ETA: At first all I could think of to share was a few entertaining "WTF?!" videos of people confusing the heck out of bystanders and taking their clothes off in public, but I was thinking about the name "Saharasnow," and this drabble came to me.

__________

Saharasnow (Aulu)

Bikanel's sands were blazing beyond the metal roof, and shade was not much defense.

Lulu had filled Auron's jug twice with icewater today, willing survival. Their clothes were drenched in sweat. They lay side by side, waiting for nightfall. As always, they wasted no words.

No platitudes could promise they would find the others, find Yuna.

Failure was always an option, as they knew too well.

She had walked until the sun claimed her, until she had fallen and rolled to the foot of a dune, until the warrior who never stopped walking had carried her ten more paces before collapsing himself under a sand-pitted metal lean-to.

Auron woke minutes or hours later (had he actually slept?) to feel tiny cold drops on his face, his bare arm where he had flung his coat aside.

Hands clenched in her lap, the pale sorceress sat beside him with head bowed, hair hanging across her face. (Did she ever weep?)

The falling snow that rained around them in a gentle shower was already melting when it reached their skin.

But it was defiance. The defiance that kept the dead among the living.

Auron sat, stood, held out his hand, the one he usually kept tucked in his coat.

"Let's go."

Edited at 2009-07-25 09:57 pm (UTC)

What manner of FF6 things does she like? I can probably swing a few drabbles.

The thing she notices most is his heat.

The Empire, what she remembers of it, is the chill of steel and the harsh winds off the mountains in winter. Ruthless efficiency was the watchword, not that she had any choice in the matter; the Slave Crown enforced swift compliance and straightforward action.

Locke brings her flowers, tiny purple things stubbornly growing in the cracks of Mt. Koltz. She treasures them, and the feel of his warm, calloused skin on hers when he presses the flowers into her hands.

Most of all she treasures his smile, warm with camaraderie and reassurance.

Bless you, you two.

You know, scratch this. I'm unlocking the post now. I hope more folks will see this and drop by, too!

This

is not a story.

This is what happens after the story is over. After you turn the last page. After the last word that might have been anything is read and becomes only one. After the back cover says, "There is nothing more."

Covers always lie.

She does not arrive. She was not there, and then she always had been. Time is fluid, without a story telling what happened next. She died old, but she is not old. She is twenty-two. It is the age she always was inside. Even when she was five. Even when she was thirteen. Even when she was twenty-one. Even when she was twenty-four. Even when she was thirty-seven. Even when she was fifty. Even when she was eighty-five. She was always twenty-two.

People are layered here. He can see everything she ever was in her face. Her hair is dark, is streaked gray, is pure white, is long, is short, is loose, is braided. Her face is smooth, is wrinkled, is round, is sharp, is marked with tears, is dry with dust. Her eyes, though, her eyes are forever.

He is not waiting. There is no waiting here. There is no time to wait.

He is thirty. He was always thirty, even though he never was. He too is layered. He is scarred, unmarked, one eye shut, both eyes open, hair greying, hair black, face half-hidden, face open and honest, smiling, crying, angry, calm. He looks as he ever did.

They have not grown apart. How could they, when they have never been apart? Here, outside of the story, they have forgotten nothing, though there is always more to say. There are children, and dreams, and smiles, and friends.

Where the story is not, everything is.