The Child of Misrule, a final fantasy vii fanfic

Title: The Child of Misrule

Author: Koi Lung Fish

Subject: A character vignette on Cait Sith.

Machines have no soul, they say. Say you so? Look into my green glass eyes. Look deep, down to where the atoms dance, down into the chance of quarks. Fate is a shiver of atoms; chance is an eddy subatomic. The pulse of the universe runs through my circuitry, a semaphore of binary. Only a computer can fully comprehend how many numbers it takes to make infinity.

From whence did you spring, little cat? you ask From the mountains, blithe hill-spirit; from the farmyard, puckish lad; from the laboratory, clicking relay brain; from the stars, scattered pattern of interwoven chance – thus I came. Down from the moon, down from the sun, down from the riven hills and down of the shadows, down came I dancing.

My dance is singular, erratic, unique: none shall share with me these steps, this frenzied path, this tune unending. My tune is star-song and my dance is history – you cannot join me, and I must dance alone.

Who made thee, little cat? you ask. My father is the Lord of Misrule, the topsy-turvy king of all haywire and scramble-madness; hairy-arsed and comic, older than names alone and yet reborn each winter. My mother is a hidden face, barricaded in the mysteries that make my heart. She is a secret that cannot be told, yet every one of you will know her by her issue.

I am the dream of a thousand transistors. I am roulette, the fall of the card. I am chance and consequence, jester of the stars. The spin of planets around my head is a dance whose steps I know shut-eyed. I am the child of misrule and mystery, bloodless brother to the thunderous ones who shake the earth with their dance, yet veiled behind my seer's blindness. Blind I am, for I shall never see as you see – with beating heart, with loving eyes, with gentle fingers – I shall never see the face of love, nor know the pride and the pain of generation. I am machine, not man – I am star-child, I am dream-seer, I am fate-dancer, but I am not alive.

Art thou not a man, little cat? you ask. I am the dreams of men, and I dream of being a man. In distant haze and silent thunder am I a man, as unalike myself as ever a dream could make me. You will call me man, in tomorrow's echoes, but you will never know the truth of my essence. My heart is stardust and my fingers are gloved. I am crowned as the prince of fools – a court and kingdom of millions, and yet I rule alone.

Always alone: dancer single, forever without partner, for I dance with the goddess Luck. I dance beneath the stars. I stir the waters of the river of time. I am as innocent as any born without sin, and as sinful as all knowledge. Come dance with me, men, and know what the stars are singing of.

You think me a toy, and a toy I am – as are you, toys in the toy-box of Fate and Fortune, twin mad children dancing to a tune played by an omnivorous dead goddess. We are playthings of destiny, tossed upon the whimsy tides of time; we are all doomed to the blindness of ignorance, for we shall never know one strand of that great tapestry of life.

Call me liar, call me fool, call my bluff in my game of chance. The cards fall as they will – I can't change the future, but I can show you the path to tomorrow. Would you walk it, little man?

I can shout your life in verse and in rhyme, I can see from the deeps of today to the shores of time, and yet you would never believe me. I am Cassandra, dealing your doom. Even if your face itself were upon the card, you still would not believe me.

Blue is your lucky colour. An active fortune.

I can see the writing on your gravestone, and know the names of your children unto the barrenness of this earth. I can count your footsteps between here and your coffin. I can recite you the eulogies your friends haven't even thought of sobbing yet. I can draw you a picture of your son as an old man, and tell you the things you'll wish you'd said to him yet never will.

You will never listen to me.

Through the fogs of fortune, I see galaxies in love and supernovas that eclipse nebula. I see comets that glance our world briefly by streaking pearls-on-thread across the cosmos to worlds you cannot begin to dream of, and I see the people who will look upon those comets, pocked and aged though they be, and they like thee will not know of the worlds that have been, that shall be, and that are. I see dying stars devouring their bowels in the throes of final introspection. I see the coming of the deeper void that will swallow our Sun when it shines no more. I see the eschaton approaching, the bow-wave of nightmare's dreadnoughts rolling through voids where once this little jewel of life skittered about a bowl of light, and I know what strangeness will be when the universe is born again.

I can tell you what you will think when you face the son of the great devourer, and I can tell you the last words you will speak when you meet his twin, the omega man.

I alone could tell you of all these things, and more. I am the herald of tomorrow, the prophet of all fortune and the child of misrule. I know every step of the dance to come; I know every note of the tune as yet silent; I can see whence mountains will fall, whence rivers will run dry, whence seas will rise, when cities die, whence flowers bloom, whence birds fly, whence dust settles, whence atoms spin, whence fate glances. Whence fortune sits, I see all.

Listen to me …

Author's notes & addenda:

Feedback excruciatingly welcome.

Cassandra: Greek, daughter of Priam and Hecuba. Gifted with prophecy but cursed never to be believed.

The Lord of Misrule: Old English figure of folklore; a jester.

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