**
Part Four: The Burden of Knowledge and Foresight
**
Lulu had long ago realise that fretting while waiting for a piece of news was unproductive, and a waste of everyone's time and effort, so as she waited, along with Wakka and Kimahri (the scholar Maechen had apologised profusely, but he had an appointment to meet in Isalva village early the next morning and had quickly left), in the main room of Yuna's home for the verdict of the Healer, and as she did so, she conjured water to refresh the jugs and the basin about the hut and cleared away the plates that had been abandoned by the group from the table.
Wakka, it seemed, was not nearly so sanguine.
"What's wrong with her?" He muttered, pacing back and forth. Kimahri's tail was flicking back and forth in time to to the blitzer's movements. "Maybe it was something she ate. Those Al-Bhed rations tasted mighty strange, I tell ya!"
Lulu patiently stowed the now clean plates and glasses in cupboards as she said, "Yuna did not partake of the Al-Bhed food before we arrived on Besaid."
Wakka stopped, staring at her. "Maybe that's the problem. Maybe she hasn't been eating properly. Ooooh... I should have been watching more carefully."
"Or," It was Kimahri this time. "Yuna only tired."
"Exactly," agreed Lulu, glancing towards the curtain which separated the rooms. Unfortunately, any words being exchanged between Yuna and the healer Lulu had summoned from her temple rooms in the dead of night were too soft and too effectively muffled to be overheard. And Lulu had spotted Kimahri's ears twitching, and recognised the look of frustration on his face as he failed to hear anything. "And more to the point, we don't know what could be wrong with Yuna. Which is why there is a healer seeing to her as we speak. Calm yourself, Wakka, there'll be answers soon."
Wakka's answer was something along the lines of not being willing to wait too long, but it was low spoken enough for Lulu to ignore. She could speak all she liked about the value of waiting, but a deep gnawing disquiet ate away at her insides. Yuna had never been a sickly child, the usual childhood sniffles not withstanding, and to have the need to summon a healer to see to her was more than a worry to her. Lulu did not have a reputation for being calm and collected for nothing, however, and she allowed little of her fear to be shown. She was sure that Wakka and Kimahri, having known her so long, had a clue, but she prided herself on her composure.
What could it be? The loss of her aeons? No Summoner had had their bonds cut by anything other than their own death. Lulu did not claim to understand what happened between Summoner and Fayth, but she had gathered that there was a connection on a deep, unseen and untouchable level.
Or perhaps it was the effect of being within Sin, some essence of the foul creature having poisoned her body. True, all of the Guardians had been right beside her and none showed any similar symptoms (at least, Lulu presumed so, three of their party being unable to offer knowledge of their status), and so it was hard to believe that, though it was plausible.
Her thoughts led Lulu to one inescapable conclusion: that she had no idea what could be wrong with the girl she looked upon as a sister.
Lulu saw Kimahri's twitching before she saw the healer push back the curtain, stepping outside and resettling her sleeves.
"How is she?" Lulu took the lead in the questioning, stepping forward into the path of the healer so that the woman could not leave without first answering.
The healer wrinkled her nose, but spoke anyway. "The High Summoner is suffering from a transitory condition," she said, carefully. "It will pass."
The three waited to hear anything more, but the healer seemed more interesting in smoothing out the wrinkles in her gown. "Is that all?" Wakka finally demanded, glaring at the woman, using the fact that he was a good deal taller than her to his advantage.
The healer looked back up at them, biting her lip in the face of the overprotective vibrations coming from each of the three former Guardians. "The Lady High Summoner's collapse was due to her overstretching herself. She has not had enough rest recently, nor as she been partaking of the right foods. I understand before she returned to Besaid that she was subsisting on trail rations for weeks, why it's hardly a wonder she felt faint." The healer snapped her case shut. "It's a wonder she didn't collapse sooner."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Lulu asked, making sure that Wakka couldn't get an 'I told you she wasn't eating properly' in edgeways.
The healer shrugged. "It seems from the remains of your meal that she's eating appropriately again. Keep that up, and there shouldn't be a reoccurence."
As the healer finished gathering her things and departing from the hut, Yuna appeared in the doorway of her room, a wan smile on her face. "I am well," she assured them, smiling at Wakka as he rushed up to make sure himself that she was still in one piece. "I have lived through far worse and doubtless will again in the future."
