This blanket is itchy.
Cloud lies on his side underneath it. His knees are bent at his stomach. The bare parts of his body prickle under the blanket. It is way too bristly a material. And heavy. It almost pins him to his cot. Presses down hard on his lungs.
Frustrated, Cloud kicks the blanket away. He hears it slide off the foot of his tiny bed. It is an almost inaudible sound. More like a breath than a word. He huffs. Then tucks his chin in against his collarbone. Inhaling deeply, Cloud can feel his lungs shudder. They seem to shrink inside him.
All around him, the Highwind speaks. Its organs thrum and groan. Each sound reverberates through its metal bones. It is like the steel itself warbles.
The airship is noisy when it is in flight. Cloud has always known this. But he thought that he had grown accustomed to it.
Now, each noise needles him awake.
"Shut up," he tells it. The airship does not obey.
He needs silence. True silence.
Like the kind he witnessed that night in the red canyon. The howling wind had been so sharp. Enough that Cloud could almost believe that it alone had carved out the gorge. He can remember having to fight against the wind to light their campfire. Once the fire caught, it had been even harder to keep its flames contained.
But both the fire and the wind died hours later. Only Cloud had been awake then. Somehow, their absence made the distance between him and the stars expand. Like it was a distance he could hear. His windburned skin had begun to itch. The only sound he heard then was his own breath.
Cloud needs the silence he remembers as a child. It had been an early morning. His mother was not even awake yet. Neither was the sun. He had knelt at the largest window in their kitchen. The glass would fog up if he held his face too close to it. So he made sure not to as he watched the sun creep up from behind the mountains.
There had been a spider that lived in the upper right-hand corner of that window. His mother had said it was harmless and that it helped to keep the bugs out. So she never did anything to hurt it. Cloud liked to watch it too. That same morning, the spider dangled delicately from a thread of its own making. Its web had been empty. Only sunlight beaded on it. It had looked exquisite. And sad.
These things took his voice from him then. His gaze drifted back to the dark form of the mountain range. For some reason, his mouth moved. Yet he made no noise. Cloud forgets what he had been trying to say. Maybe nothing. He may have just been trying to mirror the shape of the mountains with his mouth.
One memory spills into another. Suddenly, he is there in that pool. The water is air against him. It has no weight. No presence. His breath catches and gets stuck. He cannot be here. Not tonight. Not ever.
Cloud still lies on his bed. Unintentionally, his mouth moves through shapes. He does not know what one he is looking for. It could be the outline of those mountains again. Or the sound the blanket had made as it fell.
He does not find that latter shape with his own mouth. It is formed by her lips instead. The woman had knelt on an altar inside a ruined city. When he stepped onto the altar, she had let out that precise noise. Not a word. Or a name. Only a breath. The sound of fabric falling in on itself.
She talked about the future more than anyone.
His memories pull him in. Cloud follows the woman into another one. It is the vision where the trees glowed and laced their roots together in the cold earth. Flitting through the trees, she had been a thing as immaterial as the air. He could only catch glimpses of her: a hand. A curl. An eye. Her face in profile. Each fraction of her had looked like a trick of light.
Disoriented, Cloud had felt his whole being waver. Like he was just a mirage himself. He thinks it might have been terror that rendered him speechless. It might have been wonder too. Cloud had hung on her every word. Caught every syllable. Whenever she paused, he did not breathe.
Then the woman had stepped clear of the trees.
Cloud recalls her expression. The gentle curve of her eyebrows. The soft shape of her mouth. He could almost believe she was smiling.
I'll come back when it's all over.
Cloud understands her words even less now than he had then.
She might have been trying to reassure him. If so, it had not worked. A heartbeat sent tremors through his entire being. Desperation and something else seized him. The air itself fought against him as Cloud tried to pursue her through the forest. He can remember how his legs struggled to pedal through the viscous air.
Cloud woke up to the sound of his own breath. The nerves in his legs had throbbed.
A few of them buzz now. There is a sudden soreness in his legs. The air almost seems to swell along his calves. Something about it clings to him like his sweat does. Or like the chalky earth of the red canyon. He cannot step back outside of his memories now. The woman had sat on one hip and rubbed the dirt between her fingertips. They had been no more than two feet apart from each other. They had been no more than five apart from the Cosmo Candle. But the fire provided no warmth. It only crackled and made their shadows move erratically.
Her eyes had lifted from the dirt in her hands to the stars overhead. By the way the woman squinted at them, he knew she was thinking deeply. Cloud did not know what she thought about. Only that whatever it was looked like it hurt.
