The girl seemed quite focused on her task. Focused, determined, tense -- but not afraid. She slanted him no wary looks as she picked her way up the rocky slope.

That was... strange. Not that the existence of a competent Earth child was so surprising. But it was an unknown variable, and he didn't have much else to puzzle over as long as she hadn't found any tracks to follow.

"You can rest assured that whether or not you perform, I will not be taking you to bed."

The girl's foot slipped on a rock and she paused to stare at him over her shoulder. Then her face started to redden. "-- You heard that?"

Sephiroth didn't bother answering.

"... I didn't think you would," the girl said, and started climbing again. "Want to sleep with me, I mean."

"Yet you seem quite driven."

She was silent for a moment, making him think that she wouldn't answer at all -- making him think there was something more interesting hidden in her behavior than he had assumed.

"One of the village boys went missing too. Recently."

"I didn't hear about that."

The girl's voice was quiet and bitter when she answered, "There is no reason you would have. Cloud is -- nobody cares much whether he comes back. No one was going to risk asking for permission to launch a search party."

"Troublemaker?"

The girl's eyebrows briefly scrunched down. "No -- no sir."

She looked away; Sephiroth frowned slightly.

"... He did act out, sometimes, but that was more of a reaction..." She sighed. "His mother was... weird. They never really fit in."

'Weird' covered so much ground. Insanity, feeble-mindedness, too much smarts, different customs, disdain for local traditions, traces of Cetra blood...

"I don't think it's right that no one went to look."