Sebuna - 1997
Sebuna woke alone, as she often did of late. Nanaki was old enough not to be glued to her side, and he would wake before her to run out and greet the dawn.
She padded out of their den, movements slow as she worked the stiffness out of her leg. On good days, she could still keep up with her son, but rarely could she shake the limp entirely. He had so much energy, it was natural he should leave her behind.
She nosed her way out into the daylight and looked for Nanaki, spotting him out past the Candle. He was playing chase with some of the human children, and Sebuna put her whiskers forward, pleased. It was good to see him letting himself be a child. In his adolescence, he was still lanky but nearly as big as she was, and to the younger humans of the canyon, he could nearly pass himself off as an adult. He would often play at it, mimicking the way she spoke.
Tohar had told her it was normal for a child, but she knew there was more to it. Nanaki was 38, and he had watched humans born after him grow to become respected adults within the community. Why should it be different for him?
In a way, it was unfair that he was still a child, but it was a greater injustice that he should be pushed to be an adult before he was ready. But if Sebuna emphasized the stark difference in their experience, he pulled away. If she told stories of her own childhood, he seemed more determined to prove he had grown past it.
Would Seto have known what to say? She often longed for his perspective, but he had never raised a cub before either. It was Bugenhagen who had come to her aid. He was so old for a human, Nanaki didn't seem to feel any pressure to put on airs with him. Everyone looked up to Bugenhagen.
No one really knew what old looked like, for one of them. To any human, Sebuna was steady and unchanging. She felt it some days, like the petrification that had nearly taken her leg spread through her still. She couldn't move fast enough for anyone.
Some commotion at the gate drew her attention away from Nanaki. Strange men's voices arguing with young Ira. She approached to find two Shinra soldiers.
It was clear at a glance that they posed no threat. The blue of their uniforms was dulled by the red dust of the canyon, and they were missing their helmets and pauldrons. One of them was shivering, an unzipped bedroll wrapped around his shoulders. To have reached the settlement so early, they must have spent the night in the gorge, but the climb should have warmed him. He had a hand on his rifle, leaning on it for support. She wondered if it was even loaded.
"I told you," Ira was saying, "soldiers aren't permitted here."
"And I said, we're not here for Shinra!" snapped the shivering soldier.
Sebuna had known humans who, in the wake of an attack, had pushed themselves to become stronger in preparation for future assaults. But in the decades since the Gi attack, the people of the canyon had instead leaned further into their pacifist ideals. Like Bugenhagen that night, they decided violence was a fault to overcome.
When war had broken out between Wutai and Shinra, they had abstained from involvement, unwilling even to provide aid to either side. Sebuna had not objected at first, but the ensuing isolation had changed the character of the canyon. Once, they had welcomed strangers.
Sebuna came up beside Ira, and as he glanced down at her, she gave him a nod. "Why have you come then?" she asked the soldiers.
"It talks!?"
"'She,' if you would," Sebuna said mildly. "My name is Sebuna, and I am the guardian of this canyon."
The two soldiers exchanged dumbfounded glances, looked uncertainly at Ira, and at last the other said simply, "We need help."
"That much is plain," said Sebuna, knowing they probably couldn't read her amusement. "Did something happen to your unit?"
The one who'd answered her shuffled his feet, while the feverish one grit his teeth. "Sure," he said. "We left 'em."
Sebuna had expected to have to coax out of them what Shinra troops had been doing in the area, but at that she began to see the picture. "...you're deserters," she realized.
"Which's why we're not looking to lead any more Shinra here," he confirmed.
"...and why we couldn't go to them for help," the other added. "It took us months just to get out of Wutai."
Sebuna exchanged glances with Ira, who asked, "You've been on your own all that time?"
"Yeah," said the first soldier, drawing his bedroll closer. "It's been fucking hell, so just-- All we want is a bed and something to eat that's not a goddamn cactus."
"I think we can let them in, Ira," Sebuna said gently. "I'm happy to take responsibility for them."
Ira nodded his agreement. "You'll have to surrender your weapons," he decided. "And there's one thing I want to know."
"What's that?" the soldier asked warily.
"...do you even know the war's over?"
The two men exchanged startled glances, more surprised by that revelation than by a talking beast. Sebuna had already judged it a slim chance that this was an act, but that confirmed it for her.
"What... What do you mean, over?" asked the second soldier. "Did we win?"
Ira shook his head, holding his hand out for their rifles. "No," he said. "You didn't."
They fell into a stunned silence as Ira took their weapons and Sebuna invited them to follow her into the settlement.
"May I ask your names?" she said.
"I'm Paul," the second soldier answered mechanically, and then he gestured to his sick friend. "This's Slate."
"Welcome to Cosmo Canyon, Paul, Slate. As long as you make no trouble, you'll be looked after here."
But the news had clearly distracted them from their mission. "The war's really over?" Paul asked.
"The treaty was signed last month," Sebuna affirmed.
"Then we made it..."
Slate snorted. "You think they wouldn't still come after us? They'd love to blame losing on a bunch of deserters."
"...I guess you're right."
Sebuna glanced up at Paul. "You hoped to go home?"
"My son... I didn't want him growing up without a father." He averted his gaze. "I know it's cowardly."
Sebuna felt a pang in her heart. "No," she said. "Your fight was not protect him, so there was no reason to let it take you from him." If only Seto had been able to do the same.
"Great," said Slate. "Pair of softies, you are."
"You deserted, too, didn't you?" Sebuna asked him.
"Heidegger was gonna get us all killed!" he said. "That stupid bastard didn't know what he was doing. More than half my unit got wiped out, and I wasn't gonna join 'em."
"You decided the fight wasn't worth your life."
