Head High, Smile Wide!

Pebbles! I love them—they have so many colors and textures within their stony surfaces.

I love surfing and splashing across creeks and pulling blackberries from poky bushes.

I adore sunrises and sunsets, and ice cream sundaes and butterflies and sunbeams and big fat lazy cats and smiling and laughing and dancing like a maniac and mixing chocolate chips into dough and swimming and opening my eyes underwater to make faces at the poisonous fish that dart past your ankles but don't bite because they only hate mean people who want to pick them up.

I love life. I love my friends too.

Cid's my big brother friend who yells at me for being a brat, but how can I not be irrepressibly cheerful when life is beautiful and the Planet's at peace? Life is short; how can I mope around like a certain spike-o-rama fellow I know who has bonded tighter to his buster sword than oxygen binds to iron in hemoglobin?

Just kidding; Spikes doesn't mope as much. I think he's getting better at accepting that he's already atoned for his "sin." He should give Vincent a lesson.

I love Tifa too; she listens to me when I feel so frustrated with being a teenager that I'm going to explode and then she'll have to sweep up the pieces and get Reeve to program a robot that'll stitch me up and polish me so don't have those crack-lines that broken-and-re-glued teapots have. When I get mad at the world in general, and mad at my mom for dying and leaving me to grow up a tomboy with no sense of fashion or even how to cook and do all the awesome things that Tifa can, I talk to her and/or Shera. They understand me.

Cait Sith's not a bad pal either; I threaten to de-whisker him and he pipes down for a half a minute while I rant and chuck material around the room. And when he starts talking again, I poke his nose and he grunts before protesting that I treat him like a doll, rather than a sophisticated, high-tech piece of machinery.

Cloud's my big brother. The one who doesn't talk a lot but loves you anyway and would climb into a tree to rescue your kitty if you really needed him to.

Barrett's working things out with his job and I don't see him often, but he's still awesome.

See? I am happy because I choose to be happy. Life is wonderful to me, even when I kick so hard that my training dummies' heads fly off and I have to spend an hour reattaching and reinforcing their supports. Life is precious beyond materia (yuh-uh!) and can't be wasted—there's so much that I need to do!

I need to visit Aeris' grave and tell her that I love her and that I'm getting a new kitten. I need to call up my dad and tell him that I love him and that he's the greatest ninja's daddy ever. I need to tell Marlene that she's sweet and cuddly and that Denzel's cool too.

Can't talk anymore; I have to say hi to the fuchsias that popped up in Shera's gardening box two days ago.

Remember to smile, ok?