The holidays had been a blur. Thanksgiving had taken its time in coming, but Christmas had just popped out of nowhere, like a ninja; a ninja holiday. Did that even make sense? Whatever, it fit. Between exams and patrols and accidentally beating up mirror Senshi and being rescued by chibi Senshi – yes, being rescued by, not rescuing – she hadn’t had time to even buy Christmas presents before the holiday was upon her.

In a flurry of mistletoe and wrapping paper, Christmas had gone just as quickly as it came, replaced by fireworks and alcoholic beverages. Rosa kept one eye on her imbibing parents and the other on her little siblings, and despite the faint edginess that she felt constantly – surely something would happen to ruin the holidays – all went well and all the winter holidays were perfectly merry. It was so nice - so normal - that her little brother throwing up on her shoes after eating too much candy didn’t really bother her.

Why then, in early January, had Rosa hurriedly left the house, transforming into Sailor Pomona as soon as she was a safe distance away? Too. Much. TOGETHERNESS.

Dammit all, but little brothers could be such a pain! Little brothers, jerkface older brothers, and nagging parents; the lot of them! Distracted as she had been by school and her Senshi duties, Pomona had almost forgotten. Then came the holidays and weeks of doing activities together, and as much as saving the world from magical psychopaths had helped her realize how much she cherished her family, enough was enough! She had to get out.

So Pomona took to the streets, arms crossed tightly against the cold, and began to patrol. She hadn’t patrolled since before the holidays, and even then her patrols had been shorter then normal. She’d been slacking again and really, there was no excuse for it. Maybe she’d make up for it and visit the dreaded park? There was always trouble to be found there.

A body-shaking shiver from the cold made Pomona reconsider. Going to look for a fight didn’t really appeal. In fact, the longer Pomona stayed out in the cold in her tiny Senshi outfit, the less she wanted to be outside at all. A pity, since being henshined up had sapped away the edginess she’d felt throughout the holidays, but the cold, oh no, she didn’t like it.

Wait… duh! Planet Pomona. Her planet was a fricken greenhouse, how could she forget that? She was willing to bet that it was just as hot and muggy there as it had been the last three times she had visited. And hey, the last time she hadn’t had any unfortunate encounters with her planet’s vegetation, so maybe it was a sign that she was familiar enough with her planet now to actually enjoy taking trips there.

Pulling out her magic red phone, the world soon became hot, humid, and green. Grinning, Pomona took a deep breath of the damp air, then let it out slowly. Talk about a change of pace! She swore she could feel her dry skin reviving from just the few seconds she’d been there.

Recognizing the crossroads she was at, Pomona decided that it was past time that she visit the little town she had spotted once before. Setting off in its direction, she kept to a sedate stroll; slow and steady just seemed like the way to do things on Planet Pomona. She got the feeling that the planet’s inhabitants had rarely done anything in a hurry, except for maybe hurrying to the dinner table, if the Pomona space-hobbits were anything like Tolkien’s Hobbits.

Tiled roofs soon appeared over the rolling hills, followed by what looked like adobe walls. It was hard to tell from the distance, seeing as how the walls were almost completely covered in different vines. It was not hard to tell though that it was most definitely a small town, or a tiny village actually; only four streets from the looks of it. Maybe Planet Pomona had no big cities? Just an educated guess, but she suspected it was true.

Pomona reached the very edge of the village, looked down the street, and grinned. The town could pass for a little Bree, if Bree had been more Spanish then English. As it was, the ivy curling over every building hid most of the adobe walls, so she could almost close her eyes and imagine…

… a really big festival. Wait, what?

Frowning, Pomona opened her eyes, and much to her consternation, the image was still there! It was like a bad drug drip, a ghostly scene playing out before her eyes. Instead of ivy, the buildings were decked out with lively flags and banners and streamers. More decorations were hung between the buildings, criss-crossing over the street. And the street! Before a weedy road, now crowded with hazy images of people: talking people, laughing people, drinking people, and eating people. Lots and lots of eating people. In fact, Pomona saw a mob of people surrounding a table laden with bowls of peppers, engaged in what looked suspiciously like an eating contest. She squinted, trying to get better look, then promptly fell back on her arse when one of the hallucination-contestants looked up.

Sydney!

