**
Part Two: Back in Besaid
**
The archways of the temple were rather soothing to Yuna's eye. There was something to their grace and flow that was pleasing to the eye and calming to the senses. They looked somewhat aerodynamic, fin-like, and brought to mind Valefor's elegance in the sky, and Yuna felt a pang of loss as she, for a moment, was painfully aware of the space in her mind where Valefor's fayth had once resided.
It was something, she knew, that only a Summoner could understand. The Yevon clergy could go on all they liked about refusing to believe that the Fayth would abandon them, but any Summoner anywhere in Spira would feel that absence and know that the Fayth were gone without any hope of return. But still, Yuna had to see with her own eyes. It was a childish urge, she knew, but still, it was one she was willing to indulge just this once.
No one stopped her as she strode through the entrance to the Temple, and she ignored the whispers as she ascended the steps to the Cloister of Trials. No one would dare think of stopping her, and so she pushed aside the doors carelessly, disappearing from view, and feeling a faint sense of relief at vanishing from the curious eyes of the Temple acolytes.
She made her way through the Trials, remembering from past experience the sequence of orbs and slots that enabled her to make her way quickly to the Chamber of the Fayth. She moved through it automatically, barely giving a thought to anything other than her destination.
The Chamber of the Fayth.
The opened automatically at her approach, the mechanisms still working even if that which lay within was long gone. She paused at the threshold, hearing the door lower with a grinding noise behind her, she gave her eyes a moment to adapt to the dark, as the only light came from barely glowing sconces which dotted the walls every few meters. The chamber itself was practically unlit, as the light which used to be supplied from the fayth statue was gone.
She rested a hand on the surface of the dome protecting the statue, expecting to feel the natural warmth she associated with it. Instead it was cool to the touch. Just like normal stone.
"I wondered if I should take you and your kin back to Zanarkand," she said, her voice a low whisper. She felt disinclined to talk too loudly, realising she was standing in a tomb. There were very few tombs around Spira. It took too long to carve them out of unfeeling stone and rock. "I don't know if it's wise to keep you all in the Temples, where you were trapped for so long, if you shouldn't be returned home."
She sat down on the floor, feeling a slight chill touching her backside as she did so. She wondered if it had been the best thing to do, coming straight here from the beach, having met and greeted what felt like every single person on Besaid island. Wakka had wanted to take her straight to the Healer, but she had put him off, insisting that she needed to see the Fayth.
"But I have to wonder if you truly care," she continued, looking around her at nothing in particular. "If I were you, and had only now been able to sleep after a thousand years, I'd sleep wherever I happened to be, I think. And you, all of you, sleep on the Farplane."
She sighed, absently running a hand over the cloudy glass that shielded the stone. "If you do, and the Al-Bhed are not wrong, of course." With her faith in Yevon having been shaken and tumbled, she couldn't help but question truths once held as absolute. Was the Farplane the home of those who were done with their lives on Spira, or simply a place where pyreflies gathered to give shape to the memories of the living?
Yuna found that whenever she thought about it, she grew near tears. She drew such comfort in being able to visit her father and mother on the Farplane, and that it could have been false, only a mirror for her mind, shook her. She blinked rapidly, determined not to cry, not now, not here.
She gripped the edge of her trailing sleeves, and stared to carefully clean away the dust that had started to threaten to obscure the statue beneath the dome. When the Fayth was in residence, it had kept itself clean, but now a thousand years worth of dust was settling. Yuna wasn't too bothered about dirtying her sleeve; it had become so filthy through blood and dirt on her pilgrimage that it was starting to get a little worn and threadbare anyway.
"I wonder what I shall do," she said, as she cleaned. "I wonder how I shall live. I had expected to die, after all. I wasn't planning for a future." She paused, rubbing at a spot she'd already cleared. "What do other girls think about? Surviving long enough to marry? Have children?" She shook her head, taking a step around and continuing. "Maybe I should live. Just... live. That'd be nice. Not to anticipate death. Not to conduct the souls of the dead in a dance. Maybe I could get a dog."
She paused, and muffled a laugh with her free hand. "Maybe not."
She had dusted most of the dome clean, and she sat down again, giving the last few inches a sad swipe. "I wish I could be thinking about getting married. With /him/." She rested her arms on the dome, looking down into the empty stone. "I wonder if you had anyone you missed. Husband? Lover? Was he one of the Wall? Or did he die in Zanarkand long ago?"
