(no subject)

[ordinarydoctor.livejournal.com]

Who: Citan, open (Sigurd? Or anyone!)
What: It's not stealing, it's treasure-hunting!
When: Noonish
Where: Someplace between Rabanastre and the Nam-Yensa Sandsea
Rating: TBA

The midday sun heated Citan's back as he left Rabanastre on a rented chocobo, and a stifling wind blew in his face, but he was on his way and that was a wonderful feeling. To be going somewhere! As often as he tried to think of himself as a patient man, content to simply live his life when there was nothing else to do, it was so very freeing to stretch his proverbial legs again. He had lived in Rabanastre four months and in that time he'd been able to do nothing but try and find his feet. Getting a roof over his head and keeping it there had taken precedence over everything else, including the all-pervasive question of Where am I and how on earth did I prove the relative-state formulation?

But now he had the time to give his attention over to other things, as well as the money--and just when he needed it, too. He'd heard rumors that some sort of vessel had (crashed? appeared? landed?) in Nam-Yensa and he was eager to see it with his own eyes and possibly strip it for parts. He certainly couldn't do that to any of the ships at the aerodrome. He hadn't been able to get close enough to examine them.

So he'd closed up his little practice for a few days (there was always a need for doctors, even in a world where curative magic was readily accessible; healers were more expensive, for one) and was now heading off to try and find this vessel. He didn't even mind that the only form of transportation available to him was a giant bird. If it could carry his equipment and anything he brought back as salvage, so be it. At least he was doing something again.

He urged the animal to run faster, and it squawked at him almost crossly but pressed on. Eventually it would get too tired to keep up this pace, but for now he wanted the desert whipping past him at breakneck speed. It felt like the promise of accomplishment, whether or not he did, in fact, accomplish anything once he got there.

Comments

[resolute-blaze.livejournal.com]

Sigurd, for his part, was painfully unaware that the Yggdrasil had accumulated much attention apart from that of the natives too terrified to approach it…and just as well too. They didn’t seem to care too much for the stranger and the presence of his gargantuan ship in the middle of their desert--whether out of fear or simple policy, Sigurd had no idea. He was happy to coexist peacefully, for the time being, but he hadn't and inkling as to when or if the surrounding residence would mount an attack against him or his young master’s ship and that was simply impermissible. Of course the ship was hearty and Sigurd was no pushover, but he was one and the Yggdrasil was not impermeable, something else that had the fair-haired man walking around on pins and needles constantly. He was desperate to find a new source of power in order to change the location of the chip…maybe out to sea or simply somewhere safer.

On the rare occasion he was able to glean a moment of relaxation he spent his time on the upper deck, keeping watch and absolutely loathe to leave his station. Currently, he was having one of those moments, sitting on the stair on the upper deck, the hatch open so that the vaguest of breezes might spill into the ship. It was more bearable at night when the desert cooled down, though he was used to the scorching heat, he’d been used to it since birth. The ship itself was sitting on a bit of a slant, it’s nose end having found perch on a butte and while he didn’t have 360 degrees of full surveillance coverage he could still see most of his surrounding area and anything that might approach given the remotest chance.

It didn’t seem that likely.


[Forgive my epic fail, my sister came to my house and she got really sick so I had to drive her home in her car and I had no way to get back. She doesn't have the internet so I was pretty screwed, now I am back and hopefully Citan will hear more from Sig.]

[ordinarydoctor.livejournal.com]

Within half an hour the chocobo was resisting his direction vigorously. By the time an hour had passed it had slowed to a walk and wouldn't speed up for anything, leaving Citan just a bit frustrated. He was used to driving vehicles, not riding animals. How he longed for a dune bike! He checked the position of the sun in the sky, then sighed as the bird stopped altogether with a flat wark and began to root around in a scrubby patch of grass (and was it just him or did the noise sound defiant?).

"You can eat once we are there," he told it, but the animal, lacking both knowledge of conversational Lamb and a brain complex enough to understand the idea of delayed gratification, ignored him.

So it was that he reached the site of the crash on foot, tugging the unwilling chocobo along by its reins. By that point it had stopped pulling against him and had instead taken to harassing him, pecking occasionally at the top of his head and worrying at the sleeve of his shirt. He pushed its sharp beak away for the dozenth time as they crested the top of a hill, muttering, "Stop that!"

Then he got his first look at the mysterious vessel. He stopped dead, barely noticing when the chocobo bobbed its head to the right instead of the left and attacked his other sleeve.

Is that...can it be? Surely not!

