My note: it's not just that I'm having trouble with writing this, because, in all honesty, I'm not. Instead, I'm thinking it needs a rewrite. I'm thinking the events and the message of the story would be better suited in X-2, instead of X.
Where Dreams End...
12. Across the Moonflow
There weren't many travellers on Spira's roads. Only the Crusaders and the Summoners frequently travelled, but there were a fair number of people gathered at the Moonflow.
Yuna noticed Tidus taking a moment to familiarise himself with this scene. From what she could remember of Sir Jecht's tales, his Zanarkand was a machina city, so Tidus wouldn't be used to the simple wonders of nature.
"This is the Moonflow," Lulu said.
"These are moonlillies," Yuna said, kneeling down to show Tidus a pale white flower. It was closed at the moment, but it would open after sunset. "They say that clouds of pyreflies gather here when night falls."
"The entire river glows," Lulu added, having actually seen the Moonflow at night, on one of her previous pilgrimages. "Like a sea of stars."
"Really?" Tidus asked, sounding interested. "Hey, I got an idea!"
Yuna couldn't help but laugh softly at this. He wanted to see the Moonflow. She couldn't blame him; she wanted to see it too. If only there was more time…
"We're not waiting 'til nightfall," Auron said gruffly.
"Then, once we beat Sin, we're coming back!" Tidus said. Yuna's smile faded a little. Tidus really didn't understand her pilgrimage. He didn't understand the cost that the power to defeat Sin came with. She nodded, hoping he didn't see the sadness in her eyes.
"Hey," said Wakka, changing the subject. "We better hurry or we'll miss the shoopuf!"
It worked. Tidus frowned, his thoughts of the Moonflow forgotten. "Shoopuf?" He asked, sounding confused. "Is that some kind of boat?"
Wakka chuckled slightly, pointing in the direction of the dock. Even from a distance, the shoopuf was clearly visible, a mammoth animal, towering over even some of the smaller trees. It was large and grey, with a funny nose, shaped like a trunk.
The Hypello – strange-looking mellow people who'd supposedly lived in the water so long they started to look like fish – had erected a crane mechanism on the dock. This was to hoist passengers up onto the backs of the tame shoopuf that would ferry them across the Moonflow.
"Whoa," Tidus breathed, trying to find appropriate words for what he was seeing. "What the… whoa!"
"This is a shoopuf," Wakka said, giving the other guardian a knowing smirk.
"Whoa…" Tidus breathed again, but this time there was a look of excitement on his face. "Let's ride! Come on, let's go!"
"All right!" Wakka acquiesced, still smirking. "We board as soon as we're ready, ya?"
As a group, they moved towards the dock, though Auron moved off to talk to O'aka.
Yuna got a better look at the Hypello driver. She'd seen Hypello before, of course, there had been Hypello at Luca, for the tournament, but she'd never seen one up close. She was disturbed to find that she couldn't really tell this Hypello from the ones she'd seen in Luca.
He did look a little fishy, lending credit to the rumours she'd heard of Hypello origins. He was short, shorter even than Buffy. His skin was grey-blue and his eyes were different from hers and Tidus', somehow more fish-like. He was dressed in what looked like a pair of red overalls.
"Ride ze shoopuf?" The short Hypello asked.
"I'm ready!" Tidus said, enthusiastically. He glanced around, noticing that Auron had returned. "Let me on!"
"All aboards!" The driver said. The group boarded the crane, and were hoisted up so that they could board the shoopuf's passenger compartment, a kind of platform strapped to the shoopuf's back. The Hypello, more used to the rigors of driving the shoopuf, scrambled up, seating himself comfortably on the shoopuf's shoulders.
"Shoopuf launchin'!" The driver called. A moment later, there was a lurch, and they'd set off…
I gotta say, the Al Bhed idea of Home wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I mean, location is everything, and these guys decided the middle of the desert was prime real estate. Vegas it ain't.
Home loomed. That was the right description of it. It loomed over the desert, casting a long shadow against the yellow sands. Compared to the other places in Spira that Buffy had visited, this was a technological paradise, but there were still some things that the Al Bhed hadn't mastered yet.
Proper indoor lighting was one of those things.
They could improve this place so much, if they'd just introduce the common light bulb, Buffy thought irritated, as, for what seemed like the hundredth time, she found herself wandering the lower corridors of the Al Bhed Home, hopelessly lost.
There was something here, something that called out to her, but she had no idea what it was. There was something here, something so familiar…
"Are we there yet?" Rikku complained, disrupting Buffy's focus.
"I didn't ask you to come along, you know," Buffy said darkly. She'd lost track of the number of times her young Al Bhed friend had asked her that same question several dark corridors and a couple of flights of stairs ago.
"Well, you seemed so out of it," Rikku squeaked.
"Let me ask you something, Rikku," Buffy said calmly. "Why a desert? Why wouldn't you put Home on some tropical island, or something?"
"We wanna make it hard for the Yevonites to find," Rikku said, shrugging. "Plus, the remains of an ancient machina city lie buried in the sand, so it's easy to dig for parts."
"I guess," Buffy said. "But couldn't you have put it next to an oasis or something? You know, for some…"
Buffy didn't get much further than that. Whatever it was that called to her was very nearby now. The girl looked around, finding that she'd somehow found her way to the bottom of a very deep shaft. Old staircases and twisted metal walkways led down here via circuitous routes.
