Re-edited with more paragraph breaks as requested by guest reviewer. Thank you for your kind words!
It was once she had written the fiftieth letter that Aeris started to question what she was doing. It had started out as just a cute thing to do while Zack was off on his mission, done in the expectation he would reply at some point. That had been a year and a half ago. A year and a half since their last, brief conversation by phone. The device,a gift from Zack, now sat on her bedside table, charged every few days but otherwise inert. After a week with no call from Zack she called again only to get his voice-mail. He was busy then. Or out of range. Or any number of a hundred other reasons. He still did not answer after two weeks, nor had he returned her call.
In between the calls she wrote letters, sometimes composing the next in her head on the way back from the post-box. She wrote them down on her return home lest she forget the details. Some days she would have three or more ready by bedtime. Others it was just the one she wrote in the morning before heading out to take care of the flowers, or none if no topics came to mind. But the desire to keep writing waned a little as she continued to receive no response. The initial surge, the novelty of it all, began to tail off and there were other necessities to concern herself with. Elmyra's hours were reduced at work forcing a rethink of the house-hold's finances. The idea of selling flowers became a necessity rather than a diverting fringe bonus. But selling them to who? There was no one among those she knew in Sector Five she would dream of charging for the colourful blossoms. It felt wrong to demand money when she had given them away before.
Not that her list of acquaintances stretched that far. Time and fixation on gardening seemed to have blunted her conversational skills and the number of people she knew. She used to ask so many questions too, talk so much. Was it because she was older? Had she and Elmyra exhausted conversation between themselves? On reflection their list of topics was no longer the sum total of knowledge in the universe. Now it would be the trivial things they did when not with the other.
She could recite Elmyra's past almost verbatim, and it was not as if Aeris had a huge amount to say about her own. Not that she ever wanted to. She had rationed out every detail about Zack she felt comfortable relating to give them new topics, but even that had its limits. And now she thought about it there was so much she had never known about him. Elmyra would have no interest in the letters, or rather she did not want Elmyra to see them. They contained all her fanciful wonderings, assembled from a multitude of sources. All her little tales and things she wanted to do. Far more than twenty-three wishes at this point. She could not even begin to count how many there were.
After two months the phone no longer made outgoing calls. A mechanical voice informed her the account linked to the device was now frozen and she would need to pay the outstanding balance. It quoted a phone number and wanting to keep this direct line to Zack, Aeris hiked through Sector Five looking for a pay phone. After a lot of searching, she found one covered in graffiti and suspended above a pool of rust-coloured water. At least it worked. She called the number, her nerve failing when the Shinra accounts department answered.
Aeris berated herself even as she walked home, staring at Zack's entry in the phone-book. Of course it was the Shinra phone service. Who else would Zack have gotten the phone from? But even so, he had been paying for it before so why was he not now? At least it was not the sole method of communicating with him. The loss of the phone sent her into over-drive and she wrote one letter a day for a month. They ranged from rambling trains of thoughts to a few quiet words. She did not care what any of them said any more. Now she craved some kind of response. A word, a sheet of paper with her name on it, anything.
It was not until she was one letter shy of ninety that the idea of stopping became unavoidable. Why persist when there was no response? The notion had been building up in the back of her mind since the fiftieth letter but until now she had not been able to face the idea. This latest letter had been the most delayed, two full months passing since she wrote the eighty-eighth. She sobbed as she wrote, unable to bring herself to mail it and instead took it with her to the church, staring at the envelope. Praying for a miracle she let it sit on the flower bed and returned home.
For the next week she did not stray far from her bed. It was not possible he was dead; she was certain she would have felt him return to the Planet if he had died. So he had to still be alive. But why had he not answered any of the letters? Maybe he wasn't receiving them? But then there was nothing she could do. She sent him letters to the address he had provided. Shinra would return undeliverable mail to the sender. Of course, not direct to her. The Turks may know where her house was, but she was reluctant to give Shinra any help with her whereabouts. Her return address was in reality the materia shop along the street. Unless the owner had decided to hoard her letters, it was not as if she had missed the returned envelopes. They were going somewhere and stopping there.
