A cool, gentle breeze blew across the small field as the shining sun warmed the grass growing in the corral, and I gulped down a swig of water from a canteen, letting out a sigh of relaxation before leaning back against the sturdy wooden fence. My bangs seemed to have other plans, falling loosely in front of my eyes, forcing me to brush them back behind my ears. I glanced over at the thatched cottage roof that sat underneath the sheltering boughs of the great oak tree; I'd forgotten that I'd left my hat hanging around in the upstairs room. L'il Cactus was probably using it for some purpose or another by now, maybe a blanket or something.

It was afternoon already, after all, and I was eternally grateful that today was a decidedly uneventful day. Well, uneventful for the most part, since we weren't picnicking out in the corral for nothing – I briefly heard the steady breathing of the light-haired catgirl seated next to me. Daena had showed up early this morning for a surprise visit (a nice change of pace from just the occasional letter, I did have to admit), which had no doubt contributed to Bud and Lisa's good moods, and we'd ended up taking lunch outdoors on Lisa's suggestion.

Stretching out to grab at my small sandwich, I took a nibble of it and peered out into the open pen. The sound of a child laughing carried on the wind as a green-garbed boy played around with Peeko, attempting to mimic the yellow-feathered bird's 'kweh'-ing as best he could. Not that Peeko minded the treatment, of course – he was just too focused on trying to swipe the occasional peck or three at the kid's lunch while he was preoccupied. His sister, on the other hand, was quietly fiddling with the flowers in a quiet spot near the barn, a contented smile on her face as she deftly looped the stems together.

"Hey, Bud!" I cupped my hands to my mouth and called out, and the tyke looked over at me from the middle of the corral, sitting rather blankly in the grass. He waved at me as a gesture of his paying attention. "Try to be a little more careful with your food, okay? Unless you want Peeko to start packing on the pounds!"

"Okay!" He yelled back, hopping onto his feet and lightly slapping the chocobo's belly with his free hand. Peeko chirped merrily as the boy took off across the pen, and the bird ruffled his feathers as he started to chase after his little friend. Chuckling softly under my breath, I took another chomp out of my lunch and another gulp of water from my canteen.

Daena was hunched forward, her nose buried deep in one of the books she'd picked out from the study, and I grinned as her ears began to unconsciously flick back and forth, as did her tail. I fidgeted around on the grass, trying to see what she had chosen.

It was at that point that I found myself taken by surprise, finally noticing the two things sticking outward from her outfit, and I quirked an eyebrow upward at the sight of them. I managed to spy the title of her book (The Four Dragons and Other Assorted Legends), but my interest lay elsewhere now. "Huh... hey, uh, Daena?"

"Mm?" She grunted softly in acknowledgment, her green eyes flicking back and forth across each page of the mythology book. Seeing as she was too wrapped up in her reading, I sat up straighter against the fence and reaching over, taking the thing between my thumb and forefinger and tugging lightly. She gasped in surprise, letting the book flop closed on her hand as she turned to look over her shoulder at me. "O-oh! Hey, what are you doing?"

"Daena, what's with the wings?" I remarked, poking and prodding gently at the titular tiny pair of white wings attached to the backside of her trademark blue vest. Her tail had stiffened in shock at my first touch, but quickly fell down and wagged in the warm grass. "Why do you have them? For that matter, why did I not realize you had them until just now?"

I shuffled around on the grass so I could take both wings into each hand, gently moving them back and forth in a flapping motion. The catgirl's eyes widened slightly, as did my grin, and she closed the book fully and placed it at her side, her mouth twitching upward at my playful gesturing. "You mean you didn't notice them before?"

"No, not really, I think. Does this mean you're some kind of angel kitty-cat? Can you fly?" I replied cheekily, listening to her vest shift around as I ran my fingers across the feathers. They were surprisingly soft, but definitely weren't actual appendages by any stretch of the imagination.

The catgirl blinked a couple times at my words, and probably blushed underneath her fur, not that I was able to tell. "E-er... no, they're just part of my clothing, that's all. They're no different from a cloak or a pair of gloves... or that goofy hat that you're almost always wearing."

