How Forever Found Us
Part One: The Silver Millennium
Written by Jill Annette
PROLOGUE
Start of the Silver Millennium
You might think you know the real story, but the truth is you only know a part of it. There is so much history to learn. There are so many years which pass through one reign to another. There are too many names, places and dates to remember every specific detail, unless—maybe—you hear it from someone who witnessed it all; someone who is familiar with the people as time itself—someone like me, the Keeper of Time. I saw what happened before the princess's first breath and well past her last. I am known as Pluto or even Setsuna if you have passed me on the streets of Earth. A highly unlikely occurrence, for I am never to leave my post—though I have left once, but that is not where we will begin our story.
It begins before the sun was set afire and Apollo was sent to his home for an eternity of hell. The sun was a mountainous place. Its surface covered with an abundance of life. When the sun was livable, there was no known sort of hunger. The lands of the sun were always bountiful and the Sun Kingdom freely gave away the excess for the entire universe. No one knew suffering. Our story however, is not about the sun or its kingdom (not entirely). At this moment in time, our place of residence is the moon.
Queen Serenity was no ordinary ruler. She ruled a kingdom that seemingly never aged. Even the elderly had youthfulness about them. Serenity herself was reaching a hundred and fifty years old when she was crowned but to her people she was still very young. The people of the moon would physically age until their twenty-fifth birthday. Then their youth would stay with them for the majority of their life. Moonlings were not immortal but they could live well past a thousand years. Only in their last hundred years did their bodies start to deteriorate.
People of the moon learned to cope with death early on in their life, seeing a good number of lives taken from others of different planets with a much shorter lifespan—especially those from Earth who, on average lived a few hundred years. Only three men on record of earth lived past 900 and one known never to die but instead taken to his Heaven to live eternally.
Queen Serenity fell in love with Apollo of the sun. They had been betrothed since birth and love found them throughout their childhood, a rarity indeed. Apollo was raised to be a great fighter, enabled to defend both kingdoms. Queen Serenity herself, like most women of this time, was raised to be a ruler. When they were married, the Queen was immensely happy. Her destiny was finally fulfilled. She was starting the life she was born to have and nothing could keep her from it. Or so she thought.
Planet Nemesis came from a different galaxy, eons away. Its target was the sun, the Milky Way Galaxy's strength. Without it, the galaxy would be able to flourish no more. Because it was his home, Apollo kissed his queen farewell and led the armies of the sun to fight the demons from his lands. However, the monsters of Nemesis were far greater than anyone had imagined. The planet from outside the region of our planets held much more power than the beings of this galaxy could anticipate. Their magic alone is what set the sun ablaze and it continues to burn millions of years later.
When the Queen heard of her husband's death, she was devastated. For days she locked herself up in her quarters and wept. She lost the one thing most precious to her. What brought the queen out of her stupor was the day she found out about the little boy inside of her. I say a boy because that is what Queen Serenity knew she would have, because what else could she? The fitting role for her baby to make was a boy who looked like the father he would never meet; golden hair, bright green eyes and copper toned skin. Queen Serenity would have nothing other than a bright boy.
That was until the baby was born and a girl took the dreams of her baby boy away. There was milky white skin, glowing with brilliance and her own blue eyes staring back at her. The only thing Apollo left behind was a determined chin and that gorgeous golden mane. Because Queen Serenity did not think of the possibility of having a daughter, she thought not of a name. This is how Princess Serenity the Second came into the world, named after her mother, the greatest ruler of the moon.
Princess Serenity, whose name quickly was shortened to Sere by those closest to the royal family to reduce confusion, was appointed four guardians from other planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. Her guardians were immortals of their worlds. Immortals were a rare breed and hard to come by but it was not too hard for the Queen to find the best for her daughter.
Today, immortals are thought of as a myth, only found in fairy tales and vampire novels. Let me tell you this now, like dragons, unicorns and dinosaurs, they once survived in this galaxy. However, unlike those creatures, immortals still exist; they just learned how to hide the truth from others. How can I say this so assuredly? Well, if I was there to see the birth of Serenity II and I'm here telling you the story today, I guess I would still have to be alive.
The princess's guardians were goddesses of their own right. Ami of Mercury was petite; she was probably the most peculiar because she kept her hair as short as a boy's. Her hair was the color of most Mercutians, a shade of blue that matched the oceans of their land and her eyes were brown like its soil. Ami loved to educate herself in the history and current issues of the universe and was found to spend most of her leisure time with her nose in a book or in politics. Minako of Venus was golden. Her hair was light, white blond, her eyes a remarkable shade of periwinkle, she almost seemed devoid of any vibrant color except for her skin which shone beautifully. Minako was a people watcher and picked up on a lot of things others did not—for instance, who liked who. Rei of Mars had dark hair and violet eyes. Her eyes sparked when agitated and some people found it easier to let her go about her own business. Rei, when able, read the fires of the world to gain her knowledge of the places and people around her. Makoto of Jupiter was an earthy being. She stood taller than the rest of the girls, her hair a dark brown and eyes shone a pure green. Makoto was a huntress and a lover of all creatures.
Together the girls created the perfect being to protect the queen's daughter, the moon's own princess. Though Princess Sere was not the boy the queen had hoped for, she was still better than anything Queen Serenity could hope for. If truth be told, the Queen would not know what to do if something were to happen to the beautiful girl she bore nine months after the death of the love of her life.