http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Sefirot/Sefirot.html
from the author of "An Autobiography of Vincent Valentine"
Phoenix Down.
Phantom Wall Stories: A tale of Sephiroth
"'Ere this evil road,'
I answered, rising, "leave the deep abyss,
I pray thee tell me, lest my thought should err,
Why upward rise the legs of Lucifer," (Dante's Inferno, Canto I. Translated from Italian by S. Fowler Wright)
Part: Alpha
Yesod
Angels do not die.
They, divine or evil, were never mortal to begin with.
Death is only a mortal's condition.
Angels can be sentenced to hell.
Or worse.
But, ultimately, they cannot be destroyed.
The Sephiroth
Came to visit me at first in a dream.
I was asleep downstairs in the apartment complex's basement.
I had first heard of the Jenova project a few years after the meteor threat.
The media was ran by the Shin-Ra Company, so the papers were not entirely clear about what exactly happened between the ex-general Sephiroth, and the meteor that threatened the world. I read that Sephiroth, somehow, summoned the meteor from reasons of insanity and wanted to destroy the Earth.
It sounded crazy to me too. Didn't make any sense. But that was what Shin-Ra said.
I really didn't care, either. It was all over. And, anyway, that was five years ago. The Earth healed itself, and my friends, family, and I were alive, and I'm still working as a journalist for Kalm's paper, "The Daily Sojourn."
I didn't make very much.
I was starting to re-think my career choices.
Then, it started to happen. Just like I said, the first time it happened I was moving some boxes in the apartment complex's basement, and I suddenly started to feel weak, and I sat down on a musty old red sofa.
It was raining outside.
Little feet tapped upon the basement windows in the form of tiny, night, winter raindrops.
I must have fallen asleep.
In my dream, there was a dark hallway.
I squinted to see into the darkness.
But the darkness kept on shifting.
I reached out into that dark hallway.
But I touched nothing but slippery shadows.
I heard the silence; and it was loud.
...
"Hello?" I yelled.
And the darkness said hello to me.
It said it was waiting for me.
For five years.
I asked the darkness what it wanted, what it was doing there in my dreams.
It said that it wanted to talk to me.
I told it, I told it, I says,
That I did not want to talk to it.
Because I was afraid.
...
Then, it said,
"Be not afraid."
It told me that it was an angel.
An angel, there, waiting, in that dark hallway.
"Come to me, for I am the way, the truth, and the darkness."
I hesitated.
Then, I know not why, I walked into that hallway,
Where the shadows kept on shifting.
And where the silence was loud.
And then I woke up.
...
I woke up right where I fell asleep.
Except, there was a man sitting in a chair across from me.
Only, it was not a man.
It was Sephiroth.
Spider legged shadows danced across his pale, smooth, inhuman face.
Silky silver lengths of fine hair sat upon his shoulders.
His eyes were long and the color of supple green stars.
Delicately, so elegantly, his fingers rested under his lips as if in pensive thought.
"I find it amusing."
The angel first said as he turned away from me. I had just turned on the tape recorder.
I am not sure where the tape recorder came from.
But it was the first thing that occurred for me to do. It was the only thing that made sense.
As if it were a command from a dream.
I asked him, nervously, to tell me what was so amusing.
His narrow eyes snapped back at me.
I felt a small pain in my stomach.
He was going to conduct this interview in his own way. He stood slowly.
His shiny black coat fell to the floor.
The folds in it were glossy and beautiful.
Then, he pulled out his long sword, knocked over a chair, and sliced it in half without a qualm,
As if killing the furniture, or destroying anything, was natural.
I was afraid.
And he smiled.
"Don't ask why I choose you to be my particular interviewer. Is... that recorder on? Don't ask WHY I wanted to be interviewed. Just do as I say and we will not have a problem..."
He kicked the chair back up to its ride side, and sat down quickly. He crossed his legs.
The chair's stuffing was crawling out.
"Go on. Ask me a question. That is what you do as a profession, isn't it?"
I told him that I wasn't sure where he should begin, besides the beginning.
He hesitated.
His fingers found a resting place under his lips once more.
I felt uneasy.
The long, thin smile played upon the corner of his lips.
