eared bunny like her mother's. Or a small dog, or some kind of songbird -- this one she thinks is a bit weird, she's not really artistic or whimsical at all.
"What do you think?" she asks Breon, chin on her knee, as they watch the slopes running down sharp until they hide the bottom of the valley. Neither of them understands how anyone can live on flat country.
Breon flicks chocobo again, gangly teenage bird, scratches the underside of his jaw with huge, dull claws. He makes a thoughtful little hrm.
"Chocobo?"
"No. I like it, but no."
The sheep drift closer, quick to lift their heads and go round-eyed in nerves when an eagle screams or a griffin whistles. Breon tries on a ram next, prances around, lowers his head and charges at nothing.
"Hm."
Tifa laughs a little bit. "You look like a cotton ball on toothpicks."
"Shush, you. I'll settle angora, just you see."
A goat is next, and he suddenly goes from a standstill to jumping almost straight up onto a rock, then another rock and the back of a very surprised sheep. Poiing! She laughs louder. Breon circles her, stabbing little dagger horns at the wind in sharp little twitches.
"Bit too aggressive, maybe," she comments, wistful. It's so... It'd be so fun to be a goat. But.
"Too small," Breon dismisses, and then he's a huge bull. "Too big and slow and docile, pshah--"
"Wild?" she says, interested. Breon looks at her, just for a second.
Mountain goat, hip high, huge curved horns. Very nice, but a bit too ... solid? Deericorn, crackling with protective magic -- no, neither of them is much of a mage, they're too down to earth, too -- too physical to settle as magic users.
Bleah.
The sun is going down -- early, as usual, but that's normal in the mountain. She gets up and whistles to call the flock to her.
When they walk down a chocobo crowds Breon off the path, so he just flips mountain goat to scramble and bounce over the sharp rocks lining it instead -- and then deer, the small white-speckled, almost hornless ones, so pretty but with a somewhat longer step at least, easier to move with. He still has to scramble some.
Maybe it'd be easier if he was small enough for her to carry, as a great number of daemons are.
Maybe it'd be easier if he was cuter, less threatening, more girly. No one would be surprised that way, no one would talk, people would compliment her and be comforted in their impressions of her and move on. A few months back she knows that feeling the gist of her thought Breon would have shifted to grizzly and growled, rebelling with a strength she doesn't (allow herself to) feel.
Maybe... maybe she doesn't want things to be that easy.
When they reach the village Breon is a Nibel king stag -- gangly with youth, only two branching blade points to each antler, still not done growing and his shoulder high as her chest already.
(Two months ago she was sitting by the fire at the inn while Johnny's uncle told them the story of the two wolves he found gored to death in the pine trees, of a herd of fleet-footed does and brand-new fawns grazing peacefully together while the king of the herd stood watch, antlers dyed rust red with old predator blood.)
(Her father's Lilenna asks Breon to change into something that'll fit inside the house when it's time for sleep. Tifa isn't surprised when he refuses and informs the three of them that he and Tifa will be spending the night in the stable.)
Tifa is 13. 800 words long.
--
Breon doesn't settle especially early -- two of Tifa's agemates have settled already, a butterfly and a prairie dog -- or especially late -- three more are waiting their turn, Johnny and Lily and Cloud. Nothing important is happening -- it's not the anniversary of their mother's death, they haven't gotten into a fight, no one has dropped any actual wisdom on them, nothing.
They just go up to the pastures with the draft chocobos, Breon plodding along as a fourth chocobo himself, and they sit there in the sun and the brisk breeze coming from the shadowed Mount Nibel.
Breon flips eagle, as well, dips and sways in the wind, until he gets bored and lands on her knee. Tifa watches the chocobos patiently scratch roots out of the earth, watches the sheep come down from the higher slopes a bit. They feel safer surrounded by the bigger, protective birds.
The thing is, people don't chat about what they want their own daemon to be -- might jinx it -- but they do about what they think it'll reasonably be, even if they try not to be too hopeful, too unrealistic. They talk a ton about what they believe other people's will be.
Tifa apparently would be just perfect with a sweet, soft-furred, lop-eared bunny like her mother's. Or a small dog, or some kind of songbird -- this one she thinks is a bit weird, she's not really artistic or whimsical at all.
"What do you think?" she asks Breon, chin on her knee, as they watch the slopes running down sharp until they hide the bottom of the valley. Neither of them understands how anyone can live on flat country.
Breon flicks chocobo again, gangly teenage bird, scratches the underside of his jaw with huge, dull claws. He makes a thoughtful little hrm.
"Chocobo?"
"No. I like it, but no."
The sheep drift closer, quick to lift their heads and go round-eyed in nerves when an eagle screams or a griffin whistles. Breon tries on a ram next, prances around, lowers his head and charges at nothing.
"Hm."
Tifa laughs a little bit. "You look like a cotton ball on toothpicks."
"Shush, you. I'll settle angora, just you see."
A goat is next, and he suddenly goes from a standstill to jumping almost straight up onto a rock, then another rock and the back of a very surprised sheep. Poiing! She laughs louder. Breon circles her, stabbing little dagger horns at the wind in sharp little twitches.
"Bit too aggressive, maybe," she comments, wistful. It's so... It'd be so fun to be a goat. But.
"Too small," Breon dismisses, and then he's a huge bull. "Too big and slow and docile, pshah--"
"Wild?" she says, interested. Breon looks at her, just for a second.
Mountain goat, hip high, huge curved horns. Very nice, but a bit too ... solid? Deericorn, crackling with protective magic -- no, neither of them is much of a mage, they're too down to earth, too -- too physical to settle as magic users.
Bleah.
The sun is going down -- early, as usual, but that's normal in the mountain. She gets up and whistles to call the flock to her.
When they walk down a chocobo crowds Breon off the path, so he just flips mountain goat to scramble and bounce over the sharp rocks lining it instead -- and then deer, the small white-speckled, almost hornless ones, so pretty but with a somewhat longer step at least, easier to move with. He still has to scramble some.
Maybe it'd be easier if he was small enough for her to carry, as a great number of daemons are.
Maybe it'd be easier if he was cuter, less threatening, more girly. No one would be surprised that way, no one would talk, people would compliment her and be comforted in their impressions of her and move on. A few months back she knows that feeling the gist of her thought Breon would have shifted to grizzly and growled, rebelling with a strength she doesn't (allow herself to) feel.
Maybe... maybe she doesn't want things to be that easy.
When they reach the village Breon is a Nibel king stag -- gangly with youth, only two branching blade points to each antler, still not done growing and his shoulder high as her chest already.
(Two months ago she was sitting by the fire at the inn while Johnny's uncle told them the story of the two wolves he found gored to death in the pine trees, of a herd of fleet-footed does and brand-new fawns grazing peacefully together while the king of the herd stood watch, antlers dyed rust red with old predator blood.)
(Her father's Lilenna asks Breon to change into something that'll fit inside the house when it's time for sleep. Tifa isn't surprised when he refuses and informs the three of them that he and Tifa will be spending the night in the stable.)