"Hey," Yuna said, in a voice that commanded my attention, "how about this: you and me, in twenty years, sitting right here, except surrounded by kids. You'll be telling them all about your days as a professional blitzer, and some of the older ones will be swimming and splashing us."

I laughed. "Sounds like a plan. But, why does it have to be twenty whole years?"

She smiled at me. "Because I said so," she replied. I reached into the water and splashed her playfully. She shrieked and pushed me off the dock and into the water.

We had been sitting on the end of the harbor, where I had first met Wakka when I came to Spira. We had been mockingly planning our future together, where we would be in a certain amount of years and what we'd be doing. She didn't know what I was planning; she didn't know her dream wedding day would come sooner than she had been expecting.

Today was a good day. I had yet to hear Lilith's, or anyone else's, voice inside or around me. As a matter of fact, I hadn't heard anything from her in days. Maybe she had given up. It had been at least a month since I had first returned to Spira. I had done plenty more research, ordering book upon book from traveling merchants. I never told Yuna or any of the others why, and eventually they stopped asking.

I surfaced in the water, faking an angry look up at my girlfriend. Then I grinned evilly and grabbed her foot, yanking her into the water with me. She yelped and kicked at me, shrieking insults that weren't all that insulting. "You big meanie!"

I laughed. "You've been hanging around Rikku too much if you expect that to offend me."

She glared and put her hands on the top of my head, pushing down hard. I pulled her under with me, encircling my arms around her waist. She grinned at me and wiggled out of my grip, swimming out deeper. I followed her and grabbed her again when she surfaced. Again she squirmed away and continued swimming deeper. We chased each other for the next half hour, sometimes swimming out, and sometimes swooping back into the shallows.

Yuna went into the shallows and surfaced, her back to me. The water was waist-high on her, and I was suddenly reminded of certain night that felt like ages ago: a certain night in Macalania Forest. I approached her from behind and put my hands over her eyes. "Guess who."

She shifted her weight to one side. "Oh, don't tell me I have to kill you again, Seymour."

I turned her to face me but kept my hands over her eyes, then leaned in and kissed her.

"Oh, I know…" she said when I pulled away.

I grinned.

"…Wakka!"

"Yuck!" I said, taking my hands from her face.

Yuna laughed. "I was kidding. I knew it was you."

I put an arm around her waist and started back to the shore. She rested her head against my shoulder as we made our way back to the village.

--

"So, what do you think? Can you help me out?"

Wakka looked thoughtful for a minute. "I just might be able to, ya?" He leaned forward, as if about to tell me a secret. "Strawberries."

I raised an eyebrow. "Strawberries?"

"She loves 'em. 'Specially with chocolate."

I nodded. It had been an hour or two since Yuna and I had gone swimming, and she was out shopping with Lulu and Rikku. Perfect time to plan my surprise. "Anything else?"

"Uh… not that I can think of, ya?"

"Okay, thanks man." I turned to go.

"Hey, got something else to say."

I turned back to him. "What's up?"

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do, eh, brudda?"

I grinned. "You got nothing to worry about."

"I'm serious, man."

I laughed. "Calm down! I won't, I won't!"

He grinned. "If I think of anything else, I'll tell ya, ya?"

"Thanks, Wakka!"

"Nothing's like before." The words floated toward from me as I perched on the edge of the cliff overlooking Besaid. I turned around to see the figure of a young man. He looked familiar to me… I just couldn't place him.

I turned back around, uttering a simple noise of agreement.

"But, hey, things always change, ya?"

"Yeah…" Judging by his accent, this boy was a Besaid native.

Suddenly I recognized him. His face resembled mine, but he had dark hair and dark eyes.

I turned back to him. "Chappu?" I asked cautiously.

"Yeah, do I know you?"

I dismissed the thought with a wave of my hand. "Nah, I'm a friend of your brother's. He talked about a lot before Yuna's pilgrimage."

"How is everybody? Wakka still blitzin'?"

"Not so much. He quit the year after you died."

