Hitomi's mother hadn't always been her mother.
Once upon a time, she too had been a wide-eyed young girl, a child who sat on her own mother's lap and listened to fairy tales. In one, a boy came to Earth inside a giant peach and grew up to be a demon-slayer. In another, an old bamboo cutter found a tiny baby, who later became a beautiful woman and returned to her home on the Capital of the Moon.
When her mother, once, told the other story, the one about another world just beyond the moon and the girl who traveled in a pillar of light between this world and her own, it didn't seem out of place at all, and she never thought to ask more about it.
She would later forget the way her mother clutched her pink stone necklace tightly in one hand as she spoke. She would even forget that the story seemed to have no real ending, just the column of light taking the girl away from the explorer. Thinking of it afterwards, as a young woman and finally as an adult, she would just assume that she had been too young to understand the true meaning of it all.
What she would remember is how every memory of her mother also contained the pendant. It was so omnipresent that it was like the color of her eyes or the sound of her voice; it was not even an item that she wore, it was just a part of her, inseparable and eternal.
In time, the little wide-eyed girl grew up, met and married her husband, and gave birth to the first of her two children.
She looked down into the bright eyes of her daughter, eyes that already seemed too alert, too… perceptive for a newborn baby.
"Hitomi." She whispered.
Years later, after Hitomi's brother had also been born and grown into an adventurous four-year-old, an incident occurred that Hitomi's mother would remember clearly for the rest of her life.
She had been in the kitchen chopping vegetables for their dinner when Hitomi burst in, wailing, through the back door. She turned immediately to comfort her child, checking her over first for any obvious injuries with a mother's practiced eye.
"Hitomi? What's wrong, honey?"
Hitomi, usually bubbly and cheerful, threw herself into her mother's arms and cried as if her heart were breaking. "Brother's hurt! Brother fell down!"
She gathered her into her arms and looked quickly out the window. Mamoru was playing contentedly, building a towering castle out of wooden blocks and clearly not in pain at all. She looked down at the weeping child in her arms for a moment, her brow furrowed in confusion.
"Hitomi…? Your brother's not…"
She was cut off by a sudden thud and a sharp cry of pain from outside. Mamoru was laying on the ground, his chubby little hand grasping feebly at his other wrist, which bent at a sickening angle.
The blood drained from Hitomi's mother's face. She glanced at Hitomi in shock for only an instant, then rushed outside to rescue her child.
"Mamoru! What happened, baby?"
He stared pitifully, tearfully, up at her, the ruins of his castle scattered around him. "Mama… I wanted to be a king in my tower, but I fell down."
Even in the chaos of rushing the boy to the hospital and returning home hours later with two exhausted and cranky children, she wouldn't quite forget about how Hitomi had tried to warn her that Mamoru was hurt before it had even happened.
Inevitably, the ravages of time came to pass. Hitomi's grandmother became very sick and it was generally accepted that she was living out the end of her days. Hitomi, though still a young girl, was old enough to understand that she needed to see her Grandma while she could, and often visited her in the early evening hours after school. This, later, was how she would remember her best: sitting in her old-fashioned blue kimono before dusk, watching the moon rise.
On one of these afternoons, as they sat quietly side by side, Hitomi's grandmother lifted her pendant from around her neck and paused for a moment with it folded in her hand.
She turned her body a little to face her young granddaughter, then lowered her eyes from the rising moon to meet the young girl's earnest face. "Hitomi… I want you to have this."
"Grandma… Are you sure? This is your lucky pendant…"
"Yes. This pendant will be very important to you someday, Hitomi. Always keep it close. Humor your old grandmother, okay?" A smile flickered faintly around the old woman's lips, and for a moment both Hitomi and her mother, watching from inside the house, could imagine the young girl that she had once been.
The old woman placed the necklace into the young girl's palm, resting her hand on top of Hitomi's for a moment. She left her body in place but turned her head to gaze at the sky again. From Hitomi's mother's perspective, it seemed as if her eyes weren't quite focused on the moon itself, but rather on some distant point in space that only she could see.
Briefly, a faint memory of some old fairy tale about a world beyond the moon stirred in her mind, but she dismissed it in favor of keeping her attention on the scene in front of her.
"Hitomi."
The old woman's voice sounded stronger than it had in a long time.
"Your wishes have power. Believe in yourself, and the… the stars will give you their power to make your dreams come true. Do you understand?"
"…Yes, Grandmother."
Even from a distance, her mother could hear the waver in Hitomi's voice and knew it for the uncertainty of all young people who were still learning their place in the world. She wondered if Hitomi was old enough yet to understand what a precious heirloom was being handed down to her, how that pendant had lain next to her grandmother's skin for a lifetime of experiences without bearing so much as a single scratch for all of that.
Only a short time afterwards, Hitomi's grandmother was gone, and all that was left of her hung around her granddaughter's neck. Her mother was surprised at how easily she became as used to seeing the pendant with her daughter as she ever had with her mother. Hitomi looked like her grandmother as a girl more every day and it only seemed right that it should be her inheritance from the woman she had loved so much. In a strange way, it seemed as if it belonged with her.
