The sunset makes the Eidolon Wall look like it's on fire, she had said to Zidane, and it holds true even as she bows her head in front of it, as she clasps her hands and squeezes her eyes. Phantom flames flicker behind her eyelids, licking up the wall and scorching the sky, but she inhales and there's only incense. Only magic and memory. There is so much of both in this place and Ramuh stirs behind her breast, bearing witness. It's a homecoming for him too, she realizes, and smiles at the thought. She's forgotten so much, the ancestors of her early memories long replaced by Alexandria's kings and queens and consorts, but Garnet just smiles wider and says a prayer for finding things long lost.
When she opens her eyes Eiko is beaming at her. Garnet falters, flushing under her bright-eyed gaze, but smiles back after a moment, smaller but no less warm.
"I haven't done that in so long." Garnet unclasps her hands, staring down at the cracks in her palms and dirt caked in her nail beds, tangible evidence of how far she's come from the naive, sheltered princess she had been. Before—and how strange, for there to be a before where only blank space used to be—she had prayed with these hands every day. She wonders when she stopped. Before she lost her horn? After? She supposes she will never know, now. "I'd forgotten how comforting it is."
The sound of sniffling has Garnet looking up hastily. Eiko's body is angled slightly away but Garnet sees the heel of her hand rubbing over her nose as well as the redness between the cracks of her fingers and deduces from there. Her own throat closes reflexively; Eiko sniffles once, twice more before Garnet prevails.
"Eiko—"
"I'm not—" Eiko makes an incoherent noise that sounds more angry than anything. Her hand drops from her face to her side, clenching into a fist. Garnet flinches back when Eiko wheels on her, all wet eyes and trembling mouth. "I'm not sad." More softly: "Really, I'm not. Or…or sad isn't the only thing I am, anyway. Grandpa and I used to pray together all the time, you know? And Mog's usually always with me, or one of the other moogles will pay their respects or keep me company, but I haven't…I never thought…"
Oh, Garnet thinks, and sidles closer, reaching for Eiko's clenched fist before she can think about it too deeply, heart in her throat. Eiko lets her, fingers uncurling of her own accord, something heartbreakingly fragile in her eyes. Then their palms meet, dry but soft — princess and orphan, orphan and orphan, the last daughters of Madain Sari.
Eiko smiles, watery but real. "I was so afraid," she says but doesn't look afraid, not at all. Just looks braver than any seven year old has a right to be. "I light incense and pray and try to remember all the old stories. But it's hard. Stories — they're the heart's blood of our tribe. That's what Grandpa always said. What if I forget something? What if I remember it wrong? The moogles know some of them too but it's different. Eidolons come from stories. If I'm the only one left to tell them, does that mean there won't be any new ones?"
Garnet doesn't know. If she's learned one thing since setting out from Alexandria it is this: There is so much she doesn't know about the world much less herself. Summoning is something she has read about in a few scattered texts or has vague recollections of Doctor Tot's mumbling. Her eidolons have long been cold and dormant inside of her, waiting for her to reach out and touch, but by the time she was brave enough they were already torn from her grasp.
She thinks about Eiko, young and brash and unashamed, afraid of loneliness and legacy but never her own power. She thinks about the magic of Lord Avon's plays, the taste of I Want To Be Your Canary on her tongue as she sounds out the phrases that leave her breathless. She thinks about the weight of Zidane's dagger in her palms, standing in the sun and watching light pool in its steel, and thinking: this, I want to be this. Strong, swift, sure. She thinks that there is a power in names, just like there are in stories, and Dagger is a story she started telling herself. It took on a life of its own, the way the best stories always do.
She may not know the ending but she knows they are writing it all now together.
"You can tell me the stories." Garnet squeezes Eiko's hand, relishing her slack-jawed surprise. Light is fading but she feels steady and sure. The words feel right. Irrevocable. "I'll tell you them right back and tell my daughter and my daughter's daughter. I think the telling is all that matters, Eiko. Madain Sari may be dead but we're both still here. That's what matters, isn't it?"
Eiko recovers and nods, little button nose red but eyes bright. "Mhm." She vibrates with new energy, tugging on Garnet's hand and dragging her over to one of the murals on the outer wall. Bahamut, Garnet realizes with surprise. Eiko turns a grin on her. "This is one of your eidolons, right? Did you know he was the King of Dragons? One of my favorite stories is about him , I made Grandpa tell it like a million times..."
She trails off, looking too hopeful for Garnet's heart to bear. Garnet could no sooner deny her than she could deny herself. "I would love to hear it."
Eiko's smile dazzles.
They stand and when they tire of standing sit cross-legged down in the dirt. Eiko talks and Garnet listens, Eiko all hands and face and Garnet listening with a smile, soaking it all in: the lengthening shadows, the dust in the air and the salt on the wind. The weight of history pressing in on them. What a terrible fate, she muses, to be among the last. But what are stories if not a type of resurrection? Madain Sari, dead but not gone, not completely—not with them there to keep breathing life back into it.