#Skyless

[dubadoowop]

Skyless?! On Webtoon?!

Please please please check this shit out- it's so wonderful. Art, story, and character-wise.

The characters are so expressive in their body language and faces- don't you immediately feel love for them??

It has creachers.

It has intrigue- look at that- look at the framing- look at the remnants of our time made fantastical and adventurous.

Anyway :3c

I like it.

Skyless is now on Webtoon! Even if you have the books (thank you!), the webtoon is a whole new reading experience, and episode 1 features a special never-before-seen prologue :>

Please give it a look, like, follow, share - your support means a lot!!

[kingskyless]

me, myself (persona) and I (main sona)

i wanna say this was a quick doodle but skyless and poli the oc took me like 15 tries each

[stgroversfire]

skyless moon - mac demarco

verse 1 and some chorus before i blunder

[thegiftofgabes]

Nibiru: Chronicles of the Skyless World - About

I have been running a Nibiru adventure for the past couple of months and I figured I'd share about it.

This series of posts is a summary of the sessions, so don't expect them to be a literature masterpiece, quite the contrary, they'll be brief and succinct, at first directed to the players to keep up with past events.

That said...

Please feel free to ask about the story, the characters, the sessions, details and so on. I would actually be very appreciative of it.

I'll post the first few sessions over the week!

[the-giik-games]

SETTLEMOON IS NOW RELEASED

An idle game about building a town in an abandoned RPG world. Meet the locals of Settlemoon, customize your town, and discover what happened to this land, lost in a skyless void.

This is the first game I've made as a full, start-to-finish, sold for money, actual whole entire game. I hope you have as good a time playing through it as I did making it! It's been a fun experience. Maybe I should share some older progress posts and going into detail on the systems later...but for now, go play it!

[sephirthoughts]

Mother

Chapter 1: The Grey Figure

summary: post-advent children, the remnants of sephiroth wind up somewhere they aren't supposed to be, without a clue how they got there, or how to get out. a mysterious figure takes them under its wing, claiming to want to help them.

tags: gratuitous silliness, slight mystery, post-canon, the remnants are the stars because we need more of them

rating: teen and up

warnings: amnesia, i guess?

Location: The Skyless Plains, Space Between Worlds

Through the bleak and barren waste, a solitary figure wandered. Grey and wraithlike, it was, veiled in hooded robes, like shredded wisps of cloud; invisible in the purple-grey fog, that hung heavily over the featureless landscape.

But that was alright. None who came here had eyes. 

The figure had just paused, to contemplate choosing another direction, in which to wander aimlessly, when a sound disturbed the perpetual calm. A voice. Then another, and another. Three voices!

“But such lively voices in this place are unheard of,” thought the figure, then laughed inwardly, believing itself to be terribly clever.

Since it had no specific reason to choose any other direction, the figure glided toward the lively voices, to take a look. Soon, it came upon their source: three legless and armless little blobs, who seemed to be quite small, for creatures capable of generating so much noise.

The grey figure thought of them as little, because, though size was entirely conceptual, here, when judged relative to the grey figure’s own size, theirs would be similar to grapefruits, if the grey figure is assumed to have the rough dimensions of a human being. 

In any case, the three little blobs were made of pale and wavering light; one white, one blue, and one green—which only mattered because the light was actually life force, which could be seen by those without eyes, and thus the colors perceived, in this place. 

“Greetings, little blobs,” said the grey figure, in as polite and non-terrifying a tone as it could remember how to configure. 

Of course, the three blobs screamed in terror and darted away as fast as they possibly could. Or, perhaps, darted is the wrong word. They had no limbs and, to be perfectly honest, were not very fast.

The grey figure stood watching, curiously, as the tiny disembodied existences wriggled in the grey dirt, inching away at a pace far slower than its own usual, aimless strolling. 

“Did we—did we lose her?” the green one panted (having absolutely no reason to be out of breath, since none of them had lungs).

“Maybe, but those things are wily,” said the (slightly) more intelligent white one. “She might be trying to trick us into letting our guard down.”

“No one told me to have my guard up, in the first place,” the blue one whined. “I’ve had it down this whole time.”

“Pardon me, little blobs,” said the grey figure again, in an even more polite and non-terrifying tone.

The three blobs repeated the process of howling and flailing stupidly in the dirt, until they succeeded in getting a few more inches away, upon which they repeated their former conversation, nearly verbatim.

The grey figure gave a forbearing sigh. Reaching down, it plucked up the three wriggling blobs and held them in its (purely conceptual) palms, to have a (metaphorical) look at them.

