Only white at first. And then there is a thought: death? Can't see or hear or feel. Only sense. Sense my-self enveloped by (pur...e. PUR.E.IT.Y.) something. I don't know what it is (never have known, never believed), yet I sense it. Here, with me. Found it in this non-existence.
But then there are sounds. A reverberating voice of softness resonates a spectrum of bouncing frequencies: speech. Someone is speaking. Who is my angel of death, pulling me across the threshold?
The voice speaks again, and it sounds as if it's underwater, gurgling the sea and spitting up nothing but bubbles. That's when life breathes into me, like a desperate gasp for air, as if my head had been submerged only moments before. Memories flood me: falling, falling, the crash, and then the whiteness. I fell so far, and I felt myself drowning in all that white. So I am not dead? The voice gets clearer; the tide of death slowly recedes...
"Oh! He moved!"
I think of responding, but though the will to is there, it doesn't seem to channel itself into the outward manifestation of my voice. Voice: throat, vocal chords, lungs...I have a body. My heart bounds with life, and my head is dull in pain with it. You have a body, and you can use it, I remind myself. Wake up, get up.
"Hello, hello?"
I open my eyes, and a white sunlight blinds me. I grimace at the intensity, but as my pupils constrict and blindness subsides, I see an illuminated figure bowed over me with a funny little smile on her face.
The drums beat in the background to a slow, chant-like rhythm. The earth that the huts and shops had been cut into was dark red, like the muscles of the planet. A bonfire burned in the center of the circle, and it's dancing sparks illuminated the particles of dust and dirt that hovered on the air. The sunset was in its last symphony of color: purple, dark pink, and red. Some stars were already shining against the darkening sky. All the world had changed around it in these past years, but Cosmo Canyon was just as it had been in his memories from that fateful journey.
"Who are you, stranger?" the young man guarding the gate asked as Cloud came up the steps to Cosmo Canyon.
"Cloud Strife, and I came to speak with one of your Elders."
"Our Elders need not be disturbed by the trifles of an outsider. People come here to seek the Study of Planet Life, and we do not appreciate intrusions by those who disregard the Planet's life-force in favor of a convenient lifestyle."
"Cloud!" a deep, roar-like voice called out from one of the hut platforms. Red XIII, looking older and slightly more scarred than before, came rushing down to the gate. "Let him in, Buhan," Red XIII commanded. "He's done far more for the Planet than you could ever hope to." The gate-keeper bowed his head in respect, and stepped aside to allow Cloud in.
"Don't pay mind to the younger ones," Red XIII apologized as Cloud stepped forward. "They are filled with youthful indignation, and are quick to judge those who come from the outside. I can't say I was too different at their age, but one hopes that the next generation will not make the same mistakes that we did."
"It's been a long time. I never thought I'd forget what it was like to be that young myself," Cloud said. Red XIII surveyed his old friend. He did not look much older; an oversized sword was still strapped to his back, he was as pale as before, and he did not slump over like many his age did, rather his posture was uncommonly straight. But his once bright, mako-blue eyes had grayed slightly since they had last seen each other.
"Yes, it's been a long time. What was it that made you come visit, after so many years?"
"I wanted to talk to you about something that's been on my mind," Cloud said.
"Alright then. Come, we'll speak by the fire." Red XIII led him to Cosmo Candle, and they sat down next to each other, mesmerized by the eternal flame. Red XIII laid his paws out in front of him, and rested his head on them. "What was it you wanted to talk about?"
There is a brilliant white ray of moonlight shining down on her like a spotlight. The light reflects her praying image onto the glass-like surface below her, and she looks like an angel with that moonlight creating the illusion of a white aura emanating from her. I stand there, silent in reverence and fear. The mysticism, the unrealism, of this moment seems to magnify.
Her bright green eyes blink open, and turn towards me. I stare back, the ability to speak somehow lost to me, because as her eyes open, I feel myself being pulled into that sensation which I had not believed existed before (pure-ity? puuuuurity). We don't exchange words (Why did you leave? I'm afraid of what Sephiroth just tried to make me do. I'm so glad I found you.) because they feel unfitting of this essence we are both enveloped in. And there is suddenly no need for them anyway.
She must know what I'm thinking because she smiles, and whatever had been in my mind before reaching this altar has now washed away by the ocean of deep beauty. A disturbance breaks the sky. I see a shape of blackness in the mirror of the glass-like floor, and it ripples across the reflective surface like a mirage as it falls from above.
"Death," Cloud replied. Red XIII seemed slightly taken aback by the morbidity of the subject which his old companion had come so far to discuss, but he waited in silence for Cloud to continue. "I've seen people die from Geostigma, from the passing of time, from my own blade, from...sacrifice. And I still feel like I don't understand it. What is it to die? What is it to lose someone forever? I thought, maybe, since you're older than me in years and have been here observing the Study of Planet Life for over ninety years now, maybe you'd know more on the subject than myself."
"Why do you ask me this?" Red XIII said, narrowing his eyes. Cloud looked away from him, and it was a startlingly similar gesture to what the young Cloud would've done. "You can't still be haunted with grief from memories of events long passed?"
"No, it's not that." Cloud's voice was low but indignant. "It's been forty-four years since we saved the Planet from Meteor. Everyone... that we lost along that journey has faded over the years to dusty memories that are less real than ghosts. What has happened to what we lost?" He still looked away. "What is it to die, to lose someone forever?" he repeated. Red XIII sighed, and sat up. He closed his eyes for a moment, organizing his thoughts.
"You think of death the wrong way," he began. Cloud's attention drew taut, and he turned back to Red XIII, listening intently. "Death is not losing someone forever."
"But we can't ever get back those we've lost," Cloud interrupted.
"Maybe in the sense you think of it." A rueful, wooden flute joined in with the heartbeat-like drumming in the background. "But death is never the end. Death is a new beginning; it is returning to the Planet to create new life. It is to return to the rivers of Lifestream, and it is a noble purpose to die. Maybe that which we lost will not return in the same form we knew it in, but then our attachment was to the form we saw and not the true reality of its existence.
"Death is of purity, Cloud. It is to be cleansed of the form which separates us from the ocean of all life, and rejoin that infinite whiteness."
Cloud sighed, and looked up at the stars. Of purity, of death. What about what he had lost? Could he ever get that back?
I look up into the void of black. It's over, it's done. The burden is gone, and it is a peace I have never known to be without it. From the ground rise beams of Lifestream that swirl around me and disintegrate into glowing green bulbs of light. Like bubbles, they float and rise above me into the darkness.
"...Lifestream?" I whisper aloud. And for the third time in my life, I feel my heart being pried open by a sensation so warm and sweet. Before, I wasn't sure what it was. I didn't believe what it was. But I know that it's purity (Purity), and I know that it's her. She is here, here with me, and without a thought of the impossibility of her being with me, I reach out to her presence.
For a moment, all I see is the white that surrounds me. But then her soft hand breaks through the white, and reaches down to me. I can't help myself from smiling. It's her, she's here. I can't explain how it's possible, but I know with the deepest fiber of my being that it's really her.
"I think I'm beginning to understand," Cloud mumbled.
"Then you know that she is never really lost," Red XIII said, nodding his head. "She'll be there once you've left this life." Cloud looked down at his old friend.
"Who said we were talking about her?" he asked. Red barked with laughter, and rose from his seat by Cosmo Candle.
"Your eyes. Good to see you again, Cloud."