#aerithweek2026

Aerith often found her foster mother tending to her garden quietly. Ever since her husband died, she hadn’t been quite like herself. Not that Aerith knew how Elmyra was normally—they had only lived together for a handful of months, after all—but Aerith could see the subtle change. A more withdrawn demeanor, her unseeing gaze, and sometimes, in the middle of the night, Aerith would hear quiet sobs coming from the kitchen.

Aerith turned in her blanket, wondering if she should sneak downstairs and give Elmyra a hug. Her foster mother couldn’t see the world like she did. Perhaps, if Elmyra could have seen his spirit, she wouldn’t have to feel so lonely. Like Aerith, who, even with her mother gone, could still feel her in the wind, on the brush of fresh leaves against her palms, or hear her voice in the babbling water of the stream outside. Her mother was never truly dead. She had only returned to the Planet. Just like Elmyra’s husband.

Aerith lay awake for a long time. After a while, she heard the sobs fade. Aerith propped herself on her elbows. Then she slipped her feet off her bed and sneaked toward the door. She turned the knob and carefully pulled the door off its hinges. The lights turned off in the stairwell. Footsteps approached, the wooden stairs creaking under Elmyra’s weight. Then Aerith spotted a bob of brown head through the railing, and she immediately shut her door and hid under her covers. 

Elmyra’s feet stopped in front of her door, but she didn’t push it open. Aerith waited with bated breath until she heard a quiet, trembling sigh. Then Elmyra was gone, crossing the hall to the other room across from hers. A click; her footsteps receded; another click. 

***

It had been a month since they buried Elmyra’s husband. 

Early the next morning, before the sun was even out, Aerith sneaked out of the house to the garden outside. Past the bridge to the patch of grass on the other side of the river, Aerith made her way to a small hidden alcove against the cliff face. It was right by the waterfall, so the water ran pure. Aerith crouched before the flower bed she had built, where delicate pale yellow primroses thrived. 

A smile spread across Aerith’s lips. “They’ve blossomed,” she murmured. 

The soft petals crowned feathery green stalks that were almost as long as her forearm. Their leaves, verdant and broad, covered the moist ground. There were enough of the flowers to fill several vases at home, but Aerith had another thing in mind. 

Carefully, she snipped each bloom at the base of their stalks. A crown, she thought, as she began twining the stalks together. But Aerith had never weaved a flower crown before. She had only seen pictures of it in a book at the lab. She’d told her mother once that one day, she would like to make a flower crown for her, if they ever got out. 

And now they had… 

But her mother wasn’t with her anymore.

Aerith’s fingers slipped, and the crown fell apart in her hands. Before she could huff in frustration, a whisper of a laugh caressed her ear.

Don’t rush, my dear. Take your time.

Aerith’s head snapped up. “Mom?”

The flowers seemed to smile. I’m here with you.

By the time the sun rose over their part of the Slums, Aerith finally finished her flower crown. Pride swelled in her chest as she looked at her somewhat haphazard wreath. A little too much twig and vine. She plucked a few more primroses from the flowerbed and slipped them into the headpiece. It wasn’t perfect, and some jutted out of place, but it was a crown nonetheless, and she couldn’t wait to show it to Elmyra. 

The wind kissed her cheek, as if to say “Well done”. 

Just then, she heard a different voice calling her name. “Aerith?” Elmyra’s shout echoed from their house. “Aerith, where are you, sweetheart?” 

“I’m here, Mom!” 

She leaped from her hiding place and rushed back up the garden and across the river. Elmyra stood at the doorway, looking positively distraught until she caught sight of Aerith barrelling from the garden. 

“There you are! I was looking for you everywhere!” she said. “What happened to you? Your dress is all dirty, and your hands—”

“I was making this.” Aerith brought her primrose crown up to her foster mother’s eyes. “It’s for you.”

“For… me?”

“Uh-huh.” Aerith beamed. “Do you like it?”

Elmyra blinked even as she accepted the flower crown. “Well, I do, but… what brought this on?”

“Well…” Aerith fidgeted. She hung her head, hands clasped on her back. “Your husband wanted you to have it.”

Elmyra froze. “My husband?”

“That time his spirit came to visit, he asked me for a favor. He’d found some primrose seeds that he kept in his pocket. He… wanted you to have them. So when they returned his body, I took the seeds from him and planted it secretly in the garden.” Aerith looked up now, her pulse stammering anxiously because Elmyra did not look quite pleased. “Are you… not happy? It was supposed to be a surprise. I thought you would like a surprise…” Her voice, having grown quieter with each word, finally trailed off. 

Elmyra did not say anything for a long while. Aerith squirmed in her feet. Was she wrong again? Should she not have kept it from Elmyra? 

Aerith had been afraid that if she’d spoken recklessly, like when she’d told Elmyra her husband had returned to the Planet, Elmyra would be sad. But her husband had said that Elmyra loved the flower. If Aerith could grow them in their garden, perhaps her foster mother would smile once she saw them in full bloom. 

At least, that’s what she’d thought. 

“Mom, I—”

Before Aerith could say another word, Elmyra had dropped to her knees and brought Aerith into her arms. 

“Thank you,” she whispered. Her breath shuddered. 

In the flower book Aerith once read at the lab, it’d said that primroses meant new beginnings. She had looked up at her mother and said, “If we ever get out, I want to plant primroses in our garden. Then I’ll make a crown for you and you’ll be queen.”

Her mother had smiled. “Then I’ll also make one for you so you’ll be my princess.”

She’d giggled at the thought.

Now Aerith stood crushed within Elmyra’s embrace. Her mother wasn’t here anymore to wear a crown, but Elmyra was. A cottage for just the two of them, with a garden beside. They hadn’t left Midgar, but the days of painful syringes and glaring light were behind her. 

She could live here. 

Elmyra pulled away, wiped tears from her eyes. She smiled. “Show me where the primroses are. I’ll make you a crown too.”

Aerith beamed. She hummed her response and led her mother back to the alcove with the pale yellow flowers.