The Right Fit - Final Fantasy IX - G
Fandom: Final Fantasy IX
Title: The Right Fit.
Rating: PG 13
Word Count: 735
Notes: General. Freya. Posted October 20, 2006.
Summary: There is a something for someone in every city.
Alexandria is a beautiful city and it makes Freya feel uncomfortable. Partly, she thinks, because it is so rigid in nature - as if the city itself was once cultivated to grow into a predetermined form, like roses on a trellis. It reminds her of the hard cut beauty of statues, standing frozen forever in perfection.
Six days after the Mistadons attacked, six days since Zidane and Dagger left, and already Freya wants to leave. Steiner bids her stay at the castle till the princesses return, Beatrix actually orders it, and even Freya herself knows she will wait for Zidane, even if death threatens her to leave. However, the impulse for Freya to flee resides everywhere in the castle: in the smooth stone walls, the stately books, the polished silverware at the dinner table, even the soft richness of her silk bed sheets. Alexandria is a city of virtues like courage, strength, like fealty, determination, but it is also a city of elegance and wealth. It is a holy place, for heroes and knights and all those legendary people she admires and cherishes and loves, but it is also strict and stately. People here are destined for great things.
It is not a place she belongs.
Freya escapes into the city beyond the castle. Her feet make the clacking sound of nails on stone, and it draws attention to her. Men smoking cigars and women washing laundry turn to watch as she passes and she can feel their eyes like flies swarming around her. Perhaps they have not seen a Burmecian before. Perhaps they have. To Freya, the subject is irrelevant, as are their stares. Their gawks are simply evidence to the foreignness she feels about this city.
For it is a very strange city.
Freya drifts through the marketplace, browsing stalls, walking in and out of doors (through which she must stoop, for they were not made with a Burmecian’s height in mind) and simply watches. She studies the architecture of the buildings, tests the sturdiness of the wooden walls, admires the texture of them. Wood is, after all, a novelty in Burmecia.
A trio of girls perch on the entrance to a hotel, chattering about jump ropes, Tetra Master, icky brothers, Mistadons, and that cute boy Benji who lost his kitten down the alley. As she walks past, Freya is struck with how much they remind her of the girls back in Lindblum, gossiping over airships, Lowell Bridges in the Theater District, and their collections of Tetra Cards. She pauses, intrigued, and then after a moment, turns down the alley.
Alexandria changes before her eyes. Wood transforms into stone, the streets become dirtier, the people stare less and less. A man at the dock gives her a friendly nod as she passes by. Not soon after, she finds little Benji, running frantically up and down a street calling for his kitten Bobo. She finds Bobo perched on the roof of his house and rescues him, but her glimpse of Alexandria from such a height pulls her to return to the roof despite the enthusiastic hugging Benji dotes on her. She lands on the bell tower near the water’s edge and finds a well-used route leading deeper into Alexandria. Despite herself, Freya is curious.
“Prince Puck would be all over these in an instant,” she thinks with a smile, as she walks carefully across strategically placed boards that make path ways between the houses. She watches the gritty clouds of soot rise from chimneys and finally, she sits on the roof of a particularly nice building (new shingles, she notices, for their color has not dulled with the weather) and gazes down at the canal that separates the castle from the rest of the city.
Despite the newness of the building, there are soot and dust everywhere. Freya’s traveling suit and family crest are more pink in color than red, and her hair is more grey than silver, but that hardly matters to her. Dust is a familiar thing, a counterpart to any city. Down in the marketplace perhaps, the dust is hidden away, but now, up here, Freya wonders how she could have thought Alexandria so completely alien as to lack such a thing.
Freya leans back comfortably against the warm shingles and lets the sun caress her dirty face. Drowsily, she muses that perhaps she was wrong.
She fits right in Alexandria.
Title: The Right Fit.
Rating: PG 13
Word Count: 735
Notes: General. Freya. Posted October 20, 2006.
Summary: There is a something for someone in every city.
Alexandria is a beautiful city and it makes Freya feel uncomfortable. Partly, she thinks, because it is so rigid in nature - as if the city itself was once cultivated to grow into a predetermined form, like roses on a trellis. It reminds her of the hard cut beauty of statues, standing frozen forever in perfection.
Six days after the Mistadons attacked, six days since Zidane and Dagger left, and already Freya wants to leave. Steiner bids her stay at the castle till the princesses return, Beatrix actually orders it, and even Freya herself knows she will wait for Zidane, even if death threatens her to leave. However, the impulse for Freya to flee resides everywhere in the castle: in the smooth stone walls, the stately books, the polished silverware at the dinner table, even the soft richness of her silk bed sheets. Alexandria is a city of virtues like courage, strength, like fealty, determination, but it is also a city of elegance and wealth. It is a holy place, for heroes and knights and all those legendary people she admires and cherishes and loves, but it is also strict and stately. People here are destined for great things.
It is not a place she belongs.
Freya escapes into the city beyond the castle. Her feet make the clacking sound of nails on stone, and it draws attention to her. Men smoking cigars and women washing laundry turn to watch as she passes and she can feel their eyes like flies swarming around her. Perhaps they have not seen a Burmecian before. Perhaps they have. To Freya, the subject is irrelevant, as are their stares. Their gawks are simply evidence to the foreignness she feels about this city.
For it is a very strange city.
Freya drifts through the marketplace, browsing stalls, walking in and out of doors (through which she must stoop, for they were not made with a Burmecian’s height in mind) and simply watches. She studies the architecture of the buildings, tests the sturdiness of the wooden walls, admires the texture of them. Wood is, after all, a novelty in Burmecia.
A trio of girls perch on the entrance to a hotel, chattering about jump ropes, Tetra Master, icky brothers, Mistadons, and that cute boy Benji who lost his kitten down the alley. As she walks past, Freya is struck with how much they remind her of the girls back in Lindblum, gossiping over airships, Lowell Bridges in the Theater District, and their collections of Tetra Cards. She pauses, intrigued, and then after a moment, turns down the alley.
Alexandria changes before her eyes. Wood transforms into stone, the streets become dirtier, the people stare less and less. A man at the dock gives her a friendly nod as she passes by. Not soon after, she finds little Benji, running frantically up and down a street calling for his kitten Bobo. She finds Bobo perched on the roof of his house and rescues him, but her glimpse of Alexandria from such a height pulls her to return to the roof despite the enthusiastic hugging Benji dotes on her. She lands on the bell tower near the water’s edge and finds a well-used route leading deeper into Alexandria. Despite herself, Freya is curious.
“Prince Puck would be all over these in an instant,” she thinks with a smile, as she walks carefully across strategically placed boards that make path ways between the houses. She watches the gritty clouds of soot rise from chimneys and finally, she sits on the roof of a particularly nice building (new shingles, she notices, for their color has not dulled with the weather) and gazes down at the canal that separates the castle from the rest of the city.
Despite the newness of the building, there are soot and dust everywhere. Freya’s traveling suit and family crest are more pink in color than red, and her hair is more grey than silver, but that hardly matters to her. Dust is a familiar thing, a counterpart to any city. Down in the marketplace perhaps, the dust is hidden away, but now, up here, Freya wonders how she could have thought Alexandria so completely alien as to lack such a thing.
Freya leans back comfortably against the warm shingles and lets the sun caress her dirty face. Drowsily, she muses that perhaps she was wrong.
She fits right in Alexandria.