Contributed by Dave Blanker - cthulu29@hotmail.com

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I cease to look through his eyes and return again to my own.
        “Mr. Reeve,” she’s saying, “something’s happening.”
        I figure he can take care of himself for a while.  I turn and follow
Marlene up the staircase.  She’s a cute kid, very polite.  Again I
regret that I involved her in this.
        Elmyra is already in the upstairs room when I arrive.  Even after my
despicable actions toward her and little Marlene, she has done her best
to be my friend.
        My only friend.
        So many mistakes.  I was so harsh in letting her know that her daughter
had died.  I guess I didn’t know how badly she would react, the way her
emotions would leave her hurting  and distraught for days.   I didn’t
realize that Aeris was the only thing that made her life
meaningful after her husband died in the war.  I guess that the only
thing that consoled her was the fact that Marlene was there for her.
        I still remember the day a few weeks ago when we all got here.  I had
escaped the Shinra building’s jail and found Marlene and Elmyra before
they could be used as bait.  We escaped together and we borrowed a house
in Kalm from a friend of Elmyra who was going to
Costa Del Sol for a long vacation.  Elmyra was still depressed, but the
day we moved in, Marlene walked up to her and said, “Mrs. Gainsborough,
you shouldn’t be sad.  Aeris isn’t gone, she’s just
resting.”
        “What?”
        “I was in the flower garden just now and she talked to me.  She said
she didn’t want you to be sad.  She said she’s healing close to the
planet, and she’ll be back someday.”
        Elmyra smiled, bent down and hugged Marlene, and then went outside.
        I started to follow, but Marlene stopped me.
        “She said to tell you that it wasn’t your fault.  She said that you
need to help Papa and Tifa and Cloud and the others to save the planet.”
        And as innocently as it began, it was over.  She hopped up the stairs
to her room, and I began to think.  How had she known?  I wasn’t
surprised in the least that Marlene had talked to Aeris.  Things too far
beyond my understanding had happened recently to make me skeptical.  But
how did Aeris know that I blamed myself?
        She was a good person who shouldn’t have died.  She was always nice to
me when I was my other self, even after I betrayed them and kidnapped
Marlene and Elmyra.  I kept thinking that maybe if I had done something
differently, if I had stood up to Rufus or his father, if I had
intervened with Hojo’s research, if I hadn’t just stood by that she
would still be alive.
        But she was right.  I ignored my ill feelings and went back to my other
Persona, that of Cait Sith.  I then concentrated on the task at hand:
fighting the spectre known as Sephiroth.
        All of this rattled through my brain in a matter of seconds, and I am
now back in the present.
        Just a few minutes ago, we finally put an end to it.  Or at least we
thought we had.  We defeated Sephiroth in the North Cave and barely
escaped as the crater collapsed around us.  Thanks to Shinra’s
modification of the Highwind (the Shinra had done something good for
us?), we made it out safely, albeit with a few cuts and bruises.
        And now I stand alongside Elmyra as Marlene looks out of the window.
We behold a sight that I simply can’t fully describe.
        Meteor had begun its descent.
        On Midgar.