One
Their hands met in the water. Man and woman, they moved around each other in a silken dance of joy and timeless love. They were both very new to their adulthood, tested by burdens those decades older, and supposedly wiser, than they would have struggled to carry. He was lean in the way of an athlete strengthened by water and speed. She was slender and delicate, with an iron core stronger than mountains.
He grabbed hold of her and pulled her close for a moment, reveling in the sensation of weightlessness, the smooth silk of the ocean depths, the tickle of her dark hair across his face, and the joy of knowing that he was once again real.
They'd been like this once before, but it was a bittersweet memory. They'd danced around each other in a pool in a forest that was now dying a little more each day, so new to their love, so aware that it wasn't going to last.
He'd saved her life, in the end, though. She had been a summoner, akin to a priestess, and fated to surrender her life for peace in a futile, empty sacrifice. He saved his summoner and now there were no more summoners. But the price had been himself.
Like her father before her, his father's best friend, she'd chosen a path that should have led to her own destruction. She walked to face Sin, to destroy Sin and die in the process, and hoped that Sin would one day be gone forever.
But the path of their fathers could not give them that peace, that Eternal Calm. Not ever. Yunalesca, the Unsent remnant of the woman who had created the only means they knew to defeat the behemoth Sin, had told them the truth that Yevon concealed. The Final Summoning that destroyed Sin and killed the Summoner, a willing sacrifice for peace, only caused Sin to be born again. Yunalesca's husband, Lord Zaon, had been the first guardian to become the Fayth of the Final Aeon, and so became the second Sin, beginning the terrible cycle of death and destruction. So together they cast off their false hope, and found a new one.
And he had vanished with the aeons, beings created by the joining of the summoner with the spirits of people sealed in stone, the fayth. Sin existed because the fayth dreamed. To destroy Sin was to wake the fayth, free them from the stones, stop their dreaming.
And he was a dream of the fayth. But he wasn't just a dream. And because he was both real and dream, he'd hung somewhere between awareness and nothing for two years. Until Yuna had freed the fayth a second time and they gave her a choice, and a chance.
Now they were together again, floating in water and knowing a joy they hadn't had time for before.
They surfaced and Yuna gasped for air. He laughed out of sheer delight. "We weren't down that long."
"I'm . . . getting . . . better at holding my breath, but I'm not as good as you are, Star Player of the Zanarkand Abes!" She slapped at him in the water, sending up a splash, but she was smiling as she did so.
She had changed so much in two years, and he loved it. "Remember, the best blitzball players can sleep underwater."
She laughed. "I'll get there."
He ran a fond, gloved, hand through the hair that had become more like his while they had been apart. "You will."
A sudden gust blew across the surface of the water and caught their attention. He looked up at a suddenly darkening sky. "Yuna . . ."
"We need to get back."
They started swimming for the shore of Besaid Island, but either they were further out then they had planned, or something was pushing them back, because after several minutes of strong swimming, they were no closer to their home.
Lightning ran through the clouds that had obscured what had been a bright and beautiful day. The waves grew larger around them and he reached out and grabbed hold of Yuna's hand.
"I don't know what's going on, but I'm not letting go of you."
The storm was upon them impossibly fast and impossibly strong. It was almost like the chaotic waters that had surrounded Sin, transporting him from the Al Bhed ship to Besaid when he had first arrived in Spira from the dream of Zanarkand.
The waves were trying to pull them apart, but they just held on tighter, until a wave crashed over their heads and send them into blackness.
Shuna wanted to swim in the lake near the Holt. Several other elves, Wolfrider and Palace-dweller both, decided that it would be fun, and so they set out one afternoon.
They were not expecting what they saw when they arrived, though.
Floating facedown in the water was a man. A human man. In strange white and yellow and black clothing, blonde hair and tanned skin. He wasn't moving.
Shuna didn't scream. Several of the Palace-dwellers did, though. She ran into the water and was surprised to see Nightfall following behind her. It took most of them to drag him free of the lake.
They laid him on his back on the shore and were calling for the rest of the tribe when his eyes opened suddenly and he sat up.
Nightfall had an arrow in her bow in an instant, but the strange man simply looked at all of them in confusion. He looked at Nightfall, at her ears, her eyes, her hands, and then he looked at Shuna, her ears, her eyes, her hands.
"Who are you?" Somehow Shuna found the courage to ask the simple question.
She wasn't prepared for the look on the man's face. "I - I don't know."