It had been a long time since The Wild Boy had been moved. He had stood in his same position for some years, and had been in this gallery for many more. His tour guides said so often. He could see only straight ahead, quite natural to him now. After all, if he could not move anything else, why should what he saw move?

He knew he had been made by an artist called Persephone, and that he was a pioneer work. He was one of the last four works completed by his artist before she died, and of the four he was one of only three that survived intact, and the only one never to be damaged. Another one of Persephone's works had a wing damaged during something called a civil war, and the other's tail had been snapped off once, apparently. He had never had to be restored like them.

He also knew thanks to his tour guides that the other two works were like him in the way they had been sculpted, what had, when they were first made, been a new type of statue. The so-called "modest nude" which apparently meant that he was a representation of a naked human, apart from his fake tail and fur cloak, but lacked the detail. He was glad of that, he had once sat opposite what had been a normal nude, and the strange thing it had on its pelvis had looked silly.

But now, early this morning, he was being moved. A group of workers had wheeled in the small crane they had used to lift the other statues. He recalled once that crane had been hand-cranked and that the workers had been paranoid moving statues then. This one they had used for a few years now, it gave off a faint buzzing noise, and seemed to work at the press of a button.

"Wonder if the old boy had got tired of the view the last forty years?" A worker said behind him as he felt the soft but strong support ropes be tied around him.

He had to wonder himself. Was he tired of the view? Across from him the statue had changed almost monthly. It had been nice to have such variety.

"Bound to have. Bet he was as confused by all the modern art as I was." Another worker noted.

"You two crazy old coots still talking about the art like it's alive?" A female voice said, apparently from a young woman just at the edge of his locked vision.

"Of course it is. If he was just a lump of rock he wouldn't be worth millions now, would he?" A worker joked

"Besides, young miss, to appreciate art like this you have to remember they're a moment of life frozen. Might not be as warm or as mortal as you and me, but statues like this have souls of their own." The other added.

"Whatever. Just get his granite butt moved to the east wing so we can move the new one in."

The Wild Boy was slightly offended. His butt was Marble.

The workers carefully lifted him and his pedestal off the spot, guiding him over onto a trolley, and slowly took him away. He could hear the soft voices of the workers, guiding each other to move him carefully, but above all, he heard the squeak of the trolley wheels. He marvelled for a moment as he saw the other statues pass by. Each of them just as immobile as he was. He hadn't seen them before, of course, having been stuck in place, but he wished he had. Being an artwork himself and having seen so many artworks opposite himself he had become quite the critic.

He had to admit, the statues he left behind had all been very nice.  He wondered where he was going. He was moving somewhere else.

He didn't know if this was good or bad.

***

She'd begun to feel more calm when they came in, but The Angel was still a little nervous of louder noises and sudden movements.

She'd had no tour guides for nearly a decade. No visitors to see her. And for the past three years, no statue opposite her. It was better than what had happened to the last statues she had watched.

It had for her been lighting fast, but she would have no idea what was referred to as The Battle of Burmecia Palace, had lasted six days, and that she had bore witness to the fiercest fighting right here in the halls of the Royal Gallery. She had been outside then, not in this storage room. From the words she had heard from her few visitors, that had all started nearly ten years ago.

She had known her owner then, King Puck VI, for the old king had been a good visitor. He appreciated his art. He had kept her, rejecting offers to buy her right before her. Many rich nobles from other lands had come, with the King, and had viewed her with a notion of purchase.

But a King's price was high, it seemed, for she had stood here in Burmecia for a hundred years. She had once stood in Treno with other angels, but she felt her wings were not as impressive as theirs sometimes. She had been glad to come to Burmecia. Many visitors came in, for the Royal Gallery was not just part of the palace but a museum too. But then it seemed something had went wrong.

One day, they stopped cleaning her and the other statues so regularly. The visitors stopped coming in too, and instead, Burmecians in green patchy clothing wandered around carrying odd objects. She had stood facing the courtyard, a nice view that let her see half a dozen statues before looking out the tall windows onto immaculate grass and hedges, colourful flowerbeds, and a distant fountain spraying water high into the air. Sometimes she wished she'd been a fountain.

The courtyard was transformed before her eyes. The hedges and grass were torn up and churned apart as the Burmecians in the patchy clothing began to build walls of brown bags, and string out coils of metal. The fountain had been switched off, the jets of water splashing to a halt.

Then that night the courtyard had exploded. Red lines zipped around everywhere, with loud roaring booms outside. The patchy green Burmecians had ran around outside, and bright mushrooms of fire had landed everywhere outside. One even smashed a window once, and to her horror, shattered a statue into rubble. Of course, it seemed those strange explosions did the same to the patchy green Burmecians but they didn't throw such alarming dust and rubble everywhere. Just a strange pink mist.

Then the patchy-green ones had begun to move into the gallery, still making their odd objects spray red lines outside. More Burmecians had begun to try and get in, and it seemed whatever the red lines hit, if it was a living thing, fell over. Horrifyingly, the other Burmecians didn't care what they were hitting when they used their own odd objects. The Angel had saw red lines shoot bits off other statues, and she hoped they wouldn't hit her.

But as the day broke, the red lines stopped flying, and the other Burmecians stopped trying to get in. Hundreds of them, and hundreds of the patchy green ones, lay all over the place in red puddles. Worse, many of the statues before her had great gouges and craters all over.

A strange flying machine had landed in the courtyard outside. The King had boarded it. That was the last time she ever saw him. And soon after, everyone had left. The Burmecians had taken away the Burmecians lying everywhere, but had left her and the other statues behind. She had stood for years, confused. She heard rumbling and explosions at nights, and nothing stirred before her.

