It's sunset.
All the colours have burst out of the sun, as though it was some wanton fruit, overripe. It's dribbled all down his front, across the sides of his hair, lit up the caves beneath his eyelashes. She's drenched in red and pink and gold, her face turned up towards the sun and the sea.
He has sand in his eyes. That's what it looks like, sand or grit or little fragments of bone. He'd told her, actually - this sand was build out of the husks of thousands of dead little shellfish. Some places were carved from mackerel bones. You were walking on layers of fossils, thrusting your toes between mashed ribcages and crushed up spines.
The sun is melting, like berries hanging on Gagazet bushels. When it's gone, there will be no colour left. Just grey sand and black sea and dull blue, blue, blue. She feels a red inside of her, though, burning and pushing and demanding to be told. It licks the inside of her lips, tickles her tongue.
"Do you think Home will become a beach?"
He looks to him, wide eyed green flashing blue.
"With all the bones of the Al Bhed?"
He smirks at this. "I would think it more likely that the Ronso would become a beach. Melt the mountain, crush their bones. It certainly felt like there was enough to make one," and then he laughs, as though this is somehow funny, ha ha what a brilliant joke. But he realizes she isn't laughing with him and frowns. "You burned their bodies, Yuna. They're ash, now."
"Who will send them?"
"Who sent the Ronso, who sent the fish?" He let his fingers dip under the sand, lifting it and watching it all blow away. "Sometimes death can just be accepted, rather than refacing all the worries of life again."
She stares out to sea, watches how the horizon dips into nothingness. Behind them, there is nothing but white. This is all they have, and it rises.
"Death is a gift, then?"
"I can imagine no greater gift, no gift so final, so eternal." He drags his spider fingers down her arm, she watches and hesitates, before lifting her hand and taking him in hers.
She smiles sweetly, sighs a little, brushes sand off her knee. And then the red bleeds free, she laughs, looks up at them and tilts her head, "Then die!"
"Can't you see, Seymour?"
Beneath him there is his mother, there is her screaming, rattling bones. The sea is made of fur, it moves on a tide of blood and beads. The Al Bhed scream in the distance, the white is an explosion, frozen in time. Kinoc is the mud. Jyscal is a tree.
"It's time to die."
"But I can't," he murmurs, shivering in the dull light. Her wedding dress bounces, the feathers on her back so real and beautiful and ripped clean from doves. "I can't die, if I do, then who will control Sin?"
"Silly," she laughs, brings herself to embrace him, eyelashes fluttering against his chest. "Sin will control itself."
And then she suddenly pulls her knees under her, drags him up and clasps both his hands.
"Let's go."
"Where?"
"Let's go where it all begins."
And she turns, laughing and brilliant and beautiful as the last drop of light begins to fade from the sun. The tree withers. The mud slackens. The explosion turns grey and a cloud of ash howls at their back. The sea rots, the fur sinks, the blood and bones and beads turn to fish and everything swells. His mother is in her mouth, and her hair turns long and black and sleek and her fingers tug him towards the sea.
And he's laughing, he's laughing too - but what does it mean? Can he go? Should he go? Leap, skip, jump out of existence?
Sin veers, it begins to fall from the sky. All of Bevelle screams.
She tugs his hand, she tugs.
"Let's go where it all ends."
"Rest."
"Let's go."
"Believe."
Everything turns white. He is the sea, he is the tree, he is the mud and the sand and he kisses her and swallows her and is her and all things become one and nothing all at once.
"Let's go."
Everything laughs.