I own nothing. Said this, you need to know that this is my first attempt to write in english.
-—The Senshi Way To Love
I. Chasing the White Rabbit
In the eerie immensity of blackness, time was countless. It appeared to be the end of a good dream, or the beginning of a nightmare, she couldn't know (and, there's been just the slightest of the thumb-thumbs of her heart). Whit the mind empty of keepsakes, worries or feelings, she tried to remember the last thought before falling asleep, the last word before shutting the mouth, the last color before closing the eyes, but nothing happened.
And, in a sudden blink of light, the rabbit came. As a tiny white point that her hands couldn't reach, it started at her blankly for an eternity, without moving (neither closer nor faraway) and without making a noise (could it even make a hush?).
Sometime upon the strange vision, and some way, she caught no voice, no words, just a simple suggestion. Maybe a brightly blink, a change between shadows, something that clearly meant «follow me».
And then, the white rabbit disappeared like a shooting star.
When she woke up at three, her gaze wandered to the inky sky and it's compendium of piercings stars, and felt as if they were smiling back. Everything was completely silent again, but it wasn't bad, or sad, or lonely.
The next thing she knew was the annoying beeping of the alarm clock.
Through the lasts chilly days of winter, her blue eyes looked up at the clearer blue sky, and immediately, they felt on the silhouette of a startled crescent moon. Out of element, it keeps trying to hide behind the clouds. Usagi smiled, feeling sympathetic, and then walked down the street, following the familiar path.
Don't try so hard, she thought. There are things we cannot fight.
Someone passed her by running, someone else did it happily talking in the cell phone. Laugh and voices, steps, hustle.
Everything was fine in the world these days.
But she shrugged with an icy gust of wind, and stopped as if she were facing an invisible wall. She knew she wasn't dreaming again, because it felt too real. Neither her shaking hands nor her cold breath did it as definitive as actually realizing that the rabbit was somewhere near her. Suddenly, the brooch that rested in her chest became too heavy and too warm to ignore, and she touched it with lazy fingers, hesitantly turning around. People were standing side by side or waiting for the red light to change, but no one looked back at her.
Two nights ago, she had had a vision. Not a dream, not a revelation. If nothing, she had learned to trust her instincts, to try to see things in ways that others would not mind to. Lonely witness, she had been part of some change in the world, some intrusion, some turn of winds, but she couldn't know exactly what had happened.
It didn't seem to be a message from the future, nor the past. An enemy would be more careful in hiding. So, she wasn't afraid, but she needed to know what it was in order to prevent —anything.
It came from the music store. She watched it across the street with absent eyes. The «Abbey Road» was hitting some vintage song out, and nothing changed while she was paralyzed there. For a while, the rabbit kept calling for her strong enough to make the hustle, the voices, the steps disappear all around. Calm whiteness surrounded her and a tiny voice sang in the dim distance without words. It was all melody and significance, but it was so alien and it made it so hard to catch that Usagi felt the urge to truly concentrate on it. Then, when she was about to move towards it, a grabbing hand in the arm brought every sense to life again with such intensity that she needed a second or two to be completely conscious.
"—and I was wondering where were you."
She focused her gaze on Mina, trying to read on her face what was she saying, but failed and looked to the store one more time. The rabbit was gone. She sighed.
"Usagi-chan?"
To not worry her friend, she smiled.
"Sorry, I lost track of time. C'mon," she tangled her arm with Mina's, enjoying the familiarity, and although the other girl sent a suspicious gaze, she didn't protested. "I'm dying to eat something, I wish Mako-chan—"
When she realized the stillness in Mina, she stopped herself mid-sentence. Usagi's studied her carefully, forgetting everything else. In the always joyful eyes she saw a conflicting gaze that didn't really catch anything above the internal fight.
How oddly.
"Mina…" she called. When it didn't work, she stopped. The other girl was surprised with the sudden parade. Mina meets her eyes.
"What's going on?" Usagi asked.
After a brief hesitation, in which Mina's eyes looked down and back up, she finally confessed.
"Do you think it is bad to have dreams? I mean, we all have a common dream… but what about my owns goals? Yours?"
Usagi blinked. For years, she had knew that she were not the only one who was wondering the same, almost every day making those same questions over and over again (What it was like to not know what to expect from the future? What it was like to wake up every morning and try to figure what to do the next day, the next two years, the next ten ones? What it was like to choose), but no one else was brave enough to admit it. Not to themselves, less to her. Her lips spread in a huge smile, and it didn't keep it from making her look kind of sad.
"I can remember myself wishing no more than being a wife and a mother, but that was when I was a child. Now, I know that some things are settled in stone." When she said this, Mina's face covered in shadows. "Not, I'm not talking about destiny, I'm talking about refusal. I refuse to accept to fall, I refuse to let my friends fall, but what I refuse the most is to see a dream fall. And that never changed. Sure, I don't wish to be a wife and a mother, not anymore, but that was never really a dream. It was a fantasy."
Mina looked straight to her, as if trying to decode the meaning of that little speech. "Then, what is your real dream?"
The eyes that were almost a reflection of her owns only gazed back, as if Usagi were wondering if it was truly necessary a sincere response. It wasn't. But that was okay, because Mina already had her answer.
A cold wind tangled both her hairs, and Usagi sighed.
"C'mon, they're going to worry."
Taking this change of subject, and accepting it, she nodded.
"Let's go."
Yes, I love The Beatles. Yes, this is a big A.U, more or less, because there are going to be too many different things, and too many others are going to be the same. As well, let me know if something is not so okay.
Erssatz.