Work Text:
(Yuna.)
I… think that I would always want to live by the sea.
To live everyday by the ocean, whose shape is etched out by the soft sun… To see waves make their long, slow journey only to surge forth, frothing white, giving themselves up to the shore… To hear the calling gulls… That would make me happy forever, I think.
I want to feel the sand stick to my toes, and even hear the crunch of seaweed while dodging crabs! I miss… beating carpets free of sand. Revealing all those lovely colors the beach tried to hide.
But I don’t think I’ll be beating anymore carpets. Or dancing through that crinkly black seaweed. Or wading through sand so thick and soft that I worry it might swallow me whole.
It won’t be the sea, that kills me. It won’t be those thundering waves, so scary! It won’t be a shark, or a snake, or even a crab. But the thing that kills me, that… That will be from the sea, I suppose.
It’s funny, because… you remind me of the sea. With your eyes so blue, and your hair like the sand. Wakka, too - his hair is like a wave! And Lulu’s belts are just like rafts of seaweed, don’t you think? Even Rikku… her eyes are like whirlpools. And Kimarhi, with his fur so blue and his mane so white… I suppose, in a way, we’re all like the sea.
I want the water to hold me like this, forever.
I want to float like this, to stare up at that wide, endless sky… that unreachable sea.
But I think… the sea scares me, too. No, not the sea. But what comes, shivering, out of it. I don’t … want anyone to be afraid of the sea. I want everyone to float like this, eyes to the sky, without ever having to look to the horizon, just to check, just in case.
I never want to walk over the dead, again.
I never … want to see beaches full of… full of death, again.
How many towns have sunk beneath the water?
How many more…
Maybe, I shouldn’t love the sea, so much. Maybe I should learn to hate the sea. It is so cold, and vast, and helplessly cruel.
But… I suppose it doesn’t really matter, how much I love or hate the sea, does it?
Soon, I will see nothing but stars.
--
(Seymour)
Ah, the sea. It is what feeds Spira. It is what destroys Spira. What it gives, it soon takes, such is the way of all things.
Tell me, Lady Yuna - how far have you walked out across the waves? I have made so many journeys out across the water. But my longest was all the way from Besaid out to that small, insignificant island that welcomed my childhood.
Can you imagine how long that journey took, Lady Yuna? Can you imagine what I saw… What I felt? With nothing but the sea and the sky, sunsets blazing beneath my feet, stars mixing with water. You could make that journey, too. Simply walk out into that endless blue.
I was born in the cradle of the woods. Salt does not suit my people well. Trees, after all, do not grow in oceans. Don’t you find that terribly sad? My people would rather watch over the sea of the dead, a slew of painful memories, than to walk by the ocean.
I know the sea. I know it very well.
Baaj is a lonely place, Lady Yuna. There is nothing to do there but to watch the ocean. There are fiends, yes - but the most vicious of which are attracted to the water. After all, the sea is full of pyreflies. It’s why your guardian, Wakka, was it? Can stand to live within it for so long. Those pyreflies give him life.
Is that not… funny, in a way?
The sea offers up the salt of life. We eat nearly all it produces. And yet, it is so full of death. And as Sin only shows, it eats us all, too.
Yet… Lady Yuna, I see the ocean in you.
You can be so still and so soft, and yet even your shallowness only invites others in. There is depth to you, buried so deep and cradled in such darkness. And yet your surface blazes with the sun, and all who look upon you do so to marvel.
Your determination is like the rocking of those waves, and it comes down with a thundering force. You would travel hundreds of miles, all just to surge forth, one last time, and crush yourself on the shore. You go, step by step, ripple by ripple, wave by wave - all just to die.
So… even though you give the world life, you must take from it, too.
Take me. Take all your strength and drown me in it. Let me slip, sweetly, beneath the thundering of your twirling arms. Send me, far away, deep down into your hushed depths.
And together, you and I, we will lash the world. Our salted tongues will curl through every town, our blanket of water will salt even the trees of Guadosalam. We will be the ocean of all oceans, and everything, all things, will become the sea.
Only then, will we all float.
Backs to the ocean, eyes to the stars.