Cleyra
Thoughts as we shuffle out of Cleyra.

As my melting brain strained to recover from the sight of rats Riverdancing, who should appear on the screen but... Garnet. Musing. Everything changed a year ago on her birthday, she says; her mother started acting weird, her tutor left, and oh, a strange tall man started hanging around the palace. Maybe he was involved? She wishes that she knew something about him.

Now, when I was 15, I wasn't the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. I was self-absorbed and snivelly, and I spent way too much time playing Windows Solitaire and text RPGs. But if a man with a vast cascade of silver hair and a "bellydancer goes to war" outfit had started hanging around Mom... I'd have done more than notice. I'd have gotten his name, at least. Maybe where he was from, how he got his hair that shade, what his opinion of Duran Duran was. Maybe, given the state of my family at the time, I'd have tried to angle Mom into dumping Dad and dating Mr. Tall, Fair, and Pretty. I wouldn't have been completely clueless when all hell broke out and black mages started rampaging across Fox Mill Estates. And when the team of adventurers came to "kidnap" me and haul me off to Franklin Farms, I'd have been able to tell my uncle more than, "There's a strange man who's been hanging around the house!"

So I would have actually said, "There's this guy, he's really cute, his name is Kuja and he's from Delaware and his favorite color is purple and he likes 'Hungry Like the Wolf' but not 'New Moon on Monday,' and I tried to get Mom to date him but she wouldn't. I think he's behind the black mages who razed the elementary school." And then we'd all have to troop off to Delaware to find a magic amulet that plays "New Moon on Monday" when the miko yells, "SIT!", and there would be a traumatizingly boring battle in which we tried to knock Kuja down low enough to put the amulet around his neck. Perhaps it's for the best that I'm not Garnet. But the point is--I would have learned the man's name.

Kuja's put his sorceror mojo on Garnet, and she still doesn't know his name.

On to pondering food in FFIX; or, is it just me, or is something strange going on here?