She didn't tan, so Squall didn't understand why Rinoa was stretched out on a blanket in the sunniest area of their yard, twirling her fingers above her face. She looked like a princess from a fairy tale, holding her fingertips aloft for the songbirds to use as perches for their inevitable duet. He knew that she would never have the patience for a bird to land on her finger. Rinoa was more likely to climb a tree and force it to sing on her hand rather than wait. He hated to imagine what might happen if someone like Selphie ever suggested the idea to her. Between the two of them, they stood a good chance of blowing up every tree within a mile of their tiny house in an effort to bend nature to their collective will.

"What are you doing?"

She wiped a few beads of sweat from her nose and held her hand up again so she could watch the sky through her fingers. She closed her fingers and the blue was gone. She opened them again, fanning her hand so that the sky appeared to have stripes. Hello blue. Goodbye blue. Hello again, blue. "Watching the sky."

Squall glanced up and saw nothing of interest. The weather had been clear and hot for two weeks, with no forecast for change anytime soon. They needed some rain, especially for their wilted vegetable garden, but he didn't mind the heat. At least it was constant, predictable. Far more importantly, it was reliable.

"What are you looking for?"

"Nothing, really." She waved her hand and felt thin slivers of coolness where her fingers shaded her face from the sun. "It's just pretty today, don't you think?"

The top of Squall's head was starting to prickle from the heat. Flopping onto the blanket next to his girlfriend, he rested on one arm and watched her play with the sky. She did odd things sometimes, like luring ants to the front porch with sugar because she liked to watch them march, but that was part of her charm. He wanted his world to be predictable and calm, but she could be as chaotic as she wanted. There was something soothing that her capricious nature provided him. An odd thing that, especially as he despised the same quality in others.

She gently placed her fingertips on his chin, noting that he had a small shaving cut on the sharp edge of his jaw, then not-so-gently forced his face towards the sky. Settling back onto her elbows, she resumed her study of the cloudless blue above. "I think you should watch it too. You don't do it enough."

Squall copied her and leaned on his own elbows. The heat was making him drowsy. Grasshoppers buzzed over the crackling lawn, their bodies expanding in flying curtains of black and white, then folding into neat, green packages upon landing. He thought them deceitful little insects, hiding their wings like that just to leap out and surprise anyone nearby.

"So which one called?" Arms tired, Rinoa let them fall to her sides so Squall would stop wondering what she was doing. It was cute most of the time, but she wanted to speak with him, not have him stare at her like some love-struck kid.

He had almost forgotten why he wanted to speak with her in the first place. "What?"

"Was it Quisty or Xu?"

"I never said..." Indeed he hadn't. He had been so entranced with watching her that he forgot to mention that he had just received a call from Garden. The school on the salty coast of Balamb was part of his past and he liked to keep it that way.

"Must have been Xu then."

"How did you...?"

Rinoa shrugged as much as her position would allow, pouting her lips when the motion didn't feel as satisfactory as it should have. It was hard to shrug on her back. "Quisty must have ran off again."

A short nod. She was almost scary when she did things like this. He had forgotten to feed Angelo one morning and she knew it before they even made it to the market. Rinoa wouldn't talk to him for two hours after that, not until he had promised to buy that damned dog a new chew toy as an apology.

"And she's not called in a few days."

"Yeah."

"And she wanted to know if we had talked to her."

Squall rarely stammered, but Rinoa had the ability to make him feel like he was speaking to a group of distinguished military officials in nothing but a pair of briefs and a pink wig. "Yes, but..."

"Oh, don't look so confused. You're not as mysterious as you like to think you are, mister."

"What?"

She tugged his ear lobe and rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. "Your ear is red from holding the phone for so long. I figured it might have been Selphie..."

Squall blew a strand of hair out of his face. Rinoa smiled.

"...but you don't get irritated talking to her."

"I'm not irritated."

