The Quest for Fire by Imrryr
Chapter 2
...
Lucca found herself in complete darkness, sprawled out on what felt like wet dirt, the gate nowhere to be seen. Fumbling around, her hands sifted through dirt – yep, it was definitely dirt – and stones, before finally gripping the flashlight, but when she flicked the switch nothing happened. "Ayla?"
"Lucca?" That was her voice all right.
She breathed a sigh of relief. Dropping the flashlight, Lucca raised her hand and summoned a red flame. Ayla, who was only a foot from her hand, flinched, but then smiled gratefully. Performing a sustained spell like this wasn't exactly something she could do all day, but for now at least they could see.
She swallowed. Ayla was practically on top of her, chest rising and falling as she caught her breath, like something out of a half-remembered dream that Lucca would definitely be better off not thinking about at that moment. The woman's eyes were intent, focused, but there was a trace of what might have been fear there too.
That, in itself, was far more worrying than not knowing where, or when, they were.
Keeping her hand raised, Lucca pushed herself up before looking around. It was undoubtedly the same cave. In this magical, but more natural looking fire light, shadows seemed to dance along the walls, illuminating this place in much the same way Ayla's ancestors would've seen it.
Ayla was already on her feet, and carefully, Lucca led let the way out into the main chamber of the cave. Puddles dotted the floor. It smelled like sweet water.
Definitely the same cave then...
"I guess without the red gate, the water will stay in its proper time period now." But what year were they even in?
Once into the chamber, Ayla pointed eagerly at the ceiling. "Look!"
It was astonishing. Ayla's drawing was still there - not as clear as when she carved it, but maybe that was just the light - however, now it was absolutely surrounded by other images; dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes, some up to ten feet tall, lining the walls of the cave. Lucca craned her neck. Hundreds of them all crammed together, covering nearly every inch of space.
"Where these come from?" Ayla asked.
Lucca shook her head. With her free hand she dug for her gate key. When its crystal display lit up, it offered no clue as to when they were.
They'd need to get outside to get any kind of reading.
"I guess this must be the future… well, your future."
Ayla frowned, but nodded slowly. For the longest time, Lucca hadn't been completely sure if Ayla really understood the concept of time-travel, or if perhaps she thought that every trip through a gate merely took them to a different land in her own time. A land of cities, a land of rubble, a land of islands in the sky. Lucca hadn't given her enough credit. It wouldn't be the first time. "How many years?"
She looked around. It was hard to say. If this were an abandoned castle, like the ruins of Choras, maybe she could've guessed. Caves, like buildings, didn't last forever, but unlike buildings, they were excellent preservers of things.
Things like these carvings.
Both women began wandering around the chamber. Bones lay piled up by the wall near the exit. Dinosaur and animal remains of all shapes and sizes, like someone had actually been living here.
On top of that, one of the unexplored side passages was now filled to the ceiling with more discarded shells and tiny bones.
Someone had been living here for a very, very long time.
Her flame picked out a hint of something along the wall; another pile of ancient bones, along with ancient scraps of fur, covered in what must've been years of dirt and dust. These were definitely people. Or once had been.
Ayla knelt before them, taking one of the bones - not a human one, but a dinosaur tooth, that was left lying on the person's rib cage. The base of the tooth still showed the hole through which a piece of string would have run.
Lucca didn't need to say anything. These were clearly Ayla's people.
They spent several minutes looking for more, finding about a dozen skulls in total, most of them apparently placed where they were deliberately, arms across the chest, with fine necklaces unlike anything Lucca had seen Iokans wear. But then there were others who simply laid sprawled out on the floor, as if they had died there, alone. And everything was covered with a fine layer of dirt and dust.
She shivered. This was too much like the distant future they were trying to avert.
Ayla had begun collecting the remains of some of the skeletons, and it took Lucca a long while to realize she was choosing only the ones that appeared to have died where they fell. She stood well back as Ayla worked, grouping the bones together at the center of the room. When she finished, Ayla sat before them and whispered a few words under her breath. These were in Ayla's native language. Lucca stood stock still, reminded of Marle and Crono's reactions to all those dead bodies they had found.
Marle had cried, and Crono kept vacillating between confusion and anger, like he wanted to find whoever had done this and destroy them.
Lucca's thoughts had been on how it could've happened and how it might've been prevented.
Today, her reaction was much the same, but she had the feeling that she already knew the answer to her questions.
Once finished, Ayla stepped back until she was shoulder to shoulder with Lucca. "Ayla's people… but would never leave them like this."
If these were truly Ayla's people, there was no sign of Ayla or Kino, or any of the other tribespeople Lucca knew. In modern times, a skeleton's identity might be determined by the possessions surrounding its body, a watch of modern Guardian design, a suit made of imported fabrics from Choras, but Iokans had so few of possessions to speak of.
One last time, Lucca looked back at the passage they came from. Still no sign of the red gate. Whatever it was they were meant to do here, apparently they hadn't done it yet.
Unwilling to stay here any longer, they made their way towards the exit of the cave. A blast of frigid air had Ayla hugging herself and rubbing her upper arms. Lucca grimaced. This was bad. They weren't exactly dressed for cold weather, let alone an ice age.
Ayla darted back into the cave, quickly pulling down two furs that hung from ropes strung up along the wall. They were old and musty, but Lucca had no complaint about putting her's on and pulling the hood over her head. It fit rather well, while Ayla's was a bit too small, the sleeves stopping a few inches below her wrists.
With a shared nod, they tried stepping out again.
Cold didn't even begin to describe it. There was no comparing it to anything: colder than a meat locker, colder than winters on the mountains of Guardia, colder than the earthbound lands beneath the Kingdom of Zeal.
It took a second for Lucca to realize that chattering sound in her ears was actually coming from Ayla. Okay, this was really bad. How could anyone survive in a world like this?
"Here," she offered, placing a hand on Ayla's shoulder. She'd learned this trick on their trek up Mount Woe. A spell to fight to the cold.
When it took effect, Ayla's eyes went wide before she nodded her thanks. Clearly though, what she had seen in the cave still disturbed her. Lucca had never seen the woman look so haunted.
They had to crawl on their hands and knees to press through the icy opening of the cavern. Once outside, the sight before her brought back clear memories of another trip through an untested gate. Snow and ice covered everything, and not a single living thing could be seen. No dinosaurs, no birds, no insects. Even the dense forest hugging the shore was gone. The lagoon was gone too, buried under a featureless plain of snow.
It was clearly the same cave, but the world surrounding it had changed utterly.
Far on the horizon, the ocean was still there, a dark blue expanse pocketed by what might've been icebergs, it was hard to tell from this distance. Regardless, it seemed even more distant than before. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years must've passed for the world to change in such a profound way.
'Just like 12,000 BC,' Lucca thought. The earthbound lands beneath the kingdom of Zeal, frozen for countless years. She half expected to see floating cities above their heads, but there was nothing to be seen except a featureless gray blanket of clouds.
Zeal probably wasn't actually up there. This cave was exactly like the one from Ayla's time. Very few places could endure the passage of millions of years completely unchanged. So, somewhere between sixty-five million and twelve-thousand years ago then. That was entirely too large a margin for error.
