i, bloom.

[ redacted ] - the ‘construction’ of the galactic leyline, a repository for all known knowledge in the universe, begins. it is a joint effort between the elnaril* and cetra, with each race providing knowledge in the their respective areas ( cetra = magic / elnaril = science ).

unknown period of time - after the completion of the galactic leyline with the elnaril, the cetra begin their migration across the galaxy while channeling ‘mana’ and cultivating life. 

2,000+ years prior - the race eventually settles on an infant planet that would eventually become known as gaia. eventually the planet is struck by a meteor that brings the creature known as the ‘calamity of the skies’. the cetra gather to heal the planet’s wound but are nearly wiped out in the process. the few surviving cetra are able to seal the creature away.

εγλ 1959 - shinra manufacturing works discovers mako energy.

εγλ 1977 - led by professor gast, the calamity of the skies is found by a team of shinra scientists in the northern crater. initially thought to be a preserved cetra, it is given the name jenova.

εγλ 1977-1982 - the jenova project, otherwise known as project s, begins when an unborn fetus is injected with jenova cells in an attempt to create a half-human / cetra hybrid.

εγλ 1980 - sephiroth, the subject of project s, is born.

εγλ early 1980s - discovering that jenova isn’t a cetra, professor gast leaves his position of head of the science department at shinra and travels the planet to find the truth. eventually he meets ifalna, a true cetra, at cosmos canyon and begins to interview her which leads to the two falling in love. the move to icicle inn to hide away from shinra.

εγλ 1985 / february 7th - aeris gainsborough is born.

εγλ 1985 / february 27th - professor hojo, now the head scientist of shinra, has gast shot down in order to capture ifalna and aeris. the mother and daughter are captured and brought to midgar.

εγλ 1985-88 - shinra launches the space exploration program. the program is initially been written off as mostly a failure with only space probes being sent outside of the planet’s orbit.

εγλ 1992 - the wutai war begins after wutai refuses to allow the construction of a mako reactor in its country. elmyra gainsborough, whose husband had been sent off to fight in the war, finds a nearly dead ifalna who had suffered wounds after escaping the shinra building. elmyra promises to protect aeris and takes her in as her daughter. aeris inherits the white materia from her mother.

εγλ 1997 - the probes sent out little over a decade ago would make a world-changing discovery: other lifeforms existed outside of their own. the revelation would bring an equal amount of fear, uncertainty, and excitement which the shinra corporation is exceptionally quick to capitalize on. 

εγλ 1998 - after nearly a year of off-planetary communication, the race known as the silgrians are the first species allowed to land on the planet and meet with president shinra ⎯⎯⎯ an event that would be televised globally.

εγλ 1999 - the construction of a shinra space station on gaia's nearest begins. unbeknownst to the greater population, the true purpose is to house jenova.

εγλ 0000 - it’s eventually discovered that the planet’s energy source, mako ( known as ki, mana, or even magic ), is a highly valuable substance across the galaxy. this newfound discovery results in further investments being poured into not only perfecting the manufacturing of huge materia, large chunks of crystallized mako that are capable of powering spaceships, but the potential construction of reactors on neighboring worlds that are viable for mako extraction.

εγλ early 0000s - shinra begins to expand their business by selling huge materia and mako to traveling merchants in need of fuel. however, due to the threat of pirates and outlaws as well as shinra’s increasing ambitions, the SOLDIER program is revamped to combat any off-world threats.

εγλ 0001 / february - the wutai war ends.

εγλ 0002 - the renowned general sephiroth, 1st class SOLDIER zack fair, and a group of grunts are given the mission to survey the progress of the space station. the mission itself nor the details of it are ever revealed to the public and all members of the team are written off as deceased. sephiroth and jenova's remains go missing.

εγλ 004 - after years of years of distant surveillance, aeris is finally captured but allowed to maintain most of her freedom under the condition that she works in coordination with the turks.

εγλ 007 / late november - shinra learns of the galactic leyline. believing it to be the true ‘promised land’, a place with an unlimited supply of mako, the turks are given the assignment to collect the outlaw star once it is verified that the bio-android melfina is on board the ship. 

for starters, aeris technically already plays an indirect role in the lifestream sequence in the original game depending on if you see the maiden who travels the planet canon or not. for any who don’t know what it is, it’s a novel about aeris’s time in the lifestream after her death that leads up to the end of the game. one of the biggest moments in it is that when cloud falls into the lifestream after giving sephiroth the black materia, aeris is able to ‘see’ all that has happened since she died via his memories. she is shocked and doesn’t want to believe cloud isn’t real when sephiroth claims cloud is a clone. it’s not only until she meets zack in the lifestream that she learns the truth about cloud and nibelheim but she can’t do anything to help.

