A/N - This is inspired by the lovely mini-manga I read recently called, 'Sky Regnus,' which is about Fran and Balthier's first meeting. The art is so beautiful and sometimes very cute! There's also another one I want to read called 'Highvision,' so if anyone knows where I can find the English translation, please tell me!

Voice

Fran is a listener. All her life she has been taught her purpose: to listen to the needs of the Wood, and to make them so. A simple inclination of the head suffices for a greeting, or an indication of the affirmative, and often all she must do to order to have her answer is to stand there, and wait.

Her new partner, Balthier, is not a listener. He fills the silences with needless words, telling her this and that about a place he has been to, what the wine was like, and everything else under the sun. It is almost as if he avoids the silence, lest it cause him to think on that which had best be forgotten. His past.

Fran supposes this is his business, and is content to wait until he chooses to discuss it with her. After all, she need only but be patient, as she always has been.

She ponders the man she has thrown her lot in with, on a probationary basis of course. Balthier's word, not hers. There are times when she does not quite know what he is talking about, with a raised eyebrow and a slight upward pull of the lips. She looks for the signs, a tap of the nose, a wink, a tug of the ear, that indicate that there is some hidden meaning in his words, if only she could resonate with him the way she did with the Wood. She is new to this of course, and she will learn.

Sometimes, he will take her completely off guard.

While still relatively new to the hume voices, Fran's sensitive ears cannot tell them apart from each other. They are much too loud, shouting to be heard in the maelstrom of their cluttered cities and towns. For some reason, this sky pirate shears through them all like a hot knife in butter.

Round-vowelled, dripping with insolence, and containing just enough masculine growl to counter the effect of the lace on his collar, Fran finds Balthier's drawling tone...pleasing. He does not shout to be heard, most likely his Archadian insolence again, but expects his words to weave their way through the noise of all the other humes.

She remembers the first time his voice caught her off guard. It was a ridiculously mundane moment in which the two of them were tinkering in the control room. Balthier had simply asked her to pass the screwdriver, and she had felt an accountable warmth in her cheeks and a momentary shortness of breath. A rebellious thought had strayed into her head; that she could suffer the silence of the Wood if it meant she could listen to that voice, as honey-smooth as a prowling coeurl.

Fran shook her head lightly. She was acting like an infatuated young girl, the ones who simpered and fawned and were curiously prone to fainting. Yet no one else but Balthier has this effect on her. He could even say, 'Porridge' and she would feel an illicit thrill run its way up her spine.

She shakes her head lightly. 'He is so young,' she thinks to herself. 'He is so young...'

"Fran...?" comes a now familiar sound from around the corner. Balthier pokes his head into the room. "Ah, I thought I'd find you here. Now's not the time for lazing about you know, we've got a ship to fly."

Fran rises to her feet, one hand resting on her hip. "You've not heard of shore leave, I think."

Balthier puts on a shocked expression. "Good heavens no! The Strahl gets terribly upset if we don't give her enough work to do."

Fran feels her lips curve upward into something most humes would call an enigmatic smile. "So do I, pirate," she says, amused, "So do I."

And she does not even consider for a moment that her voice has the same hypnotizing effect on Balthier.