**Allllrighty, here's the next chapter! I'm sorry its taking so long all this week...I was gone from school for most of this week due to pain, so the make-up work is horrendous. I'm trying my best, though! And to the one reviewer (whom you can talk to over AIM-- they're Puhoser) who said Genki and Mariana were um....doing it? THEY AREN'T. Trust me--I have all their other stuff that they're doing planned out. So they're not sleeping together. So there. Nyaa. Enjoy the rest of the story (and there will be romance in it, just be PATIENT...lol). Check the blog I mentioned earlier for updates as to whether or not the next chap of the fic will be on time...gotta love it. ^_^ Ja!**
"Arashi!" Yueh nudged the summoner girl in the shoulder lightly. "Arashi, we're here!"
"She's still not up?" Niet asked. She peeked into the wagon from the back, which faced the Moonflow. "I don't even see how she could fall asleep on that ride."
Yueh shrugged and poked Arashi harder. "I don't know. Arashi. Arashi!" Rolling her eyes, she finally just shook the girl awake.
Arashi blinked, and instinctively went to adjust her glasses. Finding they weren't there, she scratched her temple and her eyelids fluttered. "Wha...oh, we're there already." Glancing outside, she scrambled to find the movie sphere. "Its dark out already. You should have woken me up sooner." Arashi hopped out the front of the wagon, the sphere in hand. Yueh turned to look at Niet and gave a small smirk.
"I tried to wake her up for ten minutes. Its not my fault." Niet laughed and waved Yueh outside.
"C'mon, I got the sleeping bags set up. No tents."
Yueh grinned as she climbed out the back. "Good, otherwise we'd have lost second tent." She preemptively dodged an oncoming joking hit from Niet. "Kidding! Kidding!"
"Yueh, Niet! Its starting!" Arashi yelled out.
"Oh!" Niet and Yueh ran towards the shoreline and sat next to an attentive Arashi, who already had her movie sphere out and rolling. She held it like a camcorder out in front of her, watching the slowly rising lights through the sphere.
"Isn't it gorgeous?" Arashi said quietly. Yueh gazed silently out at the swirling pyreflies, her eyes starting to drift closed.
Its so peaceful... She blinked slowly as she leaned back into the shore. You'd never think something like this is caused by Sin, too. The pyreflies danced across the surface of the water, the sun now gone and the moon taking its place in the sky. The pastel colored dots of light against the darkened sky made it seem like the stars had fallen to the earth and were now doing an intricate dance for Yueh and her friends alone. Sadly, Yueh's eyes felt heavier with every passing moment, and it seemed Niet was feeling the same.
Arashi finally tore her eyes away from the beautiful sight in front of her (and the sphere) to look at Niet and Yueh. She kept glancing back at the sphere as she spoke. "I understand that you two are probably very tired. I'll keep recording so you can go to bed, if you like," she said quietly. Yueh tried to shake her head, but yawned instead, causing Arashi to smile.
"You two go and sleep. I'll stay up and keep watch. If anything happens, you know I have Tsuki to count on." Arashi waved her free hand at the other two. "Go on, you're probably really tired."
"I'm--" Yueh let out a yawn despite herself. She stretched out her arms and scooted back onto the sleeping bag behind her. She laid herself down on the sleeping back and her eyes fluttered shut. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see Niet doing something similar. "...I'm sleepy..."
"Good night, Yueh," was the last thing Yueh heard before she fell asleep.
*-*-*-*-*
She woke again in the middle of the night, to hushed whispering and a small gasp. It was coming from the direction of the Moonflow. Yueh quickly turned her attention to where the small noise had come from.
Arashi was standing, a hand to her face, as a glittering swarm of pyreflies flew from their place next to her and back into the lake. In the night, she could just see that Arashi's face was a bit darker than normal. Yueh scrambled out of her sleeping bag and ran up to Arashi, scanning the lake.
"Was there an attack? Is there something? Arashi?" Yueh waved her hand in front of the summoner's blushing face. "Ar-a-shi? Hello?"
Arashi suddenly turned away, clutching her belt. "I'm fine. I was just...staring at the Moonflow." Yueh noticed that moonlight glittered off of the belt, and saw it had five jewels on it. Arashi whirled back around, smiling. "Its beautiful, isn't it? Oh!" She flushed once more and bent down suddenly to pick up a glowing blue orb on the ground, which Yueh recognized shortly thereafter as the movie sphere. Arashi poked the sphere gently. "I must have forgotten to turn it off, I suppose." She smiled gently and moved to her sleeping bag, still set out and untouched. She settled on top of it and closed her eyes. "Anyway, you should go back to bed. We'll set out again in the morning." Before Yueh could even say a word, Arashi was lightly snoring, the sphere clutched to her chest.
Yueh stared at the sphere Arashi now held. Something had happened, she could tell, even if Arashi wouldn't tell her. She wished she could see what was on that sphere. Arashi had to have gotten those jewels on her belt some time during the middle of the night. And however she had gotten them must be on the sphere...
Yawning, Yueh returned to her sleeping back and tucked herself in. She laid propped up on her elbows, watching the pyreflies for a short while, and before falling asleep, she remembered something.
Arashi had been wearing glasses again. And the ones she had been wearing were tinted and suspiciously familiar...but she couldn't quite place it.
They look...like someone I know. Someone I knew...someone...
Her mind and body finally gave out and she drifted off without another thought.
*-*-*-*-*
Arashi had apparently been the first one up in the morning, more like the self she had once been before the incident with Sin. She was hopping around, her new glasses falling down her nose more than her old ones once had, and packing up everything while singing the "Frog Song" to herself--and asking a groggy Yueh to join in once she had woken up.