"You were fighting fiends and monsters," Lulu said, implacably. "You were not having dinner with friends."
"Lulu, Wakka," Yuna said kindly, "I am well. The healer said I have only been overextending myself."
Kimahri's tail swished through the air. A tacit 'told you so' gesture which Wakka gave the Ronso a half-hearted glare for.
"I'm going to go to bed and rest," said Yuna, shooing them out of the hut, "I'm sure I'll feel well tomorrow."
**
Yuna felt, true to the her words, much better the next morning. The good night's sleep had done her wonders, and it had gotten around the village that she was unwell and not up to receiving guests, and so many of the villagers had been subtly redirecting would-be-visitors away from her hut. Lulu and Wakka had checked in on her, but were reassured by the healthy blush to her features, and didn't bother her when she expressed a simple desire to get some rest.
Kimahri was sitting in their living area, a pot of tea and an empty mug set out on the table for her. Kimahri never drank tea, and the fact that he had gone to effort of making something that she loved gave Yuna cause to worry. He only ever did such things when he wanted to share something unpleasant with her.
Her mind flashed back to the expression on Rikku's face when her cousin had cornered her on the airship's deck, and though a Ronso's expressions were nothing like those of the Al-Bhed, Yuna had spent too long around her friend not to be intimately familiar with what every twitch of his fur meant.
"You want to leave, don't you?"
Kimahri lowered his head slightly, as close as he would come to a nod.
Yuna moved automatically, picking up the mug he had set out for her, pouring some tea and taking a sip without even thinking about it. She couldn't stop him; it wasn't her right to do so. It was selfish, she knew, but she wanted to keep him with her. She wanted to throw her arms around his chest and plead with him not to leave as she had done so long ago when he had first brought her to Besaid.
But she was a grown woman now. It was time to think of what he wanted, not her own needs.
"Why?" she asked, striving to sound simply curious, and not hurt, though she was sure her voice wavered slightly.
"To find those taken by Seymour," he said, his voice somewhat lower and more gravelly than usual. "And for Ronso to claim them back from the mountain."
Yuna knew what he meant. He wanted to meet up with the other Ronso left alive after Seymour's rampage through Mount Gagazet, to find the bodies of those who he had slain, to know who they were and to give them over to a more honourable burial than being lost in the ice fields and craggy rocks. "If you need a Summoner," she said, looking at his deep amber eyes, "Someone to perform a Sending, I am here. It would mean a lot to be able to do that for the people who stood by me when no one else did."
Though it was spoken among Spirans that fiends were the dead who had been killed by Sin, Yuna had learnt from her tutors that it was rather a case of those who had died 'unwillingly'. And that was a far more difficult to define cause of one's demise. It might have been those who died fighting, who were murdered, or even those who had suffered accidents and could not accept their own deaths, lingering on. She could not bear the thought that those brave, proud Ronso who had proclaimed they would build a statue of her with a great horn, when all others only wanted her dead as a traitor, would wander Spira as fiends and monsters.
Kimahri put a hand on top of her head in affection, and Yuna didn't bother fixing her hair after he removed it. It made her feel loved.
"Are you going to contact the Al-Bhed and seek transport?" Yuna asked, striving to keep her smile fixed on her face.
Kimahri shook his head. "Al-Bhed have their own home to worry about. Kimarhi make own way to Gagazet." He settled one of his great paws on top of her fingers, which she had tightly woven together. "Kimahri worries for Yuna."
"Don't worry," Yuna said, with a soft laugh that she hoped sounded carefree. "Between Wakka and Lulu, I don't think I'll have any problems scaring away any adoring fans."
"Yuna not need Wakka or Lulu."
Yuna grinned, a little more genuinely this time. "You're sweet, Kimahri."
She wanted to be like him. Not blue furred and large in size, but to have the freedom to travel, to go where she wished. But that was not her fate, at least not for now. Perhaps at some point in the future it would be, but now she was confined to a simple wooden hut on one of Spira's southernmost islands.
"Take my battle items and any armour you wish," Yuna offered, "I would have the knowledge that I have helped you protect yourself on the road, in lieu of not being there by your side."
"Kimahri will miss Yuna."
Yuna swallowed past the lump in her throat. "Will you leave today?" she asked, and he nodded.
