Schism
Often in my nocturnal wanderings, I would return to that forest on Elysian, where I screamed out for Helios. On hands and knees, in my nightdress, torn and soaked, sobbing as the sounds of thunderous cloudbursts and lightning danced about me like a crazed ringmaster, as if leering at me, delighting in my pitiful state, the rain drowned my tears, I found myself then surrounded by growling salivating Youma. I was petrified. Then they were gone. I was alone and afraid. I woke scared and crying.
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ACT 15
Luna and Artemis were always with me and supported me, even if others in the palace took a counter position to any of my childish whims. I was so precocious. I was a princess, and I let everyone know it , too. I am mortified at the thought now. Like a good girl, I faithfully adorned my head with the much-loathed cones of amethyst of which I had developed an overwhelming sense of disdain. I would fight the image in the morning as I stared back at the mirror and poke my tongue out at my reflection before rushing off to breakfast and classes with Ami.
Please understand, I love mother dearly, my cute and my powerful mother, cute because she was a girl like me when I sought her out after the terror of diamond and Wiseman and the dominion of ice that blanked out everything good and pretty. I used the time key, and with my faithful Luna P traveled back to the far-off past and the rest you know.
I was a doll of crystal, shattered was my life and my mind, or at least, this was how I felt, I remembered everything, my time as Wicked Lady and despite everything, I knew to be true, the insane guilt and fear tormented me long after that fateful day. I know I was evil then, but something of her is still alive in me.
The mirror looked back at me forlorn, broken and refracted, just how I felt inside. How could they possibly understand what I was going through. No, they had no idea, or little knowledge of the strange afflictions that plagued both my waking life and the land of dream.
The tiny pieces of glass fell in a cloud of iridescent pink all around me, illuminated by the morning sunlight, funny that, the same color as my hair. I smiled at the lovely glitter of the powdery crystal dust that settled upon the bare skin of arms and legs and grinned like a loon.
My hair is pretty, like my mother’s, but I hated the Odangos I had to wear since a child. This aversion had only made itself apparent upon the return to the 21st century by my mother’s past self -- Usagi. Don’t get me wrong, her Odangos look beautiful and I adore them on her, but mine are ugly, or were; that was until I refused point blank to wear them. I also refused to listen to mother when she admonished me for appearing at breakfast, with shimmering amethyst locks falling over my chest to pool in my lap. Smiling, I would toss my pink mane defiantly over my shoulder and pull away whenever mother tried to tie the dreaded Odangos once again.
After breakfast, as with most mornings, I would stomp off and undo them. It was a battle of wills. I was determined to win. Shouting my usual protestations on my way out as I headed for the palace gardens had caused mother such worry and hurt, I knew, but didn’t care. I dug in my heels. Every time she would retie the Odangos, I would appear later with my hair hanging down my back with a smug smile on my pixie-like face and the reaction was always the same. Mother would demand I retie them and I would walk away ignoring her protestations and threats.
But this morning, I had woken to the stirrings of womanhood -- my first moon cycle and with it, a mood that from, I imagined, by the looks on my parent’s faces as they rushed to my room at the sound of smashing glass, told me they had seen this coming and only now accepted it as inevitable.
I stood their in my Senshi form. Shuddering and seething with rage as tears streamed down my cheeks. The only thing I could manage to get out, “I won’t ever wear those again, you cannot force me, and I will cut it all off if I have too!” I spat the dummy big-time, punished for lesser things, but not this day. I knew that and they did, too. “That’s better, don’t you think?” said I, brushing out the tumble of fuchsia that felt so much better as it now fell loosely in ringlets over my chest to my hips. I was free at last! With my golden crescent blazing a blinding unearthly glow upon my brow, mother just looked at father, then back at me sadly, and nodded and was never spoken of again.
