As usual, I disavow any rights to the characters from Pretty Guardian SailorMoon. They all belong to Takeuchi Naoko and Bandai.
Greetings
to my most prolific reviewer, aserene! I hope you like the end
result as much as you like the beginning. :) I promise the
next chapter will be longer. And Chapter 8 will make up for any
short ones in between, hahaha...
- Raya
Lonely Harp
Dreams of Memories
(One year later)
Ami sat at her seat in the empty class room and stared down at the test in front of her. Absently, she wondered why she was wearing her old elementary school outfit while taking a Harvard Physics II final at Azuban High School. She watched with growing anxiety as the test in front of her changed from a Physics final to a Calculus final, and then to a Chemistry final, and then a Biology final. As rapidly as she tried to answer the questions, the tests changed before she could complete even one.
Before her anxiety could grow overwhelming, however, she heard a noise that made her forget all about tests. Blinking, she raised her head and listened closely, trying to pinpoint it. Once again, the faint, chiming sounds came.
Laying her pencil down and rising from her seat, she walked towards the wall of windows that appeared in the back of the classroom. They faded away and were replaced by a thick silver mist as she approached them.
She looked down curiously as she realized that her outfit had changed as well. She raised a hand questioningly to her suddenly shorter hair, and then brought it around so that she could inspect the long white glove that now covered her arm.
'Of course... Sailor Mercury...' she thought to herself with the strange calmness of dreams. She looked around again, and then continued walking into the mist. Slowly, the faint sounds became louder.
Her heart clutched inside of her as she finally recognized the sound. 'The Harp...' she thought, brown eyes widening in shock. She paused, though, as she realized that there was something different about the sound. She listened and thought for a moment, and then continued walking and listening.
'It's not as depressed... Or angry,' she finally decided to herself. 'It sounds more... lonely?'
She blinked uncertainly as a figure suddenly became visible. She narrowed her eyes, trying to peer through the mist to make it out more clearly. All that she could see, however, was that it was a woman with long hair.
As she came closer, she heard a faint crunching sound and felt something shift under her boots. Looking down at the ground curiously, she realized that she had stepped onto silver sand. She looked up again quickly as the sounds of the harp faded away.
"Go away," she heard the woman say in a cold, hard voice. Her heart clenched again as she recognized it. She stepped forward again as the figure turned to face her. "Princess?" she whispered, reaching out with one hand. For an instant, the mists became thin enough to see that the woman wore her hair in buns on either side of her head with long pigtails streaming out of them.
"Go away," the thinly veiled woman commanded again icily. She raised her right hand and made a pushing motion towards Sailor Mercury.
Sailor Mercury cried in surprise and flailed her arms as she felt herself falling backwards.
With a gasp, Ami sat up in her bed and clutched the sheet to her heaving chest. Her mind raced as she tried to remember the dream that had faded so quickly.
'Something about Usagi-chan... And being lonely,' she thought as she dropped the sheet to rub her forehead. 'Why does that make me so sad? And scared?'
"Usagi-chan," she said softly. She sat quietly for a few more minutes trying to bring the dream back, and then gave up. As she lay down to try to go back to sleep, the cell phone on the nightstand caught her eye. She looked at it a moment, then picked it up and cradled it.
A few moments later, she nodded to herself, opened it up, and placed a call.