But that still left the phone and why it no longer worked. Why had Zack stopped paying for it? Again, she could understand it if he had died. But it had happened so soon after he went on that mission that it was hard to shake images of Zack making the decision to let the service lapse. Or perhaps not even thinking about it to that degree; paying for the phone could have been the last thing on his mind. Like the beginning of a landslide, the thought surged, becoming destructive in it's implications. The phone no longer worked because he no longer wanted to talk to her. He refused to answer her mail for the same reason. He had found someone else - someone he liked more than her. More than his underage slum dweller.
Disappointment and frustration now teemed in her head. Aeris burrowed into her pillows. She had been drunk on the attention, admitting things she never would to anyone else. How foolish was it to fear the sky? An entire city lived on the upper plate with nothing between them and it; they not only endured, but lived in comfort. Or at least that was what she had heard. Outside of the murky memories of her mother's death, she could not remember what it had been like up on the plate. What did it look like up there? Had she seen the sky in their escape and that had in turn fueled her fears?
The week passed and Aeris began coming to terms with her conclusion. Zack was gone and he was not coming back. Life at home was becoming difficult as money would not stretch far enough. She was living a pointless life in the gutter of the most advanced city on the Planet. She was afraid the sky would consume her, doing nothing while she waited for her boyfriend to return. No. This would not do. She did not need him to return. She would do this herself. And for that, Aeris Gainsborough needed to be rebuilt.
On the eighth day she threw back her covers and began making lists. The same writing paper she had used to write to Zack had a new purpose now. She wrote out two lists. The elements of herself she liked and those she disliked. After a moment's thought she added a third list for aspirations. Flowers she would keep; one of her few interests and their growth was almost effortless to achieve. She added an aspiration to find new hobbies, or at least set aside more time to read each day. Her stance on the sky went onto the dislike list.
Her dress; gone. Aspiration: pink dress. She wondered about this for a moment, remembering Zack had asked her to wear that colour on their date. No, this would be different. It was not for him, it was for her; this was not for a date, this was for her life. A bold new dress instead of the blue and white sundress before. Liked: the ribbon. Near identical to the one her mother had used to tie her hair up while they were in Shinra's clutches. It would remind her of her mother, not of Zack. Dislike: flower-carts. Too bound up with Zack, and if she was conquering her fear of the heavens as well, going to be awkward if she took it to the upper plate on the train. Which lead to an aspiration: sell more flowers. The upper plate had money. The upper plate was away from the ground. If anyone would appreciate flowers it would be those living up in the air. Dislike: fear of failure and thus aspiration: confidence.
She stared at the pages once she ran out of things to list. It seemed so simple on paper, but to do so in reality? No. Yes. Confidence remember? She was going to succeed. Aeris was rebuilding herself into something new. It was time to move on from the directionless girl who met the SOLDIER. If he did not want her, then she was not going to need him. She glanced over at her shoes and added boots to the aspiration list. The wedge shoes were part of her old style and had no place in the new. She leant back on her chair putting her new image together in her head. Pink dress, the red bolero jacket Elmyra had given her from her wardrobe. Braided hair and boots. The ribbon. That thin black necklace she found in amongst Elmyra's jewelry - whatever it might have once held long gone. Maybe she could replace that later but for now she just wanted something around her neck and against her collarbone.
Aspiration: walk under the gap in the plate once per day. She needed to go up to the world above and so needed be comfortable with the sky. It was okay to take it slow, but not okay to put it off forever. If walking under the gap did not see her pulled up into infinity then she would practice spending time out in the open. And when that no longer made her heard pound and her knees weak, she would take the train to the upper plate. Flowers, flowers. She needed some way to carry the flowers. Aspirations gained a new entry of 'basket'.
And she would talk. She would ask questions, find things out, seek knowledge. Her fearless seven year old self would be her model. Soon she would wander the entire city. And maybe beyond? If the sky held no fear, then what was to stop her venturing outside? For the first time in her life she might see what was outside Midgar. That sent a jolt of anticipation into her stomach. She wanted to start now, needed to start now.
Aeris Gainsborough had torn up her old self, discarding the parts she no longer wanted. A new Aeris Gainsborough searched through her jar of change for enough to buy a basket. She was made from fragments of her old self, but she was not the same; this new Aeris would be freer. She would have adventures. She would not let fear hamper her ever again. She would wear pink and sell flowers. She would see the world.