Aeris Gainsborough
JOB: Flower Merchant

AGE: 22

WEAPON: Rod

HEIGHT: 5'3"

BIRTHDATE: February 7

BIRTHPLACE: Icicle Inn

BLOOD TYPE: O
Aeris is one of the last remaining Ancients on the Planet. The Ancients are really a race of people called the Cetra who traveled from planet to planet, colonizing each one and then moving on. It was said that at the end of their journey, the Cetra would find a bountiful land full of resources, called the Promised Land. The Cetra believed in living in harmony with nature and they had the ability to speak with a Planet. However, after reaching one planet, some Cetra began to make permanent homes. They stayed on one planet and stopped living the nomadic lifestyle of the other Cetra. Eventually, this group of Cetra became a whole race of their own. They forgot about the Planet's needs and lived carelessly, taking whatever they wanted.

One day, disaster struck the Planet they had chosen to live on. Jenova, a humongous and hideous creature, fell from outer space and smashed into the Planet, creating a huge tear in the Planet's surface, towards the North. The Cetra began to realize something was happening and went to the Northern Continent, which they called the 'Knowledspole'. Through talking with the Planet, they discovered that the Planet was ailing from a tear it could not mend. The Cetra tried to mend the tear by cultivating the land so that all of the Planet's resources went into healing its wound. The Planet asked the Cetra to leave the North, but they would not. Then one day, Jenova rose from the crater. It infected the Northern Cetra with a terrible virus that they could not cure and it wiped them all out. Then it did the same with the other Cetra tribes, until almost no Cetra were left. Eventually, the remaining Cetra managed to seal Jenova and prevent it from causing further damage. The irony of this is that many years later, Jenova was "confirmed" to be of Ancient blood in the writings of Professor Gast.

Today, only a few Cetra remain. Aeris' birth mother, Ifalna, was one of these Cetra, but she and her husband, Professor Gast, were captured by the Shinra after Gast turned his back on the company. Gast's successor, Professor Hojo, planned to experiment on Ifalna to find out more about the Ancients. Aeris' stepmother, Elmira, discovered Aeris at the train station in Sector 7. Elmira had been waiting for her husband to return from war when she stumbled upon Ifalna. The Cetra woman had escaped the Shinra research facility with her daughter, but she had been killed by Shinra troops. Elmira adopted Aeris and now Aeris works as a flower girl in the Sector 5 slums of Midgar. She meets Cloud after AVALANCHE has destroyed the first Mako Reactor.