“Do you remember the first time we were here?” Aerith wonders, standing among rows of blooming freesia in the garden. She fiddles with the fabric of the apron tied crookedly over her pink dress, one that doesn’t quite fit her the same way anymore. “You were a newbie, and I was hazing you... or something!” Her words are teasing, referencing something Tseng had said to her in passing about teasing his new recruit too much.

She rests a hand over her stomach, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “I knew, you know... that you’d come,” she says, her voice touched with wonder rather than certainty. “Not how or when, just that you would.” She turns to look at you then, green eyes bright and unreadable. “And I knew, somehow, that if you did… something was going to change.” She was alive, and impossibly here, and the lifestream was moving without her involvement.