For the first time in years, there in the cold of the darkening day, Auron thought about his mother. She was a harried woman, with a tempered smile and tired eyes, carrying a large body and enveloping arms which made her hugs impossible to escape. Gray curls twisted through her mousey hair, an apron desperately trying to contain her matronly shape, covered in flour and cat fur and the frayed threads of twenty years' time. A collector of husbands all of whom she'd outlived, she loved her children above all things. There were five boys and two girls, in a tiny home on the outskirts of the city, constituting just enough space to live, with girls in one bedroom and boys in the other. From the barnyard in the back his mother ran her bakery, peddling bread and eggs and her company on the hazy afternoons when her children were out.
Auron was her oldest child. The son of a Yevonite soldier, an extenuated man of poor health and poorer temper who was killed before his wife had given birth, Auron had been named for him, and seemed to have inherited both his nerves and pig-headedness. Seven years older than his closest sibling, the boy was fiercely attached to his mother and unnecessarily responsible for his age, in charge of his little brothers, attending his baby sisters, caring for the livestock, and overseeing their involvement in the temple. It was customary for boys in the clergy to leave home for the monastery at thirteen, and Auron recalled the dark morning of his departure, night still hanging over the valley. His belongings slung in a sack over his shoulder, he crept about the house and woke his siblings to say goodbye, though when he reached the door, his mother, sleepless from a night of crying babies, held him for an hour, refusing to let him move, planting kisses all over his face like a chicken pecking seeds until the first few rays of sunlight peeked over the hills and he had to push her away.
He could recall her face, the sun browned quality of her skin, flat wrinkled lips and gleaming gray eyes, her strong arms and fingers, the way her skirts would sweep the floor as she shuffled around the house, and how she would laugh, and scold him for being so deathly serious. How she cried when Auron left home, and how her body lingered in the window until his silhouette disappeared into the fog.
Auron's head bobbed as he began to slowly slip in and out of consciousness, unaware of the group of Ronso which had gathered around him, whose rumbling voices asked his name in broken Spiran, again and again until the wounded man collapsed face first into the snow.
"Rin! Tet oui tu dra pitkadc oad?"
He was having a dream of being alone.
Darkness, black water floating in a sea of ruins, the gasoline rainbow of pyrefly tails curling in and out of holes in the blackness mesmerized him in a swirl of abalone. A single silver earring caught the light in the distance, a bellchime, Ronso tails, his arms were heavy, he couldn't swim and the blackness flowed in and out like the waves of a phantom pain in the back of his mind. In the crashing water only a baritone voice could be heard, soft, in the distance, and Auron wriggled against the tide to draw nearer. The voice seemed so familiar. Comforting. A low timbre, even tempered, pious words with an air of merciful grace, forgiving, Braska's voice, his mother's voice, someone dear and ordinary reaching out to him in the black dark.
"E ryjah'd ryt y lryhla. Lyh oui kad Tiskel du dyga y muug yd dras?"
"Fro? Ec ra yfyga? Ymnekrd, E'mm lusa pylg mydan."
"Dryhg oui."
A door shut. Auron's eyelashes adhered to each other tightly and an audible tearing interrupted the voice as his eye flickered open, shutting, opening, awake but unaware, the blackness slowly dissipating as he noticed a figure moving side to side on the periphery of his vision. Confusion and hysteria clouding his mind, he thrashed himself violently, grunting, startling whoever was looming nearby and causing them to drop something to the floor.
"Ah! Tysh ed!"
The baritone voice. Auron's heart pounded wildly against his chest as he tried to free himself from his bonds, but was unable to move. Pain shot up his spine and down his legs. A hand gripped his arm firmly, and Auron's eye rolled about in his head trying to focus on the human face which hung close to his own.
Are those eyes on it's head? No, wait … goggles. It's an Al Bhed. Green eyes, blond hair, yeah, an Al Bhed all right. Is he real? Am I real? Where am I, there aren't Al Bhed in Zanarkand. Wait, I'm not in Zanarkand. I think I'm drooling.
"Guh… ahh … guh..."
"Have no fear, my friend," the Al Bhed's accent was thick but intelligible, "You are understandably slobbery." He dabbed a tissue at the corner of Auron's gaping mouth before holding it against Auron's nose and instructing him to blow. It took a few minutes, piecing together where eyes and nose and mouth belonged, but Auron eventually recognized the face - it was the Al Bhed merchant, Rin, perpetual busybody and entrepreneur, one of the Al Bhed whom their party had encountered a number of times on their pilgrimage - and, from the looks of it, Rin had recognized him as well. The Al Bhed was working diligently, a set of potions and herbs on a tray beside him, his hands dyed brown with old blood as he cleaned the wounds covering Auron's broken body which lay nude on a backless settee in a small room at the back of Rin's agency. I'm naked. What?
"Guh… gah guhz …"
He peered down, noticing he had also been shaven as his beard was no longer obstructing his view, and his stomach churned as he surveyed the damage. His lower body was wrapped completely in gauze, pools of red seeping through in some places on his legs, and on the floor beside where Rin sat was piled a stack of soiled towels, and a bucket.
"Do you need to vomit again?" Rin asked, reaching for the bucket. Auron didn't respond. "I assure you," Rin laughed as he snipped away a bit of gauze from the wrapping on Auron's arm, "there is nothing left in you to eject."
He stood, and wiped a layer of sweat from his brow, pulling down his goggles to inspect them for grime. Rin smiled, his eyes kind and sincere, and he looked for a moment at a clock on the wall. His body sunk, and he turned his attention once more to Auron.
"There now. I do hope you are feeling better. We could not save the right eye but the rest of you seems to be ... mostly in tact. You are an expensive mess."
"Guh…"
"Hm. I will apply another potion. You should feel no pain now, Sir Auron."
"Gaga...hz…. et… " Auron stammered. Sir?
"What was that? Gagazet?"
Rin spread an Al Bhed salve over his hands and rubbed it gently over Auron's chest and arms, under his armpit, around his throat, where the ice had blackened his skin, and Auron felt warm and numb all over. Something of a smile passed over him.
"The Ronso who brought you in claimed to have found you there, at the summit. You must have had quite a fall. But do not worry! You are in good hands."
"Than...k…"
Rin smiled. "Not at all."
He rose, and looked Auron over, before turning to dig about in a wicker chest behind him. Rin pulled out a colorful woolen blanket and draped it over Auron's thighs and abdomen. He stepped to the door, and ducked out, laughing.
"We do not want the girls coming in here and getting ideas, now, do we!"