She is beautiful always, and like this she seems ever more beautiful. Though her rosy pink skin has become a dark but smooth grey granite, her perfection is apparent in how much like a work of art she has become.

A flawless face, a perfect shape framed by hair that normally is a brighter and more wondrous gold than any ring or necklace. But at the moment the only gold is that of her headdress, the golden metal and pearls and jems glittering in contrast to her now dulled form.

Blank orbs below the wispy delicate strands of her eyelashes and eyebrows, a beautifully formed slope of her nose over lips that I must fight myself from kissing each time I set eyes upon them.  Her clothing left normal, it means that the lace of her gloves and stockings now show not an attractive pink hue below, but seem like the webs of spiders over the work of a master sculptor.

She is Rosa Farrell, and I, Kain Highwind, only wish I could call her mine.

But she is not. She belongs to another, a man I call friend and a man who has suffered her fate as well.

It is fitting they have suffered this together. It is ironic that I must save them.

For a brief moment of jealousy I stare at him and know what made her his. He is as statuesque as her in his own way. The kind of facial features that women of Baron seem to desire. A rounded chin and eyes that are normally compassionate.

My eyes seem unable to do anything but give a piercing gaze. Cecil seems unable to give a glare such as I can, yet he finds it easier to command the respect of men and her alike.  

They both seem like they are not people any more. If it were not for their clothing, for the bleeding form of the dispatched Black Lizard before us, for Edge lying out cold and Rydia (a confident and independent young woman now, but still I see only a scared child mourning her mother when I look at her) also standing in stone beside us, none would know the truth.

And for a dark second I wonder if any would know if I were to lop that statuesque head from chiselled shoulders and then shame takes me. He and she are my friends. We have known each other for all our lives.

Yet why does she love him and not me?

Edge groans, stirring slightly. The dark thought is banished entirely but the shame is not. What would I gain from it? She would not love me. The only way I could have her would be to leave her as she is, like some grisly trophy.

But as I grab the Gold Needles, as I prepare to turn back statuesque Rosa and chiselled Cecil, I know the truth. She is no trophy, and if she is...

...She belongs to someone else