(A/N): Welcome to the story starring Baralai's parents! :D
I'm not entirely sure if it will flow in strict chronological order or I will jump back and forth between specific events, but we'll see where this takes us!
Prologue
The Shadows of Memory
Mori thought he would die a boy, who would never be able to swim in the sea or gaze up at the sky without fear. He lived his whole life in Kilika, watching Sin come back to tear it apart plank by broken plank, tree by uprooted tree, shepherding souls into the afterlife. Losing his home, what little family and stability he had, he sought refuge in the hot, humid jungle, frightened by the calm of the waves that drowned out the deep, dark memory of the massacre.
He lost track of his age, counting the callouses and scars on his skin to mark the passage of time, and focused solely on survival. To see the next day, to endure nightfall and witness the sun rise again. The woods at night eased him into a state of everlasting unrest, unsettled by all the strange, alien noises of the violent wildlife, scavenging for sleep within the thickest canopies of the thickest treetops to conceal himself from sight and smell.
He hunted fiends for sustenance, disgusted by the rudimentary knowledge they were once human, and buried them when he picked their bones clean. His young, famished, body-addled mind couldn't recall if fiends were able to return after death when they were already dead humans to begin with, only reincarnated as demons, but even so. He did his best to respect their corpses for giving him another chance to live another day in exchange for theirs, even though he could not send them himself. Six years old, and those were the rules he lived by in the wake of devastation, reestablishing some semblance of a normal life.
The adults tried to place him in a priory, the closest thing they had to an orphanage, and he promptly ran away when they started to force-feed him empty prayers and Yevon nonsense. If the teachings really worked, then why were they being punished? If they were meant to atone for the wrongs of their forefathers, then why did they have to? Sin didn't care about their suffering or their efforts to end said suffering.
'It's a monster, it's a killer, it doesn't care about anything―.'
Of course, the priests whipped him for such "insubordinate thoughts," and Mori knew he would never find peace there. Not with the orphaned children flocking to the succor of their wolf shepherds like sheep. He saw a terrible, warped world ruled by guileless adults, and he left to live in the wilderness where he couldn't see the ocean or have to deal with brainwashed devout people.
That's when he met her.
A young woman born in the isle of Besaid. A Summoner.
"Live like you know you will die tomorrow. Do everything that you want to do and be at peace with it. Without that fear, you would have no desire to live. You wouldn't be alive."
That crazy, fey woman who told him that so many years ago took him by the hand and led him to the future. Their future. Now Mori stands before an empty bank of the Moonflow at dusk, many years later, watching the love of his life dance barefoot on the rippling water. Swallowed by the light of the sun caught in descent, her silhouette burns across the horizon amidst its fiery colors.
Ilyria dances to comfort the Shoopuf who lost its mate, dancing to appease its grief by banishing the illusion that still grips it. She dances to reel the pyreflies in, wrapping them around the tip of her long, golden staff where a translucent crystal glows within its solar circumference. Magical energy accumulates there, beckoning the pyreflies to follow its radiance. She sings to them a song she has recited time and time again within the walls of their household, stringing together fragments born from the idle daydreams entertained in her day-to-day tasks ― a song without words.
Her sheer, one-piece dress flows like gossamer, moving in the air like the pyreflies, as if she were one with them, a specter of the past. She looks so beautiful and haunting, entreating to the earth her absolute devotion, her vivacity never ages. Only her hair grows and her dimples deepen, but never her life or her love for life.
Mori watches her dance until nightfall inks the sky and the background noises of evacuation have calmed down. She finally ceases her long, tireless dance and retreats from the water, hefting her staff perpendicular to her back while she returns to shore with bold and languid strides. She smiles at him, allowing for their friend, Scisero, to fuss over her. And he bows his head, before departing in search of their son.
Today may be the last day of the week-long emergency evacuation, but there still lies a lot of work to be done. Particularly his reconnaissance behind the Yevoner hunters' activities, and what he can do to terminate them from their infantile roots. He would always hate politics and the Bevellian government with a passion, but he would do anything his son asked of him, and Baralai just happens to be the Chancellor of the Spiran Council.
Compared to his virtuoso Summoner wife and influential politician son, his life mattered very little. After all, his life had never been his the moment he met Ilyria; when she became pregnant near the end of their pilgrimage and chose to keep the fragile, unborn life inside her despite his prepubescent doubts, Mori vowed to protect that miracle forever.
His legacy, his hope for a better world. The only prayer he harbored, became the only prayer that came true.
Nothing else mattered to him than preserving that miracle for as long as he lived.