The further they got from Ul'dah, the less K'ile mourned the family that he'd departed from. He glanced in the general direction he though the city was, inhaled, sighed. He could still smell his niece's scent lingering about the cart where she'd ridden or placed her hands. It was like the echo of a scent, something he could make out this far from the city. It was weak, though.
He mourned less, but as he looked back north, he frowned more deeply. The cessation of his mourning was not acceptance, but instead forgetting. In his mind, K'airos and K'piru were already becoming less real. As if Ul'dah existed in a dream, and he were awakening back into a world where they were still dead.
K'ile found himself breathing heavy, ears dipping lower, tail lazier in its motions. As he learned better how to guide the Chocobo, he noticed her could leave them walk on their own for periods of time. During such times he would move back in the cart, closer to K'luha. He could breathe easier when he ws closer to her, even as sad as she was. And he was beginning to notice that she was very sad.
"We're going to do alright, Luha," he said to her at once such point, as they moved slowly through the migrating dunes. He meant it more as self-assurance, hoping that maybe, if she concurred, he might actually be able to convince himself.
Things were taking a great toll of K'luha. She was paying for her foolish behavior in a way more terrible than being strapped to a board. Most of the journey, she spent asleep. And when she was awake she still felt as if she were asleep. And it began to seem as if it was all just feverish dreaming.Â
And when she began dreaming in her sickened sleep, she lost track of when things were a dream and when it was real. K'luha had lost her perception of time and space and people in the deafening pain and silence of her prison.Â
Occasionally she felt as if something solid was nearby to grasp, but mostly she felt sick. And it was at some time or place during this strange void that Luha thought she heard someone say something to her. But her voide was stuck somewhere she didn't know anymore, and didn't seem to reply at all, but to let her head kind of fall forward with the movement of the carriage.
Lingering on the top of the items they were shipping home, K'ile watched the Chocobo who were lazily walking along. The dunes were simple, and even though these particular birds hadn't yet figured out how to keep their footing on the sand, it was practically impossible for them to crash or overturn the carriage for at least a few miles.
So he diverted his attention away from them, to K'luha, moving to where she was at the back of the carriage. He hated the way the job of driving separated him from her; he was not a person who was meant to be alone, either in illusion or in fact, and for some reason that extra yalm of distance had been weighing on him. He hadn't been able to get a clear look at her from where he'd been sitting, and she hadn't responded to him in some time.
As K'ile made his way to her, he moved one of the crates so that it was between the sun and the woman, putting her face in merciful shadow. He took a water skin from where it sat atop one of the casks that K'airos had given them.
"Luha, hey," he said. "Are you doing alright back here? You've been kind of quiet."
To K'ile, there were in the open dunes, but from K'luha's point of view they were travelling through the valley she had seen once as a child. A valley she had knocked her brothers and sisters into with huge thick rib bones spearing through the endless sand. The dunes rose high above them on either side that suddenly cast a shadow on her face, easing the burning sun off of her face.Â
And as they travelled K'luha could make out the moaning and suffering forms of her family left behind. Her brothers and her exiled sister, her aunts and uncles, and extended family. Their forms burned and screamed and moaned around as they carriage ever moved forward in an uneasing motion. As if it were a boat crossing an ocean of sand unto oblivion. And far off in the distance, she saw the form of her daughter. And it was all she could do to watch the mangled form of what she thought would be her son rise from the depths of the sand and drag her daughter down as well.Â
But in reality, none of these were true. K'luha just remained glassy eyed and silent to K'ile's question.
Figuring maybe she was overheated, K'ile opened the water skin and poured some water over her forehead and the bidge of her nose.
K'luha didn't seem to react for a few moments. Until she lifted her head with a small start, jolted out of whatever she had been enduring. She blinked a few times as water dripped down her forehead and nose onto her chest. Luha didn't immediately recognize K'ile and half stared at him strangely for a moment.
"Hey, I know your arms aren't broken." K'ile reached down and pulled one of K'luha's hands up, putting it to the water skin, "Drink some. You look dehydrated or something."
Luha looked slowly towards the water skin. Her arms offered no resistance to K'ile's direction. But also didn't stay up, instead sort of limply dropping back down to her side and hanging there.
Looking a bit annoyed, K'ile took up the water skin and put it to K'luha's lips to pour some into her mouth, pressing her head back as he did so. "Come on, don't get all dramatic on me."
