Mneme - Lady Mercury
Emmerich - Lord Zoicite
Beset - Lady Mars
the feel of her name
My lover's gone
I know that kiss will be my last
no more his song
the tune upon his lips has passed
I sing alone
while I watch the ocean
--My Lover's Gone by Dido
3. the searching
Mercury shut the screen and sighed deeply. She put her hands to her face and rubbed her eyes with her fingers. The night seemed to stretch before her in a languid sprawl, but she had no time for sleep. She had been charged with the task of finding what had caused the death of the late Lord Jadeite, and though she was one of the many looking into this, she was probably one of the very few with the much needed clearance to access the Alliance database. Time was short and there just wasn't enough of it for what needed to be done.
"Until this mystery is solved, we cannot open communications with Earth," Counselor Luna's face had been hard and no one argued with her on this. Mercury found herself often disagreeing with the policies they were using to deal with the latest tragedies, but she had nothing to support her except a feeling of dread. Unlike Mars, who relied on her intuitions, Mercury could not speak without hard evidence to present. As much as she hated the decision, she could not ask the Counselors or anyone else to support her when all she had to go on was a feeling.
After all, the gods did not touch her with the unseen powers, but with a sharp cut mind that could discover the truth so that all could see it for what it was.
Yet, she was so exhausted that time seemed to move so much slower for her, even though she knew this was not so. The sands were slipping through the glass and even if she felt, in the darkness, the hours seeming to stretch like years, it was all just an illusion. A sometimes dangerous misimpression that was much like the world they lived in, here on the Moon. She had experienced how ephemeral her feelings and her perceptions were. Often times, she found herself once more in the light that spilled out into the skies. The sudden realization of mornings when she had been sure that she had only put one hand down next to the pages of knowledge, trying to delve and decipher into contents that were as fascinating as it was arcane, was something that was disconcerting at best.
For the last few hours, she had been visiting the ancient writings from the people of Mars. There were many stories, legends and myth and prophecies they had recorded of what they foresaw in the future of the Silver Alliance. Her own planet had soon followed with detailed analysis of the consequences of the actions of her Lady Queen and the political machinations driving the negotiations at the time. There were the stories from Uranus and Neptune, Pluto and Saturn, but they were mostly more of the histories that people took to heart as lessons of what could happen if peace did not reign supreme. One or two of the text were even from the lost Solarian civilization. Those stories gave her a headache just to translate, but luckily, she had hers and the main computer working over time to get her much of the information she needed.
There were even stories of Venus, thought to be the origins of the Queens Selenity.
Pages upon pages of text that she had never imagined, even in all her wonderings through the books of the Alliance Libraries, or the random inquiries she had made to the Alliance database before this debacle had left her with just enough excitement to keep awake. The wings of texts and ancient scrolls lay waiting for her to read and she wished that her search was not so filled with dread. Yet, even she took note of the ancient texts from the Sun, for their astronomers have noted its findings that had only had a small section in the daily reports made to the Queen. They had been observing the sudden spike of activity there, even felt an ancient evil stirring, but these things had been so brief and there had been so many other things that needed their attention that only now did they truly take notice. But negotiations with Earth was at its most crucial moments too, and soon, they would finally be able to bridge the last long-standing gap between them and the people of Earth.
Mercury sighed as she shifted through the notes. Her eyes focused on several details in the growing document with increasing unease. Her index finger tapped against the curled pages in her hand before she turned away to flick open her small computer. The keys came alive at her touch as she highlighted the passages she wanted analyzed with her own findings.
The specific aspects that the Councelors have given her concerning the death of the King and the conditions of his corpse were just the tip of a long list of worries she had already found. She had hesitated several times over certain parts of the passage that filled her with both curiosity and dread. Turning the page absent-mindedly, she suddenly winced as the sharp edge of the page cut open her finger. She raised it to her lip, pausing at the last second as she looked down at the small wound, turning into a line of red beneath her observations.
"Let me give you the magick kiss," Lord Zoicite's voice rang in her ear. Mercury blinked, a blush coloring her cheeks at the memory. It had been so vivid. For a moment she even thought she had faintly smelled leather and soap, and felt the phantom warmth of his hand grasping her own.
"I didn't know you had the healer's touch," she had remarked naively, surprised by his actions and his words. She had been much redder then, for she was so rarely touched by anyone much less the opposite sex. He had, after all, also mentioned a kiss...
