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I haven't blogged for years~ I don't think reblogging fandom stuff counts. XD
I'll be using this page for my author updates, particularly my Project FFX-3: Last Will & Testament.
Here's to hoping this sticks!
[FFX -Will-] A vigil for all of the lost. (Yuna, Tidus, Baralai)
a moment of silence
(Summary: In the wake of Sin’s sudden devastation, the citizenry of Bevelle mourn while Yuna struggles to come to terms with the changes that surround her. Set during the events of -Will-, featuring a multitude of characters.)
@kingcael this is for you, enjoy~ :D
Yuna spots him in the crowd, wishing she could be there with him.
People crowd the beach, from the piers all the way to the boardwalk, facing the last light of a mourning sun. Each person holds an unlit paper lantern in tribute of the fallen, and one by one they ignite in the dark like stars that shine brighter than the city lights of Bevelle. They begin to release them into the sky, and she watches Tidus do the same as he follows its solemn ascension with misty eyes.
She wishes she could hold his hand and lean on each other for warmth, but she knows she lost the right. She rejected him earlier, in her pitiful attempt to protect him. He wouldn’t understand. She knows Wakka didn’t, because in his anger and confusion towards her actions, he assumed his position behind her instead of by her side while she stood next to Baralai. Not even his disdain for the Chancellor or his overprotective instincts could remedy him being cross with her.
So Yuna faces forward again, before anyone noticed her stray eye and called attention to it. From here atop the edge of the concrete path, she possesses a vantage point of the vigil that holds everyone in thrall. The citizenry of Bevelle present in this scene stand like shadows in the still quiet, their eyes transfixed upon the ocean where a woman wreathed in white stands barefoot on the shore, dragging the length of her gold, regal staff behind her.
Down below at the forefront, Yuna recognizes Lucil by the flare of her long, cardinal red hair whipping in the harsh sea breeze while Nooj, General of the Bevelle army and Military Advisor of the Spiran Council, accompanies her. The newly elected Praetor of Military Affairs wears armor and clothes more suitable for the frigid environment, marching with a procession of warrior monks armed with machine rifles. They cross the sand in three rows of ten straight lines until they reach their designated area, brandishing their guns in a fluid rehearsal of heartfelt salutes, before settling into place as stoic statues; their hands folded atop the tip of the barrel, the butts of their rifles planted into the ground.
On the opposite end of the beach, Yuna sees Isaaru march with an equal number of people who set themselves apart by their lack of uniform. Picking out Kurgum and Chuami in the middle, he must be leading the Senders with a score of officers on Lady Ilyria’s behalf, since the Head Coordinator of the Senders will be performing the mass Sending alone.
Isaaru, ex-Summoner, agent of Yevon, now Praetor of Judicial Affairs...
Everyone she knew are moving up in the world, taking their place in modern society. Even Paine, the warrior who subjected herself to wanderlust following Yuna’s departure from the Gullwings, eventually settled into a role, serving as Baralai’s deputy recorder in charge of supervising the major current events of Spira. Despite their differences in the past, they are working towards a common goal now: building a future on the preservation of truth.
Although Yuna struggles to pinpoint Paine in the crowd, especially with nightfall painting the horizon in deep, abysmal blue, she knows Paine must be out there somewhere, recording this night so that nobody can forget the tragedy that transpired today. Who could forget, in the face of old, familiar tragedy?
A choir of voices starts to rise, low and quiet at first, a rumbling born from grieving hearts, until more voices soon join them from outside their humble, little circle. Those people must be Yevoners and their sympathizers going by the Hymn’s nostalgic tune, singing without words to avoid the backlash surely broiling beneath the surface of calm waters. Allowing the Yevoners who live in Bevelle permission to sing tonight must have been a controversial move on Baralai’s part; Yuna cannot imagine the Council approving this on an unanimous vote.
Or maybe they have no power to exercise control over them, thus they made the political gamble to simply leave them be. Regardless, the Yevoners’ actions reflect on her now, the High Priestess of their order. She doesn’t know how she should feel about that, shouldering so much unwanted responsibility when she only initially wanted to help. If only she knew relenting to the elders’ demands would lead to this, she would have never agreed to become their figurehead.
Yuna sighs. So much time lost, it suffocates her.
As cruel and selfish as it sounds, she wants to leave this place, as it does not concern her. She should never have let Chuami sway her into leaving Besaid. Now people will start turning towards her to deal with Sin, even though she no longer has the emotional fortitude equipped to fulfill their expectations. Not like Baralai, the Chancellor of Spira.
