III. The Halcyon Spirit
An echo poured over the cosmos, drenching the depths of the Planet with new life and vitality. She breathed and the wind would bow to her. She danced and the flowers would bloom. She smiled and the light would shine. In an instant, she could make a withering world thrive again with one word of encouragement.
She became known as the Mother of Gaia, the Angel of Life, the Halcyon Spirit. She enveloped the sick and dying and restored their quivering souls, warming their hearts and rekindling their hope. He was desperate for her hands again, desperate for the sound of her heartbeat, desperate for her clumsy feet pitter-pattering close behind. Cloud was never so sure of how lost he was in life until he met her, and didn't realize how much she stabilized his path until she was taken. They say it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, but this loss had broken him from within.
During the night he closed his eyes and let himself be eaten by the darkness of the night. He felt his body falling, circling round and round into nowhere. He was weightless externally, but his insides felt heavy and dense, like something were sitting atop his chest. Cloud couldn't explain this feeling; this heavy weightlessness, just like he couldn't explain this passionate hurt he felt when he felt nothing at all. It was all a paradox and he felt as though he'd just opened Pandora's box, floating into the unknown blindly.
In the darkness, he began to hear her call. High-pitched coos, like a faraway bird that existed somehow within the depths of outer space. Halcyon Spirit. Her song echoed between the stars and tickled at his head. He felt as though he were being rinsed with cold water; like someone had just poured a large bucket over his head. He breathed as though it were the first time. His fingertips began to tingle-he knew it was her. Cloud wanted to open his eyes, he needed to see her again, but they wouldn't budge. He was doomed to the dark now.
He tried to call her name. Aerith. But his voice was made mute by the deafening silence of space. Only her song filled his ears now. She was the only one with power here. This was her domain, and as vulnerable as that was, it was total paradise. Is this our world? The Spirit healed him in every way that a person could be healed. She lifted his drowning heart afloat in the turmoil of his soul, kissed it gently and nurtured it. She cared for his life like a hen and an egg; always watching, always close. He was weightless now.
And the lights flicked on. And his bed was beneath him again. Though he were back where he fell asleep, the cold of his room had been replaced by warmth, as though the sun had risen and were beaming through the windows. The Halcyon Spirit had only just left. But she was still near. Always watching. Always close.
Ellie Goulding's Mirror heavily inspires me towards something Aerith related, and since I've been in a Clerith mood, I wrote a fanfic with said inspiration. Ellie is a Queen.
