"I'm not going to eat it. Never. Never."

I have some standards. Even stuck underground with the world's least personable gourmet carrion chef and so hungry it felt like my belly had gone all cannibal and was setting upon my spleen at this particular moment -- even then, I have some standards. Pudding? Doesn't cut it. Will never cut it. I will starve to death before I eat anything made with a pudding.

"It's not really my business -- "

Okay, before you start thinking that I'm not a red-blooded Al Bhed girl because I don't like pudding, I should make it clear that the pudding that we're talking about? It's -not- the pudding you're thinking about. Banana cream? No. Chocolate Parfait? No. No, the pudding we're discussing is the kind with eyes. It can wiggle around on its own without you shaking the bowl.

"It is so. We've been stuck in this cave for years and we have no food and almost no water. At this point? My business? Totally your business. Your business? Totally my business. End of story. But still. I'm not going to eat that. Ever."

Common Cave Pudding - Cyanea Spelaeum -- Also known as slimebabies, flanettes, cave jellies, and the total grossness. Before you start imagining us chowing down on tubby old flans barbecued by their own firas reflected back at them, you should know that that's flat silly. Flans are fiends. You kill one and they explode into fairy lights and smoke, just like anything else. There's nothing left to eat, let alone barbecue. Who'd want to eat something made of angry old souls anyway? To me, that's just asking for indigestion.

"I bet it's delicious."

My little white Al Bhed butt.

"Auron, you are more full of crap than a septic tank."

Anyway, cave puddings? Totally not fiends. They're an actual indigenous Spiran lifeform. There are some fiend specialists who think that the first flans came about when angry pyreflies with puddinglike dispositions coalesced into something like a pudding, just like people with doglike dispositions coalesce into things like coyotes and white fangs. Only flans are a lot meaner, bigger, and smarter than puddings -- which admittedly isn't hard. I'm not even sure puddings have brains. Strike that, I know that they don't have brains. They're translucent. You'd be able to see them if they had them. So yeah. Puddings? Not winning the Al Bhed Prize for Literature in the near future. Ix-nay on their survival instinct too. They certainly hadn't been hard to catch. Auron had just said go pick some of those up, and like a big dummy I said sure boss, cheerful as a bunny.

"Eat it."

How was I supposed to guess that the damn fool wanted to eat them? And what's worse, he wanted me to eat them too.

"It's gonna taste like crap. Maybe worse than crap. I dunno about you, but I don't usually eat things that were blue and jelly when they were alive."

It was also bad because they didn't have anything but these huge round eyes, deep as a kitten's. Under different circumstances, I might've begged Auron to let me keep one as a pet. As it stood, eating one of them was something like spitting a puppy on a fork and roasting it over an open flame. In case you're having trouble with that analogy, let me just state clearly: not kosher.

"You should eat or you might die."

Even the one that had been half cooked still had the eyeballs floating in it like sunny side up egg yolks. When I'd told Auron he was a sicko, he'd just rationally responded that the eyes were the most nutritious part. Most of the rest of it was water content and lipids -- both of which we needed if we were going to make it off of this staircase alive and not looking like debutantes from an eating disorder convention.

"If I eat it then I know I'll die. I bet it's poisonous."

"It's not poisonous. I already ate some."

"That doesn't prove anything. I bet you could drink diesel and not die. You're built like a tank. Me? Not so much built like a tank. More built like, I dunno, a roller skate. An awesome fast roller skate who can be sorting the contents of your pockets before you even know you've encountered her, but still, a roller skate. You do not feed diesel to a roller skate-- "

"Listen Rikku," he began patiently, "It's warm pudding or it's warm rat, and we're fresh out of warm rat at the moment."

Not even properly cooked or anything. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it were deep fried and smothered in gravy so I wouldn't know what it was, but not only were we without a full service kitchen, we were also without man's best friend and greatest modern convenience: fire. All the flint and tinder in the world wouldn't do anything useful when we had no kindling. We were stuck warming the pudding over the heating sphere in a tin cup, which, thank our ancestors, was still working. Haute cuisine it was not. Haute grossness was more like it.

"No way. Never."

"You'll be walking along, down the stairs, and suddenly you'll get so faint -- "

Oh this is just what I wanted to hear: the Perils of Rikku, wilting lily. This is the time when I know for certain that all those years learning bawdy sea shanties in something other than my mother tongue were worth it. They were worth it like fire.