Out of everyone she knew, time has changed him the most, if not for the better. He no longer wears robes inscribed with the letters of Yevon, or greets people with prayers. Abandoning the Yevon name completely, he focuses on Spira above any spiritual body based on archaic principles. He intimidates her more than he ever did before, because once again, they find themselves on opposite sides of the spectrum.
Even so, she stands with him as an official ally of the Council, because obligation compels her to. Their impromptu reunion left no room for awkward air when Baralai managed to rescue her from a decimated pile of falling debris and they fought off Sinspawn together, but once the long day settled to a heavy close, the dread and resignation came creeping back to her.
She wonders if Baralai can sense her conflicting emotions, her unwillingness to participate and refuse? By all rights, he should be stern and frustrated with her like the rest of his councilmen, but for some reason has only expressed patience and kindness in spite of his weariness.
Glancing up at him, she dares to consider him a friend. Neither of them had spoken to each other since they arrived on time for the vigil, and not for lack of fondness or affection. Not once has Baralai appeared to have torn his eyes away, his posture perfectly straight, if not stiff, while his severe and stoic expression belies the rage he must be bottling inside.
And then it occurs to her: although the people here have lost loved ones, friends and family alike, Baralai lost citizens he had sworn to protect, even those who turned up missing with their faces plastered all over the billboards of Bevelle’s skylines and its temple walls. They could only clean up so much wreckage in one day; the Spiran Council feared a Beckoning outbreak.
Yuna hesitates to reach out and touch his arm, feeling compelled to comfort him. Would he welcome her sympathy or reject it? He looks so furious, his jaw clenched in ire and his arms locked behind him in a disguised gesture of self-restraint. And then something changes in his expression, a small light in his pitch black gaze―
Sensing a dramatic shift in the air, Yuna faces forward again.
Lady Ilyria treads the water in a wreath of white silk, her silver anklets chiming to the force of the wind conjured by her magic. She balances her oblong, hefty staff in the upturned palm of her left hand, cradling the space of its golden circumference in her right hand as it encircles her backside.
Pyreflies emerge to the call of her divine ceremony, floating around her like moths to a flame, whistling in cloy delight. They cannot resist the glow of her energy, suckling to her seductive luminosity. Her beauty reminds her of the late Yunalesca in a way, her sensual style of dance even more so as her overgrown platinum hair weaves in the air like a siren underwater, and she commands all life in the chaotic sea.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of caskets begin to drift off shore, decorated to the brim in the native blue bellflowers indigenous to Bevelle. They drift to the pull of the waves, guided by the inherent power of Ilyria’s graceful spins, as the myriad of makeshift lights burn across the horizon, blinding Yuna with another memory that she will carry in her heart forever.
Summary: Mori watches his wife, Head Coordinator of the Senders, dance to improve the state of the tumultuous Moonflow. He recalls the life he once lived, and the life he lives now, and what it means to live for the future. Set after -Will-, a character study of Baralai’s father.
@kingcael you inspired this from me <3
Mori thought he would die a boy, who would never be able to swim in the sea or gaze up at the sky without fear. He lived his whole life in Kilika, watching Sin come back to tear it apart plank by broken plank, tree by uprooted tree, life by fragile life. Losing what little family and stability he had, he sought refuge in the hot, humid jungle, frightened by the calm of the waves that drowned out the deep, dark memory of the massacre.
He lost track of his age, lost sight of his flesh and blood, the remnants of his humanity, and focused solely on survival. To see the next day, to endure nightfall and witness the sun rise again. The jungle at night eased him into a state of everlasting unrest, unsettled by all the strange, alien noises of the wildlife, scavenging for sleep within the thickest canopies of the headiest treetops to conceal himself from sight and smell.
He hunted fiends for sustenance, disgusted by the rudimentary knowledge they were once human, and buried them when he picked their bones clean. His young, famished, body-addled mind couldn’t recall if fiends were able to return after death, when they were already dead humans to begin with, only reincarnated as demons, but even so.
He did his best to respect their corpses for giving him another chance to live in exchange for theirs, even though he couldn’t send them as a Summoner. Six years old, and those were the rules he lived by, in the wake of reestablishing some semblance of a new life. He ran away from the Temple when they tried to force-feed him empty prayers and Yevon nonsense.
If the teachings really worked, then why were they being punished? If they were meant to atone for the wrongs of their forefathers, then why did they have to? Sin didn’t care about their suffering and their efforts to end said suffering.
‘It’s a monster, it’s a killer, it doesn’t care about anything―.’