But it was. The ship that he'd been planning to dismantle and carry off piece by piece was, against all logic, the Yggdrasil.

He had just enough sense to tie the bird to a small, withered husk of a tree so that it wouldn't run off with his possessions before he approached. If Sigurd hadn't already seen him, it would be easy enough to now--his green clothing stood out against the sand like a sore thumb, and, although he currently wore a wide-brimmed and thoroughly ridiculous-looking hat to keep the sun from his eyes, he'd tipped his head back to stare up along the metal flank of the ship. The look on his face, and the emotion that accompanied it, were utterly alien to him.

Hyuga Ricdeau, who ate string theory for breakfast, was dumbfounded.

[It's okay. :D]

[resolute-blaze.livejournal.com]

Regardless of the sun-hat Citan wore for protection, once Sigurd’s eye had picked him out of the vast ocean of sand with cascading dunes, he recognized the man instantly. Of course, much like Citan he doubted the certainty of his own vision, but it passed and when it did he carefully made his way to the outer edges of the ship, careful of the slight sloping, until he was able to grasp the bars and lean out over the edge.

The desert pirate wasn’t sure if he could yell out to the man looking up at the Yggdrasil with an equal amount of disbelief; his voice had endured days of improper use. Instead he beckoned to Citan with a wave, one arm arcing over his head while the other arm gestured to a ladder welded onto the starboard side of the vessel. Perhaps he would find a more usable voice when he was face to face with the other man.

[ordinarydoctor.livejournal.com]

It felt like an eternity before Citan's mind kicked into gear again; at first he could only stare and wonder if the sun had addled him more than he'd thought. What were the odds of--

Well, what were the odds of his ending up here in the first place? He touched the side of the great ship and it burned him, heated by the desert. If it was a mirage or an illusion it was certainly a convincing one, and although he was half-afraid to trust his weight to the ladder in case he was hallucinating he couldn't just stand here and gawpe while one of his oldest and dearest friends beckoned to him from up there. He'd thought they had all been lost to him forever.

He tested the first rung, and it held.

Citan had never climbed anything more quickly in his life. By the time that his head popped back into view he'd found his voice, although it didn't have anything particularly intelligent to say. "Sigurd?" was all that came out, so hesitant for a man who generally believed what his eyes told him, and then again: "Sigurd!"

And he practically flung himself onto the deck, although the searing press of metal on his hands may have had something to do with that.

[resolute-blaze.livejournal.com]

Sigurd felt a grin tugging at the corner of his lips, but he subdued it as it didn’t seem to be the right thing to do. He had not anticipated the heat of the steel ladder since he never left the Yggdrasil for whatever the reason, but the truest was because this was the ship of his young master. He missed the young prince with ever beat of his heart, he ached to see him, the brother through the father he’d known only a few short years. He kept that part of himself a secret and always, because Sigurd was so together…but that was beside the point. Citan was here and that was real and the way he swiftly climbed the ladder affected Sigurd with barely suppressed humor. Ah, one of his dearest friends, now that was something!

Once the green-clad man had made it to the top Sigurd threw out an arm to assist him over the railing and onto the upper deck. Of course, but that time Citan had flung himself over, Sigurd only made a point to catch him so he didn’t stumble and end up barreling down to the farthest ends of the ship. When he was safely over the bar and looking steady on his feet Sigurd released Citan, though he remained close by—just in case. Perhaps because he was so used to it, the searing heat of the Yggdrasil’s metal exterior, it never bothered him and he hadn’t thought of it.

“I think it’s okay to trust your eyes,” he said noting the question in his companion’s voice at first, “you didn’t run into any trouble on your way?”

[ordinarydoctor.livejournal.com]

It was probably a good thing that Sigurd caught him, because he almost did go slipping off along the deck. He grabbed the other man's arm, unprepared for the angle that the Yggdrasil sat at. The way it was positioned almost made it seem like it had been dropped out of the sky, or had crashed or something. Certainly it couldn't move now, or it would be somewhere far less inconvenient.

The state of the Yggdrasil, however, paled in comparison to the realness of his friend.

"The last several months have been nothing but trouble! It looks like you are in more of it than I am--how long have you--how did you--"

Citan had brought a flask of water with him as a matter of course; it would have been foolish to venture into the desert without at least one. As he regained his balance and let go he pulled it off his belt and offered it to Sigurd, although, if the rumors were to be believed, he and the ship must have been here for some time now.

"I had heard there was something out here, but I never thought..." He trailed off, nothing short of flabbergasted.