Lord Zoicite had shot her a wink and a slow, smug smirk. She was about to pull her hand away, suddenly suspicious that he was only teasing her. But he had already caught her wounded digit with his lips and at her wide-eyed surprise, he had gently nipped it. Mercury remembered snatching her hand away as if it was on fire, clutching it to her breast and nearly slamming herself against a wall in her effort to put more distance between them. In the process of all this, she had knocked over a stack of books but was too shocked, if not a bit frightened, to straighten the mess she left.
"Oh!" she had gasped. She was unsure whether it had been due to the kiss or to her own clumsiness that made the air seem to have escaped from her lungs and refused to return. The gravity of the Moon was certainly less than that of her own planet, and sometimes she underestimated her own strength.
Lord Zoicite had laughed at her, delighted by her reactions. He ended up being the one to bend down, cleaning up the scattered disarray as she continued to edge away from him as if he were a dangerous beast that had escaped into the library. She didn't think he understood then, and not until much later, just how uncomfortable he made her. With any other Senshi, perhaps he would have had more success with his flirtations.
Granted, Mars would have had no problem with coldly rejecting him flat out, and the woman had her aloof disdain down so well that the men at court feared her as much as they admired her. Venus would have out done him, seeing Lord Zoicite's teasing as a goad or a challenge to see who had more charm. As suave as he was, Mercury would have side with her leader when it came to the game of hearts. Of them all, it would be Jupiter who would have been flattered by the attention, and Lord Zoicite would have stopped rather quickly in his advances because of the lack of resistance. Her friend was also exceedingly serious about such things, easily falling for a pretty face and a strong set of shoulders. Mercury was glad it was not Jupiter. After all, the Jovian had the worst luck with men and she didn't need to add Lord Zoicite to that list of disasters.
She didn't enjoy being the victim of his vanity either, though he must have thought himself exceedingly charming due to her violent reactions to him.
Mercury was a bit annoyed with herself, but she had never been very good with people, especially men. The other Senshi got along with her, and she called them friends, but she rarely interacted with anyone outside of the Lady Queen's most trusted circle. The only one she could really talk to was the Counselor Luna, and even then she had to watch herself because of protocols. They were still friends, though the relationship had started from a case of mistaken identity. Mercury had, at first, discovered Luna in her feline form. The counselor had been scouting the young children that were to be sworn in as Senshi, and she had immediately taken a liking to the cat.
She always did do better with animals than humans.
Mercury rubbed at her eyes again. She was so exhausted, but she forced herself not to think about it as she set down her visor. Venus had been wired since they took note that Mars had not shown up at their usual meeting, and her commander had forced them all to stay up with her as they had scoured the palace when Mars remained missing for the rest of the day. By the second day Venus had ordered her to scan the Moon for the missing Sailor Senshi, and when the day gave way to night any thoughts of sleep had fled her. Her leader was the one who finally checked the Observation Room, when they had exhausted all the possibilities concerning the local areas. To say she was surprised to discover Mars had travelled to the Earth would be an understatement. She had always thought of Mars as one of the more reliable and level-headed of the group, and though they were not the greatest of friends, she trusted the other with her life. To have made such a reckless decision so suddenly, Mercury wondered what had caused such a thing.
She did not understand it all too well herself, at least that was what she told herself. She was logically worried about the Kings, and if Lord Zoicite in particular came to mind more often than the rest these last few hours, it was simply because she knew him better. They had become friends, after all. Since the time they had caught each other off-guard outside of the palace walls, they had started a tentative relationship of sorts.
It had been one particularly slow afternoon that had led her to find Lord Zoicite out in the market place. She rarely went into the city, but she sometimes travelled there without informing the other Senshi. Mercury didn't really enjoy company, but sometimes she missed the cramped spaces of her own planet and the market place was a great place to find rare books that were not even available within the great Library. They were books mostly on travel and adventure, battered and dirt cheap. Mercury loved them and she had a hard time confessing such an interest to anyone she knew, but then again, no one had ever asked.
She couldn't travel to the places she read about at her own leisure, so she would go to the bazaar whenever her duties slackened enough to allow her the time. The trip itself had become a hobby, the process of looking for beat up journals detailing these rare, long journeys to other planets were all picked up with eager hands. It was, of course, much more difficult to locate the outer planets now that they were reduced to mere outposts on the edges of the universe, but sometimes she would find old, worn books that no one had looked at for decades or centuries, waiting for her to find them. It was what made these stories so fascinating and fantastical, and it made finding them her own little challenge. The gruelling voyages detailed in cramped handwrittings of every imaginable language was a treat to be savored. They were not always great writers, these travelors of far and distant places, but they didn't always need to be.