It seemed to Hitomi's mother that her daughter grew up without ever taking off her grandmother's stone; one day she was a cheerful girl-child with an uncanny knack for finding lost things, and the next she was a sometimes-moody teenager, staying out too late with Yukari and bringing home medals from track meets. Later, she would think that two changes occurred in Hitomi at the same time: she started to blush when she talked about boys and she got swept up in the latest school fad of fortune-telling.
One day, her mother humored the teenage girl by bringing home a tarot card deck from a gift shop. "Predict the future!" the packaging exclaimed, and she hesitated only a second, almost managing to not be reminded of that long-ago incident with Mamoru at all.
She couldn't help thinking of it, however, when Hitomi started coming home from school and telling her excitedly that everyone at school said that her tarot readings nearly always came true. Still, logic prevailed, so her mother merely smiled and teased her gently.
"Is that so, Hitomi? Maybe you can find out who your boyfriend is going to be if you ask the cards! What about that nice young man you're always talking about... Amano, was it?"
Hitomi responded with a deep blush and looked away, muttering.
Mamoru chose that instant to make an entrance. "Please, like anyone's gonna want to kiss her! With that short hair, she looks like a man!"
Hitomi's embarrassment channeled itself into rage and she chased her brother from the room, yelling his name.
Her mother would remember that moment for a long time. It was the last day that Hitomi would ever seem like a normal teenager.
While she slept that night, Hitomi's mother had an unusual dream, a dream that was as real to her as a memory. Hitomi's friends Yukari and Amano had come to see her, grave worry etched on their faces. "She just disappeared," they said, "A dragon… and a strange man… a column of light…"
As mothers do, she'd had any number of nightmares about her children being hurt, but this dream was different. She was worried about Hitomi, but she felt a prevailing sense of peace.
"I know that she'll be back."
When Hitomi came home after school the next day, a bit later than usual, she closed the door behind her very, very slowly, and stood for a moment against it with her head down and her face in shadow. Her mother looked up and immediately noticed that something about her daughter was different. She seemed… almost as if…
Older. Yes. That was the word for what she was seeing, though she didn't understand how it could be possible.
Her daughter, whom she had seen that morning as she left for school, had grown older in the space of a day. She studied her closely. Her hair was just a touch longer, yes, but the difference in her daughter wasn't all physical. She just couldn't quite put a finger on what else had changed.
"Hitomi, dear…?"
Hitomi looked up as if she had already forgotten where she was, as if her home was no longer familiar to her.
"Oh… Hey, Mom." Her eyes and her voice were a million miles away.
Her daughter, in that moment, bore such a strong resemblance to her grandmother that it startled her. She remembered the way the old woman had looked at the sky the afternoon she gave Hitomi her pendant. That distant gaze was mirrored now almost exactly upon the face of her granddaughter.
It was only then that Hitomi's mother thought to look for that ever-present pendant. She was so accustomed to seeing it that she felt that its pronounced absence should have screamed at her, but it had not. Some instinct made her refrain from asking where it was. Somehow, she was sure, that mystery was wrapped up in the same answer of what had made her daughter age over the course of a single day.
A long pause passed between them in the quiet house, but Hitomi gave no sign she had even noticed.
Her mother forced cheerfulness and normality into her voice. "Why don't you go upstairs and get started on your homework, dear, while I run you a hot bath?"
Hitomi nodded as if she were underwater and moved to comply.
After her daughter had ascended the stairs and entered her room, Hitomi's mother sat in the stillness for a moment with her arms crossed on the table, then rose to run hot water into the bath.
Hitomi didn't respond to her first few calls that her bath was getting cold, as she had suspected she wouldn't, so with some trepidation she crept towards her daughter's room. The door was partially open, but she came only close enough to see the still-packed bag and her daughter, still in her school uniform, sprawled haphazardly across her bed, the elbow of one arm cupped in her opposite hand. As she watched, she saw Hitomi's mouth move, though if she spoke it was only a single syllable and too soft to hear.
Quietly, her mother tiptoed away and returned with a small tray, two cups, and a steaming pot of tea. She didn't knock before she entered, knowing that Hitomi wouldn't hear it anyway, and set the tray gently on the bedside table. She sat down tentatively on the edge of the bed and reached out to touch her daughter.
"Hitomi…?"
At the sound of her name, Hitomi turned her face towards her mother and her eyes seemed to focus on her for the first time.
Somehow, her mother wasn't surprised to see tears threatening to overflow, but she was a bit taken aback when Hitomi suddenly lunged forward and hugged her tightly, sobbing out, "Oh, Mom, I missed you so much!"
Though she didn't understand what was happening or what had happened, Hitomi's mother knew then with certainty that something huge and life-altering had happened to her daughter, and she reacted instinctively by smoothing her hair and trying to soothe her while her mind whirled with questions.