“You’ll never take us alive!” roared the white one.  

“I’m too beautiful to die!” wailed the blue one.

“I can’t feel my legs!” bellowed the green one.

“Calm down, little blobs,” the grey figure gently admonished. “You’re using up your life force, thrashing about, like this. If you keep it up, you’ll disappear altogether.”

“We’re not blobs, you reaper hag! We’re souls!” the white one contended. “And don’t even think about eating us! I’ll…I’ll lodge myself in your throat and choke you!!”

The grey figure considered this for some (or no) time (which did not exist here). “Hm. You do seem to be human souls. But you’re so small. You must be very young souls.”

“We’re not born yet,” the green one offered helpfully.

“Shut up, Loz!” the white one scolded. “Don’t tell it things!”

The grey figure seemed to smile. “Your name is Loz?”

“No!!” the white one thundered. 

“Yep,” the green one chirped.

“I’m Yazoo,” the blue one said languidly, as if speaking was a dreadful inconvenience, and it could only be asked to do so much.

“I said don’t tell it things!!” 

“You’re Loz, and you’re Yazoo,” repeated the grey figure. “And what’s your name, little one?”

“None of your business!” the white one wiggled angrily.

“He’s Kadaj,” the green one said. “We’re all brothers.”

“I see. So, you’ve always been together?”

“Yes.”

“Mn.”

“Ye—I mean! Who’s asking!! And put us down!”

“This is a curious riddle, little blobs,” the grey figure said musingly. “If you were never born, how do you have names?”

“We named ourselves!” growled Kadaj, the white one. “What do you care!”

“Did you? Well, they’re darling names,” the figure chuckled. “I like them, very much.”

“Thanks!” Loz chimed.

“Hmph,” Yazoo hmphed.

“So, Yazoo, Loz, Kadaj, tell me; how have you come here?”

The three blobs faltered, seeming to be at a loss.

“We…um. Well.”

“We really can’t…”

“We don’t know.”

The grey figure nodded. “I suspected as much. And where were you, before?”

“We don’t know.”

“No idea.”

“And we wouldn’t tell you anyway!”

“I ask because you look like human souls, to me. But if that’s the case, you shouldn’t have been able to come here. This is a place of exile, for those who can’t return to the lifestream.”

“We were in the lifestream, once,” Loz said cheerfully. “It was warm and bright!”

“Then we were…somewhere else,” Yazoo murmured.

“Now, we’re lost in this stupid wasteland,” Kadaj grumbled.

“Well, you’re in luck,” said the grey figure. “As it so happens, I’m the guardian of this place. If you’ve found your way here by mistake or mischance, there must be a way to send you back to where you belong.”

“The guardian?” Yazoo asked, skeptically. 

“What’s a guardian?” Loz wanted to know. 

“As guardian, it’s my task to oversee this place, and ensure that everything proceeds according to the rules. I’ve never tried to exercise my authority, before, because I’ve never had a reason. But this does seem to be the correct situation for it.” 

“Were you always here?” Loz asked.

“No. I was human, once.”

“You don’t seem human,” Kadaj said suspiciously. “How long have you been here?”

“That is a question,” the grey figure sighed. “It seems, not very long. And yet, I feel as if I carry the burden of ten-thousand centuries.”

“You can just say you don’t know,” Kadaj informed it, which made the figure seem to smile.

“Excuse me, um, ma’am,” Loz put in, shyly. “Do you have a name?”

The figure appeared briefly troubled. “I must have, but…I seem to have lost it.”

“Then, what do we call you?” Yazoo asked. 

“Yeah, we have to call you something,” Kadaj agreed.

The figure laughed softly, seeming to be pleased by this. “You wish to give me a name?”

“Well, we don’t actually know any names,” Loz admitted.

“We know our names, idiot,” Kadaj retorted.

“But we can’t use our names, they’re already ours,” Yazoo lamented.

“The three of you seem to know many words,” observed the figure. “Any word you know can serve as a name, if you choose to use it as one. Why not choose a word, for my name?” 

“Reaper hag,” Kadaj put forth confidently.

“But I’m not a reaper. Shouldn’t a name be a more unique designation, that avoids causing unnecessary confusion?” the grey figure reasoned.

The blobs were utterly confounded by this, and fell silent. 

The grey figure seemed to laugh, again, behind its wispy sleeve. “This is not a pressing matter. Think, for a while, and choose something you like, to call me. For now, let us go.”

“Hang on a minute, go where?!” Kadaj demanded. “We never agreed to go with you! This is some kind of trick, isn’t it!”