"Oh… he was good, ya? Real talent in that one… wish he hadn't quit. You think it was my fault?"

I shrugged, turning back to the cliff. "I dun know. Maybe."

"How Lulu doin'? She find herself a husband yet, eh?"

I shook my head. "No, not yet… I don't think she ever really got over you."

"Hm…" Chappu was silent for a second, then said, "Well, I gotta be going. Tell everybody to take care o' themselves, ya?"

"Yeah, sure. Bye."

I turned around as he ran down the path to the beach, his form literally fading (like mine did, that last night on the airship) as he returned to his realm.

I had formed a theory on why I was seeing the dead. With the defeat of Yevon, the Farplane was in disarray, and there was nothing keeping the dead from coming back for short amounts of time. I was the only one who could see and communicate with them because I was the only one who had come back to life after being dead, and that gave me a tie to those who had left Spira and weren't lucky enough to have come back.

It wasn't strange to see people walking around the town, ignored by the other, more lively (if you'll pardon the bad pun) citizens. I had started seeing them about two weeks ago, maybe more. They were really quite easy to ignore. The only problem was telling them apart from living beings. You see, they look just like they did when they died. Sure, there were some wandering around without heads or limbs, but then there were the people who had died from illness and looked perfectly normal, if not a little too pale. I had even seen a man who had died by falling from the cliff where I now sat. It wasn't too pretty.

I had been sitting there, waiting for Yuna and the other girls to get back, waiting to hear the familiar sound of the airship's engine, or the girls' laughter as they made their way up the path. But I had yet to hear anything that could be taken a sign of my friends' return.

I stood and stretched, then began to wander aimlessly along the island's many paths. I hiked the dirt hills and machina ruins. I went back to the beach and submerged myself in the water.

That was when it happened. As I swam out deeper, I saw the light glint off something on the ocean floor. Curious, I dove deeper and deeper, until I was an arm's length away from the sand and the object I had seen. I reached out and grabbed the thing and a handful of the sand it was half-hidden under.

When I was back on the beach, I lay down on my stomach and cleared the sand from the object. It was circular and, upon flipping it over, I realized it was a cracked mirror. I turned it over in my hands again and noticed an inscription that was so worn I hadn't noticed it at first. I squinted at it for a couple seconds, then realized that it was in a different language, one that I couldn't recognize but seemed eerily familiar.

Using the tip of my finger, I wrote as much as I could decipher (which wasn't much) onto the sand. It looked like someone had grabbed a pen and just wrote whatever symbols came to mind. There was an 's'- shape, a long, curved line, and more shapes I couldn't even describe. Realizing I was getting no where, I shoved the mirror into my shorts' pocket.

The winds picked up suddenly, and a loud, resonating hum echoed over the beach. Looking up, I saw that the airship had finally arrived. It landed in the water next to the port and, once the door opened and the ramp was let down, out stepped Yuna, Rikku, and Lulu, all laden with shopping bags and all laughing. Well, okay, so Yuna and Rikku were laughing and Lulu was just smiling slightly.

Rikku was the first one who spotted me, considering Yuna was talking to Lulu about something. The young Al Bhed waved excitedly. "Hey! What're you doing down here?" she asked, raising her voice to be heard over the airship's engine.

I grinned and stood, dusting off my clothes as I did. I waited till the small group got closer, and answered simply, "I live here, too, you know."

Rikku giggled. "Well, yeah, but why are you down by the beach?"

I shrugged. "I was bored, there was nothing to do, so I decided to go swimming." I rested my arm over Yuna's shoulders, who, in turn, snaked her hand across my lower back and rested it on the hip farthest from her.

"Oh!" I exclaimed, suddenly remembering the mirror. I pulled it out of my pocket. "I found this when I was swimming. It looks like it has some sort of weird language written on it." I passed it to Yuna, who squinted at the strange marks.

"It seems familiar, but I can't place it. Maybe it's one of the temple languages I had to learn to become a summoner. What do you think, Lulu?" She handed the small object to the black mage.