"Yeah, whatever. They told us Wutai was gonna run roughshod over Midgar if we didn't keep 'em in line, but fuck it, Shinra didn't give a damn about us either. I figured they couldn't be any worse."
"A reasonable assessment," said Sebuna.
"I'd call you a smart-ass, but you earned it. You stayed out of the whole damn thing."
Sebuna hummed thoughtfully. "We left both sides to fend for themselves, but I wonder if it was smart. We protected ourselves in the short term, but we are a part of the world, and we won't be immune to the repercussions."
"Repercussions?" Paul wondered.
"The balance of power in the world has shifted. It hasn't settled yet."
"...above my pay grade, I think," said Paul. "I just wanna get back to my family."
Slate opened his mouth to say something, but Nanaki bounded up then to join them, and Slate stumbled, startled.
"Ohna, why are there soldiers here?" Nanaki wanted to know.
"Oh, fuck me, there's two of them," Slate muttered under his breath. Nanaki's ears flicked, showing he'd caught the remark, but Sebuna answered him first.
"The war is over," she said, "so there are no sides to be taken."
"But isn't it against the rules?"
"Rules are not immutable. When circumstances change, some are to be reconsidered."
Nanaki tilted his head, his tail swaying, and Sebuna knew there was something he would push her on later, but she did not regret the statement. It was important not to view rules so rigidly that one never asked why they existed.
"This is my son, Nanaki," Sebuna explained to the two deserters, and she introduced them in turn to Nanaki. "They've come here for aid; why don't you help me take them to the clinic?"
"Right," said Nanaki, and he bounded ahead a few steps. "This way. It's not far."
But Slate moved slowly without his rifle to lean on. Judging by Paul's body language, he had already offered help and been refused, so Sebuna said nothing of it. They kept pace with him, climbing the steps of the canyon to its first landing and on into its corridors.
As they neared the clinic, Nanaki ran ahead once more to alert the medics to their impending patients. They facilitated introductions, and then Sebuna opted to wait for the deserters in the corridor. Whether Slate's illness was caused by improperly eaten cactus or something less embarrassing, it was none of her business, and she could tell Nanaki had more questions better asked out of earshot.
"So it's okay for soldiers to come here now?" he wondered as he sat beside her to wait.
"In truth, I don't know," Sebuna admitted. "I will have to discuss it with Bugenhagen and the elders. But these two are soldiers no longer."
"Because the war is over?"
"Because they deserted the battlefield."
"What?" Nanaki's ears snapped upright. "You mean they're cowards?"
"No," Sebuna said patiently. "What was the war being fought for?"
"Shinra wanted to expand into Wutai, but Wutai rejected their reactors."
"So was that a noble battle?" She watched him carefully, knowing precisely where his notions of bravery in war came from. "If the Gi had given up their fight, would they have been cowards?"
Nanaki grimaced, his tail swishing behind him. "The Gi weren't noble..."
"But if one had deserted that battle, what would you have said of him?" Sebuna pressed.
"If... if he'd stopped fighting, then he wouldn't have hurt anyone else in the canyon," Nanaki reasoned slowly. "It would have been the right choice."
She nodded. "Precisely. I don't know that either of these men fully recognizes the personhood of their opponents, or the wrong they were perpetrating, but they understand what Shinra sought was not worth men's lives."
Nanaki was quiet for a moment. "So what does that make them?"
Sebuna tossed her mane. "Not noble, perhaps, but it does take some measure of bravery to recognize a mistake and to change one's course of action. I suppose it makes me wonder... how much change they might be open to."
Nanaki glanced at the door to the clinic. "Are they going to stay in the canyon?"
"I don't believe it is their intent to remain, no. But they need time to rest before they set out again."
"I'm not sure what would change about them, if they just leave again."
"One does not have to stay in this canyon to share our thoughts," she said, "though perhaps we've come to make the mistake of believing it so. An immutable rule that those who believe in the study of planet life must study it here."
"...but rules aren't immutable."
Sebuna shook her head. "No. I think that is one it may be time to reconsider." With the treaty signed, worries about the war finding its way to their threshold would ebb. Sebuna's duty to the protection of the canyon would not require her to remain so close.
Nanaki adjusted his paws, sitting up straighter. "I would be interested to see the world beyond the canyon," he said.
She put her whiskers forward. "Oh? You want to help change minds, even those of such ignoble people?"
"...well, we wouldn't go all the way to Midgar," he said. "Right?"
Sebuna chuckled. "No, I think not. We ought to begin nearer to home, and learn which of our neighbors might be our friends."
"Are they really very different?"
"No, not very. You know many people in this canyon who came from outside of it. It's simply been years since anyone new has come to stay."
"Maybe the soldiers will, you know," Nanaki proposed. "There's no way Midgar is better than our canyon."
"It is home to them," she reminded him, "thought I won't discourage it should they take a liking to ours. I think it would be good for us, too, to welcome them."
Nanaki's ear swivelled back, catching the sound of conversation moving closer to the other side of the clinic door, a sign their guests might soon be emerging. "Do you think there're things we could learn from them?" he wondered.
"There may be," she said. "No matter how many years one sees, there are always things to learn, and they can come from unexpected teachers. It's best to keep an open mind."
Nanaki nodded seriously, and Sebuna was pleased. He accepted her wisdom in this, and perhaps it was because she presented them both as having something to learn, and something to teach to these newcomers. It was not a path she had tread before him, nor was it a task best left to adults alone. They could complement each other in this endeavor.
Ultimately it was the work of humanity, but that was the work which remained. The way they always fractured themselves into different tribes, believing the thoughts of all within one group to be the same. Bugenhagen had left Shinra to separate himself from its way of thinking. How many disparate voices had instead remained within it?
If two Shinra soldiers had come seeking a haven, perhaps there was a path to reconciliation.