“I vote to go with the reaper hag,” Loz said. 

“Seconded,” Yazoo yawned. 

“There’s no voting! This isn’t a democracy! Hey, where are you taking us! I demand answers! I dem—mph! Mmmph!”

Kadaj’s outraged protestations were muffled, as the grey figure stuffed the three little blobs into its sleeve, and vanished.

To be more accurate, it didn’t really vanish, it simply used astounding speed to cross unfathomable (conceptual) distances, in negligible time (which did not exist here). Not that it would have mattered if it vanished or not, though, since again, no one could see it in the first place.

“Here we are,” it said, shaking the little blobs back out of its sleeve, to plop onto the grey ground.

“—have rights! I don’t have to put up with being manhandled by some reaper hag, just because I’m—” Kadaj broke off, bewildered. “Where are we?”

“Home,” the figure said, in a sepulchral facsimile of cheerfulness.

Kadaj scowled. “This doesn’t look like home. It looks like more shitty grey fog.”

“What should home look like?” the figure asked.

“It should have a house!” Loz answered sagely. 

As he spoke the words, some of the fog receded, and a cottage style, two-story house emerged, just as he’d imagined it, only grey.

“It should have a garden,” Yazoo ventured, and more of the fog lifted, revealing a perfectly idyllic kitchen garden, full of flowers and vegetables and herbs of many varieties, only they were all grey. 

“It should have a mother,” Kadaj said coldly. 

When he looked up to sneer at the grey figure, however, he found that it had transformed, into a lovely young woman, with a gentle smile on her face.

She was as grey as everything else, but her skin was fair and her eyes were deep, and her long hair, which she wore pulled up in a high ponytail, was somewhere in the middle. Her figure was slender and petite, and she wore a simple dress, with an apron and comfortable house shoes, like the mother character in a children’s storybook. 

“M…mother?” Loz faltered.

“She’s not our mother!” Kadaj exploded. “She’s that reaper hag, in disguise!”

“That’s true—well, not exactly true, since I’m not a reaper,” said the former grey figure, who was now a grey young woman. “I am the same person who brought you here. I have created this place for you, in accordance with your ideas regarding what a home is, to make you more comfortable. I suppose I’m to act as the mother, since you say a home requires one, and I can’t create sentient beings.”

“Mother!” said Loz and Yazoo, bouncing happily.

“Since we’re home, shall we go inside?” asked the grey young woman.

“Inside, inside!” Loz and Yazoo cheered.

“You’re both idiots seeking death,” Kadaj groused, sullenly following the others into the house, with his arms crossed and his little silver eyebrows lowered in a scowl. Then he abruptly realized he had arms to cross, and a chest to cross them on, as well as legs to follow the others with, and gave a yelp. “I’m a person! Y—you guys are people, too! We were born! Wait, that doesn’t make sense.”

“Since this place is intended for your comfort, I gave you human forms, based on the condition of your souls,” the grey woman explained. “You’re children, now, because you’re so weak and small.” 

“Shouldn’t we be babies, then?” Kadaj pointed out. 

“I’ve no wish to care for infants, who can neither speak, nor do anything for themselves, so I gave you a little spiritual energy boost. Your physical ages should be around six human years.”

“Couldn’t you have given us a big one, so we can be grown ups?” 

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the woman said gravely.

“Is it against the rules?”

“No. It’s just that I think you’re absolutely precious like this,” she grinned, reaching down to pinch Kadaj’s little round cheeks.

“Back, hag!” he barked, striking out with both hands, to fend her off. Unfortunately, he had the strength of a six year old, and the woman simply ignored his little slaps and pinched his cheeks to her heart’s content. 

His eyes were blazing with white-hot indignation, and the moment she released him, he ran away up the narrow stairwell. A second or two later, they heard a door slam, upstairs.

“Only just become a mother, and it seems I’ve already got a teenager,” the young woman mused. “Wherever does the time go?”

“Mother? We’re hungry,” Yazoo said, tugging on her apron.

He was looking up at her with the largest, saddest eyes, and an aggrieved pout, which, on his beautiful, childlike face, was a devastating blow capable of slaying gods and mortals, alike. 

“Mother, can you cook us something?” Loz put in, tugging on her apron on the other side.

“I’m not sure. I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we,” she said, and entered the kitchen with the intrepid air of an adventurer, sallying forth into an undiscovered country, fraught with unknown dangers.

