"I know. Let me help," he repeats. "I'll help find the bodies and clear debris and whatever else. Point me at where I can be useful."

...yeah. That's—that's good. A good idea. Azym follows Zei to do the same.

The Aurochs and Wakka and Kimahri and the Crusaders and the boat's crew all join them, so soon enough they are all coordinating to deal with—all of the everything.

Lulu stays on the beach relaying requests and serving mostly as communication liaison.d

They seem to be prioritising recovering the bodies, even those that aren't... whole. Even if it's just pieces.

Azym doesn't question it. Whether there's a practical reason or a purely sentimental one, these people have just—had their life upended, destroyed, changed forever. They deserve to have their wishes respected.

He can sympathise.

They work well into the evening and by the time they've determined they won't be able to find any more bodies or relevant parts the sun is setting. People at the beach have been hard at work putting them in adorned coffins, each one individually carved just then and there with the name of the deceased. A few of the coffins stand empty, but that was only to be expected. All of them have good luck charms and flower garlands attached.

Very few people talked, beyond the strictly necessary. The mourners all worked, with whatever they could. The grief was palpable in the air, thick enough to cut with a sword, but no one cried all afternoon. Not even the children.

When most of the work seems to be done, the locals start pushing the coffins towards the sea, where they float lazily on the water.

Azym is still not questioning their customs, not talking, just helping, but it still strikes him as very odd. What's the point of recovering the bodies only to put them in boxes then return them to sea?

As the villagers all start clustering around them—around Zei in particular—he gets his answer in the sound of drums.

Zei's feet are bare, and as he steps onto the water he does not sink. Walking on the surface, he makes his way towards the rough center of the coffins, and starts—dancing.

The drums aren't coming from anywhere. Or they're coming from everywhere. Or they're coming from the sea—from the dead. For a few seconds it is just the drums, and the waves, and Zei's dance, twirling his staff from one hand to the other and extending his arms out and up, slowly rotating in place and lowering the tip of his focus to touch the surface of the water.

And then there's the song song. It starts at the same time as the lights begin, wisps of white and rainbow emerging from the sea, from the earth, from the coffins. The voices come from them, old and young, man and woman. Voices of the dead, singing in unison, in mourning of their own deaths. More and more of the wisps appear, spiralling up into the heavens, not all at the same time and not all in a rush, but all relentlessly upwards.

Some of them fan out towards the onlookers, well into the beach, and the song follows them. Some of them seem to almost stop in front of people before resuming their journey up. Not physical, not solid or even gaseous. Just light.

It's the same song Azym heard in the temple in Besaid. It was just one person singing, there, and much more quietly; here, it's a choir.

Although the lyrics are in some language he doesn't understand repeat and sear themselves into his mind now that he starts to grasp their significance.

People cry. After all day holding it back, holding it in, they finally let themselves—fall apart. Let themselves mourn, and wail, and scream. Let themselves fall to their knees sobbing, now that they know the souls of their loved ones are being cared for, are being sent on their way.

Azym notices he's crying, too. He's not sure when that happened. He's just been watching Zei, watching the ghastly dance, and the lid he's been keeping on his feelings dissolved like mist. He knew none of these people, but he understands. He understands what was lost, here, and he—he finally lets himself fully acknowledge what he lost.

Images start flashing in his mind, images he didn't let himself see when he was fleeing the monster in Zanarkand. Didn't let himself think, because if he didn't think, then it wasn't real. Only it was. It wasn't just the vague understanding that the water would crush people; it was remembering the faces of his team mates looking up at him as they realised they wouldn't be able to escape like he did. Watching them drain away, knowing that gravity would crush their bodies before they could do anything about it, and looking away from them because he could not do anything either. Watching a woman scream someone's name, holding his head in her lap, his lower body missing. Watching the people be drawn towards Sin's gravity effect and be torn apart by it.

He lets himself feel, for the first time, his loss. Everyone he's ever known, everyone he's ever met, gone as if it's nothing. He'll never return to Zanarkand, and even if he did, it would not be there anymore. It would be ruins and corpses and dead memories. He's crying, and he's not watching Zei anymore, because all he can see is his whole life, being snuffed out by forces far beyond his control.

He's crying, and he's on the ground, and he's shivering uncontrollably despite the warmth. The song doesn't help, the song's doing this, it just feels like death is all the more real. All the heavier. He can't look up anymore because he can't open his eyes. He can't think.