The gate key began to beep.
"I'm picking up something." It still had no idea what year they had been sent to, but now Lucca's crude - and probably out of date - digitized map of the continent held one blue speck of light. She aimed the key to the southwest and the indicator began to slowly pulse. "It's the gate in the Mystic Mountains." The signal was strangely weaker than normal, but it was unmistakable.
Kneeling, she looked back into the cave. Last time, the red gate reappeared after she had saved her mother, but here there was no one here left to save.
Why would it show them all this, if there was nothing to be done about it?
Ayla nodded her assent to Lucca's unasked question. "Not want to stay here."
…
The trek to the mountains was treacherous, even without the usual herds of stampeding dinosaurs charging up and down the canyon. Many years must've passed since Ayla's day, because they found the floor of the entire canyon buried under a high glacier. While it made their ascent fairly gradual, the wind gnawed at their skin, even through Lucca's sustained spell, and the deep crevasses nearly caught both of them out more than once.
Even Ayla looked unsure of herself.
This world was truly alien to her. It would be like asking Lucca to survive in the post-apocalyptic future. She could do it, probably, but life as an inventor was easier in a world where there was food, and coffee, and an absence of killer robots.
And Lucca's own uncertainty on her feet was compounded by the three elixirs she had downed to keep her warmth spell going. The slippery ground was made worse by the dizziness in her head, and only Ayla's quick reflexes kept her from planting her face in the snow two dozen times on her way up. She had the impression that the hints of vibrant colors flittering at the edge of her vision were not in fact real.
Fortunately, thanks to the gate key, it was a simple matter to find what they were looking for, even on this featureless glacier. 'Five-thousand feet to go.'
As the ground finally grew a little flatter and slightly less treacherous, she aimed the key at the unobscured setting sun. A few taps of the display brought up a program Lucca had been waiting for a chance to field-test. In addition to searching for gates and temporal anomalies, the gate key was able to track a multitude of different things: temperature, barometric pressure, electromagnetic fields, well, the list went on and on.
More importantly, at least for the moment, was the key's ability to track the precession of the equinoxes, the slow change in the tilt of the earth, the distance of the moon and sun, and the imperceptible movements of the stars just twinkling into view…
Several teeth-chattering minutes passed before the computations were finished.
'64,997,551 BC,' the display read. 'Plus or minus five-hundred years.' According to the key, they were over two thousand years from where they had started. It was just as she feared. "Lavos did all this. He brought the long winter, just as Azala said he would."
Ayla was shaking her head, her unusually soft voice almost impossible to hear over the howling wind. She was hugging her chest, but it didn't seem like it was from the cold anymore. "Never understand reptites. Only fight, never talk. World plenty big, see from Epoch, but reptites not want to share."
And their leader would rather call down Lavos and destroy the planet than even try.
Lucca hummed in thought. She couldn't remember a single citizen of Guardia expressing a desire to understand the mystics during their long war. It's us or them, they would say, and as long as Magus had been in charge, perhaps that had been true.
She wanted to see Ayla keep that outlook though, that desire to forgive, that desire to understand her enemies, even if many people would call it naive.
It hadn't changed just how hard Ayla had fought for her people.
Her sense of right and wrong, her desire to understand, her will to fight… these were all as much a part of her nature as Lucca's desire to create, or Marle's desire to change the world for the better. Ayla was simply hardwired that way.
Unfortunately, it wasn't too surprising when they reached the gate's indicated position to find it was nowhere in sight.
Ayla was looking curiously over her shoulder as Lucca read from the key's display. "Gate under ice?" she asked.
Lucca nodded. "About thirty feet of it, unfortunately." The mass dulled the signal surprisingly well.
She frowned, an expression which only grew deeper when she reached into her pocket. A hand stopped Lucca from pulling out her last, and very nearly empty, elixir bottle. "Bad to drink too much," Ayla chided.
She sighed and nodded again. Marle had downed several bottles during their long fight with Azala. By the end of it all she was babbling something about rainbows and ice cream and rainbows made out of ice cream. Then she fainted. Crono had to drag her to safety when the castle came down.
Lucca's mind searched for alternatives. Even if they had a pick-axe, they'd freeze to death before they could dig deep enough, if they could dig deep enough. The ice here was as hard as stone, and even Ayla's strength had its limits. No, it had to be a spell, but she was already so exhausted, and time was running out. They couldn't just stay out here.
"We don't have a choice. Listen," she added as the wind picked up again. She pressed the gate key into Ayla's hand, wrapping her fingers around it before grabbing the elixir bottle and downing its contents. Instantly, she felt rejuvenated, almost exactly like stepping into an enertron, if the enertron also left you feeling drunk. She laughed out loud as her skin tingled, Ayla's eyes widening in some combination of surprise and concern. "I'm going to cast the biggest fireball I can into this glacier, burn a hole straight down… but you might have to drag me into the gate."
Ayla stared into her eyes for a long moment, wind whipping through her hair. She nodded slightly in understanding, but something else was in her expression, something Lucca couldn't begin to describe. It was then that she did the absolute last thing Lucca expected. Ayla placed her hands firmly on Lucca's shoulders and kissed her right on the lips.
Ok, that elixir must've been more powerful than she thought. She blinked, but Ayla was still there, parted lips mere inches from her own. They had definitely just kissed.
"I… uh, wow."
Ayla smiled, warm hands still grasping at her shirt. "Lucca strong, but if faint, Ayla protect."
She swallowed at the intensity in the woman's gaze. "Ok," she said softly. Suddenly, fainting didn't sound so bad.
…
Red swirls of light danced before her eyes, like she was lost in the pathways between time, always so disorienting, as if the laws of gravity had decided to simply check out for a few moments. Hints of something moved at the edge of her vision. Continents converging and fracturing, kingdoms rising and falling, icecaps advancing and retreating.
The passage of time. Forwards, backwards, branching off in a million directions. Years, centuries, millennia, epochs…
But how much time exactly?
Then it faded to black.
When she finally opened her eyes again, it was clear that the dancing lights were not entirely a figment of her imagination. Everything was a big red blur. Great. Her glasses were missing.
At least she was warm.
Oh, that was because someone was lying on top of her.
"A- Ayla?" She tried to force her head off the cold ground, but the attempted movement made her dizzy.
Blue, slightly less blurry eyes appeared in front her, betraying a mix of emotions. "Lucca all right?"
Lucca cringed as she rubbed her temple. A magical hangover, only this was a million times worse than the after-effects of drinking too much poi. "Where are we?" The darkness was the only resemblance this place had to the End of Time. The floor was much less comfortable, for starters.
A blue sphere hung over their heads, wobbling like a drop of water suspended in midair, and casting everything in a pale blue light. It was the gate they had just travelled through. There was no way they were going back that way.
The air was still cold, but at least they weren't standing on top of a glacier.
Wherever here was.
The gate key was pressed into her line of sight, Ayla holding on to it as Lucca's hands unsteadily struggled with its weight. Eventually, she just couldn't do it, and instructed Ayla to point the key at the sky and press the green button.
