Generation Lost, Part 1
Prologue
By Taerir
Okay, this is the first time I've written a Sailor Moon fanfic that did not contain any made-up characters. This is solely based on the series itself, mostly the manga. I don't know when or if I'll add to it (I usually prefer to focus on my original fiction, not fanfiction), so tell me what you think.
All Sailor Moon references are the property of their respective owners. I, Taerir, do claim the prose contained in this document, copyright 2003. No duplication is permitted without written permission from the author.
How do you explain to someone what it's like to have lived for nearly a thousand years? Is it even possible to comprehend the full implications of such a thing?
It appears a romantic thing, at first, to live that long. You arrive in the world and have a thousand years to enjoy the things you love most. The day when you must leave it all is a far off thing, a day that in your mind might as well never happen.
Yet, when you must actually live those thousand years, the time is not as simple as that.
Perhaps it is because we are the last of a dying generation. We are the last who remember life before Crystal Tokyo. We are the remaining few who know what it was like to expect only a hundred years among the living. Now, a millenium-long lifespan is commonplace for the younger generations.
Still, a thousand years is a thousand years, regardless of when you live it. Human experience remains the same. When our Usagi-chan became Neo-Queen Serenity, she did not abolish hardship. Such a feat would not have been even within the great power of the Ginzuishou. And we grew closer to immortal than we once were, but we remained mortal.
Life metamorphoses when you have lived long enough to feel that you have experienced everything. We still have new battles to fight, and our hard-won peace to defend. But all of us, in one way or another, have experienced love. We have all experienced loss, and guilt, and the wide array of other human emotions. All of us have gained wisdom that we never thought to possess. We both are and are not the young women who began this journey, and sometimes it feels as if there is no facet of life left unexplored. We have seen it all.
Truly, such experience tends to separate one from the rest of humanity. Life becomes much like floating upon a gentle sea. You surrender yourself, and let the currents take you where they will. Yet you see it all from a distance, somehow. Pain still exists, as does joy. But somehow, it is not the surprise it once was. You simply exist, waiting for nothing, ready to leave or stay as fate demands.
For the senshi, the change was even more pronounced. I venture to say that many of the "common people," silly term though that is, saw us as demigods of some sort. We, of course, were not. But we were companions of their queen, and we had known her well for longer than she had ruled. To them, she indeed seemed a goddess, the one who loved without limit and possessed the great power that held the world together.
To us, she remained simply a person, a being of flesh and blood. She was no more and no less than the girl we'd known since middle school. She'd grown, to be sure, into a great woman, capable of great things. But we were her friends, the ones who'd followed her from the Silver Millenium all the way to Crystal Tokyo, and that was what she needed most from us. And she gave us friendship back.
Mars was the steel will, the shrine priestess through and through. Jupiter was the strength and, at the same time, the protective caretaker. Venus took the role of leader, a role model despite her quirks. And I, Mercury, was the book learning, the dedication to a dream. Uranus, strong and quick, was the true warrior among the senshi. Neptune remained ever the elegant artist, calm and thoughtful. Pluto was the experience, the one of us who gained insight from the crossing, intricate streams of time she had witnessed. And Tuxedo Kamen, now the king, was the supportive, protective influence needed to hold the queen steady. We all played our roles. But despite what we gave to her, she of the moon was the one who bound us all together, who somehow made our lives bearable.
So we lived for our thousand years. We loved, we lost, and we learned. We gave the world successors, to assure that peace would be defended with or without us.
But then, it was finally time to leave.
