"Alive"
It was cold here.
Like a lake of solid ice.
All she could hear beyond the blackness that surrounded her was sobbing. Crying that tore at the very core of the soul she swore she no longer kept.
She knew she was dead.
She had felt the last of her life's blood filling her lungs from the blow she had been dealt. Felt it drowning her. She knew she had drowned in her own blood upon the ruins of a dream.
She realized the sobbing was her own.
Eyes the color of blue topaz shot open in the dark. Framed beneath lashes of polished silver they shivered with tears unshed. For the very life of her she could not remember her name. She floated there in the abyss. A ghost even to herself.
One soft long fingered hand of ivory clutched at the chest that bore no beat of a heart. Where was it? Why was it that she was here, conscious and some how living, yet with no heartbeat?
"I am dead" she thought. "Yet I live to feel the cold around me..." her voice stilled in her head for a moment as her brow furrowed in thought.
"Where am I?" she asked.
Suddenly the abyss shifted. Light broke through in tiny beams as the sun did through the clouds. She knew terror at this sudden change. She clutched all around her for something to steady herself. But it seemed the light grew larger and pulled at her.
"No!" her mind screamed in agony "I do not want to leave this place!". Suddenly she felt the beat in her chest. A quick pulse at first and then a constant painful contraction. Her eyes widened with the pain of quickening life.
With a scream it all fell away and she lost the consciousness she had gained in the dark.
When she awoke next she was clothed, standing in a silent forest. No sign of life but herself uttered a sound here. This was it, the gate between where she had been in death and the reality of life that hovered just beyond. She realized she had but a few moments to linger in this place. She was now destined to be among the living.
Somewhere beyond the trees she could smell the faint scent of roses mingling with the soft mist in the air. Such a delicate smell, yet it brought faint tears to her crystalline eyes.
How long had it been since she'd smelled roses, felt the caress of water on her milk white skin? Too long, trapped in that place where nothing but distant memories had haunted her eternal sleep. She'd failed so many people when she'd died, perhaps that hell was meant to be her sacred place. Yet she'd escaped it somehow. Obtained a new body, new flesh, her soul was captured again in the beat of her heart. She looked as she had when she was young, she hadn't died young, she knew that. The pain of age, and those long dead, had made her beauty cold and distant. Yet once again the identity of those dead and her part in it eluded her. She knew she should endure punishment, yet for what she could not remember.
Beneath the cloak of gray wool she hid her long platinum hair. It hung in soft waves to her very ankles. She was slight of build. Delicate and feminine were the curves of her body. Her eyes were thickly framed in soft lashes, and held a pain no mortal being had ever endured. Gentle trails of silver dust traveled down her high cheek bones as her tears turned to glass. The crystal teardrops fell with no audible thud to the dark grass below her bare feet.
With mechanical grace she took a step forward, amazed at the pain so small an action could bring. She grit her teeth and bore it, knowing it was necessary. The pain was there to remind her she was once again alive. Someday it would pass.
She walked a little ways looking around, wondering if anyone was in between the trees and darkness.
"I feel alone. As if I'm missing some part of myself I should have......but I can't remember what it is I've lost" She said quietly to herself, looking up at the moon now. The blue of her eyes echoed the moonlight, as the sound of her sweet bell like voice echoed the very wind in the trees.
"You will find it" A voice drifted from the treetops. She felt no fear for the voice was female and grandmotherly in quality. "What am I to do until I find it?" she asked looking up. "You are what is known as Senshi, a sailor scout…" the voice spoke softly "…But you are not like the others. You hold sway over the very binds of reality. You are guardian of this gate. The gate between death and life, life and death. You decide the worthiness of those who must pass through here." She stood stunned for a moment as she took it in. The disembodied voice continued on. "The world beyond this is not as you have known it. Things have changed and you must conform to them. Do you understand moon child?" She looked at the plane around her. Nodding softly she spoke "I understand". "Judge them and regain your identity. You live again for a purpose you must find yourself." The voice spoke as if closer to her physically. For a brief moment she believed she could see the shimmering shape of a stately elderly woman through the mist. Then the voice and the ghostly body were gone, she could feel in her bones that there was no more of either.
Light grew in the corner of her eyes. Turning to it she found a door. Through it she would go. Face and figure hidden behind the cloak, she descended upon the world of the living.
"I am Senshi, I am the Sailor of Death…" she spoke to herself.
"…I am Sailor New Moon"