She followed instructions well. When the calculations were finished, Ayla showed her the results.
"Three-million years B.C," Lucca said out loud in astonishment. Okay, she hadn't actually bothered to confirm that the mountain gate still led to the End of Time, but generally, doing the same thing over and over again led to the same result. There was no reason to expect the gate to lead anywhere but the End of Time. That's where it had always led.
Could gates change their destinations somehow?
Still, at least it wasn't freezing.
"Ayla's future," her companion said, frowning.
Lucca nodded. It was technically true, but sixty-two million years was a long time. What would the Kingdom of Guardia look like after that much time had passed? It wouldn't even be a memory. "Oww… my head."
"Lucca rest."
She closed her eyes, just barely managing to slip an arm under her head before slumping to the floor. "Yeah. Good idea." Tensing, she opened her eyes again. "Is it safe… wherever we are?"
Ayla shrugged. "See nothing but rocks. Rocks not move though."
"Oh," she yawned. "That's good." She hated the ones that moved.
…
Every bone in her body seemed to ache when she awoke - even cave-people preferred not to sleep directly on the ground – but Lucca's mind felt clear. Ayla was perched on a nearby boulder with the gate key still in her hand. She quickly leapt down when she saw Lucca rise.
"Feel ok?" she asked, helping the woman up.
Lucca nodded. There was the little matter of her aching shoulder, not to mention the vivid memory of Ayla recently kissing her. But yes, how she currently felt could be accurately described as 'ok.'
"Here," she said, and Lucca breathed a sigh of relief when Ayla slid her glasses in place for her. She took them off for a moment to inspect them. Cracked. Darn it. She let out a decidedly less relieved sigh. Oh well, it was still better than the alternative.
Next, Ayla held up the key for inspection. "Another gate," she said, pointing to the screen.
"You learned how to read the display," she said, more to herself than Ayla. Impressive. Even Marle hadn't figured that out yet. The last time she'd handled the gate key, she'd held it upside down.
"Light flash when point at gate," Ayla said, as if explaining it to her. She aimed the key away from the target and the flashing light at the bottom right of the screen dimmed to a faint blue until it was pointed at the gate they had just fallen out of. Then the flashing resumed in earnest. "See Lucca use before."
Sure enough, the key indicated an uncharted gate several miles to the north, but the signal was odd. Unusually strong. Plus, she couldn't get a read on its destination. 'Great,' she mused. 'Lucca Ashtear, together with Ayla, her buxom prehistoric companion, is forever cursed to wander the pathways between time. Will she ever find her way back home?' It sounded like the opening to one of those cheesy radio serials she used to listen to with her father.
Lucca shook her head as she dusted herself off, taking the offered key and returning it to its holster. That strange red hue she'd remembered from the previous night was still present, and above her head were veins of a glowing red rock in the surrounding cliffs.
Dreamstone?
Whatever it was, it was pretty, like shooting fireworks suspended in the air, and beyond that, the faint twinkling of stars. Not a cave, but close.
Thankfully, she wouldn't need to summon a fire again. She wasn't sure she had the strength for it.
The place turned out to be a maze of sharp rocks and high cliffs, but Ayla led them through like she had grown up among it all. "How do you know the way?" Lucca eventually asked.
Ayla stopped, grasping Lucca's hand. "Feel," she whispered. Lucca froze. All she felt was that warm strength. Ayla shook her head, smiling at the look in her eyes. It was then that she finally noticed the strands of blonde hair dancing around Ayla's face, the light breeze tickling the hairs on the back of her hand.
"Oh." Her voice was as quiet as Ayla's had been. "We're following the wind?"
She nodded. "Come," she said and Lucca followed. Those glowing red veins of rock illuminated her like the bonfire back in Ioka, and the fire in the cave, bringing to mind all those barely remembered - dreams? memories? It hardly mattered anymore.
"Lucca?" Ayla's eyes asked the question when she lagged behind. There were things that should be said, Lucca realized, but it was all too far out of her realm of experience.
Ayla's eyes were so focused on her in fact, that before Lucca could warn her, she knocked her head on an outcrop of rock.
"Ayla! Are you okay?"
She screwed her eyes shut as she rubbed at the side of her head. "Ayla okay. Have thick skull."
"Here, let me look." Ayla allowed herself to be pulled to the ground, kneeling on a stone ledge as Lucca looked her over. It was hardly her area of expertise, but all of them had learned a great deal about first-aid in the past few months.
Just a small bruise, she'd be fine.
Ayla held onto Lucca's hand, drawing her close when she made to pull back. Lucca had no idea what was going through the woman's mind, at least not until Ayla licked her lips. Then it sort of became obvious. She swallowed.
It was the boldest thing she had ever done - more nerve-wracking than testing the teleporter on herself – but she pressed forward until their faces were a few inches apart, Ayla's hot breath fogging her glasses. They stood there, inches from each other, until Lucca worked up the nerve and brought their lips together.
It was still hard to understand how she had gotten to this point. Apparently, kissing Ayla was just a thing that was going to happen now, another unexpected aspect of her life, like magic, talking robots, and time-travel. Funny how this felt like the strangest twist yet.
When they pulled apart, Ayla pressed her forehead against Lucca's. They stared at each other, a smile growing on her lips until Lucca had to turn away and laugh.
Ayla's eyes lit up and she pulled Lucca in for a bone-crushing hug that lifted her right off her feet.
"Oof! We'd, uh, better keep moving," Lucca gasped. "Everyone's probably wondering where we are."
Nodding, Ayla set her gently down before grabbing hold of her hand again and leading her towards the gate.
...
An enormous spire of rock lay in the center of a giant pond, breaking through the surface and easily reaching fifty feet into the air. Like the veins of ore they had passed, it twisted and turned and shone with its own light, a light that would've put any fire Lucca could create to shame. A wall of rocks surrounded it on every side like a natural dome, and their reflected light seemed to confirm that they were now, at least, actually underground.
The light pulsed, reflecting off the shiny volcanic rock and filling the room like the slow beat of a heart.
And leading to this fiery rock was a natural stone arch.
The gate key was leading them straight over the bridge, but where was the gate?
Lucca opened her mouth when Ayla continued ahead, heedless of the danger, as though she were in a trance. She wanted to protest. It wasn't safe. They had no idea what this thing even was -
A second later and Lucca was following. Something about the rock enticed her. Its reds, oranges, and yellows seemed to twist beneath the surface, gradually taking recognizable shapes; domed cities, rockets, and ships that travelled between the stars as easily as a frigate rode the waves. She saw it all as clearly as if it had been illustrated in a book.
Everything the future could be.
If only she could get a little closer. If Lucca could just press her hand to the rock, maybe she could figure out what it was and where it had come from. Magic seemed to fill the air, like the hall of the Mammon Machine. Was this tied to the gates somehow? She wanted to understand. She wanted to see more.
Closer and closer they stepped until it was within arm's reach.
Ayla had a hand out when suddenly a flash of light blinded her. Stumbling backwards, Lucca's teeth chattered at an ear-piercing scream.
…
"Ayla?"
"Lucca?"