Unexpected things were out there, waiting for her to discover them, and the market was full of such things. That day, it ended up being Lord Zoicite that she found, carrying Lunarian street children on his shoulders and having a few hanging around his waist. He had passed her by just as she had turned away from a stall of mewling Martian cats, but they recognized one another right away. "You!" they had spoken at the same time in surprise, fingers pointing accusingly.
Her one hand had tightened around her treasured journal (this one said to be from a travelor to Pluto!) and she had feared he might have found her out, while her mind was curious about why he was even there. "What--" they both started and then she cut herself off with a blush and he had pulled back, his face also slightly pink. Perhaps they were both found out by the other.
"Who's the pretty lady?" the child on Lord Zoicite's shoulder asked curiously.
"Is she your betrothed?" another inquired.
They both turned red at the very idea. "No!"
The children didn't look very convinced at the unified denial. And despite their protests, they both ended up spending the afternoon on the outskirts of town, playing Lunarian children's games. Some of those games were reminescent of her own childhood games, but most of them were more similar to the games the children on Venus played than anywhere else.
For the first time, Mercury saw the arrogant features gentle into warm smiles and gay laughter. Lord Zoicite had a very long and feminine face and most cultures would probably have called him beautiful, but to Mercury, he was all sharp edges and sharper words. His eyes seemed like a reflection, very much a verdant mirror of the world, though what it reflected may not always be accurate. He was cold and many times, when she gazed into those eyes full of jagged things, she wondered what it was that he trying to keep away.
Mercury had spent her whole life with beautiful, powerful women, be it on the Moon or back home on Mercury. She knew that beauty, many times, was like an icy wall. It kept out the world and isolated the one who wore a face that only the outside could appreciate. It could ugly the soul, and break hearts without trying. It did not move her as much as it would have in her youth, when she had been fascinated with all things rare and different, exotic and pleasing.
Yet, with these children, he never hesitated to get down to the ground and play with them until dirt smudged his skin and mud ruined his clothes. Only then, with a brown stain beneath his cheekbone and a smile that left fine lines in the corners of his eyes did Mercury think that she could no longer ignore his radiance. His smooth face had told her before that he was not a man accustomed to smiling, but when he did his visage became one that she could not look away from.
For all the time she has known him, he had seemed like a lifeless sculpture that she couldn't relate to or appreciate outside of its fine craftsmanship. But here, he was a man who seemed to carry more than the same cold disdain that all the Kings had radiated when they had first come to the Moon. It must have been at the young Prince Endymion's urgings, for he was the only one opened himself to the ideals of the Silver Alliance and the people that lived there.
Even then, their Lady Queen had deliberately kept their Princess out of sight for fear of the prophecies she was bringing to life. She had been warned before of the fate of their young charge since Princess Serenity's birth. If they could solidify these negotiations, then Princess Serenity would be able to set foot on Earth without fear of persecution or the terrible curse put upon her as a babe. They would no longer have to hide or be forbidden from studying a world more alive than any other in the universe. Finally, with curious hands and hungry eyes, she may be able to see and touch and smell and taste the things she had only read about in battered journals and forgotten excerpts. She would be able to do more than just meet the men of Earth and experience the many wonders she had only been able to view through the screens of the Observation Room.
"You look like you are in the middle of discovering a treasure," Lord Zoicite observed, his eyes on the book she clutched to her, interrupting her thoughts. She just continued to look at him, not quite sure how to respond, before looking down at her hands and quickly pulling the journal out of sight. She wasn't sure why but she was suddenly afraid of what thoughts he could see on her face. "I'm not Lord Jadeite, you know? I can't hear what's on your mind," he spoke in her silence. He sounded quite irate with her, though she admitted that she was acting a bit more rude than usual.
She blinked and continued to stare at the ground, this time feeling a bit guilty. "You don't need to read minds to guess at someone's thoughts," she said softly, thinking of Venus with her knowing looks and Mars with her inuitions.
She wasn't sure how but awkwardly they ended up together. Perhaps it was the laughing children who begged her to join them, or the fact that she had already been more than a bit graceless in dealing with this meeting. It was some time past before she needed to speak to him again, but eventually, even she couldn't ignore the fact that her unsociable skills might have insulted his easily smarted ego. He was rather sensitive to the social nuances that she had always been so terrible at. At first he asked all the questions, about the Moon and its social structures, about Mercury that made her happy and homesick, and eventually about the people at the palace. She ended up speculating a lot about Earth as she listened to his inquiries and watching his reactions to her answers, but she tried her best to always speak the truth of her own observations, at least with as much honesty as she could afford.
