Final Fantasy: The Text Adventure

There are thirty moogles here.

Hoisting outlandish woodwinds over their heads, they play the delicate opening strains of Selrach Nenirov's Prelude to a Post Encomium: Imaginary Worlds. Fantastic star-voyaging ships maneuver silently into graceful landing patterns all around the high mountain tarn, frozen to a depth of a thousand meters, and polished by aeons of gentle star-pressure from this world's corona borealis. The ships have tuned their open channels to the moogles' symphony, missing not a moment.

The ice, black, ancient and vitreous, begins to reflect the first whispers of the corona overhead. A hush falls over the assembled watchers. The silence lingers a bit too long, perhaps, but then, from opposite ends of the mountain lake, two skaters sit, spraddle-kneed, as they remove the guards from their skates and step onto the ice.

The ice booms. Slowly they glide together, as though reluctant to disturb the surface. Then suddenly, with a gentle surge of acceleration, Fran and Balthier catch each other and spin around a mutual center. The moogle orchestra soars slightly, as though freed from the absolute determinism of Nenirov, and a deep shaft of violet light penetrates from the sky and reflects in the ice below the dancing couple.

You pause a moment in appreciation, but you've seen these two weave their magic on a thousand other occasions. The sky begins to insist with a subtly rhythmic pulse of greens, golds, reds, pinks. Graebal is waiting. You hurry on...