"So," Yuna broke the silence at the Celsius bridge, clapping her hands together, "who's ready for the big surprise today?"
"I am!" hollered Tidus, clenching his fist tightly in a victorious blitzer's way, then checking the looks on everyone else's faces. His boyish smile showed two rows of perfect white teeth and his eyes lit up with excitement. "What's wrong with you guys today?"
"Nothing," Paine said with a shrug. "It's just... aside from the fact that we have a wedding to think about, there's another big surprise on top of that?"
Rikku was sitting in her own chair in the cockpit, chewing on the end of a braid and staring down at the ocean that rolled below them, reflecting the great airship's bird-like shadow and the clouds that the Celsius scraped. A tiny radio was on, playing a broadcast in Al Bhed about the projects in the Sanubia Sands. Only until now, she usually attached very little importance to them. But she listened closely now, propping her feet up and crossing her ankles, feeling that the desert island had the key to something she needed, for some unexplainable reason.
"Rikku?" Yuna called for her cousin's attention. The High Summoner smiled gleefully, approaching her and patting her little blond head. "You're going to enjoy this."
Rikku turned off the radio and looked up at her cousin, removing her small set of aviation goggles. Now that she really took the time to notice, Yuna was extremely pretty; it soothed one's eyes and spirits to look at her. The sight of her reminded Rikku that although her cousin was two years older than she, there was a tougher woman within Yuna that was just beginning to emerge. She remembered how quickly Yuna had fled her home in Besaid to join her on her spherehunting journeys, and how maturely and responsibly she had acted in those times where they faced great peril, and that was just counting after the vanquish of Sin. Rikku couldn't help but admire the way her precious Yunie began to show her beautiful strong legs, so well proportioned with the rest of her. A few years ago Rikku had been more gutsy and leapt to Yuna's defense. Now, she had become almost an idol, the model to look up to... and keep up with on these capricious outings all across Spira.
"Ready? Here it is!" Yuna pointed to Brother, who slid open the door to the Celsius and glided smoothly over richly green plains of grass that were splotched with bright color today.
Tidus and Rikku nodded to one another, leaping out onto the ground of the Calm Lands before the airship even landed, then waved for Yuna to follow suit.
"What's all this?" asked Auron, reaching out an arm to help Paine off. He scanned over the site to find that the place where he, Braska, and Jecht once ventured across was now teeming with frivolous people who scattered to treat themselves to balloons, hover rides, races, contests, vendors, and games. Children and adults alike in festive dress ran wildly between activities, so much that the former guardian struggled to envision the vast emptiness that extended way out to the gorges, the dominant silence and the somber battle scars in the earth that had once been there.
"A carnival," the female warrior replied, forming an all too grown-up smile. "Yuna told me she wanted a break from all the madness, so she wanted to bring us here to have some fun.... It's alright, it's not my thing either," she added when she noticed Auron's expression. "Though you won't find a bar here."
Auron laughed, but feeling somehow empty inside. "It's... amusing." Drawing in a sharp breath, he stepped forward with his massive arm tucked inside his jacket and his hand only slightly showing, with two fingers tucked firmly underneath his belt. The notorious pair of sunglasses were raised to cover the more vulnerable chestnut-gray of his eyes.
"I have more than enough credits to go around, if you feel like playing anything. But right now I'm going to the hover rides, and the lupine races, if you'd like to come with me," Paine offered. "I see that those three are already gone!" She pointed out to Rikku, Tidus, and Yuna, off in the distance and yelling to each other over whether to go to the Reptile Run, Sky Slots, or to buy food first.
"Sounds good," he said, following her down the hill like a shadow and considering himself very much out of place among the younger people.
It was weeks now and he still hadn't quite figured out where in Spira he belonged. This was really his second life to live; on Yuna's journey he was here on borrowed time. Maybe there was still a mistake he was supposed to correct this time around. Still, there was very little he could do here. Pleasing his little Yuna, who was like a niece to him, beat out whatever kind of other priorities he might have had.
He told himself this the entire walk across the plain, until Paine made her transactions and motioned for him to step into a large machina copter that would take them not very far above the ground, but at least faster to where the other games were, in long distances from each other.
"Much better idea than to run like they are," Auron muttered, sliding in beside his new companion and holding onto a metal bar on the side. Slowly they began to raise and the propellers whirred furiously.
"Hundreds of people ride these hovers everyday, so this won't go very fast," Paine said, toying with her barbed wire necklace. "And hey, who says we can't have fun like the others, huh? Personally, I'd like to go fight some fiends later. Occasionally they escape from the games. You can only train them to do so much."
"I might join you for that."
"What are your plans for the future, Sir Auron?" Paine turned a little to face him, blinking curiously without being inquisitive. Auron liked and trusted the young woman's eyes, and the richness in her voice. He discovered that there was really great ease in talking with her.
"I... I don't know, actually. I've only been here for a short period of time, and I never know where I might be going tomorrow, or the next week." In his lap he held onto a large canteen that attached to his belt by a string of multicolored beads. His fingertips rapped against them inaudibly, in a rhythm he did not recognize.
"I guess what I really mean to ask is what you want to do."
Truth be told, he was rather floored when he thought about it. He never considered how he would be spending his time. Of course he couldn't be staying with Lulu and Wakka forever. Perhaps it was time he started shaping his life, his new one. But where to start?
