Notes: (a) loosely based on the1sentence claim, Butterfly Edge, I did forever ago. (b) there's no official word out yet, so Luso's age is entirely a guess, based on the fact that Ramza thinks he looks young. (c) Aerith is using Gast and Ifalna's surname here, because there is no Elmyra in this 'verse.

Feedback, as ever, is loved.

---

It has been three months, two weeks and six days and I am still not used to this world. If I am awake for too long I feel sick in the back of my throat and the pit of my stomach, and when I try to sleep, to dream, I wake with a headache worse than any nausea. I wake with a start and it's cold and bright, but I can't place the time anymore than I can remember how I got here. It's silent. I used to wake up with a radio beside me, and now the people around me don't even know what a radiois. I'm starting to think I dreamt it up. I'm starting to think I made everything before this up.

Probably. I don't remember any of it. Nothing substantial.

I'm in Aerith's house. Well, her mother's house, really. It's huge and empty and always feels cold (although I haven't yet been here for a summer) and they only live here because it costs them nothing. Her father was a chemist, and after his death his well-to-do patron left them this house. It's more a ruin, actually; there were three more rooms, but they've crumbled now. There are holes in most of the walls, bricks missing, and they try to keep the draft out by stretching old, worn fabric across the gaps.

I give them a hundred gil a week to stay in this cold little room—the bed creaks whenever I so much as breathe, and the bedsheets feel like hay—and they take it happily, and I try my best to keep out of their way. Getting up makes the bed groan, and the stone floor chills my toes, so I jump from foot to foot. The front room's the only room with a carpet, and even that's threadbare. Nothing in the room is mine, other than the clothes I stumbled in, and they hang from nails hammered between bricks. I grab them before I leave the room. All I'm wearing now is a pair of her father's old trousers. He was much taller than me, and I nearly trip over my tangled feet.

In the bathroom there's running water. It's cold, but it does the job. I pump a bucket full, strip off, pick up a sponge and begin to wash myself. It doesn't take long, spurred on by the icy water, and I use the makeshift-pajama bottoms to towel myself off. Dressed, clean and cold, I walk along the corridor and consider knocking on Aerith's door for a moment—but I hesitate a second before the act, because I don't know the time. Maybe she's out. Maybe she's sleeping. The sun is shining but I don't understand this world, so nothing registers for me.

It's like the clock in my head has shattered, and the broken shards are making it hard for me to see the hands. And so I don't knock. We don't talk much. She wants to talk to me and I want to talk to her, but something is keeping me away. I'm not scared. It's just that—I know her. She doesn't know me.

I don't remember her at all. Not her face, her eyes, or even her name. I had to ask her it three times before I remembered it. Took me four attempts to spell it correctly. I don't recall ever having a conversation with her before, and I didn't recognise the sound of her voice, but I know I've said everything there is to say to her already. It just makes me nervous, I suppose. I might say—do—something ridiculous. I'm not even from this world, and I feel like I've know her for—not forever, certainly, but for a while, at least. Long enough.

And so, that's how it is. I'm just the lodger. Sometimes I see her in town and she waves to me, and sometimes we eat together or talk in the hallway. Worst of all, she believes me. She knows I'm not from this world, this Ivalice, and she acts quite casually about it all, explains things to me that I wouldn't otherwise understand.

Careful to skip the half-crumbled step, I jog down the stairs into the kitchen. Ifalna's sitting at the table, and for a moment, in the strange shadows made by the thin slitted windows, I think it's Aerith. They look a lot alike, Aerith and Ifalna, and Ifalna's not yet so old that her hair's turned completely grey. She was probably only a little older than I am now when she had Aerith, and she's just as kind as her daughter. Aerith's told her about me, or so I think, because she accepts me with a bizarre sort of ease, almost as if I'm just a ghost passing through.

I pause and catch her eye—it never occurred to me that perhaps I'm dead, after all. I shake my head and say good morning. She smiles. She's got a huge, patch-work shawl wrapped around her, because they only use the fire when it's really cold. Sometimes I collect firewood to make myself feel useful. As if she can read my mind, Ifalna tells me Aerith's out, working.

