Top: cartoon of the initial conditions. The big blue circle and the small black dot represent the molecular cloud and the SMBH, respectively. The dashed black arrow shows the initial velocity (v₁) of a slice of the cloud (slice 1) with zero impact parameter. The solid black arrow shows the initial velocity (v₂) of a second slice of the cloud (slice 2) with non-zero impact parameter (b₂, red line). Even if v₁ and v₂ are the same, the trajectory of slice 1 does not change, while the trajectory of slice 2 is deflected because of the gravitational focusing of the SMBH (blue line). Bottom: cartoon of the evolution of slice 1 and slice 2 after cloud disruption. Slice 1 produces ring 1 (edge-on) around the SMBH, while slice 2 produces ring 2. The arbitrarily drawn inclination between the two rings is a consequence of the different initial impact parameters. In this cartoon, we neglect the turbulent motions inside the cloud as well as details connected with cooling, shocks, and angular momentum transfer.