After a minute she freed an arm to pour a cup of tea. She leaned back from Hitomi just enough to offer her the cup. She took it, hesitantly, and looked up at her mom.
"Hitomi… if there's something you need to talk about, I'm here for you."
Hitomi looked into the depths of her tea, appearing to search for words. "Mom, I… I want to, but… I'm not sure if you'll believe me. I don't think I would believe me."
"Honey…" Hitomi's mother thought back to that moment all those years ago, when she hadn't trusted Hitomi when she said Mamoru was going to be hurt, and a thousand tiny incidents in which her daughter had seemed to know things she shouldn't. She also considered that mysterious pendant and her mother's story about the world beyond the moon, and intuitively understood that somehow it was all connected. "…Hitomi. I'll believe anything you tell me."
A wavering smile crossed Hitomi's tear-streaked face and she gripped her cup a bit more tightly. It struck her mother, again, how much older she looked, especially her eyes. She took a deep breath to steady herself and began, "Well, it all started the day I asked the cards if I'd ever find love… I told Yukari I was late to track practice because I was writing a paper, but really I was reading my own fortune…"
Hitomi's mother listened patiently to every word, long after the teapot had gone cold and the clock ticked past midnight. She marveled at the vision of Escaflowne, gasped each time as she raced to save the life of the young Fanelian king, wept at Hitomi's description of his white, white wings and his deep, deep sadness, and was, in the end, quiet as Hitomi told her the whole of her grandmother's story and the origin of the pendant.
But never once did she ever doubt the truth of it.
"… and then he sent me back to the Mys-… to Earth, and I woke up for the third time in the infirmary on the same afternoon that I left to go to Gaea." Hitomi dropped her eyes to the empty cup in her hands, abruptly silent.
Her mother didn't wonder anymore at how her daughter had seemed to age over the course of a single day. Not only had she lived months on another planet, but she'd had experiences that no one else on Earth ever had. Yes… it wasn't just physical age, but mental, as well. Hitomi had matured far beyond her years, had seen terrible things in the thick of war and been changed by them. She wasn't an average fifteen-year-old anymore whose only cares were about boys, school, and track.
Well, maybe one boy…
"Mom… did I do the right thing by coming back here?" Hitomi suddenly looked up, a plea in her eyes. "I saw so much pain and suffering that I never want to see again! I caused so much pain, too. But then, in the end, with Van… I wanted so much to be sure about coming back, but I wasn't, even right up until I left…"
"Hitomi…" She tried to process her daughter's extraordinary words, but thoughts of the fairy tales her mother had told her kept coming into her mind. In all of them, the children grew up and embraced the place they decided they truly belonged. For the first time, she wondered if her mother had told her those tales as more than just entertainment. Her heart ached for her daughter, and an expression crossed her face that was half a smile and half a grimace. "If there's anything you learned on Gaea, isn't it that you choose your own destiny? There's no such thing as right and wrong paths when you don't believe in predetermined fate, isn't that it?"
Hitomi's gaze down and drifted to the side. "Yes, but…"
Her mother took a deep breath and exhaled with the pain of all parents everywhere who realize that, if they truly love them, one day they must let their children go. "Hitomi, you won't always be fifteen years old. You will change and you'll figure out what you really want, whether it's on this world or Gaea. But you don't have to decide right now, it's okay to go on living a normal life until you're sure."
Her daughter's shoulders relaxed and Hitomi sighed. "Thanks, Mom… I just… Thank you for believing in me." She smiled a private smile as she said it, as if reliving some moment in her mind.
Hitomi's mother reached out and covered her hands with her own. "My daughter… I'll always believe in you."
Time, she reflected, has a way of speeding up as you get older, so that every year goes faster and faster, but in your mind everything is as clear as if it happened just the other day.
In that way, it seemed as if it hadn't been so long since that night her daughter had told her the story of Gaea. She supposed she had known even then that Hitomi had really been telling her two stories: one of her past and one of her future.
She was awakened one night abruptly but not unexpectedly. The light pouring into her room was powerful, blue-white, bright as condensed starlight, but slow… it lingered in the air like a lover's touch on skin. Hitomi's mother ran to the window, noting distantly the yellow lights flickering on in houses up and down the street. She threw open the glass panes and leaned out, craning her neck upward just in time to catch the last vestige of light fading into a pinpoint in the sky near the moon. For a second, she thought she could almost make out a ripple when it disappeared…
Sleepy, murmuring heads began to peer out from several doors and windows, and Hitomi's mother turned her attention back towards the ground. It was only then that the wind stirred and began to disperse the flurry of white feathers on her lawn.
Tears stood in her eyes even as she smiled, knowing that soon they would be gone, and knowing too that the break of day would bring questions. She wondered what she would tell them, if she should reply that Hitomi had chosen her own destiny or that they should just believe in her, but then, suddenly, she knew exactly what to say.
She whispered the words into the dim air as if practicing.
"She's doing just fine."