12.
Title: Sunlight
Rating: G
Pairing: None
Word Count: 472
Warning(s): None
Summary: They were tired, and it was a long journey.
Dedication: To my best friend Alice, because we didn't get a chance to spend time with each other last night like we had planned.
A/N: Wow. o= I'm actually WRITING these! Cookies for all! For I am in a GREAT mood! =D
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Maybe it had been because of how long and miserable the countless days had been. Eventually, the tough, slow travel through the Thunder Plains and then Macalania began to seep into us all.
We were tired.
I can't say how long we spent exactly going from one place to the other. In the Thunder Plains, we must have endured weeks. Not only of constant traveling, but of training and gathering materials that we somehow knew we would need for the future fights ahead of us.
But we were miserable.
Endless rain, day and night—never being able to tell what hour it is because it's always, always the same darkness. Always cloudy and storming, drenching us not just through our clothes, but right down to the bones.
More than half of us got sick during the time we were there.
It darkened our spirits considerably. The fiends we encountered too were testier than the ones before. Magic was normally the way to go, and more than a handful of them were quite resilient to physical attacks from all of us besides Auron's hefty blades.
Ixion was our saving grace, but that didn't change much when we reached the end of the plains.
From ceaseless noise and violence, we departed and came upon an eerie world of darkness. Everything was quiet, quiet, quiet. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, nothing whispered of life.
Macalania was a completely different trial, and one through which we fumbled and bumbled our way loudly until we felt we would go mad if we didn't hear another sound other than our own ugly, loud noises.
We lost track of time.
We could have been in there for only a day, perhaps a week. Maybe a year. It was that kind of place. You never knew which way to go, if you were going in circles or not, and how much farther it would be until those endless, thick and heavy-feeling woods would end.
But… one day…
We finally broke through.
"Sunlight!"
Yuna was not the only one to bear witness to our delight, and relief. More than a few of us rushed forward, smiles spilling over our lips, muscles aching for that feeling! That freedom! We ran, we walked, we moved—we broke out!—into the sunlight!
I remember closing my eyes, as I stood in full view of the uninhibited sun—just soaking it all in, feeling all those miserable weeks of bone-drenching rain and darkness being completely drained from me. And in its place, the warm—heart and body and soul warming—sunlight rose in my skin, and I—
A sudden thump made me drag open my eyes, and I blinked to see Yuna flat on her back on that grassy knoll overlooking the Calm Lands.
I remember I smiled. And I thought, Yuna had the best idea.