But he simply sat there and stared at me.
"Very... well." He said, finally, shattering the cold pause.
He cocked his head to the side, and rested his chin upon his knuckles.
"Are you afraid of me?"
I told him I was.
"THAT is what is so amusing."
He suddenly threw his head back, and wickedly laughed.
His long hair dangled and danced.
His chest seemed to convulse.
His laugh was loud, and sharp.
Like the shadows that kept on shifting.
Much like his eyes.
He excused himself, and wiped the bottom of his eyes of tears that were not there.
I didn't ask him what was so funny.
Then, he simply began to talk.
"It started out in the lab. However, you see I was not the only one. My earliest memories were with professor Hojo. Have you met him? He is... brilliant. I will credit him that. Like I said... I wasn't the only one injected with Jenova cells. No. My clones. Hmm. From the expression on your face, I can tell that you don't really understand. I will explain better."
~
"How is she doing?" Gast eagerly asked Ifalna.
"I don't know. The doctors won't let me IN!"
Gast paced back and forth. His nails were bitten and bloody.
"I don't like it. He shouldn't have done this. Experimenting on human-"
"Pro- I mean, Gast, look!" Ifalna tapped his shoulder. Gast spun around.
A blonde haired doctor came out of the room. In his arms was a very large baby, wailing, writhing, and crying.
"AW! He's so CUTE! Let me hold him!" Ifalna beamed as the doctor rested the child in her cradled arms.
"How's Lucrecia?" Gast asked the doctor, who was lined with worry and stress.
"Uh...well. You see, the child is unusually large. That is, he is the size, weight, and uhm, well; his developmental stage is very uh, unusual for a newborn. Probably due to the Jenova cells. He is at the mental and size capacity of a four month old. He can crawl. Uh, this experience was very... VERY physically traumatic for the mother."
"Is she OK?!" Gast barked, not accepting that off key answer from the doctor.
The doctor glanced at him. He flipped over some papers on a clipboard, took out a pen and began to walk away.
"She will pull through." He answered stonily.
Gast pressed his face against the glass on the door, trying to get a glimpse of Lucrecia.
Ifalna held the baby and soothingly cooed.
"I wonder if you would like to play with little my little Aeris? Hey... hey, baby... shh... don't cry. Yeah. Your mommy will be ok, little one. Can you see if she is ok?" Ifalna asked.
"No, I can't see anything. But I think that she's on a drip, or something."
Ifalna didn't respond. The baby grabbed her finger, tightly.
"This little guy is STRONG!"
"Yeah." Gast said as he turned to her. He smiled limply.
"He's a big guy. Bet he's... going to grow fast, and be a man. Due to the Jenova cells, of course. You know? This is all HOJO's fault that my assistant is sick." Gast thumped his fist against the hospital's white stonewalls.
"Honey, calm down. She will be ok. We should get this little one to the nursery, though."
Gast nodded, and the three of them left for the nursery...
~
"You seem a little bored." The angel said to me as I looked at the tape recorder. I told him that I wasn't bored at all. Quite opposite, that I was fascinated by the tale of his birth.
He paused another long pause, this time as if suddenly falling into an ocean of deep thoughts.
I did not disrupt him.
His eyes slowly rose to meet mine.
I felt my body quake under the graveyard glare.
He told me, in a deep reverberating voice, that this was all he was going to talk about this evening.
I woke up again.
Except, I KNOW that I was never asleep.
It was as if I suddenly became conscience.
The night winter raindrops went...
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
I was alone.
Except for a hallway that was now there.
One that was not there in the apartment basement before I came down.
It sat across from me, where the red chair used to be, the same chair that had the stuffing crawling out.
I slowly stood up, and rubbed my eyes. I felt cold.
The hallway also felt cold.
I looked around. I thought, I thought that maybe if I moved the boxes in front of the hallway that was there, and was not there before, that I would be less afraid.
There was something terribly, utterly, horribly, frightening about that hallway.
Except, it was nothing more than a dark passageway, and nothing else.
Maybe it was there before I fell asleep, and simply did not notice it.
Then, why does it seem to engulf the whole room?...
....
With it's wide-open unknown...
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The rain fell.