"You are. Your nose is red where you always pinch it." Poking the spot between his eyebrows that he unconsciously reached for during periods of emotional distress, she teased, "Riiiiight there. Keep pinching it like that and you'll pinch it off one day."

"Okay. Fine. She's worried."

Rinoa sat up so she could shrug properly. When talking to Squall, she needed every tool at her disposal. Her body could say things better than her mouth sometimes, especially when he was in one of his staring moods. "I figured. She gets like that."

"She freaks out, you mean."

"Oh hush. She doesn't freak out."

Eyebrows lifting so that they were hidden by his hair, Squall felt his mouth open before he could stop himself. "When it comes to Quistis? She's nuts."

In spite of Xu's temper, Rinoa couldn't bring herself to feel any real anger towards her. Xu did for Quistis what Rinoa had once wanted her father to do for her, what Squall did for her now. She had frightening methods, but she was a softie at heart.

She hoped, anyway. "Just because she's a little...protective doesn't mean she's nuts."

Squall saw the glimmer of a smile on Rinoa's lips when his hand started to move towards his nose. He brushed his hair from his eyes instead. "Whatever."

"So where is she going?"

It was too hot to talk about Quistis. She was fine, as far as he knew, so he didn't understand why everyone cared so much. She was a big girl. She could handle herself. "Hell if I know."

"Aww..." Rinoa fluffed his hair and kissed his forehead. "Always so mad."

"Ugh. Whatever."

"So I guess you don't know?"

Confused and too hot to try to pretend otherwise, Squall finally snapped, "Why would I know?"

Hoisting herself up to her feet, she stepped on Squall's toes and reached for his hands. When he pulled himself to a standing position, she kissed his chin, then mumbled, "Eh, you're who I would call if I were Xu."

"What? Why would you call me? I don't even have that much to do with Quistis anymore."

"Because you think like..." She nearly said because you think like Seifer, but caught herself just in time. If she made him mad today, he'd hide in the den with a weapons magazine instead of grilling that spicy chicken he promised her. It wouldn't have been such a big deal, but he loved the praise she lavished on him when he cooked. He was always so happy when he was in the kitchen. She wondered what he might have become if he had gone to culinary school instead of a dodgy old military academy. "Oh, never mind honey. You'll really get mad if I tell you. Let's just go inside and make some lemonade."


Quistis tapped a pen against her teeth in frustration. She had only a foggy idea why she was sitting on a cracked plastic chair in a dim dining room, trying to read an archaic tome that probably hadn't even been understood by anyone that originally spoke the language. It wouldn't have been so difficult to translate the text if anyone could help her. Even the most complicated tongues had a cadence, a rhythm that made sense of the words even when the exact meaning wasn't clear. Her book seemed to have been written by a madman. Some passages were clear, easily understood to be tales and poems, but others, like the one that had her so bewildered now, were the most complicated reading she had ever done.

Water dripped from a faucet.

Ping.

She squinted at the page bearing the octopus man that Xu thought so amusing a few days ago.

Ping.

Even the style of the characters themselves seemed to be different, as if another hand had stolen the quill from the author.

Ping.

She continued to read. Time, war, a great army...a bird? Surely that meant something else.

Ping.

A game involving swords and a horse? A rip in dimensions? What did that even mean? It sounded more like someone was trying to write a script for a science fiction series than writing a passage for a book of folklore.

Ping.

The hell with it.

She closed the book and rubbed her eyes. She was too tired to make any sense of her translation anyway. Xu would have kicked her ass for pushing herself so hard, but Xu wasn't with her, so she felt like she should kick her own ass. It felt as if her eyelids were lined with sandpaper.

"How long have you been doing this?"

"As long as I can remember."

"Hm. And how long is that?"

"Since I was a kid."

"That's not long. If I said that, then you could claim it's been a long time. Since you're just a kid, don't give me the aged and wise routine, at least not until you're well past forty. Okay kiddo?"

