Yuffie Kisaragi Locksborough was a long way from home. Quite a long way, in fact. She was in the woods bordering Shinra Manor, which was a good seven miles from the Locksborough Estate. She peered through the trees with some amount of anguish as she noted that the sun was turning that horrible orangey-pinkish color and getting much too close to the horizon.

Godo was going to whip her. Or threaten to whip her while Elmyra protested that daughters cannot be whipped like sons can, and Godo would bemoan the fact that he had three daughters instead of three sons. Aerith would giggle and kiss her, and Tifa would say, "Oh, Yuffie," in that way that only she could and hug her anyway. Yuffie herself would probably make some lighthearted quip about the whole thing and be scolded once again for her lack of good propriety.

As if she gave a whit about propriety. But if Godo, in one of his fits of thunderous anger, threatened taking away her coming out ball tomorrow, she'd just die. Being four years younger than Tifa when Tifa and Aerith were barely two years apart just wasn't fair. So she was determined to get home, and quickly.

She turned her attention to the dappled mare beneath her. "Now, Betsy," she said, lowering her eyebrows in an attempt to look menacing. "Really. This is getting ridiculous. I want you to stop eating grass and take us both home immediately." She flicked the reins impatiently.

The creature chewed the surrounding foliage with ease.

Yuffie let out a bellow of intense and high-pitched rage and cracked the reins down hard on the mare's back. Betsy broke into an abrupt gallop, and she lurched forward, flailing her arms around wildly as the reins were ripped from her hands. "Whoa! Slow down, girl!" she shouted, but Betsy kept right on.

They flew through the forest at an alarming pace, breaking several small branches as they plunged headlong into the thick of them. She ducked just seconds before they bolted beneath a larger branch, one that could have easily knocked her out of the saddle or beaten her brains out entirely.

Out of the woods a mere moments later, she grappled for the reins and finally got a hold of them, yanking backward with all the force she could muster. A bit too much force, perhaps.

She lay on the ground a few minutes before getting up, contemplating whether or not her head was still attached to the rest of her body. It thudded with a very dull resonance that made it difficult to think. She blinked at the world, or perhaps it blinked at her. In any case, it was flickering in and out of her vision in a somewhat startling manner.

She realized suddenly that the mare was not making any noise now, but she was still standing there, and there was someone standing in front of her. Or else she was simply seeing strange horse- and people-shaped blobs as a side effect of landing on her head too hard. But she thought they were really there.

She jumped to her feet, a bit too quickly. Her stomach did a flip-flop, and she was promptly sick in the nearby bushes. As she much as she hated being sick, she felt considerably better afterwards and could see much more clearly as well. Maybe I should get sick more often. I feel wonderful!

She turned back to Betsy then, and remembered the person. He was definitely not a figment of her head injury. She definitely wouldn't have imagined someone that looked like him. His hair was too long, he looked altogether disheveled, and he was wearing too much black. It overwhelmed him, all the way from his waistcoat to his boots. She decided almost immediately that he must have been a strange, disagreeable sort of man.

For a moment, she considered various ways of being rude and obnoxious to him. After all, this was, in a way, the last day she would ever be allowed to be rude and ignore all the basic rules of society. As much as she was looking forward to being treated like an adult, tomorrow really was the end.

Just as she was about to tell him how horrid he looked in so much black, she finally realized where they were. She was standing in the lawn of Shinra Manor. The lawn. Of Shinra Manor. "What—what are you doing here?" she finally sputtered at him.

He looked at her and blinked. "I...live here," he said slowly, in a deep voice that didn't sound quite used to speaking.

"What? No, you don't! You can't live here! If you lived here, I would know about it. Everyone would know about it. No one's lived in Shinra Manor for years and years. It's probably haunted." She made her last remark with a nonchalant shrug and a sidelong glance at the house itself. It was huge, really, with tall gothic spires and an altogether formidable air. She gave an involuntary shudder—half fear and half delight. Ghost stories of Shinra Manor had been one of her favorite aspects of her childhood. Ghost stories of Shinra Manor practically were her childhood.

He was staring at her blankly.

"Well, what do you have to say about it?" she asked, turning back to him with impatience.

