I found Sky sitting on the docks, staring up into the distance. The night was dark, but she seemed like she was looking at something in the stars.

I briefly looked up. "Mommy's having the baby now. They made me go away," I said, sitting down next to her.

Sky tapped her chin with her finger, thinking. "I wonder if I have a sister?" I shrugged. "Or a brother? I think so… I don't know."

I looked at her curiously. I had only known her for a few months, and had never asked her where she came from. "Why not?"

She looked down at the water. "I don't know. I don't know anything."

"You know lots of things." I searched for an example. "You can read."

"So can you."

"Not really. And you can write."

"But I didn't know how to talk, a year  ago. That's not what I meant, anyway. I mean, I don't know where I came from."

"Why not?"

That probably wasn't the best question, but who ever said I was tactful? Sky stood up. "I'm gonna go find Jen. She said she'd show me the pictures in the sky."

"Can I come?"

"Sure."

We trotted down the docks back to the village proper. "She's up there," Sky said, pointing. There were several levels of wooden paths in Kilika, the lowest right on the water and the highest a couple feet taller than my six-year-old head. They obviously weren't right on top of each other, though. No one would be able to walk on them. Of course, mommy had had to explain to me that that was why. I could fit under them fine.

"Do you see those stars in the shape of an upside-down question mark?" Jen said as we approached. "That's the constellation of Ifrit."

"And those two stars up there are his horns, right?" a boy older than me asked eagerly.  Sky sat down and looked up, like she had been when I first found her. I sighed—Sky seemed nice, and I was spending time with her to make friends with her, but I didn't like trying to find pictures in the sky. I always got frustrated. I don't like to be frustrated. I sat down anyway, resigned.

"I think I see one!" another girl said excitedly. "Those up there look like a shoopuf!"

All I could see was a shapeless blob. "It's possible. I mean, a shoopuf with a house on its back is a shapeless blob…there are a lot of clouds that look like shapeless blobs." A familiar voice floated up into my mind, waking me from…from…

The sudden pain in my shoulder did more good to wake me up than anything. I gasped and winced, then regretted moving. All of a sudden, a cool green light washed over the inside of my eyelids, and I opened my eyes.

Sky was leaning over me, her hands hovering just above my shoulder, a green light flowing from them. She smiled a relieved smile when I looked at her, then the green light faded into nothing.

"Where…" was my first question. I was lying on a bed that probably wasn't stuffed with feathers, but it was more comfortable than the ground. Looking at the wooden walls around us, I realized we were inside.

"A Crusader base, foot of Mushroom Rock. How are you feeling?"

"Fine."

"You sure?" she asked worriedly.

"Yeah." As I said that, my shoulder started throbbing. It didn't hurt anywhere near as badly as it did at first, but it was still painful.  "No."

Sky's face fell. "Me and Nyk've been using Cura on your shoulder for a couple days now. It looks like your shoulder'll heal fine, but…it'll probably still hurt."

"No kidding," I grumbled.

"Yes, well. At least you'll be able to use your arm."

I looked at her curiously. "How bad was I hurt?"

Sky sat back. "You wouldn't have died, if that's what you're asking. All I'm saying is I'm really, really glad we have two healers. Go to sleep now. It'll help your shoulder heal."

"I've been asleep for a few days," I grumbled.

"It's not the same. It doesn't make you feel any better. Believe me, I've had experience," Sky said in a lecturing tone. "Go to sleep." With that, she left the room.

I craned my neck to the side to look at the back of my shoulder. I couldn't see it very well, but there was a large, raised area of new pink skin that contrasted sharply with my perpetual tan. (It comes of living in a tropical climate.) Smaller scars surrounded it. I was fairly glad that I didn't really remember what it had looked like before.

I think I dropped off to sleep about then, because when I woke up the sun was slanting through the window at an angle that told me it was near evening. I was pretty sure it had been around breakfast before.