THE AUTHOR HAS SOMETHING TO SAY 

yazoo: mother we’re ever so hungry

loz: please make us food, mother

system: [-1000 points of puppy-eyes damage to party member mother] 

grey figure: [spitting out blood] my character settings are not specced for this 

[milkyfederation]

Settings challenge, 2nd month: The Moon (1).

The Moon is the capital of Earth.

A city on the surface of our main satellite is the political and economic capital of Federated Earth, since it's easier to access than our home world and its pesky gravity.

Baselu is humanity's most populated city. A closed (but ever-growing) structure with a terraformed environment and artificial gravity.

Home to a an unending variety of people and services, the Baselu Metropolitan Area is the perfect place to do or find anything.

This preschool teacher is showing his very diverse class of kids (including aliens) earthian animals they might not be familiar with.

A businesswoman is on an important call while receiving the coffee she ordered, instead of going down to the café. Her robotic eye is a non-necessary modification, which are frequent on The Moon.

One of the most common sights in Baselu, an endless stream of unique looking people crossing the street.

A bodybuilder going to the gym. His arms are modded with energy veins. Might want to work a bit on your legs too, bud.

An alien expat. She works online but loves living in Baselu, so exotic!

This earthian feels very lost in the skyless labyrinth that is the capital. He's looking for the hospital, where he'll get tests that aren't available on Earth.

It's almost weird to see people with all their natural hair, or skin. This tattooed runner is a more common sight.

A goth weirdo walking their dog back home from one of the city's parks.

Our android friend is making sure he's not late for work.

Baselu is my criticism of artificial capitals (screw Madrid), while also being an ode to the opportunities, diversity and variety of cities.

The city's name comes from "base lunar", abbreviated through time to Baselu. The joke is there's an irrelevant Catalan city called Besalú, and it is hilarious to me for the capital of humanity to be named similarly.

[whereserpentswalk]

Its been thousands of years since humanity has left earth, and you've ended you've ended up as a human in a part of the galaxy where other species became dominant before humans ever could. The closest human governments are further away then any spaceship could travel to within a lifetime, yet still humanity exists here.

Humans currently live in a diaspora across countless systems. Some live in spaceships and independent space stations, which is what most nonhumans think the normal environment for humans is, some living their entire lives without ever touch a planet. Other humans live within other specie's empires, subject to their laws, forced to conform to what alien governments want for their citizens, or what they want from humans to make sure they're safe.

Humans are just known by the larger society of this part of the galaxy as a diaspora race, the idea that they'd ever be capable of having their own government is laughable to most. They're known as traders, mercenaries sometimes as criminals, but never as a people with their own nations, their own worlds to be proud of.

You've read some of humanity's oldest stories. The station you live on has a city sized population, and is a local hub for human culture, especially when it comes to human creatives and scholars. It's strange reading stories from old earth, to see how the Iliad or the Inferno or the Journey to the West describe humanity, not as something deviant and on the fringes of society, but as something important, something special that needs protecting. To think your ancestors wrote these stories in shining human cities, thinking that humanity was all their was, to thing you wouldn't look out of place to any of these ancient humans if you could visit them.

Anti human sentiment is growing. More and more humans live on ships and stations now for that reason. More and more states see humans as a scavenger race, as something that inherently lives off of other, grander, civilizations. Some planets have started banning humans from moving to them. Others have banned human religions, especially those that allow nonhumans to convert.

Human reproductive cycles are seen as especially subversive, with the fact that humans have strong natural urges to mate, and that they see it as pleasurable, being seen as something that makes them a threat. A lot of the humans who are allowed to stay on some planets are forced to remove their desire to mate, or even the organs pertaining to it. It's hard to explain to nonhumans why that seems like such a violation to you.

More and more humans are fleeing to your station. You don't mind, though they are going to have to build it to be bigger soon. Your roommate for your new apartment is someone who just fled here from a planet where she almost never saw another human. She looks sickly and frail, she was never in an environment made for humans, and she never saw enough humans to realize how unhealthy she is, her bones were stretched from being on a world with lower gravity then humans are evolved for, and her reproductive organs were removed as per her old planet's policy.

She seems so embarrassed of being a human, and especially afraid of the human culture that's so present on the station. Even the more stereotypically human members of the station are something she's afraid of. You want to hug and comfort her. And you want to show her all these old humans books you've found. You want to tell her that her race didn't evolve as a race of scavengers.

You wonder about your station. A planet might be nicer, but it's a planet that wouldn't be fine tuned for humans. This stations gravity and atmosphere mimics a homeworld you'll never see, because it's what human bodies were built for. When you're in parts of the station so heavily urbanized it could pass for a dense skyless part of a planetary city, and the conditions around you perfectly mimic the cool autumns your ancestors once knew, you wonder if part of you can feel earth.