"That's a low blow, Daena..." She folded her arms and stuck her tongue out at me, and I recoiled, placing a hand to my chest in mock indignation. I quickly put on a pained expression to go with my pose, eliciting a soft laugh from the girl. "That 'goofy' hat helps to protect my head from the dangers of having Peeko poke at my hair while we're traveling!"

"And what do the feathers on the front of the hat do?" She asked, stifling her chuckling, and I opened my mouth to retort, only to find that... she actually had made a good point. Darn. She laughed triumphantly as I dug into the deeper parts of my brain for a response, and she reached back with her arms to pry mine away from the tiny wings on her vest.

"They make me look cool?" I said lamely with a shrug of my shoulders, and Daena snorted, rubbing her nose with a finger as she mimicked my posture, leaning back against the neighboring fencepost. "But I mean, I've never seen any of the others at Gato with wings on their outfits. They have to mean something in particular, right?"

Daena scooped my copy of The Four Dragons up into her lap, absently thumbing through the pages to try and find where she had left off. "They're just a personal thing, really. I would sometimes look for feathers that fell off of the birds that flew around the Grottoes. Matilda... Irwin and Escad and I, we would hide them in a little place in town so they wouldn't float away. We collected them."

"Ahh." I folded my arms, taking another, less-intrusive look at the wings sticking out from her back, pushing the catgirl's tail away so I wouldn't sit on it by accident. "So after a while you had them bundled up and stuck onto your outfit. That's pretty neat of you, actually."

And I wasn't joking around when I said that. It very much sounded like something Daena would do. The catgirl shyly wrapped a lock of hair around her fingers as she glanced at me out of the corner of her eyes, and I smiled back at her before hastily checking on Bud and Lisa. The former was still playing around with Peeko, the chocobo dead-set on getting that sandwich; the latter had left her flower crowns aside to start eating. "I'm a little surprised that they're still hanging on, though. With the scrapes either of us tend to get in, I'd have though they'd have gotten themselves munched off by a monster."

"Well, that's why I'm always careful about that," She replied, and the both of us paused for a few moments as we took in the pleasant sound of pages turning. The breeze kicked up again, shaking a few of the upper branches of the large tree nearby, and I took the opportunity to wipe away a few beads of sweat forming on my brow. I grabbed my sandwich and took a bite out of it as Daena continued. "But no, to answer your question, they're not some symbol of me being an 'angel kitty-cat', and no, I can't use the wings to fly."

"Too bad." I folded my arms as she finally found her place in the book. "If you and the rest of the people in Gato could fly, I bet that you could give Pelican a run for her money with the mail!"

"If we all could fly, I think it would be much easier for the Temple of Healing to help people," Daena mused thoughtfully before giggling brightly, gesturing towards the copy of The Four Dragons in her lap. "But it does sound really funny, you're right. Can you imagine a bunch of priestesses from the temple swooping around town like a flock of birds?"

She let out another snort of amusement, and I grinned as well, picturing it in my mind's eye: the pious nuns in Gato flying around with a comically-undersized set of wings, traveling in formations across Fa'diel's countryside and occasionally getting distracted by picnickers lounging at a little cottage. I wasn't sure if Daena was thinking of exactly the same things I was, but she seemed to be enjoying the entertaining thought anyway.

"Wo-woaah- look out!"

We both raised our heads to attention, our muscles tensing up as we stared out into the corral. Bud had called out to us, a panicked look on his face as he shook his head wildly. I sucked in a breath as I noticed him clinging from Peeko's beak, likely an attempt at getting his lunch back from the chocobo once the bird had managed to steal it from him. The bird and boy rushed towards Daena and I at high speed, and I tried to help the catgirl onto her feet, but it was too late.

Peeko ended up losing his footing just before us anyway, and he toppled over on our heads, sending himself, Bud, Daena and I flat into the grass. I tried to open my eyes as I struggled against the chocobo's soft belly, but ended up getting an eyeful of yellow everything for my trouble; Daena was slowly inching her way out from under the bird, who was 'kweh'-ing excitedly all the while. I heard Lisa give a shout, and I managed to poke my head out into the open just in time to see the girl jog over from across the corral.

