Uh, this is my first POV fic, so please be nice. -_-; I might have screwed up tenses somewhere, sorry about that... I didn't proofread this much. I'm sick! Don't injure me! O_o; This randomly-written story (or even vignette, maybe?) doesn't say whose point of view this is from, but if you know enough about the black mages, you'll know it's Mr 56. He's usually in the cemetary with Mr 288.
There are possible, though minute, spoilers for those not started, um, maybe disc 4. A really, really in-depth novelisation. I'm not creative with plots of my own. So sue me. FFIX (C) Square.
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I stood quietly at the grave of my good friend. He had stopped — rather, died a while ago now, but this spot in the cemetary had remained my favourite place in the whole village. Everyone was usually quiet, wordlessly respecting the dead, saying silently:
‘We won't forget you.’
The silence was broken, softly, as I suddenly heard the voice of that Genome girl. Her voice was nice to hear, though I noticed that she always spoke to us with a cynical tone for some reason. She just didn't understand our ways yet, I had decided.
“Why do you bury the dead?” Mikoto inquired with a straight face, subtly curious. She looked down to the ground, as if to try and see our deceased friends, under all that soil, under all that dry soil below a thin layer of dusty sand. I peered at her. She had blonde hair, falling no further than to the nape of her neck, and she wore simple clothing that was pink and white. She had a tail, too, like the other Genomes. All the Genomes looked alike, really, though some had different kinds of clothes. The Genomes were a lot like black mages. We, though, were almost completely identical, with our black jackets with a purple trim, our white gloves and pants, our yellow hats. Some of us, though, like Mr 44, were more plump than others, or more gaunt on the other hand. And we all had our own unique personalities now, as Mr 288 would say.
She seemed quite intelligent, kind of like Mr 288, though she still didn't understand our ways. Maybe she could learn? The Genomes reminded me of the way we Black Mages were at first. We're more alike than I thought. I used to be very naive like them. All of us were, except Mr 288. He knew all about personalities and individualism — things that still kind of boggle me today.
Mr 288 usually stayed in the cemetary with me; he liked to idly reflect on different things. Friends? Life? Death? He used to speak of his fear of death a lot, but now, now he talks about how we should live life happily.
Mr 288 probably liked the silence as much as I did. Hopefully my friend — his name was Mr 36 — liked the silence, too. I wonder if he could listen to the silence we offered, if he could hear it from under the ground, buried under a few feet of soil, beneath us. Did he know that I paid silent homage to him? I hoped he did.
I snapped out of that stream of thought, paying attention again and glancing over to Mr 288.
“‘We won't forget you,’” he was saying to Mikoto. I assumed he was talking about what the use of our cemetary was. That was what I said to Mr 36 every day, not out loud, but I hoped he heard it. I wouldn't ever forget him, or our other friends that have died. I was happy, at least, that none of our friends had died recently. It seemed that no one had died since we came back to the village after learning that Kuja was lying — about knowing how to extend our lifespans. We supposedly would die after a year of our creation. I was sure it had been a year for most of us... maybe we had grown stronger, then? Maybe we didn't have to die until we were ready. I was not ready yet, so I was sure I wouldn't die, not then.
“I won't forget Mr 36,” I piped up in the middle of the conversation between Mr 288 and Mikoto. I hadn't been listening to much of what they said beforehand, but I felt the need to express what was on my mind at that moment. Mr 288's head bobbed once in my direction, and then he looked off into the distance. I looked down at the ground, and so did Mikoto — pensively. She had no words. She just looked down with me, where Mr 36 and others rest underneath the dry earth, underneath our motionless feet, in silent recognition.
I thought to myself that, as we stared down at the rough, cemetary ground as if we could see what was underneath, she was beginning to understand, just a little more, why we did what we did.
“You bury him... and come here so you won't forget him...”
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