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The air is full of smells that Cloud could not even begin to separate from each other, outside of the fact he knows, loosely, that some of them belong to the food stalls that line the street that’s currently flooded with crowds of people that he trudges through; pushing past some’s shoulders and barely avoiding a head-on collision with others, some say words he does not even clearly hear or understand, all of them sounding like they are underwater.
There are more sounds outside of their gurgled voices that seem to almost bounce off of him in directions that are not all from the same one, lights that hang above that all blur together alongside his surroundings, various signs he cannot really make out what they say or what they are even advertising because he continues to walk forward.
Where he’s going, he can’t say, because he doesn’t know. He hasn’t known where he is for quite some time, all he can make out is some of the small things that have changed; more or less amounts of people here and there, the amount of chatter, and the slight changes of the colors and environment around him. All he knows that has stayed the same is that he has been walking for a very long time, his legs have not stopped to pause and they may be aching right now, but if they are, he cannot tell, because the walking has become such a regular motion that to stop it now feels like halting and letting yourself sink instead of continuing to swim.
People, people, people, that’s all he really can process past the motion of one foot in front of the other. There are so many people yet so little at the same time to him, because he moves, and they become blurs, and he never sees the blurs once they leave the corner of his eye, and then it’s like they cease to exist, and they’ll never be people he sees again.
Maybe there were no people at all, their shapes blend with the ones of buildings and soon everything is nothing but a blur, and soon it seems nothing exists at all.
And he continues to walk, this cycle continuing on as it always had, the same way a bird takes flight from a branch, a flower unfurls its petals, a— dog barks.
Suddenly and abruptly, Cloud halts, hands at his side and fists clenched which he does not remember doing but he notices now that he has stopped the perpetual movement of moving his legs and arms continuously with no real goal. The bark makes him turn his head to the rushing blur in front of him and make out a matted mess of fur, dirtied by the pollution of the slums and looking more like mud, there is a stray dog that stands at a stall, it stares at him, and their eyes meet, and in that strange moment, their eyes seem not that different from each other. Its tongue hangs out of its mouth with no purpose other than to draw extra breath, drool dropping to the ground as its teeth are bared with nothing to chew on.
It is then maybe most would feel a hunger settle into their stomach, a realization brought by a broken pattern, but Cloud does not. Instead, he stares at it only for a moment before he turns his head away from it and he walks on, fists still clenched, and everything else around him feeling less like a surrounding and more akin to a whirlwind.
And by all means, the cycle from this point forth should continue, but instead his arm is grabbed and he stumbles at the force of which it is grabbed.
A muffled voice he does not recognize but the way they say a word seems familiar makes him turn his head, perhaps his mind thinks of when he was a child (which he could not name one memory of if you had asked him personally) and was at his mother’s side in the market, but all he sees is a stall owner waving a sign in front of his face, which he cannot read or quite process what it means, but he skims over it anyway because apparently, they offer something free. And because they offer something free, he receives a sample, then they ask for him to pay—as if what they had given him was not a free sample, or maybe it hadn’t been one all along—and he shuffles around his pockets for money only to find he does not have any.
He shakes his head and takes the sample with him and ignores the face of sympathy and the second face of furrowed frustration to walk, but this time he does not fall into an endless drive to move forward, all he finds is himself staring at what he has.
It’s a short stick pierced through some pieces of meat, ones seasoned with seasonings that have mixed with the rest of the air so really it does not smell like anything at all.
So Cloud finds his legs taking him to a quieter place, one with less lights and fewer stalls and less people about, and when he does he feels them buckle out from underneath him and leave him leaning against the wall of an alley, still holding the stick of meat. He stares at it with no feeling or need to eat it, but then in the bit of light that does seep into the alley there stands a shadow now. He looks over expecting to see the shopkeeper, perhaps they had come to take back the sample, but all he sees is the stray.
Thus he and the stray stare at each other again, once more does their gaze not seem that different from each other, its ears are flattened and he looks at the drool that still drips out of its mouth and to the food he holds.
It takes a step forward, he does not move, and when it takes another step forward toward him, he holds his arm out, the other slack in his lap (which he did not notice before nor will he now) and the dog’s eyes flicker from him to the meat, its tongue still hanging, its breath still ragged, and yet it approaches the stick slowly, deliberately, as if waiting for him to pull it away, but his grasp on it is not really there at all and it slips out of his hand, falling to the floor of the alley and the stray pounces upon it.
It laps up at the meat, whatever extra seasoning it may have filling its belly, that is when Cloud notices the ribs that protrude from it, its tongue now licks its lips and it no longer hangs but retreats inside behind its teeth which are now no longer bared.
It looks back up at him and still its eyes do not resemble his but at the same time they are not unfamiliar, and it looks at him, with flattened ears and a stiff tail, and Cloud notices his arm like the stick is now on the ground of the alley, which he had not really noticed it had done after dropping it.
He pulls it back and soon it lays next to the other one, and the stray still defensive seems to lower its guard, looking out to the busied streets and looking like it does not enjoy the sound of them either, so instead it walks into the alley more, disappearing from sight, and instead laying across from Cloud, against the wall, tail limp like his arms. And so, the two sit there, not in silence, but there is no conversation made between the stray and him.
So he and the stray sit in the alley, and nobody bats an eye; some glimpse and see and they do not bother, and at some point the cold ground makes the ache in his muscles realized, and the choice to sit becomes a regret.
The stray rests on an uncomfortable limp, one he had not noticed before as it had blended with its wild fur and the dirt that submerged it into the background. For it seems to not notice it has an injury at all. And in that moment, they are both nothing alike and everything alike.
