Author's Note: I wrote this a while ago. I hope that you all like it. ^^; It was my first take on a centric.
A n g e l D u s t
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Part I: Sleepless Visions
A faint breeze ruffled the thick canopy with another dexterous swing. Like the last drift, this one caused the whole forest to quake in terror. Tidus is particularly fond of this part of the island. "Can you hear that?" the young man whistled to his fickle counterpart. "What do you think, Rikku?"
"What do I think…?" She trailed off. "I think you're crazy! It's going to thunder any minute now!" She was right, but was there really any rush? A nice afternoon at the campsite certainly won't do. Perhaps Rikku thought otherwise. "Can we go now?! It's going to rain soon!"
Tidus glanced at his right arm, and then back at Rikku. She had been pacing about; frantically whisking her limbs in a craze of nostalgia. "Okay," he said, stretching out his legs to regain even the slightest source of adrenaline that he so desperately craved. "We'll leave as soon as the sun sets!"
Rikku wasn't too pleased to hear the news, but—nonetheless—she continued to wait patiently, like a manageable child. …There was something about that silly demeanor of hers that always resembled a kid in some cases. At least to Tidus -- nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. "But I can hear the thunder, y'know. It's there . . ." she moaned incoherently. Tidus shrieked with amusement while clutching the joint of his ankle.
The blonde-haired deva shot back a thunderous whale of dismay: "You jerk!"
Tidus swallowed in his pride, and let out another siren of raspy chuckles. "I'm sorry, y'know. You're just too—" There was a flash . . . A brilliant flash of light danced through the impressionable darkness. But where was Tidus?
"Tidus!" a terrified Rikku croaked! "What just happened?!" Not a word . . . Instead, a violent crackle of wind sparked an interest of fear within the petrified female.
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How long had he been out? An hour? Maybe two . . . The moment just felt so sudden to him. "Yuna," he heard himself say. "Where are you…?" She was this consistent image in the back of his mind—an elegant brunette with a pair of vibrant brown eyes. She appeared to be laughing about something…
At what, Tidus thought desperately. What are you laughing at?
Her hand rose ever so calmly to meet roof of her cheekbone. Tidus grew anxious of this façade. "What's so funny?"
Yuna greeted the presumptuous male with a familiar utter of words: "Now—you try!" In a sudden daze of hilarity, Tidus did try… He tried so damned hard that even the air took refuge from his hot breath. "Okay, maybe you should stop. I think we're scaring everyone."
But there was no stopping this incite of tune. They carried on, giggling without a care in the world. "I want this journey to be full of laughter…" a spirited Yuna would say. "You understand that, right?"
Of course he did. He knew all about that simple pleasure. Laughter always seemed to be a close relative.
--Or maybe it wasn't their laughter that Yuna reflected on so lightly. "We were in Luca when you said that to me. Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Was it against the practices, of Yevon to tell a completely oblivious guardian the secrets of a summoner's pilgrimage? Tidus thought so, anyway. This place [this society] was nothing like his Zanarkand . . .