It was probably significant that Lucca didn't even flinch when she opened her eyes to find Ayla on top of her for the second time in - well, for all she knew they had travelled through time again – so, the second time in recent memory, at least.
"Lucca okay?"
She blinked. It felt distinctly like she had landed on her head again. Marle was going to have to die for stealing her helmet. "What happened?"
Ayla seemed surprised by the question, like she was hoping Lucca could tell her. She shook her head. "Don't know."
Any response was arrested by Ayla's soft lips.
"Wha - what was that for?"
"Ayla not do good job of protecting Lucca. Always fall on head."
She gave a winsome smile. "That's probably more my fault than yours, really."
Ayla grinned, but didn't seem particularly interested in moving from her spot. "Cold place," she said finally.
Lucca coughed, tearing her eyes away from the woman on top of her. The world around them had changed again. It was daytime, for starters. The blue sky was cloudless, but the wind could be heard shrieking from somewhere in the distance. She shivered. Unfortunately, the weather had not much improved. Ayla was already reaching for the gate key, and she pressed it into Lucca's reluctant hands.
The same time as before. Three million years BC. They were somewhere else on the planet, thousands of miles away, if the readings were true, but the date was exactly the same... within a few years margin of error of course.
Ayla wrapped her arms around Lucca and brought her to a sitting position. "Cold…"
"Yeah." She continued to fumble with the key and allowed herself to absorb some of her friend's prodigious body heat. "Same time period. Different location." She scanned for gates. Okay, weird, they were apparently right on top of one. She pressed the activator and nothing happened.
Great, she thought. This was bad. Really bad.
Ayla hummed in her ear. A sigh of contentment.
Okay. Not completely bad.
"Everything okay, Lucca."
She shook her head. "No, it's not. Crono and Marle won't know where we are."
Ayla lifted her onto her feet and then wrapped her in another tight hug. "Lucca still alive. Lucca strong. Will find way home."
She sighed, finding herself strangely comforted by Ayla's confidence. "We could be stuck here forever, you know?"
"Then Ayla protect."
Lucca shut her eyes and chuckled to herself. Her life just kept getting stranger.
Ayla kept close as Lucca looked around. The chill in the air was compounded by the wind and the snow it was blowing into their faces. Not as cold as the glacier had been, but still decidedly unpleasant. They were in the center of an earthen depression, surrounded by a ring of high stones.
"This is definitely not a natural formation."
Ayla appeared to notice that too. "People here?"
Lucca shrugged. "Hopefully? Or hopefully not? It depends on how friendly they are."
"Ayla punch if not friendly."
She laughed. "Works for me." There were no signs of recent human activity. No fires, no marks in the snow... but with the amount of it blowing through the air right now, someone could've been here fifteen minutes ago and Lucca wouldn't have noticed.
This was definitely not a place she wanted to explore. She'd have to figure out why the key was malfunctioning, but she couldn't really do that now.
It was probably too much to expect to find a work bench and a soldering gun out here.
"Wait!" she called out, as Ayla climbed up the hill and strode past the stones. "Where are you going?"
There was no time to answer that. Ayla tensed, then darted behind the nearest standing stone just before a swarm of javelins came flying by, falling at the ground at Lucca's feet.
She grabbed her gun and was up in a flash. Both women peered around the stones to find several dozen people shouting and waving their spears at them.
"Not friendly," Lucca muttered.
"Ayla punch?"
Neither woman noticed the man advancing on them from behind until it was too late. Lucca yelped when she felt the sharp point of a stone spear at her back, before spinning around and throwing herself back into the stone.
As fast as lightning, that spear was thrust at her again, stopping inches from her eyes before Ayla flew in and punched the spearman right between the eyes, taking him with her as they fell to the ground.
A great commotion followed, several men and women of the tribe charged up the hill, advancing quickly on Ayla, who took them down one by one, yanking their spears from their very hands before sending them into the dirt.
Lucca watched horrified, taking aim but afraid to pull the trigger. The last thing she wanted to do was kill anyone. There was the timeline to think about, for one thing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw several more men running up the hill, spears at the ready.
Ayla, meanwhile, had their first attacker in her powerful grip. He tore at her, only managing to get a handful of her fur parka. The ancient coat ripped apart when she tossed the man clear out of the circle. Lucca called after her, but Ayla was already pulling off her shredded coat and running into the fray, straight at the dozen or so men advancing men.
"Atah!"
Everything went deathly still when that sharp voice called out. Hopefully, that word meant stop.
She stepped outside the circle. Ayla was standing there, now only in her Iokan furs, daring any of the men to come closer. At the bottom of the hill stood a few scattered huts surrounded by a wooden palisade.
Lucca shook her head.
Clouds of steam wafted up from deep fissures in the ground, and pools of unfrozen water surrounded the village on three sides. It became quite apparent why people had decided to settle here. Ayla remained tense, but did not move, and neither did the villagers. All this time they said not a word, notably, their eyes were fixed to Ayla.
"Why everyone stare?"
Well, there were probably a couple of reasons for that. One, Ayla was easily a foot taller than anyone else here - man, woman, and Lucca included. Two: she wasn't exactly dressed for the weather anymore.
Finally, one of the men pulled back his hood, revealing a head a thick blue air, and the fact that he was actually a she.
Ayla gasped.
"What is it?" Lucca asked, now standing shoulder to shoulder with her friend.
"Niviru," she whispered.
"Niviru?" Lucca repeated. Now was not the time for a language lesson.
Ayla nodded. "Call them 'The Sky People.' Live high on the mountain, west of Laruba. Always in the clouds. Have blue hair, like sky."
"Wait. You're saying these people are from your time? That's not possible."
"Not possible," Ayla said, nodding, "but still true."
Lucca swallowed, the spears they were carrying certainly didn't look friendly, but at least they were pointed at the ground now. Their hair was indeed blue, tumbling out of their parkas. Still… how could Ayla recognize them?
It made. No. Sense.
Everyone tensed, Lucca included, when Ayla stepped forward, raising her hand. "Mehalo."
This one word, the traditional Iokan greeting, sent all the assembled people chattering to each other. They were silenced when another woman in a snow white parka stepped forward. Lucca was barely able to hide her surprise when she pulled back her hood. Blue like the sky indeed. It reminded her of the people of Zeal. "Halo, nen tari leza."
Ayla blinked, but soon they were speaking at length to each other despite the howling wind and the thirty or so yards that separated them. Granted, Lucca's knowledge of Ayla's language had more holes in it than a slice of Poorean cheese, but even she was surprised but how completely impossible it was to follow their conversation. She couldn't pick out a single word.
Thankfully though, whatever Ayla and the woman were discussing seemed to have calmed the situation considerably. All the assembled men and women listened on intently, and even their first attacker had dusted himself off and melted into the sea of faces.
Lucca leaned close when the tribal woman turned to speak to another. "You can understand them?"
Ayla nodded, scratching the back of her head. "Speak strange though. Thick accent. Also, too many words."
"Too many words?"
Again she nodded. "Speak like Lucca."
"I should be offended by that, shouldn't I?"
Ayla grinned. "Niviru people change much. Shorter than Ayla remember, thinner too, like people from bad future."
