Part Two

1.

I really can't say anymore when it all began. My life has become a blur before it happened. So then, I will start from where I can remember.

The clouds wisped across the sky above me that day. I remember it was unnaturally cool in the canyon, a crisp cool showing the signs of a cooler winter to come. Winter was, however, more than half a year away. A mildly strong wind blew in from the north, no doubt aiding the abnormally cool air.

That day was a special one to me, though I suppose it's a selfish thing to say it was only special for me. It marked the bicentennial of the defeat of Sephiroth.

I lay outside Grandfather Bugenhagen's observatory resting by myself. I wasn't actually resting, though, so much as I was thinking. I'd been alone all day, just thinking. Cloud was supposed to have come that day to celebrate with me, Cloud being the great, great grandson of the Cloud I met in Hojo's lab so long before. But he hadn't shown up, and so I locked myself on top of the canyon and thought. In those days I did a lot of that sort of thing. Even back then I had more or less left behind my fighting days. There was no longer much need for fighting in my life, except in the case of hunting, so I spent most of my time with thought.

Many images came into my mind that day, but mostly I thought about our group of nine from so long before. I pictured each of their faces, thought about their personalities, and wondered why it was I came to enjoy their company. Each of them, I ultimately decided, was, at heart, a good person. Though they had each had their own downfalls, they all were mature and enlightened in their own ways. There was Barret, prone to violence and less than admirable language. But even with that, he was mature in his outlook on life and his principles. Cloud sometimes was depressive (and other times immature), but even though he didn't much show it, he was a very caring person. And there was Aeris. I always admired her. She was one of the few virtuous humans I could not find a fault in. Only my grandfather held that status before her. I tentatively say I loved her. Not romantically, of course. Despite what Hojo may have thought, I don't believe it would have worked. No, she seemed more like family to me. They all did. I sat alone and remembered them all.

At one point my thoughts moved briefly to Midgar, where our journey together seemed to have begun and ended, and then to Sephiroth. Thinking about him now, it seems he was a curse and a blessing. Obviously, he was a menace, a truly depraved soul who made an attempt on the life of the planet. The thing I have trouble believing but that I can't just ignore is that without Sephiroth I may never have come to know Cloud and the others. In a way Sephiroth is the reason I am where I am today.

These things I thought about on that day, my day. Some time into the afternoon I fell asleep.

I dreamed I stood in some sort of circular room set in the side of a mountain. In front of me was the room's exit, which looked out onto a small lake of blood-red water. A river flowed out from the far side of the lake and rushed silently away down between two mountains moving out to a sea shimmering in the distance. In the portion of blue sky visible between the two mountains, billowing cumulus clouds drifted lazily toward nothing in particular. It was daytime. Examining the room I stood in, I saw the walls were made of some sort of dull blue rock. The entire room was lit by light entering from the outside.

Then there erupted a bright white flash of light, seemingly from everywhere at once, that blinded me momentarily. When I could see again, the exit to the lake had disappeared, replaced by a rock wall, and the room was very dark with the exception of some sort of glowing object set in the wall in front of me. It glowed with a pulsing white light which, when it dimmed, left the room veiled in darkness. I slowly moved toward it. As I reached it, the pulsing stopped and the room fell into darkness.

Another flash startled me. The glowing object was gone, but now the walls shone and shimmered like the ocean I'd seen before, illuminated in a deep cerulean blue. In place of the glowing object there now was a door-like hole in the wall. The walls inside the doorway did not shine, and I could not see anything beyond it.

A last burst of white light eclipsed my sight. The rock walls had returned to their drab blue color, and the hole in the wall was gone. Returned was the exit onto the lake. The sky outside burned in shades of red, orange, and yellow light. The sun was a large half-circle on the horizon over the ocean, cut on its left and right by the two mountain faces. Everything outside was silhouetted against the sun, including the clouds in the sky. It shone directly in at me. Sunset. I squinted to see and blinked involuntarily to stop the assault of the sun on my sight. I could not open my eye again because of the harsh light. But through my shut eyelid I saw a shadow fall over me. I opened my eye and saw a large figure blocking the doorway, blotting out the sun. Some sort of large animal. What kind, I could not tell, as it was completely silhouetted. I could see, however, that it was a quadruped. It stood firmly in front of me, as big and strong as the mountains behind it. On the back of its head stood long hair, like a horse's mane, which blew wildly in a wind that did not exist, set aflame in the burning light.