"I'm not listening to you: OH WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR?"

"And you'll pass out and keel over and I won't be close enough to catch you -- "

"Really not listening, WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR EARL-EYE IN THE MORNING? TIE HIM TO THE TRAFFSAIL WHEN SHE'S YARD-ARM UNDER. TIE HIM TO THE TRAFFSAIL WHEN SHE'S YARD-ARM UNDER -- "

I'd have given everything I had -- which admittedly isn't that much, me being on the losing end of that fateful poker game and all -- to tie Auron to a traffsail at this point. Anything to keep that pudding away from me.

"And then you'll fall."

"SHAVE HIS BELLY WITH A RUSTY RAZOR. SHAVE HIS BELLY WITH A RUSTY RAZOR. SHAVE HIS BELLY WITH A RUSTY RAZOR, EARL-EYE IN THE MORNING."

"You'll fall until you hit the bottom of this place with a lurching splatter."

"At least I'll be at the bottom then."

"You were listening."

"How can I not listen? Your voice is like a bullhorn."

"Pot. Kettle. Black. Now hush," he grunted, then as an afterthought, "And eat your pudding."

I didn't and I wasn't going to and he knew it, so he reached over as casual as a tail-wagging dog and pinched my nose closed. I flailed and beat against his arm, but like I said before, he's built like a tank. Tank vs. Roller Skate no holds barred arm wrestling? Tank wins. I was intent on just holding my breath until I died rather than open up my mouth, but my body wasn't having any of that, and it eventually gave up and I was gasping for air like a fish. He wasted no time in pouring some down my throat.

I ate my pudding. It was horrible and tasted like crap. I was sick afterwards and vomited about half of it back up. For some reason, being right wasn't very satisfying.

"There," he said evenly, "Now at least you have something in your stomach."

All I could do was lament mournfully that I hadn't tossed up all my pudding all over him. I think that would have made me feel a little better.

The Shape of His Heart

By Gabi-hime (gabihime at gmail dot com)

Chapter Four: Building Our Big Cat Flush

We lost our light on the fifth day. It happened all at once, no warning sputtering or blinking or anything like that at all. Just snap and it was out. We stopped dead and I pounded on it for a while, but that didn't do anything to lighten the area. Now, I went to the Rikku Cidolphus School of Technical Barbarism, and I'm a firm believer in the old adage 'If it doesn't work, just bang on it a while.' That may seem like a funny kind of philosophy to come from an Al Bhed synth genius, but you'd be surprised how often it works. I had even begun wondering if I shouldn't try it out on Auron.

Domestic violence aside, beating on our light sphere did nothing productive but make my hand ache -- which really, on reflection, is not that productive. We had no matches or torches besides, and I didn't know enough magic to make a twinkle, let alone a steady light. Auron was similarly not a big help. We were now alone and in the dark on a spiral staircase with a sheer drop for the long haul. My luck had deserted me again.

Well, there was not really much for it. We could sit still and either wait for a dawn that would never come to us deep underground, or keep on staggering forward. Auron and I? We're both thick skulled as mountain chocobos. I bet you can guess which one we decided on.

"You walk on the inside," I ordered, and I didn't need to see his face to know I'd baffled him.

"I don't think so," he said, and he didn't, but I wasn't finished yet.

"Listen, Legendary Guardian Chubbo, if you misstep and fall off this staircase there's no way that I'm going to be able to catch you. You'll drag me off with you."

"No," he answered stubbornly.

"Yes," I fired back, hands on my hips even though that kind of body language is kind of ineffective in the dark, "But if I fall? You might still be able to catch me since I don't weigh four million tons."

"You don't understand -- "

"I don't understand why you're retarded," I rolled my eyes, another priceless Rikku moment lost to the dark, "Besides. I'm not going to fall. I was running catwalks in the dark before I could talk," I had already flopped down on the ground and was stripping off my shoes and socks, "Hold these," I ordered, and after a few false exchanges he did, and without complaint. I was up on my bare feet again, toes digging into the stone. There was no way I could slip now. In bare feet? I have to be at least three quarters ninja.

"Now do you understand?" I sighed, wriggling my toes one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three like a waltz.

". . . . Yes," he finally said shortly, but it was a while coming. Then he paused and seemed to consider, "Just make sure you're responsible with my leg."