In spite of the pain from her eyes, Quistis smiled. Her many visits to Dr. Kadowaki's office were always educational. The woman was clever, Quistis had to admit that. Rolling bandages and learning how to mix potions, it never felt like she was being interviewed. Looking back on it, she couldn't believe that she allowed herself to fall for such an obvious ruse, but it had happened every time. If nothing else, it had been nice to have someone to talk to, even if she had been outsmarted into yielding information about herself.

"Tell me about the first instance."

"I...I don't really remember."

"And yet you've been doing it since childhood? How can you claim that if you can't remember doing it?"

"Because I know."

"You seem very sure of this."

"Well Doctor K, when's the first time you walked?"

"Walking is something that everyone does. This is something...slightly less common."

"And this is something I've always done. I can't tell you when it started. It's just..."

She knew that she could do things that the others couldn't do, but she had never really thought that much about it. It was simply part of her, as much as her blonde hair and the freckles on her shoulders. Some kids could dance, some could do somersaults, and she could fire lasers from her eyes. It was all perfectly natural and perfectly normal, at least for her.

"Fine, fine. Let's move on. Tell me what happens."

"I don't really know. Everything just gets really hot and then..."

"No, no. I've read the reports. I think everyone in a three-mile radius is now aware of WHAT happens, especially if they bother to notice that pile of ash in that was formerly a very attractive Galbadian Date Palm. I mean what precipitates these spells of yours. What do you do to make it happen?"

"I don't do anything."

"Hm. In that case, what happens to you in order for this to occur? What happened in the T.C.?"

"We were just training. Instructor Aki had paired me against Seifer so that we could practice our fire spells. No drawing, no healing. Silent casts. Seifer has always been better at silent casting..."

That was something that had always bothered her. No matter how she could best him in coursework and academics, Seifer was always better at casting certain types of magic. He made it seem so easy, the bastard.

"...at least with the flame derivatives."

She almost laughed. Even when reminiscing, she found that her past self couldn't stand to know that Seifer could do something better than her.

"Mhm."

"So he hit me pretty hard with fira, then I fell over. He started laughing about it, then the next thing I know, everyone is yelling and somebody tackled me. I didn't mean to hit him. Not with that, anyway."

"Mhm."

"Is he okay? Did I hurt him?"

"I think you hurt his pride, but physically, he'll be fine. The tree, on the other hand, will never again bear those delicious dates that I enjoyed so much in my lunch..."

"He didn't say anything to me. He always says something!"

"Well, he was lamenting the loss of the back of his pants..."

"Doctor, please!"

"Oh, stop worrying. He's fine. He might be a bit embarrassed that you knocked him on his ass when he was showing off, but he's perfectly fine. He won't be able to sit on anything harder than a pillow for a few days, but those burns will heal in no time. As for me, though, I'm out one date tree, so I recommend that you keep rolling those bandages so I don't have to give you detention, young lady."

Quistis meant to stop by Kadowaki's office before she left, but whether it was to say hello, goodbye, or just to thank her for years of advice, she didn't know. Dr. K was the closest she had to a mother, just as Xu was the closest she had to a sister. She had considered telling Xu where she planned to go, but that would have been seen as an insult instead of a favor. She loved them both and felt like she had stolen something precious from them when she packed her old traveling bag, just like she used to for missions. A change of clothes, a few potions, first aid supplies, her favorite well-worn whip, a tent, a knife, and her book, then she left Garden before the sun rose. And though she hated to, she had a spirit resting in her mind, just a word away from true junctioning.

Heavy footsteps clanging on metal stairs interrupted her musings. She looked up to see an old man descending the rusted staircase. He scratched his beard and gave what Quistis assumed was a smile. She couldn't see past the grizzled hair on his chin and cheeks to be sure, but his kind eyes were definitely grinning.

