Kefka Palazzo — Roleplayer Guild

Cidolphus Escovane

Twenty Seven | 15, September | 6’0” | First Class
“Wind and time, rapes the flower trembling on the vine.  Nothing yields to shelter.“ 

 Soldier Base: Exterior

Dawn was an hour ago, and still the frigid  air clung to the world.  The warmth of his breath mixed with the cold of the air, producing a mist that escaped from his lips in tendril of cloudy white fingers. The sun was nothing more than a weak ball of light off on the horizon, casting long the shadows.  The compound was already active.  Soldier awoke early, remained till long after the day burned away on the horizon, and the night again sought its dominance.  The compound, it seemed, never slept, and at times solitude was a premium commodity.  But like all things precious, discovery only required a learned eye and a steady, patient hand.  

The courtyard was emptying.  The daily routines of countless drones compelled movement away from the small grove of trees that provided an aesthetic center for the concrete field meadow of fountains, wooden benches and a dusting of misshapen marble statues of past Soldier’s displayed like gods.  In perfect stoicism, Cid sat and watched the bodies trickle away from the natural luster of the trees on the grove’s outer edge, moving away from the natural spirit as though it were a cancer to their pristine, concrete worlds.  They moved away, as Cid’s booted feet took a step back, to let the shadows swallow him up, to let the cancer’s arms encircle him; to let the darkness consume.  

What do you think, when you’re all alone like this?

The voice was familiar, beloved.  Cid could sooner forget the sounds of his own voice than to find himself incapable of placing face and name to the sound that stirred such fondness in his breast.  It was as though night descended on him, as though the prying eyes of all cased looking, as though the darkness of shadow became so dense that they build up walls around him, physical, impenetrable walls.  His back felt the roughness of a tree’s bark even through the soldier uniform he was wearing.  He could smell salt in the air, could feel it sticking against his drying lips.   Here, everything was still.  Everything stopped.   The world simply existed, void of movement.  

“I don’t,” Cid whispered in response, feeling the words form on the tip of his tongue, and die at the end of his lips, but the answer was head all the same.  He felt hands across his face, slender, thin fingers pushing through his hair, creating avenues in the short, brown threads.  It was relaxing all the same, like a childhood memory bubbling up to the surface of a mother and her darling child.   

Is this what I am to you?

The feeling shattered, embarrassment flooded his mind, and for a moment, Cid felt himself more exposed and raw than he had ever before.  His life had always been secretive, beyond the attention of most around him.  He was a living shadow for the majority of his life, as to most of the people he’s ever known, he’s been nameless, faceless, without depth or true form.  Thus it was uncomfortable for him to feel so exposed, to be read in a moment that transcends the capabilities of intimacy.  He was beyond exposed, but sharing his very existence with another.  

“No,” He whispered in answer.  

Can you define it?

“Define what?” Cid asked in confusion, his eyes opening, as the darkness flooded away, allowing again for the light to explode into being before him.  The world was again as it had been, weak light and cold, frigid temperatures.  Cid stood with his back against a straight trunk, his booted feet only inches away from the concrete of this modern world, but surely and squarely on the ancient dirt.  Before hiseyes were hollow ones.  Crystaline blue, and colder than the deepest winter chill.   They were slender, delicate orbs, set in a face so soft and tender that Cid could not breathe in its presence.  

What I am to you? 

The lips attached to the eyes moved in perfect unity to the voice that whispered in his thoughts.  Cid shook his head, pushing thoughts out of his head as quickly as they were brought to his attention, the honest truth flooding to an uncomfortable conclusion.  Images of her in is arms, lips meeting, his hand brushing her hair, his head in her lap as she brushed his, a thousand different sunsets, a hundred nights wrapped in a hundred different blankets under countless stars.  The images became before they were beckoned, as honest truth often does, before the ego can draw it still and silent.   And in the next moment, when ego caught up with id, darkness reigned again in his mind.  

Who is she?

“A regret.  Nothing more,”  Cid answered plainly, stepping back, looking over the woman standing before him.  His heart ached to see the fondness that flashed in her eyes.  Fondness that Cid knew was placed there intentionally, because she knew he wanted it there.  There had been a time that he would have given the world to see it, just as it was in that moment, so pure, so obviously fixated on him.  His body stiffened as she came to stand before him, reaching up with those long, slender fingers, touching to the temples of his skull, pushing her fingers gentle to his hair.  

She is power over you.  She is what you think about.  She is what I am to you, what you hope I will become.  She is the answer.  Your secret.  Your regret.  I will be her.  I will cherish you

The world was loud, uncomfortably so.  His eyes opened, as the world flushed back in on him, and he stretched.  The call came again, an echo of the summons, Soldier, First Class… Council Room.  Cid stretched tired muscles, rolling his shoulders as he stepped out of the small grove of trees in the garden’s square, and settled his spear across his shoulders.  His arms looped around it, and he pulled tight against his back, as he walked into the building – the voice of his dreams fading into the burning cancer of reality, beneath the dim, weak sun.  

The next few minutes had him in the council chamber, standing quietly in the back, watching as the other filed into the room, one after another, as he waited for the purpose of the summons to be revealed.
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