A moment of disconcerting silence ensued. Breaking the silence with a very deep male voice, it said with noticeable contempt, "We don't want you here."

A strong wind kicked up in my face. I braced myself and dug into the ground with my nails to keep my footing. Just as my nails began to slip, I woke up.

2.

For a split second I panicked. My senses returned to me quickly, and I calmed down. The sun had set in the west, lighting the canyon on fire with shades of burnt ochre and umber. It was warmer now, but the same stern wind blowing in from the north kept it feeling relatively cool.

"What a dream," I said to myself.

I was quiet, trying to remember everything about the dream. And suddenly my ears perked. For a moment I thought I heard something on the wind. A very distant, weak sound high above me. But, listening for a few seconds, I heard nothing. I rose to my feet and walked toward Grandfather's house. The sound came again. It halted me mid-step, poised with my head facing down, listening.

Very faded I heard a sound like a siren. It was a prolonged wailing noise, its tone rising and then falling over a period of about ten seconds, pausing, and beginning again, rising up to the same zenith, hovering there, then falling again into nothing.

I closed my eye and put immense concentration forth to hear it over the sound of the wind in my ears. It sounded like a howling coyote, or a wolf in the Nibel Mountains, or maybe some other animal. Whatever it was, I could detect in it a distinct melancholy undertone giving it a lamenting air.

I listened to the howl for about five minutes. It seemed to get louder, and the wind to get stronger with it. I felt almost as though I were in a trance; I listened to that sound and nothing else, and didn't move. Even the sound of the wind in my ears faded away, becoming nothing more than a minor interference. Up and down, up and down. It was an almost hypnotic sound.

Then it faded one last time and did not rise up again. The northern wind had also stopped. In place now was deafening silence. Everything but the sound of my breathing had dropped off the radar. This new silence troubled me. It felt as though I were being watched. I halfway opened my eye and watched the dirt at my feet motionlessly.

Shattering the silence, a piercing knocking rose up from the ground behind me. I jumped in shock and was petrified. My chest burned from the jolt. The knocking was persistent. I followed the sound with my head to its source. A closed, latched door in the ground vibrated slightly with each knock. I stood staring at the door as though I were looking on some horrible monster emerged from the depths of the ocean for the first time, afraid to move or speak. After a moment the shock and burning feeling subsided, and I moved toward the sound. I paused for a quick second before kicking open the latch on the door. The knocking stopped, and the door flipped open. Down below, at the top of a ladder, stood a man.

"Elder Nanaki, are you alright?" he asked.

I was the village's main elder at that time, and had been for a long while. Really, I guess it was natural I should be an elder. One, I truly was by far the elder of any other person in the canyon, and two, not to insult the other villagers, but I was much more knowledgeable about the the study of planet life than any of them.

"Yes, I'm fine. Why do you ask, Kero?"

Kero was the Cosmo Canyon village guard at the time, standing watch at its entrance steps to keep trespassers out. He had a daughter, Maria, near seven years old, who liked to run around the village helping her father protect the people. She was a sweet little girl who couldn't have harmed a fly if she wanted to, but... I guess you could say it didn't hurt having her protect us.

"It's just that you've been up here alone all day. No one has heard from you in the rest of the canyon. And you don't usually lock this hatch. Plus you didn't answer for so long after I began knocking," Kero said.

"I appreciate and understand your concern, but I assure you, everything is fine." At the moment, I wasn't sure I believed myself. The howling sound echoed through my head. It bothered me for some reason.

"Good to hear. I just came up to tell you that you have a visitor. He is waiting for you in the pub."

"Thank you. Would you please tell him I'll be down in a minute"

"Sure," he said, and climbed down the ladder and left.

I watched him leave, and then turned back around. I stood still, listening. A light wind had picked up again, but nothing could be heard riding on it. After a moment I gave up and went down to the pub to meet my visitor.

3.