"I don't mean to be prying at all," Paine spoke again when he didn't respond, "but what I think you have is truly amazing. No one gets a second chance at... I mean, to do this over again. I won't specify, it's so complicated, but what I think you should do is consider your dreams. Do what I did. I have no regrets." She set a black gloved hand on his forearm without realizing it, and he smiled instinctively.
"You would have made a very good friend and comrade, Paine," was all he said.
"That doesn't matter. And I won't apologize for prying, just so you know." One smirk, and that was the last time Auron would wonder about his new ally, at least for now.
Patches of grass below them, long and swaying from the rush of air beneath their hover, were golden-blond and even some soft pistachio-green. Auron's sighs were relaxed, and abandoning his reason for a moment, he let his thoughts wander to Rikku and what she was thinking of, not necessarily now while screwing around playing games, but those times when she was elsewhere and he couldn't see her. Who spoke to her, and how did she feel about those people? Who else could rouse her spirits in the way he discovered he already could, and who else, then, loved her flustered smile and the glimmer in her eyes? Watching the grass like this, he heard Paine dragging the heel of her tough boot against it in boredom, but all its softness only reminded him of the Al Bhed girl, and the image of her lying in it and staring up at the sky, pondering things that, for some reason, he dearly longed to know.
He didn't stop even when Paine led him to the patch of earth on which fiendish blue wolves raced, and their spectators watched excitedly, awaiting the outcomes on their bets. People around him cheered and whistled, but all he saw he considered to be just animals running, rather than some astounding spectacle. Growing bored for the first time he could remember in ages, he took notice of the way his coat raised a little on his shoulders as he breathed.
"I might be here awhile, so why don't you go and take Rikku to ride chocobos for awhile? I'm sure you won't be bored with Rikku." Paine winked, but Auron chose to ignore what she meant. Slyly, the girl slipped a handful of credits underneath one of the belt buckles at the arm of his coat.
"You don't bore me," he half-lied. To be honest, she was great company to him for only eighteen, but she just wasn't Rikku. He had gotten too used to spontaneity and having someone around to annoy him. Paine, he could tell already, wasn't the kind of person you would argue with for fun and enjoyment.
And sure enough, the bouncy little blonde had come to them with a big mass of pink cotton candy and plastic shopping bag full of prizes already, nearly stumbling on her big shoes and getting tangled up in her mile-long scarf. "Hey! What are you guys doing?"
"Rikku," Auron asked, "do you want to ride the chocobos? I have a few credits and I'm not that interested in playing games."
"Yeah, sure!" Smiling, she grabbed the empty arm of his coat, as he never wore it with his left arm anywhere except tucked across the front. "Cotton candy?" she offered, breaking off a generous piece. "I love it!"
"Uh, no, thank you," he declined. "I really don't like sweets."
"Oh, but you'll love it! Pretty please?"
"Rikku...."
"Just try it! It's not like it'll kill you. You're no fun."
Auron grumbled to her even though inside he was enjoying this. He accepted it in the palm of his hand and let it melt in his mouth rapidly, trying not to make a face when he got the full taste of it. Who did she think she was, controlling him like that?
"It tastes awful."
"Well, you're welcome, you big meanie."
"What do you have in that bag?"
And she looked so cute to him, poking her head inside and rummaging through it. "Let's see... I have a bouncy ball, some lip gloss, barettes, bubble gum, water bombs, a spinning top, fake Gil, a fake watch, a plastic ring, candy, a Cactuar keychain, an airhorn, a paper flower, mini rubber band balls, a hairbrush, three tickets for another game, a moogle figurine.... Think fast!"
Something orange flew at him and Auron guarded his chest with a wide, flat palm. "A ball. Is that the best you got?"
"Who said it was a present for you?" Rikku stuck out her tongue. "Alright, then prepare yourself for this."
"Rikku! That's disgusting!... Is that--?"
"Fake snot. Uh-huh."
Auron's face fell stern and his eyebrows lowered. "You're gonna get it, little girl."
"Whatta ya mean?"
"At first we were just going riding, but now we're racing and I'm going to teach you a lesson."
"Okay, okay! Here." Rikku pulled out a shining plastic ring that glimmered purple with holofoil patches of green prisms, forcing it onto his smallest finger. "There, a present. Now do we have a truce?"
"I don't think so," he replied, forcing back a laugh.
"You big meanie...!"
Auron smiled as he remembered he had only ridden chocobos less than a handful of times before. The one picked out for him was frisky and at the same time patient, seeming to know his rider already. He stroked the bird's sunshine feathers, admiring its majestic beauty as it was much taller than him, and stood proudly. The chocobo's eyes were soft blue like crystal spheres, and its large round beak almost resembled a friendly smile in return.
"Five times around the ring," he said to Rikku when they were both mounted. She gave him a thumbs-up and they both took off, urging their chocobos onward. These magnificent birds outstretched their long, nimble legs and picked up speed, not even careening over the sides under the weight of their riders. Naturally, Auron was in the lead and several paces in front of Rikku's chocobo, not bothering to look behind....
"Aaaaa! Auron!!!! Oh, crap!"
His breath caught in his throat as he turned his chocobo around to find hers running off frantically. He sent his running after them, even though they were already a long way off. Auron's eyes widened and his heart stopped as he braced himself---
"OOF!!!!!"
"Oh, no," he gasped as he saw Rikku's body hit the ground hard. By the time he reached her, she was curled up and clutching her leg, cursing under her breath in Al Bhed.