Sex and the Pilgrimage.
Rikku sipped at her red wine as the world walked by around her. Yuna was at the bar, ordering yet another bottle, while Lulu had run across the street for cigarettes. The young ex-guardian smiled as a few young girls walked by, their Spardas bags filled with over expensive purses and shoes. She looked down at her own designer bags, having been a shopping trip of her own with Yuna just this morning.
A glance at her Zaon watch told her it was just past three o'clock. Three o'clock on the five year anniversary of Vegnagun's destruction, over seven years since Yuna had vanquished Sin. The machine cities of old were gradually reclaiming Spira; the continent of the era of Pilgrimages was slowly being overrun by skyscrapers, airships, expanding cities and easy living. Newspapers, magazines, cinemas, coffee houses, clubs, bars, designer labels; the discovery of millions of spheres by millions of sphere hunters had given the people a thirst for the life their ancestors had lead. Contemplating the rapidly changing Spira, her smile grew slightly as the oversized wine glass in front of her was topped up by one of Rikku's closest friends.
"What are you smiling at?" Lulu enquired as she retook her place beside the young Al Bhed. A particularly long menthol cigarette hung from her mouth, the white butt already stained by her purple lipstick. Lulu had never lost her gothic edge, even when the vast quantities of gil she had acquired on the journey around Spira afforded her the luxury of Bevelle and Luca's most fashionable stores. Clad in the finest silks and satins, Lulu sat in a purple burlesque corset, her hair curled and draped over her pale, naked shoulders. The beads and braids had long since left Lulu's visage, the black mage having made a new found obsession with burlesque, dark fashions.
"Nothing." Rikku chirped. "Just life."
Lulu rolled her eyes and set her oversized sunglasses on her head. Her eyeliner and mascara accentuated her deep honey eyes, purple and silver make up picking up the similar colours that had been dyed though her hair.
"Well life isn't smiling back." The mage said solemnly; her outlook on life was almost as emo as her dress sense "Wakka still hasn't called back..."
"Aw honey, we only left Besaid two days ago, he just wants to give you some girl time." Rikku rubbed her friends shoulder with a sympathetic smile on her face. Lulu smiled slightly in return, and taking another drag on her cigarette, poured the last of the blood red wine into her glass.
"They were all out of red..." Yuna re-emerged onto the sidewalk, walking back to their open-air table hold three bottles of rosé wine.
"Aww no, Yunie! Rosé is weak!"
Rikku and Lulu looked with distain at the pink bottles Yuna placed before them as she set herself across from the Al Bhed. Her hair had grown considerably, poker straight aside from the natural wave that her side fringe seemed to hold. It was also much darker, Yuna having discovered the joys of hair dye once the world didn't need saving every now and again. It bounced down her bare back as she wore a strapless, backless couture black dress, rumoured to have been fashioned on one of the mega star Lenne's own wardrobe favourites. It had set the ex-summoner back almost 10,000 gil, but after spending so much money on weapons and armour on her pilgrimage, she justified the purchase as "what she was due".
"Well it was all they had!" she exclaimed, her fabulous black stilettos clicking as she crossed her legs and poured a very large glass for herself. "And I like it!"
"Correction, you like pink"
The girls looked around as Paine walked up, half a dozen bags in each hand, the sound of her own stilettos (these ones however, white) scuffing audibly along the sidewalk. Her white dress hung to her knees and her waist was accentuated by a red belt that matched her Spardas clutch bag perfectly. The red beads she wore around her neck picked out the red of the rose that sat in her OTT white hat, while her silver sunglasses almost disappeared into her shoulder length, feathered silver hair.
"You're an hour late, Dr P!" Rikku piped up, moving her seat along the circle table a little to give her friend room to offload her multitude of bags.
"That shop assistant was DIRE!" she exclaimed as she flopped into the last seat at the table, "I don't know whether she was away making those shoes or if she was just trying them on herself before she gave them to me, but she took way too long to get back to me!"
"Was that the one in Spardas?" Yuna asked, eating some of the salad they had all ordered as their starter. Lulu began pouring Paine some wine as Rikku waved over the waitress to order another salad.
"Oh, the one that almost ripped my Shiva dress?" Lulu chipped in, the cigarette now in her left hand as she used her right to fork some of the salad. "I've had trouble with her every time I've been here..."
"The very same..."Paine sighed and sat up straighter, picking up the glass and thanking the waitress for the salad. "...I think next month I want to go to Luca...There's a show on in the Stadium; I think it's Dona's new range..."
"Ugh!" Lulu choked on her wine. After wiping her mouth with a napkin she sat upstraight and laughed lightly. "That bitch's clothes are funniest things to hit the stadium since Isarru tried his hand at singing!" The four girls laughed, remembering Isarru's embarrassing attempt to mirror Yuna's fame with a cheap rip off of the hymn of the fayth; even Maroda and Pacce had slated it in the press after its release. "Well I'm going if it's her show!"
"Yeah I'm up for that!" Rikku smiled, clapping her hands excitedly "It can be like here...all over again!"
"Besaid to Kilika then Luca. God it's like the pilgrimage all over again!" Yuna laughed lightly. Rikku and Lulu exchanged glances.
"Do you...?"
"Oh my god..."
They exchanged slightly drunken giggles as they both pointed at Yuna in unison with a "that's such a great idea" look on their faces.
"Oh...Oh...I dunno guys..." She shifted slightly in her seat, and with typical indecisiveness, pondered a second pilgrimage to herself.
"Oh for God sake Yuna it's not like your gonna be fighting Sin again! It'll be fun! Like, it'll be a Drink, Shop, Drink, Shop, Do Lunch Pilgrimage!"
"Yeah Rikku, and then when we reach Zanarkand it'll be bankruptcy and liver failure!" Paine chipped in, though she had a kind of gleam in her eye that told each other the other girls she was up for it.
"Let me think about it for a couple of days. We've got a week left here before we're heading back to Besaid right?"
The other three nodded and exchanged glances.
"Okay, I'll think about it."
Amid cheers and high-pitched squeals on Rikku's part, the girls discussed the "will does" "wants" and "needs" of a second pilgrimage around Spira (with a few lewd comments thrown in now and again by a forgetfully tipsy Lulu), all over the half eaten salads and the mounting bottles of rosé wine, and after five o'clock, pitchers of cosmopolitan cocktails and blue lagoon rum.