Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was, wasn't it? If HGTV took place on long-lost planets in long-lost societies, where people no longer lived but something could, or someone. "Could you imagine that home show? Extreme Makeover: Ancient Worlds Edition," and he lifted both his hands to wiggle his fingers around his head. Honestly, if that was possible, making a show about it might be just enough to get more people interested in the homeworlds away from Earth.

At the least, he knew plenty of people that binged those shows for fun, himself included as he was figuring out what to do here.

"Thank you," his smile was warm, proud, "it took a lot of trial and error, honestly, and binging a lot of relevant videos. I had to learn how to use concrete, for example," he motioned toward nearby repaired paths with a chuckle, "but my world helped too. With more attention, it became stronger. After Pendour and I planted a garden here, more native plants responded. I've helped others with this, too."

It was a non-spoken offer, if anything.

She didn't know where to start, but while they got to their feet, Encke started scanning around what was nearby to where they are. They were near the gardens--

Perfect.

"Want to see the city square? The People called this something else, but I've just been referring to it as The Fountain," he laughed, gesturing for Nectaris to follow him. The cat, seeming to take this as an invitation, bounded after Encke. "When I got the water flow back up here, this Fountain came back to life."

And it had.

For hundreds of feet in front of them, this area was comparatively in bloom. Glowing, bulbous plants burst up between the reconstructed rocks and paths, seeming to exist in unison with them as if they were meant to be there. The flora became denser the closer they got to the fountain, where there were also smooth paths and areas where people would have been able to sit and observe, to perform, to gather, to debate, to live. Encke remembered bringing people like Caedus here before; he wondered if it looked different even from then.

The cat happily scampered off a bit ahead to meet up with another cat and bump it with her head.

That actually was a really good idea--

He'd have to get Viatrix on making sure if she was going to make this thing, she had a pretty robust video feature. Almost all social media platforms did at this point, so he couldn't imagine that'd be hard... "That honestly would be a lot of fun."

Maybe they could make something like those TikToks or the Shorts that had seemed to have taken some of his older acting colleagues by storm...

He grinned when she complimented the glowing on his comet -- honestly, he agreed, how did one get cooler than glowing, because he loved every world but he had a special love for the bioluminescence of his own -- but then she froze, and instead of continuing the conversation he ventured a cautious, "You good?" Had she seen something? He hadn't seen anything. Encke found himself looking for another something that might have been there.

Oh, she was back.

All those--

Encke's eyes widened.

"No," he was venturing cautiously again, but it was for a very different reason this time. Encke had invited countless people to his comet at this point, but none of the people he was close to had ever had a flash like that. Not even the people he wasn't close to. But he experienced them constantly here now. And it wasn't like she was seeing something he had just seen. "You saw something though, right? It felt like you were a part of it like you were seeing something you were within?"

... Of all things.

No ******** way.

"This area did use to feel like a real city."

It was peaceful now. The quiet that had once wound through it was absent now, with noises of the buzzing of electricity above, the trilling cats nearby, and the buzzing of the bees as they flitted from bulb to bulb, but it didn't quite feel the same as it did in his memories. This area in particular was home to gatherings, home to the arts, home to people relaxing and enjoying the sound of the impossibly large fountain.

He wished there was some way to repopulate this place with his people, but he knew the reality he faced.

Better to focus on what he could do than the quite potentially impossible.

Encke shook his head out of it to keep his mind on the focus of the conversation. Their skin looked like the night sky. That sounded about right, and he didn't quite respond right away as his brain tumbled over the possibilities. Had Nectaris been a visitor in the life before? A resident? A frequent guest? Someone who had wanted to immigrate? The People had always been about expanding to enrich themselves or something of the sorts and it didn't really matter who wanted to be part of that; anyone seemed to be welcomed--

"No, nothing bad at all. From my experiences of seeing the past, and from others who have told me about theirs -- means you were here before, at some point. Never heard of anyone seeing anything who hadn't been..."

He scrambled to take his senshi phone out, scrolling over to his favorites to pull up a particular picture.

Ignatius of the First House, the painting he had discovered in one of the halls when he transcended.

"Kinda like this, right?" He turned his phone toward her. "The person you saw?"

She was using the voice she was using when she thought he was definitely wrong about something, and he knew that, but in this case, he thought she was definitely wrong about this one. Encke had never spoken with anyone who had memories of a past life without having a past life. He had also never spoken to anyone who had experienced someone else's past life.

The easiest conclusion to make was that she was experiencing her own past life, no matter what form that had taken. Once everything else had been eliminated, the only conclusion left had to be the correct one.

"There's a lot of people in my memories. Most of them aren't knights and senshi. Maybe--"

His thoughts took a record scratch and fell off the top of the mountain peak in the distance of the city when she seemed to be more than agreeing that what she was looking at was the right species. The one. That was specifically the one he was showing her, the exact Enckean, the exact member of the People.

"Them?" Encke confirmed, pointing to the screen.

He might have peered around what he was showing her to make sure he hadn't pulled up some other painting.

"I don't know who you were in the past," because she clearly wasn't a knight, for the reasons she had been awoken as a Moon Knight in this life, and he was fairly sure senshi couldn't just become civilians, and-- a civilian? Probably, but who--

"But somehow, you knew me."

