FFX: Sacred Threads
Jun. 12th, 2006 01:22 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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brokenprismTitle: Sacred Threads
For: FFX
Characters: Yuna
Rating: T
Warnings: angst, etc.
Spirans are a patchwork people: lives constantly torn apart and sewn back together, rebuilt with pieces that barely fit. Spirans thrive on mismatch and glue and partial memories and everyone's clothes came from someone before them, someone they loved and lost. Bits and pieces, shards and scars: that's how Spira dresses itself, to honor those who left before.
Summoner Yuna is nothing new: she is all pieces and parts from the past, only washed and shined and rearranged. The sleeves she wears, for example, are part of a summoner's traditional garb; but only she and Lulu know that they were painstakingly sewn from an old cloak Yuna outgrew at the age of six but refused to discard. Her skirt comes from a robe her mother had worn once, to dance with her father. Her obi was pieced together from an old robe of her father's, before he left on pilgrimage. The beads in her hair are all patchwork, gifts and tokens from Besaid's dead she has honored. She is a conglomerate of other souls, sacred and lost, knotted together with thread and her own powerful gritty hope.
Why, Tidus asks, and he's serious: Everyone spends such time in the mornings dressing and wrapping and tying like it's a sacred ritual, when really it's just clothes. It's too reverent: aren't they on a journey, aren't they trying to get somewhere? Don't they have to be able to fight, be able to move?
Yuna knows her guardians follow the same sacred unspoken tradition. She does not know what Lulu did to earn the belts she wears because the one time she asked the normally stoic mage simply said "Um," and walked away: but she knows there were trials and tests and that Lulu cares for the belts like they were penance, slowly checking them once a week, keeping them soft, and stitching up what had torn.
Likewise she knows most of Wakka's blitzball garb came from Chappu because she sewed it for him; Wakka couldn't bear to wear Chappu's things outright but couldn't bear to throw it all into a chest to save for never, so young Yuna had torn it all apart and pieced it all together from scratch, making Wakka a new uniform that was also old, and giving it to him on Holy Day, which made him cry.
Kimahri is the same way, she knows, although he won't tell her much about the furs he wears to honor his ancestors. It's a Ronso thing she heard once as a rumour - the ritual of the skins - but Yuna isn't as disturbed as she should be, for she's wearing the skins of her ancestors as well, in a way. Kimahri's beads and stones come from Mount Gagazet, she knows that well enough, for he gifted her with one such precious stone, now tied firmly in her braid.
The Al Bhed are slightly different because they must dress to protect themselves against sun and sea and sand: but Yuna knows that Rikku's beads and feathers are treasures in themselves from a childhood Yuna can't remember. Al Bhed don't believe much in memories but Rikku was never perfect and she still clutches them sometimes in her sleep.
The only mystery is Sir Auron, but he is no mystery, for he wears his bitter memories in his face.
So when Tidus asks her why everyone spends so much time in the mornings and evenings, stitching and patching and tidying, she doesn't know what to say, because her people are a patchwork people and sometimes it's all they have of what came before.
She fingers the charms in her hair like a prayer. "Because ... because sometimes these threads are what defines us as ourselves." It's not the truth, but she doesn't know how else to explain the ritual to someone who never accepted a token from a dying hand before giving a Sending.
It's the only way Spirans can define themselves: pieces and parts of the dead.
For: FFX
Characters: Yuna
Rating: T
Warnings: angst, etc.
Spirans are a patchwork people: lives constantly torn apart and sewn back together, rebuilt with pieces that barely fit. Spirans thrive on mismatch and glue and partial memories and everyone's clothes came from someone before them, someone they loved and lost. Bits and pieces, shards and scars: that's how Spira dresses itself, to honor those who left before.
Summoner Yuna is nothing new: she is all pieces and parts from the past, only washed and shined and rearranged. The sleeves she wears, for example, are part of a summoner's traditional garb; but only she and Lulu know that they were painstakingly sewn from an old cloak Yuna outgrew at the age of six but refused to discard. Her skirt comes from a robe her mother had worn once, to dance with her father. Her obi was pieced together from an old robe of her father's, before he left on pilgrimage. The beads in her hair are all patchwork, gifts and tokens from Besaid's dead she has honored. She is a conglomerate of other souls, sacred and lost, knotted together with thread and her own powerful gritty hope.
Why, Tidus asks, and he's serious: Everyone spends such time in the mornings dressing and wrapping and tying like it's a sacred ritual, when really it's just clothes. It's too reverent: aren't they on a journey, aren't they trying to get somewhere? Don't they have to be able to fight, be able to move?
Yuna knows her guardians follow the same sacred unspoken tradition. She does not know what Lulu did to earn the belts she wears because the one time she asked the normally stoic mage simply said "Um," and walked away: but she knows there were trials and tests and that Lulu cares for the belts like they were penance, slowly checking them once a week, keeping them soft, and stitching up what had torn.
Likewise she knows most of Wakka's blitzball garb came from Chappu because she sewed it for him; Wakka couldn't bear to wear Chappu's things outright but couldn't bear to throw it all into a chest to save for never, so young Yuna had torn it all apart and pieced it all together from scratch, making Wakka a new uniform that was also old, and giving it to him on Holy Day, which made him cry.
Kimahri is the same way, she knows, although he won't tell her much about the furs he wears to honor his ancestors. It's a Ronso thing she heard once as a rumour - the ritual of the skins - but Yuna isn't as disturbed as she should be, for she's wearing the skins of her ancestors as well, in a way. Kimahri's beads and stones come from Mount Gagazet, she knows that well enough, for he gifted her with one such precious stone, now tied firmly in her braid.
The Al Bhed are slightly different because they must dress to protect themselves against sun and sea and sand: but Yuna knows that Rikku's beads and feathers are treasures in themselves from a childhood Yuna can't remember. Al Bhed don't believe much in memories but Rikku was never perfect and she still clutches them sometimes in her sleep.
The only mystery is Sir Auron, but he is no mystery, for he wears his bitter memories in his face.
So when Tidus asks her why everyone spends so much time in the mornings and evenings, stitching and patching and tidying, she doesn't know what to say, because her people are a patchwork people and sometimes it's all they have of what came before.
She fingers the charms in her hair like a prayer. "Because ... because sometimes these threads are what defines us as ourselves." It's not the truth, but she doesn't know how else to explain the ritual to someone who never accepted a token from a dying hand before giving a Sending.
It's the only way Spirans can define themselves: pieces and parts of the dead.
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