eventually when he and tifa fall into the lifestream, aeris is able to help guide ‘tifa’s conscious into cloud’s heart’ ( don’t ask me how that even works ) so that tifa can help him while also not be intoxicated by the mako. essentially, she helps tifa be able to help cloud.

so ‘if’ this novel is canon then 1). aeris doesn't fully know who the real cloud was until after she dies. she is shown to be shocked and confused after learning the truth:

aeris cried as she thought about the shattered cloud that even her prayers wouldn’t reach. his wrecked character could no longer be fixed. if he wasn’t cloud in the first place then, who was he? knowing him only as a former member of SOLDIER, there was no way she could guess. she embraced the feeling of helplessness that she couldn’t put into words.

“i felt something odd about him but was everything really just made up and part of his false character? cloud wasn’t real at all? …no, that can’t be true. there were things that only cloud could think of. things that he done because he was cloud. he was never an empty vessel to begin with!“ but she couldn’t figure out the truth. her thoughts just went in circles.

it isn’t until tifa helps cloud that aeris finally says she knows the ‘real’ cloud:

she was happy. she was happy that she now knew the real cloud and was able to watch over him, even though it was just for a short while.

basically i’m not fond of the idea of aeris knowing fully who cloud is as it never really made sense to me personally. aeris isn’t omnipresent - she doesn't seem to fully know zack is dead ( at least in the original game ).

2). tifa is the only one who can piece together the ‘true’ cloud and always will be. zack is dead, sephiroth is….sephiroth, and aeris was never there to begin with. one of the most important things about my canon is that i go out of my way to make sure the original events still play out mostly the same ( ex. aeris doesn’t die but sephiroth’s attack leaves her weakened which allows holy to still be held back by sephiroth just like in the game ). the lifestream sequence is an important, intimate moment between cloud and tifa regardless if you view them platonically or romantically so i have no desire to change it.

so with all of that said, what is different in the ‘aeris lives’ version of this? well like i’ve said before, there are bits and pieces of the maiden that travels the planet that have inspired me and i’m using for my own purposes. aeris’s development in vii is about self-discovery and accepting her role as a cetra - learning how to properly manipulate the planet’s energy is a part of that. working with the lifestream/planet’s energy is something that’s mentioned multiple times in relation to the cetra:

a race who lived on the planet from long ago, and who possessed the ability to speak with the planet. Also known as the ‘cetra’. the ancients are said to have opened up lifestream veins in the land, working to make the planet fertile. ( source ).

ifalna: …i can’t explain it very well, but it’s like having a conversation with the planet… it said something fell from the sky making a large wound. thousands of cetra pulled together, trying to heal the planet… but, due to the severity of the wound, it was only able to heal itself, over many years.

gast: do the Ancients, rather, the cetra, have special powers to heal the planet?

ifalna: no, it’s not that kind of power. the life force of all living things on this planet becomes the energy. the cetra tried desperately to cultivate the land so as not to diminish the needed energy…

aeris: that’s right. one person’s power alone won’t do it. somewhere special. where there’s plenty of the planet’s energy…

this is how aeris helps tifa stay alive in the lifestream in order to help cloud as well as bring forth the lifestream to stop meteor once it touches down. basically, aeris does not play a major role in piecing cloud together ( although i have mentioned previously that in this altered canon, tifa does confide in aeris about how she remembers nibelheim differently. post edit: which rebirth has now made canon. yay! ). instead, her role is keeping them alive which is still incredibly important!

so now it’s time to dive deeper into aeris, cloud and his dissociation. this is…a strange and difficult subject to cover simply because some of this is based around personal interpretation + aeris becomes increasingly reclusive after cosmos canyon so it’s hard to analyze how she feels at times. i’ve already established that i don’t think she fully knew his true identity but she is more than aware of there being something ‘off’ about him even though she never directly states it in-game. i don’t think you can talk about aeris’s feelings on cloud’s ‘true’ identity without talking about her secretive / emotionally reclusive nature first.

aeris is an open person…when it comes to everyone else except her. it’s actually rare to hear her thoughts and feelings directly and when we do…it’s honestly usually vague. even when she’s trying to be ‘open’, she still manages to alienate herself:

click to view images.

she also tends to avoid oversharing such as specifically stopping herself from revealing information after telling the party that they should focus on going after sephiroth:

aeris: and… i’m sorry, forget it! i think I’m tired. i’m going to bed now. *runs upstairs.*

when we first met her, aeris doesn’t know what the white materia does yet throughout her journey, you can see that her connection with planet has gotten much stronger. she clearly has learned new information about the planet, the capital of her ancestors, and the white materia between cosmos canyon and the events at the temple of the ancients yet she doesn’t share them until she talks to cloud while he’s sleeping:

aeris: this forest leads to the city of the ancients… and is called the sleeping forest. it’s only a matter of time before sephiroth uses meteor. that’s why I’m going to protect it. only a survivor of the cetra, like me, can do it.