Lulu studied it for a moment, silent, and then shook her head. "I don't recognize it, either. It doesn't look like any form of Spiran I've seen." She looked to Rikku. "Maybe some form of Al Bhed?"

"Well, let's see!" The young girl took the mirror from the Lulu. She turned it around in her hands until it made a full circle, biting her lip and squinting. "I think… I think it is. It looks real familiar, and I know some of the letters, but I just can't place where I've seen it before, you know?"

I frowned. Me, Yuna, and Rikku recognized it, but Lulu didn't. How was that possible? Lulu was the one who knew everything, but here it was, something she had never seen that the three youngest members of the party had. It made me even more curious as to the mystery object's origins.

Rikku handed it back to me with a shrug. "We could call Pops and see if he knows anything about it, if you want."

"No need," Yuna responded, her eyes on the sand. "We'll see him soon enough."

I looked at her, a question in my eyes, but said nothing. She'd been doing that a lot lately, saying something mysterious about people we'd see or things we'd do, and usually she was right.

She looked over at me and smiled that sweet, carefree smile that made me fall head-over-heels every time I saw it. I grinned back stupidly and pulled her closer.

Once we were back home, I continued planning my surprise. I just had to make sure Yuna didn't hear me talking.

I approached Rikku first. She was sitting in front of her mirror with an assortment of hair-styling tools beside her. She was obviously having fun experimenting with her hair. Right now she had it pulled up in a ponytail that cascaded down her back in a waterfall of curls and braids. She looked up at me when I knocked on the open door to her room. "Oh, hi, Tidus. What's up?" She asked, turning back to the mirror.

I closed the door and perched on the end of the bed. "Remember what I told you when you were all depressed, after the ball?"

She nodded slowly.

"Well, I've decided when to do it."

A couple minutes later I left Rikku's room, her advice sticking in my head like glue.

"Sure," she'd said. "Strawberries are a good idea. Chocolate's good, too, because it's an aphrodisiac, but if you want to get kinky you should go for some whipped cream."

I grinned inwardly at her. She definitely wasn't as innocent as she used to let on. It was the same with Yuna. The girl's cousin really wasn't as sweet as everyone thought. And I knew these things; I had seen the wild side of her. I grinned again at how stupid that thought was. Of course she had a wild side. Everyone did. Some people just didn't know how to let it show.

My brain started going into overtime, planning out all that I could of the night I was planning for the woman I loved. Rikku had given me another piece of advice.

"Candles. She loves them. Especially flower- or vanilla-scented ones."

It looked like I'd have to plan a shopping trip of my own to Luca.

*-.-*

I know, I know, sucky ending to a sucky chapter. Sorry about the wait. My computer got a virus and it wouldn't open Word, so I couldn't work on this chapter. Even after my niece, Ashley, fixed the computer, it took me way too long to write this. This chapter, unfortunately, served no purpose to me when I started it. I had a horrible case of writer's block. Just ask Shad, I complained enough about it to her.

Which reminds me. Thank you so much, Shad! It may not show too much, but you have been a HUGE help during the writing of this chapter, what with the moral support and the direct quoting (Rikku's line up there about whipped cream was directly stolen from the all-powerful Shad). Also, while on the topic of thanks, Merry definitely deserves thanks for letting me vent to her all those times. She's the only one who knows what's planned for DOE which all came out by accident when I was ranting to her about my horrible writers block. ::huggles her friends:: Thanks, guys! I love you both oh-so-very much!

Okay, well, sorry again that this chapter took so freaking LONG to get out. I have my reasons, yes sirree.

Oh, and I think I AM gonna post some Katsu pics of me in my Rikku costume. Shad said she'd look if I posted them, so at least I know SOMEONE will.

On the subject of Katsu, that's why I posted this chapter. ::Excited squeal:: We're leaving tomorrow! I didn't want to come home and have to deal with the evil-ness of this thing, so I decided to finish it up tonight.

Moo,

E.N.