"Boat leaves for Kilika after midday meal. Kimahri will be on board."
Impulsively, Yuna scrambled to her feet and threw her arms around him, clinging to him tightly and burying her face in his fur. His large, so strong arms wrapped around her gently. Those arms were capable of crushing her, and Yuna remembered when she was little several of the village women expressing concern that the child of the High Summoner was being cared for by such a strong creature, but his embrace had only made her feel safe, and comforted, like nothing could ever come between them. Yuna revelled in the feeling that she was a small girl again, where her friend and protector's embrace could make all the monsters go away.
Later, after he had left, Yuna sat alone at her table, a cup of fragrant herbal tea in her hands, the surface of the drink gently rippling as her tears splashed down from her face into the cup. With the newfound silence in the hut, and the burden of knowledge which the healer had suddenly placed upon her, Yuna felt horribly, terribly, alone.
**
High Priestess Ismene looked out over the city below. Standing, as she was, at the top of the tower of the temple of St. Bevelle, she had a perfect overview of everything that happened below. The breeze was calm that day, and barely raised her hair with its motion. Bevelle had only recently reopened its gates, but she, and the rest of the Yevon clergy, still realised that something had changed.
The people no longer flocked to Yevon's heart.
Most of those who had moved back into the city were residents there, who had left when the warrior monks had started patrolling the streets and, in their fear, cracking down on all sorts of freedoms within the city walls. There were a few who came to worship had the temples, but there were so few. Where before they would have been full, now they barely filled a quarter of their seats.
Some within Yevon refused to panic, or see a problem. Traditionally, in the aftermath of Sin's defeat, there had been a period where faith in Yevon would fall off, where the people would think they no longer needed the protection of the church. After all, Sin was defeated, what was there to be concerned about? When Sin returned, those clergymen argued, the people realised their folly, and Spira would return to them.
Ismene, and others, were not so convinced. She had walked through the Trials. She knew them intimately and had no problem negotiating them. As an acolyte, she had been assigned to reset the Trials after a Summoner had passed through them. It had been a role that had marked her out from the mass of Yevonites who served the church early on. Entering and passing through the Trials was something only permitted to a Summoner and their Guardians, and coming so close to the Fayth was a sure sign she was made for great things.
She thought becoming one of the heads of Yevon church raised her to that standard.
She had passed through the Trials, and then, not without a degree of trepidation, she had passed through the door to the Chamber of the Fayth, and had stood over the statue. She had heard tales of the statue, and knew that it was not meant to look like dead and lifeless stone. The room had been cold, and her breath had misted in the air. She had wanted to cry then, because she knew that they had been abandoned by the Fayth, and she was not the first to come to that conclusion.
Other priests and priestesses had followed, risking being labelled as blasphemers for their actions, and seen the statues, all across Spira, for themselves. The Fayth were gone. And everyone knew far too well that Sin was more likely to return than not. In the past, everyone had declared that Sin was gone forever, and every time it returned.
Granted, the High Summoners themselves had never been present to make that statement, but it was hard to ignore a thousand years of precident.
Ismene, though, felt that she had a wider view of matters than the rest of the church. She had seen the statues, seen the dead Fayth, and had felt, in her bones, that perhaps High Summoner Yuna was right. Sin would not return. In which case, the 'brief drop in attendance' to the worship of Yevon would become permanent when it was realised that death incarnate would not come back to haunt them.
That was not going to happen, not while Ismene still had breath in her body. Not while she could still affect the course of Yevon. The younger priests and priestesses were easily led, the old men who thought themselves powerful were fools and easily pushed to courses of action while still thinking it was their plan. And the head of the warrior monks who had recenting been appointed was about as suited to his task as the daft white mage who had somehow been appointed as Captain of the Guard.
She felt the wind raise, as if sensing her thoughts. She clenched her hands, feeling just how bony her fingers were, and realised that she was too old now to give up on that which she had devoted her life to.
"I will not Yevon die! I swear it!" She called to the wind. "I will not let that which I have believed in my whole life and suffered for be dismissed as inconvenient!"
Almost as an echo, the bells of St. Bevelle chimed out the hour, and Ismene raised her hands, feeling as if she could take on anything, anyone, even the High Summoner who proclaimed Yevon to be a lie.