I feel guilty. Since leaving Ramza and the others, I've done nothing. I haven't even taken care of myself properly. I'm only here because a stranger in a tavern told me go back here if I felt so drawn to the place, gave me a few thousand gil, and I was drunk enough to start wandering back to Zarghidas. Once I sobered up I didn't have the energy to stop. And so I got here, found Aerith again—who, this time, didn't need saving—and since then I haven't done anything. I sit and think. I try to remember. I get nowhere, and I don't understand why they haven't asked me to leave yet.

Ifalna's eating bread, and we ran out of butter last week. I get some for myself and it's a little stale, but it feels good, heavy, in my stomach. We talk for a while and my head's starting to clear. She asks me if I've remembered anything, and I lie. I try to change the subject, but Aerith gets her persistence from her mother.

It's not so much a case of working out what I could do to earn gil—it's trying to figure out what I haven't done yet. I don't remember anything specific, but my hands are calloused so I figure I've done pretty much everything in the twenty one years of my life I don't remember. Funny how I know how old I am and my name, but nothing else. Those things I could easily make up.

"Hey," I say, after a while, chewing the last of the crust, "I'm going to work today."

Ifalna straightens in her chair. "That's nice, Cloud," she says, genuinely happy for me. She's smiling at me, not humouring me. For some ridiculous reason I have the urge to make things better for Aerith, and so, by association, her mother too.

I take some of my things out of a little alcove in the wall. Grey stone. Everything is grey, and my sword is gleaming amongst the ruins. I sheath it and strap it to my back. (I've been given strange looks for doing this, because people here keep their swords by the sides. Then again, my clothes are stranger.)

I walk to the tavern, where I know all kinds of bills will be posted. The streets of Zarghidas are cobbled but my soles are thick, and the clock in the town centre says it's almost midday. Strange. I thought it was later. Or earlier. Shaking my head I enter the tavern, take a seat and empty my pockets. I have nine hundred gil left; I've given three hundred to Ifalna so far, and I'm not sure where the rest has gone. All of a sudden I feel deflated, like this is a very bad idea. I don't think I'm going to be much help. All I do is think about a past that might not have ever happened.

The barkeeper's looking at me out the corner of his eye, so I have to dosomething; getting up, looking more confident than I feel, I pull random bills from the board until I have a handful, pick up a piece of chalk and sit back down. The man relaxes, but keeps one eye on me. I study the bills. Nothing looks interesting. Nothing looks challenging. I worry because I don't want to do anything, and wonder when I became so unmotivated. Or maybe I've always been like this.

And then I remember something. How I react changes depending on what I remember, but most often everything around me is suddenly very quiet. When I remember, it's never a whole scene; it's just one sense, contorted. Right now I'm remembering a dream; there's no noise, but there's an image I can't see. I close my eyes, take hold of the chalk and scrawl on the back of a bill. I draw circles and sharp lines, and it's not at all neat. Glancing down I see I've drawn a city. I don't know how I know this, but it's all metal and floating, and I feel like I was in its shadow at once point. And I know Aerith wasn't there with me at the time, but I think that she should have been. I'm getting a headache, so I don't think about it anymore.

I turn over the bill I've drawn on, and decided to take it without even reading it. It's a Behemoth—I've killed those before. I think.

---

The Behemoth's two towns and a bit over, and I start to walk. I'm about half a mile away from Zarghidas when the earth starts to pound beneath my feet, and I'm smart enough to stand back and clear the dirt track. There's a wagon fast approaching, pulled by two chocobos. The owner slows when he sees me, jerks his thumb to the back where there are a couple of other people sitting amongst haystacks and asks if I want a lift. I give him thirty gil and then I'm sitting amongst the hay, and it's definitely less comfortable than my bed.

The two chocobos that pull the wagon are proud creatures. They have strong legs and move quicker than any I've ever seen before, their beaks held high to the early-afternoon sun. I suppose they've been running back and forth across this track their entire lives, and now think that they're the kings of it. They certainly wouldn't let anyone on their backs, that's for sure. I stare out towards the distance and then somebody's shaking my shoulder.

