Clara from Barbie in the Nutcracker meets Sephiroth.

Please don't
hover over them.
Give them some privacy.

Clara had been wandering through the woods of Parthenia with her newest friend, Nutcracker, for the whole afternoon. The air was balmy, and pretty gold light filtered through the gaps in the trees. Nutcracker did have a big head, she thought, gazing at him for a moment, but it had a charming finish. Which type of tree, she wondered, did he come from? They took a break from their trek, and she traced her fingers across the neat bark of a nearby pine tree. Strolling through the woods with this strange, new wooden man made her look at it differently. The trees seemed to pulse with quiet, watchful life. She sighed.

All of a sudden, the woosh of something hard through the air startled her, and a thin piece of metal appeared embedded into the bark that had been pristine and untouched just moments before. A sword, she realised. It was long. Longer than any sword she’d seen, and tapered off to a slow point. She looked to its hilt and found its wielder, a tall, foreboding man dressed in black, with long, flowing silver hair glittering in the sunlight, dappled pools dancing highlights across the breadth of it.

“What-“ she started, but lost herself to a stammer. The man looked directly at her, and she noticed that his eyes were a bright, almost alien green. The Nutcracker raced in with two rapid clunks as his feet met the ground. He finished Clara’s thought.

“What are you doing?” he said, straightening up against the stranger.

The man let his head fall back, and he shook his shoulders in a rolling chuckle. He plucked his sword from the tree with a strange grace, and said, “you have to be careful in this place. It can be dangerous.” Clara and the Nutcracker saw, then, that the severed lower half of a snake had fallen from the place where the sword had met the tree. Clara looked at the Nutcracker in horror. He looked blankly back.

To be continued...