Cry of the Lost: A Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Tale

Chapter 2

"It was 15 years ago today...mom and dad passed away. I was only six at the time, but I remember. I crept into my parents' bedroom that morning to surprise them with breakfast: a hard-boiled egg and a glass of tap water for each of them. We were poor. My parents worked for a clothing manufacturer for ten gil an hour. I've heard of places where people make 1000 to even 10,000 gil an hour! Well, that morning, two eggs were all I could find for breakfast.

"After quietly placing the tray of food onto the little milk crate nightstand by my parents' bed, I shouted, 'Rise and shine!' My parents didn't even stir. Often my parents would return home from work exhausted, so I figured they were just sound asleep. I moved over to shake my mom awake, and that's when I noticed that she was pale and not breathing. As I shook with all my might, tears began to flow down my cheeks. I ran to my dad screaming and found only the same lifelessness before me. I leaped onto the bed and shook my father and mother as though my strength could give them life. I yelled and shook for what seemed like days until I finally ran out of the room and smack into the arms of my uncle who worked across the street. He had come at the sound of my screaming. I cried in his arms until I could cry no longer. I remember my uncle cried with me — the only time I've ever seen him cry. From that day on, my uncle raised me as his own son. Uncle Cid was mom's only brother, and she had loved him as much as she had me and dad. Now, Uncle Cid returned that love to me."

Curt set down his journal and looked at the ink stains he had just scribbled. A tear fell from his eye and blotted the page. He quickly dried it. Had 15 years really passed? It seemed like only yesterday, and now he was finally 21. Twenty one years of memories...none so vivid as the one he had just written down. Curt continued to reflect.

"It all started with the star I think. We saw it fall. I was around four years old. No one had ever seen such a sight...no one knew where it went, or what it meant. But it fell. Many months later, it began...first the animals. Once timid beasts had become wild. Some animals even seemed to evolve or mutate. People could no longer journey safely through the land alone. That was the start of the patrols. Then things got worse. People started getting sick...and many died. No one knew the cause. After mom and dad died, Uncle Cid and I moved to Torenada City. He was searching for an answer.

"That was when the first one was found...the first myrrh tree. Uncle Cid and an expedition stumbled upon it up in the Jorgian Mountains. They had set up camp under the shade of the tree. One of the men had fallen ill...the same symptoms as all the others: vomiting, trembling, fever, hallucinations. In the morning, Cid rose to find that his comrade was feeling better...and stranger still that everyone and everything was covered with what appeared to be dew. However, it had been a dry, warm night, and the area surrounding the camp and tree was dry. Uncle Cid looked up, and as he did a drop of dew fell from a tree leaf and landed right in his eye. He told me that it stung like hell, but that it also made him feel strangely at peace. Immediately, he began collecting the dew...shaking it off the leaves of the myrrh tree like a crazed man. And that's how it all changed. After some study, it was found that myrrh — as the dew came to be called — countered the illness and death that had pervaded the land. It was first thought that it had to be taken like medicine, but then the scientists realized that it simply provided an aura...like a shield against some invisible force. One only needed to be near the substance to get well or to keep out of harm from the miasma blight — that's what people called the unseen illness.

"A year or so later, Uncle Cid and the scientists found that the myrrh's protective properties could be enhanced and its range expanded through being placed in crystal orbs of a specific resonant frequency. And so the crystal chalices were created...large crystal sculptures that stood at the center of every town to provide protection. Crystal caravans were sent out every year to gather myrrh for their towns' chalices. Every crystal caravan or transport caravan carried a small crystal orb containing a small amount of myrrh. Without them, the miasma would inevitably strike.

"Well now that I'm 21, I'll be leaving on my first crystal caravan today...what will it be like I wonder?"