Luha didn't fight K'ile on this matter either. Out of sheer instinct, she swallowed the water. But she still didn't reply to K'ile.
"There you go." He closed up the skin and and set it at Luha's side, against her leg. "Drink a bit more or you'll start feeling worse. Hear?"
Luha did not hear. Or reply. Her head simply dropped down going limp, as if she had gone back to sleep.
K'ile watched Luha in silence for a long moment, putting a hand against her cheek to support her head. He sighed, leaned forward and put his face beside hers, muttering into her ear, "Are you alright, Luha?"
K'luha murmured faintly at the question, but her murmuring was unintelligible and muffled at best. Her ears flicked slowly in opposite directions, as if even her most natural of insticts were confused and drowsy.
"I'll get you home soon," K'ile said, petting one side of K'luha's head and kissing the other, before pulling away from her. "We'll be fine."
This earned another small unintelligible murmur before Luha's ears confused moved again.
Unhappily, K'ile stood away from K'luha, saying, "Make sure you drink some water," before crawling back up to the front of the carriage just in time to keep the Chocobo from catching the yolk on one of the large rib-bones sticking up out of the sand.
Luha weakly lifted her heavy head. Her eyes tried to focus on the land passing by them. The sand was slowly rising to high dunes besides them. And from the high dunes, surrounding them on either side were bones. Thick and enormous, stabbing through the sands. Taken aback, Luha's ears flattened against her head, and she looked clusmily to either side.
"You guys be more careful," K'ile was saying to the chocobo, figuring he might as well make a habit of talking to things that didn't respond, since he was doing it so much lately. "I really shouldn't have to check in on you guys every two minutes. Your worse at this than I am."
As they ventured further, the dunes rose so high it blocked the the sun until it was mottled and shining faintly on them through the thick bones poking through sand up ahead. The area was eerie, covered in bones and strangely enough quills. Luha felt a cold chill through her body as they moved forward. This wasn't a place they should be. It wasn't a place they should go.Â
She opened her mouth to try and talk. To protest, but her lips refused to utter sound. But the fear creeping up her spine and into her head forced her to try again, sputtering and hissing until she could managed the word,Â
"Back."
Trying to figure out what to do with the reins on the Chocobo, one of K'ile's ears twitched and he looked around in mild confusion, as though he'd heard something strange on the wind. He looked up at the rising dunes, around at the bones, glanced back behind them but not at Luha specifically.
Mumbled and stuttering through her voice, Luha pursed her lips and said it again, most insitantly.Â
"Back."
K'ile finally looked at Luhua, knitting his brow. "What?"
"Back." She repeated hoarsely.
"Back what?"
K'luha's ears flattened again and her head sort of limply rolled over onto her shoulder. "Back..." She repeated more faintly, as if talking was incredibly taxing.
Turning a bit more around, K'ile held his hands up in gesture for emphasis, "What are you talking about? Really?"
As if to answer for Luha, there was a loud and dark snarl that echoed through the shadow tomb of the unknown. K'luha seemed to faintly cringe at the noise, but didn't speak further.
K'ile turned back to the front of the carriage, gazing into the duned shadows. The desert was so bright around them that the bone-decorated value seemed especially dark, the Seeker's eyes not adapting very well to the dark. What he had heard he usually would've smelled first, but now that he had, he couldn't miss it.
He pulled on the reins of the chocobo, "Stop for a second," the creatures protesting the gesture because apparently he hadn't done it right. He didn't really have time for that though. He hauled on the rains hard enough to pull the necks on the Chocobo back, making them stumble. "I said stop!"
Putting botht he reins in one hand and taking his spear from the cart in the other, K'ile jumped down to pull the chocobo sideways and force them to turn around.
There was another grumbling noise, almost like snoring, and a faint breeze through the valley. Luha shivered again.
Getting the chocobo to urn the carriage around, he pulled the birds forward and had them start walking back out the way they came in. The valley wasn't a place that K'ile was familiar with, but not matter how tempting a walk in the shade was, it wasn't worth getting turned around and dealing with unknowns. They'd go around.
The further they got out of the valley the less whatever it was in there growled. And finally Luha faintly perked her ears when she could feel a bit of sunlight on her again.