i believe that aeris was able to get stronger because she finally got out of midgar ( a city that was literally sucking the life out of the planet ) since staying in one place was actually against what the cetra were in practice. they were meant to travel / ‘journey’ across the planet and ‘speak’ with it as those who did settle in one place eventually lost the ability to speak with the planet:

aeris: the cetra were born from the planet, speak with the planet, and unlock the planet.

sephiroth: this planet originally belonged to the cetra. cetra was a itinerant* race. they would migrate in, settle the planet, then move on.

*itinerant means to travel from place to place.

aeris: someday i’ll get out of midgar… speak with the planet and find my promised land.

elder hargo: the life of the ancients is one continuous journey. a journey to grow trees and plants, produce animals, and to raise mako energy.

aeris: you search and travel, until you feel it. like you just know, ’…this is the promised land.’

the closest we actually get to hearing aeris’s direct feelings on what’s happening with cloud is in her last conversation with him:

aeirs: oh… then, why don’t you REALLY worry about it? and let me handle sephiroth. and cloud, you take care of yourself. so you don’t have a breakdown, okay?

while her priority is sephiroth and protecting the planet, she still clearly cares about cloud and decides to take care of the situation on her own because he currently isn’t well enough for it. next i want to discuss is the golden saucer date. it’s another example of aeris’s tendency to be unclear when opening herself up:

click to view images.

this moment during aeris’s date with cloud is the source for the theory that aeris knew cloud wasn’t who he was. aeris mentions how cloud and ‘him’ ( zack ) were alike and she saw ‘him’ in cloud at first but she realizes that they are different now. i’ve already stated that i disagreed with the idea that aeris knew who cloud really was earlier so i’m not going to completely rehash that, however, there is another reason why i disagree with it. i think that people tend to focus so heavily on the foreshadowing about cloud that they aren’t actually thinking about aeris and her feelings in this scene.

aeris has canon feelings for cloud and i think this scene is her saying that she wants to truly get to know him after seeing so much of zack, her ex, in him first. she specifically mentions that to zack himself in the lifestream ( the translation for this reads kind of awkwardly in my opinion ):

aeris: and that’s your bad point. you’re not simplistic and awkward like cloud. zack: is that what you liked, aeris? aeris: who knows. things might have changed after five years.

*the maiden that travels the planet was written before crisis core was released and aeris is clearly shown to have moved on here yet crisis core contradicts this by having her still write zack nearly five years after he’s gone missing. this is one of the reasons why it’s kind of iffy on whether this novel is canon or not but this blog clearly doesn’t care about canon anyway so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

now we’re going to move on to the events at the temple of the ancients which i honestly think are some of the most important moments between the two. we finally start delving into cloud not being….well, cloud. the first is when they’re looking at the murals of meteor on the walls and cloud starts disassociating and we get this response from aeris:

click to view images.

if aeris had any concerns or suspicious about cloud’s behavior, i think this scene ( and this entire section of the game ) officially confirms them. what’s most interesting is aeris’s response to say that everything is fine ( and forces the other party member to agree ) despite how bad the situation continues to grow before sephiroth eventually forces cloud to hand him the black materia. again, aeris tries to console him while he continues to breakdown:

click to view images.

before finally, cloud ( controlled by sephiroth ) pushes aeris down and begins to uncontrollably attack her. he doesn’t stop until the second party member comes and knocks him out. this is a very overlooked scene - one that i had honestly forgotten about myself until some fans began to question whether it would be cut or not in the remake. it’s intense and uncomfortable and its something that has to be addressed openly between cloud and aeris in my ‘aeris lives’ canon.

yes, cloud is being controlled by sephiroth but it’s still his body that is physically attacking her. that’s a lot to take in and even though she doesn’t blame him ( one of the reoccurring things she does is repeatedly tell cloud to not worry about what has just happened ) but the memory of it is still hurtful.

cloud: yeah, I hear you. sorry for what happened. aeris: don’t worry about it.

aeris: cloud… you haven’t done anything. it’s not your fault.

aeris: …it’s nothing so don’t worry about it.

honestly everything that happened during the temple of ancients and even at the forgotten city needs to be addressed because while aeris left towards the forgotten city alone, she never left with the intention to die despite being well aware of the possible danger she was in. she talked about the future more than any of them ( although i find it interesting that we never actually see that in game despite tifa mentioning it multiple times ).