"I think it is you, my Lord, who has found a treasure," she said at last, quite out of the blue, observing him this time. She remembered the look he had on his face while he watched the children. He did not act like their meeting in the market when she noted his presence, there was not a trace of that unease at being discovered from earlier. She remembered his questions about poverty and the homeless, about those who lacked families and those who were enslaved. She had seen and read about the wars of Earth, and the orphans of those conflicts. She had heard in the meetings concerning the path that the Earth should take cover information on the conflicts that lived there, sometimes so very quietly in the hearts of her people. Perhaps, there were indeed things that even clever Lord Zoicite had not envisioned possible until now.
Or perhaps, there had been a lack of hope in him until now.
Lord Zoicite did not laugh this time, he had turned to her and reached across the distance that had always separated them and touched her cheek. It was the first time he had touched her since he kissed her injured finger in the library. This time though, his touch was more intimate and his face more vulnerable than any kiss or any words could have been. "Whatever you think of me, Lady Mercury, I mean what I say when I'm around you. You have already earned my deepest respect and I hope you never doubt that," he told her with his voice so earnest that she could not help but continue to look. In those eyes, she saw herself. His eyes, they were green and clear, unlike anything she had ever seen. From the reflection in them, she saw something essential that was him and could hide nothing in return. "You do not need to read minds to know I tell you the truth, either, Lady Mercury."
For the first time, she found him truly charming. She smiled at him and felt his hand tense against her skin, surprised to find that she had forgotten the intimate touch for a brief second as she looked up to him. She had seen him catch his breath, uncertain why she was sure that she was the cause of this. Unsure why this thought had pleased her.
"Definitely a mistress, at least!" one of the boys boasted, causing Mercury's cheek to overheat beneath Lord Zoicite's hand and her head to instinctively pull away. He let her go without any resistance, though it was she who regretted the loss. Instead, he had turned to give a devious wink to the children who squealed at this display, errupting into loud gossip and even louder speculations.
The children then tugged and pulled her to her feet, grasping onto her reluctant hands and parting her from Lord Zoisite. The girls had already started a game of tales and songs. The sound of their clapping hands, along with their childish voices, floated over grass and water. She was embarrassed but she joined them in their songs, remembering when she had been too young to be officially named a Senshi yet, and not invited to join the games of her peers. The songs and the optimism of the children surrounding her quickly allowed her to relax, forgetting her awkwardness as they continued. Soon, Lord Zoicite did as well. He had a surprisingly strong voice, lower than his features seemed to hint at. They laughed and sung allowing the wind to carry the enchanting sounds of joy over the fields, until the sky turned dark blue and the air turned cool. Their voices mingled with the distant sounds of waves from the sea before fading into retrospection.
Mercury blinked back the memory, hand on her own cheek. At the end of the evening, he had grasped her free hand tightly and kissed it while looking into her eyes with his unwavering and piercing gaze. It had only been a soft brush of lip against skin, despite the fierceness of his stare. Yet, there had been nothing friendly in his gaze and her breath had caught as she gazed back. For the first time the red on her cheeks were not from embarrassment or shame, but a different type of self-awareness. Her heart had skipped a beat as she clutched the book she discovered to her heart, feeling it flutter. The journal had ended up traveling with her on her own little adventure, unrecorded as it was and far more personal. Till this day, she treasured it not just for the story it told but the memory it held.
Only later, when she had dazedly stumbled into her room, did she wonder if this changed their relationship somehow. When she saw him again, he had been his usual self with teasing words and playful actions. She had been disappointed but it was short lived, for when their eyes had met, his held a softer look than ever before. Sometimes, when they spoke, she felt like she was being wrapped up in the secret of that meeting.
Now, she wondered, dread in her gut and eyes strained from the long hours of research, what he could be thinking of concerning Lord Jadeite's disappearance. She had seen how easily he was at jumping into conversations with his cutting wit, how much quicker he was at being angered for the injury of a fellow comrade or a bullied child. He was forever running to conclusions too, and his impatience was perhaps what made his company so unpredictable and even more exciting. She thought he was a somewhat clumsy King and an even clumsier protector, and perhaps that was why she had liked him beneath that thin veneer of pride and hauteur.