"Your leg?" I sputtered. He had to bring it up now, didn't he?

"My leg," he repeated comfortably, and although I couldn't see it, I could clearly hear the crinkle of paper that just had to be the deed to my leg. I almost wanted to try and snatch it away from him. I didn't.

In the end, he didn't walk on the inside. We found out through trial and error that it was best to send me down the stairs first with him behind me, holding onto my ribbons like the traces on a buggy chocobo. Only he wasn't guiding me, I was guiding him like a regular seeing-eye dog. We went on for some time just like that, me with one hand on the wall reading the irregular pebbling, toes dug into the stone as I felt my way down, never taking the next step for granted. He stayed terse and silent behind me.

After what may have been hours or only a very long stretch of minutes, I broke the silence again.

"You know, my stomach and I are seriously considering cannibalism."

"How good for you and your stomach," he'd answered, all smoky dark.

"You wouldn't mind if we waited until you were asleep tonight and then smothered you, cut you up, and ate your spleen on crackers, would you?"

"You don't have any crackers," he offered levelly.

"Well poop," I laughed weakly, "So much for that good idea."

He chuckled and it became easier to pass the time again, despite it being as dark as the inside of your spleen. When fiends came, I took them: one shot, three shots, two shots, sighting down the barrel like it was an extension of my arm -- only not really sighting, since I couldn't really see. It was always easy to sight them. Fiend eyes shine in the dark. It's the pyrefly light behind them glowing like a bioluminescent fungus, and that soft glow gave me all the mark I needed, floateyes nothing but one big target -- a blinking sign that said please shoot me here. When they were close, I could almost make out the lines on Auron's face in the brief, hollow glow, and we exchanged humorless smiles. His eye picked up the light from the pyrefly flights and would shine softly in the gloom whenever I made a kill. I had to wonder if my own eyes weren't shining the same way -- like we were half-starved and half fiend already. It was times like that that I wanted to crawl into his lap and bury my face in that ratty old gi of his and have him pet my head and tell me that everything was going to be all right, just like my Pops had when I was little. If Auron told me it was going to be all right? Then it would be all right. He would make it all right. I was convinced of that much, at least.

Our past knock-down drag-outs about Yunie aside, if the world got broken, he would fix it. That's what legendary guardians do.

But he didn't pet my head and he didn't offer me any easy solace. He didn't say 'don't worry Rikku, it will be okay.' He didn't say 'it's all right, no matter what, I'll take care of you' and it occurred to me that he wasn't really my jolly old grandpa out to bully the world for my benefit. Auron was Auron, and it wasn't really his place to take care of me. He was Yunie's guardian and not mine. Whenever he was being all aloof-comforting it was always for her benefit, because he was her surrogate dad. The rest of us? We just got the spill-over comfort. He didn't say 'I'll see to it' because it wasn't his to see to. It was mine, for better or for worse.

My name is Rikku Cidolphus and I don't need a daddy. I've already got one fruitcake pops already. I think that's plenty for any girl. I'm responsible for myself and can't take the easy out of begging bosshog to give me cuddles and make all the decisions for me.

I'm sure if I tried that he'd say something all fortune cookie about it being my story.

It was my story. I was making it my story, and he was along for the ride. I have to wonder what he thinks his story is. I thought I heard him mention to Tidus once that his story ended with Braska. I dunno what kind of crack he's smoking, but stories just don't end like that. Real stories? The good stories? The ones worth reading until your eyes hurt and go blurry and you have to put the book down? They never end. Mine's never gonna.

Certainly not down this stupid sucky hole. -We'd- get out. We'd -get- out. We'd get -out-.

I looked over my shoulder at him even though it was pitch black and pointless, and I tried to smile. Thanks big guy. You really do know just what to say to make a girl feel better -- or what you -don't have- to say.

It's just like the moon. He's always up there, silent and watching, and sometimes you can look up and draw a little bit of comfort just from knowing he's there.

"You know," I said conversationally, dulling the panic that was always there, creeping around behind my eye-sockets, "I wouldn't want to be stuck starving down this awful hole with anyone else but you."

He chuckled, all smoky-peat, and said, "Is that so?"

