Final Fantasy VII Prologue
(a product of boredom)


Tiny sparks rose and danced in the warm air issuing from the grating, lending their meager light and heat to the dim alleyway. To the eyes of the young woman kneeling by the warmth, they writhed and undulated in harmony, like miniature constellations in an endless ballet.

As she rubbed her hands together in the heated air, the pinpricks of light that reflected in her deep green eyes seemed to draw out the knowledge in them that went far beyond her twenty-two years.
Knowledge that sometimes even she had difficulty understanding.

"I wonder if the stars are out tonight," she thought. "No one in the slums can see the stars anymore." She sighed.

She rose to her feet, a distant look in her eyes.
Time to make a living again.

Dusting off the skirt of her pale pink dress, she slung her flower basket in the crook of her right elbow and started back to the street. Her old boots echoed loudly off the paving stones, resonating in the confined space.

Flowers were scarce in the slums - in the entire city - so she made a decent enough living selling them to passers-by. Only she knew how and where to grow them properly, for she had a mysterious attunement to the energies of nature, what little of it was left intact in the city.

She chewed her lower lip, dropping her gaze to the damp flagstone street where grass had once grown in the cracks, in some distant memory.

As she stared into space, a barely remembered voice from the cobwebs of her childhood tickled her consciousness. She'd heard it before, during contemplative moments alone, echoing in her mind - though she could never really remember who had spoken them.

She heard it now, faint, troubled, sad.

"…your destiny is far more significant than you will ever know, Aerith, my child."

She stopped and stood pensively at the curb, her skin harshly lit by the neon sign above her head. The noise and bustle continued around her as she stood lost in thought, dwarfed by the shops and factories around her, the giant furnaces, the immense multi-leveled city of Midgar that seemed to reach the heavens - and blocked out the sky for those unfortunate enough to live at the bottom in dingy, artificially lit surroundings.

She sighed again.

A train whistle blared faintly in the distance.

"I wonder if the stars are out tonight."


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