Character: Polaris Frost
World: Sargatanas
Prize: Chocobo Noble Barding

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After All

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The body was found sitting on the smooth wooden benches of Mih Khetto's Amphitheatre.


"I'd wager he's been dead four or five bells", said the young Midlander kneeling on the wet grass. She didn't look up as she spoke, performing measurements on the victim with a small brass instrument that I didn't recognise. "Signs of a struggle, but not a drop of blood. Same aetheric disturbance as the other cases. And uh, no head. Obviously. Sir."


She sighed, touching her fingertips to the ground to steady herself as she pushed back up to her feet. I gazed down at the pale corpse dispassionately, my head abuzz with thoughts I couldn't quite grasp.


They're so white and so small, but there are so many…


"You reckon this one had bought one of those damnable hats, too?" she asked. I moved away.


They called them "Moogle Heads", and they had become wildly popular this All Saint's Wake. Whimsical, charming and perhaps a little comical, it seemed that even the merchants themselves didn't know where they came from, but they sold, and sold well.


Every last one of the victims had purchased one before their murder. "Damnable hats" indeed.


I've never seen a knife so big


There were more people now, men and women of the Twin Adders in their long yellow coats. A stern Elezen man waved his arms percussively and barked orders in the distance. There was so much noise...


My mouth fills with cotton. Breathing is hard now, but they don't stop


The girl was still talking, "...readings I took were very disturbing. Something entirely unnatural was done to these poor people. Sir, are you listening sir?"


Their hands are so white and so small at my neck, and they're cutting, cutting...


"Sir?"


"Yes, yes, I'm listening Freya..." replied the detective tiredly.


I woke from my daydream with a jolt.


I watched the man from above as he ambled his way through the mud and the grass to his colleague who was still standing over my body.


Neither of them saw me, and few would. How boring.


I fluttered away from the scene, over smooth wooden bridges, across clear, idyllic streams that lined Gridania like veins in marble. Like veins in a body.


I stopped when I heard something peculiar: a young boy calling to me, walking hand in his mother's hand, raising his free arm to point at me. He smiled to me, and I smiled back. He wore one of those wildly popular hats, one that I once wore. It seemed so long ago...


His mother wasn't wearing one, but that was alright. He would have no need for mothers soon. Not once I'd set his pretty head free.


Moogles aren't born, after all. We're made.