2020-09-14: On Walkabout
- Log: On Walkabout
- Cast: Yuna, Rikku
- Where: The Cape of Breath
- Date: September 14, 2020
- Summary: Rikku and Yuna get some air after the events of Warwing Varukias.
============================<* The Cape of Breath *>============================ Stretching from the edge of the slowly-spreading northern desert, the Cape of Breath is the lush southern region of Meria Boule. Farmland and livestock take up much of the hilly region, dotted with the estates and castles of Merian nobles, often at the height of elevation, but across temperate land to the west great forests begin, still part of the great resources of the Merian nation. In places the badlands of the north find mirrors here, hotter regions with accordingly sparser populations... where people could move. To the farthest south and east are the wide coastlines, each marked with large cities. Only the fortress nature of many estates at the hearts of settlements recalls much of Meria's more warlike history, after the great efforts of the late Queen to ensure peace for all Meria Boule, and the spread of knowledge. Nevertheless, the increasing spread of monsters can make travel without caravan or guards a perilous undertaking indeed. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_gmgvAz8Ks
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Rikku isn't the MOST obvious person to invite on a jaunt out of the big city to get a little nature, but Yuna surely has her reasons. She hasn't shared them in any detail. Escorted by Kimahri, who's been taking up the rear, she's been her typical journeying self, almost as though their walk in itself is the point -- she wants to keep moving, no matter what. And she wants to smile, no matter what.
Eventually she decides that they've gone far enough, or maybe the site itself is particularly appealing: a knoll of luscious green grass, enclosed by a copse of old gnarly trees, with a river -- a creek, really -- running along one side.
"I'd like to sit for a bit, if that's all right," she suggests softly; she's grown into adopting Auron's candor when it comes to setting a pace, rather than feeling embarrassed to do so, or waiting until someone else eats the bullet of asking to stop.
It really is a beautiful day. A few white fluffy clouds adorn an otherwise endless azure sky. The Warwing feels a million miles away. The slightest breeze stirs the beaded earring along her neck -- if it had bells, it would have gently chimed.
The summoner spreads her skirts widely, hiding her legs beneath them entirely by sitting straight with knees bent to the side. She is near enough the stream to be able to see its surface dazzle.
Folding her hands, she lets them disappear inside her sleeves, which meet in the middle below her waist. And she looks out at the beauty all around, and the excellent companion that she's been unexpectedly blessed with in her cousin, and knows a moment of contentment.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
It feels like if there's anyone you should take on a journey that you want to keep moving - it's Rikku. It's like she has trouble staying still even on more sedate travels like this one.
Paradoxically, she's someone whose dearest wish would perhaps be for Yuna's pilgrimage to slow to a crawl. She certainly feels the pressure of her decision. The longer this goes, the more time they have to make up for lost time.
It's not something she'd say, but it's something perhaps she doesn't have to. Not to Yuna, not to Lulu, or Kimahri, or Wakka, or even Auron. They've all gone through their own thoughts, had their own feelings on the matter, that her own are probably akin to an open book.
As much as she's been moving for this occasion though, the moment Yuna says she'd like to sit for a bit, Rikku takes a look along the area. The old gnarled trees, the greenery of the grass, the gentle susurrus of the stream.
Yuna expresses a desire to sit for a while. Rikku bounces on her feet, as if her body hadn't adjusted yet to the idea that she soon would not be in motion, "Sure! Are your feet tired? Or-"
And then after Yuna seats herself, she sits down herself beside her, cross-legged. "-did you just want to take some time out... to... you know, chat?"
Even seated she feels like she's still in motion. In the rhythmic way she moves her legs. In the way she looks around to assess the location and keeps adjusting the way she sits. Over the course of few seconds though, it's like she's gradually settling in to the atmosphere. Like it's soaking in, and eventually she slowly leans backwards and puts her palms down as if to brace her body to stay still.
