Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like).
(This is a cut piece from FVIIrarepairweek I didn’t end up using but liked all the same. Nothing very serious, I just like situational comedy. Set in The Wretched, the one where Tifa and Seph settle down together. It’s... more than a paragraph.)
The custom’s officer looked at his screen with a frown. Tifa felt her gut clench. The queue behind her was long and impatient. The lights were bright and cruel and steadily giving her a headache.
He glanced down at the bag on the scanner and then up at the screen again. It was Sephiroth’s bag and she knew exactly what was in it that was causing the trouble. They had expected to be using the military airport but plans had changed and they had to come through the normal one. Then she left her favourite jacket back at the hotel, he ran back to get it, and here she was: alone and un-caffeinated at five in the morning, checking in both of their bags.
The custom’s officer cleared his throat and called out to his co-worker at the next station. She came over to stare at the screen too, bringing one of the other queues to a halt at well. Tifa resisted the urge to rub the headache building at her temple or the heat rising at her cheeks. Two and then three more officers came over to gawk, all keeping a healthy distance from the bag. She could feel the eyes of every single person in the check-in area on the back of her head.
“I didn’t even know it could scan for that,” one of the customs officers muttered.
Her officer reached for his phone. “Uh, could I get a supervisor at counter eight, please?”
“Is there a problem?” Tifa asked, her voice thin and strained. Like she didn’t know.
The seven workers behind the stall shuffled and exchanged looks.
“You declared you’re traveling with weapons?”
“It’s just that…” he turned the screen around so she could see, “the scanner is calling it a WMD.”
The whole screen was flashing red, the words WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION blazing across it. In the middle of all the fuss sat the innocent little materia that housed Masamune.
She breathed in and out very slowly.
“I can’t let that through.”
“Look at the passport that goes with that bag,” she said.
“He’s not going to leave it behind.” She scrambled around in her handbag for the right papers. “It’s either this or he takes it as carry-on. We’ve got the permit for it, it should be alright.”
The officer started to shake his head, then the supervisor arrived.
The other officers scattered back to their counters and half the line behind her started ducking under the ropes to jump into other queues. She was so embarrassed.
The supervisor looked at the screen. He looked at the bag. He looked at the passport. Then he looked at her.
He picked up the phone. “Can I get a manager out here?”
She closed her eyes and wished she had never gotten out of bed. That they’d slept in and missed the flight, they could have started a new life here, it would have been preferable to this.
