Welcome to Gaia! ::

Virgo wrapped herself in Babylon’s furry cloak and took a deep breath, expecting the light scent of snow and the mustier smell of dust--and got instead a noseful of flowers. “Oh, my goodness,” she said, looking at the flowers glowing beneath the walls of the city. “Those weren’t there the last time I was here.” She paused then, and conscientiously edited, “The last time Aria was here.”

She was not her past self. Right? And the world demanded more from her than just her life. “I’m not sure,” she said. “When I returned to Virgo Outpost, it was… as you saw it.” Her home had never stopped blooming, but then, it had never been a world. It had only ever been what it was, a construct of magic and the barest, smallest piece of hope for her people. A promise to them that they could be safe within the walls of Babylon, the labyrinth of Mistral… She sighed and adjusted her veil, and wondered what the constellation of Virgo would have been like. How would her life have differed if she’d been Court, but not Guard?

There was no point in wondering about it. She followed Babylon up the main street, and to the Virgon quarter. She stopped just outside the walls of her childhood home to get up her nerve; she straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath, and pushed open the gate.

Aunt Spica’s tree was in glorious full bloom, yellow and lavender petals spreading to catch the starlight overhead. They looked like nothing so much as smaller roses of sharon, and the petals were soft and supple to the touch. “I’ve never seen them in bloom,” she said, “never. It wasn’t the right time.”

"Yes," said Virgo, "they do. Something of a hybrid between pears and apples." She looked up at the tree, perhaps trying to remember how the fruit tasted. The texture came back to her, the soft blush-pink of the skin, but nothing of the flavor. She felt terribly cheated, like something intrinsic to her had been taken without even a by-your-leave. "They only bloom once every few years," she says. "I think they were blooming the year I was born, and they didn't bloom again until after I was sent away."

Her past life, she thought, was depressing. And so was her present one, really. "Thank you for showing this to me," she said. "It means a lot."

Virgo didn’t exactly know what he was talking about, but figured it was probably something like bees. Of course, plants needed bees to grow, it was Important--but she didn’t remember bees from any of her visits to Babylon.

Oh, well. They would see.

She sighed. "How are things with you and Menachem?"

Virgo's first, visceral reaction was No. Not any actual articulate emotion, just... no. She didn't want to lose Menachem, even as a ghost that could never move on. Not to death, or reincarnation. How many people had she, as Neso had charmingly put it, lost enough already? Babylon's ancestor had been the first (although she hadn't known it until the moment Aria ceased breathing in the cold vacuum of space) but not the last. Never, ever the last.

She said none of that, only hoped her face had stayed mildly interested, and if not mildly interested, at least focused on the flower in her hands. (It didn't.) Very carefully, she said, "I don't know that that's possible. It may be. I'm no handmaiden of Cosmos." Then she let the petals fall, plucking them from the stamen of the flower one at a time. They left tiny blurs on the snow, almost obscenely bright against the white backdrop. "I don't know what to say. I would miss him. But it's better to miss him and hope to see him again someday than it would be to miss him and know he's trapped here."

Maybe… his starseed was so old. Maybe he could come back sooner. But if he did, she’d miss him still. Virgo could think of no way to say what she wanted to say, had no call to be that selfish, and she vised her hands tightly shut over the flower and its remaining petals. “I… it’s your decision. And his. I have no place in it.” She peeked at the crushed petals in her hands and then let them go, conscientiously brushed snow over them like that might hide the evidence.

She had a odd moment of deja vu, a conviction that she’d stood here before and had this exact conversation before and would hear it again. I’m sorry, Aria, she seemed to hear, on the winter breeze in Babylon. Do you want to go back now? We could look for him. But Menachem wasn’t Huben. Had never been like him, except in their dark hair and bright eyes and ready smiles. And Menachem wasn’t going to leave her of his own free will. In a way--in the same way it always was--it was Virgo who had left him.

“Let’s go back,” she said. She left them all, in the end.