Chapter I

It was dark, but dark long enough for there to be a pale glow of light around the room. It was the same colorless light given off from the moon that Tabatha had become so familiar with the past nights before this one. She would wake up in bed, her covers thrown blatantly off of her body, her hair sprawled out like a spider web showered in dew, and her right arm rigid by her side. Every night the ache in the wounded limb would heighten as she awoke from her peaceful sleep and every time true light would show, the markings around the bite mark would define, and sometimes branch out. This night, however, light was not necessary.

The peculiar markings, like runes from an elvish text, had a luminous glow to them, but only barely. It was the kind of glow you see when light passes through a fish’s body or through a thin slab of colored wax. Although it came from her own stinging arm, Tabatha could only describe the radiance as beautiful…uncanny, but beautiful. At that lingering thought, Tabatha began to drift back into sleep, her throbbing arm cradled in moonlight and the emerald light of its own.

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As the sun rose steadily to the east, Tabatha’s body began to stir once again. The pain that once embraced her writing arm had lifted. She scrutinized it as she lay on her back, her head turned. The faint glow had also sub-sided, but the light of the sun merely overpowered it. The girl nodded in affirmation and heaved herself up, running her fingers through her long, silver hair.

Silver hair: that was another occurrence that was quite unusual. Her hair was once a natural blonde, but ever since she gained her injury, her hair lost its shade of gold. Instead, she was degraded down to silver and wondered sometimes if her hair would soon turn bronze. Tabatha laughed at the thought and got out of bed when the slight sound of steel to wood reached her ears.

Her overactive curiosity drive caused Tabatha to get ready for the day twice as fast. She nearly pulled on two different boots! In the middle of it all, a closer knocking came to the door, tripling the girl’s efforts to get dressed faster than lightning. She zipped up her boots and her close-fitting dress down the middle, dusted herself off, and made an attempt to reach the doorknob, but—

“Ah!” The markings on her arm seemed to be the only thing visible at that moment. No one could see them—not just some person knocking at her front door! Witchcraft could be assumed. As the second round of knocks drummed the door (along with a, “Hey! Is anyone home?” quickly answered by a, “One second, please!”), Tabatha pulled open her dresser drawers in search of a bandage substitute. “Aha!” She whispered to herself as she grasped a pair of white linen stockings. She twirled them hastily around her right arm, cocked that arm to the side as if lame, and rushed to open the door.

Instead of a solid being, Tabatha thought a shining apparition was greeting her. Almost immediately as the door was pulled open, she brought her supposedly hurt arm to her eyes to block the blinding light.

“Excuse my intrusion, Miss, but may I step inside?” The golden figure asked. Squinting through the fissures of her fingers, the young woman nodded and stepped aside. Metal clattered as the form stepped forward, bending its knees slightly in order to keep its head from colliding with the ceiling. The moment it came into the house, Tabatha took her arm down and realized this spirit was really a bulking man in a suit of golden armor.

“My apologies. The sun was in a most inconvenient place.” He studied Tabatha with a wary eye, regardless of the fact that she stood two feet smaller than him. His eyes fell on her arm wrapped in white stockings and she instantly clutched it with her other arm. It throbbed, but only faintly.

“What happened there?” He asked courteously, leaning over to have a closer look. Tabatha withdrew the arm, rubbing it at an effort to soothe the pain. “Ah…just a bite—a wolf bite. A rabid wolf of some sort came by a few days ago and attacked me.”

“Ah…” He gazed out the window cautiously as if to make sure the same wolf wasn’t lingering. “Poor lass, poor lass…”

Tabatha threw the man a gaze more cautious than his own. A certain tone in his voice as he said these words told her that there was more to his sympathy than a simple bite of the arm. “What is it you came here to tell me, Sir?”

“You see, that was exactly the thing I was trying to avoid telling you…” The giant sighed, “…but I guess what’s ordered has to be served.” He lifted his helmet off of his head, ruffled his hair streaked with warm sweat, and took a deep breath. “Your land, this whole cape, the house, everything…it has all been bought.”

“Bought…?” There was an obvious hint of panic is the girl’s voice. Somewhere in the middle of saying it, the word wanted to be pulled back into her throat, afraid to be said. She bowed her head for a second, in thought--in thoughtless thought where nothing seemed to cross her mind but fear and regret. She swallowed. “Bought…by whom?”

“Empress Amethyst—the Ruler of Feryteil.” The concerned soldier bowed his head with helmet at hand, twiddling with it nervously, “I did everything in my power to change her mind, but she just…” he moaned and watched as his fingers fiddled away, “…she just hasn’t been herself lately.”

“But Sir!” Tabatha cried, “The cape can’t be bought unless permission from my mother, Terra Evans, is granted, and I know for certain that she would never—“

“My dear, I’m terribly sorry…” the soldier interrupted, “I hate to be the bringer of even more bad news, but…your mother has been out of contact for so long that officials have pronounced her…” he choked as if holding back a torrent of tears, “…p-pronounced her…dead.”

The certain light that often reflected in the young woman’s emerald-green eyes suddenly faded out as if to say, “All hope is lost.” The warm light was replaced by a cold one; a glassy one…tears began to swell in Tabatha’s eyes. “My mother isn’t dead…” she sniveled, “…She told me…she told me she’d come home…She promised…”

“Kind lass, please…” the brooding man wiped a tear from his cheek, “your eyes tell mine to reflect. I hate even greater to be the bringer of yet more bad news…”

There’s more? Tabatha’s mind questioned itself. She lifted her head, revealing her tear-stricken face. Her arm flinched—her bad arm. She grasped it as it began to smart…to sting…

“This isn’t your house anymore.” The man cried. “I’m going to have to ask you…ask you to leave.” He wiped his pitiful tears on a metal sleeve.

The stinging instantly turned into a terrible burning that seemed to spread throughout her whole body. She held up her arm in front of her face. Why? She asked it in her mind. Why me? Why now? It trembled from the stress, suspended there…rigid. Burning.

“Dear lass, forgive me.” He maneuvered his fingers near the quaking arm. “All of this must trouble your arm.” He touched it gently at an attempt to soothe Tabatha, but the arm erupted in irrepressible spasms.

A sorrowful rage overcame her. She brought the arm close to her chest, feeling the pain heighten, and released it in one swing of the arm…one single swing forward and so many things happened at once. She cried out a terrible scream of anger, the armored man flew backwards and through the doorway, sliding across the ground, gravel flinging in every which direction. A gust of wind brought Tabatha’s silvery hair up, giving her the appearance of a ferocious lion that had conquered its prey.

For a second she stood there in complete disbelief, her arm still thrust forward. The pain had evaporated from it completely, but what really baffled her was hard to even realize…

She didn’t lay a finger on the man…the man that just flew yards away from where she extended her arm…

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Do I really need to put in my asides? Yeah, I think I do. Anywho, this is my original story I decided wasn't long enough or magnificent enough to be published into an actual book, so I decided to present it to everyone on the web, completely free of charge. Ain't I just the nicest person in the world?

Okay, so what just happened? That's easy. Telekinesis. You're probably thinking by now, "Heh, this story's cliche. I'm not reading it." By all means, I don't care. I'm just here to show my work for no real reason. If you actually do like it, awesome! My job is somewhat fulfilled!

Hm. Now that I'm playing FF9, the knight guy sure does act a lot like Steiner =/