The bad future. That's what Ayla called the world after Lavos. The similarities had gone right over Lucca's head, but now she saw them as clear as day. It was in their eyes, really, the way they followed Ayla's every moment like she had just fallen from the sky... and, well, in a way, Lucca supposed, she had.
But it was also in their physical appearance. Their clothes were ragged, held together with primitive thongs, more primitive in fact than Iokan clothing. Technologically though, their black bladed spears were far advanced compared to the simple wooden clubs that the Iokans preferred.
An older man approached with something wrapped in animal skins and handed it to the woman, uncovering it before stepping back.
A bone necklace, like the kind Ayla was wearing at that moment.
The woman stepped forward, handing the animal skin and necklace to her.
"Chief say this was handed down from long-ago. From before the days grew cold."
Lucca felt the texture with her fingers. It was definitely real, but the story just didn't add up. How could something like this survive for over sixty-million years, passed down from generation to generation? How could -
"They came through a gate," Lucca realized. "That's how humanity survived the ice age."
Ayla nodded. "Gate bring them here, but what was red rock?"
Lucca shook her head. She had no idea.
When the chief spoke again, Ayla continued to translate her words for Lucca's benefit. "Long ago, land was warm and filled with creatures like this. People spread all over the world. Great villages: Ioka, Laruba, Niviru. Then the cold came. Ancestors call to the earth, ask for return of the dinosaurs, return of the sun, return of the warm rains. But sun not return."
She nodded as Ayla continued. "Ancestors lead our people to underworld, but not enough food. Earth take pity on us, great fire bring us here." She opened her hand and a flame appeared in her palm. "Give us great gift."
Several of the other assembled villagers opened their palms, and all the elements appeared. Fire, water, lightning, shadow...
Magic. The red rock. The time gates. They were all connected somehow.
"Earth teach us instead to live in this new land, to protect selves from cold, to hunt the small creatures."
The chief shook her head.
"Chief say, hard lesson to learn."
Indeed. To be dropped into this frozen waste, from a world where food and warmth were in abundance... Many would not have survived, magic or no.
The woman stepped forward, hands outstretched, and Ayla tilted her head. "Chief say it has been many generations since people appear in great circle, but all with magic welcome in village."
Stepping forward, Lucca opened her palm and summoned a small flame, earning wide smiles from the villagers who then turned and looked expectantly at Ayla, who only scratched the back of her head. Ayla had touched the great red rock, but still, she had no magic.
The smiles vanished quickly.
One man shouted, and soon they were staring down a horde of angry villagers again.
"Chief say not welcome."
Lucca stood shoulder to shoulder with Ayla, forging a new flame that flared high into the sky. The villagers stumbled backwards. Then everyone was looking over her and Lucca glanced up, surprised to see the top of her flame arching through the air, back in the direction of the stone circle.
"Look!" Ayla cried as the wind suddenly picked up.
There, in the center of the circle, stood a red gate, the tips of Lucca's fire swallowed into its whirling vortex.
"Tell them to let us go," Lucca said.
Ayla did so and the chief knelt to the ground. There was something there that reminded Lucca of Doan. He would never have asked it of them, but she vividly remembered his expression when they told him they were leaving. It was clear that he wished they would've stayed and helped the people in the dome. And just as before, Lucca could do nothing for them.
Didn't keep her from feeling horrible about it though.
The chief again spoke a few soft words to her people, and both Lucca and Ayla were surprised when she followed them alone back up the hill and past the ring of stones.
No one else followed.
Once at there, they stood for a long moment, the wind at their backs and the red gate swirled. Ayla remained oddly silent until Lucca got her attention. "What's wrong?"
She looked at her feet. "Ayla sorry."
"Sorry for what?"
"Not mean to start fight."
Lucca smiled. "I have no doubt you could've taken them all by yourself."
Ayla looked up at that, eyes glinting.
"We just have to be careful," she continued. "One of those people could've been my ancestor or something."
That got her smiling again. "Not good to punch Lucca's grandmother."
She chuckled as she watched the whirling gate; the one that would hopefully lead them home. If nothing else, it would be nice to visit a time period where the wind didn't howl so freaking much. Magus would feel right at home here.
"You're not shivering."
Ayla nodded, blinking as if she hadn't noticed. "Feel warm."
"You feel warm?" Lucca certainly didn't, even with her old musty parka still on.
Another nod. "And itchy," she added, scratching at her bare upper arms.
She smirked. "I see that."
Ok. It was time to get out of here. She was used to these trips through time leaving her with more questions than answers, but right now she was sitting on a grand total of zero answers for roughly nine-billion questions. She needed time to think.
They'd have to talk to Gaspar, or Melchior, or someone with a better understanding of such things.
With her free hand, Lucca pulled out the gate key. Odd. This gate was red, there should've been nothing for the key to pick up, but the sensor still showed an anomaly. Question number nine-billion and one then.
They would go through anyway.
Not that she didn't enjoy spending time with Ayla. It was just that, out of all three eras, by far the most pleasant was the one with the giant man-eating dinosaurs, and that was honestly kind of disturbing.
"Ready?"
Ayla gave her a relieved smile even as she continued to absently scratch herself.
…
It wasn't the cave they had left, but she'd take it. Lucca never thought she'd be so happy to see this place again; several platforms surrounded by wrought-iron fences being all there was to keep them from tumbling into the endless void. Ayla spent minutes at the fountain, drinking her fill of water, while Lucca watched on amused.
Gaspar was leaning against the light post, fast asleep as always. Their other friends, Frog, Robo, Crono and Marle, were still back in Ioka, probably worried sick about them. They shouldn't tarry too long.
She tried to shake Gaspar awake, but he snored right through it all. If this were an emergency maybe she wouldn't have felt so bad for waking him, but well, there was one other person at the End of Time who knew a few things about magic…
By the time Ayla finished, she probably had more water on her than in her, though Lucca did her best not to notice. Sharing a nod of agreement, they opened the door to Spekkio's... room? office? Lucca was going to go with office.
And yikes. His resting form practically filled the space. Was he this big the last time?
Immediately, his eyes were on Ayla. "Hello again, Sweetheart," he said chuckling in his deep voice. "And Glasses-Chick. Nice of you both to drop by."
Lucca told herself she probably should've been jealous at way the creature oggled her new girlfriend - or whatever exactly Ayla was to her now - but she wasn't. Spekkio respected strength and martial ability beyond all things. It was only natural that Ayla commanded his attention the second she walked into the room, just like Crono did.
For all she knew, he was more attracted to Crono than anyone else.
In fact, now that she thought about it, it was probably for the best that Marle never noticed the way Spekkio looked at him. That would be awkward.
"Now this is interesting," the giant creature said, sitting down on the floor so that his eyes were almost level with theirs. He stared deeply into Ayla's eyes, earning an expression that was half on its way to looking irritated. "Only a lucky few have ever come in direct contact with the frozen flame."
"Frozen flame?" Lucca repeated.
He tapped his taloned fingers together. Each one was longer than the reforged Masamune. "A piece of your good friend Lavos, scattered all over the planet after he fell to Earth. The first humans encountered them roughly three-million years ago."