"Yea, Yueh! Sing along! Kaeru no uta ga, kikoete kuru yo, gwa, gwa, gwa, gwa, gero gero gero geroooo--" She turned around and helped Yueh stumble up onto her feet. "GWA GWA GWA! Everyone!" she shouted, lightly kicking Niet awake. She hopped around to the beat of the "song" as she picked up Yueh's sleeping bag out from underneath her. "Kaeru no uta ga..." Her voice disappeared into the back of the covered wagon.
Niet rubbed her side lightly. "When did the cheeriness fairy whack her over the head with her wand?"
"I don't know..." Something good must have happened last night. I wonder... She hit her hand on her thigh. I wish I could see that sphere!
However, that would seem an impossible task, for Arashi had the sphere wrapped up in the handkerchief that hung off her other unused belt loop. Arashi whisked the other sleeping bag out from under Niet, making her friend stumble and fall on her face into the shoreline. Yueh couldn't help but giggle. Niet stared up at her.
"Not...appreciated." Yueh tried to stop laughing as she extended a hand to help Niet up. Instead, Niet got a wicked grin on her face and pulled Yueh down with her. Yueh screamed and fell, her mouth getting a large mound of dirt and grass in her mouth. She sat up, spitting it out, as Niet rolled on the ground with laughter, pointing.
Arashi peeked out from the rear of the wagon and tsked. "If you two are quite done, we have to get going to Guadosalam. That is, after we somehow manage to get this wagon across the Moonflow..." She sat on the back edge of the wagon, thinking. "Hoo, boy, I never thought of that."
Yueh stood up, brushing sand off of her pants. "Neither did I. I don't think they'll let the shoopufs carry the chocobos, much less the wagon, across." She gave Niet a hand to help her up, which she accepted. She nearly, accidentally, toppled them both over again before they both steadied themselves upright.
"The shoopufs. Think the one that Jecht attacked is here?" Niet asked as they wandered towards the wagon. Yueh began to shrug before she stopped, openmouthed, staring at Niet. "I mean--what? What'd I do now?" She stopped about two feet in front of Yueh with a questioning look on her face. "What did I do?"
"How do you know about Jecht attacking the shoopuf?" Yueh asked, still not moving.
Niet just waved her hand dismissively. "I took your advice and read a bunch of that book I got. It talks all about shoopufs in the chapter about the Moonflow." She jumped into the wagon and waved for Yueh to do the same. "I probably know more about the Moonflow and shoopufs than you do at this point!"
Yueh, regaining her wits, leaped into the wagon after Niet. "I don't think so." She grinned, and so did Niet.
"Is that a challenge?"
"C'mon, you two, we've got a little bit to go to the shoopuf docks, and even once we get there, we have to figure out how the heck we're going to get our lovely wagon across," Arashi yelled out from the front. The reins were in her hands.
Niet blanched and quickly scrambled to the front of the wagon, quickly grabbing the reins from Arashi's hands.
"You are not driving." She rearranged herself neatly on the front seat. "I'll drive."
Yueh dug around for the map in the mess that was now the back of their wagon. It was messier than her brother's room, and that was saying something. After diving under a pile of blankets and food bags, she popped back up with the now squished map in her hand, victorious. Arashi, now seated in the back alongside Yueh, laughed. Seeing Arashi smile was a nice change of pace for Yueh.
She's got to know something we don't...why else would she be so happy? As the wagon started forward, Arashi began to hum the frog song to herself once again. Yueh unrolled the map and began searching for their next stops.
I really hope you know something we don't...
*-*-*-*-*
"Okay...we could--no, its too deep. Maybe if we--no, the wagon would sink with all that weight. Well, if we...ah, crap, we're screwed." Yueh slumped down against the wagon's front right wheel with a resigned sigh. "I have no clue how we're going to get this thing across!"
Niet, who was seated beside her, shrugged. "I don't have any ideas, either." She stared up at the sky and hit her head lightly against the wheel. "I don't wanna leave the wagon behind!"
Yueh peeked through the wheel's spokes to look at their summoner across the way. "I hope Arashi's having more luck negotiating with that shoopuf driver than we are thinking of ideas." At the moment, Arashi was standing placidly, her hands in front of her, talking quietly to the shoopuf driver. She had been talking back and forth for at least fifteen minutes, and was either trying to convince the driver to let the shoopuf carry them all across or just simply making idle conversation. I can't even tell what they're talking about now.
Arashi finally bowed and walked back to the wagon. "Finally," Yueh let out. She nudged Niet in the side and pointed through the spokes to an approaching Arashi.
"She looks happy. Think she got the...um, driver to agree?" Niet asked. The girls stood up as Arashi approached.
Yueh asked first. "...so?"
Arashi grinned. "They'll take the wagon across on a separate shoopuf, along with the chocobos. It'll take a while, though." She leaned forward and spoke in a stage whisper. "They don't want the shoopufs to over do it." Arashi pushed her tinted glasses back up her nose with a quick snort-giggle. "So, let's get everything secured so they can take it across..."
As they did so, screaming came from behind them. All three girls whirled around to see an overly large Ochu bopping around, spreading poison spores as it bounced.
"Ah, crap, just when we were going to leave..." Yueh kicked the wheel of the wagon lightly before readying a fire spell. Niet pulled out her rapier, and Arashi readied her jeweled belt.
"All right, Ochu," Yueh growled at the huge plant creature, "you're going down."