She'd never know.
She thought perhaps about visiting the Farplane. Maybe if she saw the Fayth there, she would know that she had sent them and they were happy.
But no. She couldn't doubt her abilities in the Sending. She had fulfilled her task. She should leave the dead to themselves, and just live her life as one of the living.
She moved to her knees, bending down to press her lips against the dome in a brief kiss. "Rest well," she said, before getting to her feet and shaking some of the dust from her sleeves. "Goodbye."
Yuna said, almost absently, to the Priest on her way out of the building, "Don't worry about resetting the Trials. There's nothing left to protect."
**
The village was practically thrumming with activity, even though it had shaded into evening by the time that Yuna emerged from the temple, and most of it seemed centred around the return of the High Summoner to live amongst them again. Many who she had known since childhood greeted her with apparently newfound respect and awe. She wasn't a simple apprentice any longer, but a High Summoner who had defeated Sin for all time and, not to mention, had lived. She smiled, nodded, and moved through the village that, while looked at her anew, seemed content to allow her to live her life. A few of the children tagged along, giggling and chattering to her enthusiastically.
There were celebrations to take place that evening, she knew. A welcome home for the Summoner. She dutifully allowed herself to be pulled aside, to dance and talk with as many of the villagers could get close enough to her. There was a roaring fire in the village circle, with many people throwing open their huts and setting out food and drink within and allowing all free access.
There was a palpable sense of relief in the air, Yuna thought. Not just joy, but relief, and this was how the villagers had chosen to express it. Their happiness wasn't all for Yuna's safe return, but for themselves, that they wouldn't have to see their village torn down and more children die. Yuna couldn't think of it as selfish, and threw herself into their celebrations, cheering on their new chance at life as much as they did.
The elders of the village talked to her of the final battle with Sin over and over, and with some judicious editting of the real events, she told them until she felt her voice going hoarse and excused herself to find something to drink. On the way through the village, she passed Lulu and Wakka, both of who were being monopolised by villagers. Lulu kept batting away curious children who were trying to undo the buckles on her skirt out of simple curiosity, until Wakka gave them one of his blitzballs to play with and successfully distracted them. Kimahri was nowhere to be seen.
She entered the hut she knew to belong to the village seamstress, who had put away her materials and covered her loom with a thick cloth and had set out trestle tables covered with some off-cuts of Besaid cloth and laiden them down with all manner of drink. Yuna selected a ceramic mug, filling it almost to the brim with a spicy mulled wine, and was focussing on blowing on the surface to cool it as she turned, walking straight into someone who had been paying as little attention as she had been.
"Oh! Lady High Summoner! I'm so sorry!" The girl was small, pale haired and very young by the looks of her. She wouldn't look up into Yuna's face as she made the reverential prayer-sign of Yevon, bowing deeply and looking to stay bowed until Yuna, smiling, suggested she stand up properly to talk to her.
"That's quite alright," she said, "I'm afraid I wasn't looking where I was going."
The girl gave a nervous giggle, quickly muffled, and still refused to look up and meet Yuna's eyes.
"What's your name?" Yuna asked the shy girl, gently.
"Marta," the girl said, twisting her fingers together. "I came from Isalva village, from the other side of the island? Not long after you left on your pilgrimage."
"Ah, I haven't had reason to visit there," Yuna said, sitting down and patting the couch next to her in invitation. "What made you come to Besaid village?"
"The temple," Marta said, quietly, seeming as if she was about to refuse the offer of a seat before Yuna's kindly look encouraged her. "I... I heard you became a Summoner and went to confront Sin. I thought you were so brave, Lady High Summoner, I thought... that maybe I could do the same."
Yuna felt a chill that travelled to the very tips of her fingers, and failed to be warmed by the hot mulled wine in the mug she held. "You became an apprentice Summoner?" she asked, making an effort to keep her voice light.
"Yes," Marta bobbed her head, peeking up from behind blond hair that felt in front of her eyes, making eye contact for the first time. "I only received my first staff this week past and started to learn to dance the Sending." There was a proud gleam in her eyes that just hurt Yuna when she thought of what would have been in store for this girl at the end of her training. "Now, I don't have to go on a pilgrimage, but I just wanted you to know. You inspired me to help save Spira, and I wanted to thank you."
