(no subject)
The entrance to the Farplane is a crevice in the wall of the Guado city; there's a stone bridge leading up and through. The walls are high, and thick, but once you've passed through them they aren't there at all. Only the door remains to link what lies beyond with what lies without.
(futher up)
The ledge is smooth and round, and ringed with a waist-high fence. It's not so much a barrier as a line between here and there.
There is Spira's core, the planet's heart. But what it looks like--
(and further in)
--is a world.
There's a ghost moon in a night sky, and everywhere beneath and below this tiny shelter of red rock is water, water rushing out and on and on, over cliffs in roaring cascades, extending into eternity.
She's never been here before. But the stars sing, and she has, she's felt that water sluice around her ankles by Yrael's side, and she's looked into that ebony night in the eyes of a pale girl by the lake at Milliways.
She sees, through the rising mist and haze and clouds of pyreflies, a fin cut through the water far away, and raises a hand in fruitless greeting. And then the Master Shark is forgotten, as distant memories unfold and old shapes are rediscovered, and they stand before her, just out of reach beyond the railing.
Her father is pale and handsome, but marked with a weary grimness she doesn't remember. The fruits of his pilgrimage, she supposes. They are both semi-transparent--she can see the long tail of his hat through his face. Her mother's hand clasps his, disappearing into the wide sleeve of his coat of overlapping scales, armor and cassock combined. Her mother--looks like her, apart from hair color, her ruddy Al Bhed skin tone washed out by her translucency.
They are, both of them, very young.
She wraps her hands around the railings and hangs on, willing the tears away from her eyes. There'll be time for that later; right now she doesn't want to add the blurriness of tears to the haze of looking into death itself.
Slowly, dreamily, Chandra of the Al Bhed raises her other hand and waves to her daughter, across thirteen years.
(futher up)
The ledge is smooth and round, and ringed with a waist-high fence. It's not so much a barrier as a line between here and there.
There is Spira's core, the planet's heart. But what it looks like--
(and further in)
--is a world.
There's a ghost moon in a night sky, and everywhere beneath and below this tiny shelter of red rock is water, water rushing out and on and on, over cliffs in roaring cascades, extending into eternity.
She's never been here before. But the stars sing, and she has, she's felt that water sluice around her ankles by Yrael's side, and she's looked into that ebony night in the eyes of a pale girl by the lake at Milliways.
She sees, through the rising mist and haze and clouds of pyreflies, a fin cut through the water far away, and raises a hand in fruitless greeting. And then the Master Shark is forgotten, as distant memories unfold and old shapes are rediscovered, and they stand before her, just out of reach beyond the railing.
Her father is pale and handsome, but marked with a weary grimness she doesn't remember. The fruits of his pilgrimage, she supposes. They are both semi-transparent--she can see the long tail of his hat through his face. Her mother's hand clasps his, disappearing into the wide sleeve of his coat of overlapping scales, armor and cassock combined. Her mother--looks like her, apart from hair color, her ruddy Al Bhed skin tone washed out by her translucency.
They are, both of them, very young.
She wraps her hands around the railings and hangs on, willing the tears away from her eyes. There'll be time for that later; right now she doesn't want to add the blurriness of tears to the haze of looking into death itself.
Slowly, dreamily, Chandra of the Al Bhed raises her other hand and waves to her daughter, across thirteen years.