from the ashes
Tifa Lockheart was fifteen when her life came crashing down around her.
Tifa led what could be considered a charmed life. She was the prettiest girl in town, her father was the richest and most important man, her house was the biggest and most beautiful. (He was loving but distant, the house was home but empty. You couldn't imagine living anywhere else, and yet you felt just a bit self-conscious at how much bigger than all other houses it was.)
Tifa may not have been entirely content with her life. She did, after all, spend quite a while honing her skills in martial arts, which was most definitely not a proper womanly pursuit. (You loved the bone-deep tiredness that came with practicing for hours without rest, the way your body ached as you lay down, the way it screamed when you forced it to keep moving.)
But in the end, she had a nice life. A good life, full of people who loved her (admired you, wanted you, envied you, wanted something from you, watched you all the time).
She had all she could possibly need. (Such a pretty pretty cage, so very comfortable, there's no need to try to escape because you could never possibly want to leave.)
Tifa Lockheart was fifteen when her world ended.
(Everybody you ever knew is dead, everything you ever knew is burning to the ground.
Fifteen years, that's so young, that's a lifetime.
Your life, the one you built, the one you were given, the only one you ever knew, that life is burning down with everything else, becoming so much ash.
In a way, you die here.)
She went looking for her father. What did that mean? Did she, like so many children do, believe that her father could make it all better? That he was invincible, immortal, that he would make the bad man go away and make everything go back to normal?
But no: she didn't break down over his body. She took the sword that had killed him, and hunted down his killer. Her reaction was swift, was as much a part of her as the determination that made her one of the best students an experienced martial arts master had ever had.
And then her father's killer pierced her body so very easily, and then he threw her aside like so much trash.
(It's a new life, the one you make for yourself when you wake up in Midgar.
Sometimes it feels like the young, innocent Tifa Lockheart died with Nibelheim. And sometimes you feel like you are still that girl, even though you are no longer so innocent, so naïve. And sometimes you know that you're the same person, only changed.
But this new life you made for yourself, that no one can deny. It's terrible, but it's yours. You think, sometimes, that you are stronger now than you were before.)
If we wanted to get poetic, we could compare Tifa Lockheart to a blade – she was, after all, forged in fire.
(You are a phoenix, rising from the ashes.)