Yuna gave the girl a one-armed hug about her shoulders before Marta slipped back into the party, leaving Yuna temporarily alone to stare despondantly into the surface of the wine before a new group entered the hut, reverencing to her, which she acknowledged with a smile and a nod, and walked out, deciding that she didn't want to face the party and the people there any longer, and without a better idea of where to go, Yuna returned to the hut she had always lived in with Kimahri since childhood.
The little hut seemed practically untouched since she had left. The Ronso himself was already resting on his pallet in the main room, taking rest during the night as he had often not during the journey. He often elected to watch the camp at night, having better eyes during those dark hours than any of the Humans. The room was freshly aired out and swept, but other than that seemed untouched. The trunk that she had abandoned by the temple at the start of her journey was perched just inside the doorway of her bedroom.
She knew exactly why the hut was untouched. It would have become a shrine to her. Had she fulfilled the expectations of Spira, defeated Sin and died in the process, the people of Besaid would have opened her hut as a shrine, inviting pilgrims of another sort to the village, who would praise Yevon that she had secured them another calm, and perhaps inspiring the next Summoner to their task, perpetuating the cycle of death.
She sighed, not bothering to light the room, simply getting undressed and finding her bed by the starlight and by memory. She took a great deal of satisfaction in being finally able to divest herself of her clothing, grimy and worn from the travels and trials she had undergone with her Guardians, her friends, and not have to neatly fold them or wrap herself in blankets enough to keep her warm while crossing the ice fields of Macalania or the thin and treacherous paths of Mount Gagazet. She didn't bother to wash in the basin of water one of the women of the village had set out in anticipation of her return to the hut, but simply dropped herself, feeling weary to her soul, onto the bed, pulled the blanket over her, and fell instantly asleep.
**
The next morning, Yuna was faced with a dilemma. Part of the pilgrimage of a Summoner was a forced poverty. One change of clothes was all a Summoner could carry, with all the trials to go through, and so Yuna, when faced with the possibility of different clothes to wear, found that she couldn't possibly select something. She had experienced the unaccustomed luxury of going through several sets of clothing, trying them on and discarding, unable to decide what she wanted to wear. She found that she had lost a fair amount of weight while on her travels, and so some things were simply too big for her now, and she had hardly been large before she had left.
Should she wear the blue or the green? Or neither? It seemed that simply to have the choice was an unimaginably pretentious, even though she knew, intellectually that it wasn't.
There was a voice calling into the hut, hailing her by name, and Yuna was forced to make a decision, simply choosing to pull on the garment that was in her hands, a dress of green with yellow vines stitched upon it. She was attempting to wrangle the obi around her waist as she heard the almost silent padding of her Ronso friend crossing the floor in the main room to see who was apparently intent on waking anyone in the village who still slept.
"Is the Summoner within?" she heard, echoing through the small hut.
Thinking there was some emergency, Yuna hurried out of her room, still pulling her obi into a bow, and tugging it into position as she walked into sight of the door.
"What is it? Is something wrong?" She had visions of her services needed to send the dead, not knowing why else they would need to see a Summoner, and wondered for a panicked moment what dreadful thing could have happened.
"Oh! My lady High Summoner!" It was a couple, a man and woman, and it was the woman who spoke, referencing in the fashion of one who followed Yevon. "We're so glad to have seen you. We've come all the way from Kilika, you see."
"What's wrong?" Yuna demanded, stepping closer to Kimahri, feeling the need of support. Simple being close to his immovable presence was a comfort.
"Wrong?" The woman looked shocked. "Why, my lady, nothing is wrong! We simply had to come and see you with our own two eyes, to see the High Summoner who delivered us from Sin for all time."
Yuna felt the worry drain out of her, leaving a faint annoyance in its place at having been so frantic. "Thank you," she said simply, reminding herself that this was to be expected from the people of Spira. All their past heroes were dead; she should be understanding of that. "It really wasn't necessary to inconvenience yourselves coming all this way."
"But we had to, m'lady," The man this time. "Such a thing we can tell our child when he is born, that we saw the High Summoner who ensured he could grow up without fearing death."
Yuna gave his wife a small bow. "Congratulations," she said.
The woman raised a hand unconsciously to her stomach, brushing it fondly. "Thank you, my lady."
Yuna abruptly realised that she was conducting this conversation on the doorstep of her home. "Would you like to come in?"
