Final Fantasy: Rosas Journey

 

Rating: PG
Genre: Adventure/ Mystery
Setting: Technically the world of FF9, but it also travels all over the place
Main Characters: Rosa, Tog

 

Part 4

Rosa shivered. The coldness was numbing. Rosa opened her eyes slowly, looking around. She could see her breath freezing in the air. The place she had landed was a desolate wasteland. Snow scattered the wind driven landscape, the bitterly cold wind blowing it up in clouds, and whipping Rosas hair around her face. Her knees throbbed painfully, blood staining the frozen ground she knelt on. She attempted to stand up, but a throbbing pain from the scratches on her knees made her collapse again. She found herself wishing that Tog was with her. But he wasn’t. She was completely alone. She swivelled herself around, slowly, painfully, until she was no longer kneeling. The effort involved, mixed with the continuous, throbbing pain shooting through her knees made her feel sick. She sat on the ground, holding her head with her hands, willing the pain to stop, to go away.

Slowly, and partly because of the sheer coldness of the wind, the pain died down. Rosa was half afraid to try standing up again, in case the pain came rushing back as soon as she forced her injured knees to work. But she reasoned that staying put would do her no good at all. She wouldn’t be able to find Tog if she stayed there and there was a high possibility that she would freeze to death staying still in the bitter coldness that surrounded her. Taking a deep breath, and shutting her eyes, she stood up slowly. She felt a dull throbbing in her knees, and knew that by walking she was only going to make the pain worse. But she had no other choice. She forced herself forward, staggering slowly across the barren landscape, searching for a sign of a town, a village, a farmhouse. Anywhere where she could escape the cold, and try to do something about her scratched knees.

She lost track of time, staggering along in the bleak wilderness, all her energy was focused on continuing to walk. After a while, the numbness in her knees had faded, ad she was left with only the blinding pain. There was no sign of any dwellings. Several times the extremeness of the pain caused her to nearly black out, but Rosa knew that if she stopped, or collapsed, she would never be able to find the will power to continue, and she would sit there and freeze. But she also realised that if she didn’t find some sort of shelter soon the effort of staying awake would become to much, she would collapse from exhaustion. As the time drifted slowly on, she found herself wondering how she had got herself into this situation. Her idea of adventure didn’t include staggering around catching pneumonia, with cut knees, making walking more difficult. All she could do was be thankful that there was no driving wind. To battle against the wind while in as much pain as she was would have been complete torture. Stumbling slightly, Rosa’s mind was brought back to Gaia. She just managed to catch herself, stop herself from falling, and she jerked upright again, wincing as a fresh wave of pain swept through her legs. Her muscles were tired with carrying her, when she was injured like this. She was afraid she would not even be able to force herself onwards if she couldn’t rest her aching muscles. But up ahead she could see a blur on the horizon, which seemed to be spouting smoke. With a slightly renewed vigour, she staggered towards it, drawing nearer by the minute.

Not long after she could see that the blur was a house, quite a large house, backed by a small grove of trees. She was stumbling more towards it now, and it became apparent to her that the ground had gone into a slope. The house was built in a dip in the wasteland, impossible to see over the flat expanses of the frozen tundra.

She reached the house, and put the last of her strength into tugging on the bell rope that hung lifelessly by the door. A deep, resounding tone ran through the house. Rosa stood outside, swaying, and praying that whoever lived here would be kind enough to allow her refuge from the cold which had stung her body and now chilled her bones. The door handle shifted after what seemed like an age to Rosa, and the door swung inwards slowly. Standing behind the door was a tall, well dressed man. Rosa opened her mouth to ask for shelter from the cold, but her energy had vanished. She fell forward slowly, onto the steps, unconscious from the pain and the cold.

 

END OF PART 4