Picture, if you will, green-blue light, glowing like forgotten stars, arcing from rusted steel pipes. Watch as it dances like water and pools in the shadows; bright, wide eyes that speak secrets and promises.
Picture the young woman, kneeling in a corridor of brick and stone. Look on; see how she reaches for the light, how she cups it in her hands… Lit by its aura, she is beauty and life, the whisper of silk against cracked tiles and crumbling mortar.
Watch on as she stands; turns; and watch how the alley opens onto an intersection of roaring traffic, of lives tearing past, each catching the other faces passing as little more than background to whatever story they so desperately pursue. Her beauty is not diminished; in the chaos in shines on, brighter, like green-blue light from rusted pipes, like the sky after storms; like hope, and all its angels, guiding the lost home.
She fades into crowds; the world expands; and the bustle of life and steel and stone is wider now, a vast, impossible city; it rises on columns from the ashes of a wasteland, this disk of iron and will, a grand statement of righteous arrogance, a power that proclaims; Here I stand; here I shall stay.
Circle by turbines that gout fire, fire that glows with the same green-blue brilliance, but here there is none of that tiny peace; here the light is fury, marking, burning, all that it touches. And there, alive in the fire, standing high above it all, a tower of chrome, of pipes and arches, crested in a sign of red and gold. Pause. Read the words: ShinRa Electric Power Company. Just words. Words that raised up this terrible wonder. Words that have decided the fate of nations. Words that rule the world.
Look out further though; look out beyond this Midgar that man has crafted for himself, and see the Valhalla that swiftly awaits him; an afterlife of dust and ashes, of barren wastelands wrought too only by his own hand and folly. See now how its disease spreads like a cancer, its touch slowly killing all in its passing. A vast, empty desert, whose only promise of hope is the distant green that lies beyond, as yet untouched by encroaching entropy, or the cold metallic heart that beats on at the centre of it all.
Vast; empty; save for one figure.
Watch now as he struggles, battles for every step. See the dark crimson that marks his face, the sand that catches in his fine blonde hair, on the dark uniform he wears. Pity the burden he carries with him, in his hands, in his heart; eyes of blue, blue like the light that glowed before, now pale and haunted, grief, madness, tracing every blink, every shudder. Marvel at what little strength he has left, his numb fingers gripping on to the sheet of steel he drags behind him. See the red handle, the not-yet-dulled edge of a sword, tall, deadly; the proud instrument of war that this young man perhaps once was. In the silence of that place the only sound is the scuffing of dust as he passes, the scraping of metal against sand.
Until the silence is broken. Listen; do you not hear that distant roar? Not animal, not in this desolation; another constructed thing, an engine… There! In the distance! A truck, wheels bouncing on stones as it barrels onwards towards him. Watch as he falls to his knees, as it pulls up ahead of him, as two more men step out and approach. One wears the same uniform as the kneeling boy; he stands tall, powerful, imposing, his dark hair playing in the windy echoes of their approach, his fine brows furrowed in confusion, even, perhaps, anger; the other is slight, but walks with confidence, his power shrouded in grace, his long red coat already marked by the decay on which they stand.
The words they share are hard, distant; before long they seize the kneeling boy, drag him to the truck, and drive back towards that distant towering blackness and whatever future it holds.
Take heart. Be strong. Fear not what has passed. Open your eyes, that have seen much already, that have seen hope bloom like flowers, clouds drift over deserts, men walk like avenging angels; watch on; for this tale is now theirs to tell.