FFVIII: Kaleidoscope
Fandom: Final Fantasy VIII
Pairing: None
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Summary: It's not given to humans to truly understand the future. For philosophy_20.
Sometimes Ellone feels like a hummingbird, darting from person to person, from one time to another in an endless dizzying kaleidoscope of beautiful single moments and longer days, still hot and fresh from just being viewed. The next moment she feels completely useless, confined to one body and one time though her mind can find them all and their possibilities between. For a moment she can see the future in brief crystalline flashes -- Squall's son, and an early grave, and Quistis crying and Laguna's hand on Selphie's shoulder, steadying, and none of it connects in the right ways and it could mean one thing or another and everything in between.
If she had no body, she knows, she could see it. If she was mere thought and light and a breezy trail she could see it, whisper how to avoid the grave and the tears, find Seifer and turn him back the right way before he ever got turned around in the first place. But such power is not given to mortals and Ellone is that in every cell of her -- mortal and limited by it, held back and in by her own mind's constraints. Never stray too far, she warns herself when she closes her eyes, but she doesn't need the warning -- her body will save her mind no matter what, jerking awake before she truly sees what it is she tries to see, the name on the grave and Rinoa's face, whether in joy or sorrow or solemn death.
Some days she feels as if she's seen things already -- small moments, like Squall's smile and the swish of Rinoa's hair as she dances -- and maybe she has, but she can't touch the before-memory in her mind, whole and complete, but only in snatches of déjà vu and bright distorted moments.
Sometimes her mind skips ahead, leaving her vague and smiling in the wrong places, and it's then that Laguna worries and touches her hand, trying to bring her out of it, and Rinoa shakes her shoulder gently and Squall asks her what's wrong, but not all in the same place or time, just shuffled together by her mind which is too human to understand the sheer scale of it.
It would almost make her cry, but the tears never come. She is stronger than they ever know, and wiser, and she never breathes a word of what she knows or might know somehow, someday. She can't change the past but she could change the future, and she doesn't know if that's something a human should do with the few tattered snatches of future gained.
Pairing: None
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Summary: It's not given to humans to truly understand the future. For philosophy_20.
Sometimes Ellone feels like a hummingbird, darting from person to person, from one time to another in an endless dizzying kaleidoscope of beautiful single moments and longer days, still hot and fresh from just being viewed. The next moment she feels completely useless, confined to one body and one time though her mind can find them all and their possibilities between. For a moment she can see the future in brief crystalline flashes -- Squall's son, and an early grave, and Quistis crying and Laguna's hand on Selphie's shoulder, steadying, and none of it connects in the right ways and it could mean one thing or another and everything in between.
If she had no body, she knows, she could see it. If she was mere thought and light and a breezy trail she could see it, whisper how to avoid the grave and the tears, find Seifer and turn him back the right way before he ever got turned around in the first place. But such power is not given to mortals and Ellone is that in every cell of her -- mortal and limited by it, held back and in by her own mind's constraints. Never stray too far, she warns herself when she closes her eyes, but she doesn't need the warning -- her body will save her mind no matter what, jerking awake before she truly sees what it is she tries to see, the name on the grave and Rinoa's face, whether in joy or sorrow or solemn death.
Some days she feels as if she's seen things already -- small moments, like Squall's smile and the swish of Rinoa's hair as she dances -- and maybe she has, but she can't touch the before-memory in her mind, whole and complete, but only in snatches of déjà vu and bright distorted moments.
Sometimes her mind skips ahead, leaving her vague and smiling in the wrong places, and it's then that Laguna worries and touches her hand, trying to bring her out of it, and Rinoa shakes her shoulder gently and Squall asks her what's wrong, but not all in the same place or time, just shuffled together by her mind which is too human to understand the sheer scale of it.
It would almost make her cry, but the tears never come. She is stronger than they ever know, and wiser, and she never breathes a word of what she knows or might know somehow, someday. She can't change the past but she could change the future, and she doesn't know if that's something a human should do with the few tattered snatches of future gained.