Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Multifaceted ❯ Theme #22: Gil; Wealth - Gilded ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Title: Gilded.
Author: Shaded Mazoku.
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI.
Subject: Kefka Palazzo.
Theme/Challenge: #22: Gil; Wealth.
Rating: PG.
Disclaimer: Not mine at all. They’re Squeenix’. I just borrow them.

*

It would probably come as a surprise to most people that Kefka cares very little about money. After all, he will gleefully spend money on the strangest things. Rich and heavy fabrics, jewel-encrusted hair decorations with delicate gold filigree and large fluffy feathers, fancy sets of jewellery he wears all mixed up, with gold hoops in one ear, draping ruby drops in the other, and rings that rarely matches either of them. Kefka is a master of impulse shopping, and his quarters reflect this. There are whole shelves full of random objects and gadgets. One shelf is filled with dolls in all imaginable shapes and sizes. Kefka usually leaves Terra standing next to that shelf when he’s not dragging her along like a child with his favourite toy, only occasionally remembering to provide her a chair. If Kefka realises the irony of this, he doesn’t show it, just smiles to himself and piles Terra’s hair on top of her head, fastening it with hairpins in four different sizes and designs, tangling shiny trinkets into her hair.

Despite his spending habits, though, Kefka is not very concerned with wealth and value. For a long while, he wore a thin gold wire with shards of mirror fastened to it in his hair, the edges of the shards carefully filed down to avoid causing injury. He misses that particular decoration. It was lost during an assassin’s attack and Kefka still smiles when he remembers the fate of that assassin. Chained to a wall and used as target practice for Kefka’s Bio spell, kept alive for three days by potions only, until Kefka got bored and let him die. The assassin wore a stud in his ear shaped like a snake. The stud is in Kefka’s quarters somewhere, but he has long forgotten where. Not that he cares anymore, new and interesting things have already caught his eyes. He is an incredibly capricious man.

The truth is that Kefka is, by nature, a bit of a packrat, or maybe rather a magpie, collecting everything that catches his fancy. Of course, nobody will ever say that anywhere he can hear them, unless they’re suicidal, stupid or both. It doesn’t make it any less true. A box on a table, which is a work of art itself, covered in carvings and gold leaf, holds several pieces of jewellery each worth more than an average Imperial Soldier’s yearly income, but the same box also holds pretty marbles, pieces of glass found on the shore and rounded by the waves, tinsel, four slim needles and a handful of edible and shiny cake decoration. The dolls on the shelf vary from a princess doll in a fluffy and shiny confection of a dress that sparkle in the light when it’s moves and that has perfect jewellery in scale, to a small handmade wooden one that is painted with red and gold painting and has a string of something shiny braided into it’s hair. There is even one doll carved from the bones of a very large monster and covered in dust from shiny minerals and nothing else. The doll is almost as large as Kefka himself and has empty eye sockets that stare into the air aimlessly. It looks rather scary and that is why Kefka likes it so much.

The amount of gold matters little to Kefka, but he loves the colour of it. It just happens to be necessary to have gold to be able to afford it, which makes him laugh when he thinks about it. The Palazzo family is an old one, and money is one thing they have always had. Of course, there isn’t really a Palazzo family anymore, not after that unfortunate fire a few years back, leaving Kefka the only living member. Kefka truly does like his fire. It’s so very useful, though nobody seems to realise it. So money matters little to Kefka. Yes, it enables him to keep buying his trinkets, but he doubts anyone would refuse to let him have what he wants anyway.

Kefka is a small man, and far too slender, almost delicate, in build to fit the image of what a man should look like. His eyes are larger than usual for a man, with long lashes, and they look even larger due to his eye colour. He has high cheekbones, full lips even without the paint, and long, slender fingers, with long and well-kept nails. He can probably pass for female, should he try, though not a conventionally beautiful one. No, Kefka is in no way physically imposing. Nearly everyone around him is taller than he is, even Terra. Despite this, though, he is the most feared man in the Empire. There are only a few people who dare to speak up against him, notably the Emperor himself and General Leo. Everyone else fears him, fears his temper and his insanity. The servants duck out of sight at the smallest glimpse of his fanciful outfits, the soldiers whisper behind his back but whimper like the cowards they are when Kefka turns his too-pale eyes on them.

He couldn’t have bought that kind of delightful fear with money. Yet another reason why money mean little to him. He knows what it is he wants and money can’t buy him those things. Money is good for buying silly trinkets and pretty things, but not for true desires. Of course, money does have its advantages. On a desk in a corner in Kefka’s quarters, there’s a beautiful little sculpture made in the likeness of the legendary Goddesses. The sculpture is made from cheap, but heavy metal, which is crumbling away from the inside. To keep the rottenness from showing, the sculpture has been gilded, covered in gold until its flaws are hidden. Nobody can see that it’s falling apart from the inside.

Some people might suggest that it is what both the Empire and Kefka himself does to hide their faults. Wealth is very useful like that.