Chapter 12: Business Arrangement
It'd only been a matter of days, but for some reason I felt homesick. Before the Purge, my father and I'd been as far apart as two men who lived in the same house could be. But now, besides Lightning, he was the closest person to me in my life. Even if Rygdea was keeping him in the loop, I'm sure he was worried sick. He'd trusted Lightning to watch over me, and instead I'd put the both of us in the danger.
"What's making you such a downer today?" Vanille said, shearing a sheep with a knife she'd stolen from a tonberry.
"Does it make me a wuss to say I kinda miss my dad?" I held the wriggling fluffy creature as it baaed.
"Of course not, and you'll see him again soon. There's no need to make a fuss."
I let go of the sheep in favor of grabbing a more docile one. The fur wasn't nearly as plush, but it didn't fight against me and Vanille. Scratchy wool was better than being kicked in the balls.
"It's not just that. Pretty soon I'll move out. I'll probably stay as long as I finish up school, but there will be no reason for me to stick around once I start my career. Plus, what if I get married before then?" I tried to hide my blush by burying my face in the sheep's coat.
"I'm not following you, Hope. Why can't you just stay?" she said, hacking away tufts and shoving them into her bag. "I already mentioned when we were in Oerba, life on Pulse was never like that. We shared our homes with everyone. Though it's not as simple as that. I am from the Dia clan and Fang is from the Yun clan. If we were to get married, I would join the Yuns. We each have specific territories in our villages. So I would move into the homes that her clan up kept. No one would be averse to others staying there, just that general maintenance fell on a specific family.
"Also, it was our job to take care of our elders. So I'm completely in the dark about why you would need to leave your father. Why can't your bride just join you? Though, if you truly were like the Oerbans, traditionally the husband joins the wife's family. So you'd be moving in with Lightning."
"I never said anything about marrying her," I plucked a clump of dirt from the wool and flicked it at Vanille. "But if the husband moves in with the wife, how do you figure you'd join Fang's family. Isn't she more…masculine than you?"
"Accommodations can always be made for certain circumstances. I was an orphan, Fang was not. While I loved my clan, it would have made sense for me to assimilate into her family. It's something we'd discussed. She hadn't proposed, but I think she was working up to it. None of that's relevant now. We are the only survivors from either of our clans." She spun her knife in her hand. "Point is, why can't she just live with you?"
I mulled over the thought. It wasn't nearly as unfeasible an idea as I'd pictured. As far as my father was concerned, the woman lived with us already. The spare room was her room. When the housekeeping service would come to clean, he was always quick to remind them to change the sheets in "Ms. Farron's room" in case she dropped in. My father adored her, and always made space for her in his life. Even on busy work weeks, he would always clear his evening schedule to spend time with us. As she visited frequently, this must have been quite the chore for him.
The stench of blood caught my attention. I turned around to see the woman herself walking the chocobo over to us. The bird had a canine carcass draped over its back. Surprisingly, her uniform was spotless.
"This guy tried to pick a fight with our feathered beauty here." Lightning stroked the birds chin. "Bet you can tell who won. Anyway, I have no idea how to butcher this thing, or if he's even edible."
Vanille glanced up from her task with the sheep. She didn't even walk over to Lightning.
"Not edible. That slightly sweet smell underlying the metallic one, it's the poison infecting his organs. Something must have bit him days ago. Probably why the Chocobo put him out of his misery. Go deposit the body as far as possible so it doesn't attract any bigger monsters." Vanille gestured off into the distance.
Lightning looked at the carcass slightly sadly. It seemed a waste to just abandon the dead thing. Not that we hadn't done plenty of that when we were on the run from persecution. Something somewhere would eat the body eventually.
"Do you want me to come with you?" I asked.
"It doesn't take two people to walk a bird."
"It'll get dark soon. I'd feel better if I came with you."
"Since when were you scared of the dark?"
"I was talking about your safety." I grunted unhappily. "I don't want you wandering the dark like a bloody beacon."
Vanille headed back to camp, and I walked silently next to Lightning. We walked until sunset, which came early in the ravine. We finally found access to a lower level. We dropped the body and watched as it tumbled into the crevasse and fell out of sight.
When I helped Lightning up onto the bird, she didn't complain this time. She simply climbed on the chocobo and held out her hand to pull me up too. My hands slipped around her waist, but she didn't struggle. She didn't give the bird directions, letting us sit there for a moment in the darkness.
"Vanille and I were talking about marriage before you showed up."
"Am I supposed to congratulate you two? You already know how I feel about teenage proposals, you saw me with Snow. And technically both he and Serah were legally adults."