Then three years ago, other people had come in, and began to move the statues. One, an Alexandrian with a tail, had looked at her, and spoke  as he jotted something down.

"The Angel. Damage to right wing, small cracks on left leg. Bullet damage to Pedestal. Damage from soot and smoke."

Then she had been left for days as the others were moved. Then she had been moved out and into another room, a dark room. Left there for a year and a half, underneath a cover, she had thought she was now to stay in storage forever.

Then she had been taken out once more, into a well lit room and had been polished for the first time in years. Artists carefully worked on her, repairing the damage done. She hoped it meant she would be back on display.

She was wrong. She stood in that room for a year and a half, the artists working slowly even from a statue's perspective as they painstakingly, inch by inch, repaired her.

But every time someone came in, or a loud noise came from somewhere, she remembered the dust and rubble that her fellow statues had become. It was no different today, but today was to be different. She saw they were to move her and felt joy. Then she saw the crate, a shipping crate.

She was leaving Burmecia.

She wasn't sure if this was good or bad.

***

She had been here unnoticed, unloved, for years. And for all that time, she had missed something, but had no idea what.

She barely recalled her title. The Wild Girl had been neglected. From being bought years ago from Treno, to sitting in Alexandria Castle with many visitors, to storage. The Castle had new treasures to display. She was put aside. And forgotten.

Even when she was remembered she had been ignored as art. The only living thing that had ever moved her dust cover aside to look upon her, had been curators making inventory.

"The Wild Girl, Persephone, 1800. Bought by Chancellor Alexis in 1809 for its resemblance to the then missing Queen Garnet XVII. Used as a basis for the official statue of Queen Garnet placed in the Main Hall by King John III in 1821 seven years after she had been declared dead.  Damaged 1956, tail knocked off."

That was all the history she knew of herself now.

And then the dust cover came off again, and there were a number of men and women there.

"Damn. Just lying here in storage all this time. Away from her Wild Boy…" A man said.

"You're too poetic, Mister Miller. You should write prose rather than buy art." A woman said.

"My dear Queen, if I wrote prose I would make unemployed half the writers on Gaia."

The woman, the Queen, seemed to smile.

"You certainly have the ego for it. Moving on, though, why do you want this statue so badly? There are a dozen other Persephone's in the castle."

"This one, Your Majesty, is one of the last, and one of the first Modest Nudes. I intend to collect them all."

"Ah, yes, I remember now. I think my father knocked her tail off playing hide and seek when he was a boy."

"Indeed he did. The story is well known amongst collectors. But she was finely restored, as you can see here." Mister Miller said, moving behind her, and unseen, pointing to the invisible area where her tail had been reattached.

The Queen moved behind her, and the Wild Girl felt indignation as a royal digit prodded her stone form.

"Hmm, solid rock. Well sculpted though. Apparently this had a resemblance to an ancestor of mine, Queen Garnet the XVII. Explains why all the poetry from then called her the most beautiful jewel of the realm. "

"Which makes leaving it here under a dust cover and for future kings to play Hide and Seek with, all the greater a travesty. It has history, which I'm sure you don't know. Did you know it gained a reputation for driving men mad?"

"What, with this figure? A little work with a chisel and she'd have a nice rear end, but she's blanker than a dress-up doll."

"You miss the point, Your Majesty. In fact in a way she inspired dress-up dolls. At least, before they decided to sculpt underwear onto them instead. But no, in 1804, General Steiner once tried to destroy the statue with a Supersoft. He had believed it to be the petrified form of Queen Garnet somehow, also claiming he had once been a statue himself beside her. Of course, his madness was not from the statue, but from family worries. His young son was deathly ill at the time.  Fortunately, both father and son recovered, and he was stopped from causing any harm to the statue."

The Wild Girl did not remember that. Then again, she remembered very little, and was glad that someone was looking at her again, even if the Queen had broken the cardinal rule of look, but don't touch. How would Her Majesty like it if the Wild Girl were to poke around her behind and note that it was soft and fleshy?

"What a lovely story, Mister Miller. Will you now tell me General Steiner won the war against Kuja, and that he became the first Prime Minister in 1823, and that his great grandson invented television?"

"It was his grandson, actually, but…"

"Mister Miller, you've already bought this statue, is what I am saying. It's yours to remove when you wish. Maybe you can bore the Regent of Lindblum with stories about it. "

"I doubt it, Your Majesty. You couldn't bore him with a drill." Mister Miller chuckled.

The dust cover was replaced, and soon after, the Wild Girl was moved. She didn't see where to.

She was sure though, it had to be a good thing. Maybe now she could be the art she had always meant to be.

***

The Wild Boy stood in his own room now. Large, well-lit, but alarmingly to him, empty. No visitors. No other statues. Just cleaners occasionally.  

Then they brought in another statue. Out of the large crate, came a winged statue half his size, and he somehow remembered something. This statue had been with him once.

It was one of the other Persephone works. The Angel. He'd last saw her in Treno, all those years ago.

And now she sat across from him again, just to the left of the door.

Then another statue arrived. It was another long lost face. The Wild Girl. She had been in Treno too.

The Angel had been excited to see The Wild Boy too. And then the Wild Girl. The Wild Girl meanwhile was glad to see a well-lit room for once, and to be free of the dust covers.

But the final happiness for the three statues came the next day. The room opened to the public, and people viewed them. People looked at them. Hundreds, thousands of them.

They were away from the past now, and back together at last. And they were as happy as they could be. They were made to be looked at, and now, they could look at each other too once more. They were statues, and that was what they were for. This was what they had always been. It was what they always would be.