"I have seen no evidence of it's being haunted. But I just arrived today. The lease was settled last month."

"And where did you move from?" she asked.

"Midgar City."

"Oh, I see," she replied, uncrossing her arms and looking him over. His clothes looked quite finely-tailored, come to think of it. And he had that look, like he thought he was of a higher class than her. "City folk," she said. "That explains a lot." She paused briefly. "Midgar Countryside is so much nicer than the city. There's room to breathe and not so many stuck up, dowdy people." She looked at him pointedly.

He showed no sign of being even slightly affected by her words.

She sighed. "Well, what's the city like?"

He stared at her for so long she began to wonder if he was still alive. Maybe he'd just died standing up like that, and wouldn't that be horrifying to have someone die staring at you and holding the reins of your horse? She'd have to pry them from his cold, dead hands while he stared with that same blank look for all of eternity. Just as her worry was beginning to peak, he spoke, "Different...from here."

"That's very informative, Mr..." she trailed off, realizing she didn't know his name. She'd been conversing with him for a whole three minutes or so, and they hadn't even been introduced. That was a terrible breach of etiquette.

"Valentine," he answered for her. "Vincent Valentine."

"Mr. Valentine," she repeated with a genteel smile, dipping her head downward slightly. This was something Aerith had taught her, that a lady always nodded and repeated a gentleman's name when introduced to him and appeared generally sweet and demure. She thought she mastered it rather well, actually, when she put her mind to it. Now she ought to have been introduced to him as well, by a third party, but there was no third party to be found.

"I'm..." she faltered for a moment. What was she supposed to say? Calling herself Miss Locksborough seemed strange, but Yuffie was much too informal. "I'm...Yuffie Kisaragi Locksborough," she said at last.

She made a short bow and watched him do likewise. Afterwards, she stared at him, trying to mimic his blank, removed expression. It was harder than it looked. It made her face feel very confined, all scrunched up in a ball of wrinkles.

After a long, awkward pause, he cleared his throat, sounding pained. "Locksborough Estate. That's...not far from here, is it?"

"Seven miles that way," Yuffie replied, pointing over her shoulder. "I should be going back, actually." She glanced at the sky. The sun was sinking at an alarming pace. It was almost half way gone now. She wondered what Godo would think of her coming in after dark with scrapes and bruises and probably a large, egg-shaped lump on her head. Well, at least she could use her various injuries as an excuse for her lateness.

She moved towards Mr. Valentine and took her reins out of his hands. He looked dubiously down at his fingers as she got into the saddle.

"I...did you want a ride home?" he asked, turning toward her. "I could lend you a carriage. It's getting late. You looked like you had a hard fall."

"Oh, I'm fine," she replied. "I do this sort of thing all the time. I mean, of course I don't make a habit of falling off horses. I'm actually an excellent rider; I just...well, you know. I was having...difficulties. Just one of those days." She glanced once more at the manor and then spotted where she'd spewed up her stomach in front of him. She felt her face redden. "Um. I'm sorry about the bushes. Really. I'll make it up to you. I'll—I'll—you can come to my ball! It's tomorrow. My first ever. It'll be wonderful, and it's a good way to meet people, especially since you've just moved in, and—" she flicked the reins just slightly, not really expecting Betsy to move very much, but she found herself abruptly heading in the opposite direction at a breakneck speed. The rest of her sentence was lost in a loud yelp as she struggled to maintain her balance.

Mr. Valentine was left standing in some confusion on the edge of his new lawn.

When she finally arrived home, the first stars were beginning to twinkle in the dark sky. She handed Betsy off to a stableboy who eyed her with some curiosity but took the mare without a word. She thanked him and continued on her way to the house.

Once inside, she made her way through the familiar halls to the parlor. The door was shut and for a moment she stayed outside, one hand resting on the brass doorknob. There was music playing softly, and she could picture Tifa's long fingers gliding across the ivory keys. Her own fingers were shorter and much less graceful. And she'd never had the patience for actually practicing the piano.