Scrambling back onto her feet, Pomona started to make her way through the crowd to get a better look at the table, before she realized she was going through the crowd. That was… kinda disturbing. She knew it wasn’t real, but Pomona nevertheless made her way to the edge of the crowd, skirting around the ghostly apparitions she saw as she tried to make her way through. She suspected any on-looker would think she looked quite ridiculous, dancing around invisible obstacles, but she couldn’t just go plowing on through the crowd of ghost-hallucionation-memory people. She was sure it was disrespectful or something.

Of course, the memory ghosts didn’t seem to care that Pomona was trying to not walk through them. In fact, many of them seemed to be headed in her direction now, like she was swimming upstream. Some of the little children were pointing to some place behind her, and finally Pomona twisted to try and find what they were looking at. A small group of people had gathered around a blonde that looked like a sort of low-key belly dancer, except for the oddly familiar hair. It was not, however, the blonde that seemed to hold the children’s attention. No, it was the gray, tailless, talking cat that had garnered all this attention.

*********. It had to be. And if that was *********, then the blonde was probably Iris. She supposed it made sense that Iris would be here, since Iris was a fellow member of the Asteroid Belt.

Shaking her head, Pomona resumed heading towards the pepper-eating table. Up close now, she could definitely see that yes, one of the people chomping down on peppers definitely looked like a red-faced Sydney. There was a wild-haired girl, and a boy with puppy-ear hair, and smack in the center of the table was... herself.

Pomona stared and stared, then blinked and stared some more because really, it was odd seeing her past self. She had known on an intellectual level that she'd had a past life, but finally seeing proof of it in the form of her memory self was an experience. That and her logical little mind couldn't help but wonder why she was experiencing a memory - presumably her own - from a third person P.O.V. It made no sense. She quickly wrote it off to magic, knowing that if she pondered the issue too long she'd get a headache.

Back to the matter at hand: Sydney. If Sydney had been here on Planet Pomona, then obviously she had known her at least on a passing basis in the past. She was curious to know what their relationship had been like, especially since she was already picking up some subtle differences between this memory and the present day. For example, Sydney was willing eating peppers. Peppers! The Sydney Pomona knew disliked the spicy fruits - yes, they were fruits, not vegetables - and avoided them as best she could. This Sydney was not only eating them, but was doing so rather determinedly, her red face the only sign of her discomfort. In fact, most of the contestants seemed to be taking the competition quite seriously, herself included.

" Come on Rosie lass, you can do it! Don't be lettin' us down!"

The cry from the crowd got the attention of Pomona, her past self, and the past Sydney. Her past self looked like she wanted to throw a pepper at the man the had called out, but the expression looked exaggerated, like she was responding to a running joke or something. On the other hand, Syndey had a slightly amused look on her face as she eyed past-Pomona's reaction.

' Sydney somehow subconsciously remembered my past nickname? That's nuts.' Pomona thought, shaking her head in disbelief. ' Just a coincidence. It's an obvious enough nickname.'

The fact that her past self had flowers incorporated into her outfit probably had something to do with the nickname. Her past self’s hair - which was longer then her current style - had flowers woven into it, and she had a rose choker. It fit, she supposed; after all, Planet Pomona had an awful lot of plant life, and was most definitely an agricultural planet. In fact, considering the number of people gathered here, she suspected that this little town was the biggest single settlement on the whole planet.

Looking at it that way, this seemed like the place for the castle of Pomona to be located, assuming there was one. Pomona suspected that the castle wouldn’t be a very grand one, assuming there even was one to begin with. But every planet and/or Senshi had a castle, didn’t they? So surely there was at least an especially grand hobbit hole that passed for the Pomona castle. Pomona just had to find it.

Just as Pomona made up her mind to go searching for her castle, the memory ended, vanishing just as quickly as it came. Left in a weed-choked street, devoid of the parties from the distance past, Pomona found herself wishing the memory would come back. Having finally seen what it had looked like when people had lived here, the empty streets suddenly felt wrong. This had not been some cold city of jaded people, but a place where the inhabitants had been happy, warm, and lively, so now their absence was especially keen.

Shuddering, Pomona hurriedly walked down the widest looking street, figuring it was the most likely to lead to her castle. Once she made the turn onto the street, she could tell that she had made the right choice. The road was just a couple of buildings long, the buildings quickly replaced by wild shrubbery on both sides. Above the bushes, perched on a hill, Pomona could see a large house perched on a hill, overlooking the town. That, she figured, was probably the castle.