And the darkness of the hallway kept on shifting.
from the author of "An Autobiography of Vincent Valentine"
Phoenix Down.
Phantom Wall Stories: A tale of Sephiroth
"'Ere this evil road,'
I answered, rising, "leave the deep abyss,
I pray thee tell me, lest my thought should err,
Why upward rise the legs of Lucifer," (Dante's Inferno, Canto I. Translated from Italian by S. Fowler Wright)
Part: Alpha
Yesod
Angels do not die.
They, divine or evil, were never mortal to begin with.
Death is only a mortal's condition.
Angels can be sentenced to hell.
Or worse.
But, ultimately, they cannot be destroyed.
The Sephiroth
Came to visit me at first in a dream.
I was asleep downstairs in the apartment complex's basement.
I had first heard of the Jenova project a few years after the meteor threat.
The media was ran by the Shin-Ra Company, so the papers were not entirely clear about what exactly happened between the ex-general Sephiroth, and the meteor that threatened the world. I read that Sephiroth, somehow, summoned the meteor from reasons of insanity and wanted to destroy the Earth.
It sounded crazy to me too. Didn't make any sense. But that was what Shin-Ra said.
I really didn't care, either. It was all over. And, anyway, that was five years ago. The Earth healed itself, and my friends, family, and I were alive, and I'm still working as a journalist for Kalm's paper, "The Daily Sojourn."
I didn't make very much.
I was starting to re-think my career choices.
Then, it started to happen. Just like I said, the first time it happened I was moving some boxes in the apartment complex's basement, and I suddenly started to feel weak, and I sat down on a musty old red sofa.
It was raining outside.
Little feet tapped upon the basement windows in the form of tiny, night, winter raindrops.
I must have fallen asleep.
In my dream, there was a dark hallway.
I squinted to see into the darkness.
But the darkness kept on shifting.
I reached out into that dark hallway.
But I touched nothing but slippery shadows.
I heard the silence; and it was loud.
...
"Hello?" I yelled.
And the darkness said hello to me.
It said it was waiting for me.
For five years.
I asked the darkness what it wanted, what it was doing there in my dreams.
It said that it wanted to talk to me.
I told it, I told it, I says,
That I did not want to talk to it.
Because I was afraid.
...
Then, it said,
"Be not afraid."
It told me that it was an angel.
An angel, there, waiting, in that dark hallway.
"Come to me, for I am the way, the truth, and the darkness."
I hesitated.
Then, I know not why, I walked into that hallway,
Where the shadows kept on shifting.
And where the silence was loud.
And then I woke up.
...
I woke up right where I fell asleep.
Except, there was a man sitting in a chair across from me.
Only, it was not a man.
It was Sephiroth.
Spider legged shadows danced across his pale, smooth, inhuman face.
Silky silver lengths of fine hair sat upon his shoulders.
His eyes were long and the color of supple green stars.
Delicately, so elegantly, his fingers rested under his lips as if in pensive thought.
"I find it amusing."
The angel first said as he turned away from me. I had just turned on the tape recorder.
I am not sure where the tape recorder came from.
But it was the first thing that occurred for me to do. It was the only thing that made sense.
As if it were a command from a dream.
I asked him, nervously, to tell me what was so amusing.
His narrow eyes snapped back at me.
I felt a small pain in my stomach.
He was going to conduct this interview in his own way. He stood slowly.
His shiny black coat fell to the floor.
The folds in it were glossy and beautiful.
Then, he pulled out his long sword, knocked over a chair, and sliced it in half without a qualm,
As if killing the furniture, or destroying anything, was natural.
I was afraid.
And he smiled.
"Don't ask why I choose you to be my particular interviewer. Is... that recorder on? Don't ask WHY I wanted to be interviewed. Just do as I say and we will not have a problem..."
He kicked the chair back up to its ride side, and sat down quickly. He crossed his legs.
The chair's stuffing was crawling out.
"Go on. Ask me a question. That is what you do as a profession, isn't it?"
I told him that I wasn't sure where he should begin, besides the beginning.
He hesitated.
His fingers found a resting place under his lips once more.
I felt uneasy.
The long, thin smile played upon the corner of his lips.
But he simply sat there and stared at me.
