FicWad

In Montagna, a small town in Trabia, there was a bazaar. Laguna had told me of it, early in our friendship, with the sort of detatched affection one holds for distant childhood memories-he spoke of wandering the bazaar with his mother and sisters, and how they'd always coo and aww over all the textiles and make him try on funny hats. He would laugh a little, smile at the wall or the ceiling, and sigh softly.

He would not mention it often-and after we met up again in Winhill, not at all-but I remembered him telling me about the bazaar in Montagna, and I could not put it out of my head that he would think it quite something to go back to Trabia and see that bazaar. So, when he'd finally put everything together in arragements to travel as a reporter, and had said his temperary good-byes to Raine and Ellone, it was to that town that I was constantly, subtly steering us.

We travelled through the small village of Balamb, and the booming consumerism of Fisherman's Horizon. To Deling City, where I was subtly uncomfortable of being sited by the authorities; and Timber, where we visited his mother and sisters. And then, from there, we set out for Trabia. I did not tell him about my plans to detour us to Montagna until well after we had set down on the cold Trabian earth and Laguna was looking around like he might burst with patriotic pride. He had never looked so happy in Galbadia. It was good to see him smile like that.

There weren't trains in Trabia-the terrain being too craggy and diverse-so we flagged our way across the country, off toward where Trabia ceased to be and became the egnimatic Dictatorship of Esthar.

Three nights in from our landing, we arrived in Montagna. Laguna was mostly asleep, barely even noticing when I pulled him from the back of a truck and trudged the both of us up to one of the few inns in the town. He slept easily, murmuring as he often did, and I watched the town roost up well before I went to bed myself, turning the covers down around us and huddling against his reassuring warmth. It was pleasant to spend time with him, even if all the travel was because of "business".

In the morning, I woke to the chatter of people in the street. Laguna was still beside me, curled half around himself and sleeping like a child. I smiled, brushing his hair out of his eyes, and gently roused him. He blinked at me owlishly for a moment, listening to the burble of voices, curling a bit tighter around himself as he tried to go back to sleep. He rubbed his eyes.

"What time is it?"

"After sunrise," I told him. My watch was on the side table and the clock in the room facing away from the bed. He groaned against my side, arms circling me slowly to draw me close. I chuckled softly, sitting up a bit so his arms were around my waist comfortably and his head pillowed beside my thigh.

"Where're we?"

"Montagna. We arrived last night." I felt his lashes flutter on my thigh, and looked down at him as he slowly looked up at me. A smile broke slowly on my face, and I nodded toward the open window on the other side of the room. For a moment, he was very still, simply listening to the voices that drifted up to us.

After a moment, however, he was bounding across the room in barely anything, leaning out the window and watching the streets like a child that had suddenly remembered it was his birthday. I laughed, following him and dragging him back as he laughed and went on about how I remembered all those stories he'd told, all those stupid memories he had of this place.

I kissed him gently, saying, "Of course I remembered. Go take a shower and get dressed. It sounds busy down there."

"It always is," he said, grinning like a fiend, and tore about.

An hour later, we were in the streets, packed in among the people who frequented these bazaars and those few travelers like us that had found this niche of bright colors and loud voices. Everywhere, there were shouting merchants speaking the language of their homes and of Trabia. Children ran up and down the streets, amid the legs of the potential consumers. Plump mothers escorted their put-upon daughters, and groups of heckling teenaged boys wandered with an aimless sort of abandon. I felt very much at home there, remembering my own long-since-past; and Laguna was beaming like an idiot.

There, among the rigmorale of all those people and booths, Laguna zeroed in on one in particular. Tchotchkes and weathered heirlooms (which I supposed were probably all fake) were scattered over a silky red cloth in artful disarray. Laguna hummed over them all as I watched the crowds, picking them up and questioning the merit of them with the merchant behind the booth front.

It was the jingle of gil coins that alerted me to our first purchase of the afternoon. He tucked it quickly into a bag, and refused to tell me what it was that he'd bought. Thus, I asumed it something for Raine or Ellone, and paid it no further heed.

More than once, I caught him glancing cautiously at the dingy jewelry in some of the stalls, but he never picked up anything more daring than a necklace or a pair of earrings-a few of which he bought, saying he could always use the change of jewelry. I threatened to steal one of the pairs, studs with a bright red stone set in the pewter, and he only smiled, and willingly handed them over to me.

Later in the day, as we sat over a meal in our hotel room, I again asked about that first purchase of his. Laguna only laughed, sparing me a kiss, saying he'd tell me later. When the time was right. I did my best to pout-he told me I was about twenty years too old for that to work any longer, even on /him/.

We laughed and sorted through our purchases. He wrote his letter to Raine, smiling to himself the entire time, and posted it in the lobby. I bathed away the grime of our travel to Montagna. As the sun began to set, he pulled me to him and kissed me wonderfully, smiling when he slowly pulled away.

"Thank you," he uttered gently. I shrugged, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, angling myself very close to him. It was pleasant to be with him, forgetting everything that had happened and everything he had waiting for him back in Winhill.

"What's in the bag?" I asked hopefully. He laughed, tumbling back on the bed with me atop them. I smiled, straddling him easily, pinning him down. "Tell me."

"No," he chortled. I resigned for the moment, settled into the steady rhythm we'd taken to at the start of our little adventure, kissing and touching and-there was no room to think of Winhill and Raine and the future like this. Just us, in little Montagna, listening to the last sounds of the bazaar.

It was not until we arrived in Winhill that I found the mirror among my things, and the little piece of paper with his handwriting covering the tarnished glass.

Never forget where your heart is.

I smiled, and kept the mirror with my things.