And sure enough, it was. The overgrown lane eventually widened into what had probably once been a lawn, the dirt road changing to worn cobblestone as it led up the hill to the two-story “palace.” It was certainly comfortable, perhaps even large, but it was no mansion, and certainly not what one would call a castle. It had no turrets, no moat, and didn’t even appear to be made of stone. Indeed, the patches of wall visible through the ivy appeared to be made of adobe, much like the buildings back in the town.

Shoving a few vines aside, Pomona brushed the wood of the arched front door before finally laying her hand on it.

“ Capsaicin.” She said with a sigh.

Capsaicin, Castle of Pomona. She knew instinctively that she had spent a lot of time here.

“ Amelia!” called someone.

Pomona pivoted to see her past-self chasing an orange-haired girl up the path to the castle. She barely got a glimpse at this “Amelia’s” face before she and her past self literally passed through the doors and into the castle. She couldn’t help but think that the freckled teen seemed vaguely familiar, even if she couldn’t place her.

Pomona pushed the heavy wooden door inward and was greeted by the sight of a fairly spacious entrance – spacious for here, anyway – flanked on both sides with curving staircases that led to a second floor. Between them was an arched opening, and having just seen her past self disappear through it, it was through there that Pomona chose to go. She moved at a fast pace, trying to keep up with her past self, and eventually was confronted with what looked like a small, confined jungle.

The Senshi stared at the wall of green for a moment, then allowed her eyes to follow the barely-visible perimeter, eventually realizing that this jungle was in fact an overgrown garden located in the center of the “castle.”

Right. So far Pomona hadn’t had many positive experiences with the local plant life, and she just couldn’t work up the motivation to tackle this mess today. Turning around, Pomona traced her way back through kitchens and dining rooms – yes, plural – before she finally made it back to the castle’s entrance. She planned to leave and resume her explorations another day, but it somehow seemed wrong – disrespectful, even - to magically beam away from within the castle.

Slipping out the castle’s doors, Pomona gaped at what she saw.

The lawn of the castle, the hills surrounding it – heck, Pomona was willing to bet all the available grass on the whole tiny little planet! – had been staked out by visitors with blankets and mattresses and sleeping bags. Little campfires had sprung up everywhere, dotting the rural landscape for as far as the eye could see. Children shrieked and giggled as they chased each other around said campfires, adults with over-full bellies watching them with lazy amusement. A group of locals stood nearby, whispering excitedly with a group of minstrels and bards.

It was… well, it was nice. Yes, ignoring all the evil thorns and hell-spawn peppers, Pomona could say that her planet had been nice once upon a time.

A sudden cheer and flurry of laughter erupted from the near by group, making Pomona leap a bit. Whipping her head around, she saw the group of locals dispersing, running amongst the guests lazing about on the lawn and pulling random people to their feet. The musicians, meanwhile, had clustered closer to a large bonfire that two other locals seemed to have magically started. A look from their director, and a lively tempo filled the air, loud, happy voices shouting obviously-familiar words along with them.

" Hark my lads and lassy-bells
Hear the voices rise and swell
Ho ho, hey hey, yer young ‘n gay!
So go and dance yer heart away!"

The Pomonians appeared to be dragging young people towards the bonfire, where they gleefully coerced them into lines for dancing. The locals then paired off, the men carrying the song on in booming voices.

" Now listen here you hopeful gents
You’ve no wife yet to lament!
So grab yerself a drink or two
And hold a lassy close to you."

The women-folk, in one well-rehearsed movement, all harrumphed and pushed away their dance partners, plucking young men from the group herded their earlier and using them as their new dance partners.

" Looky ladies, ‘n learn ye’ well
These boys, they hide intentions well
So don’t your a-heart deny:
Pick one easy on the eye!"

Now it was the ladies turn to laugh as they shoved the young men towards the assembled ladies, flouncing away for their original partners. One of the waiting maidens boldly took the nearest boy’s hand and pulled him into the dancing. With a start, Pomona realized it was herself.

Well. Well!

The dancing began in earnest then, the young singles pairing up with hoots and hollers, the now perked-up on-lookers cheering them on. Some of the onlookers even began to dance themselves, their twirling and stamping silhouettes visible in front of their campfires. Pomonians staggered out of the castle now and then, laden with trays of food – the phrase “too much food” had no meaning here – which they brought out amongst the guests. The guests, despite having surely eaten well earlier, helped themselves to the offerings to fuel themselves for the continued festivities.

Well indeed! Pomona grinned widely, alternating between shaking her head and laughing while she pulled out her phone and dialed home; her new home, anyway. This place, at last, she could tell had truly been her first home.