It's a young boy—maybe about fourteen—and I'm surprised that, out of all the people in Ivalice, I've met him before. He grins widely at me when I turn around.

"Hey Cloud," he says, "How are things going for you?"

I stiffen, a bit. I'm not so good at this. At least he doesn't speak like Ramza did, like all the high-borns do. He talks just like Aerith, and Aerith tells me her blood is as common as dirt.

I don't answer right away. Luso tilts his head, and eventually I say, "Still not found your friends?" and he looks disheartened for a moment, shakes his head, and then the grin is back.

"Nope. But I'm still hunting! How about yourself?" He's got a spear with him, I notice, and a sword around his waist.

"Working." It feels weird to say it after so much time dedicated to doing nothing. I pull out the bill and show him the Behemoth. There's a signature in red ink at the bottom where they partitioner's agreed to pay me if I can bring back one of it's horns unscathed. I wasn't really listening, but apparently they're a key ingredient in remedies. Whatever the case is, I'll be getting five hundred gil for this.

"Whoa," Luso says, and then his eyes are fiery. Of course—when he first met Ramza, he was being chased by two of the monsters. "Whoa. Let me come along?"

I wonder if he actually planned on going somewhere in particular before he came across me. If he had, he's certainly forgotten it now, and his eyes are sparkling with an odd sort of naïve desire for revenge. I suppose I look as if I'm about to say no, because he quickly adds, "I don't want any of the money."

I shrug my shoulders, which I suppose he takes to be a yes, because he looks rather pleased with himself. Help wouldn't hurt. I haven't fought in a while, and fighting is always strange out here—I feel as if I'm so much stronger than I really am, as if I have more skill than I can ever summon. My legs feel too slow and heavy. My arms have trouble keeping a hold of the sword. Well; I still fight better than most.

"Why do you want the money anyway?" Luso asks. This is all fun and games to him, as a kid. He's in it for the danger, to make himself stronger. He probably eats from fruit trees, drinks from rivers, and sleeps in barns.

"I have to pay to stay where I'm living."

"You live with someone?" Either he's curious, impressed, bored, or all three.

"Yeah."

"A girl?"

I shrug again, and he looks too smug for a fourteen year old.

---

Back in Zarghidas my arms hurt and my lip is bloody, but I feel good. There's energy I didn't know I possessed pumping through me, and plenty of gil in my pocket. Taking into account what it cost to get there and back I've made four hundred and twenty gil. Maybe I'll buy some fresh food, something that isn't bland.

I'm walking through town, minding my own business when I see Aerith. For some reason, maybe because of my high spirits, I call to her, even though my throat is suddenly dry. She looks around, catches my eye and then walks over with a smile on her face. I frown; her flower basket is almost full. The gil is my pocket is very, very heavy. I want to give it all to her.

Aerith looks at me, leans forward and then she's so close that I have to take a step back.

"Have you been in a fight?" she asks, but I expect she knows the answer.

I nod, and before she can ask why or how, I pull out the bill. It's pretty battered by now. She takes it, turns it the right way up and gives me a sort of approving smile, but there's still worry beneath it all. I tell her much gil I've earnt and it fizzles away. Aerith laughs and I carry on the awkward conversation for a few minutes more, until the nagging the the back of my head tells me I should leave, that I shouldn't bother her. She still has plenty of flowers to sell.

And so I say Goodbye, maybe I'll see you later at your house. I still don't call it Home. And then it happens, a far too physical turning point in my life so far (that is: what I remember, all three months of it). I turn to leave, and my head spins like a great metal plate, and all of a sudden my dream floods back to me—and half a heartbeat later I know, more clearly than I know anything, that it wasn't a dream at all. I'm re-remember my life. Like in my dream, the city's floating above me and it's all iron and grit, and Aerith's not there. Aerithshould be there, but I don't panic, I don't even worry that much, on the surface. There are two other people with me, people without faces, and they don't really know Aerith very well, only know me well enough to realise that I'm going to go find her. I don't think I've ever felt such determination.