[noosphe-re]

In a skyless world, the earth becomes a chasm. And the poem is one of consolation’s gifts, a quality of the winds, from both south and north. Do not describe your wounds as the camera sees them.

Mahmoud Darwish, Homage to Edward Said, Counterpoint, Le Monde diplomatique, January 2005, translated from the French version of the original by Julie Stoker

[jupytrrr]

Sorry I can't come in today. Nah. Yea the neighbourhood was consumed by the skyless realms deep beneath the earth, sorry. Mhm. Yea the ground was torn asunder and the entire street was pulled in. Yea I'll never see the glory and serenity of our pale star again. Anyways I gotta go. Mhm. It's the neighbours. It appaers they were driven mad by the caves and have already started forming cannibal maurader clans that worship a dark god. Tomorrow? Uhhhhh yea we'll see.

[zoideramy]

Skyless Day

Zoids HMM Shadow Fox Custom - Rose Fox Gigi

Today an unusual grey covers the desert sky. Rain is on the way, the only question is how much?

[rhineposting]

so I ended up writing a one-shot about the sinners of khaenri'ah (rhinedottir and surtalogi in particular) and for the time being im proud of it so 👉👈

[shenrickyz]

 ꒦꒷꒷꒦ ASSiGNiNG NCT SEi SONG LYRiCS

  ꒦꒷꒷꒦ MEMBER 001

❝ so when you're near me, darling, can't you hear me, S.O.S? the love you gave me, nothing else can save me, S.O.S ❞ ⸻ XUWiCHA RATTANAKOSiN

  ꒦꒷꒷꒦ MEMBER 002

❝ 'cause whatever you give life, you're gonna get back, why be a wallflower when you can be a venus fly trap? ❞ ⸻ MAKANi SEO

  ꒦꒷꒷꒦ MEMBER 003

❝ i would rather hold your hand than have a cool hand shake ❞ ⸻ JiANG ZiXiN

  ꒦꒷꒷꒦ MEMBER 004

❝ remember that the days are numbered, springtime returns to summer, with or without you ❞ ⸻ FUKUSHiMA HiKARi

  ꒦꒷꒷꒦ MEMBER 005

❝ whatever goes around eventually comes back to you, so you gotta be careful, baby, and look both ways ❞ ⸻ HEO MiNJAE

  ꒦꒷꒷꒦ MEMBER 006

❝ don't go crying to your mama, 'cause you're on your own in the real world ❞ ⸻ KANG SEOJUN

  ꒦꒷꒷꒦ iSA SPEAKS ! okay so i wanted to explain at least the meaning for the members' choices 😭😭 i so badly wanted to give hikari a song from bury me at makeout creek, hikari is actually represented by every mitski song 🫶 anyway, i ended up giving hikari skyless moon because the song sort of represents how hikari feels about his place in dream, especially during his hiatus era where he questioned if his role as a member even mattered (will he ever be happy? idk 🤷‍♂️), ofc i gave seojun a paramore song because 😇!!! the lyrics basically symbolize how he had to grow up quickly, how he constantly bottles things up and it especially references like predebut times where he suddenly felt like he had to force himself to grow up when he joined sm 🙁 sorry #seojunnation

makani's is pretty self explanatory 😭😭 it shows how he toughened himself up on his own accord to avoid getting hurt by others, he shuts them out than acts all high and mighty because he genuinely hates the idea of people abandoning him or simply not caring anymore (abandonment issues are soooo common here) zixin's is basically how he doesn't exactly know to encapsulate his feelings, he often hides his true feelings with mountains of affection but then he absolutely confuses himself because he has no idea how to properly go about it 😓 it could also be interpreted as him trying to tell his partner how he truly feels but he's so sure they'll get confused about it.. minjae's is pretty similar to seojun's where he practically forced himself to grow up while under sm's roof 😕 he absolutely despises confiding in people so he "saves himself" by presenting a front and dealing with his personal feelings in his own time away from the rest of his members

so basically xuwicha is the only one with regular lyrics that are lovely under the surface 😭😭!! that man is absolutely hooked on his lover forever, he might die from the amount of love he's receiving 😓

[abyssaldyke]

Tagged by sex but in a kiwi accent @dicaeopolis

Last song: oh god I was just blasting my brain with asmr for like 2 hours but before that. Watermelon from Dinner in America a movie I have not seen. Fuck em all but us etc etc

Favorite color: geen

Currently watching: ollie play Zelda. And game changer. We'll get back on the prestige TV eventually.

