We continued to walk in silence, and I tried very hard to think of a way out. I remembered something important now, something that the other me had told me when I was in the marsh. I pushed away the thought that Dante had described the Stygian marshes as a part of hell, and tried to focus on the words she had told me.

"The next time, you will have to figure it out on your own," I mumbled.

"Sorry, what?" Cloud said.

"Nothing!"

Figure out what? I wondered.

"Hey, uhm. I wanted to thank you, for saving me back there," he said, now that the silence had already been broken.

"What? I didn't save you. You fought on your own."

"Well, yeah, maybe, but I don't think I would have, if it hadn't been for you."

I could feel blood rush to my cheeks, and suddenly had a hard time to focus on the puzzle I was trying to solve.

"You know, I've been thinking. I – I really think you need a name," he went on. "One that I can actually call you by, I mean."

I stopped in my tracks to look at him. The expression on his face was dead serious, but the idea seemed utterly ridiculous to me. I didn't need a name. I already had a name. Then again, perhaps it really would make things a bit easier if I became something other than the newcomer. The potential spy.

"Okay. What do you have in mind?"

"I don't know. Why not just choose one that you like?"

"I'm not gonna chose anything," I insisted. "Names are given, not chosen."

He grumbled, dissatisfied.

"What about you, then? How did you choose your name?" I asked him.

"I don't really know," he said and shrugged, "It just came to me. An idea. Like an image in my mind, of something that felt important somehow. Clouds."

"And Rain?" I speculated, and he nodded.

"See? A memory."

I climbed over another fallen tree and wondered if we were really going anywhere. We'd been at this for what felt like hours, and I was beginning to feel really exhausted. Still, I had a hunch that the solution to this puzzle was almost within reach now. But it was hard to find an answer, if you weren't even sure what the question had been in the first place.

"If I'm supposed to find a name for you, I feel like I should know you better," he went on.

"There's not much to know. I'm quite boring."

"On the contrary. I get the feeling you're an exhilaratingly complicated woman," he said with a wide grin.

My blush intensified at the strange compliment. "Still. A name is supposed to be a wish, not a description. At least where I'm coming from-"

I bit my tongue to stop myself from talking. Walking next to me, he looked up at the sky, perhaps wondering what kind of wish my name was.

"If you had to choose..." he started, "Would you rather lose your sense of sight, or your sense of hearing?"

"What kind of questions is that, all of a sudden?"

"I am trying to get to know you without asking about things you cannot tell me."

I sighed in defeat. "Fine. Okay. Let me think."

But I didn't need to think very long to find an answer.

"Sight, definitely," I answered. "I can imagine being without sight, because when I close my eyes, I can still... see, sort of. The things inside my mind – memories, imagination – that would still be there. Of course, I would miss looking at art," I added, thinking of Feather's painting, "But I could imagine what it's like if somebody described it to me. Not hearing, on the other hand - there is nothing that compares to the sensation of listening to a song and having it capture you so completely and wholly, that you find yourself taken away by it. I can close my eyes and let myself be carried away. Nothing I have ever seen compares to the feelings I experience when I hear music."

"Music often transports me like a sea," he began, and it took me a second to realize that he was reciting another poem..

"Toward my pale star,
Under a ceiling of fog or a vast ether,
I get under sail;

My chest thrust out and my lungs filled
Like the canvas,
I scale the slopes of wave on wave
That the night obscures;

I feel vibrating within me all the passions
Of ships in distress;
The good wind and the tempest with its convulsions

Over the vast gulf
Cradle me. At other times, dead calm, great mirror
Of my despair."

"Yes," I nodded slowly, "Exactly."

"I don't really remember any music, so I guess don't really know what it's like," he said, "But when I think of this poem, it's like... I can feel it, somehow. I can understand that sentiment, even if I can't remember experiencing it. Do you know what I mean?"

"I believe I do. Isn't it the same with other sensations and emotions? The right words can make you feel something new that you never experienced before, as vivid as if it was real. As for songs... well, they are like poems, in that regard. Sometimes even without words. They make me feel, and that's why I enjoy them so much, I think."

I felt like I was missing the right words to describe what I really meant, but he nodded in agreement nonetheless.

"How about you?" I asked back. "Which would you give up, sight or hearing?"

"I'm not sure. I quite enjoy looking at beautiful things..."

He cast me another sideways glance that made me blush so heavily that I wanted to bury my face in a pile of dead leaves.

Damn, stop this, I thought, and tried to calm my racing heart, Can't you just be irrationally mad again, that was easier to handle.

"And do you have a favorite song?" he continued his questioning.

I let out a laugh. "Honestly, to me that's like asking if I have a favorite limb or inner organ. They're all important... all for different reasons. I couldn't just pick one."

"That's... a very interesting way to put it."

"Well, we can't all be experts who know fancy poems for every occasion that perfectly and beautifully describe a feeling with words," I said drily, and he chuckled.

"Feather told me you sing," he said, eyeing me from the side as we walked. "And quite beautifully so."

I didn't know what to reply to that, but I suddenly had to focus very hard on the ground before my feet to avoid tripping. I could feel his gaze burning on me without looking at him.

"So... do you think you would sing for me, sometime? So I could know what it's like?"

I didn't dare to steal a glance at his face, but there was longing and curiosity in his voice. And I realized the gravity of this request. If he couldn't remember music, what would it feel like to him to truly experience it? Would he enjoy it, and would my singing alone even be able to live up to that feeling that Baudelaire had described in the poem he had quoted?