It was Cloud. As I entered the pub and saw him my heart rose. It always made me happy to see him. He was in his mid-twenties at that time, and was in the face an exact replica of the original Cloud, right down to the color of his eyes. He had a much different personality than his great great grandfather though. He was much more a scientist than a fighter. In fact, he was a rather poor fighter in any comparison to his ancestor. Still, what he lacked in strength he made up for in his intelligence and mentality. I could hold conversations with him unlike I could with anyone else. Sometimes they seemed more like battles of wits than conversations. We would argue about different aspects of the study of Planet Life, the Lifestream, science, and other such subjects, though we kept it fairly light-hearted. In any case, I saw him as my equal and as a window to my past. I guess I even saw him at times as family, like a brother.

Cloud sat at a table directly in front of the bar, facing me as I entered. We both smiled as we saw each other. I hopped up on a bench across from him and sat down.

"I didn't think you were coming," I said jokingly, though I'd recently believed it.

"Red, you know me. I wouldn't dare miss something like this. I had some business back home that was tying me up."

Cloud had trouble pronouncing 'Nanaki,' so he called me Red instead. Coming from him it was alright, but over the years I'd come to dislike that name, Red XIII, and those who called me by it. And what is it that is so difficult about saying Nanaki anyway? An image of him mutilating my name in his childhood years, enunciating with excruciating effort every facet of 'Naaa Naaak Eee,' cut through my mind like a razor.

"Really," I said and acted surprised. "What kind of business?"

"I've been working on a machine that desalinates large-scale amounts of water for drinking. Nothing too major."

"The drought is still holding, then?"

"Costa del Sol is drying up. It's been almost two years. Our readily available water supply has nearly been depleted."

Cloud had lived in Costa del Sol for most all of his life. It was one of the most populated cities around, and it had been for a long while. Over the past two years a drought had held the city hostage, creating something of a dearth of readily available drinking water. Cloud had pledged to end the problem about a year back, and this desalination system was his solution.

"It's ironic that you should die of thirst living right next to the ocean."

Cloud let out a sarcastic laugh. "Well, with any luck, I'll be able to change that. There's going to be a meeting next week. The city's going to hold a vote on it."

"Hopefully it'll get passed. I mean, why wouldn't they pass it?"

"I don't know. Money issues could strike it down. But we need something good to happen. Costa del Sol is going downhill fast. Tourism is way down again this year. The beaches are almost completely empty with exception of the locals. And no tourism means no income. Some of the buildings and hotels around town are beginning to fall into disuse and to show signs of age, cracks and things, and we don't have the money, people, or materials to fix them." He paused for a moment. "It makes you wonder where all the people have gone..."

I was quick to reassure him. "I'm sure things will pick up next year. Just another slow year."

"Hopefully," he said, and didn't seem very hopeful. "How are things on your side recently?"

A thought popped up in my mind. "Nothing has been happening lately. Today has been... fairly peaceful. I've spent most of my time up on top of the canyon by Grandfather's house. It's been relaxing." I paused. The thought welled up in my head, and I could barely hold it in. "I fell asleep some time in the middle of the afternoon." I couldn't tell him. I shouldn't tell him. "And I had a weird dream." I stopped. I couldn't hold it in.

Cloud sensed my indecision and asked if something was the matter.

I hesitated. "How long were you here before I came down?"

"About ten minutes, maybe a little longer. Why?"

I asked quietly, "Did you hear anything while you were waiting for me?"

He was puzzled. Or maybe he was pretending. "I heard a lot of things. People drinking and talking. They can raise quite a clatter in here sometimes." He motioned around the pub. People talked and laughed. A man noisily dragged supplies behind him into the storage room in the back of the pub.

"No, nothing like that," I responded. "When I woke up from my dream I thought I could hear something in the distance." I heard Cloud sigh. He knew what I was going to say. "It sounded like a howl. Like some sort of animal."

"So what?" Cloud spoke with a tinge of irritation in his voice.

Suddenly I couldn't speak. The breath had been taken out of me. "I... I thought maybe it was... maybe it could have been..."

He reset himself on the bench, leaned forward, and looked me straight in the face. His face was serious but calm, and his green eyes seemed to peer into me. It was slightly odd, how he looked at me.

"Red." He whispered as though he were embarrassed to talk about it louder. "You know as well as I do what I am going to say."

I knew. He would tell me that he appreciated my search for others of my kind. That he could understand why I didn't want to be alone. But he would say that seeing and hearing vague glimpses and sounds of unidentified objects and automatically ascribing them to... I needed more proof than that. He'd said it before and he would say it again.

