Episode Zero: Stranger Chapter One

[Warning: This chapter contains spoilers for the game.]


Vanille had slept lightly. She had dreamt many dreams, and cried many times. But her memory of them was hazy, and she couldn’t remember a single one. It was that sort of sleep. “Vanille”, she heard, or thought she heard, and opened her eyes.
“Fang?”
Did she just imagine she heard her name? Or had that just been a dream too? Fang, who had been sleeping beside her, was no where to be found.
“Fang... where are you?” Vanille stood up and looked around. She felt a crushing helplessness. Everyday it grew worse.
Vanille went out into the passageway and called Fang’s name. There was no need to raise her voice, the hall was wide and even the smallest sound echoed loudly. Sure enough, this time, she heard Fang’s voice coming from below. Vanille ran down the stairs and hopped onto the elevator. She knew where Fang was, now, and could go straight to her.
She felt wind on her cheek. Cool dawn air blew from the entrance, and she could see that outside it was still dark.
“What’s up?” Fang spoke before she could say a word.
“Nothing.” Vanille said. She wished she could ask Fang the same, ask her what she was doing. But she didn’t. Instead Vanille just stood quietly beside her. From here you could see the ocean, and the sky. But no horizon.
“What a strange sky.” Fang said, looking up. It was still dark. She had done the same on the day they had woken up. They had gone outside, and Fang had looked up at the sky.
“When I look at it I can’t breathe. I mean what is that? Why can I see a city above my head?”
Cocoon was a world in the shape of a ball. Inside the ball there were cities, there were oceans, there were forests... and the space trapped between them was the “sky”. It was very different sky from the one they had known.
“It’s not just the sky, even the ocean is weird. It didn’t smell of salt at all.”
“It did, when you got close enough.”
“Even that’s weird. Here I thought I could drink it, but then... salt water. It tricked me.”
“We did think it was a lake, at first.”
“Every little thing is weird here. I don’t get any of it.” Fang sighed.
“It’s like a dream. One that you can’t understand.”
“Yeah... I’m amazed these guys can live in a place like this.”
“I wish it was a dream...” Yes, if only it had been a dream. Yesterday, and the day before that, and the first day they had woken up. If it had only been a dream, Vanille thought. “I wish we had woken up just today...” If only reality had only started from this moment. It was probably stupid to think that, it was probably just her being naive. But maybe, just maybe if that had happened, things might have turned out differently.
“It would be the same either way. We’d complete our Focus and return to Gran Pulse. What else is there for us?”
“Yes... you’re right.” Vanille smiled and nodded. But she couldn’t help but think that, maybe, just maybe if they hadn’t woken up that things might have been different. That if things had changed even a little bit, there might not have been so much pain.
“Hey, don’t worry. No Focus could ever be completed in only three days.”
Fang must have thought she looked sad because it was the fourth day since they had woken up, and they hadn’t gotten any closer to completing their Focus. When Vanille thought back on the three days since they had awoken, it made her grow dizzy and ill. It was then that she’d really feel that they should have never woken up. If they had kept on sleeping, then nothing would have happened, no one else would have gotten involved.
Vanille raised her hand towards the brightening sky. On the day they had awoken, she had stood beside Fang, looking up at the sky. Beyond her raised hands she could see a city. Such a strange colored sky. It was the color of beginnings.