"Evenin' ma'am." He clomped to the miniature refrigerator and pulled out a six-pack of cans, then opened one with his teeth. "You want a beer?"

Quistis returned his smile, but tongued the back of her front teeth. She couldn't bear to think what he was doing to the enamel on his incisors. "No, but thank you."

The longest part of his beard was tangled in the topmost buttons of his shirt. Quistis could see the hair tugging against the buttons when he tilted his head toward the table. "Gonna bother you if I have one?"

"No, not at all."

He fumbled with some metal tumblers and poured beer into one, then sloshed a light pink concoction into another. Sitting across from Quistis, he pushed one to her and drank heavily from his own. "Here you go. I can't sit here and not offer you something. My mother would turn in her grave if she thought I let a guest go thirsty, 'specially a nice lady like yourself."

"Thank you." Gingerly sipping the icy mixture, Quistis tasted something pleasantly bitter and only faintly sweet. From the color, she had expected it to taste like cotton candy. "This is delicious. What is it?"

A dark crease appeared in his beard, so Quistis again guessed that he was smiling. "It's a juice we carry with us on the longer trips. It's hard to get any fresh fruit, especially where we're heading, so we strain a lot of apples and Trabian ice-berries, then freeze it all before we head out."

Quistis sipped from her juice and pressed her cold fingertips into her eyes. It was quite a relief after struggling with the translation for three hours.

"So what you reading?"

"Hm?"

The old man pointed one gnarled finger towards the object of her recent obsession. "That book you been reading for the past two days. I saw you wouldn't let it outta your sight when you came to ask me for passage."

"Just an old book. It's mainly old songs and tales."

He finished his beer and grabbed another, pouring it from a distance so he had lots of thick foam hissing in his tumbler. He took a long pull, then sucked the suds from his moustache. He smacked his lips in satisfaction. "Bah. No good to read a song. Meant to be sung, they are."

That made so much sense that Quistis almost felt foolish. "That may be, but I doubt anyone knows the words to some of these."

He lifted the cover and flipped the pages on his thumb. "Have you read 'em all?"

"I've tried, but it's an extremely difficult translation."

Opening the book to a random page, he pointed at the neat rows of characters. "Well, what's that one about?"

She knew the answer to that one. He had found one of the first and simplest translations she had done. It was naive of her to think that decoding the rest of the book would be so easy. "An old king on a quest to find a divine relic."

"Oh aye, aye. Those relics did have a tendency to be divine. Wouldn't be fun to look for if it was a plain old relic."

Quistis watched him for a few seconds, completely dumbfounded. "That's...the most sensible thing I've heard in months."

Hoisting his beer overheard, he mimicked the pose on a famous movie poster, then brought it back to his lips so he could polish off the few remaining drops. "I reckon it was a cup or a sword, it bein' a divine relic and all."

"Well...yes. He's searching for a particular sword, one that can summon fire and ash." Quistis snatched the book and scanned the words snaked and curled on the pages. "Wait a second. Can you read this?"

"Read it? Hell girl, I can barely write me own name in Common. I don't have to read it to know that the kings were always after cups and swords." Both of their drinks finished, he dropped the cups in the stained sink, then took his seat again. "The way I figure is, it musta been pretty damned boring being a king. After you've drank and whored and killed a few men, what's left to do?"

She thought carefully, trying to sort through what she knew of royalty and what was nothing but myth and legend. "I imagine a king would stay very busy with royal politics and the enforcement of..."

"No lass. That's what a king would do now, but I mean the kings in your songs there."

"He seems to be on a journey..."

"Hm. Lots of exciting things happen in that one? Dragons and whatnot?"

Her finger traced the lines that she had read countless times. "There's a battle with a wizard, and the sword of power has been cast into a dark cloud..."

He laughed. "That ain't a king then. Must be his knight."

"What?"

"The good songs are about the knights, not the kings. They're the ones that had the adventures." Leaning so close that she could smell the hops on his breath, he whispered, "But the best songs... the ones that people will sing for centuries, the best ones are about fishing."

