Title: Final Fantasy: Tears from Gaea
Author/s: AsianScaper
Summary: Based on "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within". A tribute to mother earth and her heroes who never die in vain.
Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy. No infringement is intended.
Rating: G
Category: Drama
Feedback: Send your criticism, comments, or insights to asianscaper@hotmail.com
Archiving: Put it anywhere you wish, just email me the URL.
Spoilers: None
Dedication: For all the heroes of the planet.
Author's Note: Again, this was also done posthaste. I know not the reasons for being so compelled to write. This would be the third story in a row...there was so much to say, yet so little time. Cheers!
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There was will in the movement of the sky, and grace in the whispers of an ailing wind. On and on this breeze spoke, flowing with the simplicity of a human mask, fading with the complexity of dawn as light on light drifted past these artless seas of air like ships of the ocean god. On and on they pondered at these hollowed vessels of tightened dreams and untouched piths. So was the magic in the air as it spoke, as it became another living being to plant treachery upon her senses, upon her very nature that flowed with the revenants of good and the absence of good, evil.
Indeed, there had been a time when she felt no pain, when sorrow did not rail at her insides like gnarled hands of the rotting prophet. For prophets, too, had dreams and they too voiced out these visions with the instrument of their suffering, their voice; their despicable tongues that burned and scorched flesh with the mighty blades of truth. Such was their power and such was their doom. Such was pain and sorrow, and therein lay the curse of a temporal happiness, a heaven blighted to be plucked, blighted to drench itself in the eaves of winter and folly. But this was only the heaven, which sat upon the throne of earth and soil, of sea and river, of light and sky, of fleeting images that riled to an inexhaustible cycle…
All of which spoke of contradictions woven by the hand that made us all.
By a God who murmured softly into her ears, asking for faith and deliverance in her state of vulnerability, for he did not force creatures into believing…
She may never have believed; may never have wanted to believe but the order in the universe spoke of another void upon which this one grew, a greater body that expanded along greater things, a never-ending story called time, and a sea that stretched for all eternity called space. Worlds may indeed walk along parallel paths in the sky, yet she could not accept the barrier of understanding, the limits of the human intellect, as it scrambled to impede her mind and slaughtered the revelation to the incomprehensible: infinity and nothingness.
Looking above and beyond her, she stared into the essence of the void. It reminisced of a time stifled with the immensity of heat and magnanimity of creation; a time when there was no pain but relief, no sorrow but the pure joy of sharing. This was the beginning of our universe, of her universe, of the universe of every man. The same universe that the dead partook of. The ramparts for the living were made such that they would reach heavenly sight without the bruise from the cannon's mischief. Sin was of that kind, taken to the bastion with death written all over its bulbous head, rock and metal fused into a black sphere of destruction. Carnage was blood and bone, not flesh for flesh burned in the face of such heat and thirst for evil.
The blackness of space had in it a different face, a different expression which spoke not of the heavens nor of their warring deities, but of the Earth who strikes her breast in lamentation and pulls trees from their roots for all things taken.
Yet in the great battlefield of death, where souls spoke to the living and haunted dreams of infinite worth, this untamed wilderness of ebony upon ebony, polished to a hue without luster, supported lamps that flickered in their unease. These caged flames were steadfast against the heavenly wind, the angel of death who entered uninvited through every unmarked door. Brighter and brighter still they glowed; harder and harder still the angel refined his sword yet neither wind nor blade prevailed, for lamps were lamps and fire could not be touched by metal nor by wisps of weak zephyrs. All the brighter they shone until night was day and the sky was nothing more than white littered by black instead.
Space stared with millions upon millions of bright lamps to illumine the eye; lamps that spoke of eyes, witnesses to her planet for the harrowed earth was crying in the defeat of the multitudes.
Dream in peace…trust love…believe…
She had never been incapable of such power. Every human held the ability to love with enormity, to care with such passion to the point of insensibility. What words! What great definitions! What works that graced the human spirit! But the greater God who made all things had deemed it to be so and she could not escape the loom of heaven and earth, of light and sky, hope and fear.
May we all live…
A fervent wish surrendered to the wind for approval of the gods waiting therein; a wish that glided through the heart of a noble hero, of a servant of the soil, of a beloved of the earth. She, too, was Gaea's scion, a descendant to all that happened within her since the dawn of creation and here she sat, muttering verses like the unsung poet. She wanted nothing of fame, of richness, of gold or silver that bought nothing but strife. She wanted nothing of what other men offered for their denial of their parenthood was a refusal to the nature of their beginnings. In so doing, men rejected the nature that clung to him, the purpose, which belonged to all but him. Who, then, would pick the pieces to the consequences of such rejection?