Last movie: I think also the birdcage? Great fuckin movie.

Sweet/savory/spicy: savory always. If there are only sweets at the function I'm leaving

Current obsessions: honestly just reading really good books and like. My own writing. Surprise surprise.

Last thing googled: "term meaning without atmosphere" (for a description of seeing a planet from space). I think I gave up and went with skyless which the jury is out on.

Tagging @briannysey @dykegerard @akajustmerry @grime-scribe @lichfucker @puckgoodfaggot and all the other beautiful mutuals

[toovermorrow]

— where or when

aerith gainsborough x zack fair, cloud strife | 2.4k words

SUMMARY — Spending time alone in the church, Aerith thinks of the blond man she met crumbling through the roof. Tending to the flowers, she reminisces the time a SOLDIER did the same. — Inspired by Laufey’s Where or When.

WARNINGS — angst, introspective, post-crisis core/middle of ffvii (canon compliant), implied suggestive affection.

READ ON AO3

Through the gloom of a skyless street, light shines upon the roof of the church that Aerith left broken.

She leans down on the green, yellow, and white plants that greet her in gleeful bloom. After a while of meeting new faces and jumping across train station platforms, she finally has time for herself in the church at the end of the slums. She has time to think and feel as the fragrance of an earthy heaven hits her nose.

Flowers grow around her sandals as if they’re mindful of her presence. Living solely on a lucky patch of grass with the help of her tender care, they’ve been the only flowers around Midgar.

Aerith paces around the leaves, careful in her steps to not ruin the progress in keeping the little pieces of life left in the slums. Observing the plants as they follow the shifts she makes in the wind, her sight leads her to the hole in the roof.

Not everybody gets to meet people falling from the sky — but meeting two people who have is a low yet strange number.

She laughs at herself as she realizes it. Her green eyes shine in the sunlight as she reminisces the circumstances in which she met the blond-haired man.

Because yes, a while back, she met a blond-haired man who fell through the scaffolding of the church’s broken roof. He looked lost, as anyone who fell from the sky would.

It wasn’t really the sky, rather from the plate above. The sunlight barely shines through the streets below the hard concrete covering a good portion of the vast sky. It keeps her from her irrational fear of the world, she thinks, but maybe it isn’t so bad after meeting people crashing from above.

Just like a meteor.

When she tended to the man, he seemed cold yet endearingly awkward. There was a warmth in his sky-blue eyes that she couldn’t get ahold of. There’s an aura of experience and a life he lived despite his age, all along with the promise of a life ahead in his stride. His arms were toned, armor full of scratches, with a particular sword that looked all too familiar.

Aerith couldn’t put her finger on it then, but as her eyes focused on the open roof, she sighed as she felt the familiarity blaze through her skin.

That roof had been broken by another man before.

“…Zack?”

That’s not the new guy.

But it could’ve been.

A longer while back, she met black-haired man who also fell through the scaffolding of the church’s roof.

A while’s as long as Zack had left her.

He was warm off the bat. He was less lost, more excited to meet another life form other than his own since waking up. The warmth from eyes that were sky-blue were peculiar too. The man, a boy then, talked in his sleep about the troubles he faced in his current life, but he walked with promise of a bustling future ahead in his stride. His arms were toned, armor full of scratches, with a particular sword that looked all too familiar.

Zack Fair is her first love.

They spent time together like two puppies playing in a lawn. They’d call when they were apart, send mail when they had the time. He built her a flower wagon with the promise to populate the streets with flowers. In their downtime, they’d hold each other’s hands and twirl around the church. She’d hum a tune and he’d duet along, surprising each other with decent singing voices that erupted into giggles and laughter on the wooden floorboards of the chapel. To hell with manners whenever it came to love; he was her puppy.

“You never see flowers around here,” he always said, “I want to see a flowery Midgar with you.”

She isn’t affected by his absence, she hopes, having drafted one, two, five, ten, twenty more letters since the eighty-ninth that she sent him. Her calls never went through anymore, neither did her texts. He must’ve found somebody else, someone outside of Midgar who can bring in as many flowers as he once hoped to see in the streets with her. The flower wagon broke anyway.

Everything in the slums remained the same, so did the opened ceiling of the church.

The streets are trash and junk. The people get by with smoke in their lungs and smiles that they’ve earned through the shine of shillings and nothing more. This is life as Aerith has always known it to be, the only faint memories of her outside Midgar being her as a child running with her mom in a meadow. No flowers around still. The sky was still the color of concrete. Nothing changed when the man with shoulder armor came and left her life.