"Very... well." He said, finally, shattering the cold pause.
He cocked his head to the side, and rested his chin upon his knuckles.
"Are you afraid of me?"
I told him I was.
"THAT is what is so amusing."
He suddenly threw his head back, and wickedly laughed.
His long hair dangled and danced.
His chest seemed to convulse.
His laugh was loud, and sharp.
Like the shadows that kept on shifting.
Much like his eyes.
He excused himself, and wiped the bottom of his eyes of tears that were not there.
I didn't ask him what was so funny.
Then, he simply began to talk.
"It started out in the lab. However, you see I was not the only one. My earliest memories were with professor Hojo. Have you met him? He is... brilliant. I will credit him that. Like I said... I wasn't the only one injected with Jenova cells. No. My clones. Hmm. From the expression on your face, I can tell that you don't really understand. I will explain better."
~
"How is she doing?" Gast eagerly asked Ifalna.
"I don't know. The doctors won't let me IN!"
Gast paced back and forth. His nails were bitten and bloody.
"I don't like it. He shouldn't have done this. Experimenting on human-"
"Pro- I mean, Gast, look!" Ifalna tapped his shoulder. Gast spun around.
A blonde haired doctor came out of the room. In his arms was a very large baby, wailing, writhing, and crying.
"AW! He's so CUTE! Let me hold him!" Ifalna beamed as the doctor rested the child in her cradled arms.
"How's Lucrecia?" Gast asked the doctor, who was lined with worry and stress.
"Uh...well. You see, the child is unusually large. That is, he is the size, weight, and uhm, well; his developmental stage is very uh, unusual for a newborn. Probably due to the Jenova cells. He is at the mental and size capacity of a four month old. He can crawl. Uh, this experience was very... VERY physically traumatic for the mother."
"Is she OK?!" Gast barked, not accepting that off key answer from the doctor.
The doctor glanced at him. He flipped over some papers on a clipboard, took out a pen and began to walk away.
"She will pull through." He answered stonily.
Gast pressed his face against the glass on the door, trying to get a glimpse of Lucrecia.
Ifalna held the baby and soothingly cooed.
"I wonder if you would like to play with little my little Aeris? Hey... hey, baby... shh... don't cry. Yeah. Your mommy will be ok, little one. Can you see if she is ok?" Ifalna asked.
"No, I can't see anything. But I think that she's on a drip, or something."
Ifalna didn't respond. The baby grabbed her finger, tightly.
"This little guy is STRONG!"
"Yeah." Gast said as he turned to her. He smiled limply.
"He's a big guy. Bet he's... going to grow fast, and be a man. Due to the Jenova cells, of course. You know? This is all HOJO's fault that my assistant is sick." Gast thumped his fist against the hospital's white stonewalls.
"Honey, calm down. She will be ok. We should get this little one to the nursery, though."
Gast nodded, and the three of them left for the nursery...
~
"You seem a little bored." The angel said to me as I looked at the tape recorder. I told him that I wasn't bored at all. Quite opposite, that I was fascinated by the tale of his birth.
He paused another long pause, this time as if suddenly falling into an ocean of deep thoughts.
I did not disrupt him.
His eyes slowly rose to meet mine.
I felt my body quake under the graveyard glare.
He told me, in a deep reverberating voice, that this was all he was going to talk about this evening.
I woke up again.
Except, I KNOW that I was never asleep.
It was as if I suddenly became conscience.
The night winter raindrops went...
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
I was alone.
Except for a hallway that was now there.
One that was not there in the apartment basement before I came down.
It sat across from me, where the red chair used to be, the same chair that had the stuffing crawling out.
I slowly stood up, and rubbed my eyes. I felt cold.
The hallway also felt cold.
I looked around. I thought, I thought that maybe if I moved the boxes in front of the hallway that was there, and was not there before, that I would be less afraid.
There was something terribly, utterly, horribly, frightening about that hallway.
Except, it was nothing more than a dark passageway, and nothing else.
Maybe it was there before I fell asleep, and simply did not notice it.
Then, why does it seem to engulf the whole room?...
....
With it's wide-open unknown...
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The rain fell.
And the darkness of the hallway kept on shifting.