The pair reacted like they'd been offered a chance to step into the Chamber of the Fayth, with a certain amount of shock. "M'lady, you do us a great honour!" the woman cried, as she tentatively crossed the threshold.
Beside Yuna, Kimahri stirred. "Kimahri wait outside," he said succinctly, before he brushed past the woman's husband and into the fresh Besaid morning.
Suppressing the wish to put these two off and follow him, Yuna smiled at her visitors and gestured to the table in the centre of the room. "Would you two like a cup of tea?"
**
The start to her day was more a sign of things to come. After Yuna had politely spent the morning listening to the couple who had visited her tell her what felt like their entire life stories, and they had departed, it was practically lunch time. She had been moving to the hanging curtains only to open them to reveal an older woman, faced lined and weathered, wearing a travelling over-coat and looking tired.
"Ah, m'lady Yuna," she said, her expression lighting up, "Would you have a moment to spare for an old woman from Kilika who's come to pay her respects?"
Yuna fought the urge to sigh, and beckoned the woman to enter. She never did wind up having anything to eat at lunch until Lulu entered, after the young man who had followed on from the old woman after she had finally departed, bearing a tray with some fruits and light snacks. "You don't have to see them all," the older mage had said then.
Yuna smiled faintly around a mouthful of apple and shook her head. "In spite of what they have heard of Luca," she said, "Some will still not believe until they see me with their own eyes and talk to me, hearing the words as many have."
Lulu raised a hand to her forehead, shaking her head slowly in a mirror of Yuna's gesture. "You shouldn't let them monopolise you so. You're allowed to have your own life."
Yuna slowly lowered the sliced fruit from her lips. "Perhaps that is my task for now," she said, ponderously, only just coming to that conclusion herself. "To reassure the people of Spira that they have lives that they did not have before. That they can live without fear. My purpose in life has always been to save Spira. Perhaps I can help them realise..." She laughed slightly at how pretentious it sounded in her own mind, but said it anyway, "Perhaps I can help them realise that they have a chance to make Spira their own."
And then a father and his son from the other side of Besaid Island arrived, and Lulu stepped out to give them some privacy.
- End of Part Two
Part Two: Back in Besaid
**
The archways of the temple were rather soothing to Yuna's eye. There was something to their grace and flow that was pleasing to the eye and calming to the senses. They looked somewhat aerodynamic, fin-like, and brought to mind Valefor's elegance in the sky, and Yuna felt a pang of loss as she, for a moment, was painfully aware of the space in her mind where Valefor's fayth had once resided.
It was something, she knew, that only a Summoner could understand. The Yevon clergy could go on all they liked about refusing to believe that the Fayth would abandon them, but any Summoner anywhere in Spira would feel that absence and know that the Fayth were gone without any hope of return. But still, Yuna had to see with her own eyes. It was a childish urge, she knew, but still, it was one she was willing to indulge just this once.
No one stopped her as she strode through the entrance to the Temple, and she ignored the whispers as she ascended the steps to the Cloister of Trials. No one would dare think of stopping her, and so she pushed aside the doors carelessly, disappearing from view, and feeling a faint sense of relief at vanishing from the curious eyes of the Temple acolytes.
She made her way through the Trials, remembering from past experience the sequence of orbs and slots that enabled her to make her way quickly to the Chamber of the Fayth. She moved through it automatically, barely giving a thought to anything other than her destination.
The Chamber of the Fayth.
The opened automatically at her approach, the mechanisms still working even if that which lay within was long gone. She paused at the threshold, hearing the door lower with a grinding noise behind her, she gave her eyes a moment to adapt to the dark, as the only light came from barely glowing sconces which dotted the walls every few meters. The chamber itself was practically unlit, as the light which used to be supplied from the fayth statue was gone.
She rested a hand on the surface of the dome protecting the statue, expecting to feel the natural warmth she associated with it. Instead it was cool to the touch. Just like normal stone.
"I wondered if I should take you and your kin back to Zanarkand," she said, her voice a low whisper. She felt disinclined to talk too loudly, realising she was standing in a tomb. There were very few tombs around Spira. It took too long to carve them out of unfeeling stone and rock. "I don't know if it's wise to keep you all in the Temples, where you were trapped for so long, if you shouldn't be returned home."