Try as I might, I can't take that goodbye back. I turn on my heels, and Aerith is still watching me, is still with me, and we're not trapped in the shadow of a steel sun. My head hurts and I feel sick, like my centre of gravity's spinning, but out of nowhere I scratch the back of my head and say, "Or. Well. I'll stay, if you want." I make sure to emphasize that last part.

I'd like to say she lights up, but she doesn't—Aerith just regards me with a curious eye, as if Cloud The Stranger has suddenly pulled down the paper walls of whatever box he was trapped in. Aerith's shoulders relax and she manages not to look caught off-guard.

"I'll tell you what," Aerith says, because I know she's not going to be all Yes and Pleases, "Go home, clean yourself up, and then we'll go somewhere tonight." She brings up an elbow and the basket with it. "Some of us still have to work."

Admittedly, I wasn't expecting to be turned down, but I'm not feeling disheartened, either. This is it—this girl is the link between Ivalice, my mind, and my world. And it only took me three months of moping around to realise it. I try not to think about it too hard, try not to wonder how I can remember someone so clearly and perfectly when my mind is blank and they live in a completely different world. The day I saved her was the day she met me.

Saved her—I think I've done it before. Maybe I'll do it again.

I clear my throat and tell her it's fine. The next time I turn no city spins in my head, and I see no oceans unknown to me when I blink, but as I walk away I have the strangest feeling Aerith's smiling at me.

---

Ifalna's not in when I get back. It doesn't really surprise me, because she's not there a lot of the time; her mother lives on the far side of down, and Ifalna's job seems to comprise of looking after her. I let myself in and leave the shopping on the table—eggs, fresh bread, a bit of butter. I wasn't entirely sure what I should buy, but this will do for tomorrow's breakfast, and then I can consult the women of the house.

I wonder what to do for a while. I stretch my arms and I'm still alone, and the sound of my footfalls echoes around the empty kitchen. There's not much for it. Feeling the dried blood on my knuckles and lip I reluctantly head to the bathroom again and stand in the bath with a cold bucket of water. The bath is huge, so deep it reaches the bottom of my knees when I stand, but there's never enough warm water to fill it. Sitting on the edge of the bath, waiting to dry, I try and scrub my clothes clean—I'd buy some new ones, but none of the stores around here carry my... style.

The front door slams and I lose my chain to thought. Standing up I bolt the bathroom door shut and hear Aerith shout out, "Hello!" from downstairs. Murmuring something back I pull on my pants and trousers and then realise—it's dark outside the window. How long have I been thinking? What have I been thinking about?

Downstairs Aerith is busy making her way through a thickly sliced piece of buttery bread, and when she's finally done she looks a little apprehensive. I suppose she expects me to have changed my mind, and truth be told I'm half way there; my skin is crawling from the feeling of losing so much time—an entire afternoon!—and I'm not sure where we're going to go, what we're going to do. On the other hand, it's now or never, and fixing my head starts here.

Walking past her I refuse eye contact and push the door open. "Ready?" I ask and she says, "Oh!" wiping her lips with the back of her hand, "Yes! Of course," and begins to tug her boots back on.

It's a nice evening. The sky is an odd dusty red colour, and it's no so cold it's unbearable. We walk through the lanes, Aerith occasionally greeting people around town. I was worried at first, because of the grass stains that wouldn't come off of my trousers, but Aerith hasn't notice yet, as far as I can tell; there are dirt stains all over her dress, and no one else seems to be better the whole town over. As we walk she tells me about her day's work, about a little kid who was so upset from a grazed knee that she couldn't help but give a flower to for free, and I respond with vague "mmm," and "uh-huh," sounds and the odd "Yeah."

We arrive at a tavern soon enough, and I think I'd be rude of me to point out that Aerith doesn't exactly have the money to be throwing around getting drunk. I think she senses this though—maybe from the way my shoulders are so tense—and the moment we step in she points to the chalkboard and my jaw drops a little. Pulling off her jacket and hopping onto a barstool, she explains that the price of drink dropped during the Fifty Year War (which I still know nothing of) and were never really hiked back up. Cheap as dirt. As common as dirt. Every thing's dirt around here—even the bar looks grimy.