Naively, as anyone would, she misses him ever so dearly still.

The night was young in the same chapel, except the moonlight shone across Zack’s blue eyes with the stars encapsulated in them. They pant slowly, sharing hitched breaths that gradually calm down as Aerith reached for his finally bare shoulders. The two close in, Aerith’s body pressed against Zack’s as she was sandwiched between the back wall and him. She gently cupped his cheeks, running a thumb across his scar. He smiled at her gesture, leaning closer into her palms as the warmth of his cheeks filled her cold hands. Neither of them knew that it’s the first and last time they’ll ever be like this, close, intimate, inches away from kisses and more, all before Zack’s expedition. It’s the only time he had seen her with her hair completely down. It’s the only time she had seen him with his body exposed. Their heads closed in, Aerith wrapping her arms around Zack’s exposed upper half, inviting him to rest his hands on her hips — it was the only time they ever had a moment together, under a different kind of sky, flower wagon parked in place as it watched them feel each other’s heat.

Zack crashed through the roof of her heart. Then, he left without a trace. She only called for partial repairs since then.

Now, Aerith tends to the flowers with hope in her eyes. She picks one flower from the patch, apologizing to its severed stem, promising it a new life once she encourages it to regrow — but that’s not what she plans to do yet.

Her priority at the moment is herself, she thinks, as she hums a little tune to the freshly-picked flower.

“He loves me,” Aerith tugs on a petal, before hesitating to remove it.

It’s not the flower’s life that she’s concerned about now, she just plucked it out, but her breath hitches as she rephrases her words.

“Zack loves me…” Aerith says. “Zack loves me not—no, wait…”

The memory of the blond-haired man crashing through the roof replays in her mind as she stares at the bare ceiling. This time, it’s different. The partial repairs she requested were all for nothing as she reimagines the other man again.

The blue sky beyond the exposed ceiling is briefly interrupted by a tuft of white. She resets her little game as she finally tugs on the petal in her hand.

“Zack loves me, Cloud loves me…”

Oh, the strange man with the blond hair.

He looked almost exactly like Zack except he was moodier. Cloud Strife, SOLDIER First Class. His cadence and tone in reciting such words felt automated, but not exactly soulless; Aerith found him endearing in a different way.

Cloud never called back much, never really sent messages, never sang with her, but he did dance — not with her, as he always danced against his will. He never promised for a flowery Midgar. He never commented on the plate above the streets or the fact that the only sky they’d see clearly was through the broken roof of the chapel. Actually, Cloud never really did anything to swoon her heart at all.

He definitely is nothing like Aerith’s first love, but for some reason, she took to him too.

There’s something about him: the way that he spoke to her was gentle. He had a gruff in his tone that slightly reminded her of a little kid acting tough. She giggles to herself thinking about it, but immediately softens as she remembers his patience. She’d encountered him on Loveless Avenue before, and she’s somehow glad that he remembered her as “the flower girl” at all. They’re little things, not as grand as the gestures her first love gave her, but she felt the love and care in his heart that he didn’t know was even there.

She tugs on another petal.

“Zack loves me,” then another petal, “Cloud loves me. Zack loves me,” Aerith hums, “Cloud loves me.”

She isn’t sure what she feels.

One man is a dog, the other a cat. One man took her heart around and left, the other never even took anything yet stayed. Zack gave her life as his own was bursting, Cloud seemed caught up in his own life while figuring out hers. Suddenly, a thought ran across her mind.

They both had eyes that were the color of the sky.

Aerith stopped plucking the flower, no petals left, lost on who she ended up with in her little tune.

Not like she cared in the first place whoever she would like more. She liked them both, the puppy and the bodyguard, and she didn’t mind either one to love as much as they loved her.

Zack cared for her despite his duties. Cloud cared for her despite his demeanor. Both held her heart and made it feel whole, patching up the crashes they made through the ceiling of her soul.

Content with that realization, she smiles to herself — only for her eyebrows to furrow and for the corners of her lips to drop as soon as they smiled.

Neither of them are here with her in the chapel.

It’s not like it’s a big deal, she thinks. Zack probably has his reasons to leave, and Cloud seems busy by himself anyway. Aerith has other friends by the streets, but they never really filled up the holes in her heart the same way that they did. She’s surrounded by love and life and flowers that never go anywhere beyond her hands.

She has everything, yet she has nothing.

Despite all the people she’s met, she won’t admit that she’s still so incredibly lonely.