She sat down on the floor, feeling a slight chill touching her backside as she did so. She wondered if it had been the best thing to do, coming straight here from the beach, having met and greeted what felt like every single person on Besaid island. Wakka had wanted to take her straight to the Healer, but she had put him off, insisting that she needed to see the Fayth.
"But I have to wonder if you truly care," she continued, looking around her at nothing in particular. "If I were you, and had only now been able to sleep after a thousand years, I'd sleep wherever I happened to be, I think. And you, all of you, sleep on the Farplane."
She sighed, absently running a hand over the cloudy glass that shielded the stone. "If you do, and the Al-Bhed are not wrong, of course." With her faith in Yevon having been shaken and tumbled, she couldn't help but question truths once held as absolute. Was the Farplane the home of those who were done with their lives on Spira, or simply a place where pyreflies gathered to give shape to the memories of the living?
Yuna found that whenever she thought about it, she grew near tears. She drew such comfort in being able to visit her father and mother on the Farplane, and that it could have been false, only a mirror for her mind, shook her. She blinked rapidly, determined not to cry, not now, not here.
She gripped the edge of her trailing sleeves, and stared to carefully clean away the dust that had started to threaten to obscure the statue beneath the dome. When the Fayth was in residence, it had kept itself clean, but now a thousand years worth of dust was settling. Yuna wasn't too bothered about dirtying her sleeve; it had become so filthy through blood and dirt on her pilgrimage that it was starting to get a little worn and threadbare anyway.
"I wonder what I shall do," she said, as she cleaned. "I wonder how I shall live. I had expected to die, after all. I wasn't planning for a future." She paused, rubbing at a spot she'd already cleared. "What do other girls think about? Surviving long enough to marry? Have children?" She shook her head, taking a step around and continuing. "Maybe I should live. Just... live. That'd be nice. Not to anticipate death. Not to conduct the souls of the dead in a dance. Maybe I could get a dog."
She paused, and muffled a laugh with her free hand. "Maybe not."
She had dusted most of the dome clean, and she sat down again, giving the last few inches a sad swipe. "I wish I could be thinking about getting married. With /him/." She rested her arms on the dome, looking down into the empty stone. "I wonder if you had anyone you missed. Husband? Lover? Was he one of the Wall? Or did he die in Zanarkand long ago?"
She'd never know.
She thought perhaps about visiting the Farplane. Maybe if she saw the Fayth there, she would know that she had sent them and they were happy.
But no. She couldn't doubt her abilities in the Sending. She had fulfilled her task. She should leave the dead to themselves, and just live her life as one of the living.
She moved to her knees, bending down to press her lips against the dome in a brief kiss. "Rest well," she said, before getting to her feet and shaking some of the dust from her sleeves. "Goodbye."
Yuna said, almost absently, to the Priest on her way out of the building, "Don't worry about resetting the Trials. There's nothing left to protect."
**
The village was practically thrumming with activity, even though it had shaded into evening by the time that Yuna emerged from the temple, and most of it seemed centred around the return of the High Summoner to live amongst them again. Many who she had known since childhood greeted her with apparently newfound respect and awe. She wasn't a simple apprentice any longer, but a High Summoner who had defeated Sin for all time and, not to mention, had lived. She smiled, nodded, and moved through the village that, while looked at her anew, seemed content to allow her to live her life. A few of the children tagged along, giggling and chattering to her enthusiastically.
There were celebrations to take place that evening, she knew. A welcome home for the Summoner. She dutifully allowed herself to be pulled aside, to dance and talk with as many of the villagers could get close enough to her. There was a roaring fire in the village circle, with many people throwing open their huts and setting out food and drink within and allowing all free access.
There was a palpable sense of relief in the air, Yuna thought. Not just joy, but relief, and this was how the villagers had chosen to express it. Their happiness wasn't all for Yuna's safe return, but for themselves, that they wouldn't have to see their village torn down and more children die. Yuna couldn't think of it as selfish, and threw herself into their celebrations, cheering on their new chance at life as much as they did.
The elders of the village talked to her of the final battle with Sin over and over, and with some judicious editting of the real events, she told them until she felt her voice going hoarse and excused herself to find something to drink. On the way through the village, she passed Lulu and Wakka, both of who were being monopolised by villagers. Lulu kept batting away curious children who were trying to undo the buckles on her skirt out of simple curiosity, until Wakka gave them one of his blitzballs to play with and successfully distracted them. Kimahri was nowhere to be seen.
