By Rakusa
3.1.04
Title: Who I Am

~She was going home. She was REALLY going home~! Usagi put her hand against the thick glass separating her from her world, that and thousands of feet of atmosphere and hundreds of feet of space. But it was so much better then light years and other planets separating her from it.

To imagine that only a few layers of plexi-glass held out all danger and allowed her to be tempted into believing that soon everything will be good again. She stared at the waves of white, blue and green as it turned into a majestic marble pattern and conform into others like a kaleidoscope.

She hadn't been there for several years. Last time she was home was when she was six, a young, budding child with high intellect. Her parents were sent on a mission and she would have been put into a foster care unit, but instead with some vast maneuvering and fast pace talking her parents managed to convince mission director into allowing her to come with them. It was nice that she was allowed to otherwise her life would have been completely different and she would have never known her parents, which were amazing people, even though she'd only met those on the shuttle and the ones she met for her entire existence on thus before she left.

She was the only child at that point to ever go up into space, and the only second generation to go as well. This mission was the first one outside of the solar system, Usagi didn't know if it was the only or last one so far, depended if they decided to send more out anyways.

She remembered only bits and pieces of her life before she went into space. What she remembered was a world filled with very tall people and a vibrate beauty. Colors always changing from reds and greens to golds and yellows to white upon white upon brown. She just remembered a wide range of color every year and season.

She has lived on four planets through out her entire life. Earth, Hammanial, Jajania and Talac, each were unique and beautiful in their own right. Hammanial was filled with oceans and the creatures there had swamp feet and walked across the water as well as one order of animals were in the water, some of them ate the ones that walked on land, but most ate the other swimming ones.

Jajania was filled with different colors, greens, blacks and blues, it had 5 suns, they couldn't spend much time on that planet otherwise it would blow out the admission on the ship and they'd die of heat. It was unfortunate that they were not able to look through the planet closer than they had.

The planet she spent most of her life on though, was a disarray of pinks, bare rock crowded the planet and life grew without hesitant. Everything on this planet was pink, they spent more time because they couldn't figure out what could make it like that. Talac was close to Earth's shape, had pretty much the same distance from it's only sun, went in the same elliptical pattern, it had a moon, yet, it was all different. There was trace evidence of water being on the planet at one point in time.

Usagi had known that it wasn't possible to stay on any of the planets, but the last one was her favorite. It was like a little girl had made a wish on it, and wished that no matter what grew, that it should be pink.

Oh, Usagi wished she could meet another little girl, or somebody who wasn't at least 20 years older than her. Even before she left, she had been basically isolated from other children, her parents didn't have the desire to spend energy on keeping her healthy, so she just didn't get sick as much away from other sick children.

A gentle hand brushed Usagi's hair behind her ear. Usagi looked at the aging woman. "We received first contact with Earth." She smiled at Usagi. Usagi nodded dumbly, she was anxious to hear another voice that was living and breathing, not just on audiotape. It was the first contact they had with Earth in 10 years that could be done in a fairly conversational pace, only a few pauses in a sentence. The older woman sat down near her, looking at Usagi.

Usagi looked back at the black void called space and stared in the face of the moon. ~Her~ moon, the one she was named after. It was devastatingly empty, so Usagi turned away from the disappointment. "What are we going to do first mother when we get home?"

"Well, technically we aren't going home first, seems that they got a space shuttle up and running finally. We'll be landing there, and when we get ~there~, we will fill out a mission report." Her mother explained as if Usagi was an equivalent peer to her, a world-renowned anthologist.

"Oh." Usagi's voiced dropped slightly. "How long do you suppose we will be staying there?"

"~Really~ child, if you listen to meetings you would realize that it will be a couple of days to a week, most of our findings have been documented, we just need to run through it with them." Her mother scolded.

"Of course mother." Usagi bowed her head before looking back at the planet.

"You have been enthralled with the planet for ages, haven't you? That's always what I see you reading about, that and those romance novels somebody had the bright idea of putting into the computer's data base." Usagi's mother was affectionate but without other children to teach Usagi bad manners, her mother used it to instill nothing but good behavior into her child.

"I've read every single book in our collection of 700 books mother, some of them several times, including the ones in how to write novels and essays. Everything you have taught me has gone down onto paper, my knowledge yearns to gain more, but I haven't had the material, so I've been writing, and Earth has always been the thing that's out of grasp so far, which is the opposite for everybody else whose written about it, so yes I read about Earth to get full knowledge as possible about it." Usagi defended her interests; her mother had always dreaded coming back to a world already developed. But books weren't the only thing that Usagi had of Earth and its moon; she also had audiotapes of hit songs and noises including the new years' song with news clips in it. As well she had a vast supply of pictures of it. But none of the pictures could compare to the live view that she was greeted with at this moment.

"Oh do cheer up girl, you get to meet new people shortly." Usagi nodded in reply. Her mother sighed. "I'm a little worried about you, putting aside all of your book smarts, you don't know what its like to be a human. That is the one major draw back about you coming with us."

Usagi whipped around to face her mother; she knelt down at her side and took her mother's hand into hers. "Oh, never, I don't regret coming with you, sure I've got a major disadvantage, but I wouldn't give it up for the world." Usagi paused in thought. "I wouldn't give it up for ~Earth~."

"You say that now. It's a nice sentiment that you would give up something as precious as Earth to know me, but you don't realize what you've missed out on until you get there." Her mother freed her hand and patted her head.

"It's only been 15 years, nothing major could happen in that time! Nothing that I'd care about anyways." Usagi was adamant about it.

"Haven't my history lessons taught you anything? Tons of things can happen in ~TWO~ years, much less 15." Usagi pouted. "You still have much left to learn, it's a good thing that we are going home now and not later, it'll be easier on you, you'll see." Usagi nodded.

The ship rumbled a little as it slowed down preparing to dock. "Ah, we are landing ready to get off my wife, and my daughter?" Usagi's father asked coming out of the cockpit with the rest of the crew. "I know everybody else is ready to see their families again."

The ship came to a complete halt and a side door opened reveling a long tunnel with people busy all around it. Usagi took a deep breath, this was it, her first contact with humans other than her crewmates in 15 years, she just hoped she was prepared for it. She stepped onto the runway and walked into the tunnel, followed by her friends and family.

Hymeneal Plexus Teac Best I've ever had