This will serve as the disclaimer for the entire story: I don't own any of these characters, and I should mention that while a book called The History of the Moon does not exist I did not write any of the "selections" (excepting, of course, the selections pertaining directly to Sailor Moon or DBZ.)

Another note: The pieces of this story written as memory will be written in italics. -Niamh

You think you know me, but I've been lost in the stories, in the tales of my battles and my destiny, lies, all of them. I'm going to tell you a story, the real story, but I warn you, it wont be a happy one, real stories seldom are. It is a story of destiny, of dreams. It is a story of love and a story of loss; it is the story of my creation, and my destruction. It is a story set in memory, as stories often are, consequently, I cannot promise you that everything I tell will be exactly as it happened, I can only promise that it will be exactly as I remember.

"I told myself not to remember, but that was wrong too. Not remembering makes them stronger" The Onion Girl Charles de Lint

I sat alone in a white, white room. I was curled in a corner and I couldn't stop shaking. The memories, they'd started again. In bits, in flashes they came in no particular order. I struggled to put them together, to make them tell the story because I thought that if I could put the puzzle together, make it fit, force it into the right order, somehow it would make things better. I hadn't told anyone the story, not even them, though they deserved to know.

One of them, I forget which one, said that if I got it out, put it on paper it would help. But I couldn't seem to put them in order, make the memories fit. Even now I struggle. But I tried, I still try.

I was curled in the corner because I thought it would be safer there. Safer, where no one could sneak up behind me, where I could see everything that came at me. Somewhere near, perhaps inside me, a voice that might have been my own spoke. "Is it better that way?" it asked. "Is it better to know?"

I wasn't sure, perhaps I would've rather let some unseen thing come and bash my head in. Then again, seeing things didn't make them go away.

The veil that I wore to hide my face caught my breath, trapped it, made me hot, made me itch. Without thinking I reached up to scratch my face and gasped in pain. But there was always pain. My face hurt, my body hurt, the thing inside me hurt. No, I corrected myself, the thing did not hurt, it did not tear, or bite, the hurt was somewhere else. It grew inside me, this thing, sometimes I thought it would grow so large it would swallow me, and then I would grow inside of it, instead of it inside of me. All I really wanted was to have it out of me, I hated it. They told me I shouldn't, that it was too late to do anything about it, but I couldn't help it. I hadn't asked for this thing, hadn't wanted it. Every night I prayed to every god, every ancestor, every savior I could think of to save me, heal me, help me, but nothing ever happened, nothing ever changed. I wondered sometimes if any of them really existed, or if we truly were alone.

I remember, when I was young, I saw a building being demolished. They just filled it full of explosives and blew it up, or blew it in I guess. I remember, just before they blew up the building there was this buzzing, it was an alarm, a warning to people that they were going to light the fuse, reminding people to stay away. I always associated that noise with destruction, I thought that just before a building fell down or just before a world fell apart there would be a buzzing, a warning to people to get out, to get away. But I always wondered, what would happen to people who didn't get out, who couldn't get away? What would happen to the people trapped inside when the building fell down, when the world fell apart?

Everyday one of the people who took care of me would come into my room, bringing me food, broth mostly, urging me to eat. I didn't remember their names, or refused to. The latter was probably truer. My identity had been taken from me, ripped from me. My name…was not my name anymore and I think I resented them theirs, refused to acknowledge them. I recognized them instead by other things, this one had black hair, but that was true of more than one.

After they left I backed into my corner again. Before long I started to shake, and the memories overwhelmed me.

I remembered back, before I had shattered but after things started to fall apart. Somehow the memories of this not-so-perfect time comforted me in a way that nothing else could. Then, things certainly weren't perfect like they'd seemed when I was younger, but I still knew what was right and what was wrong, I still knew how to live. These memories seemed to give my life less perspective and I needed that. So I settled back into the only comfort I had, the burning and buzzing of a world about to fall apart, the noise that drowned out the silence of a world that already had.

I found myself in a new place, or a new time, a new something, I wasn't sure which, I just knew that this wasn't the home I'd been used to. I hadn't dropped in; I didn't fall from the sky, or open a door or plummet down a rabbit hole like Alice. The world just…shifted. The air thickened until I was sure I would suffocate, and then it…what? Fluctuated? Quivered? I don't know, all I know is something happened and I was somewhere else or…well you get the picture.

I knew that the scouts would not accept such a simple clean disappearance; they would come looking for me. So I started walking to God knows where, knowing that I oughtn't be here when they came. So I walked and I walked and I walked, I didn't bother to note my surroundings or the position of the sun. I hadn't a clue where the hell I was so there was no point in noting whether I headed east or west.

Eventually I came to a town. At least this place was civilized, that would make a few things easier. I knew that I would have to find a way to support myself; it was impossible to simply rely on "the kindness of strangers" because a stranger's kindness isn't always kindness.

'Neither is a friends' I told myself, but whether the wisdom came from the past or the present I wasn't sure.