He's alone.

He's lingers a while after the melody ends. Sitting on the sand, his feet positioned just so that the occasional wave sometimes tickled them, hugging his knees against his chest, he thinks about what his life is like now.

Azym likes to think he's hard to knock down. That was something he already believed of himself, back in Zanarkand, but Zanarkand had no hardship. It could have just as well been just a fancy. But he managed to prove it to himself over the past few days. He got pulled off his feet and then hit the ground running, multiple times. He's been rolling with everything, letting the plot take him to the next chapter.

Then the plot forced him to stop and made all of the feelings he'd been fleeing crash into him. He's not very good at stopping to think about things, but clearly that's what he's meant to do now.

But the thing is, he doesn't have many thoughts. He feels hollow, drained, empty. So many adjectives he can tack on, there, because he doesn't have anything else but the flowery poetry that's always at the edge of his mind. A flowery portrait of absolutely nothing, a blank space.

There's no reason for him to think about anything, really, he realises, because he's already thought it all out. He wasn't letting himself mourn his lost life, and he's sure it's not over, he's sure this feeling is going to keep haunting him and hitting him every now and then, but... it does not, in the end, change anything. He does have to follow the plot, he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't, and he doesn't really regret any choices he's made so far. Kind of anticlimactic, but he doesn't actually have any hidden depths that get brought to the surface by traumatic events.

He supposes he understands Zei's position on his own sacrifice on a much more visceral level, now. If he could stop this from happening for even a year, for half a year, for a week—

Is that the point the plot is trying to drive home, here? Because if so, fuck the plot very much, he could've stood to never have this particular scene happen in his story.

Well. Regardless, nothing's changed, he has no new insights, he's just in a lot of pain and very very tired and he needs to sleep. And then tomorrow the plot will resume.

He could do with someone to warm his bed now though and ohhhhhhh so that's what Wakka meant, people who live in fear of kaiju would totally be using sex as a coping mechanism and source of distraction wouldn't they? So he was saying Zei was one of those people, who sleeps around a lot so that he can occasionally forget about the weight of the world bearing on his shoulders? Honestly, legit.

He was not the only one to linger after the melody ended, but he was definitely one of the ones who stayed the longest. At some point tall torches had been lit along the beach, and at some point the sun had entirely set. The light should be enough to show him the way to the parts of the village that are more intact, whenever he feels like going.

So after quickly casting a spell to deal with the worst of the sand clinging to his clothes and skin he starts to make his way there.

The village has a different style than Besaid, and is bigger. The houses are uniformly wood, which makes sense—even from this edge of the island it's clear that the Kilika jungle is much thicker and more lush than the relatively sparse woods of Besaid. The ground is also covered in wood, though, in a way oddly reminiscent of streets; a boardwalk of sorts, forming paths between the various different buildings.

Probably the rest of his party has been housed at the inn, but he doesn't know for sure, so he asks around for the summoner.

They did indeed go to the inn, and he's given directions to it.

It's three stories tall, a cylindrical building with a conical roof, close to the center of the village and larger than all surrounding buildings by a noticeable amount. It also looks to have more activity than Azym might expect is the norm, probably due to the arrivals and the survivors of the attack who lost their homes.

The inside is lined with tables, most of them only large enough to seat four. Azym can easily find his summoner's table by finding the grumpy ronso leaning against a wall next to it, arms folded.

Zei's there, by himself, drinking something steaming out of a mug. The state of the table suggests his other guardians had shared a meal with him before departing, and a nearby table has three of the blitzballers, quietly chatting to each other, also looking like they just ate.

The summoner spots Azym before Azym spots him and waves him over.

Azym takes a seat at the same table after giving the blitzballers a little wave.

Before he can say anything Zei says, "I'll explain later. For now, are you hungry? And for later, do you mind sharing a room? They gave me a far-too-large one and I suspect they are a bit strained for resources. They'll give you a separate room if you prefer, though, you're coming with a summoner."

...why is Azym very sure that Zei seems super uncomfortable? Actually, replaying what Zei just said in his mind, probably the discomfort is from the differential treatment; he seemed fine when he talked about just sharing a room.

"Didn't realise we'd reached that point in our relationship," Azym says with a smile that does not quite reach his eyes. "Yes, I'm fine with it. And I am hungry."