With a shove, I threw my weight against Peeko, and Daena quickly followed suit, the two of us unable to really do anything else since we'd left our weapons in the house (and why would we have needed them anyway, I had thought earlier). With Bud and Lisa's help, the catgirl and I rolled out onto the field, and the two kids yelped in surprise as the chocobo managed to right himself, flapping his wings happily as he did so. The crash seemed to have loosened some of his feathers, which were flung into the air with each beat of his wings.

"There you go, you big rascal," I chided playfully, dusting my pants off as I gave Peeko a quick once-over. He didn't seem particularly injured, and I sighed in relief, taking the chance to swipe my thankfully-unharmed copy of The Four Dragons out of danger.

I glanced at Bud, who was scratching the top of his head awkwardly, and I grinned knowingly. "And as for you... I thought I told you to be careful with your food."

"Sorry..." The kid looked away, hiding his eyes behind his mop of purple hair, and I laughed, squatting down a bit to tousle the top of his head. Peeko casually (for a chocobo) added a 'kweh', as if nothing had happened in the first place, and he stomped his talons in preparation for grazing. Lisa was standing on her tiptoes as she passed something to Daena, and I looked over as Peeko trotted away, leaving a trail of yellow feathers in his wake.

"You okay, Dae... na..." I trailed off as she came into sight, feeling a beaming smile of amusement wriggle its way onto my face. Lisa had given her one of the flower crowns she made, which she was currently in the process of slipping between her ears, but that wasn't the funny thing.

No, the funny thing was the gaggle of chocobo feathers, pointing every which way, that were currently stuck in her hair, though her fiddling with the flower crown helped to dislodge a few of them, and they drifted onto her feet. If it wasn't so silly, she'd probably have looked cute with the flowers on.

"Yeah, I'm just fine...?" Daena peeked over at me and trailed off similarly when she noticed my staring, and she had a similar reaction to boot, the corners of her mouth twitching upward as she brought a hand to her face to stifle her inevitable chuckling. "O-oh... wait, are they in my hair too?"

"Wait, too?" I exclaimed, and I reached up to grope blindly at my head – I really should have kept my hat on today – and a yellow feather fell onto my nose, tickling my nostrils. A second or two later, I let out a hearty sneeze, the force of which helped some more feathers fall to the ground. Daena and I locked eyes in a haze of bird fluff, her tail holding itself aloft.

We both burst into peals of laughter at each other, doubling over as the air left our lungs, and Bud and Lisa joined in with us briefly, the former taking the opportunity to practice his evil-sorcerer laughter from back when I'd met him. It was a good few minutes before we began to quiet down, and I felt my eyes start to water as I gasped for breath. Daena and I eventually sank down back onto the grass, feeling the wind blow onto us as I crawled over to help her pick the last of the feathers out.

"I must look ridiculous," She said, still chuckling as I carefully rooted through her dirty-blonde bangs, making sure not to break Lisa's flower crown in the process. "Thanks for helping, though."

"Hey, I have to look just as laughable, or else you wouldn't have been laughing with me," I pointed out, patting her shoulder as I finished up, and I gathered the various fallen feathers from the ground, stuffing the bundle of yellow-hued feathers into my pocket. "And I'm glad to help, Daena. Maybe once we're done with lunch, we can look around the house for a place to store these things, like you did with your friends before."

The catgirl was silent for a few moments as we switched places, and I strained myself to try and look at her out of the corner of my eyes. Alas, it was to no avail, and I simply sat in place, watching Bud and Lisa chat to themselves while Peeko grazed across the corral. After a few moments, a blue glove passed me a fistful of feathers, and I accepted them with a handshake, twisting around to look at her. She smiled gratefully, adjusting the fit of her flower crown with a happy smile. "I think that's a great idea."

I returned the smile and nodded, handing her the book she'd been reading, and we settled back down against the fenceposts to let the decidedly uneventful day pass us by. Daena's tiny white wings just brushed up against the edges of her arms from the wind, and I closed my eyes, relaxing amidst the sound of turning pages and gentle breezes.

A/N: oh god what am I doing I've only barely began my own first playthrough of the game ARGH

Left the hero's name, as well as the timeframe in relation to the Fairie arc, unmentioned for the sake of smoother reading (and above-mentioned reason, oops)