"This is a nice spot." She remarks finally, with something like a contented sigh. Her eyes flicking over to Yuna, with a smile on her face, "I wonder how many places like this I miss, because it's just hard for me to stop... and take the time."
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
"Mm," Yuna murmurs affirmatively, at the latter explanation. She watches her cousin sit down, watches her restlessness do battle with the placid circumstances. Her expression is so gentle that it's almost a little bit distant, like the two of them are separated by some of those fluffy clouds above. "I think we miss a lot," she concurs.
She leans forward, examining the water -- her eyes dart back and forth, following some minnows, who are just visible beneath the surface. They twitch upstream in sizzling little bursts of enthusiasm, then are pushed back downstream by the current, over and over and over.
"I try... not to," (miss things), "Anymore," she says eventually, a characteristic silence both before and in the middle of the thought, as though she's determined to articulate herself perfectly, perfectly, down to the smallest detail.
Straightening up, she smiles back at Rikku. "It's nice," she concludes. "Being together like this. I feel very lucky. It would have been so easy... to miss meeting you."
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Her head bobs forward with an 'Mm-hmm!' from her lips, concurring with Yuna concurring.
Rikku's eyes follow the babbling stream, as if she were trying to simply watch what Yuna's watching. As if such things might give her some insight into what her cousin is thinking. The idea of learning anything about her thoughts, feelings...
... it means so much to her, that she looks for it in even the smallest things.
Though as Yuna indicates she tries not to anymore... something in her eyes change, like there's something rueful in them.
"Me too. Growing up in Spira for me was like... I was always sprinting ahead, full tilt, fast as a Chocobo - whoosh!" She makes a small motion with her chin as if to emphasize that, as those green eyes of her look at Yuna's face. "Maybe not so much anymore."
Because she met her, she doesn't say. But perhaps, she doesn't have to.
When Yuna straightens up and says that to her though, Rikku falls quiet for a few long moments, though it does not look like she's disquieted or anything. In fact the pinkened tinge to her cheeks indicates she's quite pleasantly flattered.
"Maybe." She answers airily, "Maybe it would have been. But..."
And there's a lengthy pause, as her posture shifts and she looks somewhat self-conscious, as her eyes drift back to the stream, "... the moment I heard you'd left Besaid. I was very determined to meet you. So... even if we'd kept missing each other. I'd have kept trying."
Her expression turns somewhat mischievous, as she looks at Yuna out of the corner of her eye, "I would have followed you all the way to Zanarkand in a repurposed Blitzball Machina if I had to... just to get the chance."
That's a pretty somber thought. The idea of following Yuna all the way to the end of her journey. Just to briefly meet her... and then say goodbye.
"You have no idea how happy it makes me... that it worked out like this."
And yet, she doesn't see it that way. She just sees the positive in what she got, all the time she's getting now, rather than how terrible it might have been if it hadn't.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
"It was... very quiet, in Besaid," Yuna contrasts, when Rikku brings up their childhoods. "Sometimes so much.... it felt like the Calm would never end." She grins suddenly, a swift, easy expression. "You must have been a lot of trouble for your parents."
That gives her a moment's pause. "I should thank you," she decides. "I know that this path... isn't one that your father approves of." Yuna thinks a lot about what her father would want, would have wanted. "Going against him... must be hard sometimes."
Not that she, the living embodiment of defiance against Uncle Cid's wishes, is really one to talk. It's different, though. They've still never met, but for a harsh bawl of words he shouted across Macalania's glacial plains. She looks down, freeing her hands from her sleeves to examine them self-consciously, palm up.
"Especially when I'm going against your wishes as well."
This conversation is becoming more serious than Yuna wanted. It's her own fault, native somberness off the chain instead of being properly reined in. She's probably been thinking a lot lately, though, since they fought Odessa and rescued Gatta.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
"Mm-hm! Though that's not just on me. My Brother got into so much trouble too." Rikku grins back at Yuna, "And he was the one that was supposed to be minding me growing up! If it weren't for Keyakku then I'd have probably met you down an arm, or a leg..." She suddenly moves up a hand and places a hand over her eye, "... or I'd be wearing an eyepatch by the time I met you. Arrr!"