They were, after all, his effective shields against those who might discover how soft his underside really was...
Mercury thought of Mars then, of the pain in those eyes that had once held a happiness she recognized but had not had the courage or the thought to tell anyone else about. She had seen that look starting to show in her own eyes and had been afraid to trace its roots passed the reflection in the mirror. In the end, she had not been wrong when she told Lord Zoicite that one did not need powers to guess the thoughts of others. She silently moved away from the dark window with a view of the rising Earth. She thought of the pieces of herself she had recognized in Mars and shuddered, fearing the out-come of her own unknown future.
Fingers traced her bottom lip as she thought of Lord Zoicite's goodbye. A bittersweet smile lingered there as she turned away from the window, eyes falling on the painting she had started. She had been taught but only until she met Lord Zoicite did her childhood passion raise its head again. It was still unfinished, the vision of the future they had discussed that day by the edges of the Mare Serenitatis. She had never been exceptionally good at it, passed music and her artistic skills were rather limited. Since their meeting in the market and their impromptu meetings throughout the palace, she had suddenly been filled with a desire to try to put her imaginings on paper again, ones that were not yet memories but of the future.
"My name means memory," she had told him beneath the great archways. He had been unusually hesitant, his expression dubious when it had often been her expression and her role in their relationship. It was her answer to his question, when he had asked her if she would think of him when he was gone. She couldn't fathom why he would look so when he asked her such a thing, especially since they had said many goodbyes before this and would continue to say many more goodbyes for as long as she was Senshi and he was Shitennou. Still, she wanted him to know that it was not possible for her to forget. "Our people were the great recorders of histories and facts. We learn so that we may better the world one day. We remember, because that is what we do best and what we enjoy. No race than our own have been so good at looking back. And I wish..." she paused and sighed deeply. The foolish wish in her heart that she thought she had calmed and quieted seemed to come alive whenever she looked at him.
"You wish?" he asked, but did not push more than that, which was unlike him. He had been so much more humble that day than she had ever seen him. She wasn't sure if she liked it, for him to be so unsure.
She weighed the consequences in her head, and then the words she would say to best convey what she wanted. "I once wished," she amended, "that I would be able to help." She turned her face to the sudden warm breeze blowing through the grass, carrying the echo of lost moments on invisible wings. "More than just remembering, I want to help people now and gain the ability to create hope for the future. My powers are not great, but with these small powers that I have been blessed with, I wanted to be of some use to this world, to your world." Her voice faltered as the same doubt that always plagued her assailed her again.
How? How could she help? What could she possibly do? All she had ever been taught was to record the passage of time. All she had ever been good at was but to delve into the past and rewind the hands of time. She had the command of water and ice, but they could not be used to water the crops when their purpose had always been to drown an enemy.
"Mneme," he said slowly, trying out her name for the first time. "So long as you remember this promise to yourself, as your name implies, it can be achieved. On Earth we believe we are given names to represent who we are in this world at our birth, but life is there for us to be more than the limits that names haven given to us. You have a gift, but it is not the only one you possess," he told her, his voice growing stronger with each passing moment. She had looked at him startled. It was the first time she had ever spoken this desire out loud, the first time anyone had asked, but he still surprised her with his confidence. He was brash, one of the many things she admired about him as much as it annoyed her to admit it, but his words gave her warmth and a view from a window she had never had the courage to look through. Perhaps, it was the same for him. Perhaps he got as much hope out of her as she did out of him.
"Yes, Emeric," she replied. Her hand flew to her mouth then in embarrassment, "I don't think I said that correctly at all," she admitted at last, hand still hovering over her mouth.
He had tilted his head at her with a clever twist of his mouth before he succumbed to chuckling at her expression. "No," he agreed through his laughter. "Not at all!" That was, perhaps, the first incident of many more heart-warming goodbyes to come. Yet with each passing farewell, she found it to grow harder instead of easier.
Wasn't that... a little strange?
Lady Mercury poured over the notes, letting go of the memory filled with warmth and a kind of sadness she could not yet understand. She instead searched through the writings concerning the decaying body of Lord Jadeite, trying to trace backwards in time. She despaired at how little they had gleaned from so much evidence still in tact. There was nothing that told her more than what they already knew. He was killed when his heart was taken out, and if a picture was worth a thousand words, it had been done with someone's bare hand while he still breathed. She could find nothing else that was any help to anyone other than that. She wanted to bang her head against the table, but it would only give her a headache she didn't need right now. If she couldn't find anything more, soon...
