I thought it would be hard to find something to talk about while still trying to keep everything about who I was and what I, according to the denizens of Tartaros, 'remembered' about myself, a secret. But talking with Cloud was easy. He seemed to know more about literature than I could hope to grasp in a lifetime, and it turned out he knew a lot of it by heart, too. Soon, I found myself entranced by his voice again, as he told me stories of forgotten gods, long lost lovers and sunken kingdoms.

"I like these old myths a lot," he confessed, "Because reading them is like a journey to a faraway place. But what I really like best are poems."

"Poems? Like Paradise Lost?"

"No, no, the short ones. The more abstract ones. The romantic ones, especially. Like the Fleurs Du Mal."

"The what now?"

"Flowers of Evil, Baudelaire's poems. You don't know them?"

"Ah, I do know Baudelaire..." I furrowed my brow as I tried to remember any specific poems of his. "But not in the original French."

That language was unfortunately deader than the forest around us. With the only surviving humans in the world all sharing the same language and all Old World knowledge being digitally archived and readily translated, there was no use for learning any foreign languages. My very limited knowledge of French came from bits and pieces that I had picked up from art like the song "Je ne regretted rien" or the painting "Ceci n'est pas une pipe". So I had no idea about anything he was talking about, when he began to speak again.

"J'implore ta pitié, Toi, l'unique que j'aime,
Du fond du gouffre obscur où mon coeur est tombé.
C'est un univers morne à l'horizon plombé,
Où nagent dans la nuit l'horreur et le blasphème;

Un soleil sans chaleur plane au-dessus six mois,
Et les six autres mois la nuit couvre la terre;
C'est un pays plus nu que la terre polaire
Ni bêtes, ni ruisseaux, ni verdure, ni bois!"

I stopped in my tracks and stared at him, baffled. It took me a moment to find my speech again. "You're kidding, right?"

"What? No. That's Baudelaire. De profundis clamavi – 'Out of the depths I have cried'. One of my favorites. Reminds me a lot of this place. 'It's a gloomy world with a leaden horizon, where through the night swim horror and blasphemy'," he translated for me as he gestured around us.

I continued to stare at him, utterly dumbfounded. Who on earth still speaks French these days?

I certainly didn't, so once more I found confirmation that whatever was going on here, this was not just a regular dream.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You're a bit strange, you know that?" I replied.

"Why, thank you very much." He cracked that mischievous grin that always made me think of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. "I'm happy to return that compliment."

We continued on our aimless path through the grey forest, climbing over half-rotten tree trunks and ducking below low, dead branches.

"So have you always liked literature?" I asked to keep the conversation going.

"Hard to say, really. I think it grew on me when I read through the library. But before that.... I suppose when we came here without memories, we were all just blank slates," he said and shrugged. "Except for you, of course."

"That's not true. If this was all nurture with no nature, you would all end up mostly the same. You have memories," I insisted. "And that's why each of you has their own interests and desires."

"Desires?" he repeated and threw me a sideward look with a slight smile and one eyebrow raised. I felt myself blush.

"I mean like preferences, and talents," I quickly elaborated, "Think about Feather's painting, or Edge's origami. Or your own love for literature. You didn't all end up liking the same things, despite the limited possibilities. And there's more. Like Rain always wears her hair open, and Bridge always ties it in those complicated braids. I wouldn't even know how to do that. There's other things, details. Like you always wear your jacket half-open, and Edge zips it all the way up to his beard."

"I never even noticed that."

"I'm just... observant."

Yes, it totally didn't have anything to do with the fact that I had spent a significant amount of my time in Tartaros staring at him.

"Either way. It shows that you are not just shells. When you came here, there was something in you. On a subconscious level perhaps."

"That's a nice way to think about it," he agreed. "But I wouldn't really consider it memory."

"You speak French. If that's not memory, what is?"

Walking across a patch of even ground, I turned around and continued my steps backwards, so I could watch his face while the realization worked its way up from the depths of his mind. Apparently, he had really never thought about it. He opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again and knitted his brows together.

"Huh," he just said. "Interesting."

"And think about your names, too," I suggested, as I turned around to walk normally again. "Why would you pick those names, that are so unlike anything what you find in those books in the library? Why pick names like Feather and Quill, Cloud and Rain, and not something like, I don't know, Anna or Arthur or whatever, based on the characters or authors there? You remembered something."

I hesitated for a moment, before I added, "From... the other world."

I just haven't quite figured out yet if it's just the world of the waking or the world of the living, or something else entirely.

And I recalled how Dream had called it - a world filled with color.

I heard how Cloud suddenly stopped dead in his tracks behind me and turned around to find him fixing me with a curious look. I was just about to climb across a fallen tree trunk - now I paused for a moment, and I sat down to meet his gaze.

"I... I'd like to know your name," he said.

My heart stopped for a moment, and then continued to beat at an accelerated pace. A feeling of unease spread through me, as I remembered what had happened the last time somebody in Tartaros had asked me about my name. I didn't much care to spell it out again.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because a name is important. And if you remember yours, I'd like to know it."

I opened my mouth, but closed it again, then I softly shook my head.

"But you remember it, don't you?"

The forest around us was silent as death, but I wasn't sure that we were really alone any longer. And for some reason, I felt like in this place, the world without color, my real name was a secret that had to remain unspoken. Not just because I feared the pain that had affected my throat when I had last tried to speak about it, or the threats that Rain had made, but because of something else. An invisible, unspoken threat that seemed to hang in the air and follow me around wherever I went in this place. I looked down at the silver shackle on my wrist. I wasn't scared of making a mistake and being punished any longer. I was more afraid of saying something that they perhaps wanted to hear.

I looked up and met Cloud's gaze again. His eyes were filled with boundless curiosity and yearning, like a rapt listener waiting for the climax of a story to be told. It made my heart ache, and I finally gave in.

It is a secret I will share only with you, I thought, hoping he would understand.

I put my finger on my lips to signify him not to speak, and then I pointed up above. He followed my gesture and looked up in confusion for a few moments, where the great blue was hidden behind a thick wall of grey. The thought process he went through was visible on his face, and when he found the answer to his question, his face lit up with a smile.

"Ah! I see! Nice to meet you," he said, as if I had just introduced myself. Well, in a sense, I had.

"Nice to meet you too," I said and smiled back.

We continued our walk in silence for a while. Occasionally, we heard the eerie howling in the distance, but other than that, the place remained silent. Not even any wind was rustling through the dead leaves on the ground or rubbing the branches of the trees together. I began to feel tired, and cold. I put my hands in my pockets to warm them, but to no avail. Then I realized in a shock that the paper butterfly was gone.

"Oh no, I must have lost it," I mumbled.

I turned around, casting a glance back across the vast distance we must have passed by now. The forest went on into every direction toward the horizon, and it was impossible for me to say which way we had come or where I might have lost it. Everything looked exactly the same all around us.

"Lost what?" he asked.

"A butterfly, I had it in my pocket when-"

A dry, cracking noise in the distance interrupted me and caused both of us to freeze up. We stared at each other wide eyed, hearts pounding, and unmoving, as we waited for something to happen. Another crack. This time, closer. I could feel fear well up inside of me, a primal, confusing urge that compelled me to RUN, in capital letters, even though I didn't even know from what. Something was out there. And it was coming for us.

"Come on," Cloud whispered and grabbed my shaking hand.

We burst into a sprint, away from the sound, and into the thicket.

____

A.N.
For English translations of the poem quoted by Cloud here, google for "Fleurs Du Mal poem 127" :)