Buffy felt her eyes drawn inexorably down, to the floor beneath her feet. "Whatever it was I was looking for," Buffy murmured, kneeling down to brush away some of the sand that seemed to gather everywhere in Home. There was a hatch underneath.
"I think you found it," Rikku breathed, finishing Buffy's sentiment. "I've never heard of anything down lower than this."
"What do you know about this place, anyway?" Buffy wondered, still clearing away the sand. The hatch looked heavily rusted over, like it hadn't been used in years.
"This used to be part of a machina city," Rikku explained, kneeling to help her friend. "Sin destroyed the island where we used to live. We were scattered to every corner of Spira. We put our minds to it, and this sorta became our new Home."
"Hence the name," Buffy said, giving Rikku a nod of understanding. "I wonder what it was before that."
"Hey," said Wakka, nudging Tidus in the ribs. "Take a look."
The Besaid Blitzer gestured out to the Moonflow, to the clear depths beneath the surface of the water. "What?" Tidus asked. For a moment, he saw nothing but the surface of the rippling water, and the reflections that the light cast upon it. "Whoa!"
There was a city down there, Yuna realised, gasping at her own surprise. She'd always heard of the ruins, but she'd never thought they'd be anything like this.
There was a whole city down there, complete with tall buildings, neatly paved roads, and everything else that made a city a city. Except for the people, who had long since died.
"A sunken city!" Tidus gasped.
"A machina city," Wakka clarified. "A thousand years old! They built a city on top of bridges across the river."
"But the weight of the city caused the bridges to collapse," Lulu added, glancing over the side. "And it all sank to the bottom."
"Right," Wakka agreed. "It's a good lesson."
"A lesson?" Tidus murmured. Yuna could read the question on his face. How could that possibly be a lesson?
"Yeah," Wakka said sagely. "Why build a city over a river, ya?"
"Uh, well, it would be convenient," Tidus said. "With all that water there."
"Nope," said Wakka, shaking his head. "That's not why. They just wanted to prove they could defy the laws of nature!"
Tidus didn't look convinced. Perhaps, Yuna considered, it was because he was from a machina city, and thus had a unique perspective on things. She wondered, briefly, how their beliefs had to look from his perspective. She wondered how Buffy saw her beliefs. "I'm not sure about that," Tidus said.
"Yevon has taught us: when humans have power, they seek to use it," Wakka said. "If you don't stop them, they go too far, ya?"
"Yeah, but don't you use machina too?" Tidus wondered. There was an underlying question there. How could one kind of machina be inherently wrong, while another kind was acceptable? It was a good question, Yuna thought, considering it for the first time. "Like the stadium and stuff, right?"
"Yevon," Wakka answered. "It decides… which machina we may use, and which we may not."
"So, what kind of machina may we not use, then?" Tidus asked, pressing the issue.
"Remember Operation Mi'ihen?" Wakka asked, as if any of them could possibly forget it. "That kind."
"Or war will rage again," Lulu said quietly.
"War?" Tidus asked.
"More than a thousand years ago… Mankind waged war using machina to kill," Yuna told the Zanarkand Blitz star, giving him a soft smile. Her eyes wandered out over the water once more, trying to drink in this sight, the sight of a sunken city.
Perhaps this was the perfect place to have this conversation, Yuna mused. Here out over the Moonflow, the sunken city a silent testament to the power of machina, and mankind's will, it became clear what evils were possible.
But, as with Operation Mi'ihen, weren't great acts of good, of charity, also made possible by machina, even forbidden machina?
Yuna felt herself lost in these questions. Had it not been for the presence of Tidus and Buffy, she would not have considered these other points of view. She was a Summoner, a follower of Yevon, but she felt her faith being sorely tested.
"It's because of people like the Al Bhed screwin' everything up!" Wakka's loud accusation brought Yuna back to reality.
"The Al Bhed aren't all bad guys, Wakka," Tidus dismissed, shaking his head. "When I first came to Spira, a bunch of them saved me, gave me food."
Yuna smiled at him, feeling a grateful feeling rush through her.
"Buffy was with an Al Bhed girl," Auron added.
"What?" Wakka asked, sounding almost outraged.
"She is a good judge of character," Auron said. "If nothing else, the events of Operation Mi'ihen should have taught you that she is no threat to Spira."
"How'd you know all that, anyway?" Tidus asked.
"The merchant, O'aka, told me," Auron grunted, giving his protégé a smile which never quite reached his eyes.
"How long ago did she pass through here?" Yuna asked, a note of anxiousness creeping into her voice. "Is she alright? Tell us!"
"She's only half a day ahead of us," Auron said. "If we hurry, we could make it to Macalania temple at the same time as she does."
"What makes you think she's even going there?" Tidus asked.
"She will want to question the fayth," said Yuna, closing her eyes. If Ixion's fayth knew about the Lost Ones, then there was a chance that the fayth resting in Macalania would know about them as well, maybe it would even know more. "She is looking for her friends."
"Her friends?" Tidus asked. Understanding passed across his face. "You mean the fayth. There's other fayth out there, like the one that let her summon?"
His last question left Yuna's guardians in an unsettled silence, as each of them considered the idea that an inexperienced Summoner, like Buffy, already capable of defeating Sin, would grow even more powerful…