Chapter 1

Today was her 17th birthday.

Queen Garnet.

Zidane lay on his bed, staring at the sky through his window and wondered if she was doing the same thing.

His clock told him it was two minutes past one in the morning. He had settled at the Black Mage Village after travelling back with Mikoto, and had been there for almost a month.

His though wandered back to Alexandria, Ruby would be about seven months pregnant now. He wondered how she'd react to being told she was too big to play the part of Cornelia this year.

Dagger… or Garnet as she now was, would of course ask for her favourite play for her seventeenth birthday.

Or would she?

He had only months ago revealed himself during that play, to have her run into his arms…

Even thinking about that day caused a physical pain in his heart, if only he had done something different. Maybe he shouldn't have gone back at all.

"Are you still brooding?"

Mikoto's voice alerted Zidane of her presence, only a few foot from his bed, "I think the Inn Keeper's getting a bit fed up with you staying here so long. You need your own place"

"When did you get so…" Zidane couldn't think of the word to describe the change in his sister.

"I've travelled, like you did. I've learned a lot about this world and am quite pleased to be a part of it"

Zidane groaned, "All right for some".

Mikoto sighed in annoyance, she had begun to understand the many complex feelings of the Gaians. And even though her brother was technically a genome from Terra, he had been raised to act, think and feel like any other person from Gaia. No wonder he was so confused.

"Are you going to travel again?"

Zidane rolled away from her, "You know, little sisters really are annoying… how old are you any way?"

Mikoto stopped to think, "Well I was created to be a vessel for a child, approximately twelve years old. Unlike the other Genomes, you and I grow with the passage of time. Which now makes me… fifteen, given I existed in Terra for two years"

"You couldn't just say fifteen?" Zidane joked.

"Garnet will be seventeen years today won't she?"

Zidane tensed once again and continued staring at the black sky, "Go to sleep Mikoto"

She stood for a few moments and stared at her brother's back, his tail lying limp onto the floor.

"You know, I began to wonder what else Garland could have meant. About the coming together of two planets…"

"Garland was a nutcase out to destroy Gaia for his own agenda, now sleep Mikoto or you can sit outside all night"

Reluctantly, Mikoto left the Inn quietly and made her way to a small house, located beside the mill which she had build with the aid of the mages.

Zidane listened to her footsteps fade, it seemed he had developed quite a skill in driving girls away.

Meanwhile, Queen Garnet slept fitfully in her bed. Images of two shadows moving across her bedroom walls still kept her awake until the early hours of the morning. This was one day she needed to be prepared for.

Her seventeenth birthday meant one thing, she needed to start looking for suitors. It was expected for her to marry by her eighteenth birthday, and the only man she loved she had told to leave.

At five AM she woke, feeling exhausted and frustrated. She spent her remaining two hours organising the box she kept tucked under her bed. It consisted of everything dear to her, the outfit she had worn on her travels, the various staffs she had kept and the stones which had contained her eidolons.

In the midst of them shone a bright red garnet, her breathe caught as she remembered…

Zidane stood before her, the red stone in his hand.

"Here, catch" he said to her as he flung it into the air. The stone felt hard but warm in her gloved hand.

"Once upon a time there was a stone. One day it made a wish, "I want to shine". So it travelled from person to person and shone more and more each day. And now its shining in your hand Dagger…"

She wrapped the stone in a white cloth and placed it in her pocket, just as she heard a knock at her door.

"Come in Valeria" she called.

And so began another day as Queen…

XXX

Not very exciting I know, but this is just so we now when and where we are. By the way I have decided that Garnet's birthday is in May, and Zidane's is in October. Which means he turned 17 whilst he was recovering in the Black Mage Village.