Once K'ile felt the warmth of the sun agitating the sunbruns across his shoulders , neck and cheeks, he clambered back up onto his carraige and lay his spear across it. He stood, staring back into the valley as the chocobo walked away from it, and muttered, "Guess that place must have a den or two."
He mourned less, but as he looked back north, he frowned more deeply. The cessation of his mourning was not acceptance, but instead forgetting. In his mind, K'airos and K'piru were already becoming less real. As if Ul'dah existed in a dream, and he were awakening back into a world where they were still dead.
K'ile found himself breathing heavy, ears dipping lower, tail lazier in its motions. As he learned better how to guide the Chocobo, he noticed her could leave them walk on their own for periods of time. During such times he would move back in the cart, closer to K'luha. He could breathe easier when he ws closer to her, even as sad as she was. And he was beginning to notice that she was very sad.
"We're going to do alright, Luha," he said to her at once such point, as they moved slowly through the migrating dunes. He meant it more as self-assurance, hoping that maybe, if she concurred, he might actually be able to convince himself.
Things were taking a great toll of K'luha. She was paying for her foolish behavior in a way more terrible than being strapped to a board. Most of the journey, she spent asleep. And when she was awake she still felt as if she were asleep. And it began to seem as if it was all just feverish dreaming.Â
And when she began dreaming in her sickened sleep, she lost track of when things were a dream and when it was real. K'luha had lost her perception of time and space and people in the deafening pain and silence of her prison.Â
Occasionally she felt as if something solid was nearby to grasp, but mostly she felt sick. And it was at some time or place during this strange void that Luha thought she heard someone say something to her. But her voide was stuck somewhere she didn't know anymore, and didn't seem to reply at all, but to let her head kind of fall forward with the movement of the carriage.
Lingering on the top of the items they were shipping home, K'ile watched the Chocobo who were lazily walking along. The dunes were simple, and even though these particular birds hadn't yet figured out how to keep their footing on the sand, it was practically impossible for them to crash or overturn the carriage for at least a few miles.
So he diverted his attention away from them, to K'luha, moving to where she was at the back of the carriage. He hated the way the job of driving separated him from her; he was not a person who was meant to be alone, either in illusion or in fact, and for some reason that extra yalm of distance had been weighing on him. He hadn't been able to get a clear look at her from where he'd been sitting, and she hadn't responded to him in some time.
As K'ile made his way to her, he moved one of the crates so that it was between the sun and the woman, putting her face in merciful shadow. He took a water skin from where it sat atop one of the casks that K'airos had given them.
"Luha, hey," he said. "Are you doing alright back here? You've been kind of quiet."
To K'ile, there were in the open dunes, but from K'luha's point of view they were travelling through the valley she had seen once as a child. A valley she had knocked her brothers and sisters into with huge thick rib bones spearing through the endless sand. The dunes rose high above them on either side that suddenly cast a shadow on her face, easing the burning sun off of her face.Â
And as they travelled K'luha could make out the moaning and suffering forms of her family left behind. Her brothers and her exiled sister, her aunts and uncles, and extended family. Their forms burned and screamed and moaned around as they carriage ever moved forward in an uneasing motion. As if it were a boat crossing an ocean of sand unto oblivion. And far off in the distance, she saw the form of her daughter. And it was all she could do to watch the mangled form of what she thought would be her son rise from the depths of the sand and drag her daughter down as well.Â
But in reality, none of these were true. K'luha just remained glassy eyed and silent to K'ile's question.
Figuring maybe she was overheated, K'ile opened the water skin and poured some water over her forehead and the bidge of her nose.
K'luha didn't seem to react for a few moments. Until she lifted her head with a small start, jolted out of whatever she had been enduring. She blinked a few times as water dripped down her forehead and nose onto her chest. Luha didn't immediately recognize K'ile and half stared at him strangely for a moment.
"Hey, I know your arms aren't broken." K'ile reached down and pulled one of K'luha's hands up, putting it to the water skin, "Drink some. You look dehydrated or something."
Luha looked slowly towards the water skin. Her arms offered no resistance to K'ile's direction. But also didn't stay up, instead sort of limply dropping back down to her side and hanging there.
Looking a bit annoyed, K'ile took up the water skin and put it to K'luha's lips to pour some into her mouth, pressing her head back as he did so. "Come on, don't get all dramatic on me."
Luha didn't fight K'ile on this matter either. Out of sheer instinct, she swallowed the water. But she still didn't reply to K'ile.