He had tried to reach her with words of his own.
But I'm... we're here for you.
Her eyes did not meet his. They shifted as the shadows did around them. Then the woman returned her gaze to the stars. That something else had ached so acutely then.
Before he knows it, Cloud is on his feet. The air does not fight him now.
He has a question for Nanaki. Finding the door in the dark, Cloud slips through it and out into the cargo bay. Everything is louder out here. Machinery chatters with their neighbouring parts. Some call out to things in distant regions of the airship.
The emergency lights are too small and distant to illuminate the cargo bay. Everyone knows that they flicker due to faulty wiring. Air turbulence only makes them worse. But right now he could almost believe they are but apparitions.
He stumbles deeper into the cargo bay. Nanaki must around here somewhere. He could be curled up beside some crates and using a tarp as bedding. Or he might be on top of the crates so that he is closer to air and wood than to metal. Nanaki seems to like that. Maybe he needs that.
As Cloud looks, he tries to piece his question together in his mind. He needs to ask the question right. He needs to know what it is like to be the last of something. Truly one of a kind.
Then the sheer idiocy of this hits him. His sweat is so cold against his skin. It makes him shudder. Crossing his arms to rub at them, Cloud stares ahead into the darkness.
He wishes he knew what she had meant.
He does not want to. But Cloud remembers the pool. Nothing had spoken there. Not even the water as he stepped into it. He remembers the weight of her body in his arms. Then not. Water had soaked into her. It dragged her down into its depths as her hair splayed out in a golden wreath around her pallid face. It may have been some kind of message. But then, he could only hear himself breathe.
She is dead.
There are no walls here. They are phantasms just as the emergency lights are. There is only this darkness. And more after that.
The floor creaks under his shifting weight. Something further below snores. Overhead, a piece of machinery snorts. These sounds echo and become a backdrop to new noises. More things whirr. Mechanisms cry out to each other. The only sound that cannot be drowned out is the constant hum of the engine.
"Shut up," he tells the airship. It does not listen.
Maybe this is what is it like to be the last of something: it is a one-sided conversation in the dark. It is listening to a world speak all around him. But to go unheard himself. To see nothing of what speaks. It is knowing that everything else but those voices are just apparitions flickering on the edges of his vision. Maybe he had been only an apparition to her too.
This is what it might have been like for her; this is what it might be like for Nanaki now. His lungs are so heavy in his chest.
He thinks this may be the closest he has ever been to understanding them.
In his mind, he can see her face below the glassy surface of the pool. Thin tendrils of light lie like lace on the water. It webs her face in blue and white. In gold. Something exquisite, he thinks. And sad.
There must have been a wind blowing all this time. He had just never noticed it before. The wind has died here inside this cargo bay. Now he can see the canyon it has carved out between him and her. His skin itches. Like he is swathed in that blanket again. In this moment, Cloud can only hear his own breath.
This is the truest silence of all.
A numbness has set into his feet. It begins to crawl up his legs. When it hits his knees, Cloud thinks he will collapse. But he has sunk to his knees too often lately. It seems too melodramatic to collapse right now. Especially since he is in his right mind.
Cloud hears something. Although it is scarcely louder than a breath, he thinks it sounds like a laugh. Thinks it might be his. It dies in the dark. Leaves him astonished. Perhaps he is not in his right mind after all.
Before the temple— before his breakdown— the woman would have teased him about that. She would have mentioned something about hearing voices herself. Offered him her hand and told him that they could look for their right minds together. She would have laughed. And he would have too. She had always made laughing so easy.
Aerith had always made him feel welcome.
This realization hits him. It knocks the itch out of his skin. A louder laugh escapes him.
Nibelheim had burned. His kitchen with it. Yet in this moment, Cloud can feel the windowsill underneath his arms. He knows what his lips had reached for: not a word or a name. But a shape. To know the mind of something phenomenal. To speak in the same voice as the earth.
To understand the shape of mountains.
He will try again. And he will never stop trying.
In the morning, Cloud digs out an oatmeal-and-berry protein bar and a small bag of spiced jerky from the cupboard inside the captain's lounge. When he finds Nanaki on the open-air deck, he offers him the latter.
"Thank you," Nanaki says. Gently, he takes a strip of jerky from Cloud's fingers. As he chews, his tail wags slightly. The wind slips around the shape of the Highwind and hits them. It makes Nanaki's mane billow. Makes Cloud's skin prickle.
It makes Cloud smile.