No use complaining though. Where I come from might be even worse than this. Just as I'm thinking this and trying to position myself comfortably on the barstool, Aerith turns to me and smiles, and I think—Well, it's not all that bad here. She turns away quickly and I hope she can't read my mind.

Aerith waves the barman over and orders two beers. I think it's strange at first for her to order such a drink, but I peer over the counter and there doesn't appear to be much of anything else. The barman comes back over quickly with our drinks—he's about my age, long black hair pressed flat under a chemist's cap, and seems to know Aerith. A lot of people in here do, and I can only wonder where they were hiding when those knaves attacked her.

"Hey Zack," Aerith says, takes a sip of her drink, and I latch onto the conversation again. "How's business?"

This "Zack" shrugs, and looks at me curiously as he wipes a glass clean. "The same as ever—we've always a few more customers than the flower industry," he turns from me to wink at Aerith, and then asks, "Is this the famous lodger I've heard so much about?"

Aerith nods and Zack reaches out a hand to me. "Zack Fair," he says, and whatever I thought about him a few seconds ago becomes moot. He might be boring his eyes into me and trying to get under my skin, but I think—yeah, this guy is alright. He's just having fun; I think we could get on.

"Cloud Strife," I say and shake his hard firmly. He smiles and bows his head in a mocking sort of way.

"Well, Miss Faremis, Mr Strife—unlike some I can't sit around and chat all day, so you two enjoy yourselves." And with that he's off to the other side of the bar, ready to pull a few more pints.

I haven't really met anyone in this world. Of course there was Ramza to begin with, but now he's... somewhere I don't know, and I've no idea how to contact either Mustadio or Rapha. I see Luso and Beowulf every now and again, but Aerith is the only one who's constantly there. I'm glad to have met Zack, but equally glad he's wandered off. Leaving the house was difficult enough, and I'll know I'll fall victim to another one of those headaches with too many people around.

I take a mouthful of the beer and it catches me off-guard. I swallow half of it and the taste is so disgusting I have to put my hand to my mouth so I don't spit the rest out across the bar and Aerith's lap. She laughs lightly at me, drinking hers with ease, and I slosh the foul drink around in my mouth before gulping it down with a wince.

My eyes are watering. "I suppose it tastes nicer where you're from, Cloud," Aerith says, and almost sounds sorry for me. She's still backing her drink like it's nothing, already through half a pint; I can't start falling behind already. "It must be an acquired taste"

I try to drink it quickly, as if I'll taste less of it that way. "Yeah. I guess I'll get used to it."

Leaning an elbow against the bar and resting the side of her head in her palm, she asks, "Are you planning on staying here a while?" She's looking at me as if she really cares, as if she knows me inside-out but just doesn't know it yet, and I'm worried I've turned white as a sheet and she goes "Hmm?" because I still haven't answered.

"Maybe." I drink more. "Probably."

Aerith brightens and sits back up straight. "You know you're welcome to stay with us for as long as you wish to."

"Oh. Thanks."

I buy the next round of drinks, and then, because the taste is slowly becoming less bitter—or I'm becoming all the more drunk—I decided to buy the third round as well. I'm not sure who pays after that. This isn't bad at all. Zack popped over a few minutes ago to make a snide comment, and if it wasn't for the puppy-dog expression he made I'd have hit him by now. A couple of other people have come over to exchange hellos with Aerith and I've even joined in a conversation or two. We're talking with more ease now and I'm smiling, though I'm sure it looks stupid.

Aerith leans forward, one hand bundled around the knees of her green dress and the other still clinging to her drink like a lifeline. She looks up at me, wicked, as if there's some deep, dark secret between us. "What's your world like, Cloud?" she whispers, or at least means too—I'm sure the alcohol amplifies her voice.

