Welcome to Gaia! ::

He had known Scylla was transcendent - had run into her frequently enough at this point. Ganymede he had more rarely seen; mostly just saw her from a distance with usually a small gaggle of people around her. She was a princess. Guessed that made sense. Hadn't known she was transcendent, but that also made sense--

"Do you know if they were here before you were forced to the other side?" It was a legitimate question; he knew she had no memories, but perhaps the flowers had bloomed in reaction to that connection being restored.

As she looked, he bent down to inspect one of the flowers near his feet, careful with the petals and the stems and not pulling too hard on it. It was a sign of life, beautiful and precious as it was, alien in their existence but native to this place. "I didn't necessarily get a whisper telling me welcome home at first, either." It had felt like it would be home, but more than that, it had felt like a place where he could escape the crushing reality of Earth and the Negaverse and being a monster and-- "My comet was fairly dead when I arrived to it several years ago. No electricity. No flowers. No flowing water. No life."

Nothing.

"I found a building that felt important and got to work. My comet appreciated that. Responded in kind."

And soon, he started noticing when he got back, things felt different. Plants started blooming on their own. Ways to restore other things became more obvious. Eventually, new routes opened.

He got back up, careful to step around the plant as he approached Cybele once more.

"Don't overwhelm yourself."

So she couldn't know either way. Encke nodded.

Her view on it had been a fair one, too, and he understood why so many had priorities of Earth. That was where they lived. That was where there was life besides for plants. That was where the Chaos problem was, not out here. Encke had never had the same view of the matter, but he understood where that view had come from. "For what it's worth, like the purple skies too." He found himself gazing up at them, observing how stark the silver bark seemed against it.

In some ways, this world felt like a fantasy painting come to life.

These days, he occasionally wondered if fantasy landscapes were just visions of another world that unawakened people got without realizing it--

"You know the importance of it now, and how restoring this can help with the war, too. That helps." It was never too late to start.

Encke watched as Cybele stepped forward, following her eyes and her feet to where she was headed. He squinted at it, abandoning where he was standing to go join her. "I think so..."

At the very least, the overgrowth was not as inclined to grow there, which meant it was something, even if not a path. Certainly worth exploring. He nodded to Cybele, before taking a few more steps down the path to see if it would lead anywhere that'd be obvious to him. Of course, being the senshi of the planet, she was more likely to notice something important before him, he figured--

"Seems like it may be leading somewhere -- or at least, will give us another area to look at for clues."

Cybele wasn't following.

Encke's steps slowed and then stopped and then he turned around to see what Cybele had seen. Or -- hadn't seen, she was frozen, and Encke's eyes widened in concern for a moment before his brows settled and the ghost of a smile formed on his face. She was frozen as if she was in a panic, but Encke had been to enough homeworlds and experienced enough memories on his own comet to have a sense of what that feeling was. She was looking around, watching, -- and then suddenly came back to herself.

He gave her a moment, hearing her strained whisper and not wanting to stress her out.

"Memory?"

It seemed obvious to him, glancing over his shoulder as he looked down the apparent actual path. Now he was just even more curious. Where did this lead? What had she seen? What had her homeworld found important to show her at just that moment?

... Well, the path, obviously, but...

"Did you want to go check out the path?" Encke stepped slightly to the side, letting her take the lead if she'd like. At her pace, of course. He saw the way she held her hand over the star in her heart.

Encke easily kept pace behind her.

"Eager to see what it is."

A settlement was an exciting concept. Could tell them something about how her people used to live before they were wiped out. Perhaps it was where she lived, specifically, and she could find out more about herself from before.

But it came with a complication.

Encke let Cybele have the silence she needed, and he let her speak of why remembering this past life was complicated for her. Though he had been a youma, the memory loss of his life before hadn't been the same as if he had been forcefully corrupted. He wasn't exactly sure why that was -- blamed it on the methodology, perhaps -- but it did prevent him from exactly having that feeling she had. He could get it, though. Why would her world show her this prior life and not her own life?

"What the Negaverse does to the starseed is traumatic," he sighed, "and I'm not sure there's ever any way to get those memories back beyond what you've mentioned. I think the memories of your past life are ... perhaps imprinted on the starseed? Maybe as a way to help us see what our worlds used to be before whatever came through destroyed them, so we can help bring them back to that state. And once you start moving things back in that direction, your homeworld rewards you for it. Can't imagine it feels great to know of a life you had hundreds of years ago and not pieces of the one you live now, though..."

Encke caught up to walk alongside her, offering an attempt at an optimistic smile.

"For what it's worth, on my sister, Anser does mourn what happened to you -- but she's not so much upset by you as she is upset at what the Negaverse did to you. Just another piece of evidence why they need to be, as she would say, punched into a black hole."