Proof positive that Rikku has spent too much time on the Thames.
Though, as Yuna thanks her, the whimsy in her expression smooths out. And she grows more serious, "It's the way he raised me. If I just kept going along with what he wanted, trying to keep capturing you, and my heart wasn't in it? He'd be even madder than me becoming your Guardian. He taught me to question, not to just... blindly do what anyone tells me."
She then leans forward, encircling her arms around her legs, and lowering her cheek down to her knees. Her braids shifting on the grass.
"I won't say it's not hard though. Family means a lot to me."
Something shimmers a little in her green eyes, but nothing more than that. It's like a trick of light. Though then as Yuna says that, Rikku's eyes close. And it's hard not for it to become more than that.
"And... I won't say that's not true. I won't. Family is supposed to be honest with each other."
Rikku says as she straightens back up, and opens her eyes, trying her best not to dab them. "You have your own life to live Yunie. Your own choices to make. But... hey - do me a favor?" Rikku suddenly puts her hands down again on the ground and leans slightly her way, "Tell me what kind of life you'd want for yourself, if Sin just poof - vanished tomorrow?"
As sad as the topic is, she still does what she can to make it happier.
"Just knowing that, would give me all the motivation I'd need to make it happen."
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna didn't mean to torture Rikku. But -- theirs is a very different relationship from hers and Tidus'. There are no lies between them, and at a time where she feels increasingly burdened by hiding the truth, it is sometimes refreshing to set it down.
Still... she is duly punished by the other girl for her comments. Not at first; she giggles softly at the clowning around. But then she absorbs the implied zing about her faith without complaint, and before long her stomach is tight with her cousin's sorrow.
She doesn't like the question very much, either. For a long moment she looks at nothing, looking not far from nothing herself, very small and lonely.
She straightens her legs, letting her boots peek out from beneath her skirt.
"I don't think it would be any more fair for me to answer that question than it is for you to ask it," she says finally, without hostility.
Something about her is immeasurably sadder than before.
Kimahri's shadow falls across the girls.
"Mi'ihen not fault of Yuna," he grunts. Her shoulders jerk; he's read her mind. Or, more accurately, he's often been the closest one to hear her many, many nightmares.
She sighs, and tries to change the subject. Or at least turn it around.
"What would YOU do?" She doesn't have to feign interest or warmth. She doesn't doubt that Rikku has an excellent answer about how she'd live her life, in a world without Sin.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Rikku sees perhaps how Yuna's posture tenses up, and she suddenly realizes the immensity of her error. Still she doesn't stammer back, or try to backpeddle away from it. Her eyes lid faintly, and she inhales through her nostrils.
"You're right." She says quietly, "I'm sorry." She doesn't look hurt precisely, or cowed. Just perhaps, finding herself toeing into the ocean that is Yuna's sadness, and realizing how very vast it is.
"I think I've done a lot of things that aren't exactly fair to you." Rikku says quietly, as she thinks of not just the time she tried to kidnap Yuna, but all the times she indicated that she tried to convince Tidus to run off with her.
Kimahri though causes her head to jerk around quickly, and...
... suddenly her lips purse. A little taut. And it's like Kimahri guided her a single step further. Yet she doesn't follow up with her own statements on Operation Mi'ihen.
She has her own grief from it, and she does wish to take away from Yuna's.
Yuna though, changes the question. And Rikku's posture seems to relax, as she gets a small smile on her expression. Her eyes slipping back to the stream.
"I think I'd keep running through life. Just at a better pace. For the sake of... living, not just because you kind of have to make the most of the time you get. You know? In the world right now - I always imagined I'd be rushing to get married young. Have lots of kids, so they can all have brothers and sisters."
