Closed Starter for the “Four Seasons” Divergent Megaverse!
Of how Nanaki and Fuhito first learned about ShinRa’s ties with Cosmo Canyon.
Involved Characters: Nanaki, 20yo ( @nanakithewarrior ) Fuhito Fushimi, 11yo ( @fuhitoofavalanche ), Kunsel, 3yo ( @steeleidolon )
References: Before Crisis -Final Fantasy VII-, Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
Settings: Cosmo Canyon, June εγλ 1979
Note: This thread was written on Discord, it is being copy-pasted for archiving.
It was a word Nanaki hated; and one he'd rather not use at all if he could. At 20 years of age, boys shouldn't be scared. His grandfather could remind him everyday that he shouldn't make the mistake to count his own age in the same way the other young ones did in the Valley of the Fallen Star. A year for Nanaki took three years for the other kids to come. But regardless of his words, people celebrated his birthday every human year. Boys who had seen twenty birthdays did not know fear.
Animals, however, they did. Fear was one of the few primal emotions man and beast shared, and one that he felt heavily swung the pendulum to which he was chained back towards his wild roots rather than that of the role his kind was supposed to represent here.
It was also the grim reminder of the coward he descended from. His mother would be ashamed, if she knew he was afraid.
But on the inside, where his thoughts belonged to Nanaki alone, he couldn't deny.
Fuhito, that young boy, he was scary.
He'd been living in the village for two years now - human years, that is - and from the very start, something about him never sat right with Nanaki. He thought it was the foreign scent at first; or his accent. Everything about him simply screamed "different", and still even now, when the rest had accepted his presence amongst the other scholars who had come to stay in Cosmo Canyon, Nanaki had not. Not quite...
Not that Nanaki would dare do anything about it. But he did scoot to sit a bit further when the boy joined the others around the fire for Grandpa's teachings. And he'd avoided the study rooms carefully when he caught his scent lingering by. These days more often than others.
It was a shame, because the pillows there were particularly comfortable.
If only he could put his finger on just what exactly unsettled him so, maybe he could make peace with this feeling. The few times his eyes had met the other's, Nanaki had felt the fur at the spine of his back stand on end. It felt like staring into the glassy eyes of a bird of prey. A big one, like those who'd try to snatch him when he was a much smaller pup and made him rush inside, tail tucked between his hinds, its flame be damned for singeing his toes.
Fuhito was passionate to his studies, maybe more than most in the village. But the way he went through each and every book in the study room had something predatory-like. Obsessive. It was not right.
With a small sigh, he shuddered to let his bristled fur settle back down in place. He shouldn't be thinking about him anymore. It made his stomach churn. Huffing, he rolled on the other side where he was laying, on a flat rock by the edge of the cliff that marked the village's borders, staring off into the far away, dangerous wild plains.
The child doesn't say much - until he says too much, imitating his elders with an uncanny sort of accuracy for short snippets before devolving into nonsense and laughter, as little boys do. Bright eyed - almost lupine, like droplets of smoked honey in the sun, flecked with other colors like the Canyon feldspar. His mop of hair looks like a tangle of rasped, fluffy cinnamon bark cowlicked this way and that. It affords him a natural sort of camouflage, what with the way his skin takes the daylight and the red, red earth all around.
He also has a terrible proclivity for running everywhere he goes. Always, always. Typically with something in his hands... something messy, or sharp. His fingers are stained with it this time, an earthen ochre absconded from the ashes of a tertiary fire allowed to burn out and cool.
Enter Kunsel, dun tunic painted with splashes of yellow and blue, little moccasins tied to feet that shff-shff-shff-shff in the dust. Three years old and a terror, he has taken to drawing interconnected spirals on the rock, and then tip, topple, splattering handprints in the middle with a peal of giggles. He stands butt-first, levers himself up, and starts his dizzy spirals again, approaching the red-furred shape--
Perhaps Nanaki will feature in his bizarre design.
It wasn't uncommon for Nanaki to be left to care, or to the "care", of other children. Human children liked to be wild, and they liked the wild, those like Nanaki, on all-fours and soft to the touch. This was a bit to the dismay of common creatures and Nanaki as well, for human children tended to be everything a sensitive creature could loathe: smelly and loud, disrespectful of boundaries and so oblivious to body language cues. In this aspect, Nanaki's ability to speak offered an advantage that made him a more suitable playdate than the other animals in the village.
For children old enough to understand words, anyway.
So it was with a small wave of panic that the creature startled out of sleep, twitching ears being the first to move in reaction to the approaching noise of scuffling little feet, and swiveling back quickly before the rest of his head turned. Just a moment for ochre eyes to rest on the small toddler, and he was bolting up to his feet.
"H-hey...! No, no! No coming this way!"
The edge of the cliff was so close, and these bipedal things had the most horrible balance! For as much as Nanaki could envy their ability to climb just about anywhere, he surely wouldn't wish to lose his tail like their kind had.
So busy twisting around the small child to carefully pinch the back of his tunic with his teeth, to lift him up and carry him away from his resting spot, he was completely unaware of the stained hands the little thing would surely reach his fur with the moment he put him down at a safer distance from the borders.