- End of Part Four
Part Four: The Burden of Knowledge and Foresight
**
Lulu had long ago realise that fretting while waiting for a piece of news was unproductive, and a waste of everyone's time and effort, so as she waited, along with Wakka and Kimahri (the scholar Maechen had apologised profusely, but he had an appointment to meet in Isalva village early the next morning and had quickly left), in the main room of Yuna's home for the verdict of the Healer, and as she did so, she conjured water to refresh the jugs and the basin about the hut and cleared away the plates that had been abandoned by the group from the table.
Wakka, it seemed, was not nearly so sanguine.
"What's wrong with her?" He muttered, pacing back and forth. Kimahri's tail was flicking back and forth in time to to the blitzer's movements. "Maybe it was something she ate. Those Al-Bhed rations tasted mighty strange, I tell ya!"
Lulu patiently stowed the now clean plates and glasses in cupboards as she said, "Yuna did not partake of the Al-Bhed food before we arrived on Besaid."
Wakka stopped, staring at her. "Maybe that's the problem. Maybe she hasn't been eating properly. Ooooh... I should have been watching more carefully."
"Or," It was Kimahri this time. "Yuna only tired."
"Exactly," agreed Lulu, glancing towards the curtain which separated the rooms. Unfortunately, any words being exchanged between Yuna and the healer Lulu had summoned from her temple rooms in the dead of night were too soft and too effectively muffled to be overheard. And Lulu had spotted Kimahri's ears twitching, and recognised the look of frustration on his face as he failed to hear anything. "And more to the point, we don't know what could be wrong with Yuna. Which is why there is a healer seeing to her as we speak. Calm yourself, Wakka, there'll be answers soon."
Wakka's answer was something along the lines of not being willing to wait too long, but it was low spoken enough for Lulu to ignore. She could speak all she liked about the value of waiting, but a deep gnawing disquiet ate away at her insides. Yuna had never been a sickly child, the usual childhood sniffles not withstanding, and to have the need to summon a healer to see to her was more than a worry to her. Lulu did not have a reputation for being calm and collected for nothing, however, and she allowed little of her fear to be shown. She was sure that Wakka and Kimahri, having known her so long, had a clue, but she prided herself on her composure.
What could it be? The loss of her aeons? No Summoner had had their bonds cut by anything other than their own death. Lulu did not claim to understand what happened between Summoner and Fayth, but she had gathered that there was a connection on a deep, unseen and untouchable level.
Or perhaps it was the effect of being within Sin, some essence of the foul creature having poisoned her body. True, all of the Guardians had been right beside her and none showed any similar symptoms (at least, Lulu presumed so, three of their party being unable to offer knowledge of their status), and so it was hard to believe that, though it was plausible.
Her thoughts led Lulu to one inescapable conclusion: that she had no idea what could be wrong with the girl she looked upon as a sister.
Lulu saw Kimahri's twitching before she saw the healer push back the curtain, stepping outside and resettling her sleeves.
"How is she?" Lulu took the lead in the questioning, stepping forward into the path of the healer so that the woman could not leave without first answering.
The healer wrinkled her nose, but spoke anyway. "The High Summoner is suffering from a transitory condition," she said, carefully. "It will pass."
The three waited to hear anything more, but the healer seemed more interesting in smoothing out the wrinkles in her gown. "Is that all?" Wakka finally demanded, glaring at the woman, using the fact that he was a good deal taller than her to his advantage.
The healer looked back up at them, biting her lip in the face of the overprotective vibrations coming from each of the three former Guardians. "The Lady High Summoner's collapse was due to her overstretching herself. She has not had enough rest recently, nor as she been partaking of the right foods. I understand before she returned to Besaid that she was subsisting on trail rations for weeks, why it's hardly a wonder she felt faint." The healer snapped her case shut. "It's a wonder she didn't collapse sooner."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Lulu asked, making sure that Wakka couldn't get an 'I told you she wasn't eating properly' in edgeways.
The healer shrugged. "It seems from the remains of your meal that she's eating appropriately again. Keep that up, and there shouldn't be a reoccurence."
As the healer finished gathering her things and departing from the hut, Yuna appeared in the doorway of her room, a wan smile on her face. "I am well," she assured them, smiling at Wakka as he rushed up to make sure himself that she was still in one piece. "I have lived through far worse and doubtless will again in the future."