She heard Aerith's voice as well, reading aloud from one of her books. Yuffie never really understood what they were about, but she liked listening to Aerith's voice as she read. It had a nice, lilting tone to it. "Infinite in mystery is the gift of the goddess. We seek it thus, and take to the sky. Ripples form on the water's surface. The— "

Both sounds were abruptly cut short by Godo's shouting. "Where is she? She ought to be here by now! I told her to be back before dark! If she's not lying dead in a ditch somewhere, I've half a mind to kill her myself!"

"Now, Godo," Elmyra's soothing voice stopped him from going on. "I'm sure she didn't mean to be so late. She's just—"

This seemed like the perfect moment for Yuffie to burst into the room, and she seized the moment, throwing the door open wide and spinning into the room. The spinning came to close to making her topple over, but she steadied herself and stood in front of Godo's chair, next to Elmyra on one side, and Aerith on the settee to his left. "I'm here!" she announced to everyone. Then, in less of a shout, "Are you happy to see me, Father?"

He frowned up at her. "And where have you been, young lady?" He paused and looked at her more closely, noting all her scattered scratches, dirt, and bruises. "And what have you been doing? You look like—like something out of Aerith's novel." He frowned with fresh accusation at his eldest daughter.

Aerith smiled at him as she closed the book and set it on the table in front of her. "It's a play, Father, not a novel."

He grunted and turned back to Yuffie in front of him. "Well, what kind of mischief have you been getting into, and how ought I to punish you for it?"

Yuffie smiled at him. "You ought to do nothing at all, except perhaps be exceptionally kind to me for my trying experiences."

He raised an eyebrow at her. Beside him, Elmyra was watching her with a worried crease between her brows.

"I fell off my horse," Yuffie went on. "She was being horribly disagreeable. It wasn't my fault at all. I would have been back long before dark, but she wouldn't move even an inch at my bidding, and then she galloped all the way to Shinra Manor and threw me off! I thought I might have been dead, I had such a headache. It was just terrifying!" She dropped heavily down beside Aerith with a deep sigh.

Godo snorted. "My Yuffie, terrified? I don't believe it. You probably took the old mare to Shinra yourself and were rightly bucked off for your stupidity. There's nothing to see at Shinra. I don't know what everyone's fascination with it is. It's just an old house."

"I didn't go all the way to Shinra," Yuffie protested. "And I was trying to come back. Betsy just wouldn't listen. But, Father, at Shinra—"

"Yuffie, are you sure you're alright?" Elmyra broke in at this point, leaning forward in her chair. "You look horrible."

"I'm fine, Mother."

"Are you positive? It just terrifies me thinking of you riding all the way out to Shinra Manor, all alone. And then falling off your horse! You could have been killed out there, and we wouldn't have had any notion of it until—well, who knows, with the rate Shinra's visited. It's such a dreadful, lonely place, out there in the middle of nowhere."

Yuffie opened her mouth again to speak, but was forced to close it as Elmyra went on.

"And then riding all the way back in the dark and the cold, when you could probably barely sit on your horse after taking such a fall! Yuffie, you need to be more careful!"

"At least you're back," Tifa put in softly, from her seat on the piano bench. She smiled with much more sympathy than Elmyra, though she bore a similar expression of concern.

"Yes, we're very glad you're back and safe!" Aerith exclaimed beside her, smiling as she found Yuffie's hand and squeezed it tightly. "It would have been horrid if something happened to you the day before your ball."

"I know," Yuffie replied. "That's why I didn't let anything happen to me. Otherwise, I might have actually gone into Shinra Manor to look around and been strangled by ghosts who would probably eat my soul." Or by mysterious men who wear too much black.

Aerith giggled and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

"Oh, Yuffie," was all Tifa said, shaking her head and smiling at the same time.

Yuffie grinned at both of them. "I know you're all immensely glad I'm back," she said, sitting up straighter now with a renewed importance as she considered the dark-haired and dreary Mr. Valentine. She thought of him quite fondly, because even if he was very dreary and dour, he was living in Shinra Manor, which automatically made him a great source of interest, no matter what he was really like. "And it's even better than that," she went on. "I have gossip."

"Better than Mrs. Highwind having a baby come winter?" Aerith asked with a grin.

"What?" Yuffie asked, turning towards her with shock. The Highwinds were family friends, living only two miles away, at Rocketto Park. "A baby?"

