Fanfiction: "The Next Blank Page"

[deemoyza]

Title: "The Next Blank Page" (1,674 words)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy X
Rating/Warnings: General Audiences / No Warnings Apply
Characters: Lulu, Yuna
Summary: A year after helping Yuna defeat Yu Yevon, Lulu feels adrift in the world, in her own life. But a late-night conversation with Yuna and a carelessly dropped sphere plant the seeds of a new dream, and the courage to follow it.
Notes: Originally written in response to a Snowflake Challenge post.

The night was warm and humid, even with the entrance to her hut flung open, and Lulu wiped the sweat from her brow and returned to her loom. A year after their victory over Yu Yevon, her remaining comrades had found their respective places in this new world—Yuna receiving visitors in the temple and calming their crises of faith without Yevon, Rikku excavating spheres to piece together Spira's history, Wakka becoming the coach for the Aurochs, and Kimahri becoming Elder of the Ronso—and left her behind. She took to spending her days with the weaving-women of the island and tried to find fulfillment in her new vocation.

Tidus had always spoken of lives as stories, and he'd loudly proclaimed his own, like a child clinging to their favorite toy, whenever he felt threatened. Lulu found it annoying, initially, and throughout most of the pilgrimage. But now, sitting at her loom, the cheers and celebration that had welcomed her home a distant memory, she wondered what story her life would tell, and whether it was even coherent at all.

Her life, it seemed, proceeded in segments, each with a clear beginning and end: her early days in the temples, after her parents died; her pilgrimage with Lady Ginnem, until Lady Ginnem died; those brief idyllic years in Besaid, and in Chappu's arms, until he died; Father Zuke's pilgrimage, Yuna's pilgrimage, and now here. The only common thread she could find among them was death. As an end or as a beginning or as a shadow hovering at the edge of her consciousness, it ran through her life, stringing together her emotions and her decisions, tying them all together in a sad and morbid tale.

If her life truly was her story, she couldn't say where she currently stood in the narrative. She'd lost her place, over and over again, but she couldn't stop the story from unfolding, couldn't help but be pulled along, like the threads in her loom.

Perhaps this was all there was for her. The thought passed through her mind, heavy and gray, threatening to drag her heart down with it. She abandoned her place at the loom with a sigh and stepped outside her hut. The smell of the evening's bonfire still hung in the air, and a symphony of night creatures drifted in from the forest. She turned toward the temple and saw Yuna standing beneath its arches, clad in a thin white nightgown, looking out to the sea. Lulu smiled and approached her.

"You cannot sleep?" she asked. Yuna shook her head. "You should at least try to," Lulu continued, a teasing lilt in her voice.  "People do not make the journey here to speak with a drowsy High Summoner."

Yuna shrugged. Such an unfamiliar, apathetic reaction from her.