Her head sorta bobs one way, then another, like she's thinking about it, "In a world without Sin - I don't think I'd be in any hurry for that. I'd want to travel the world." She holds up two fingers suddenly, "Both worlds - on a great adventure!" Then she corrects herself, in a grandiose way with both raised hand and volume, "Rikku's non-stop super thrilling ultra-adventure!"
Without missing a beat, she continues, "I'd want to see everything. Do everything. Go places where noone has gone! Dig up Lost Machina! Restore them into wonders that haven't been seen by anyone still alive! Figure out ancient secrets and lost histories! I'd want to become so world renowned for everything I've accomplished that literally everyone knows my name!"
Her eyes look towards Yuna in that moment. And there's something in them that says something...
... which she cannot bring herself to say. That, just like before, wouldn't be fair to say aloud to Yuna.
And I'd want to do it with you.
"I just think that'd be wonderful."
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Being sad with Yuna is a difficult feedback loop, because it isn't her own sorrow she focuses on.
"Don't be sorry," she counters immediately -- and very firmly. "You're family."
Somehow both Yuna the cousin and Yuna the summoner -- but Yuna the waif, at least, is nowhere to be found. This is a grown woman, who knows who she is and what she wants.
In the moment, it seems a little silly to accuse her of just doing what she's told.
It's easy to forget that becoming a summoner was the defining defiance committed against the people who raised HER, as well. The ones waiting for them back at the Chateau. (Kimahri never argued, never complained. Nor does he now. His support of her -- AND Rikku, in his way -- is palpable, though silent.)
She's a great listener, as always. Invited by Rikku to imagine this world, she happily does so, obviously visualizing it down to fine details, both the Rikku-mother and the Rikku-adventurer. Kicking off her boots, she dips her toes -- delicate little pebbles, despite their hard-earned pilgrimage calluses -- into the stream.
"It does sound wonderful," she agrees, her eyes aglow with Rikku's own enthusiasm. And with the words that so obviously went unsaid. They close, squinted by a wide, wide smile.
"You will," she believes, out loud. "You're going to do it all."
Yevon isn't the only thing that Yuna has faith in.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Rikku seems heartened by Yuna's statement instantly. Her posture suddenly shoring up, and it's like she's able to relax more for telling what she wants in a world both with, and without Sin.
It wasn't her intention to insult Yuna's beliefs or choices, but it's not something that can be taken back. She hasn't believed that Yuna is a Summoner for such a reason... since before she actually met her. Certainly not after she became her Guardian.
Never that.
While she might spar with Wakka, even she knows that the people from Besaid grew up with such an admirable relationship.
As Yuna agrees with the fact that it sounds wonderful, Rikku's smile widens to match Yuna's. "You know... I've never told my Dad that. Or Brother. Or even Keyakku. Just you-"
Then she suddenly cranes her head backwards enough that she's looking upside down.
"-and you Kimahri!" She says, appreciating his moment of earlier intervention.
As she then brings her head back forward and up, she keeps it at a slight angle, as she looks at Yuna fondly.
"-but anyhow, the point is... you two are the first!"
Pause.
And then softly she notes, "Thanks for believing in me Yunie. It means a lot to me."
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed. <SoundTracker> Hurry! - FFX OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgRAF4sC2pg
Yuna just keeps smiling. Her smile says, 'I'm honored', and her eyes do too. Her happiness for Rikku is simple and pure, but no less powerful for being such a blunt instrument of joy. She starts to bring her hands forward to take her cousin's, warmly, gently.
It's the last thing Rikku and Kimahri see of her--
--before the gas grenades go off.
Hissing clouds of vapor explode in every direction all at once. They're rainbow-bright and viciously powerful; not with acid, not with flammability, not even with blindness or silence, other than... as incidental side-effects.
Rikku recognizes their scent immediately; the ingredients they're made of. She knows them... as well as she knows her own Home.
"Huf'c uin lryhla! Knyp dra summoner!"
The summoner in question has already swooned; the sleep grenades were densest around her, for obvious reasons. But she and her Guardians were arrayed very close together, and there's no escaping the inevitability, the inexorability, of unconsciousness.