Whatever time it was, I felt a lot better. My shoulder kind of throbbed, but it was annoying rather than painful. Thank Yevon for magic, I thought as I swung my legs over the side of the bed. The healing salve many people used in Kilika for scrapes stung and itched, even though it did heal. I noticed my shoulder was now wrapped in a sort of white gauze, and my wavy brown hair was hanging loose. I dimly recalled losing my hair ties somewhere on the Highroad.

A search for my shoes proved futile, but at least I was still dressed. I felt a bit tottery and weak as I walked to the door of the room and peered out. The hall outside was built of some sort of stone that, even though it had apparently been used to give the walls a wood-paneled look, looked almost, but not quite, entirely unlike wood. Seeing no one, I decided to try to find the rest of my party.

After three turns, six doors, and at least two dead ends before I admitted the fact I was hopelessly lost. "This place is like a maze," I muttered. Resolving to ask the next person I found how to find Sky and the others, I picked a likely looking wooden door and opened it.

The room I looked into must have been a library—the walls were hidden behind shelves, and at least half of these were full of leather-bound books. A woman was standing across the room, running her hand along the bindings of the books. She was…odd-looking, to say the least.

She was dark-haired and thin, which in and of itself wasn't odd. However, she was wearing a long-sleeved shirt that showed her midriff and seemed to be made out of a kind of rubbery cloth. Her baggy shorts came to mid-thigh, and she was wearing boots up to her knees.

Although no one I knew would dare to go out in clothes like these, she didn't seem odd apart from that. I cleared my throat, but what I was going to say stuck in my throat as she turned around.

The room wasn't very large, so I could see her face clearly. She had a pair of goggles hanging around her neck and ribbons woven through small braids on either side of her face, but those things didn't register at the moment. What shocked me into forgetting what I had been about to say was her eyes. They were a dark green, but not dark enough to hide her spiral pupils.

The woman was an Al Bhed.

She looked at me curiously as thoughts ran through my head. At first I felt a bit disappointed—the way my mother talked about Al Bheds, I had been expecting horns or fangs or something. I looked carefully for some sign of her 'heathen-ness', but if you put her in normal clothes and changed her eyes, she could have passed for a Yevonite.

"Yes?" she said slowly.

"Er, I…" I was very confused until my mind settled on one point—no matter what she looked like, she was definitely an Al Bhed. Therefore, she was a heathen, and therefore, I shouldn't be talking to her. I sort of regretted having to dislike her—I had thought she looked nice when I first saw her. Oh, well, she couldn't be nice if she was a heathen, anyway. "I was looking for Summoner Sky."

She was silent for a moment. "I…not know good Spiran," she said carefully. "You…want find Summoner?"

"Yes." It would be rude to leave now, heathen or no.

"I show you." She beckoned to me and led the way out the door.

"You know Al Bhed?" she said as we walked.

"No."

"Pity. Much easy." We turned left, then right. "My name Nirae."

"Hello."

"Your name?"

"Rai." I felt sort of bad. She was obviously trying to be nice, and here I was, being rude. Couldn't be helped, I guess.

She paused. "Which Summoner?"

"There's more than one here?" I said, startled out of my one-word responses.

"Yes. Just came. You want Lady Rissa or Lady Sky?"

"Er. Lady Sky." Nirae made another right, then paused at a door. "You dnyjam… travel with Kiyo, no?"

I nodded.

"Tell him something?" I nodded again. "E'mm frylg oui ev oui tuh'd."

I blinked. "What?"

She pulled a piece of paper and a pencil out of her pocket and wrote something down. She then handed it to me. "It okay. Al Bhed hard. Give to him?"

I considered. "…okay." She nodded and walked back the way we had come. I couldn't think why she wanted to tell Kiyo something. Huh… I thought as I pushed open the door.

Sakura was sitting in a chair with her feet on a stool, reading a book. Kiyo was leaning over a leather cylinder, doing something. Sky and Nyk were nowhere to be seen.

"Done," Kiyo said with a satisfied air. He looked up and saw me.