"Emmric," she tried again and grimaced. The sound of her own voice was cutting in the empty library, only slightly muffled by the books surrounding her. She could never get his name right, no matter how many years she'd practiced or how many times she'd tried. Certainly, he too had tried to correct her, but usually Lord Zoicite found this more amusing than insulting and would burst into laughter at her attempts.
And now, the man who had always had too much pride and too little patience had lost a dearest friend and comrade...
Mercury found herself looking out the window again, perhaps searching for morning and the light that came with it. She wondered but did not know what expression Lord Zoicite would wear but she knew in her heart that he would want vengeance. He was a prickly man full of cynicism and he was still so young in Earth years. He really wasn't very skilled at controlling himself like the other Kings, not even when compared to the hot-tempered Lord Nephrite who was all too easy to rile. Sometimes, Lord Zoicite reminded her of the untamed stallions she had once read about on a traveler's guide to Earth. They were noted to be proud, wild and spirited, and that was how Mercury saw him.
A bit unruly and ill-tempered but full of life.
She often wished she had his courage, but all she could give to her friends and fellow Senshi was the knowledge she could gather and layout methodically like the knives one used to cut open flesh. She hoped she had enough of the knowledge she needed to find the disease. Whatever and wherever it was hiding.
"Mneme, you can do this if only you believed," his voice whispered memories into her ear.
Yes, Mercury thought, bowing her head in concentration. If nothing else, I must believe! Everyone depended on her now, and she just couldn't let them down. He had believed in her and now it was time for Mercury to believe in herself.
"You made me believe," he told her the last time he had been on the Moon. His voice had been full of something she was afraid to hear and his eyes had bored intensely into her own. His hands had been almost painfully hot as they held her cheeks and forced her to look at him.
They had been saying goodbye again. It was only to be a year more before the official meeting on Earth would commence. She would miss him, but it would not be the first time that she felt this way and she doubted that it would be the last. He had been unusually quiet for the last few days, and she had wondered what had been bothering him. As if gathering his courage to him, he had grasped her arms and then her face. And when he was done admitting such an intimate thing that made her dizzy with its implications, he had bent his head much to her horror and kissed her.
It was still a very innocent kiss, just a brush of lips, but without waiting for her answer he had gone.
She remembered the press of his lips against hers, but it was the heat of his breath that made her forget how to breathe. Now, she wondered, if she would regret that moment when her shock had rendered her mute. Her inability to speak could have been the one things she would forever look back on with doubt for the rest of her life. It could have been the last goodbye, but she had always taken these abrupt partings for granted. She had been embarrassed and filled to the brim with the possibilities that he had opened to her with his reckless actions. She had hated him and been afraid of what it really meant when she found she was only using such rhetoric to soothe the nerves he had frayed in his wake.
She remembered his disappearing back and hoped it was not the last sight of him she would have.
Lady Mercury touched her fingers to her throbbing temples and wished the memories away. She had to concentrate on this current problem and not on the personal plague of thoughts that had not left her alone since he had set foot off the Moon. She was afraid in which direction and which road she had gone down without consciously choosing her course. She was terrified of what and who she was becoming.
The ambivalent emotions ate at her, goading her with the visions of Mars. The other had, not long ago, been a woman who had been reasonable, dignified and respected. Now, that same woman who had been filled with fire had passed by her in the halls, her presence cold like black ice and her eyes forever unseeing and just a little bit mad. She had often found the other lost and wondering, at times going and stopping, uncertain at doorways and in the midst of halls, and other times, striding purposefully towards places forgotten and unknown to anyone else. Hatred was black in the shadows of Mars, stale and encompassing in the air around her. Apathy followed, always closely by with quiet footsteps. And then, the aimless anger and heavy lethargy flew in attendance behind. Mercury feared the woman who now stalked the halls like a pale ghost of her former self, seeing in the faded colors a version of her future self looking back.
She feared that unlike Venus she was not as wise with her heart and that in the end, no matter what she had tried to prevent from happening, it would not be on Jupiter's list of mistakes that Lord Zoicite resided on, but her own.
---
The soft breeze of the starless night rustled the leaves of the Lunar Willow. In the dark, the bright red foliage were no different from the color of the bark or the duskiness of the grass. The long strands of the shivering branches quivered against the invisible caresses of an unseen wind. The garden seemed to sigh and the sound traveled up, past the vaulted cieling.
