Path of Dreams

On a cliff hanging over the sea, she sat and thought. The soft grasses brushed against her arms, the warm air smelled of the ocean and flowers. While there was some noise at the inn behind her, the roll of the tide below was louder. In the center of the wide horizon before her, the golden sun was touching the glowing waves. So much in the world had changed, but this view was almost the same.

Much in Yuna's life had changed, but what remained the same?

Running footsteps made soft crunches in the grass. The setting was the same and the memory was close at hand. However, he was long gone, vanished as the dream he was into the dawn. And those footsteps belonged to someone smaller. A glance over to see messy blond hair was enough to confirm who it was. "What're you doing out here, Marisol?" Yuna asked.

"People inside are arguing politics again," the girl said. Although since she had a child-sized staff, what she was really up to was obvious. "Oh, but I've got it this time, Mom!"

"Do you now?" Yuna asked, smiling. Hopefully she did; failing this was an easy way to get exhausted and Marisol might end up oversleeping tomorrow when they needed to move on.

She nodded enthusiastically enough that her ponytail bobbed around like a buoy. "Yup! I was even practicing how to explain it to people who ask how. So," she put her feet together and stood to attention. "The old summoning can't be done anymore because all the former aeons were released from their sleep of centuries; they can't dream up themselves to appear to those who call them. But by knowing how to command pyreflies into magic using your own dreams as a form, you made up a new form of summoning, Mom. But we still need a form of the education and training that the old summoners were given cause the method of casting magic is different from how most people cast."

"Very good," she said.

Marisol beamed at the praise. "Thanks, I thought on that a lot. Also about why I couldn't summon like you when I can cast like you. See, I was trying to copy your summons, but those are your dreams, not mine. So I had to try something out of my own dreams, well daydreams, and I figured it out! So, here goes."

Putting both of her hands on her staff, Marisol bowed her head and closed her eyes for a moment to gather the energy of pyreflies. There were no visible pyreflies around, but bits of magic came to her from the waving grasses, the colorful flowers, the rich earth, the rolling waves, even from Yuna herself. Once Marisol got enough energy from that, she was able to attract pyreflies clear from the Farplane. That was good, as it meant that she really grasped the casting method used by summoners. She could have been one herself. Thankfully, that was no longer needed, nor even possible. No more sacrifices were needed.

Her daughter then swept her hands out, imitating her own method of summoning. The pyreflies swirled around her, turning into embers. Gathering close by, the embers fused into a fireball that kept growing. In a few seconds, the Bomb spirit opened its eyes. It broke out a grin in looking at them. "And there!" Marisol said.

"Very nice, although now you make me worry about you having a Bomb you can call up at any time," Yuna teased her. That could be trouble, although she wanted to trust her.

"Don't worry, I'll be responsible, I promise," she said. Since there were no fiends out here, the Bomb spirit vanished. That was another difference, as these spirits couldn't be kept out as long as the aeons.

"Then I'll hold you to that."

Having shown off what she wanted, Marisol sat down by her. "What're you doing out here, Mom?"

"Enjoying the sunset and reminiscing," Yuna said, looking back out to the ocean. "Your father once said that we should live here, so we could enjoy the beautiful view every evening. Though I wouldn't want too many people to end up living out here and turn it into a city without grass and flowers."

"Yeah, it's really pretty as it is," she agreed, playing with a yellow flower nearby. Then she got an eager look to her eyes. Those mismatched eyes were much like her own, but the way Marisol's expressions came out was a lot like her father. "Hey, so if we figured out how to call our dreams into summons, do you think we could find the path of dreams?"

"What kind of path are you talking about?" she said, curious to hear that she came up with this time.

Marisol pointed out at the setting sun. "Well dreams come to us when we go to sleep at night, and then they go away when we wake up at dawn. But, where are they going to and coming from? If we could find the path they take, we could find the world that dreams live in during the day. Maybe it's a place like the Farplane, but not that place. A different place."

"That would be interesting," Yuna said. And she could find him there.

"And I could meet my Dad there too, huh?" Marisol asked, looking up at her with a smile.

"I'd like that," she said. She'd like it more if there was some way to bring him back to Spira. But he had been like the aeons, supported by dreams. If he were to live with them again, he'd have to exist like a regular person somehow. Yuna had been trying to work that out for years. "Although, the pyreflies we use for summoning come from the Farplane, so maybe finding a path through summoning will end up there."

"But if we follow the dreams we use, we'll end up in the land of dreams," she argued. "Hmm, or maybe I could try to summon Dad? But he'd only be here a minute, we'd have to talk in pieces and that'd be confusing."

"I haven't been able to, but nothing says you can't try," Yuna said. Although she knew it wouldn't be him; it'd be Marisol's dream of her father instead.

"I'll try," she said. She went back to toying with the flower, but something else came to her mind. "Hey Mom? Are you gonna become the ruler of Spira?"

Yuna laughed at that unexpected question. "What makes you think I'll do that?"

She did have some good reasons. "Cause people keep stopping us to ask questions, or they follow along on the pilgrimage tour just to talk to you about big issues even when you tell them they can work it out with people who matter to the problem. When you're not around, I hear some of them say that they'd like it if you were in charge so you could advise everybody."

"I knew that," Yuna said. "They've been talking like that since my pilgrimage ended. When the Church of Yevon got revealed to be a fraud, people didn't know what to do with themselves. Their teachings used to be the guide that everyone lived by. Even those who acted happy to be free of that didn't know what to do. But, I wasn't sure what to do either, not even with my own life. How could I lead everyone else if I didn't know what to do with myself either?"

"That sounds tough," Marisol said.

She nodded. "And nobody realized how tough it would be. Well, maybe the old unsent Maesters did, but they just sent themselves away and left everyone else on Spira stranded. At first, I did work as a priestess at the Besaid Temple because I was familiar with what that entailed. And people still needed a sending after death more often than not. While I liked helping people there, I didn't feel comfortable with it. I kept dreaming of going back out on the road, on an adventure. More than that, I'm not all that wise. When someone asks me for advice in their life, I don't know what to say most of the time. I can only give them my experience and opinion."

"I think you're wise," she said. "You're my Mom, and you figured out how to do summoning again."

"That might make me clever, but not wise," Yuna said. "And staying around Besaid was a little boring, which was how I got into figuring that out again. But I took this chance to be a tour guide once you were old enough to travel with me. I hope that by getting different kinds of people to interact, see how each other live, it'll help stop the divisions that lead to fighting. It's also important that they hear the truth of what really went on, not just the stories that had been passed along until they no longer resemble truth. Although, if I became a leader of Spira, there'd be a lot more I could do to improve things."

"But I like being on the tour," Marisol said, pouting a little. That was probably why she brought the subject up. "I get to see all sorts of cool places and learn things I couldn't if I just stayed in one place. And now that I can do summon magic too, I can fight off the fiends just like you and Dad."

"You won't be doing that quite yet," Yuna said, hugging her suddenly and making her squeal in laughter. "A summoner's got to leave the front line fighting to her guardians, remember? Especially now that the spirits don't stay at our sides as long."

"But I will get strong enough to fight them, even on my own," she insisted. "And I'll find the path of dreams too! I'll work hard at it."

"Someday, I'm sure you will," Yuna said, feeling proud of her.