"Fishing?"

"Aye! That's where the excitement is! You never know what you'll pull into your boat. Might be a mermaid, might be a kraken."

Her lips betrayed her. Quistis was grinning before she could stop herself. "You're kidding, right?"

"No ma'am."

"You can pull a kraken onto this boat?"

He pinched his fingers together, as if he had a worm that he was going to thread onto a hook. "A small one, maybe. I might have one dragging along beneath the water right now..."

"Ah! Of course. Should we check the nets?"

He drew back in mock alarm, one hand on his chest, the other over his mouth. "Check the nets? Are you daft? If we do that, then we'll know that he's not there for sure." Checking behind him to make sure none of his crew might be coming down for a late supper, he hissed, "It's better if we can't see him. He's bigger that way. You listen to old Pops. He won't tell you a lie."

"He won't?"

"Not to you, my fair lady. You complimented my juice recipe." Pops winked again. "I'll lie like a son-of-a-bitch to everyone else, though."

They continued like this for some time. Quistis was bored by the long trip and Pops was glad to have someone new to hear his stories of the sea. He told her of his wife and mother, of how they both died during the same year of the same wasting disease, and he told her about his son, who was a fine fisherman in his own right, though his methods were too modern for his old man.

Quistis listened attentively, laughing when he told an off-color joke and asking polite questions when it seemed proper to do so.

Eventually Pops asked what had been bothering him since she had requested passage on his fishing boat. "Why are you heading down into these parts? It ain't exactly a tourist hotspot."

Quistis muttered something about needing to see someone, then flipped to the section in her reading that was giving her so much trouble.

Pops squinted, then patted her hand. "He better be worth it. I sure as hell wouldn't want my lady coming to see me in such a godforsaken spot."

Not looking up, Quistis asked, "Who says there's a he involved?"

"Ma'am, there's always a he involved when it comes to a pretty gal on a boat ride to nowhere. That's as much a given as the knights that go on quests while the kings sit on their thrones and get older and older." Belching deep within his chest, Pops covered his mouth and tried to disguise it with another question. The resulting groan sounded like a giant croaking frog. "What's his name?"

Quistis laughed until tears were streaming from her burning eyes. "I call him Jackass most of the time."

Pops wiped his own eyes with the back of his hand. He hadn't laughed so long or so happily in years. "What the hell is old Jack doing so far from the world?"

Fingering the edges of the pages, Quistis pursed her lips in thought. After a minute of constant page flipping, she smiled just enough to correct herself once more. "You might say he's never really been part of the world in the first place."

Pops patted her hand once more and gave it a slight squeeze. "You're a lovely lady, if you don't mind me saying so. Got a right pretty smile, you do. If I were a younger man and had you sitting across from me, I'd consider myself the luckiest fisherman in the world. It's like the sea has sent a siren into my nets, having you at my table."

That was funny. Quistis was tempted to laugh again, but he seemed so earnest that she couldn't hurt his feelings. "I'd be a sad sort of siren, reading my songs to you instead of singing."

"That may be, ma'am. That may very well be." Reaching under his beard, Pops procured a battered flask and offered it to his companion. "Ah well. Here's to crashing into the rocks and drowning in the arms of a beautiful woman, eh?"

Quistis accepted it and raised it to her lips. She held it there, feeling the warmth of the metal on her hand. Almost ashamed of herself for the childish thought, but unable to prevent thinking it, she briefly wondered how many bottles of liquor he could hide under that beard of his. "Here's to drowning."

Pops took a single sip from his flask, then replaced it in his hidden pocket. "Well, you best lie down for a bit and rest while you can, ma'am. We'll be hitting the Centran coast in the morning and you'll be sick as hell. I've been fishing these waters for thirty years and I still get mighty queasy, so you're likely gonna be heaving your guts out in the morning."