And this had happened previously. It first began on the centennial of Sephiroth's defeat, 100 years earlier. Most of the group was long gone by then—only Vincent remained, but I never stayed around him. Too morbid. I felt alone then, longing for my past, and the feeling was amplified by the occasion. Around that time I began seeing and hearing things, much like the howling sound. I began to believe they were being caused by others of my kind. It became something of an obsession of mine, attempting to discover what it was I was seeing and hearing. And then it all stopped, in only a year.

Only just recently it had begun again.

"I know," I said to Cloud. "But this time it's different. I actually sat and listened to it for what seemed like five minutes."

Clouded laughed. "Red, it's different every time." He stopped and was serious again.

After a moment of excruciating silence I blurted out "Well, you can't blame me for trying." I was trying to change the subject. I felt foolish now. I should have kept my mouth shut. Cloud saw this and changed his manner of speaking.

"Red, it's one of the hardest things in the world, being alone. I know you need someone you can better relate to than me." I couldn't look at him. "Someone you can love. But don't you think that if these things were what you thought that after 250 years of living here you would have met them at least once? There are some truths to face, Red. It isn't any good to find a mate if it kills you doing so."

I didn't say anything for a moment. I felt like a child. "You're right. Now that I think about it, I'm not quite sure what it was I heard. I mean, I had just woken up, and I guess I was a little groggy." I didn't like that feeling. Childishness was a trait that I loathed. Seeing it in myself embarrassed me; I wanted it to go away. I don't think I was very satisfied with what I said, but Cloud had placed some doubt in my mind.

I watched him closely, trying to read him. He seemed to be satisfied that this part of our conversation had come to a close with his point well-made.

The hesitancy I'd felt dissipated, and we began to talk more freely. It was about an hour before Cloud looked outside.

"Wow, it got dark pretty quickly."

I turned around. Outside the pub night had fallen. The Cosmo Candle shone in the doorway, masking the darkness decently. The sky was black behind the candle, only a few stars visible through its light.

"It sure did," I replied.

"I should probably get going. It's a long trip back home."

"Why don't you stay the night here in the canyon? Make the trip tomorrow when it's light out. By now the monsters are probably out."

There weren't many monsters left, even back then, but the ones that remained around the Gongaga area were relatively powerful. Too powerful for Cloud to handle anyway.

"I'm sure I can handle it."

I wanted Cloud to stay that night. "I've heard rumors of a powerful monster attacking travelers at night."

"Really?" Cloud was smiling.

"I'm not lying. It's true. Several people have gone missing, and some have even turned up dead."

"I guess I'll have to watch out for this 'monster.' ...And just where has it been seen?"

"All over the continent and even across the ocean, but most recently around the old reactor ruins and the Corel area. Rumor has it it's attracted to sources of Mako. They say that it can disguise itself as a person familiar to its victims. The only way to tell the difference between the monster and the person it is mimicking is that the monster has red, glowing eyes."

Cloud found my story interesting and pretended to think for a moment. Finally, he said "I really don't want to impose..."

"Oh, no! It's not a problem." I'd gotten him. "I'll just make a bed for you in Grandfather's house. We can sleep up there tonight."

"Alright then. I guess I'll stay here."

"Great!" I hopped up off the bench and onto the ground. "I'll go up and make you a bed."

Cloud remained seated as I backed up out the door. "Alright then. I guess I'll stay here for a bit," he repeated.

"I'll come get you when it's done," I said and left toward the house.

I was glad to have Cloud stay the night. I needed to have company, and really I wasn't close enough to most of the people living in the canyon to keep a company with them. Perhaps there was a little foresight in my eagerness to have Cloud stay as well. It's quite likely that had he returned to Costa del Sol, I would not have survived the night.

4.

We moved into the house about twenty minutes later. I scratched together a bed comprised mainly of an old sofa and a woven blanket of mine I'd bought on a short trip to Nibelheim about fifty years earlier. I placed the bed on the first floor of the house.

Cloud and I spent most of the night talking, catching up on missed time. He hadn't visited in quite a long while. About midnight he hit the wall and decided to get some sleep. I was not tired as of yet and went up to the third level of the observatory to look at the stars. That had become something of a habit of mine over the years. Even today I can spend hours on end looking up to the night sky. Something about the stars and the universe has always fascinated me. It helps me think. It was nearly three hours before I returned to the first floor where Cloud slept and ducked outside undetected.

