It is well past dusk, and she sits slowly on the park bench, her emerald hair swaying in the warm spring breeze. She comes here as often as she can. She watches the people ambling past, or the cars driving by. She watches, and she waits until at last everyone is gone, and the park's light shut off, one by one, and everything is dark. Then she turns her eyes to the sky, to the stars.
She is always alone.
Today, the cherry blossoms are blooming. Small, fragile petals, fragments of white and pink wander downwards from the trees, coming to rest lightly in her hair. Laughing, her daughter reaches up, cups a petal in her small, pale hands and flings it high into the air.
Today she is not alone.
She watches the petal as it spins, end over end, through the air. Her daughter watches it too, her violet eyes capturing every nuance, every moment of its flight. Slowly, the petal comes to a rest, pausing, halting for a single instant in time, before it begins to fall. Her daughter sighs with disappointment.
Her daughter leans against her, a small, but somehow heavy weight, her arms wrapped around her waist, head buried in her hair. She reaches down, runs her hand through short purple locks, and closes her eyes. Why, her daughter wonders, can't the blossoms be like this forever, always blooming, always beautiful.
She smiles, a sad, simple smile. For her they are,
Another petal falls, and she reaches up and catches it. There is something in its form, something in the gently sloping lines, in the wax and wane of each curve. It is beauty, it is truth, it is everything and nothing all at once.
She blinks.
In the span of a heartbeat, the petal is gone. Its edges crinkle, blacken, crumple and it turns to dust, drifting away on the next breeze. In her arms, her daughter's form quivers, shifting, thinning, collapsing in on itself and she looks down. Her daughter's face is gone, only a skull remains, and in another heartbeat that too is gone, swept away, forever.
She blinks.
Her daughter looks up at her, concern in her ancient violet eyes. Perhaps she knows, perhaps she understands. Another wind rustles past, and suddenly the park's lights are dimming, one by one, until none remain. And still, there they sit, alone in the dark, the cherry blossoms tumbling past, flickering ghosts in the shadows.
She looks up.
The stars are beautiful. Amidst the vast, boundless mantle of darkness that sits astride the shoulders of the sky, they glitter like little jewels, spinning through the night. She should speak now, should say something wise.
She says nothing.
She could speak of how the stars are born. Of the shining, swirling disk of hydrogen gas, a trillion, trillion tons of superheated matter rushing inwards lighting the fire of a nuclear furnace that will burn almost forever. She could say that.
Her daughter's lips move, murmuring a question.
Should she answer? Should she tell her how the stars she loves, the glittering shards of light so bright in the sky are already dead? How everything she sees, every scrap of light, every faint twinkle is nothing more than a shadow, the final, distant death cry of a star that has already died.
She pulls her daughter closer, never wanting to let go.
Should she tell her daughter, that they are all like stars to her? That when she looks at them, really looks, she knows that what she sees will soon be gone? That despite everything, their powers, their strengths, their virtues, in the end they are nothing more than sculptures of stardust, built of the bones of a long dead star.
Her daughter stands, walks away, laughs, and spins, hurtling through the dark.
Around her, the city falls away. She sees the towering pillars of steel and glass, tremble and fall, reduced to rust and ash in the blink of an eye. She sees the trees wither and die, and she sees a dancing child turned to nothing more than stardust and memories.
Her daughter stops, her chest heaving, eyes delighted, a smiled already on her face and for a moment she feels old, so very old. Her eyes flutter shut, she doesn't want her daughter to see them. They are old eyes, eyes that see past the veil of future, past and present. Eyes that measure time not in mortal seconds, years or centuries, but in the rise and fall of ages, in the innumerable moments in an epoch, an aeon, an era.
They are eyes that know the meaning of eternity.
When her eyes open, her daughter is further off. She is running down the path, her laughter drifting back, trailing a halo of cherry blossoms and purple hair behind her.
She waits.
The park fades away, its dark, mournful colours replaced by a million swirling vortices. Space and time fragment, shatter, reform and bend to her will. She is everywhere and nowhere at once, she is past, present, future, she is there, at the Gates.
Images, instants, moments in time, fleeting, disparate destines, the locked doors of fate, all of them rush past her, dragging behind them a crackling wake of roaring temporal thunder. But she stands firm, and a staff appears in her hands. At once the stream parts, and the very fabric of time shudders beneath the strength of her power. Doors of possibility, of chance and probability, are flung open, torn off their hinges by the ultimate key.
For a moment, just a moment, she is time.
Then suddenly it is gone, all of it, and she is back in the park, back with her daughter. She hugs her close, breathes in the scent of her hair, and the slightly muskier aroma of her sweat. She never wants to let her go, ever.
Her daughter pulls away, and grins, tugging her to her feet. It is time to go home.
As they walk home, through the darkness, along the blossom-strewn path, she wonders. She wonders how long it will be before all that she loves is dust, once more. She wonders how long a kingdom not yet born, but forged of crystal can last, before the impossible weight of destiny finally escapes her grasp and brings it all tumbling down.
And then she wonders how long it will be before the memories fade, scattered on the winds of time. How many years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds will pass before everything is gone? Before even this precious contact, this tenebrous brush of soft purple hair against her hips is forgotten.
Instinctively, she pulls her daughter closer. But she knows, deep down inside, she knows. Nothing lasts forever, not even this. Nothing is eternal.
Except her loneliness.
Author's Note
Yay! This one came out fast, didn't it? Truth be told, the last chapter was a battle between Venus and Pluto ( heh, we all know who would win that, and no, I am not not going to say, I'm not suicidal ). Frankly speaking, Pluto rocks. Behind Saturn, she is my favourite of the Outer Senshi. That aside, she's also tricky, because in the manga she can come off really stand offish, and quite calculating, and the anime is generally much worse. I still scream every time I hear her voice in English… Whatever the case, I'll let you make of this what you will, but for all those who didn't pick it up, yes, Hotarus is the other character.
And as I've said before… I live off feedback, heck if I could eat the stuff, I would… so drop me a line, good, bad? Say something ;;.
To My Reviewers : Okay, here goes. First of all, a cookie goes to Armaggedonangel for guessing ( sort of ) Pluto. To both Armaggedonangel and especially Cerii-Chan, thanks for the feedback. At the moment, I'm simply writing this one on the fly, meaning I go to my computer sit there and do the whole thing, all in one sitting. In my case, I just can't go back and revise, not without a few days in between, but really, I love writing so much that when I do revise, it will be at the end, when I've finished everything ;. Having said that, thanks to everyone else who's reviewed, and don't worry, if I haven't gotten to your favourite scout I will soon… probably. Till later, take care.