King Ignatius of the First House, Eldest Born--

That tone still seemed to be there -- perhaps not to the same degree, but he heard the way she said maybe. She wasn't denying him, though, but she sure didn't believe him, comparing the fact that space travel hadn't been invented until the 60s. And she wasn't quite wrong, at least by a human understanding of it. That was when civilians as far as they knew had started getting to space from Earth--

He'd bring up that Earth Knights had somehow traveled before then, but perhaps she'd just use that to back up her point. No magic, no special powers, there was no way she could be that, even if she was agreeing that it would have been super cute.

Honestly? It would be.

Perhaps they had been destined to meet all along.

"Just saying," he teased, because he wouldn't drop it, as much as she was doubting him, because he knew what he understood about these memories, at least from what he and others had witnessed, "never heard of anyone seeing memories that aren't theirs." And he supposed he had never met someone with civilian memories, but what she saw still hadn't been his. She saw him. Separate. Belonging to someone else. And whatever other possibilities had been eliminated--

Weird as a descriptor, though, drew a snort.

He was very used to seeing it at this point. Had been stunned by his appearance, initially, and now he occasionally forgot he didn't look like that anymore. In some ways, he wished he did. Perhaps if he did, this planet would have started out more alive than it had, and he was very proud of what he did, but there were still no people there. At least, none beyond the two of them-- "I guess it is a bit weird, right? Humans aren't really bioluminescent like that."

Honestly, it was a step more obviously unusual than even the pastel aliens that were Caedus and the Velencians--

"I like it, though. Feels right, like what the People should look like." He shot her a grin. "Of course, there was variance to that. From what I can tell, non-Enckeans lived here, too. Usually adopted into the Enckean whole if they wanted to be."

Maybe that was why she was there. A civilian of Earth or somewhere else with a curiosity about joining the People...

"I can tell you a bit more about who I was, if you're interested."

She wasn't wrong. He hadn't, either, and he couldn't really deny that one. It just seemed that they were taking two very different views of that. Nectaris' took the pessimistic angle of she must have been seeing someone else's, there was no way that could have been her own. Encke's took the more optimistic angle of that there was no way it could have been anyone else's, because it didn't track with anyone else's experiences.

But then something changed.

A mystery.

Encke grinned. No matter what the results--though he thought he was right, thanks--a mystery would feel more satisfying than making a definitive conclusion either way. And she was dancing for it, running circles around him for it, and he wiggled his fingers back as he tracked her around him as if preparing to do a twirl for a dance. "Alright, fine. Maybe between the two of us, we can figure out if civilians can have past lives too."

And maybe hers was a civilian that had some run-in with the King of the People. Though, why would they have known each other...

The mystery had layers.

He followed her to the fountain, keeping a jaunty pace behind her but letting her spin and leap on the fountain to her delight. Felt like something he had seen people do before. And this fountain was a nice, pleasant place. Had been so pleasant it had brought Caedus enough peace to rest... "I mean, think there are more aliens than there have been. Alastor, Dagon, Roka, all seem to be just one of several..."

Encke bounced from that topic back to the original intent before he got too distracted. "I was King Ignatius--I know--the eldest born of the first house, which was the ruling house of the current generation. The," his brows knit, "twelfth? Came before, and second came after. Spent a lot of time in research, trying to merge the opinions of my whole council, meeting with the people, meeting with out-comet dignitaries," meeting with someone he got the impression he shouldn't be...

The leader having romantic or intimate connections complicated the way power was passed on.

"I get the impression he was considerably more formal than I am. More self-assured, too." Perhaps to a fault. "Still prone to a lot of the same," he bounced on his toes, before adding, with a laugh, "fidgetiness, though. He seemed pretty admired. Something about how I was a leader fit for the modern age, with a good fit for diplomacy and a good eye for art. I apparently was a pretty big fan of spicy food. Was notorious for that among my home helpers."

"Well, Caedus comes by sometimes," offers Encke, thoughtfully, "and Roka's moving in with us too--" they knew a lot of aliens, didn't they? He never suspected he could count the number of extraterrestrial people he knew would be more than one, yet alone more than one's hand worth. And that didn't even count the ones he had just spotted without saying anything too--

(There had been at least one alien with Ida, he was fairly sure.)

"Almadel definitely counts too. He knows a lot about space, honestly. I'd love the chance to just sit and pick his brain..." but he was getting off-topic. "I guess I just forget how bizarre my people look in comparison to humans these days."

My people. Humans. Sometimes, he spoke as if he was more alien than he was human, especially when speaking of and thinking about who had been King Ignatius. The person he was deeply familiar with at this point, treated to a decade's worth of memories that came to his mind almost every time he had moved across this world. He saw some signs of it now, even as he took a moment to glance around, seeing a world much more populated in his mind's eye.

Her laughter brought a smile to his face.

"Little boy hardly at all," Encke snickered. "Hardly little, hardly a boy, definitely not human. Still has ADHD like the rest of us, right?"

As is confirming that, he started bouncing.

"Oh, I like spicy food actually!" He snickered. "Though not spice for spice's sake. Carolina reaper flavoring is canceled. Ghost pepper can be pretty good in chocolate, though..."

Well, if she didn't want it, more for him. "There was a blue pepper here, actually, similar in concept to our chili peppers but a bit rounder and glowing. King Ignatius thought they made a great food addition." And if he ignored everything else that happened on the visit to Astraya, he could remember Home Helper mentioning something about blue peppers... "They might be thriving here again, actually."

Maybe he'd try adding it to the space salsa...