Beneath the umbrage of leaves, the rising and falling of the still adumbration was the only movement to be seen. Light tried to stretch out warm fingers into the garden but could not reach the tree at the heart of it all. The empty sky overhead peeked in, starless and infinite, guarding the draped silhouette of a girl who slept upon the marbled bench.
Her hair was indistinguishable from her flesh and the stone that she rested on. The strands trailed down to the ground, mingling with the fingers of the willow's branches and its discarded folioles curled like small snakes upon the ground. Her long hair wrap around her, tangling around her limbs like a thin web that melted her into the scenery. Her deep breathing was the only thing that could distinguish her from the other inanimate things in the garden around her.
In this peaceful alcove, away from watchful eyes and loosened lips, Beset dreamed.
In her dream, the shadows danced against the walls of her mind. It was a play of sorts, the type where the actors' lines were always too far away to distinguish and where the act itself was a mystery. She dreamed of a black sun and falling stars, equally black. The ink blots zoomed across the red outlines of tree tops, splattering dark splotches like rain on a pond. She dreamed of a fire that did not burn and a heart that did not beat. She dreamed that she entered a chamber, deep and dark and filled with things she did not want to look at or to learn about.
She dreamed of an alter, where a body lay waiting to be awakened. Onwards she went but she did not want to go. Her feet moved against her commands and her left hand burned hotter and hotter as she approached. She stopped at the ledge and opened her painful hand to watch a beloved's name become red with her blood upon her palm. In her dream she screamed, the harsh sound vibrated in her throat but her voice would not echo past her lips. She fell to her knees as the pain spread to her heart, clutching her arm to her chest in a futile attempt to protect herself.
She felt the familiar feeling come over her once more, as if all the things she held dear were lost and that she would never be able to have them back again...
Then, as she knelt there, tears falling from her eyes and wishing she never had to remember or experience again the agony of it all, she felt the air move. She blinked against the hazy veil of tears but the world was still a blur of melting blacks and greys. Before her, when her vision finally cleared a little, were a set of shining boots, dark and gleaming and flat. It was as if someone had put a scroll of art before her. Her eyes would not obey her feeling of dread and sudden fear as they traveled up trousered legs that had no dimension, and hands, so familiar that she bit her lip to stop herself from crying out. They were long and strong, elegant fingers clasped to each other loosely between the knees. They rested, as if waiting for her to acknowledge their owner. A shadow hovered and a heated breath ghosted her ear as the picture before her shifted into life...
"I didn't tell her my name," the familiar voice spoke to her in unfamiliar tones. His legs were beginning to look more real by the minute, as if the picture of the man before her was rising from the sheets of a white page and draining the colors around him to make himself real. She squeezed closed her eyes and did not know what she wanted to see before her now. The small, treacherous hope burned at the heart of the ache inside of her from the sound of his voice. "It was you, darling, who gave her power. It was all you." He accused her, softly and sure, in the same charming manner that once she had hated.
Beset opened her eyes and saw darkness. Her breath stilled as she remained upon the bench as unmoving as a statue. The edge of the Earth could barely be seen from where she lain, unable to respire from the forgotten words that still echoed inside of her silently. She felt as if she had been dreaming of falling and woken up just in time before hitting the ground. The paralyzing fear finally left her and she was able to raise her left hand to look at it. She didn't know why but she wanted to retrace the invisible name that had once had been written there with another's calloused finger. She blinked and touched her temple, where the tears had disappeared into her hair, surprised and annoyed at having found herself crying again in her sleep.
What had that dream...?
She rose into a sitting position, putting her head in her hands and wishing she didn't feel so out of control. Sometimes she found herself forgetting what she had been doing in the middle of a task or where she was headed in the middle of the hall. One day melted into the next and she never slept well, never knew at what particular time she was at in the midst of the disaster that befell her. She hated being so unsure of when she was seeing visions and when she was facing reality, neither of which was ever pleasant but she had never shied from either before. She hated not knowing what day she had wakened to, and when she inquired, hated that she forgot the answers she sought.
Most of all, she hated feeling as if the world had lost its colors. It was a rather ridiculous notion all together, people don't just become color blind in the midst of their lives. She hated all this, but could not find the strength in herself to change the state she was in. She knew why she felt this way but even she was surprised how this was all really happened because of the passing of a man, one who was not even a citizen of the Silver Alliance.
