FLYING LESSON
She hadn't intended to get caught. For the most part her intentions had been motivated by curiosity, a desire to understand what it was that held Vaan's attention so firmly. It wasn't as if she had failed to understand the beauty of flight, the curb of clouds breaking beneath the bow of metal and the sun, a distant disc high above them, shedding light across the smooth contours of the airship. She had lived all her life on the hard soil of sand-blasted Rabanastre, the humid air full of the scent of the desert and the sun so bright upon their backs that in summer it made even the shade uninhabitable.
She could appreciate full well the joy of being above the crudely carved stone of Rabanastre's streets, distant from the hardship and toil of her lot in life, but she failed to fully understand Vaan's obsession with the machinery of flight.
Wasn't it enough to simply take joy in flight, to turn their faces into the breeze and feel the cloud break in strands about them? She remembered the first time they had boarded the Strahl, the laboured expression on her almost-sibling's face as he tried so hard to take in every detail of the experience. It had soured her feelings marginally, driving a wedge of dissatisfaction between them, if only momentarily. It wasn't that she liked him any less for it...it was simply that she wished he could appreciate things for what they were.
Filo had suffered from a similar complaint, Penelo recalled wistfully, a sudden and surprising yearning for the stifling reliability of home settling over her with unexpected swiftness.
She hadn't expected to miss Rabanastre, the theatre of so many tragedies throughout her young life, yet the sudden recollection of Filo and the association of warmth beneath the heavy Hessian sheets as occasional rays of light had filtered through the high ceiling of Lowtown and made shapes of their moving shadows on the stone walls made her feel wistful and agitated.
It was this state of mind, the fidgeting sensation that started in her memory and spread to her toes, causing them to curl inward, that had had allowed the circumstance of her capture to come about. With distemper she had taken hold of one of the many control sticks before her, hoping to memorise by association the function and nature of each of the Strahl's controls, that she had felt the gentle but sharp touch of another's hand over hers.
She had gasped and made to retrieve her hand but found it held in place, long fingers forcefully holding it down. She turned as best she could, awkward amid the constraints of the pilot's chair, which she had buckled in the hope that it might lend authenticity to the experience, and the firm grip on her own fingers.
Leaning forwards with an unsurprised expression on her face was the Strahl's co-pilot, the Viera woman, Fran.
"Í dídn't take you for an aspíríng pílot." The Viera said calmly, her accent blunting the shape of the vowels.
"I-I'm not!" Penelo answered quickly, her pale skin darkening in a ruddy blush. "I just thought it might come in handy if I was familiar with the basics..."
The Viera arched a single silver eyebrow.
"Ít's often consídered bad manners to attempt to become acquaínted with other people's property." She remarked.
Penelo's blush deepened.
"I know that!" She answered with all the indignantly of her age.
"And yet here you are." Fran remarked.
"I-I didn't mean to be here." The younger girl whimpered, turning away. "There's so much that's new to me, so much that I don't understand yet. I just want to make sure I'm ready when the time comes."
"What time?" Fran asked, her grip remaining firm.
"When Vaan leaves...when he gets an airship of his own and he leaves Rabanastre. I want to prove that I'm useful, that he'll have a reason to take me with him."
The Viera smiled thinly and reached out with her other hand, taking hold of Penelo's chin and turning her head back to face her.
"Ín the Wood we do not have such dílemmas. We have communíon, a natural sharíng of skílls and needs. We have talent and we have elders to ínstruct ín such talent. Yet amongst humes, Í have observed that you seem only to learn through struggle. Wouldn't ít be better to learn as the result of a desíre to ímprove?"
Penelo frowned.
"Observe." Fran remarked in that curious accent of hers.
She leant forwards and, closing her darkly intense eyes, placed her lips upon Penelo's own.
"Aírships deríve power from two main sources," she whispered, her free hand travelling from the younger girl's face and down the diagonal line of the restraint before encircling her breast. "Mægícíte and nethícíte."
Penelo struggled feebly against the restraint of the pilot's seat, her eyes fluttering as she felt the press of the Viera's fingers against the thin material of her clothing.
"Mægícíte, or rather a specífíc variety of mægícíte, named 'skystone' allows the craft to levítate..."
She murmured sweetly in distant response to the lesson, feeling the brush of lips above the high-collar of her clothes and the movement of the other woman's hand as it slipped into the space between her arched back and the seat.
Her other hand slipped from Penelo's own, tracing lines up the exposed flesh of her arm and the younger girl shivered and squirmed once more.
"The use of nethícíte grants the craft access to regíons with strong emíssíons of Míst ín the aír." Fran whispered in her ear but already any hope of retaining the offered information had slipped away from Penelo's grasp.
She felt her clothes come apart at the back, the Viera's pronounced fingers slipping into the opening and dancing over her skin, and she forgot all other lessons but those which she received through that delicately practised touch.
Her eyes fluttered again and, over the shoulder of the Viera woman at her side, she caught sight of the young widowed Dalmascan princess, her eyes cunning and determined as she slipped her fingers through the large buckle of her belt.
Once more Penelo reflected on the fact that she had not intended to get caught...but that she wasn't necessary upset that she had been.
The princess' skirt slipped from her waist and she stepped towards them.