Aerith first noticed the abandoned church on her eleventh birthday.
To celebrate, Elmyra had taken Aerith to play in the rusted playground. Sand had slipped in through the eyelets into her boots. On their way home, Aerith had to stop to dump them out. That was when she saw the church. It was a lambent copper in the dying sunlight.
After putting her boots back on, Aerith asked if they could go inside it. Elmyra shook her head. It's too dangerous, her mother had said. Then she took Aerith by the hand. There's too much structural damage.
Aerith liked to think that she was a good listener. But she also believed that listening was not synonymous with obeying.
Just days later, Aerith slipped out of sight and into the church. It was marvelously quiet inside its walls. For as long as she could remember, the Planet had spoken to her. At times, it had been too loud. Too many voices would speak all at once. Too many places called to her from outside Midgar. But inside that church, each sound became distinct and tolerable.
The church itself spoke too. Not like the Planet or its countless souls did. It spoke to her through battered books with ink too faded for her to read. Through the splendid carvings of animals and flora found on the backsides of the pews. It spoke to her through what remained of its stain-glass windows.
There was a window to the far right of the altar that she particularly liked. It looked like a woman clothed in a pastel shade of yellow. The upper portion of the window had been smashed in at some point. So she had no head. But the woman did have auburn hair that formed a half-circle around her bare feet. White wings framed her form.
These things all had told her that they belonged to a time long since passed. Regardless, Aerith liked to pretend that her favourite window was actually a portrait of her blood mother. She could almost convince herself that this church had belonged to the both of them in that other time.
On her third visit to the church, she heard the Planet calling out to her from somewhere beneath the floorboards. Aerith pried away plank after plank. She uncovered patches of cement and earth just as sterile. Eventually, she found the spot she had been looking for. It lay just before the chancel. Once exposed, the earth kissed her palms. It sucked at her fingertips. Like it was parched. And she was the rain.
Aerith liked to pretend that she was.
Elmyra had told her never to go to the wall market by herself. There were too many rumours about that place. But one of them was that anything could be bought, traded, and sold there. So Aerith went by herself. She exchanged a set of tarnished cutlery for some seeds.
With her bare hands, she dug into the earth and buried each seed individually. She brought them water from her apartment when she could. To say goodbye, Aerith kissed her palm and gently laid it against each mound of dirt.
Once her flowers had sprouted, Aerith came clean to Elmyra about visiting to the church. As she expected, her mother had been upset. Yet she believes it was the flowers that won Elmyra over in the end. Aerith made sure to thank each sprout before she left the church with her mother for the night. She thanked them again when she was allowed to return the next morning.
Aerith did not notice how Elmyra looked at the church until she turned fourteen. The way that the innermost edges of her eyebrows would raise had been imperceptible until then. But once Aerith saw it, she knew that the church must speak to her too.
Sometimes Tseng would visit the church. Only, he was little more than another shadow in that place. He was not much louder than one either. Tseng would take his seat in one of the furthest pews. Aerith could feel his eyes on her as she attended to her flowers. Sometimes she could ignore that. Other times, she had to tell him to leave. Every time, Tseng obeyed.
Besides them, no one else came to the church. Not that she knew anyway. On this basis alone, it was only logical to believe that the church belonged to her. It was just as easy to think that she might belong to it too.
Then someone plummeted out of the sky and landed on her flowers.
At twenty-two, Aerith was swept out of Midgar. She was able to see parts of the world she had only ever dreamed of seeing before: places without buildings and their rusting remains. Places without cement. Out there, the Planet spoke to her with a force unprecedented. It made her heart race. It made her mouth quirk. These places entwined with her being in a way that concrete city never had.
Now Aerith walks through this ancient forest. Just a few months ago, she would have thought this place was strange. Maybe even unnerving. But she is not who she was a few months ago.
Its trees look like stone. They speak to her just as the Planet does. Aerith listens. But they are filled with unintelligible echoes. Every voice inside of them is from a time long since passed. She thinks they might be from a time when people carved depictions of unusual and wondrous wildlife into the backs of wooden benches. Or from a time even before that. These voices might have once belonged to those creatures who walked the Planet without end. To those who stopped at the roots of these old trees to ask them only for directions. For the way to the Promised Land.
A part of her wants to ask for directions too. Yet she does not need to. Their branches seem to run into each other to form a line. It points a direction out for her. Aerith follows it. With each step she takes, the voices of the trees become a little bit clearer.
She finds the ancient city and descends its winding stairway. It feels like she is being inhaled. An altar encircled by water waits for her below. Maybe coming here was inevitable. Aerith cannot help but think she might really be the rain. That all the Cetra were too. This thought makes her pause. Instinctively, her eyes skim the pool for ancient faces. Like her mother's. Or the headless angel's. But there is only the faintest piece of her reflection on the water. It is little more than a streak across its calm surface. So she cannot see the dark marks under her eyes. Or the yellowing bruise along the edge of her jaw. Even still, Aerith can feel them on her face. Just as she can feel the ache in her lower rib.
She had done the best she could to alleviate the pain. Materia had helped to draw out most of the bruising and to mend the few scrapes on her skin. Her own power had seeped in where she asked it to and helped to soothe her aches. But it is not her injuries that bother her now.
There's too much structural damage, she hears as she turns her face from side to side. The streak in the water moves with her. It is the same colour as her church. She can see its shape in her reflection. The Cetra haunt her rotting pews. The Planet lies below her crumbling altar. It pushes its way up through the floorboards. Her flowers are there too. Their cream petals are just as delicate but sharp-looking as she remembers. Each one is like a shard of glass.
It's too dangerous. Aerith can almost feel Elmyra's hand in her own. A small part of her wishes she could be pulled away by her mother again. This chamber feels so cavernous. The pool feels endlessly deep. She has never felt so tiny in her entire life. The ancient city has swallowed her whole. All its pieces begin to speak over her wishes and every other part of her.
But listening has never been synonymous with obeying.
This is her choice. Aerith holds that in her heart as she begins to pray.