And I'm drunk enough to answer, because Aerith's question is not mocking—if not a little slurred—and she doesn't look so bad like this, with a drunken little glow about her. I stare for a second too long, and then shake my head. "Like this, but with airships and huge, metal buildings. And we dress better, too, and don't talk so strangely." The pictures in my head probably make more sense than my words.

"Airships?" Aerith's eyes go wide. "I've read about them in books. I would have loved the chance to go on one."

Haven't we had this conversation before? "I know." Aerith tilts her head at me as if to say 'how?'. "I'll talk you on one," I announce, lifting either my fifth-or-sixth my beer in the air.

This time, Aerith is quiet for a moment before laughing, and she's about to do something—reach out to me, perhaps—when Zack walks over, puts a hand on each of our shoulders and says, "Come on, you two. Closing time."

I don't realise until that point people have been clearing out. At first I think I've lost track of time again, and I'm about to become angry until Aerith seems just as surprised as me. She doesn't complain, though, just reaches over the bar to hug Zack, and then next thing I know we're stumbling out of the door, wonderfully drunk. I think this is the drunkest I've ever been without feeling as if I'm going to throw up. No wonder—I forgot dinner.

If it's colder outside than it was on the way here, I don't notice. The alcohol is making me feel warm and I'm buzzing, and Aerith has her coat slung over one arm. We wander back to her house in a zigzag until we reach a grassy knoll, and suddenly my legs are elastic and don't want to support me anymore. I sit down with a thud, and Aerith does the same, somewhere behind me. It's too dark to see anything.

I'm looking up at the stars and even they're spinning. I dig my fingers into the ground and I feel as if I'm going to fall off. Closing my eyes and breathing deeply, I count to ten and when I open them everything's a little clearer, just a tad calmer. The stars burn my eyes like pinpricks, and suddenly I think—this is it, I'm alone, and I can't believe how much I miss my world. Every day here feels like a dream, like nothing I see or do is really real, and if nothing has any substance and—

Aerith's arm wraps around me, and I feel her leaning against my back. Oh, Aerith. That's right, Aerith's here, Aerith's always here. The last two drinks are catching up with me and suddenly I do want to be sick but Aerith is holding me still like an anchor but it hurts to keep my eyes open because everything is spinning even though it's dark and all I can see are starts and these thoughts don't make sense and... and, I don't know.

"Hey Cloud," Aerith says, "Cloud! Maybe one of those starts is your home."

I blink hard, and she's stretching out to point at the night sky. Some of her hair is in my face. I can't tell if she really believes what she's saying or not, but she's trying her best to make me feel better, and my body relaxes a little. Aerith's something of substance, at least.

"So don't worry," she continues, and maybe she's been talking this whole time. "You'll get home eventually. But for now, you'll have to put up with my world, and me. Come on."

And you? That doesn't sound so bad right about now. Aerith manages to stand up and offers me her hands. I take them and almost pull us both back down in the process of standing, but we manage to catch each other. I'm not sure who's more drunk out of the pair of us, so we walk back to Aerith's house like that, supporting one another.

After fumbling with the keys for a good five minutes we get in, and Aerith manages to get a lantern on. The light spilling into the kitchen makes bright colours flash before my eyes. We both down a glass of water in the hope that we won't feel too terrible in the morning, and Aerith wants to eat. She holds out a chocobo egg the size of both her fists and asks if I want some—I take it from her tentatively, trying not to crack the shell with my fingertips, and tell her we're in no fit state to try and cook anything.

"Mmm, yeah," Aerith says through a sleepy yawn. "'night, Cloud. I had fun tonight. I don't know why you've been hiding away in that room for so long."

She waves in my face and makes her way up the stairs without waiting for me to answer. Two minutes later and I'm still standing there, as if I'm waiting for something more to happen. Nothing does, of course, so I blow out the lantern, bang my knee on the table and head towards my room. I call "Goodnight, Aerith," through her door, but she doesn't reply—probably asleep already. Right where I should be.

I collapse against my softer-than-hay but still not comfortable bed, and have the creeping suspicion that I'm going to have some of the strangest memories flood back to me as I sleep. My head is pounding, and so ends my first day of trying to get back home.