"It was bound to happen sooner or later."

"But—Cid as a father?" This was something she could not for the life of her imagine. "Cid can't raise a child! What if it grows up like him?"

"Yuffie!" Elmyra reprimanded. "That's not kind. You're sixteen now; you need to start acting like a lady. Ladies do not talk disparagingly of others behind their backs."

She rolled her eyes. She didn't see this as talking disparagingly. It was the plain truth of the matter. Cid was a friend, like an uncle to her almost, but not the sort of man anyone really wanted around their children. "It's nothing against Mr. Highwind personally. I just don't see how his wife puts up with him."

"I think it's lovely," Aerith said. "He might seem like a gruff, disagreeable sort of man, but I really think he'd do anything for Shera. But, Yuffie, share your news. What is it? And where did you find out?"

Yuffie smiled, quickly forgetting the affairs of the Highwinds in favor of her own. She glanced around the room, making sure everyone was paying attention. They were; even Godo, who usually showed great contempt for all their gossiping, was watching her with interest. "Well," she began and made a brief pause, "it's just that Shinra Manor has been let at last." She said this in a nonchalant manor, flicking her wrist lightly to give a passing air to the comment. Afterwards, though, she eagerly watched for their reactions. She was pleased to see that they looked, overall, shocked.

"Let? To whom?" Aerith asked.

"A Mr. Vincent Valentine," Yuffie replied. "I met him when I fell off Betsy in front of him. And then I vomited in his bushes, but he didn't really seem to mind."

"Oh, dear," Elmyra breathed, glancing at Godo, who didn't seem to know whether to be angry or amused at the situation. He seemed on the verge of a snorting laugh, and then abruptly his mouth settled into a hard line and his eyebrows lowered sternly.

"You don't have to look so serious about it!" she said. "He was quite polite. He didn't even mention the bushes. I did, though. I told him I would make it up to him and that he could come to my ball."

Before she could even offer a pleading look, Godo exploded. "You invited him to your ball? You trespassed on his property, vomited in his bushes, and invited him to your ball? What were you thinking? Don't you know this is not done? You're in no position to invite him anywhere!"

"But I thought it would be nice. I mean, he just moved in. I thought—you know—he could meet everyone that lives in the area. And you can go call on him tomorrow morning and invite him properly."

Elmyra glanced at her husband with the determined expression of trying to make the best out of a bad situation. "I suppose it would be neighborly," she offered.

Godo glared back at her.

"Well, what was he like?" Aerith asked after a moment, breaking the silence.

"Boring," Yuffie answered immediately. "Incredibly boring. And a bit depressing looking. He was wearing too much black, like he was dressed for a funeral. It was dreadful, and he hardly said anything. The only thing I really got out of the conversation was that he's from Midgar City, settled the lease on Shinra last month, and arrived today."

"Did he come alone? Does he have family, here or elsewhere?"

Yuffie shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't see anyone else. He didn't really seem like the sort of man to have a family. Or friends. Or acquaintances." She played with a piece of her hair that had come loose from it's tight bun. She chewed on it briefly, then spat it out. "But I suppose you could say I'm his acquaintance now." She wasn't entirely sure whether or not she liked the idea.

Aerith watched her curiously. "You weren't too rude to him, were you, dear?"

Yuffie frowned at her and straightened. "Of course not! I wasn't rude at all. I just asked him some questions, that's all. It wasn't like I was interrogating him." She thought back to the conversation. It had been sort of one-sided, and she had asked a lot of abrupt questions. "At least, not much," she amended. "But I'm famished!" she went on, changing the subject entirely. "Really, if I don't have something to eat, I think I might just die here and now."

Elmyra looked at her and sighed. "Go to the kitchen, dear. The rest of us have already eaten. I believe Mrs. Hart saved some for you."

Yuffie got up and strode out of the room with a smile. Altogether, she felt that her conversation with her family had been a great success. Even if Cid and Shera were having a baby, which she still found highly distasteful.

This will get more interesting soon. Hopefully, it was interesting already, but it was somewhat of an introduction. I tend to start stories a bit slowly.

Thank you for reading! Please review!