"There you go." He closed up the skin and and set it at Luha's side, against her leg. "Drink a bit more or you'll start feeling worse. Hear?"
Luha did not hear. Or reply. Her head simply dropped down going limp, as if she had gone back to sleep.
K'ile watched Luha in silence for a long moment, putting a hand against her cheek to support her head. He sighed, leaned forward and put his face beside hers, muttering into her ear, "Are you alright, Luha?"
K'luha murmured faintly at the question, but her murmuring was unintelligible and muffled at best. Her ears flicked slowly in opposite directions, as if even her most natural of insticts were confused and drowsy.
"I'll get you home soon," K'ile said, petting one side of K'luha's head and kissing the other, before pulling away from her. "We'll be fine."
This earned another small unintelligible murmur before Luha's ears confused moved again.
Unhappily, K'ile stood away from K'luha, saying, "Make sure you drink some water," before crawling back up to the front of the carriage just in time to keep the Chocobo from catching the yolk on one of the large rib-bones sticking up out of the sand.
Luha weakly lifted her heavy head. Her eyes tried to focus on the land passing by them. The sand was slowly rising to high dunes besides them. And from the high dunes, surrounding them on either side were bones. Thick and enormous, stabbing through the sands. Taken aback, Luha's ears flattened against her head, and she looked clusmily to either side.
"You guys be more careful," K'ile was saying to the chocobo, figuring he might as well make a habit of talking to things that didn't respond, since he was doing it so much lately. "I really shouldn't have to check in on you guys every two minutes. Your worse at this than I am."
As they ventured further, the dunes rose so high it blocked the the sun until it was mottled and shining faintly on them through the thick bones poking through sand up ahead. The area was eerie, covered in bones and strangely enough quills. Luha felt a cold chill through her body as they moved forward. This wasn't a place they should be. It wasn't a place they should go.Â
She opened her mouth to try and talk. To protest, but her lips refused to utter sound. But the fear creeping up her spine and into her head forced her to try again, sputtering and hissing until she could managed the word,Â
"Back."
Trying to figure out what to do with the reins on the Chocobo, one of K'ile's ears twitched and he looked around in mild confusion, as though he'd heard something strange on the wind. He looked up at the rising dunes, around at the bones, glanced back behind them but not at Luha specifically.
Mumbled and stuttering through her voice, Luha pursed her lips and said it again, most insitantly.Â
"Back."
K'ile finally looked at Luhua, knitting his brow. "What?"
"Back." She repeated hoarsely.
"Back what?"
K'luha's ears flattened again and her head sort of limply rolled over onto her shoulder. "Back..." She repeated more faintly, as if talking was incredibly taxing.
Turning a bit more around, K'ile held his hands up in gesture for emphasis, "What are you talking about? Really?"
As if to answer for Luha, there was a loud and dark snarl that echoed through the shadow tomb of the unknown. K'luha seemed to faintly cringe at the noise, but didn't speak further.
K'ile turned back to the front of the carriage, gazing into the duned shadows. The desert was so bright around them that the bone-decorated value seemed especially dark, the Seeker's eyes not adapting very well to the dark. What he had heard he usually would've smelled first, but now that he had, he couldn't miss it.
He pulled on the reins of the chocobo, "Stop for a second," the creatures protesting the gesture because apparently he hadn't done it right. He didn't really have time for that though. He hauled on the rains hard enough to pull the necks on the Chocobo back, making them stumble. "I said stop!"
Putting botht he reins in one hand and taking his spear from the cart in the other, K'ile jumped down to pull the chocobo sideways and force them to turn around.
There was another grumbling noise, almost like snoring, and a faint breeze through the valley. Luha shivered again.
Getting the chocobo to urn the carriage around, he pulled the birds forward and had them start walking back out the way they came in. The valley wasn't a place that K'ile was familiar with, but not matter how tempting a walk in the shade was, it wasn't worth getting turned around and dealing with unknowns. They'd go around.
The further they got out of the valley the less whatever it was in there growled. And finally Luha faintly perked her ears when she could feel a bit of sunlight on her again.
Once K'ile felt the warmth of the sun agitating the sunbruns across his shoulders , neck and cheeks, he clambered back up onto his carraige and lay his spear across it. He stood, staring back into the valley as the chocobo walked away from it, and muttered, "Guess that place must have a den or two."
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