"Pretty please...?" His pleading interrupted my worrying. His velvet voice had turned sweet like honey.

"Ah, well. I... I guess so. Why not..." I stammered, completely flustered.

"I'm looking forward to it already," he said, and I could practically hear him smile.

"So how about melody then?" he asked after a while.

"What about it?"

"As a name, I mean."

I stopped in my tracks and stared at him in surprise.

"Or Mel for short, if you prefer."

He stopped too and looked down at me, with a smile that made me forget the whole world around us, and for a moment even what he had just said.

"It's just a suggestion..." His expression turning into dismay as I didn't answer. "If you don't like it-"

"No!" I quickly said. "It's perfect. I love it. Really."

"Great! Melody, then!"

"...Thank you..." I muttered, feeling my cheeks flush with color.

For some reason, I felt like I had just received a very precious gift, one that I didn't really deserve. I wondered if he had the faintest idea how much the gesture of giving me a name really meant to me. The creepy and gloomy forest around us was no match for the warmth that I felt in my heart now.

A beautiful and content smile graced his features as I looked up at him. The silence around us no longer seemed threatening, but peaceful. I could not say how long we just stood there like this, and I found myself wishing we could just stay there forever.  Then he reached out to take my hand in his, and leaned a bit closer as if to whisper in my ear. And for just a split second, there was a flicker.

It was only a moment, barely a blink of an eye, and I had almost missed it. But a shadow had flitted across his face. In an instant, the warmth I had felt within me just before was replaced by a cold terror, and my insides turned to lead. I pulled my hand away and stepped back.

"I something the matter?" he asked.

The butterfly isn't gone, I realized. It was never here.

In my mind, the last pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place. I took another step back and eyed him warily.

"Cloud," I started, my heart pounding in my chest so loud that I almost couldn't hear my own words, "When we first met, what was the book that you quoted from?"

"The book... you mean Paradise Lost?" he asked, looking at me with confusion.

My heart accelerated to a breakneck pace, and my blood felt heavy as lead, spreading through my body with each pulse. I shook my head slowly.

"No... that's not correct."

In a sim, your own body and brain are actually the slowest processing units involved, I recalled Steel's words. Unless you do something unexpected. Like sabotaging an ADM suit to emit an EMP. Or picking a fistfight with a wolf pack. Then there is a moment of lag.

I clenched my fists until my fingernails dug into my flesh and the pain put tears in my eyes. It was quite convincing, just like the claws and teeth of the wolves. Almost perfect.

"Wait... no, I remember now!" Cloud suddenly exclaimed. "Right after you woke up! It was Alice in Wonderland, right? The line about being mad? Hey, what's wrong? Why are you so pale all of a sudden?"

"Okay..." I said, still doubtful. "Now... tell me something else to prove that you are real."

"What? Why wouldn't I be real? What are you talking about?"

Maybe this was a futile argument. Maybe it didn't matter if he was real, just like none of this really seemed to matter every time I woke up in the other world, the world of color. And yet, it did make a difference, as fundamental as the difference between Keres training and real life missions: In training, the world around you is simulated. But in an actual mission, it may be virtual... but still real.

I stared at Cloud, trying to process that thought and its implications. If he wasn't real, how much of this world was? What about the other prisoners? A deep sense of regret and heartache filled me at the thought that all of this could have been nothing but an elaborate illusion. Just another aspect of this hell to make me feel pain and to make me afraid, like this forest with its bleeding trees and the wolves.

And behind me, there was a sound. It was still distant, but it drew closer.

"So... Do you still think I'm nothing but a hallucination?" Cloud said jovially. "I thought we've been through this."

The sound was a growl. Low and guttural, deep and dark like an abyss.

"Melody, please. I don't know what to tell you..."

It would appear right behind me any second now, breathing down my neck.

Cloud sighed. "If you don't believe me, just... let me show you..."

He crossed the distance between us again and put a hand on the side of my face, tilting my head up gently so I would look at him. My heart somersaulted in my chest as he leaned closer, and my gaze was drawn to his mesmerizing eyes, that blue and green ocean that encompassed so perfectly all the madness and impossibility of this situation. There was no more hesitation, no more polite request in his gestures, like there had been before whenever he had touched me like that. This was the answer to my questions, the answer I was at the same time yearning for and dreading.

It definitely felt real, as he ran his other hand down along my arm in a caress so delicate that it left a trail of goosebumps on my skin. He interlaced our fingers, and pulled my hand up to his chest, where he placed it over his heart. I could feel it beating through the fabric of his clothes, pounding heavily against his ribs, almost as fast as my own. And it felt beyond real, how he caressed my cheek and the shivers that spread through my body in the wake of his touch almost tore me apart.

This was the true torture in this place. Not the pain, not the fear, nor the uncertainty of this situation, just that wicked way in which his gentle and delicate gestures only left my body to react to him all the more violently. I felt a craving, not like somebody was craving water after walking the desert for days, but with all the immediate forceful desperation of somebody who was drowning and was craving air. I wanted to lose myself in him, completely and endlessly, just like my mind was utterly lost when I gazed into his eyes.

"I am real," he whispered, so close to me that his breath tickled against my lips with every word.

For just a moment, I thought that maybe the answers to my questions didn't even matter any longer. Maybe I could really forget all my sorrow if only he continued to look at me like that.

And then, behind me, a roar tore through the deathly silence of the forest.