Oh, and now, thanks to Lucca's inattention on the glacier, those first humans very well might've been named Ayla and Lucca. "But if humans and these flames of yours have been around for over sixty-million years, why did it take so long for people to find them?"
"For the simple reason that there were no humans to do it. Not until three-million years ago, that is."
"But –"
Spekkio smiled - a wide and very intimating sort of grin with far, far too many teeth. "Few humans survived the arrival of Lavos. The only ones who made it were the ones brave enough to venture through the open gates he left scattered all over the planet. It led them to the future, though, of course, they did not know it. Some came to your time, some to three-million years ago, others ended up here."
So she was right. Humans survived the cataclysm by travelling through the gates. "And Ayla's clan didn't make it," she finished for him.
He nodded. "You have my sympathies," he said solemnly to Ayla.
Sympathies, from the god of war. That was unexpected. Ayla stood with her arms crossed, eyes on the floor, as deep in thought as she had been on the glacier. This wasn't a problem that could be solved with force or understanding.
Her enemy was nature itself.
"So Ayla isn't Marle's distant ancestor?"
He shook his head. "It was rather uncharacteristically silly of you to jump to that conclusion, you know."
"I..." she trailed off. There was nothing to say to that. They had just sort of assumed…
The god's smile returned. "But now I think you will find that the fates of Ayla and her people are hardly etched in stone. No more than yours is, Lucca."
The use of her actual name got her attention. "You're a strange sort of war god."
He covered his heart in mock offense. "I'm the master of war, but hardly the god of it. To die a slow death against the elements is not a fate I would wish on Ayla's people, or indeed on anyone."
Lucca hummed to herself.
"But now," he boomed, facing Ayla as he held up both hands. They both waited impatiently as the creature smiled, before he simply snapped his fingers.
Ayla was wrapped in a curtain of fire. Her eyes went wide as the flames danced along her skin, and she flapped her arms, but the fire refused to subside.
Understanding immediately, Lucca rushed to her, extending a hand which the woman gratefully took, worry in her eyes. As expected, the flames did not hurt. "Imagine snuffing out a campfire," she said as the fire encircled them both. At Ayla's incomprehension she added. "Picture it in your mind."
Ayla closed her eyes, the fire ebbed, flickered, roared back to life for an instant, then vanished completely.
When she opened her eyes again, she was beaming and wrapped Lucca up in another bone-crushing hug.
"I'll teach you how to control it," Lucca offered once she could breathe again.
It took a long moment for her to let go, but she finally nodded, still apparently a bit shell-shocked by the experience.
"Fire innate, of course," Spekkio said. "Very appropriate, considering the way you fight."
"The frozen flame did this?" Lucca asked.
He nodded. "It changed humans in a number of ways. They became less strong physically, but it made them a little smarter, and a lot more powerful. Good news for me. The intervening sixty-two million years were dull times for incarnations of war like myself."
Lucca cringed. "I… uh, can imagine.
"I also magically super-charged your dreamstone."
"Eh?" Lucca reached into her bag. She'd completely forgotten about the stone Ayla had given her by the shore. It was now glowing. Magic poured from it. Was that concentration of energy what set the gate key off? Tricked it into thinking there was a gate when there was none? "Wow." She clenched her hands. It had been easier to summon a powerful flame in front of those villagers. Usually a flame that large took a lot out of her. "What happened after we touched it?"
"You might call that a self-defense mechanism. It altered you, then sent you both half-way across the world. Lavos wanted humans to evolve, to become more powerful, but not too powerful. Perhaps it was worried what would happen as the result of prolonged exposure to the flame? Maybe humans would be able to destroy him, or maybe, they would destroy themselves..."
"Zeal."
"Indeed. Had they used their power to that end, Zeal could've destroyed Lavos. Fortunately for your nemesis, the frozen flame drove the queen to madness. She became easily manipulated."
"But -" A million questions jockeyed for primacy in Lucca's mind. Her words were arrested by Ayla's lips.
"Lucca ask too many questions."
She let out laugh. She hadn't noticed how bored Ayla was getting. "Fine, fine." There would be time for questions later, when Lucca had a few days to digest all she had learned.
"Aww, you two make a cute couple. Did you know King Guardia the Third led an alliance against the City of Poore for the hand of their princess, said to be the most beautiful in all the world? Thousands died!" he added with glee.
Lucca grimaced. "How... romantic."
Spekkio nodded excitedly. "And don't even get me started on the Choras Rebellion of 1021..." His words faltered at Lucca's widening eyes. "Oops, uh, actually, forget I mentioned that one."
'Right,' Lucca thought. 'One impending catastrophe at a time.'
"So," he began again, slapping his meaty hands together heavily enough to shake the floor. "Wanna tussle?"
She stepped back. Ayla, of course, instantly dropped into a fighting stance. Lucca grabbed her arm and tried to pull her towards the door. "We should really get going."
When Ayla looked back at her she was positively sulky, and moving her was like trying to move a rock.
"Aww..." Spekkio's expression matched her's perfectly. He slumped to the ground, his eyes wide and sorrowful.
"Everyone's waiting for us." Ayla kept looking back at Spekkio, and Lucca sighed, "I promise we'll fight him later, all right?"
At that, she finally relented.
His expression immediately brightened. "I'm going to hold you to that!" he boomed. Flames shot out of the four corners of the room, trailing into the sky and exploding like New Year's fireworks.
"You've really got a flair for the dramatic."
"What is war if not theatre on a grand scale? The pompous speeches, the boom of canons, the roar of ten-thousand knights charging each other. Therein lies much of the appeal."
"Huh," she said. "Wait," Lucca added, looking over her shoulder as she grasped the doorknob. "You didn't make us walk around the room three times."
Spekkio's bass laugh shook the floor. "Oh, I've just been saying that to mess with you guys."
…
When they returned to Ayla's time, it was just before nightfall, but it was a relief just to be in familiar surroundings. By the light of the moon, they made their way to a small crevice under a high wall of rock in the valley. Animal furs were there waiting for them, hanging from high wooden posts.
"Ayla camp here sometimes," her friend explained as she draped the furs on the mossy ground.
"You camp all the way out here?"
She nodded. "Narrow valley make hunting easy. Last time though, wanted to see you again, but not sure where village was, so come here, where we first meet."
Lucca smiled at the memory.
"Now understand. Village very far away."
That was one way of putting it.
"So you were already here when we fell from the gate that second time, after we stormed Magus' castle?"
Ayla nodded.
"And you dragged all three of us to Ioka?"
She nodded again.
"How?"
The woman shrugged. "Ayla strong."
Lucca laughed, and Ayla did too.
…
They stayed close together that night, too wired to sleep. The magic water at the End of Time did strange things to your day and night rhythms apparently, but once the moon disappeared behind heavy rain clouds, it was too dark to venture down the fortunately ice-free canyon anyway, and using their magic out in the open would only make them a target for any grudge-holding reptites.
Or, at least, that was the excuse Lucca was going with.
