Room 406, evening

[izzyalienqueen]

After a busy few days, Isabel was stretched out on her bed, reviewing her notes for Hunting.

The door was open.

Comments

[the_merriest]

Rikku stopped nervously, peering into Isabel's room. Okay, she got the room number right, that was a plus. She shouldn't pester her, except ... okay, maybe she should. And Isabel could always tell her to kiss off. Right? Right.

"Isabel? Hi, are you, uh, busy?"

[izzyalienqueen]

"Hi Rikku," Isabel smiled. "I'm just doing some studying but it's not a big deal. What's up?"

[the_merriest]

"Hi!" Rikku smiled back. "I just, uh. This might be silly. Or rude, or something. But you said, the other day, if you could, uh. Help? With what I'm doing? And you might have been being polite and that's totally okay if you were. But ... can I ask you, anyway?"

[izzyalienqueen]

"Sure," she nodded, sitting up and crossing her legs. "Come in, grab a seat. What do you need?"

[the_merriest]

Rikku flashed a grateful smile and snagged the nearest chair. "It's just ... you work at the library, right? I'm trying to find something that I think isn't going to be there. It's not, okay, it would be in the Special Collections section, it's just, I don't think you guys are gonna have what I need, here, since no one's heard of Spira. And I can't find anything and ... I don't know if you know where people look, if the library doesn't have what they need."

She blushed. "It's, uh. Kind of a stupid question, I know."

[izzyalienqueen]

"It's not, especially considering I've asked it myself," Isabel replied. "As for where to look? I guess it depends on what you're looking for."

[the_merriest]

"Really? Okay, thanks." Rikku smiled, a bit wistfully. "It's ... it's just that, where I'm from, things work different. Your dead move on, you don't need Summoners. No pyreflies, no fayth, and ... I need to know how all of it works. Where the fayth dream, if they even do any more. And there's nothing here to help me, because no one here has anything like that, and ..." She bit her lip. "It's not even something that forms into a question right."

[izzyalienqueen]

"What do you mean dream?" she asked curiously, wondering if it was anything like her ability to dreamwalk.

[ZOMG... So sorry, I forgot a real life commitment this morning. But I'm home now!]

[the_merriest]

Rikku bit her lip, trying to figure out how to explain it. "There's ... there are people who choose to ... not quite die. But give their spirits over to statues? And then ... they can merge with a Summoner, and I'm so bad at this, I don't understand it at all, but somehow it's their essence and ... what they dream can merge with pyreflies and become real. That's what the Aeons were, like, the fayth might be a little boy but when you Summon him, he's Bahamut, this enormous dragon-thing. Or this other woman turned into Shiva, this kind of ice goddess? It's ... that sounds strange, doesn't it?"

[izzyalienqueen]

Isabel didn't understand much of the explanation so she focused on the one part where she might possibly be able to help. "The dream is a real person?"

[the_merriest]

Rikku nodded. "Becomes one. Or, I mean. Maybe they're not real, like, how we are? But they can walk and talk and feel and love and don't know they aren't. Not until someone stops Summoning them."

She looked down for a long moment. "There was ... a city. Summoned for a thousand years. And when we freed the fayth, the dreaming stopped, and all of those people ... they vanished into thin air."

[izzyalienqueen]

"That sounds incredible," she said slowly. "I've never heard of anything like that. Is that what you're trying to do? To find them?"

[the_merriest]

Rikku shook her head. "I never knew most of them. Just one. He crossed into our world and helped us ... end things. Save the world. Even knowing what ... what it would mean for him." She closed her eyes. "I thought ... I thought maybe I could find him. And bring him back."

[izzyalienqueen]

Isabel sighed, understanding the feeling of loss and the desire to get someone back. "He sounds very special." She thought about her dreamwalking, so far it had only been on people that were relatively close physically, whether or not she would be able to reach someone that was essentially a dream. "Do you have a picture of him?"

[the_merriest]

"He ..." She looked down, thinking. "He and Yunie, they were in love. And she was supposed to die, saving the world, but we fixed it, and then he died instead, and ... that's why I was trying the whole ... ritual in the first place. She misses him so much and ..."

Rikku looked away for a long moment, then back. "No. No mementos or anything. His sword is back on Besaid, maybe I should have tried using that."

[izzyalienqueen]

Liz and Maria's faces flashed in her mind and Isabel closed her eyes. She could relate to what Rikku wanted to do. "The reason I asked about the picture. There's this thing I can do. If I had a picture of him, I might be able to contact him. If he still existed."