She entered the hut she knew to belong to the village seamstress, who had put away her materials and covered her loom with a thick cloth and had set out trestle tables covered with some off-cuts of Besaid cloth and laiden them down with all manner of drink. Yuna selected a ceramic mug, filling it almost to the brim with a spicy mulled wine, and was focussing on blowing on the surface to cool it as she turned, walking straight into someone who had been paying as little attention as she had been.
"Oh! Lady High Summoner! I'm so sorry!" The girl was small, pale haired and very young by the looks of her. She wouldn't look up into Yuna's face as she made the reverential prayer-sign of Yevon, bowing deeply and looking to stay bowed until Yuna, smiling, suggested she stand up properly to talk to her.
"That's quite alright," she said, "I'm afraid I wasn't looking where I was going."
The girl gave a nervous giggle, quickly muffled, and still refused to look up and meet Yuna's eyes.
"What's your name?" Yuna asked the shy girl, gently.
"Marta," the girl said, twisting her fingers together. "I came from Isalva village, from the other side of the island? Not long after you left on your pilgrimage."
"Ah, I haven't had reason to visit there," Yuna said, sitting down and patting the couch next to her in invitation. "What made you come to Besaid village?"
"The temple," Marta said, quietly, seeming as if she was about to refuse the offer of a seat before Yuna's kindly look encouraged her. "I... I heard you became a Summoner and went to confront Sin. I thought you were so brave, Lady High Summoner, I thought... that maybe I could do the same."
Yuna felt a chill that travelled to the very tips of her fingers, and failed to be warmed by the hot mulled wine in the mug she held. "You became an apprentice Summoner?" she asked, making an effort to keep her voice light.
"Yes," Marta bobbed her head, peeking up from behind blond hair that felt in front of her eyes, making eye contact for the first time. "I only received my first staff this week past and started to learn to dance the Sending." There was a proud gleam in her eyes that just hurt Yuna when she thought of what would have been in store for this girl at the end of her training. "Now, I don't have to go on a pilgrimage, but I just wanted you to know. You inspired me to help save Spira, and I wanted to thank you."
Yuna gave the girl a one-armed hug about her shoulders before Marta slipped back into the party, leaving Yuna temporarily alone to stare despondantly into the surface of the wine before a new group entered the hut, reverencing to her, which she acknowledged with a smile and a nod, and walked out, deciding that she didn't want to face the party and the people there any longer, and without a better idea of where to go, Yuna returned to the hut she had always lived in with Kimahri since childhood.
The little hut seemed practically untouched since she had left. The Ronso himself was already resting on his pallet in the main room, taking rest during the night as he had often not during the journey. He often elected to watch the camp at night, having better eyes during those dark hours than any of the Humans. The room was freshly aired out and swept, but other than that seemed untouched. The trunk that she had abandoned by the temple at the start of her journey was perched just inside the doorway of her bedroom.
She knew exactly why the hut was untouched. It would have become a shrine to her. Had she fulfilled the expectations of Spira, defeated Sin and died in the process, the people of Besaid would have opened her hut as a shrine, inviting pilgrims of another sort to the village, who would praise Yevon that she had secured them another calm, and perhaps inspiring the next Summoner to their task, perpetuating the cycle of death.
She sighed, not bothering to light the room, simply getting undressed and finding her bed by the starlight and by memory. She took a great deal of satisfaction in being finally able to divest herself of her clothing, grimy and worn from the travels and trials she had undergone with her Guardians, her friends, and not have to neatly fold them or wrap herself in blankets enough to keep her warm while crossing the ice fields of Macalania or the thin and treacherous paths of Mount Gagazet. She didn't bother to wash in the basin of water one of the women of the village had set out in anticipation of her return to the hut, but simply dropped herself, feeling weary to her soul, onto the bed, pulled the blanket over her, and fell instantly asleep.
**
The next morning, Yuna was faced with a dilemma. Part of the pilgrimage of a Summoner was a forced poverty. One change of clothes was all a Summoner could carry, with all the trials to go through, and so Yuna, when faced with the possibility of different clothes to wear, found that she couldn't possibly select something. She had experienced the unaccustomed luxury of going through several sets of clothing, trying them on and discarding, unable to decide what she wanted to wear. She found that she had lost a fair amount of weight while on her travels, and so some things were simply too big for her now, and she had hardly been large before she had left.