Pounding footsteps. The glint of red, green, violet smoke-diffused sunlight on full-face goggles.
"Cunno, Rikku." Keyakku's voice, practiced at being clearly understood through the muffling of a gas mask. Though by now, he sounds like he's at the far end of a distant tunnel, the long chasm between consciousness and dreamland. "Drana'c hu desa mavd. Fa ryja du cyja ran."
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Rikku's still smiling at Yuna. Her joy just as simple at Yuna's belief, her support. Her love for her cousin may be new... but it is true.
And then the image of her is lost in the clouds of vapor. Jolted in surprise, Rikku takes a reflexively deep breath, and coughs terribly.
Slapping a hand over her mouth, she fumbles in an attempt to get to her rebreather - or perhaps one of her potions.
Unfortunately, she breathed in a bit too much. And as nostalgic as those chemical scents might be, already her limbs are feeling heavy.
Her fingertips miss the pocket she was aiming for.
The Al Bhed in her ears, shocks her. Here!? Worse yet, it sounds familiar. Too familiar. It's not someone like Prissa betraying them. Her whole body is already feeling heavy. And as her center of gravity starts to shift, her hand dropping away from her mouth, she says a simple word...
"Hu..."
Into the grass she goes, Keyakku's voice swirling in her ears in light-headed vertigo. As she tries faintly to reach up with her fingertips.
"Key...a..."
Whatever thought she was attempting to communicate to Keyakku against this action feels so faint. Distant. It's like she had a panicked protest against this, but now she can't even think through the words.
There is one thing though that is not so distant in her mind.
"... Yu...nee..."
And then whether she wants it to or not, the void of chemical induced sleep embraces her.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Kimahri roars!
And rises to one knee.
He IS the largest member of their party, even if everyone were present. Perhaps it's only natural that if any Guardian can overcome this assault, it is him.
Power surges within him, then swirls around him. A mighty White Wind creates a vortex that both blows the offending sedative away and the cover of the smoke, too. It rescues Rikku from the brink of drugged slumber, then refreshes her from the inside out.
"Cred," another of the Al Bhed mutters. "Cid's kuehk du pa beccat."
There's no grabbing their leader's daughter now. But one out of two -- the one they've been pursuing the longest of all -- isn't bad. They'd already carried her too far away, out of range of the healing maelstrom the Ronso summoned, and continues to summon, out of the rage and the love in his heart.
And by the time the last of the smoke has dissipated...
...they're gone.
And Yuna's gone with them.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Kimahri's roar of outrage feels like it could reach even into the sleep of the dead. Yet Rikku's ears hear her, her mind does not. Rikku suddenly feels the healing power of his rage surge through her, and without warning her eyes jolt back open.
Limbs flailing in startlement. Suddenly her hand is in the correct pocket, as Rikku brandishes a blue gem.
"Oui drehg RA ec kuehk du pa syt!? Hud rymv yc syt yc sa!"
Back up on her feet, she cranks back her arm, ready to pitch it as far as she can..
... but as the smoke clears...
She sees nobody is here. "What!?" And in utter frustration, Rikku begins to shout aloud at the top of her lungs.
"OUI KAD PYLG RANA! LUSA PYLG!"
Then even louder, such that it might reverberate even in the distance.
"PNEHK YUNA PYLG!"
Some Guardian she turned out to be. Sleeping on the job. If she found her way up here, if Seymour did, she should have expected that her people could do the same.
Putting her hands on both sides of her head, she gets caught up in an anxious decision paralysis as she shakes her head, "Gah! What do we do - what do we do!? Um - ah!"
For all of Rikku's expectations to have a plan she finds she doesn't have one. However... she doesn't need to. Because despite how Spira is made up... a Guardian is not an island. At least in their group. They're a team. Recovering under that thought, she quickly looks at Kimahri.
"Kimahri! You're the veteran Guardian here! So whatever call you make - I'll follow your lead!"