"Totally," I said as I carefully felt down for the next step -- one at a time, it was the only way we could go, "Lulu would be less talkative than you are -- although I bet she wouldn't have made me eat that pudding. I bet Wakka would be telling me that we somehow deserved to be stuck down here. Yunie would be so preoccupied with getting to the fayth and keeping me healthy and happy that she wouldn't be taking care of herself and might go marching straight off the edge. Tidus and I would come up with some kind of plan, but it would probably be a really dumb plan and it would end up getting us both killed."

"So I win by default? Hnn."

"Except for Kimahri," I reassured, and there it was: the next step, just as the last step had been there.

"Oh?"

"It's a hard toss-up between you and Kimahri. You're both so -- like this," here I made this great series of faces for no one's benefit but my own, since the absolute zero of light kept them all private. Still, I think they were a pretty solid rendition of exactly what makes Kimahri Kimahri and Auron Auron.

"Like what?" he questioned, apparently unaware that I had mime-theater going on up front.

Absurdly, I giggled, that kind of half hysterical giggle that comes on at desperate times, "Like awesome. That's what I was thinking. You and Kimahri? Totally the awesome squad. You should maybe start a band. But, Kimahri might be more awesome stuck down this hole because I bet he knows a whole bunch of Ronso drinking songs to pass the time with."

"So Kimahri wins."

"No, you still win."

"Why?"

"Well, it's certainly not thanks to your cooking. I'd rather eat Tidus's noodles in sauce."

"Those were not noodles in sauce. They were tiny rocks in paste."

"So what does that tell you, big man?"

"That I'd rather be stuck down here with Lulu."

"I hate you. Lots and forever. I'm going on strike and not talking to you any more."

"Oh no, how will I cope?" he asked flatly, and if it had been brighter or if we hadn't been in such a mountain-goat-on-a-precipice position, I probably would've jumped him and attempted my Rikku Noogie Special. I made a mental note to be sure and mess his hair up really good in the future when things were not so bad.

In the future, when things were not so bad.

"Auron?" I asked softly, suddenly all still and serious, "What are we going to do?"

"About?" he asked unconcernedly, but I know he knew..

"Sin."

It was all there, in that one little word: the despair of the whole world tied up in a spiral.

He sighed, like it was a question that he was long tired of considering and I was sorry that I'd bothered him with it. What could we do, really? We could --

"We will do what we can," he said simply, and I could hear the tread of his boots crunch against the stone behind me as he descended a few steps out of time, "It is all we can do."

Sometimes, I think I loved that man.

But maybe that's just the hysteria talking.

Being so long underground will do that to you, you know? Some guys come back from hunts and excavations with eyes all round, with too much white showing, their pupils pinpricks of nothing against the glossy blue-white snow of their corneas. They've got the shakes bad, like they've been on a caffeine binge for weeks trying to get an engine running smooth, and when they look at you it's like they're looking through you and into some place else, maybe because the dark has made them so used to staring through nothing until they see things burned into the insides of their eyelids.

Maybe that's how we'd end up when we got out. If we got out. When we got out.

One step at a time, one hand reading the wall like it was some kind of ancient text, my gun always in my shooting hand, ready for the things that flapped and the things that crept, the things that hated and were dead, that's the way we went. It was the only way we could go. Sometimes I almost wished for another tonberry, another lantern carrying tonberry, like I might've been able to slide my hands over the flesh and air and pull away some kind of light, like we might've kept that fiendoil burning lantern. Like it wouldn't have burst into light and smoke the moment Auron's sword went singing through it or I buried a bullet in its skull, karmic payback cut from my skin tenfold.

We wanted light and we had none. Maybe there's something deeply metaphorical about that -- but it's probably just neurotoxins from that pudding getting into my head. If I start to sound strange from here on out? You know why.

I don't know how long we'd been going when I began to feel it under my hand. Maybe it had been there all along and I'd just been too stupid to realize it, to recognize it, to feel it churning up under my hand. I had been reading the grooves of the wall for hours, like it was a nameless, wordless song, all arrhythmic -- a mess of notes, pebbles and bumps that had no meaning outside of the ancient drip patterns of the water from varying strata. At first I had read it with my fingers as nonsense scribble -- happenstance -- fractal -- but as the hours slowly passed, a picture began to form in my head of some similarity I couldn't quite place, something I'd seen or heard a long time ago where the bumps had meant music like clockwork all together in a little box that would sing when you opened it --

And suddenly I knew that my hand had been reading.

