"There would have been enough inn stays for my flirting to lead there!"

"Granted. I suppose it is for the best we got it out of the way early on."

"Exactly. And now I'm feeling like sharing my tragic backstory but I'm pretty sure you got it already? Maybe not some details. My mother was Al Bhed, died when I was a baby, my father was disgraced for a while for marrying her but then he went on and killed Sin," and yes that is indeed what the word meant after all, although with Spiran pronunciation it's more like Shin than Shiin. "I was nine back then. Kimahri found me in Bevelle and my dad had told him to take me to Besaid, that's an island south of here and where I got Valefor last week. Lulu and Wakka and Wakka's brother Chappu basically raised me. Chappu died fighting Sin a year ago. And now we're here."

He says it all kind of casually, but it's a casual born from getting used to the pain rather than the painless type.

"...it's still very odd to be fighting something named Sin," Edmund says contemplatively. "My world's equivalent is a perfectly nice person when you get to know him."

"I... would say that you can try to talk to Sin and see if it's nice but actually you really shouldn't it will absolutely try to kill you and might destroy a village for its trouble."

"No, I entirely agree. My world's Sin - well."

"On that day two were born of their mother’s womb. Innocence, with eyes of burning red. Sin, with eyes of clearest blue. Innocence lived with an honest and pure heart, never straying from his mother’s word. Sin filled his heart with lies and indulgence, and deafened his ears to his mother’s pleas. When the Mother of Two broke bread, she allowed Innocence to eat his fill, as reward for his virtuous nature. Sin was cast the scraps to remind him of his worthless ways. Yet the punishment only served to feed Sin’s lusts..."

"That's the version of the story that the Church told. It goes on to describe how Innocence had Sin burned at the stake for stealing a fish."

"And are we meant to sympathise with Innocence from that story?"

"We are! Because he was nice to his mother. I'm told I cried at that story in the cathedral, when I was very young, and it was taken as a sign of my youthful piety."

"He sounds like a complete asshole!"

"Doesn't he just. Sin tells me Innocence was actually much less... like that... when they were really human children, and he was really just projecting his current self backwards. - not that I fully trust Sin? But he really is, um, easier to get along with."

"And they—stopped being humans to become something else?"

"Gods. They made themselves gods. Innocence and Sin - from what I understand, they were going to ascend together, but Innocence had a cult already believing in him, and that made him more powerful and, in turn, shaped him according to their own beliefs. So Sin was pushed aside, and became a lesser deity - but kept who he was."

"That's... a very old word. 'Gods'. Super powerful creatures people worship sometimes who are said to be responsible for various things up to and including maybe the creation of the world?"

"Yes. People worshipping them is important, it's - a power source, for them. We don't know which if any created the world but if we ever find out I'll have some strong words for them."

"We don't have those. —well I guess we could have someone who made the world and then vanished but I have no reason to believe so."

"Well, you've got one now." Edmund gestures in the vague direction of Oni-Goroshi.

Zei grins and shakes his head. "We should probably sleep, it's been a while since sunset." He eyes the other bed then adds, "I could push the beds together. If you'd like."

Edmund snuggles closer in response.

"- actually I'll sleep funny if I'm wearing my trousers, let me -" He kicks off the trousers and snuggles back in, happily nude.

He isn't complaining! And with the added context and the lack of the dividing wall of the shower area he can—no he should probably not cop a look he doesn't know how far Edmund's thing extends so he will not be weird about it.

"I'll unfortunately need you to let go for me to fetch the other bed."

"Acceptable," Edmund decrees, unhugging temporarily.

Bedwards and then he pushes it to the other one and now they have a lot more space to snuggle.

Yay, more straw. That's not entirely fair, the bedding is actually some kind of dried grass that's substantially softer and less scratchy and pokey than regular straw. Still.

Snuggle. He really wants to touch Zei more but that might melt his brain again so he'll just sort of hug him 'round the middle.

Zei himself is slightly tempted to suggest that but—Edmund's pace, he said it himself.

And actually, between the boat trip all the way from Besaid, fighting Sin on said boat, and then watching it come to Kilika and destroy half the village, and then helping recover and prepare the dead, and then Sending them, and then everything with Edmund... he's beat. Edmund might find himself possessed of a dozing Zei very very quickly now that he's finally given himself permission to relax.

In a serendipitous turn of events, Edmund is pretty exhausted too. He is possessed of a dozing Zei for only a short while before he dozes off himself.

His dreams are less turbulent than usual. Perhaps it's that he's farther away from the rotting hulk of the Beast, which has haunted his nightmares for so long. Perhaps it's the human contact. Impossible to say.

Zei is an incredibly heavy sleeper and furthermore will sleep a whole nine hours if not woken up before that. His long-suffering companions are used to this by now and will in fact not come bother them very early.