"Nooj."
"Lai."
"Guys."
"Rikku."
"...anybody?"
Gippal's voice didn't even echo. He couldn't even hear himself.
It was so cold. There was no snow, just ice. The ground was frozen, the trees were frozen, and Gippal was the only thing moving. There wasn't even wind, or the crunch of ice crystals under his feet. Just silence and his own breath which froze in the air in front of him and dropped in silent crystals to the ground.
His footsteps were silent.
There was no life. Everything was dead around him, even the air. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, nothing made a sound. He was utterly alone.
Gippal's only companion was the utter cold, which surrounded him and held him in its clutches, forcing him to shake uncontrollably with every step he took.
That was only until his shaking stopped. He could feel the cold creeping down his arms and through his shoulders. He couldn't even blink his eyes. It was like being taken over by a completely separate entity which sought to claim his entire body.
He had given up. He wanted to die out there, wanted to die and join the hopeless who had spoken to Baralai and caused him to disappear off into the thick forest trees, nearly dragging Gippal with him. Gippal wished he hadn't let go. He should have held onto Baralai, should have clinged to him as though their lives depended on it.
Their lives had depended on it. Now Lai was lost, and Nooj was lost, and Gippal was losing himself too.
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"I have to keep going," Gippal said to no one but the cold entity that was creeping through his body. "I have to keep walking. I have to find them."
It was a devastatingly humbling feeling to not even hear his own voice, but know he was talking. He had to keep talking. It took his mind off the cold, forced him to keep trudging forward through the icy path.
"I have... to find them..."
The path was narrowing around him. In a few steps it would be barely wide enough for his two feet to be side by side. It was closing around him, the icy trees brushing their icy leaves against his hair and ears as he walked by them. The trunks scraped against his mostly frozen arms, but didn't make a sound. The leaves shifted as he walked underneath them, but they did not make a sound either. One even dropped to the frozen ground and shattered, but did so in utter silence.
Gippal's only companion was the cold.
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He stared at the massive tree before him. Its three trunks intertwined around each other, and Gippal forced his frozen eyelids to blink. Icy eyelashes fell as he did this, dropping down and sliding along his chest before reaching the ground. It happened in utter silence, of course.
"G...Guys..." His throat was frozen. He could hardly speak the words, if he was even speaking at all. He had lost track of whether his voice worked, especially since he couldn't hear himself.
Gippal reached his hand forward, slowly and steadily. His fingers were so frozen that they couldn't even shake anymore.
He touched the tree, and suddenly he heard something for the first time in what felt like days.
"Ghiki..."
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Ghiki couldn't control the urge to climb. Something in him forced his body to work, to ascend the triple-trunked tree, to climb on the branches that were frozen beneath him. The driving force was the voice calling his name, warm and inviting, pulling him upward. Ghiki's hands worked surprisingly well for being frozen, and he was surprised at his ability to climb the huge tree, jumping from branch upward to branch.
All the time, the voice was encouraging him, drawing him skyward. He felt like he was dying and ascending to some sort of heavenly plane, if he believed in such a thing. Maybe he had been wrong all this time. Maybe the religious people were right, maybe he was going to heaven.
Heaven was a really tall, majestic, frozen tree.
It sounded great to him.
A flurry of wings descended from the sky suddenly. Ghiki felt feathers close around him, and he was warm again. Everything changed. He could feel his entire body now, and it was working and functioning and wonderful. The warmth of the feathers and the wings was nothing compared to the recognition he felt and understood from the creature which had grabbed him and lifted him upward to the clouds, carrying him away from the frozen waste below.