PRECIOUS TIMES by Kiraya
Disclaimer: You don't want to know what I'd do with the Final Fantasy VII franchise if I owned it.
Notes: Butterfly Effect sidestory, set at some undetermined point after Cloud's eighteenth birthday.
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When Cloud had been growing up in Nibelheim, they had celebrated the high days like clockwork every year. In the spring they celebrated the first signs of Gaea's awakening in indigo crocuses sprouting through the softening snow, and children were finally allowed out to play more freely. It had become one of Cloud's favourite holidays, because it meant he could start spending more time with Vincent again without making his mother worry too much about him getting caught in a storm.
In the summer they celebrated the longest day of the year with glasses of cold ale and sweet juice, and the music and dancing and laughter would last in the square until long after dark, when the Midsummer fires would dot the village like a thousand stars.
In the early autumn the farmers from all the isolated homesteads for miles around would come to town to trade some of their harvest for made goods, and the village square became filled with merchant stands like a Gongagan bazaar, people hawking their wares from all over.
In the bleak midwinter they celebrated the longest night of the year by filling their houses and all their windows with candles, so that even in the long dark there was welcoming light for loved ones, and wherever two or more were gathered they'd sit together and drink hot cider as family.
Not long after that came New Year, when the houses were cheerfully decked with evergreens and full of singing despite the harsh grip of winter, and they'd sit up late into the night reminiscing about the past year until dawn stained the snow outside, bringing everything back to the beginning again.
They did things differently in Midgar — of course, they did practically everything different in Midgar, except for those tired people in the slums who still stubbornly clung to the traditions of their homes. Snow fell only above the Plate, and never lasted long enough for anyone to even acknowledge the spring festival when it came around. Around the summer solstice it was much hotter than it had been back home, and though icy cold beverages were available to help stave off the heat everywhere in the city for those brave enough to leave the cool shadows, complaints of the high temperatures were more common than dancing. And little of the harvest festival, aside from the sudden increase in fresh fruits and vegetables on the market, ever came over from Kalm into the city.
The real important holidays in Midgar were the winter ones, when all the city was lit up even more brightly than usual, decked with garlands of greenery and shimmering glass baubles, the air full of old songs of celebration day and night. Drinks flowed freely wherever one went from the winter solstice all the way to New Year, when the endless parties would culminate in a grand fireworks display in the sky above the ShinRa building.
The best part of all of it, though, was not the parties or the decorations or any of that. For Cloud, what made the holiday special was sitting in Sephiroth's quarters without a care in the world as he sipped mulled wine and chatted with the three most important people in his life into the wee hours of the morning.
These were the things that made Midgar feel like home.
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30 December 2006.