The sharp cold of the night bit into me. It seemed to revive my senses, to breathe excitement into me, and I didn't know why. I'd felt cold weather like this before. I stopped walking once outside, took in a deep breath through my nose, and held it. The air burned my nostrils for a short second. The moon stood small and insignificant in the sky, casting a dim pale light on the ground that could scarcely be seen. Down below, the Cosmo Candle flitted and flickered its light all around, and that lit my way. With my exhale came a billowing cloud of vapor, writhing, expanding, and then dissipating into nothing.

I walked away from the house, refreshed, toward the northern edge of the plateau. The moon being so small, the sky was blanketed with stars. I looked out in amazement into the distance at the stars to a point where they disappeared behind the darkened Corel and Nibel mountain ranges.

"Beautiful," I whispered to myself, and sat and then lay down near the plateau's edge.

Over-tiredness set in quickly, and I almost dozed off then and there. Just as I was drowsing off, though, something caught my attention and woke me back up immediately.

In the distance on the face of the darkened mountain a small twinkling white light began trailing its way downward from the sky. It moved lazily to the left for a moment, paused, disappeared shortly, and then reappeared moving to the right, doing so over and over, all the while making its way down the mountain. Like a star feathering its way from the heavens to the ground.

I watched this light with interest as it weaved its way downward until I lost sight of it as it moved below the horizon of the edge of the canyon.

Everything seemed normal again. I still trained my attention in the same direction, but my mind which had been roused by the sight began to settle down. I turned my head back to see if by chance Cloud had woken up and seen this. The darkened house remained quiet. Turning back to the mountains, I checked the sky quickly to make sure no more stars were falling. Maybe I was going crazy, just seeing things.

I lay there for five more minutes before getting up to go back inside out of the cold. It was then the light reappeared, much closer than before. It now was on the ground, moving between two steep cliffs down below just outside of the village. I could see now the light was a white flame. It flickered erratically, caught in some draft of wind, lighting the rocks on either side of it and the ground below it. It also appeared it was being held by something, though it was too dark to say what.

I strained to see through the cold darkness and inched close to the edge of the plateau I was on to get myself as close as possible. The flame moved directly below me, paused momentarily, and then began moving forward again, but more slowly now. I put my front feet on the very edge of the cliff and leaned heavily over them to see downward. A form was silhouetted next to the flame that appeared to be holding it with a rope of some sort. I watched intently.

And then, before I had a chance to react, the land I leaned on fell away and I began to fall over the cliff. Panic shot through my mind like an arrow. I pushed out and up with my hind legs in hopes of jumping and turning in midair and grabbing the ledge to pull myself up again. The attempt was valiant but unsuccessful. I didn't get enough height on my jump, and by the time I had turned, I'd fallen too far. My head hit the edge of the cliff hard, slamming my jaw shut with crushing force. I don't remember much else about my fall. I flipped over after hitting my head and rolled and skidded down the cliffside, hitting sharp rocks on my way down. I hit the ground awkwardly, my hind quarters first and then the rest of me, landing with a loud thud, bouncing back up limply, and falling again to rest.

My mind was frantic, but I couldn't seem to think. What had just happened? It hurt to breathe. I felt a horrible blunt pain in my leg that sent pulses of searing pressure to my head. My mind buzzed loudly as the pain crescendoed, as though I'd run headlong into a wall. I wanted to get up and run away from the pain as quickly as possible, but I couldn't move. The pain radiated from my leg and overwhelmed me.

And then my mind came to rest, as still as my body, lying there in a heap. My sight rested straight ahead. The world, hopelessly out of focus, was received only in soft brown and black splotches, as amorphous, barely distinguishable shapes. On the side of my nose I dimly could see a thin layer of blood wetting down my fur, glistening strangely in the pale light of the moon. From somewhere nearby I heard the sound of pained whining.

Something was moving in front of me, though I could not see it with any clarity. A light moved toward me, swaying smoothly from left to right, like a fairy almost, like an angel. Closer and closer it came, larger and larger, this white light, until it was all I could see. And after a moment it suddenly was gone.

I lay there struggling for each breath, and the world, black sky and brown rocks, dimmed and closed up into darkness.