Of course, the priests whipped him for such “insubordinate thoughts,” and Mori knew he would never find peace there. Not with the orphaned children flocking like sheep to the succor of their wolf shepherds dressed in human skin. He saw a terrible, warped world ruled by guileless adults, and he left to live in the wilderness where he couldn’t see the ocean or have to deal with overzealous people.
That’s when he met her.
A young woman born in the isle of Besaid. A Summoner.
“Live like you know you will die tomorrow. Do everything that you want to do and be at peace with it. Without that fear, you would have no desire to live. You wouldn’t be alive.”
That crazy, young woman who told him that, so many years ago, took him by the hand and led him to the future. Their future. Now Mori stands before an empty bank of the Moonflow at dusk, many years later, watching the love of his life dance barefoot on the rippling water against the light of the sun caught in descent, melting into the horizon with all its fiery colors.
Ilyria dances to comfort the Shoopuf who lost its mate (again), dancing to help it grieve and banish the illusion that gripped it. She dances to reel the superfluous pyreflies in, wrapping them up in her long, golden staff where the translucent crystal located at its tip glows in the middle of its solar-shaped circumference. Magical energy accumulates there, beckoning the pyreflies to follow its radiance. She sings to them, a song she has recited time and time again― humming it in their household, stringing it together from absent-minded fragments in the midst of her everyday tasks; a song without words.
Her sheer, one-piece dress flows like gossamer, moving in the air like the pyreflies, as if she were one with them, a spectre of the past. She looks so beautiful and haunting, entreating to the earth her absolute devotion with all of her being, her vivacity never ages. Only her hair grows and her dimples deepen, but never her life or her love.
Mori watches her dance until nightfall inks the sky, and the background noises of evacuation have calmed down. She finally ceases her long, tireless dance and retreats from the water, hefting her staff horizontal against the small of her back, striding with slow, proud steps. She smiles at him, allowing for their friend, Siscero, who also watched over her from a distance like Mori, except they partake of their previous status as her Guardians separately, to fuss over her.
And he bows his head, before departing in search of their son.
Today may be the last day of the week-long emergency evacuation, but there still lies a lot of work to be done. Particularly his reconnaissance behind the Yevoner hunters’ activities, and what he can do to terminate them from their infantile roots. He would always hate politics and the Bevellian government with a passion, but he would do anything his son asked of him, and Baralai just happens to be the Chancellor of the Spiran Council.
Compared to his virtuoso Summoner wife and affluential politician son, his self-worth mattered very little. After all, his life had never been his the moment he met Ilyria, and when she became pregnant and chose to keep the fragile, unborn life inside her that they forged together, Mori vowed to protect that miracle forever.
His legacy, his hope for a new, better world.
The only prayer he made, became the only prayer that came true.
Nothing else mattered to him than preserving that miracle for as long as he lived.
Pardon me, but to whom this may concern, be prepared to watch me dump a lot of FFX -Will- fanfiction for the next several months. Why? Because I am canon trash.
[Cross-posted on fandomweekly, a dreamwidth community.]
Theme Prompt: #027 Flophouse
Title: Paint The Devil On The Wall
Fandom: Final Fantasy X | X-2 | -Will-
Characters: Chuami, Yuna, Wakka, Kurgum
Rating/Warnings: PG
Word Count: 1000 words
Summary: Unable to make the rest of the journey by airship, Yuna, Wakka, Kurgum, and Chuami are forced to travel by foot from Luca onward. When they stop at the Travel Agency for the night, Chuami never thought her loyalty to the Spiran Council would come into question when it couldn't be any more obvious. Set during FFX -Will-.
Title: Last Will & Testament
Fandom: Final Fantasy X | X-2
Characters: Chuami, Kurgum, Tidus
Status: 1 out of 10 chapters, approximately
Rating: PG-13 (that ought to be the consistent rating)
Word count: ~1462
Summary: Three years after the defeat of Sin, Chancellor Baralai of the newly established Spiran Council sends two of his members to Besaid Island in order to meet with High Summoner Yuna and inform her about the current state of the world. Chuami and Kurgum meet Tidus, a blitzball star, on Bevelle's Stadium Road the morning of their departure.
Warnings: spoilers for the audio drama
Notes: Link to the Prologue, which provides context to the story.
This fanfic is an in-depth novelization of the audio drama, FFX -Will-, in which I will be writing original scenes throughout the canon dialogue.
Written for the GYWO challenge
~1500 out of 75,000 words, my personal word count pledge.