Aside from the battles over how I should ware my hair, mother’s way of telling herself there was nothing wrong with me came in the form of platitudes and a brave front, dismissing the idiosyncrasies of young Serenity. I recall an incident where I had animated my dolls and set the dark crescent upon their brows. I giggled as they danced, pirouetted, sang and wrestled with one another; it was a hoot. I adored my dolls. I did this until I was eleven-years-of-age and stopped one day whilst in the garden hold up within a private enclosure with a cluster of vines and flowering plants smothering a figure eight silver trellis. Diamond was dressed in a tux, with his dark crescent turning a brilliant shade of lapis, the others also bore the glittering crescents including the cantankerous Rubeus, the vein Emerald, and the gentle but deadly Sapphire and my encore; The Akashi Sisters and Wiseman in a pink robe, performing a Spanish Flamenco dance. As Diamond took a bow, a beam of violet fire erupted from mother’s scepter and engulfed the twirling figure and my little Diamond and the other dolls were no more. I was so shocked I didn’t feel the cold hard slap mother brought upon my face.
I spat, ‘Bitch!’
Mother winced visibly at this cuss, eyes brimming with tears, and moved to slap me again. But as I stared her down with a fierce glare, she must have been frightened by what she saw there and lowered her hand only saying, ’How dare you!’ and with that, she turned away, disgusted, head bowed and left me and the pile of ash that was the last of my dolls in her fiery wake.
We hadn’t spoken for a whole month, and when things did thaw, everything had changed. I felt as if I were a piece of expensive crockery and that other issue I had cause to rebel over, the endearment I also took exception to, the use of ‘Small…Lady!’ went the way of the Odangos that same day. I would never acknowledge its use, I would ignore it and ask, ‘did you want something from your daughter, Serenity, mother or father?’ with an icy edge of sarcasm.
Despite my parent’s attempts to give the impression all was well in the Crystal Palace, I knew differently, for most nights mother would sneak into my room to, purge, me of dark Kingdom entities and the like. I was so bored with it all I can tell you, they just didn’t get it.
I finally at the ripe old age of fifteen, visited the Crystal Tokyo Archivist, she led me to a workstation and showed me how to use it, and I found the answers I was looking for and started to read. I was suffering an affliction that for many in the 21st world would be treated by meds and or experts in the art of the mind and its mysteries. I was not possessed, but suffering a schism of mind and spirit, body and of heart, I knew was my cage. I knew mother deep down was aware of this, for what parent doesn’t imagine their beloved child as healthy and happy, while struggling to find excuses to put off facing the fact a battle royal was being fought by their son or daughter internally.
I knew mother knew. Yes, I would lie in bed asleep, the snug warmth of my comforter about my shoulders, the warm body of Diana, my guardian, and sometimes Luna and Artemis by my side or at the foot of my bed. Then I would here it, the telltale sounds of mother’s footfalls upon my bedroom floor.
Standing over me, she would summon the Ginzuishou and in her glorious and beautiful form, as Sailor Affinity Moon, her body ablaze with silvery-blue light, she would whisper, ‘Cosmic Moon Power Healing Activation!’
Of course, mother would never mention it and I would not dream of bringing it up. I knew she thought Wicked Lady still dwelt in my heart as a slumbering terror awaiting her chance to claim their troubled daughter. But they didn’t understand me at all, at least not then. The first signs that my parents thought there was something wrong with me was when I was eight-years-old and started naming all my dolls after fallen Dark Moon Clan and other lesser-known individuals that had for one reason or other, held a darker fascination for me and I have already related to you their fate. I had no connection with their flesh and blood counterparts save those who had tried to kill me in the past. I couldn’t figure it out, and I tried, I really had, but no dewdrop of realization would come to my aid. I was alone. But strangest of all, this had all started shortly after the defeat of the Dark Moon Clan and I had seen off Mamoru and mother’s younger self and the Senshi.
I loved them all. They were so fun to be with; I missed them and although they were here with me, albeit much older and more serious-o, I still pined for my 21st century friends and only Pluto and the cats knew of my deeper anxieties and were closer to my heart, as were mother and father, that hadn’t changed in the slightest.