Should she wear the blue or the green? Or neither? It seemed that simply to have the choice was an unimaginably pretentious, even though she knew, intellectually that it wasn't.
There was a voice calling into the hut, hailing her by name, and Yuna was forced to make a decision, simply choosing to pull on the garment that was in her hands, a dress of green with yellow vines stitched upon it. She was attempting to wrangle the obi around her waist as she heard the almost silent padding of her Ronso friend crossing the floor in the main room to see who was apparently intent on waking anyone in the village who still slept.
"Is the Summoner within?" she heard, echoing through the small hut.
Thinking there was some emergency, Yuna hurried out of her room, still pulling her obi into a bow, and tugging it into position as she walked into sight of the door.
"What is it? Is something wrong?" She had visions of her services needed to send the dead, not knowing why else they would need to see a Summoner, and wondered for a panicked moment what dreadful thing could have happened.
"Oh! My lady High Summoner!" It was a couple, a man and woman, and it was the woman who spoke, referencing in the fashion of one who followed Yevon. "We're so glad to have seen you. We've come all the way from Kilika, you see."
"What's wrong?" Yuna demanded, stepping closer to Kimahri, feeling the need of support. Simple being close to his immovable presence was a comfort.
"Wrong?" The woman looked shocked. "Why, my lady, nothing is wrong! We simply had to come and see you with our own two eyes, to see the High Summoner who delivered us from Sin for all time."
Yuna felt the worry drain out of her, leaving a faint annoyance in its place at having been so frantic. "Thank you," she said simply, reminding herself that this was to be expected from the people of Spira. All their past heroes were dead; she should be understanding of that. "It really wasn't necessary to inconvenience yourselves coming all this way."
"But we had to, m'lady," The man this time. "Such a thing we can tell our child when he is born, that we saw the High Summoner who ensured he could grow up without fearing death."
Yuna gave his wife a small bow. "Congratulations," she said.
The woman raised a hand unconsciously to her stomach, brushing it fondly. "Thank you, my lady."
Yuna abruptly realised that she was conducting this conversation on the doorstep of her home. "Would you like to come in?"
The pair reacted like they'd been offered a chance to step into the Chamber of the Fayth, with a certain amount of shock. "M'lady, you do us a great honour!" the woman cried, as she tentatively crossed the threshold.
Beside Yuna, Kimahri stirred. "Kimahri wait outside," he said succinctly, before he brushed past the woman's husband and into the fresh Besaid morning.
Suppressing the wish to put these two off and follow him, Yuna smiled at her visitors and gestured to the table in the centre of the room. "Would you two like a cup of tea?"
**
The start to her day was more a sign of things to come. After Yuna had politely spent the morning listening to the couple who had visited her tell her what felt like their entire life stories, and they had departed, it was practically lunch time. She had been moving to the hanging curtains only to open them to reveal an older woman, faced lined and weathered, wearing a travelling over-coat and looking tired.
"Ah, m'lady Yuna," she said, her expression lighting up, "Would you have a moment to spare for an old woman from Kilika who's come to pay her respects?"
Yuna fought the urge to sigh, and beckoned the woman to enter. She never did wind up having anything to eat at lunch until Lulu entered, after the young man who had followed on from the old woman after she had finally departed, bearing a tray with some fruits and light snacks. "You don't have to see them all," the older mage had said then.
Yuna smiled faintly around a mouthful of apple and shook her head. "In spite of what they have heard of Luca," she said, "Some will still not believe until they see me with their own eyes and talk to me, hearing the words as many have."
Lulu raised a hand to her forehead, shaking her head slowly in a mirror of Yuna's gesture. "You shouldn't let them monopolise you so. You're allowed to have your own life."
Yuna slowly lowered the sliced fruit from her lips. "Perhaps that is my task for now," she said, ponderously, only just coming to that conclusion herself. "To reassure the people of Spira that they have lives that they did not have before. That they can live without fear. My purpose in life has always been to save Spira. Perhaps I can help them realise..." She laughed slightly at how pretentious it sounded in her own mind, but said it anyway, "Perhaps I can help them realise that they have a chance to make Spira their own."
And then a father and his son from the other side of Besaid Island arrived, and Lulu stepped out to give them some privacy.
- End of Part Two