You're the one on duty tonight?
Luna's soft question hung between them unanswered. Niko-Lysandra stood side-by-side with her as they looked down, passed the glass spheres. "She probably knows we're watching," Luna pondered out-loud.
"She doesn't," Niko-Lysandra replied coolly, but did not elaborate further. If she did, Niko-Lysandra thought, they would no longer be an audience to anything. At least, not anything of interest.
Luna and she stood silent. For that she was thankful, though she would have preferred solitude more. Company always agitated her, small or large. The darkness of shadows and the closeted feel of the domed observatory was as close to home as she could get.
Home.
How she had loved Mercury, and hated her people. Here she was more miserable still, for she could not even enjoy her environment. The great, hive like cities, were something she looked back on with a controlled nostalgia. The nooks, and caves she had discovered and took for her own, the distant roar of civilization that echoed like shadows behind her, an illusion of being able to leave it behind, all of that she had missed.
Sometimes, she still imagined herself able to walk those great halls alone, surrounded by stone, ice, and the silence of individuality. There, where the space is never too wide and the heavens never too high, she could once again feel herself seeping into the uneven floor beneath her. There, where the world was ruled by logic and where the real sun could not scorch to burn her...
Where logical creatures were created by illogical beings, Niko-Lysandra thought with a smile at the irony of her world so far away from here.
She remembered the distant stares, the glances filled with jealousy and awe. She had given her city the prominence it desired. Of the eight ruling hives of Mercury, a city's distinction was always marked by their possession of a Senshi - wealth and technological innovations could not compare to the birth-place of the current Senshi. Yet, she had been nothing but a pawn there, no better than she was now a pawn here.
Cressida basked in the glory of her birth, but dared not treat her less than an icon or think her to be lowly enough to be considered a citizen. She was a goddess amongst men, and a tiring existence it had been from the first.
Every citizen of Mercury had augmentations of course. An arm here, an eye there, but a Senshi was not to be touched by those crude innovations. Magick was a gift the gods did not bestow on Mercurians beyond the little they could instill into the machines they built, unless she be Senshi. Envy lived in the gazes of the Citizens of the Counsel whenever she had to hold court before them, disdain thrived in the posture of those too proud of their mechanical arms and legs, and thought they need not the protection of an ancient soldier to continue existence, she remembered that atmosphere well...
In Cressida, she was outcast.
Despite all that, she still missed Cressida. She missed the rough stones beneath her hands, and the flooded brightness of the damp underground. She remembered the artificial lakes, which were dug into artistic forms of heated, iridescent pools beneath their filtered sunlight, and she longed for the crystal rivers embedded into walls and sparkled wherever the city lights could not illuminate, like great rivers of stars on a grey, black canvas, calling her away from the crowded civilization she detested.
They had trained her to be a spy more than a warrior. In comparison to her sisters-of-arms, she would never be a soldier in that sense. She disdained the battle-field, though as a Mercurian, her allowance for what happens in the training arenas would have made her appear barbaric in her own people's eyes. The necessities of her training aside, she was like her people more than she might wish to admit. They were proud of their culture, and boosted much of how they were the first to suggest an alliance of the planets. Mercurians were at the forefront of spreading the ideas of prosperity through peace, and bragged of taming even wild Mars from their tribal fractions into three great cities with the power of Mercurian ideas - as close to a democracy as those dogmatic barbarians would ever be capable of, as the Mercurian saying went.
Yet, even distance could not diminish the feeling that she was constantly being watched. Her guard was always up, especially when a Mercurian ambassador visited the palace. Communicating her own knowledge to the man or woman, and the telling news of her activities would all be reported back home, and though a Senshi had no family to call her own on Mercury, she knew that Cressida - despite her emotional disdain for its citizens - would suffer if her conduct was less than impeccable or her character be judged as lacking.
It would be too tiring to be scolded by the Council of Fools, as she dubbed them in her mind, should such a disgrace occur. She also liked the small bit of freedom she had, when not in the company of the Princess. It was not a comfortable job though, to have to constantly report back to her planet on the politics of the Moon and the politics of the other planets - from what she could glean off of her Senshi sisters. Yet, that was the price she must pay for what she was born to be.
Sometimes, she wondered how much N. Triaria knew of her purpose at the Lunarian Palace and guessed it to be the reason why Kasra Kadri avoided her as much as politeness would allow. She had been the second Senshi sent there, after all, and the one who consistently stayed the longest. She had a cool, sisterly relationship with the Princess, though nowhere near in closeness as Folami's protective love. She thought it would truly be ridiculous if Queen Serenity had not figured out her other purpose at the palace by now, that old shrew would not dare to miss this. Niko-Lysandra never trusted the woman, anyway.