"Sing!" I cried out, half hysterical, dancing like I was barefoot on hot iron. I knew then that he had to think that I had gone off the deep end, but I still insisted, waving my arms emphatically, "Sing! The Hymn."

And again, there it all was, like a page from a fairytale about too many thieves that I'd loved when I was a kid.

Those who would pass must first speak the password.

The faithful must first speak their faith.

My voice was all trembly-wrong, too high-pitched, erratic, like I was a coke fiend doing karaoke after dropping a little too much speed, but I was belting it from my belly as if I had nothing else left to cling to in the world, "IEYUI NOBOMENU -- AURON, SING."

This finally spurred him, and then rattling out like a loose tympani drum came his uncertain bellow, "Renmiri Yojuyogo."

We were the most out of tune and imperfect duet that there has ever been, of that I am totally convinced. It was like a rooster singing harmony to a grizzly bear after they've both been beaten and malnourished until they were half dead -- but we were singing, and I hoped that was all that mattered.

We climbed the next lines together, sounding mixed and mashed, all treble-base, "Hasatekanae Kutamae."

As we sang, the wall behind us lit up, silver light running through it like a neon-sign flickering on at dusk, glyph sigil shining like a mandala around a small sphere recess I would have never noticed otherwise and I was already scrabbling in my pack, trying to find a sphere. Auron's voice dropped off and he watched me with something maybe kin to reverence in that one burnt out eye of his, but with only my voice spiraling up awkwardly, the ley lines began to fade and I was forced to shriek again, "SING AURON, SING. HASATEKANAE KUTAMAE."

Then he was singing and we were lit up again like a yule tree and I crammed the sphere against the wall as hard as I could. It fit like it had always belonged there, lighting us all purple mountains majesty and I almost sobbed, I was so happy. I did jump him then, a flailing arm tackle that expressed the wordless and boundless joy of we're not going to die all wrapped up in whiskey-tea and scarlet and a sword juggled off to one hand because I'd seen it clear in my head as soon as the sphere had left the brush of my fingertips.

Our endless spiral had turned into a ring of hope.

Let there be light, and there was, sphere torches burning out of the stone above our heads like they'd always been there and we'd just not seen them. And I was dancing down the stairs, still singing because it was a time to sing and he laughed and it was all smoke on the water and fire in the sky. There was this low wrenching sound and then a pop like a gas nozzle coming loose and he was taking a long swing from that jug of mysterious contents, a libation down his throat that seemed somehow appropriate -- and then he pressed the jug on me. I had never, ever, ever seen him do that before, not even to Tidus, and certainly not to Yunie.

We weren't going to die. He knew it too and the lips of the jug met mine and firewater burned all the way down my throat, singeing my nasal cavity and down in my belly where it smoldered like a real honest to goodness flan on top of all that soupy pudding -- with eyes -- and I was really touched. He'd just thrown a part of himself to me overhand, and I was going to keep it forever and ever, like a good luck piece made out of string and feathers and your mother's hair.

I still don't really know what's in that jug. It might've been sake, but it might just as well have been behemoth milk. The memory is all blurry-fuzzy in my head, like a spherecorder that's rolled all the way down the stairs and you can't even blame Brother for it. I would bet money on it that it was because of the pudding.

Within twenty steps we were off of the damned staircase forever and I was so happy I could've kissed him, and I seriously considered it, all hey boss, I think I've got something in my eye, will you come and get it out for mesuperduperuntestedRikkudrivebyliplock -- but the more pressing attraction of new things to look at that were not black and or black drowned me out in sensory overload and I might've maybe keeled over from the stars dancing in front of my eyes if he hadn't laid a solid hand on my shoulder and said, "Rikku, you can stop singing."

I did stop singing then, but mostly because I thought it might be important to breathe every once in a while, which I think I might've neglected otherwise, being all shallweGATHERattheRIVER. I dunno which gods we were praising at that exact moment -- maybe our ancestors who'd brought us this far, but way totally not grossout tick-baby Yevon. Maybe we weren't praising gods at all, but praising ourselves because we had done it and we were here, providence aside. We had not been delivered unto the promised land, we had delivered our own spanky selves, and rainbows and motor oil if that didn't seem like a praiseworthy thing to me. Dear Heavenly Rikku, How are you so awesome? Love, me. P.S. Oh and also Auron for being so good at spattering brains and killing things, but not for that horrible pudding or his awful singing voice, please remind me never to take him to karaoke night in Luca. Love, me again. Yeah, I'm pretty sure most Spirans spell 'heretic' R-I-K-K-U. It's the shortened form.