"You were fighting fiends and monsters," Lulu said, implacably. "You were not having dinner with friends."
"Lulu, Wakka," Yuna said kindly, "I am well. The healer said I have only been overextending myself."
Kimahri's tail swished through the air. A tacit 'told you so' gesture which Wakka gave the Ronso a half-hearted glare for.
"I'm going to go to bed and rest," said Yuna, shooing them out of the hut, "I'm sure I'll feel well tomorrow."
**
Yuna felt, true to the her words, much better the next morning. The good night's sleep had done her wonders, and it had gotten around the village that she was unwell and not up to receiving guests, and so many of the villagers had been subtly redirecting would-be-visitors away from her hut. Lulu and Wakka had checked in on her, but were reassured by the healthy blush to her features, and didn't bother her when she expressed a simple desire to get some rest.
Kimahri was sitting in their living area, a pot of tea and an empty mug set out on the table for her. Kimahri never drank tea, and the fact that he had gone to effort of making something that she loved gave Yuna cause to worry. He only ever did such things when he wanted to share something unpleasant with her.
Her mind flashed back to the expression on Rikku's face when her cousin had cornered her on the airship's deck, and though a Ronso's expressions were nothing like those of the Al-Bhed, Yuna had spent too long around her friend not to be intimately familiar with what every twitch of his fur meant.
"You want to leave, don't you?"
Kimahri lowered his head slightly, as close as he would come to a nod.
Yuna moved automatically, picking up the mug he had set out for her, pouring some tea and taking a sip without even thinking about it. She couldn't stop him; it wasn't her right to do so. It was selfish, she knew, but she wanted to keep him with her. She wanted to throw her arms around his chest and plead with him not to leave as she had done so long ago when he had first brought her to Besaid.
But she was a grown woman now. It was time to think of what he wanted, not her own needs.
"Why?" she asked, striving to sound simply curious, and not hurt, though she was sure her voice wavered slightly.
"To find those taken by Seymour," he said, his voice somewhat lower and more gravelly than usual. "And for Ronso to claim them back from the mountain."
Yuna knew what he meant. He wanted to meet up with the other Ronso left alive after Seymour's rampage through Mount Gagazet, to find the bodies of those who he had slain, to know who they were and to give them over to a more honourable burial than being lost in the ice fields and craggy rocks. "If you need a Summoner," she said, looking at his deep amber eyes, "Someone to perform a Sending, I am here. It would mean a lot to be able to do that for the people who stood by me when no one else did."
Though it was spoken among Spirans that fiends were the dead who had been killed by Sin, Yuna had learnt from her tutors that it was rather a case of those who had died 'unwillingly'. And that was a far more difficult to define cause of one's demise. It might have been those who died fighting, who were murdered, or even those who had suffered accidents and could not accept their own deaths, lingering on. She could not bear the thought that those brave, proud Ronso who had proclaimed they would build a statue of her with a great horn, when all others only wanted her dead as a traitor, would wander Spira as fiends and monsters.
Kimahri put a hand on top of her head in affection, and Yuna didn't bother fixing her hair after he removed it. It made her feel loved.
"Are you going to contact the Al-Bhed and seek transport?" Yuna asked, striving to keep her smile fixed on her face.
Kimahri shook his head. "Al-Bhed have their own home to worry about. Kimarhi make own way to Gagazet." He settled one of his great paws on top of her fingers, which she had tightly woven together. "Kimahri worries for Yuna."
"Don't worry," Yuna said, with a soft laugh that she hoped sounded carefree. "Between Wakka and Lulu, I don't think I'll have any problems scaring away any adoring fans."
"Yuna not need Wakka or Lulu."
Yuna grinned, a little more genuinely this time. "You're sweet, Kimahri."
She wanted to be like him. Not blue furred and large in size, but to have the freedom to travel, to go where she wished. But that was not her fate, at least not for now. Perhaps at some point in the future it would be, but now she was confined to a simple wooden hut on one of Spira's southernmost islands.
"Take my battle items and any armour you wish," Yuna offered, "I would have the knowledge that I have helped you protect yourself on the road, in lieu of not being there by your side."
"Kimahri will miss Yuna."
Yuna swallowed past the lump in her throat. "Will you leave today?" she asked, and he nodded.