"In Oerba, you move in with your spouse's family." I rested my forehead to her back and tightened my hold. "If you ever get married, where do you plan on living? Do you want to be like Serah and have a new home? Do you want your husband to move into your current house? Or…" the words caught in my mouth, because I knew I wasn't ready for them.
"Or?"
"Or do you want to move in with your husband and his father? I mean family. Do you want to move in with your husband and his family? He might have a mother, and siblings."
She pulled on the chocobo's feathers so she could steer us back to camp.
"I don't plan on getting married anytime soon. But I'm sure that when the time comes, I'll discuss it with them. I think I'd enjoy not living alone anymore. This stays between you and me, but I wish Serah and Snow hadn't built their own house. I was expecting the three of us to live together. Never tell Snow; I'll never live it down," she said, pinching my forearm.
"My job is important to me, and I'm stationed in New Bhodum. I do currently work in the city often, but that might not always be the case. I wouldn't want to uproot my husband's family, especially if his father had a career he loved. Still, obviously I'd want my husband to travel with me." She huffed. "I'm definitely the more demanding one. There's always a possibility my future husband won't want to move. What if he gets a job that requires him to stay where he currently lives? What's gotten into to you today, Hope? You're not usually one for 'what if' scenarios."
"'What ifs' are harmless. No one ever gets hurt by them." I leaned back as the chocobo began to run. "But I doubt there's a man in the world that wouldn't drop everything to be with you, no matter where you went."
"You act like there's an army of men at my doorstep begging to marry me. For future reference, I plan on proposing."
"Isn't that a little backwards?"
"Absolutely not. You just lauded matriarchal practices, yet you can't picture a woman proposing? If my husband plans on spending his life with me, he needs to get off his high horse about formalities. I will do it on my own terms, and when I feel the timing is right for both of us."
The glow from the camp was coming into view. What was an hour walk, was only minutes on the back of our chocobo. Pretty soon we'd be back with Vanille, and Lightning would shut down again.
"How long are you going to make him wait? A year, two, a decade?"
Our age difference kept eating away at me. In a decade, I would still only be in my twenties. She would not. She had mocked me about considering marriage as a teenager, but I had been honestly mulling it over. She could claim to not care about formalities and heteronormative traditions, but to some degree they bothered her. If they hadn't, she wouldn't be so cagey about her feelings toward me. The way Rygdea had referred to me as a "boy toy" had made me sick to my stomach. If she insisted on keeping me at arm's length, that was all I'd ever be in most people's view.
"As long as necessary. I need to be sure he's ready. Marriage is permanent. Romance isn't always the best indicator about a lifelong compatibility."
"You act like it's a business deal. 'Here Sir, I've brought nine sheep, three chocobos, and seven gremlin pelts in exchange for your virile son.'"
"At least four chocobos," she said, reaching back to pat my thigh. "And it better not take a decade. I'll be 34 by then."
"So you already have a suitor in mind?" I laughed. "I hope you know his father drives a hard bargain, he only has the one son. He might ask for five."
"Like he could fit even one in his yard. The man lives in the most urban area in all of Pulse. I'll have to limit myself to the gremlin pelts." She snorted. "Maybe I'll bring him several. An imp, rangda, and adroa pelt for color variety. His son is short enough to wear them as ponchos."
"You want your husband dressed as a gremlin?" I asked bitterly.
"My husband is a gremlin. Tiny, adorable, and lethal."
"How hard would it be for you tell him that outright? With no pretense and nothing to hide behind." Her body became rigid within my hold.
She halted the chocobo just out of Vanille's earshot. Lightning broke free of my grasp and slid off the side of the bird. She extended both her arms up to me. Testing boundaries as always, I kind of leapt off and into her arms. Of course she caught me in her steadied stance, dangling me in a hold a few inches above the ground. I hooked my arms over her shoulders and wrapped my legs around her. No longer having to do all the work, she held me in place. We looked at each other, but neither of us said anything about my ridiculous decision to cling on to her. One day I'd stop being smaller than her, so I might as well take advantage while I could.
"Hope," she said, our noses touching.
She was waiting for me to respond to her. I would neither answer nor let go. If she thought I was a gremlin, I'd be one. Using the same half-assed magic I'd figured out in Serah's kitchen, I warmed every inch of my skin. Slowly, Lightning began to sweat from the combination of the heat and my weight.
"Is there a reason you're trying to boil me alive?"
"If I'm not mistaken, gremlins rely on fire magic. I'm trying to smoke out your feelings."
"Gods. You truly are a gremlin. You're tiny, and still you're managing to kill my back."
"What happened to adorable?" I said, letting go of her and dropping to the ground.
"Did I say adorable? I meant annoying." She tied the chocobo up for the night.