"Each temple has its own Cloister of Trials. There isn't a ritual, I just have to decide you're my guardian—"

Wakka folds his arms.

"—but it's a very serious and sacred responsibility that shouldn't be asked or accepted lightly," she says, rolling her eyes only a little and in a very plausibly deniable way.

"… Can it not just be undone at some point? I mean, sure, sounds like I'm trying to cheat the system here or something, but I've never been inside that thing and I'm curious, so long as it's not, like, sacrilege or something to do it."

"It's not against Yevon's precepts to abandon a pilgrimage—one of the core tenets is that you cannot force this duty on anyone, it must be a voluntary choice—but it's frowned upon. and can be stigmatising. And if a non-guardian enters the Cloister of Trials, the summoner can be excommunicated."

"Okay, and presumably I can't just go claim to be a summoner and 'can I look in' or alternatively request a special exemption by virtue of being a summoned thing and there's some technicality that summoned things are not barred?" Sigh. "I'll just wait here."

"You need to spend years apprenticing to become one, and even if you're a summoned thing you're not an aeon." She shrugs. "Sorry, we should be back in a couple of hours."

"… Right," he says. "See you in a couple of hours, in that case."

Up she and her guardians go!

...so perhaps the blond boy isn't one!

Well, if he's very clearly not going, Theo will wait a moment and then ask, "Are you not a guardian, then?"

"Nah. I'm not even from Spira, still kinda lost here."

"Where are you from, then?"

"Zanarkand. But Kaede reckons it's not the same Zanarkand Spira knows."

"Oh, huh," he says. "How'd you get here?"

"Sin attacked, and this guy who took care of me since I was a kid—Auron—took me to it, and there was this big light, and I woke up near some ruins somewhere. Some Al Bhed helped me, then knocked me out, then I had to help them with some ruins, and then Sin attacked them, and I woke up in Besaid. And Sin attacked Kilika, after. Kaede thinks that's weird and it may be following me."

"Right. Uh, not clear on a few of those things – why did your caretaker take you to Sin, and why did an Al Bhed – that's a race, right? – knock you out, and, uh, do you have any idea why you keep waking up in presumably different places?"

"I don't know why Auron did that, he's kinda weird. The Al Bhed thought I was a fiend, and didn't know what to do with me, and I don't really know why I keep waking up in different places."

"Cool," he says. "This place sounds like so much fun. Weird events, – are you part of that religion, too? I've never heard of it before I got here, is all."

"Nah, I hadn't prayed once in my life before coming here. There were some religious people in Zanarkand but nothing like this."

"So that's kinda weird too, and then there's the fact you mysteriously appeared, this place has somehow never had an angel before despite that circle apparently being done all the time and only once getting me…" He shrugs. "Also the magic. The magic creature that destroys places. That's weird."

"Tell me about it. There was some magic in Zanarkand, Blitzball stadiums use it, and Blitzball players too, to breathe underwater. And some fiends did appear, but it was a big deal when it happened."

"We have small bits of magic but it's not, like, widespread at all." Shrug. "What's Blitzball?"

"Only the best sport ever! You mean you don't have it where you're from?"

And he descends into an excited and lengthy explanation of a sport played in a magical floating sphere of water which is sort of a cross between handball and football and wrestling, with lots of animated gestures and glance-drawing sound effects from his mouth.

Oh. Fun.

Maybe he'll try it sometime. Without his wings.