The fabric of the uniform strangely fitted to his build yet he cannot remember where he had even gotten it despite the fact it mimics that of a First Class SOLDIER’s, but he has no memory of being one and then he does, because of course, he is a SOLDIER, he had quit Shinra’s business quite a long time ago, so he dismisses the fabric as it rubs up against his skin and what he thinks are scratches or perhaps he is just reminiscing of when he was injured and dragged himself off the battlefield, (if that ever really was a time.)
The stray stares at him, riddled with scars he is convinced he has on his own body. Perhaps it too was a soldier, in its own way, one fighting for scraps instead of for glory, one eating out of hunger instead of honor. And in that moment, they are both nothing alike and everything alike.
The weight of the sword on his back must be attributed to such a thing too, it is heavy because he has carried it for a long journey, maybe a part of his brain conjures up the idea that he is almost patrolling the slums, but whatever it thinks of, it is lying to itself. Maybe in the same way the stray lies on the ground, not relaxed, still tense, not much unlike him, and yet, despite this defensive posture it holds, its eyes are closed.
And Cloud finds that strange, for his eyes, unlike the stray’s cannot close.
Because he must go somewhere, where, exactly, he does not know. Soon he lifts himself off the ground and the stray opens an eye to watch him do so, he does not stretch to relieve the ache, for that will only realize it more, so he walks out of the quiet alley out into the blur of people, and he walks and walks. The stray lifts its head and does not follow him, it stays where it is quiet, but his legs beckon him elsewhere so elsewhere he goes.
So Cloud feeds the stray for he is not hungry nor will he remember it, but it will remember him.
For when his shadow moves over the dancing lights, it opens its eye to observe as he stumbles through the crowd far more lucid than drunkards but with the same sense of direction as one, and it too rises from the ground and trails after him. To him it is not following but to it, it already is on his heel. He does not notice it, or in fact, anyone, he continues to be a passerby in others’ eyes but the stray still walks after him.
It finds the man that it follows strange. For before it and him had entered this alley, it had been running through the streets, away from shopkeepers who either had brooms or hands to swat at it with, and barely missing a nip at some food that hung off of a stall. Food that had fallen onto the street could lap up for a bit before it would be shouted at, then it would continue to run.
This night, the slums had been unvirtuous to it; no scraps of food that were not stepped on soon after, other times where it should’ve been lucky were washed away by strict shopkeepers trying to sell to businessmen that did not live down here but still seemed to do business here, someone offered it food only for them to be discouraged from it, for they had paid gil.
It had walked through the stalls and settled itself in the midst of them, its mouth coated with saliva as it stood, and people walked, and it heard another shopkeeper across the way shout at it, so it barked in return, and then it noticed someone had stopped to stare.
It was not sure what exactly he was, as while it had seen the uniform before on posters, this man was not on a poster, he was there, and he was real. And the two stared at each other’s eyes, before the man moved on.
But it was curious about this poster man, and so it followed him. It had seen him receive food for free, a look of sympathy itself had seen when the stalls too had given it food, and it saw him stumble and peel off from the crowds of people into an alley, and it approached him. It expected him to shout, to shoo, to swat, but instead, he held out the food to it, and it pounced.
So perhaps what it was is that it had grown attached to this poster man, as it followed him, sliding its way in between the spaces of stalls, to stay out of the light that the man drags himself through like it is leading him to the end of a tunnel, but there is no tunnel, there is only the stench of the slums and a bickering thing called business.
It avoids being swatted, it avoids the shouts, for if it is seen by any of the people, they shall have its head, or tell it to return to a place it has never had. It wonders how long the man has walked, how long he has been lost, if he ever had a place to rest, for he acts and drags himself along like a stray that has not had a home in a long time, yet at the same time, his hair is not matted like its fur, his skin is not as dirtied as its, people look at him like he is peculiar but not a ragged beast that must be swept away before it takes.
And so when he stumbles upon stairs, it half expects him to not even remember to lift his foot up higher each time, yet he does, so it follows him up them, observing him while he wades back and forth like there is water which is invisible to everyone else but him, and he collapses onto a bench at the station, where it has seen many come and go; so maybe he does have somewhere to go.
It does not get close, it lays under a bench a few feet away from him, but it does watch. As that is what it has always done. This is how it steals, this is how it lives, but the man does not seem to watch and learn, for he just seems to aimlessly look for something he himself isn’t sure of.
He has no scars nor wounds on his body to excuse such things, so there must be scars all over his brain, it thinks. Yet it cannot judge with its own brain, as it has forgotten completely it has a fourth leg it has pointlessly dragged behind it, and it still does not remember.
His head hangs low like the stray’s does to a platter of food, except there is no platter, and there is no food. It wonders why a man who looks as starving as he gave his food away to a stray. Maybe he understood, in that moment, it needed it more than him, maybe he has feasted too, maybe he will feast later.
The station is loud, it is crowded. The growing numbers of people make the stray’s fur bristled, and it finds itself soon shooed out from under the bench by a businessman who wishes to sit but not with a mutt. So, it runs right out from underneath, forgetting it has a fourth leg, and it does run. Run it does, past a woman, and the woman almost trips over it, looking to where it came from.
The stray slows while it almost tumbles down the stairs and pulls itself to the side of the ebb and flow of people, looking back to the man collapsed on the bench, and the woman it had tripped approaches him, putting a hand on his shoulder and saying some word that is familiar to him.
It is then the stray realizes, not only does the man receive food unlike it, he even has a name, which it has never had the pleasure of having, as he looks up at her with recognition and suddenly he does not seem much like it; more like the dogs that bark it off porches and the ones that growl when it comes to their scraps.
But unbeknownst to both him and it, they are more alike than they will ever know.