The knowledge imparted to Aeris by the Planet was still new and curious. It was effortless in an incongruous way compared to how she learnt everything before. A strange alien feeling applied to all information the Planet had provided so far. At present it was not speaking to her per se, rather it was somehow adding to her memories and her skill-sets as she walked North.
It was one thing to read something in a book and remember it the next day. It was something else to awaken the next morning knowing she had to head through the Sleeping Forest to a city. The name escaped her, or rather the Planet never deemed the information necessary. This fact was a lesser consideration than what she would do when she reached it. That knowledge was still vague and clouded, the sensation weird. It was something that she almost knew. Something on the tip of her tongue she was unable to coax into clarity. If she concentrated she could recall half-formed, disjointed images provoking a curious light-headedness. It had almost made herself faint more than once and with reluctance she had stopped trying to force understanding. She had to trust that the Planet had her best interests at heart. Fragmentary thoughts suggested her task was vital, prompted by the loss of the Black Materia. But try as she might, that was the limit of what the Planet would admit.
She wandered along the rough path between the towering trees of the forest, the air muggy, on the verge of stifling. Was it the air that made her dizzy or the alterations to her mind? She had no idea what was in her head any-more until she stumbled across it. Well, that was not quite correct. Some thoughts chained together with ease, new knowledge linking to new knowledge. Some memories she was certain were hers likewise lead her to new memories. She could not let herself dwell on the implications of the Planet's interference. How certain could she be that the thoughts and memories of her friends and family were hers? Was anything embellished or enhanced from within the Lifestream? Or worse; was she now missing details she had known before, the memories judged unnecessary by the Planet? Had she forgotten and if she had, what had she forgotten?
Stop. It would do her no good to dwell on her anxiety, trying to measure the extent to which her the tampering of her mind extended. She had to trust her memories were her own, had to trust that what she remembered was correct even if those memories were painful. Even if her last memories of Cloud were his fists raining down on her and the sight of him unconscious as she slipped out of the inn at Gongaga. The thought of Cloud connected with one of those new pieces of knowledge. How to talk to him. How she could assure him that everything would be okay. She closed her eyes, letting the flow of the Lifestream far below her wash her away from the Sleeping Forest. Her conciousness moved across the world, Cloud's own mind visible like a beacon in the distance.
She watched as his mind changed and cycled. There was a fluctuation in it, periods where it was open, receptive. It changed, became vague, indistinct, continuing to change. Some connection hooked inside her head and she knew it was cycles of sleep. Cloud was moving with unusual rapidity between periods of deep sleep and points of near waking. She watched as he waxed to the most receptive period, her memories filling in scientific details for which she had no use at the moment. Discarding fragmentary information relating to the switching between stages of sleep she reached out. She concentrated only on reaching him, talking to him, taking this chance before she got any further. She had to talk to him now, before her memory altered any further extent. She was almost to him as Cloud entered a new phase of dreaming. She touched his mind, feeling the connection across the vast distances separating them. Now she could talk to him.