Loneliness isn’t unfamiliar to her either. Ever since her biological mother died, she felt lonely even under the roof of her adoptive mother’s home. It was another hole that only her mother could patch, and she’s forever grateful to have her new mother, but the loneliness that came with death was unshakeable since then. She’d meet new faces in the slums, from older women who taught her how to pray to younger teens who talked to her endlessly. Even then, there was a tear in her heart that was bigger than any patch that could sew it back together.

So, she kept to anything familiar as a safety blanket of sorts.

Familiarity gives her comfort. Aerith somehow felt scared of the open air, the flood of sunlight that the sky above the Midgar plate could offer. She’s grateful that she could see the blue sky somewhere without feeling dread in her soul. That’s why she’s glad that she met Zack and Cloud; men who fell from above with doses of the sky in their blue eyes.

The fact that they were so similar, so familiar to her made her feel loved and a little less lonely, but keeping to them was another burden. Aerith never wants her happiness to depend on anything other than herself.

She thought she was never normal for that, another fear she lived with her whole life. She doesn’t know what it is about it.

The Shinra executives, the Turks, and the floating rumors from townsfolk all called her an Ancient. They called her biological mother a Cetra. She denies all of it, but she knows that it’s true and it sets her apart. She doesn’t despise her blood, she thinks, but all the jargon is stressful. It’s unfamiliar. It’s uncomfortable, and it makes her feel less normal.

There’s a burden that she feels is a necessity for her to free, a pain in her chest that she knows she will carry lest the world die beneath her legs.

It only tears her heart apart, leaving a hole so big that it might as well be split into two.

But her heart shouldn’t matter as much, right?

Aerith’s breath hitches as she swats the thought away. She hates that thought more than anything.

Before she knows it, she’s crying, slumped in a squat over the flowers, careful not to squash them. The soil on the patch dirties her dress, but it’s the least of her worries.

“I wish they were here,” Aerith thinks. She wants to see Zack again. She wants to know Cloud better. If another man fell from the damn roof right now, she’d take it, but her luck wouldn’t be so good.

Defeated, she sits beside the flowers, petting a lone white lily at the side.

The sunlight along with the broken scaffolding on the roof drew beautiful shadows around the lily. Aerith stares at it before wiping her tears, managing to smile at the calming sight.

Zack loved that she took care of flowers. Cloud cared for the flowers she loved.

Who knows where or when they exactly swooped her heart out of the loneliness it drowned it. Who knows where or when they’d meet her again.

All Aerith knows is that she left her heart open, broken yet beating, for the people in her life to crash through.

She’d save them and the world that they inhabit, she’d trade her life and everything with her just to patch the massive hole in her heart by herself.

It was through the wide cracks of the wood and brick above their heads that the sky finally shone, no longer the color of concrete; the greenish-blue expanse of the world greeted her heart hello , keeping her smile as the tears fell freely on her cheeks.

She bids the flowers farewell for now. She’ll be back soon.

[fabdante]

Do you think it rains in Limbo, or gets cold? Like, if the weather is bad in the real world, would that mean the weather is bad in Limbo too? Or could Dante use Limbo as a sort of shelter from bad weather- assuming he can find a way in, I mean, and can stay there for however long the bad real world weather lasts?

(I was mainly thinking winter. Dante staying in Limbo as a way to escape the winter months, because its a more reliable way to stay out of the cold than Dante has otherwise.)

I think it depends. We know that Limbo can be impacted by the real world in various ways and mimics it to a degree in some places. A really interesting example of this is Bob's jail because it's under the water, the sky is the water from the river Dante jumps into, but he's not under water and it's raining there due to the fact the sky is water

So with this as a blueprint, we know there is weather in Limbo and we know Limbo is impacted by the real world

But how much probably differs with how close an area is to aspects of the real world. Like, since Bob's jail is connected to this river, it rains. The part with all the cameras outside of Virility I could see having weather since it has a sky. But parts like the Furnace of Souls or Dantes little mind palace don't seem like their skies are at all attached to any sort of real one so what weather would impact that I guess would differ by headcanon.

As for me, I guess I take a mixed approach verging on Limbo not really having a lot of weather phenomena. I tend to headcanon hell in the reboot as being largely skyless so weather is lacking. Limbo, though, being in this weird place where it's very linked to the real world in places and not at all in others, I can see it being a grab bag.

Now, onto Dante staying in Limbo to avoid the cold. That could work! Though, I'm not sure how likely he would be to do that based on how dismissive he was of Kat going into Limbo to escape from anything. He seems like he wants to stay out of Limbo as much as possible. But, again, his survival drive might take over so it's definitely possible!