"Rai!" he said, surprised. "You're okay?"

"Fine," I said irritably. "I'd be in bed if I wasn't fine."

He frowned and walked over to Sakura, who had been watching this little exchange. "Here," he said, handing her the leather cylinder. I recognized it as one of her armguards. The bowstring of a bow could snap back and hit your arm, she had explained to me, and that was what the armguard was for.

She looked up. "You sure?"

I sighed and sat down. "Yes, I'm sure."

"You're grumpy," she commented.

"Humph."

Kiyo laughed out loud. "You are, you know."

I stared at the note the woman had given to me. I couldn't make heads or tails of it—and was torn between wanting to know what it said and the aversion to the Al Bhed. "An Al Bhed—Nirae—told me to give this to you," I said, handing out the note. Kiyo took it and stared at it quizzically, before chuckling and stuffing the note in his pocket.

"You can read Al Bhed?' Sakura asked, interested.

"Yeah. Growing up with them and all, I had to learn it in self-defense."

"What did it say?" I'd ask him how he put up with being around the Al Bhed later.

"She's my friend from Bevelle," he explained. "We had a bit of a quarrel yesterday. She wanted me to come back on the ship that's here. So I said I wanted to go by way of Sky's pilgrimage, and she got mad at me."

"And what did the note say?"

"That she'll whack me if I don't come back to Bevelle," he said, grinning. He obviously found the whole thing very amusing.

I shrugged and looked at Sakura. "Where's Sky?"

"Off somewhere." Sakura waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. She seemed very involved in her book. Her hand covered the front, but the words on the back said something about the Crusaders.

"Nyk?"

"Off somewhere. Don't worry. It's a Crusader's base. Nothing'll happen to them," she said, slightly amused.

I gave up on both of them and stared at the wall. It was a very interesting wall, with a small window in it. I got up and walked over, to find it looked out over a small garden and the ocean. I must have been about three stories up, judging by how far away the garden looked. It was drizzling slightly, but there was a small roofed porch off one of the three doors leading towards the garden. I thought it was odd for there to be a garden in a military base, and said so.

"Says here," Sakura said, pointing to her book, "that the Crusaders live in their bases most of the year. Some of them probably like to garden." She shrugged, and I turned back to the window.

Continuing my idle observation of the garden, I saw Nyk sitting on a stone bench under the roof of the porch. Sky was leaning against him, writing industriously in something. As I watched, Nyk looked up and saw me. He nudged Sky, who also looked up.

She yelled something I couldn't hear, and I shrugged and shook my head. She and Nyk both stood up, then disappeared from view as they went inside.

I sighed and returned to my seat. However, as I was feeling particularly antsy right then, I jumped up almost immediately and started to peruse the bookshelves. Not finding anything to my liking, I sat down again. The books were mostly history.

"You have any hair ties?" I asked Sakura.

She shrugged, not looking up. "Probably. I lose about five a day, so I've got to have lost of extras."

Sakura and Nyk entered the room then. "Are you okay?" Nyk asked when he saw me.

Sky walked over to me and looked at me worriedly. "Are you sure it's a good idea for you to be up?"

"I'm fine, and yes," I grumbled. "It's boring, sleeping. This place doesn't seem like a very nice place to stay, anyway. Stony and cold."

"We should probably leave soon, then," Sky mused. "Your shoulder probably is fine. Magic cures easy." I realized that was why no one had really asked me any more inventive questions than 'Are you okay?' They knew I was fine, really.

I think it was at that point I started really missing my mom. She would have insisted I needed to spend another day or so in bed, with plenty of tea and soup and that annoying stinging herbal slop she used to put on my skinned knees. Here people were treating me like I was old enough to know when my shoulder was healed enough to walk, but I had never wished more for someone to baby me.

I realized that as I had been thinking, everyone else had agreed with Sky. I took a deep breath. You're old enough to make your own decisions, now.

"Let's leave as soon as we can."