The night was alive with the sounds of a thousand birds and frogs and the occasional growling dinosaur. She remembered her first night out here - well, first sober night anyway – how she'd been unable to sleep with all that racket. In her mind she'd tried coming up with machines that would drive them all away, some kind of frequency generator or high-intensity light, ideas growing more and more destructive as the long night wore on.
In the end, the simplest solution had been to just get used to it.
Ayla was lying on her back a few short feet away, opening and closing her hand, awed by the flames she could create, observing with delight how they danced in her palm and entwined around her arm.
Something about the firelight leant a dreamlike atmosphere to the whole scene. Only this definitely wasn't a dream. There were a few too many mosquitos for that; giant, prehistoric mosquitos. Sometimes Lucca flicked tiny balls of fire at them, and soon Ayla began to do the same, making little faces of annoyance at her own poor accuracy.
Lucca was sure she'd be an expert at it before too long. Ayla picked things up quickly.
Watching her was mesmerizing, and under the faint light Lucca allowed herself to admire Ayla more openly. So much strength, even when resting. Lying beside her made Lucca feel so small in comparison. Yet here she was. Ayla had brought her along on this adventure, not Marle, or Zia, or Crono.
Yeah, that probably meant something.
Then, to her horror, she noticed Ayla's eyes upon her.
Ayla sat up, and to her even greater horror, quickly pulled her top up and over her head.
"Ay – wha?"
"See?" she said, gesturing to her exposed chest. "Not so bad."
"Huh?"
She rolled a little on her side until they were facing each other. With surprising gentleness, she took Lucca's trembling hand and placed it on her breast. "Ayla not bite, unless asked."
The sound that Lucca made was halfway between a laugh and a choke. Ayla was so warm. Without prompting, flames erupted from her hand, but she didn't even notice, and neither did Ayla.
Ayla's hand was still on top of hers, guiding it, nudging it into exploring her body, and Ayla's own flame joined Lucca's as they kissed.
When they finally pulled away, Lucca ducked her head and laughed. "You make it all sound so easy."
Ayla reached out and gently stroked her cheek, harmless flames trickling up her skin, nudging her until their eyes met again. "Ayla like."
She swallowed. "Yeah, well, Lucca like too. But I'm not brave like you are."
Ayla tilted her head. "Lucca fight Lavos. Lavos destroy world. Maybe Lucca die, but fight anyway." She smiled. "Lucca brave."
"But -"
A finger pressed against her lips silenced her. "Lucca think too much."
'Yeah,' she thought as Ayla closed the distance between them. 'Well, maybe just a little.'
…
They started for Ioka before the sun rose. It would be a long hike.
As they walked, Ayla alternated between scanning the horizon for friend or foe, and watching her feet, lost in thought. Lucca remembered feeling the same way after discovering what the future held in store for her own people.
"Can't change this," Ayla finally said. "Even if destroy Lavos now, cold still come. Ayla want to fight, but no can fight weather. Animals die from cold, leave nothing to eat. Can't fight hunger."
Lucca frowned. Suggestions vied to be given voice, but at the same time, Ayla knew her people far better than Lucca could ever hope to. It wasn't her place to tell them what to do.
"Could lead tribe to gate," she said finally, lip twitching when she saw Lucca's eyes go wide. "Couldn't go to where Niviru's people go," she continued. "But could go to Lucca's time... might change future, though."
Lucca tried, and definitely failed to hide how much she approved of the idea. "Freezing to death in a cave isn't much of a future, Ayla."
"No. Mean distant future. Not want Lucca to not exist."
"That's very kind of you," she said with a laugh.
Ayla laughed too. "Small thing can have big result, or not. Never know until see."
"It sounds like you've given this a lot of thought."
"Ayla not just punch things. Sometimes think too." She turned to Lucca and grinned. "Sometimes."
Grinning back, she put a hand on Ayla's shoulder, blushing at the way the woman's eyes lit up at the simple action. "I can't stand here and tell you that you've no right to change your people's fate. We've changed your village's future so much already," Lucca began, feeling just a little ashamed about all that. "There's no way of knowing if you were meant to survive the fight with Azala. We assumed you were Marle's ancestor... but now we know that's not true. For all we know, you could've died when Lavos fell. In the original timeline, I mean." She looked ahead. "We're all glad you didn't. Myself especially."
Ayla's blush almost rivaled her own, but she nodded sharply. "Always unintended result. Go to hunt, might get hurt. Don't go on hunt, might miss big kill, not be able to feed tribe during drought. Lucca change future. Maybe bad, maybe good. Lavos bad though. Know now that future has no place for Ioka, but not want to die."
They had stopped now, staring into each other's eyes under the bright morning sunshine, surrounded as they were by a lush primeval jungle. Ayla had all of her old confidence back.
"Want to take village to Lucca's time."
Lucca's mood brightened considerably. "Really?"
"If Lucca not mind."
She shoved Ayla's shoulder, earning a surprised laugh. "Of course I wouldn't mind." Suddenly, a new future was opening up for her. One where she wouldn't have to choose between Ayla, Crono, Marle, and her family.
Although, introducing Ayla to her family promised to be an interesting experience. Ayla picked up how to use the gate key surprisingly quickly, but how to use a knife and fork? Well, such skills might be perpetually beyond her.
Not that that mattered. Besides, table-manners were boring. Science was awesome. Lucca had learned that at a very young age.
Ayla continued, "Kino chief now though. His decision."
Lucca's mind raced. Truce wouldn't do at all. The Iokans needed a place where they could practice their way of life. Someplace unpopulated like El Nido, or... "There are islands west of Choras," Lucca suggested, the idea sounding better and better the more she thought about it. "Where the Giant's Claw used to be before most of it sank into the sea. There may still be dinosaurs living there. It wouldn't be exactly like the world you know, but it would be close, and -"
Her words were interrupted by another kiss.
This time, her fingers wrapped themselves around Ayla's top.
Ayla was a little breathless when she pulled away. "Lucca save the world and save my people too."
She smiled, still a little short of breath herself. "You would've defeated Azala even without our help." History had shown that much. Lavos only fell to Earth because Azala had called it here, and she would only have done so had she known she was going to lose.
"Not defeat Lavos though."
"Not by yourself, no. But we'll defeat it because you're with us." She ran a hand up Ayla's bicep. "Ayla strong. A lot stronger than me."
She frowned at that. "Lucca's words not make sense. In Ayla's language, strength mean many things. Most can't take down tree with own hands. Strong person can, but if use axe less likely to hurt self. Everyone in tribe valuable, not good to do stupid thing and get hurt."
"We'd call that being smart."
"Ayla understand word. Not sure why need so many though."
"How do you say it in your language?"
"Hadare. That Ayla's word." She looked Lucca up and down approvingly. "Lucca ahn metu Ayla kujera hadare."
Lucca shook her head, but smiled back regardless. "You know I have no idea what you just said, right?"
Ayla gently bumped their foreheads together. "Not worry. Lucca smart. Ayla teach."
She laughed. "You're smart too," she said. Sure, Ayla couldn't repair a robot, or even tell you what a robot was exactly, but her intelligence was adapted to the world she lived in, and she could read the subtle clues in her environment just as easily as Lucca could read a circuit board.