How could she have tied herself so intricately to him? The question called out to her in her mind, always beneath the clicking of her heels against stone and would only quiet a little when she stood completely still. Slowly, hour by hour, she was beginning to believe that she hated him too. She hated him for giving up and letting fate have its way with him, for not fighting back when he should have fought with all that he had, for not calling out to her for help in his (and her own) hour of need... For reducing her to this.
Beset felt so tired. She wanted to lay down against the cold rocks and sleep forever. She did not wish to ever dream again, or see another vision of the future when it was always bleak and full of destinations without choices. She was tired of speaking and not being heard, for now the healers and even the Lady Queen would not believe the visions she saw. No, they believed, but she had seen the heavy fear that closed their minds to truth she spoke.
She no longer had the desire to face her friends who had seen her as she had once seen herself. She did not want to witness the disappointment of dashed expectations on another's face, not when her own had been painful enough to look at in the gathered pools of still waters. If only she could remember other things than just what she dreamed these days, then maybe she would not feel as if she was going out of her mind. She felt often that she was withering away into nothing, and when she spoke her voice was like a breath that people forgotten the language to. Yet, suddenly she realized that she couldn't remember the dream she just had. Had she been dreaming? She cursed under her breath for her dreams had never been a problem before, but now she suspected that she had been purposefully forgetting some of them because her consciousness couldn't handle what laid in waiting for her in the dark of her mind.
Perhaps, she was not so different from those in the palace, after all.
Am I going mad? Perhaps it would be better to go mad than to become too weak to handle visions of the future. Perhaps it would be better to just lie down now and die now that she had become so useless. After all, she had just discovered that she was not as strong as she thought she had been. The Lady Queen did not need such a weakling to watch over her beloved child or the Alliance. Their ruler needed devotion that went on passed time and distance. If she died, another would be born in her place, forgetting these painfully debilitating moments and carrying the lessons she had learned here, as this Mars.
It was an important lesson, after all, to never give her heart to anyone.
Slowly, she raised her head and rested her cheek against her knee. Some time, long ago, I had been like this before, she thought to herself dreamily. I had watched a man shape wood with steel, and I had let that man shape my heart and my thoughts. I had thought he was worthy, that he would become eternal. I had thought that perhaps he had the power to change my destiny, but all that he has shown me in the end, all the possibilities he had placed before me, had only crumbled to nothing from its own brittleness. I was stripped and now I'm but bones, like the fallen dragons of my homeland. I was made for only the Queen and her child, so why did I wish for more? Why and how did I forget these lessons learned? Have I not learned them before in some previous life that my father have spoken of so fondly? Have I still not learned it well enough to carry it to the next life that awaits me?
She could not answer these questions that burned behind her eyes whenever she closed them. She wanted to kill her heart but was afraid to cut the veins that fed it. She had wanted to die, now and again, when the pain became too much but was a coward when it came time to act upon it. And she abhored herself for becoming like a shadow on the walls of her dreams and the palace of her reality.
Beset opened the hand she could not see and perceived that she now regretted wishing to become like the wood beneath the hands of a mortal man.
---
"Lord Jadeite!" the servant exclaimed as he saw the approaching man stride into the hall. "Where have you been, all these days? The Prince Endymion had been most worried as have your other comrades!"
Lord Jadeite paused in the hall, puzzled as he glanced around at the stone works. He pulled a hand through his hair, disheveling it, as if to clear the golden strands of cobwebs. "Forgive me," he said softly before reaching over and touching the startled servant. "But, where is the Lord Nephrite currently?" he inquired.
"The north wing," the servant answered obediently, face suddenly slack.
"Oh good," Lord Jadeite answered cheerfully. "I have need of a word with him. Be so kind as to forget this conversation all together, would you?" the servant nodded his only answer. He did not even watch the Lord Jadeite pass into the shadows, humming a strange little tune.
The servant simply stood a long time beneath the dancing torches. When he finally blinked out of his stupor, he had found that the night had wore on for quite some time and it was now early morning. "What was I doing again?" he wondered out loud to himself, touching the top of his balding head in confusion. Slowly he turned to look down the hall, as if he was expecting to see something there. The emptiness greeted him and he thought better of it and turned toward the servant's quarters instead. He tried to remember the thing that woke him in the middle of the night but couldn't recall getting out of bed.
Perhaps he had been sleep walking. He had heard of the ailment and feared that he may have been possessed by a demon in his sleep. How strange, thought the servant, I hope I'm not getting so old as to forget myself. And, if I was possessed, he thought with a shudder, I best not tell anyone about this incident...
TBC.
Theme 7: Wink
