Inspired by "Sink" by Queen Lua.
The tent is dark, save for the dim electric lamp on top of the supplies chest. The air is unusually chilly despite it being in an enclosed space in the heat of summer. Outside, the wailing of helicopter sirens has given way to the tolling of ceremonial bells. Hushed whispers and light footsteps go back and forth as the beachfront is prepared for the rite of sending.
Yuna waits alone inside, her hands on her lap and her staff by her side. She had considered leaving it behind at home in Besaid when she decided to move all the way across the country by herself all those years ago. In hindsight, maybe she had, at that time, wanted to run away from her responsibilities - from all the stiffness, the deafening silence, and the spirits of the dead.
It is why she decided to become a doctor, after all. She'd be more useful to the living this way than by being a summoner like her father. "Such a waste of natural talent," the admitting committee had collectively opined as they accepted her application to medical school. For Yuna, by nature, is every inch the summoner Lord Braska was - well-versed in the scriptures and traditions of Old Yevon, highly adept in the magical arts, and strongly imbued with a sense of duty to her people, befitting her station as the High Summoner's daughter. But in time, she had grown weary of it all and wanted some measure of difference for herself.
This she had once confided to Tidus while on a walk along the Besaid shoreline. "Am I being a coward?" Yuna asked him, the uncertainty plaguing her whole life in every word. It is only with him that she could be herself, beneath all the reserved formalities and layers of rank and ceremony and everything she was tired of.
Tidus laughed, and the answer she had been seeking had never been as clear as his eyes. "Of course not! You're just being true to yourself." Yuna relaxed her tight grip on his hand, and the warmth remaining in hers calmed her mind as she made her decision.
"Go for it, Yuna," Tidus encouraged. "It's your life. You don't owe anyone anything."
Everyone in the hospital had been baffled when Yuna reported for work the first time, magic-sealing armbands hidden underneath loose-fitting scrubs. But she has quickly proven to be a capable physician, learning and applying the clinical sciences like a fish taking to water. No one questions her presence on the team, and she is adored by many of her patients. The hectic hospital shifts are not much different from the rigorous summoner training from her childhood, but she greatly enjoys the freedom she has now more than ever.
After graduation, Yuna pursued further training as a pediatrician. In the eyes of every child she sends home smiling, she sees the pyreflies of her late father. "I am proud of you," she hears Braska say, again and again, and she is glad every time that she has chosen this path.
The earthquake happened two days ago, six months into Yuna's final year of residency training. The port city of Kilika was hit the hardest, most of which was submerged in the tsunami that came afterwards. Talks of Sin returning after ten years of calm raised fear and unrest in the general populace, despite reassurances from the central government that nothing of the sort has been confirmed yet.
Yuna arrived as part of the medical team sent from Bevelle to aid the survivors in Kilika. There was not much to do, as it turned out, for almost everyone had been swallowed by the waves, then washing back up on the shore hours later, already lifeless. After the treatment and resettling of the remaining residents (those poor, poor children) in temporary shelters came the matter of identification and proper disposal of the bodies. No one on the team was a forensic pathologist, but they would come up with a solution to it later on.
There was also the matter of sending the victims' souls into the Farplane - one complicated by the fact that Kilika's summoner was apparently among the dead, her body found crushed under the rubble of the temple. Bevelle would not be able to send a replacement summoner in time before the three-day period passes. The souls have to be sent as soon as possible before they are corrupted and turned into fiends.
"Yuna," the team leader looked her straight in the eye, "you're the only one who can do it." And not just the rite of sending, she completes his unsaid words in her mind.
Life, Yuna thought, was quite unfair - not in the sense that unfortunate things like this have to happen to her, but more of the fact that she clearly knows what her answer will be when she is made to choose between keeping her freedom and performing her duty once and for all. She thought of her father, the last High Summoner who defeated Sin, and how the Calm his sacrifice has brought about is ending soon. She thought of Tidus, back in Besaid, and the letters they have exchanged back and forth since she had decided to uproot herself and follow her dreams. Oh, how his heart will break when he finds out what she soon intends to do.
She thought of her patients, the children in the wards, whose bright eyes and toothy smiles give her boundless joy, and of the orphans in the shelters, whose very souls are wracked with trauma and grief at such a young age. And she thought of the staff in her unopened luggage, and how it seemed to mock her when she had considered leaving it behind for a second time in her apartment in Bevelle just the other day.
The joke truly is on her now, Yuna concluded wryly. This must be the punishment she deserves after years of denying her due to the dead. It is neither a pleasant nor unpleasant circumstance, but it is a weighty decision all the same.
That said, though, she already knew what her answer will be. (Life truly is unfair.)
The flap of the tent opens from behind her, and Yuna stops meditating. Kurgum, she recognizes the boy from the shelter, steps in, a white ceremonial cloak with red borders in his arms. She had been the one to interview him and take his vitals during the immediate aftermath of the disaster. His hollowed eyes betray his faint smile, and she sees in them the family he just lost, begging to be freed.
"Lady Yuna," he says, despite himself, "it is time."
Yuna nods wordlessly and slowly rises, picking up the staff she had almost cast away twice now. This rite of sending is but the first of many trials she will have to go through if she is to defeat Sin once and for all. It is uncommon for a woman her age to suddenly switch careers like so, but a Summoner's word is their bond, and she will see it through to the end, even at the cost of her life. It is hers to do as she sees fit, after all. She doesn't owe anyone anything, neither the living nor the dead. She has decided this for herself, and no one else.