"Ayla know," she continued, her low voice sending shivers down Lucca's spine. "That's why choose Lucca."
…
"And… that's what you missed."
It was kind of irritating, really. Marle had listened to her summary of their adventures with a great deal more interest than she ever had when Lucca tried to explain the mechanics of time travel, or temporal paradoxes, or anything else that was vitally important to their quest.
"Aww, why didn't you invite me?"
Lucca narrowed her eyes at her, but Marle's response was only a wide smile.
"So, some of the people from this time fell through a time gate and skipped most of the ice age?"
There was no evidence that the ice age lasted the full sixty-five million years, more likely, the planet cycled between warm and cold. Sixty-five million years of perpetual ice and snow would've created a vastly different biosphere than the one Lucca grew up in. She frowned. Now wasn't really the time to get into the intricacies of climatic variation with Marle. "More or less. There was probably a lot more than one gate created after Lavos arrived. One gate took people to the frozen flame, and the others didn't. The first group became the people of Zeal."
"And the rest became the Earthbound Ones."
"Exactly."
A great whooping cry came from outside, but neither woman so much as flinched. They had both missed the party several nights ago, and it had taken three days before Crono and Marle returned to Ioka after Lucca and Ayla came back. They'd probably still be out there looking for them if Lucca hadn't left a message with Gaspar to tell them where they were.
And by 'left a message,' she really meant, 'pinned a hastily written note to his hat.'
Now there was an even bigger party raging outside. One to both celebrate Crono's resurrection, and the upcoming migration of Ayla's tribe, and… well, maybe there was also some celebrating of Ayla and Lucca's budding relationship in there too.
"Thanks for distracting them, by the way."
"Hmm?" Marle murmured, tilting her head.
"I don't think I'm ready for massive public displays of affection yet." Or possibly ever.
Marle nodded, smiling. "It's only funny to see you embarrassed in front of a small group of close friends. Preferably one that includes me."
Lucca huffed. Clearly the tribe had expected them to kiss in front of everyone, to make their relationship – thingy - official, but Marle had chosen that moment to present her gift to the Iokans, riding into the square on Robo's back, with the robot pulling an absolutely massive net behind him. "Nice horde by the way."
Marle beamed. "Thanks!"
"How did you collect all those sea-shells?"
"Robo helped me. We'll probably be picking out shells from between the seats of the Epoch for a few days though."
Oh, that explained the smell, if nothing else.
"So…" Marle drawled. "Are you going to tell me what you got her?"
Blushing a little, Lucca nodded and reached into her bag. She pulled out an Iokan necklace, strung with the teeth of a small dinosaur, one she had killed just the other day. Ayla had been kind enough to take care of the skinning and tooth-removal bits. Lucca hadn't had the stomach for that.
"Ooh, it's pretty," Marle said after Lucca handed it over.
"That one's mine, actually. Ayla's is larger." She had finally given it to her in private just an hour before. Not in a million years would Lucca ever forget Ayla's way of thanking her. Holy moley…
Marle fingered the largest of the teeth. Mounted in the center of it was a small red stone. "Is that?"
"Dreamstone. Yeah." She had enlisted Melchior's help in fashioning it to the appropriate size before mounting it, while also using the time to put the finishing touches on a second, even more powerful gate key.
"It's glowing. Is that normal?"
Lucca shook her head. "It started doing that after we came in contact with the frozen flame." She patted her new key, still in its holster at her side. "Shows up on the scanner just like a gate does. It flashes, like a flare, when it travels through time, and I've configured this key to track those movements. That way, we can find each other… wherever, or whenever, we might end up in the future… or past, or you know, whichever."
Marle's eyes were brimming with tears.
"Oh, god. Don't… please."
"That's so romantic!" she squealed. Marle wrapped her in a bone-crushing hug, which after an awkward moment got somehow significantly more bone-crushing.
"Why we hug Lucca?"
"Ayla!" Marle cried. She pulled out her hands from in between them, and did her best to wrap them both up in an even larger hug. "Lucca's fine. Just congratulating her on returning safe and sound… and other stuff."
Ayla squeezed her again, but at least it wasn't in an oxygen depriving way this time. "Lucca save Ayla's people."
Marle pulled away, sitting with her back to the fire and watching with delight the way Lucca fidgeted in Ayla's grasp. "She's good at that, isn't she?"
Lucca had her eyes screwed tight, her face as red as a fire spell.
"Everyone like Lucca. Very strong. Protect Ayla's people."
"And I'm sure dad will be happy to let you all live on the South Sea islands. When my great-grandfather was king, they sent an entire fleet there to settle the place, but the people, erm, they sort of got eaten by dinosaurs, I guess."
Lucca made a face.
"And if he says no, well, I can be very persuasive!"
"She'll yell a lot until he gives in, is what she means," Lucca corrected.
Ayla nodded.
Marle flung her ponytail over her shoulder. "Nah, I'll just pout at him, like this!" She stuck out her lower lip, eyes growing wide and almost saucer-like.
"Please not look at Ayla like that."
Marle giggled.
Ayla pulled Lucca backwards until she was basically sitting in the woman's lap. This did nothing to relieve her embarrassment.
"Ooh," Marle said, when Ayla's necklace briefly caught the light of the fire. "It's so pretty."
She grinned, nodding enthusiastically as she held it up with one hand while holding Lucca to her with the other. Instead of a small jewel being embedded in one of the teeth, Lucca had carved two large tooth-shaped jewels entirely out of dreamstone. The effect was striking, especially under the dim light of the fire.
"I was… uh, thinking about making one for everyone… except Magus," Lucca said at last.
"Cuz he's a jerk?"
"Yeah."
Marle scrunched her brow, looking down at her white dress that, as always, was stained in several places with dirt. "I think a dinosaur necklace might clash with my outfit though."
"Actually, I was going to make a ring, one for you, and one for Crono," Lucca replied.
Her friend's face flushed hotly and Lucca grinned at the unexpected victory. "A friendship ring," she quickly added. "Or a whatever-you-want-it-mean ring, if you prefer."
Marle nodded, her eyes pinned on the ground.
"Mmm," Ayla purred, the vibration short-circuiting Lucca's brain. "Lucca smell good."
Her friend's face flushed again. "Oh, wow, okay! Well, time for me to go see what Crono's up to!" She dashed out of the tent before Lucca could get a word in.
She chuckled to herself as Ayla rested her chin on her shoulder. In front of them, the fire at the center of the tent continued to crackle and sputter. Lucca's necklace lay on the ground where Marle had dropped it and Ayla leaned forward, snatching it up before letting it fall gently around Lucca's neck.
They stayed that way for a long while, watching the fire dance before them. Lucca's thoughts turned to the future. The journey ahead would be long and arduous, and quite possibly fatal. This would probably be the last opportunity they'd have to unwind before the final battle. After so many months, everyone was much too anxious to get it all over and done with.
"Did you want to go back out? Rejoin the party?" she finally asked. The hour was growing late.
Ayla shook her head, burying it in Lucca's hair. "Ayla happy right here."
Lucca placed her own small hand around the muscular arm wrapped around her chest and smiled.
The End.
AN - Thanks for reading! ^-^