The mother, of course…
…and she spread her trembling fingers, already weak and misshapen, to mend the tattered doll of immeasurable worth.
My world is crying, the harrowing heavens sigh with their abuse, and the stars look upon me like the millions of eyes that fall witness to my planet's pain. Her sorrows. Her joys. Her people.
Such was the song Aki Ross sang to the decadence of rose petals. These plants grew with such stubbornness; such perseverance unknown to all but those who saw it, men and their eyes.
"What will you do, Aki?"
"Dream in peace…trust love…believe…" she said softly, lowering her eyes to nourish her sight with the ashes that grew from her rose's stem. "Have they all…died?"
"Yes."
"Then, we start over, and over…and over."
The bearded man who looked at her with the eyes of a father, nodded in his resignation, willing to do the impossible, unwilling to do the bidding of humanity's science.
Both scientists were silent in their grief. How could a petty plant cower beneath the hands of those who created it? How could it die and surrender its plant soul with such conformity to human dirges that to see it falter in the brown cast of its leaves brought tears to a scientist's apathetic eye?
Life was still life and in the eyes of the mother, the tallest did not stand high in her heart; the most insignificant were never pebbles on her feet; the weak were neither sick nor dying. All was equal in her eye and this rose, a victim to a race for man's ultimate survival, was given such blessing that it crumpled to the ground with ease. There was no pain in its passing but for the beholders of its fate, it was loss beyond the grief of their hearts. The power of consanguinity between the species of a single planet had astounded Aki Ross in its pure simplicity and in being such, its pure woe. It had done so once before with such dire cruelty that it had left a part of her writhing in the dregs of sorrow.
"We tamper with nature, we cast lots with the devil and here we are…wallowing in defeat." Sid's voice reached the frail temper of Aki's heart and she was unable to restrain her anger.
"We tried, doctor," Aki hissed. "Don't make this the last of many hopes."
Always, there was truth in her words, unscientific as it may have seemed now.
"I know, child. I know. Come, we have more important things to do than…mourn the loss of something we never had the pleasure of ownership in the first place." The old doctor smiled grimly, those withering lips not unlike ancient structures that eroded against the test of time.
Her eyes left the table where all her plants grew. Before the plague of her hands, they had been brilliant with every hue, laughing in the light of their colors, dancing to the synthetic quality of artificial air. Wrenched from their home, a home of the true soil which churned in its discomfort as wind lashed with noxious fumes and the sun glared with the fiery eyes of a wolf; they felt momentary comfort only to find themselves drowning in the luxury of it all. And they had perished like men stabbed for their ignorance.
Sighing heavily, with the ponderous sound of a burdened animal, her path led her across walls of concrete and metal until finally, she entered the truth.
Nay, she was exiting the road of blunder and entering the world where nothing could go wrong for all things were fated to be and all things had foundation in benevolence. The door that led to a healing earth closed shut behind her.
The world that greeted her was a far cry from the walled defense of whirring machines and critical supervision. Here, all shared in a certain amount of chaos to serve order. The earth beneath her trembled momentarily, as if testing the mettle of her determination, and settled. A strong wind bit at her flesh yet still she stood against the onslaught of nature to behold the beauty of all that came her way.
"Why do you abhor me so much?" she asked, dumb in her disbelief as icy wastes stared with furrowed brows, those sharp angles of ice emulating swords against the dancing light of a distant moon. Cruelty was all that shouted its clumsy insults, blue against the traps of winter, glittering in their wrath. But then, there was the soothing voice of a woman who bore children to the very extent of her fertility.
Laughter…Lamentation…all this, you have done for me. So must I do for you.
Tears welled in Aki's eyes; those salty rivers spreading like a deluge upon the tanned surface of her eyes. Magnificent as if the petulant trident had been waved to summon the seas from their source. The spirit she shared with this trembling earth was desperate in its attempt to be set free for the truth pierced its already wounded feet with fresh tips of a healing poison.
Such was her fervor that Aki's heart throbbed with the pain in a love that hurt with ferocity.
She whispered, too. "Why do you love me so much?"
Reverence marked Aki's voice and upon this altar, the same mother spoke in her simplicity, offering all that she had without restraint in a bloody sacrifice of selflessness.
Belief…
Dear Mother Earth wept in her discovery that this little child knew the extent of all pain…
…And all happiness…
…That the stars wept therewith and rain ordained that liquid diamonds kiss the lips of her mother…
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-The End-