However, as the years slipped by, as weird to me as they might have been, things were pretty much okay for me; other than the strange visions I had on a regular basis. Although I am sixteen now, fully educated, both in the ways of a courtly lady and future monarch, and I am skilled at battle, though I know lords’ Kunzite, Nephrite, Zoicite and both Jadeite and Rei who now run the Senshi and Shitennou military academy here in Crystal Tokyo, still keep an eye on me.
The most disturbing thing about my last two years before reaching puberty, I had kept disappearing from my bedchamber and the palace guard, the Senshi and Shitennou would help my mother and father to find me. I was infuriated. They thought me a liar, or baka. ’A troubled kid,’ was Motoki-sama’s refrain.
But nobody except Pluto believed me. She knew a whole lot more about my condition than did I at that juncture, but I tried my best to understand her reasons for not telling me, or even father and mother. But she would only smile and say, ‘It is not time for them or you to know just yet…’ So I had to be content with this.
I trusted my Luna P with everything, and still do to this day. I would also tell Pluto my most coveted secrets: everything from the boy I kissed behind father’s rose garden, to where I hid food snacks; these I’d find late at night after waking in a strange place. Each time it happened, the location would shift. I would often disappear up to three times at night, and most often mother and father would bring me back, post guards, or even sit by my bedside.
Fortunately for me and all concerned, this would ensure I would not find myself ‘sleep-napped’ by this strange phenomenon and then it would stop; sometimes for a week, a month and more, but again, the strange disappearances would begin anew and place the family and the people I loved privy to all this on tenterhooks. The anxiety high, it was awful. But upon my dawning into womanhood, it all stopped. The strange teleportation’s and life at the Crystal Palace soon assumed some semblance of normalcy.
ACT 16
The Candidate
On my eighteenth birthday, I understood everything. Pluto and Lord Janus and his wife, Sailor Praxis paid me a visit as I took a long walk in the gardens at the palace reflecting on my life up to that point.
I suffered what Pluto called, temporal disorientation. You see, whilst I had traveled back in time as a girl, my mental state was fractured and my odd behavior resulted from this fragmentation. Displaced, my consciousness was coexisting at an unstable point of reality my tiny body and mind couldn’t handle.
Amydarainia told me My Senshi nature allowed me the ability to recover, as I had to evolve to a point where my Affinity stream realigned itself, thereby restoring a normal life and me to wholeness.
I remember the opening of the Crystal Millennium Park so clearly, though only a year ago now, so much had happened between then and the present. Not least of all was my engagement to Helios, the love of my heart. But back then, on that opening day I stood atop a miniaturized escarpment, proportionately perfect in scale to that of a famous landmark on the Myolan continent. This new body of land lay to the southeast of Japan, a new massive super-continent, and the largest on the planet. Also, this day was the first time I felt a whole person again, it was the summer of my graduation from Crystal Tokyo University. I was seventeen. I allowed the sense of well-being to wash over me as father took Helios and me to the new theme park he had helped build for me as there was, Kamis protect his dear heart, nothing he wouldn’t do for me if given the opportunity. It was an amusement park, funny, after 1000 years, I found it quaint and above all, truly wonderful . I giggled, as I stood there mesmerized in my short skirt and twenty-first century styled top and sandshoes, my pink hair falling in a loose tumble, Helios in jeans and a golden windcheater looked so scrumptious and terrestrial I could have kissed him. Wait a minute; I did kiss him!
We all delighted in the scene before us: the dinosaur sculptures, the miniature crystal city of 21st Century Tokyo, the games and artist displays, the bands and the dancers, the food and the wine, it was breathtaking.
The old world, now gone seemed novel and peculiar. Mother at one time in my early teens would rebuke me for my indifference to the machinations of court life and my penchant for sneaking off to explore the old quarter, a Senshi always dispatched to keep an eye on me, but I loved the place.
Now, it was fully restored, all of it. The best of the old world, the ruins faithfully reproduced were a popular tourist attraction. Visitors from the planets in the Crystal Alliance frequented the park all-year-round and brought their children with them, these youngsters spellbound by all the park had to offer, and at its heart, the far larger replica of The Crown Arcade, my fave place to hang-out as it was mother’s and of course father and the girls. I remember mother’s reaction, it was clear on her face as she stood inside the arcade, Motoki holding the inevitable cloth in hand behind the counter as had his ancestor, and I knew that all the old memories of grandma and grandpa were resurfacing for her.
