Songs for What We Have Lost

(the journey homeward to the habitual self)

Zell has never forgotten the crisp salt-sand-fish smell of the sea, undercut by barbecue sauce and, if his aunt brought any, blueberries. He always knows the ozone tang of a storm on the horizon for what it is, long before his parents or even Grandpa Dincht.

There's a storm on the sea right now. He watches lightning flash and feels the wings of something golden shiver. It stretches; for an instant his body thrums with electricity, and he smells a different ocean, saltier, more metallic, undercut by flowers—

The instant ends, subsumed in lemonade, in shadow-boxing, in tactics, in Thundaga.

(one in a thousand burns clean and is gone leaving a white ash)

Faces: she's forgotten faces.

His eyes fade from memory, their peculiar shade of gray burned to ash in a snowstorm's shadow. Gold-auburn hair twines smokey plume after smokey plume against the steel sky; becomes a strawberry-blonde she met once.

And then it's gone. The rollicking ocean burns away from her dreams.

Selphie crouches amist the rubble. Much of it's still hot from the missiles. Here, her room would—should—be; there, a photo album.

She finds only charred scraps of paper, burned beyond all recognition. Above the char she smells singed fur.

Even when she tries, she can only see him grown.

(if you only knew; my flesh would be become a song for you)

The tinny snatch of song she's never sung, coupled with Balamb's sea breeze, jolts a whipstrike to Quistis's tired memory. For an instant, she remembers another ocean, another sea-salt scent, tastes blackberries and vanilla.

But the record skips, and stops. The dimly-recallled voice, hoarse and throaty, vanishes beneath waves that only exist in battle.

Those waves, she glimpses golden between one moment and the next. In those instants, her whip's no weapon but a harp-string.

But then the summoning ends, the battle ends. Siren leaves only silence behind her, until scattered, shimmering notes comprise the only song in Quistis's head.

(i will drown before i die)

Until he junctions, Squall neither remembers nor fully forgets the orphanage. Rainy nights remind him of the ocean's roar; student chatter in Garden's halls dimly echoes laughter heard years ago. Strangers's eyes glimmer for an instant; he thinks he's home, but—

Twenty minutes after the bell, his teeth chatter; his breath freezes in his throat. Her coldness burns his lungs. Trapped in ice, untouchable, unspeaking, she's bitter strength and sweet loneliness. He wants to be like her.

Her chuckle echoes cracks spiderwebbing through ice.

—but home is not people.

Her wake is the heavy, muffling silence of a snowy morning.