The mask of compassion that Queen Serenity wore always before her subjects spoke more about the Queen's long experiences with politics than anything else. It was there to soften the edges of that piercing acumen and strategic ruthlessness that a young Queen like Kasra Kadri had yet to learn to disguise herself completely behind. The soft expression that wooed many a fools disgusted Niko-Lysandra though she never let on her discomfort whenever the Queen was in view.
After all, she had plenty of evidence that the Queen herself was no fool, and doubted that Luna accompanied her much of the time because of her lovely personality. She had seen with her own eyes that she was never left alone with the naive princess of the Moon, a child who would gullibly tell away the secrets of the palace should she just ask it of the other. She looked down to the princess then, at the girl staring with such bare and aching longing at the Prince of Earth, his holographic picture barely flickering at the extended hand that longed to touch his features and met the emptiness of air with great disappointment....
If she knew we were watching, she would not wear that expression so nakedly. Niko-Lysandra was confident with this belief, knew the Princess, despite all the child's brashness and heart, despite the other's disdain for studying politics and delight in running away from her tutors, she knew that Serenity acknowledged, as well as every citizen of the Moon, that the Earth was forbidden. Even Princess Serenity could not deny or ignore, beneath her infatuated heart or her romanticized ideas, that it was wrong to stare so at a citizen, worse, a ruler of the Earth itself. Yet, the child was still much the sheltered girl, despite her heritage, to believe for a moment that she was ever alone enough to escape the attentions of her guards, and she was just reckless enough to perhaps even wear that expression defiantly if provoked with the right words at the right time.
Sometimes, Niko-Lysandra thought, as she looked to that pretty princess with her hair of gold and her pale features, much like her own, that the other would not be able to handle the great tragedies of being the ruler of the Moon. Yet the girl made even Niko-Lysandra wondered curiously at what it would be like to have a heart, even if it were only for a day. If she did, could she resist such an expression of pathetic yearning? Would she have felt more connected to that girl who held her hand and hugged her when the princess had been a child hungry for companionship, who called her sister and laughed with such openness and trust?
For over fifty years, she had lived and served the Queen, and then her daughter. Her features had already stopped changing in the mirror of the Lake Serenity, the lake that never showed an untruth to those who knew how to look. "All this time, how can she not know we watch?" Luna marveled with a small smile of wonder, and a small frown of worry.
"As long as ignorance and innocence would allow her the security," Niko-Lysandra answered softly.
To the princess who did not know that she was a spy, a seed to seek out and gather the weaknesses of Queen Serenity's rule; that N. Triaria was trained to be best not just in swordsmanship but the bedchamber, at so young an age that she barely considered those who desired her to be more than tools and faceless beasts of desire itself; that Kasra Kadri had to kill her kin, her innocence, and then her heart to prove herself worthy of her throne, and yet, have it all mean so little when her Senshi-hood whisked her away from it all; and that even Serenity's beloved older sister, Folami, was a bastard child, considered unfit to be heir, unwanted by her own people and a threat to the system of rulership - cast out instead to be a gladiator, a slave, and a gypsy - due to her own father's fecund indiscretions; that their hands were all stained and that their age were older than the princess's fifteen years... it was an illusion that the other could live with for a little longer. Even Niko-Lysandra did not wish to see the day of truth come too quickly, if ever. She wondered when it will be that this Princess would turn into a Queen like her mother, and dreaded the day. She wondered when they would have to dispel the stories of her youth, of their pledge of alliance to her first baby's breath with their small childhood hearts - for that was not how it truly was. It would be hard, she acknowledged, to dash those fragile dreams of their alliance being made from loyalty and love, and not necessity and politics. It would be hard to be viewed by those trusting eyes, turning hard from experience, and found to be a potential threat, one likely to betray should her duty force it upon her and circumstances deemed it advantageous for Mercury to strike. She was the Senshi who never shyed away from the truth, no matter how painful it would be, but this time she would relish it even less.
These masks we wear, Niko-Lysandra thought wearily as she watched the naked expressions flicker across the Princess' face without a thought to disguise them. When did they become our own face? The answer might have held some relief, she knew, if she could ever recall the face she had once called her own beneath it all, and thought, for certain, that it had never been so like the innocent one before her now.
End.
Niko-Lysandra - victorious liberator
Niko-Lysandra of Cressida
Cressida - Gold - One of the major capitals of Mercury
Theme: sm_monthly 01/2008 Day 5 : Revealing