As I looked upon the exhibit before me, the impressive micro-sized landscape became rocky, a miniaturized array of standing stones, rising three meters, looked magnificent. It was a minute version of Ancient England’s historic Stonehenge monument, a sparse arrangement of mosses and lichen wrapping their way around the monolithic structure.
Children of all ages were climbing all over the structure, whilst adults took the ancient masterpiece more seriously and scanned images into crystal pod modulators, crouched, and studied the beautiful stonework up close. I had a wonderful time and in fact, that summer was the happiest I had known and I know next summer will be as memorable and fun.
My thoughts returned to present concerns. I nodded as Setsuna, having assumed her civilian appearance and along with the new guardians of time, I followed Rei into the Fire Temple of Mars located within the palace grounds.
I took in the ornate murals, the statuary of Earth Shinto and Sulean culture and sat with my friends before the sacred fire to meditate. After a time, I slipped into a deep trance and my vision blurred, and an elaborate and cryptic vision unfolded before me.
I was dressed in a black fuku with a lemon-green sash tied at my waste, holding the garnet rod. I couldn’t believe it, where was Janus, Praxis and Pluto? I was standing inside a sports auditorium of some description, possessing vast open-ended access at either end of a long corridor. Swirling kaleidoscopes of cloud swam in and out of phase at either end. Its luxuriant wooden floors polished, and marked with demarcation lines, set in a netball court configuration. I knew this to be symbolic, but had no idea the meaning at that point. People were lining up on either side, enjoying the spectacle in progress.
I then observed a collection of spheres the same color as my sash rushing frenetically everywhere, these were I knew, sentient beings of some kind, but like nothing I’d seen anywhere on Earth and I was spellbound. These little guys appearing and dissolving instantaneously in front of my eyes, I plucked one out of mid-air, and examined it closely. But it, along with all the others, dissolved.
Meanwhile, the girls that had been rushing about playing the game looked suddenly lethargic and despondent, as did the crowd. Everyone stood perplexed as some of the girls in their colorful skirts and tops wept.
Suddenly, I knew what I had to do; I lifted my time staff. I knew the garnet rod was mine to use, and with confidence, I commanded it to unleash its power and an effulgent light flowed out like an exploding sun in all directions, and then the most beautiful crystal maze appeared before me.
I gasped, it was shimmering like a diadem of beautiful jewels. An assortment of complex patterns were ebbing and flowing, these forming new combinations and images like bursting floral blooms appeared before my eyes.
“Serenity my child; I am Daphne, High Priestess of Chronos. This is the Crystal Nexus or if you prefer, The Affinity Weft, Serenity, and your destiny and as apprentice to the Guardian of Time, Janus and Pluto will help you understand and love this place as it lives in your heart and is part of you. You had to undergo a series of trials and I apologize for their degree of difficulty, but it was necessary, as the mantle of being a time guardian is a testing one. The rules are changed and you can live a normal life and marry your Helios at the appointed time and this you will know as events in their way weave themselves according to the Affinity Weft’s workings. So now, go happily and embrace your destiny as the future guardian of time. Pluto has earned her rest and will soon live on Elysian. She shall be waiting for you to join Helios. You shall all dwell in that world and spend time on Earth, as your duties are to protect the gates of paradox, the Time Gate opens onto the Affinity Stream, there is so much more, but that, you will have to discover for yourself child. Now, it is time to return to your home.”
As I opened my eyes, Helios was holding my left hand, Pluto my right and we smiled at one another.
“I am to be Guardian of Time, but it will be after our first born, Helios my love.” I smiled at Pluto who smiled back. “Now, how did I know that, Setsuna?” I asked addressing my friend in her civilian guise.
“Goes with the territory, Serenity.”
I was content with that.