She used to say something about launching them at the Moon until she realized the Moon was actually important--

"Huh. Never thought of it that way, but it'd make sense. Lose access to your planet when corrupted after all." Encke had no reason to think that Chaos could touch their worlds, and the thought it might have been able to was alarming enough to redouble his hope that the proposed usage of Archideus to finally end Metallia was going to work. He had never seen Chaos on his world, at least, and he had been going for years -- and he had once been a youma, so he assumed if any worlds were going to have an infection --

Best not to think any further about that.

Cybele walked a bit faster, but Encke kept pace.

It was true -- Anser had never seen Cybele when she had been corrupted. Perhaps it was a stroke of luck; it was something she hadn't had to go through directly, face-to-face, as it was happening. On the other hand, it probably did contribute to her initial reaction to learning what had happened -- the stress, the angst, the fact that she hadn't been able to do anything, and being confronted with the results in person all at once --

That was a massive tree --

Okay, think about that in a minute --

"No, she wasn't, and it probably contributed to her reaction." Did he want to think about it? Want to say it? "Part of the reason why I've never been able to stop her, not even when she was little," not even when she had been battered at the Autumn when he found out, "is because she says she has to keep powering up. Says she has to do something. Relates it to what the Negaverse does to everyone. To people like you and me."

He cracked his knuckles behind his back.

"I'm not surprised she's taking it so hard." Maybe Encke'd try to talk to her about it. "But I think she'd still appreciate seeing you even if you do have to rebuild your memories. Helps her know that it won't happen again. And she can work with you on throwing them into a black hole."

"Isolating yourself won't help with that, necessarily." Encke had long since dropped his attempts to stop Anser or really anyone. In all honesty, the people he knew becoming powered had become more of a relief than a stressor. Unlike civilians, they could transcend.

Provided them better protection than it would have if they were civilians by miles.

"Negaverse tends to go after single targets more than groups, I think. Even despite the target on your back, I think we're all still safer in units." Him, her, his sister, a certain husband of his-- "But I think she'd like to see this place! Maybe she can take you to hers, too. Pretty interesting place." It wasn't Encke's Comet, of course, but Encke was fascinated by space at large. Anser was a completely different animal than his comet was, much larger, much grassier, much more filled with bones than his world had ever been--

His thoughts screeched to a halt as he became much more interested in what was in front of him than thoughts of Anser's planet, and he quickened his steps to get a look at what she was looking at. The carvings -- vines and swirls and patterns, and he found himself leaning in to get a closer look and to understand the art and craftsmanship behind it, "It's always fascinating to see things like this -- carvings, the fabric they chose to use -- gives an idea of the arts of the people, right? At one point I found a painting of myself which was especially trippy..."

He let his fingers trace over one of the carvings before backing up slightly.

"This place was important to you or your people at some point, even if just as a dwelling. As good of a place to start with repairs as any."

Or rebuilding, as it may be...

Encke could tell by the way she cut herself off that there was something Cybele hadn't said and he wasn't going to make her say it, but he did understand, at least, why her thoughts may have been conflicted on ... all of it.

He offered a sympathetic smile, but let her focus carry to the post.

Rotted.

Disappointing for sure, but perhaps unsurprising considering how overgrown her planet still seemed to be. It had probably been grown over for years, perhaps used by the soil, perhaps taken by some weather. Best not to focus on that, though-- "Exactly!" It was a start she didn't have before, and that was the important part to even getting the work on her planet started. There was a small place that people had dwelled that was important to them. Even if it had been rotted out--

"Could start with taking inventory of what's still here? What all of this could have been used for? And what you might bring up to help bring it back that way?" Encke pursed his lips in thought. "Maybe some camping gear might help in this area ... could also see if they left anything behind, maybe some chests or cooking gear or anything like that..."

He doubted there was going to be anything like Encke, with the city and the Ruling House and the electricity that eventually flew through the air, but this reminded him a bit of Anser's world. Very ... wild.

Encke let his eyes wander over to the rings of stones. Fire circles. Guessed that made sense. He could visualize sticks in the center and a fire that licked to the sky as people huddled around it and tried to keep warm...'

Maybe he was just remembering a movie he acted in.

They could rebuild these little places and make it a gathering place again if that was what Cybele wished to do.

He nodded, pursing his lips when she mentioned that she couldn't do much without materials, and that she couldn't stay too late-- "Do you have obligations on Earth you need to work around?" Encke assumed she did--most of them did--but it was something to consider when he offered her any advice. "If anything, don't need to do anything intensive every time you're here. Next time you come back, bring what you think will help. Set that up. Also will keep costs for materials down, if you don't have that."

He glanced around, smiling at the wilderness around them.

"Plus, you may find your planet provides. There's a lot here, even if the settlements themselves have degraded."

There was a fond smile on his face as he added, "Encke's Comet felt like it was urging me along after a while, even if it wasn't in obvious ways."