The stairway spit us into a checker tiled tunnel with lapis lazuli and aquamarine ribbing the vault, old and smooth like it'd had a thousand years of a thousand hands running over it and I wanted so badly to pry some of it from the walls and carry it with me forever, like antique lace on a wedding gown, that I was already digging in my pockets for a chisel when Auron caught on to what I was doing and gave me this look that might have killed something like a rabbit or a guinea pig or even maybe a dog. I kept my drill bit in my pocket, but that didn't keep me from wanting.

Outside of the gemstones in the architecture, and the fact that the Hymn was with us again, full and fine, the prettiest thing in the entire tunnel had to be this beautiful little basin carved out of the live rock and laid all around with smooth stones -- and like ice cream with four cherries and chocolate sauce there was fresh water welling up in it. I am a desert girl by birth and upbringing. I know an oasis when I see it and I know exactly what to do with an oasis when I see it.

Like a Brother-calibur goon, I stuck my whole head under to get a good drink and then had water down my collar and making the rubber of my shirt stick to me with embarrassing squelchy noises as I hooted and howled and did a screamy-dumb celebratory dance in front of the basin. We are the champions, my friends. Auron filled up our canteens and I tried to figure out exactly what kind of frilly snake monster was decorating the bow of the pool, all goldfish fins and whiskers like a cat, long and limp as an over-cooked noodle. I couldn't really tell if it was supposed to be pretty or threatening. It kind of sucked at being both. It was too frilly to be all that scary, too much aquarian lacework and all -- on the other hand? It had these curving serpent teeth in a nasty looking overbite that made me feel that this was not the kind of thing you gave a high society Bevelle lady to keep in a bowl as a pet. It was like a little gold canary that opens its mouth to show you the nastiest canines you've ever seen.

Except, birds don't have teeth. Well, birds that aren't fiends don't have teeth. Nobody wants a divebeak at home as a pet, crammed into some little filigree cage so its legs stick out between the bars. They smell. And they sing like a hypello figure-skating on a chalkboard. Maybe with an untuned piano strapped to his back.

The tunnel was lit by soft blue-white light spheres set in little gold fixtures that I also wanted to nick, but Auron had started so sharpish down the tunnel that I had to jog to catch him. I knew what he was thinking -- we'd already been away from Yunie and the gang for more than a week. This was not the kind of thing guardians are supposed to do, I don't think, maybe not even on a mission to find missing aeons. My vacation frolic? It was getting a little more extended than I had originally ever planned. Sidle off four a couple days of treasure hunting in the mountains? Golden. Get lost underground forever with Auron until I was forced to eat his spleen? Maybe not so golden.

For what it's worth, he didn't take the time to lecture me over it again, which is pretty nice. It kept me from having to launch into a rousing chorus of Auron, Auron Rhymes with Moron, which I think also did us both good.

The tunnel we were in had a gradual upward slope too. It wasn't much noticeable until I dropped a ball bearing on it to see and had the thing hit a groove in the tile and roll on off like it had a motor attached. Lady luck? She was on my side again and maybe tap-dancing, and I might've started skipping like a maniac down the tunnel had I not noticed Auron flatly staring at me.

Now, I wasn't about to flatter myself that it was the good kind of staring. I hadn't had a bath in forever and I was kind of greasy over my hands from working with the gun so much. It was not really a struck-dumb-by-your-radiant-underage-beauty kind of moment moment and stupidly, the only thing that I could think was ohnodidIforgettoputonmypantstoday? even though I hadn't even had the luxury of taking them off since we'd started this rockin' adventure.

"What is it?" I asked, laughing nervously and trying to play it off, "Do I have pudding between my teeth and you just didn't tell me or something?"

"Your hair," was all he murmured, as if that explained everything.

Still stuck in the land of not-knowing-what-was-going on, I grabbed at one of my braids to examine it, but it brushed through my fingers. I was about to grab after it when what had happened finally impacted in my small Rikku brain and I whooped and hollered.

"Breeze! FRESH AIR!"

I was gone before he could say another word.

----

Hot diggety. AURON IS PAUL, RIKKU IS CHANI OK GO.

Another little bit in this patchwork done. I heart my readers.

Love,

Gabs