"Boat leaves for Kilika after midday meal. Kimahri will be on board."
Impulsively, Yuna scrambled to her feet and threw her arms around him, clinging to him tightly and burying her face in his fur. His large, so strong arms wrapped around her gently. Those arms were capable of crushing her, and Yuna remembered when she was little several of the village women expressing concern that the child of the High Summoner was being cared for by such a strong creature, but his embrace had only made her feel safe, and comforted, like nothing could ever come between them. Yuna revelled in the feeling that she was a small girl again, where her friend and protector's embrace could make all the monsters go away.
Later, after he had left, Yuna sat alone at her table, a cup of fragrant herbal tea in her hands, the surface of the drink gently rippling as her tears splashed down from her face into the cup. With the newfound silence in the hut, and the burden of knowledge which the healer had suddenly placed upon her, Yuna felt horribly, terribly, alone.
**
High Priestess Ismene looked out over the city below. Standing, as she was, at the top of the tower of the temple of St. Bevelle, she had a perfect overview of everything that happened below. The breeze was calm that day, and barely raised her hair with its motion. Bevelle had only recently reopened its gates, but she, and the rest of the Yevon clergy, still realised that something had changed.
The people no longer flocked to Yevon's heart.
Most of those who had moved back into the city were residents there, who had left when the warrior monks had started patrolling the streets and, in their fear, cracking down on all sorts of freedoms within the city walls. There were a few who came to worship had the temples, but there were so few. Where before they would have been full, now they barely filled a quarter of their seats.
Some within Yevon refused to panic, or see a problem. Traditionally, in the aftermath of Sin's defeat, there had been a period where faith in Yevon would fall off, where the people would think they no longer needed the protection of the church. After all, Sin was defeated, what was there to be concerned about? When Sin returned, those clergymen argued, the people realised their folly, and Spira would return to them.
Ismene, and others, were not so convinced. She had walked through the Trials. She knew them intimately and had no problem negotiating them. As an acolyte, she had been assigned to reset the Trials after a Summoner had passed through them. It had been a role that had marked her out from the mass of Yevonites who served the church early on. Entering and passing through the Trials was something only permitted to a Summoner and their Guardians, and coming so close to the Fayth was a sure sign she was made for great things.
She thought becoming one of the heads of Yevon church raised her to that standard.
She had passed through the Trials, and then, not without a degree of trepidation, she had passed through the door to the Chamber of the Fayth, and had stood over the statue. She had heard tales of the statue, and knew that it was not meant to look like dead and lifeless stone. The room had been cold, and her breath had misted in the air. She had wanted to cry then, because she knew that they had been abandoned by the Fayth, and she was not the first to come to that conclusion.
Other priests and priestesses had followed, risking being labelled as blasphemers for their actions, and seen the statues, all across Spira, for themselves. The Fayth were gone. And everyone knew far too well that Sin was more likely to return than not. In the past, everyone had declared that Sin was gone forever, and every time it returned.
Granted, the High Summoners themselves had never been present to make that statement, but it was hard to ignore a thousand years of precident.
Ismene, though, felt that she had a wider view of matters than the rest of the church. She had seen the statues, seen the dead Fayth, and had felt, in her bones, that perhaps High Summoner Yuna was right. Sin would not return. In which case, the 'brief drop in attendance' to the worship of Yevon would become permanent when it was realised that death incarnate would not come back to haunt them.
That was not going to happen, not while Ismene still had breath in her body. Not while she could still affect the course of Yevon. The younger priests and priestesses were easily led, the old men who thought themselves powerful were fools and easily pushed to courses of action while still thinking it was their plan. And the head of the warrior monks who had recenting been appointed was about as suited to his task as the daft white mage who had somehow been appointed as Captain of the Guard.
She felt the wind raise, as if sensing her thoughts. She clenched her hands, feeling just how bony her fingers were, and realised that she was too old now to give up on that which she had devoted her life to.
"I will not Yevon die! I swear it!" She called to the wind. "I will not let that which I have believed in my whole life and suffered for be dismissed as inconvenient!"
Almost as an echo, the bells of St. Bevelle chimed out the hour, and Ismene raised her hands, feeling as if she could take on anything, anyone, even the High Summoner who proclaimed Yevon to be a lie.
- End of Part Four