Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had tried to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —

Nameless here for evermore.

-Excerpt from 'The Raven' by Edgar Allen Poe.

It started with a sketch on paper. His room soon became filled with a sea of crumpled pages. He continued to draw until he captured the moment as he pictured it in his mind. The man swiftly placed the finished piece onto the large, expensive canvas he bought the other day and opened his new pack of oil paints with trembling fingers.

With a fine-haired paintbrush, he gave the canvas a soft yellow wash. The picture consisted of a woman's face and shoulders. She was facing the painter with a side view, as if she was on the verge of turning to face him, her hair perpetually swaying, encapsulated in that single moment.

The young man brushed a lock of blonde hair away from his face and started with the background that consisted of rocks and cliffs of Cosmo Canyon.

He etched in the weathered landscape as how he remembered it; the deep erosions on the precipices showing the eternal passage of time, the moonlit ground caved with the footsteps of many that had crossed this place but the painting centred around the woman in the foreground as the man painted long elegant strokes of black, navy and silver around her. Shades of brown died into black the crevices of the long cliffs; too forgotten to be regained without the artistic eye.

Cerulean eyes searched the dark shades frantically before a small brush blended the pale moonlight with the darkness.

The man realised that the night was almost over and it was time to move on. He kept his talent a secret from the others and continued painting every night that passed until there were dark, visible circles underneath his eyes and she placed a small hand on his lean arm with concern but he told her everything was fine so she could join the others again. He memorised the image of her eyes vividly in his mind that day so when everyone was asleep, his next motive was to paint the eyes of the woman on the canvas.

He gave the eyes a green wash first before filling them in with a rich emerald colour. His brush worked rhythmically with many shades of green including pine green for depth, a hint of lime for the reflections of the moonlight, small elegant hues of jade and olive closer to the pupil.

Ghostly specks of light- brown and metallic grey remained hidden to add more volume to her eyes. The pupils were saturated black with shimmers of ivory around it. The painter took a step back to observe the piece so far. His heart skipped a beat for he felt as if he placed the very eyes he loved onto the canvas before him.

He trembled and swallowed a lump in his throat at the fearful thought. He was borrowing her beauty-not his imagination-and painting it onto the canvas yet he continued to borrow and once night left and vanished in the break of dawn, he didn't give any of her beauty back to her. It remained imprisoned in brush strokes and confined within a canvas.

It took him a couple of weeks to paint the soft texture of her hair, mainly auburn and maroon though he used glints of gold and azure blue for the strands that attracted the moonlight. The strands that were lost in the darkness bore sapphire and burgundy sfumato brush-strokes.

He took particular care not to make the strands that framed her face appear unrealistic. Her curls fell down to her bare shoulders with elegance, the brown mingled with faint hints of mahogany and navy.

Her lips were not difficult to paint as they were small, cherry-shaped. The man had an image of roses as he shaded the very colours of the flowers onto her lips; soft reds and pinks with silver for a glossy shine. All that was left to do now was the skin.

His team mates were suspicious as to why he persisted on staying in a rented room all by himself. Money was hard to earn and he should have realised that but the young man was afraid if she found out that he was painting a portrait of her.

The skin was hard to illustrate, it was translucent whenever he saw her in the sun and it was a pale blue when they hid in dark alleys but she seemed like she bathed in milk. Her porcelain complexion was creamy white with mixed tints of apple pink on her cheeks.

He did not accomplish in capturing this, it drove him crazy. He slammed his pallet against the desk beside him and he remained brooding on his stool, the only source of light came from a flickering lamp on the desk.

Then he started calmly with many shades of white, pink, yellow and the lightest brown, he painted her skin, blending her contours to create a harmonic illusion. When his pallet was full, he used the walls of his room to mix the paints.

He painted her straight nose; the edges faded with the techniques of sfumato and he filled her shoulders a divine glow until her skin was a stunning chiascuro to the dark cliffs of the Cosmo Canyon,

Lastly, he added the elastic black necklace she wore around her long, elegant neck.

The portrait was complete. The man observed it with jealous Death standing beside him: his beloved trapped in a moment of time, forever to sway into a turn that will only happen in the viewer's mind-her eyes large and beautiful like two bright shooting stars, her luscious lips slightly parted in awe.

But something was missing; the woman in the picture was not her. The painter had placed fragments of his soul into the portrait but she was not present inside it at all. This was only his perception of her, his personality-his feelings!

The only thing that belonged to her was the immortal countenance of beauty, so melancholic and poignant it was...

So Cloud Strife wiped a tear from his eye for his effort that had gone to waste. He watched the portrait again and felt as if time had stopped, as if the woman inside was beckoning him to enter. The paints on the walls swirled around him, each colour providing him a memory to cling to.

The only sound that was to be heard was the rapid beating of Cloud's heart. He did not know how but his hand was reaching towards the painting, waiting for the clutches of the other dimension to take him in.

In the far future, Death envied his object of beauty so much that he claimed the woman for himself so none may look upon the real human but upon the enigmatic woman in the portrait painted by Cloud Strife.

And what did Cloud Strife do?

He stood staring at the mingled colours as they fell like rain into his deep blue eyes causing his vision to grow softer and softer before his surroundings faded to black.

But the woman in the portrait was never alone for fragments of Cloud were trapped inside...

'Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.'

-Sec 212,'The Symposium' by Plato.

I got the inspiration from Edgar Allen Poe's story; 'the oval portrait'. I do not own Final Fantasy 7 :(

Okay, so I realised there were hardly any Clerith fics that focused on the mystery behind their relationship. Most of the Clerith fics contain angst, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of angst myself but there has to be more fics about the Clerith mystery. This story has a deep meaning to it so cheers to anyone who could decipher this.

Thank you for reading, :)