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First Part

Thraen gave a surprised, uncertain groan as air was pushed out of his lungs from her hug a bit, and more from the protests of his broken ribs. It came out as a strained, "Thannnnnnkssss-"

The usual instinct to cough was quashed, no better for his middle than firm manhandling from young ladies. Her hand on his arm was shivering, despite the energy in her voice, the declarative excitement- She's nervous? Tired? Afraid? Well, honestly, it doesn't have to be just one. It's probably a lot of things all at once. I've admitted I've not done this, so there's plenty for both of us to be worried about.

No, I need to not be worried. Focus. Like Stroud taught you, Quenton. No, not Quenton. I'm Thraen.

He emptied his mind slowly, letting thought based in vocabulary drain away as through his feet into the earth. Cares, hopes, fears, everything that was a person to fade away in long, slow breaths until inside there was only the brilliant starseed and a youth upon who's being was the name Thraen. He clasped the glimmer in imaginary hands, brought it near imagined chest. Listened.

It was almost inaudible at first, and his ears strained in the dark as listening for a ghost at midnight. Rain? No, falling water- fountains, the play of rocks and water, marble turning orbs and rolled glass pebbles. Leaves and branches swaying in a breeze of memory. Birds and cicada calling from long ago. Laughter- friends and lovers chased in hedge mazes and sought the prized hidden in alcoves and statued hands.

His real, good hand covered over Medea's on his broken arm, the less good hand hit the button. It was a weird, wrenching feel, and then it was so much cooler than before. There was no breeze, no fresh green scent or bloom of flowers. There was a grey waste with petrified tangles of branches and vines everywhere- blankets of skeletal fingers and hair that rose from the ground like supplicants asking for mercy. In the distance was a ruin of tumbling walls and the broken and glassless cage of an expansive conservatory.

"....all is dead."

"I....hear fountains in my heart. They're not even whispering here. It's all petrified...every last piece and life is ...there's no singing here at all. " Tears rolled down his cheeks, unchecked, but his expression was fierce and set in spite of them. " 'Abandoned city of metal and stone' the primer said of some. This isn't abandoned...except by me. By whatever the last song of the life of this world was that resides as my starseed. "

These were gardens here. That was a hedge and the stone beneath it tumbling down as age decays it enough to give in without...anything to act on it. What even happened ....there's....no way to know...its all stone. stone...petrified. "Petrified..there must have been a great amount of something that happened no...not necessarily water or liquid, I guess. Maybe magic, maybe flooding- I don't know. Our magic makes things happen out of thin air, so whose to say there wasn't something similar that happened. To this whole mass. A whole culture. "

"There's nothing here but despair, " he shifted Medea on his arm carefully, moving her gently to his good side to wrap his arm supportively around her waist. Looking down at their feet, their footsteps were clear in the accumulation of what must have once been leaves and detritus. Flowerpetals that crushed to dust, grey and colourless, under their shoes. "The primer said some might be lush. Some otherwise. That every case was different. The writer was still exploring their world, and that there were visions to be had. "

He looked up at the stars, the vast black of space a greater, clearer expanse of view from the tiny asteroid. The gas giants looked so much larger, and views of everything were packed with the shadows of the other asteroid belt objects. "If the seed is the heart, and we are living....there's hope for our lands. There's hope for lights like all those stars to keep burning. "

Was he reassuring her? Himself? Maybe it didn't matter which, and he wasn't sure if it was or wasn't true. Seeds are meant to be planted, given clean water and light, good soil. Grow. This can be rebuilt, somehow. Someway. Fires are just nature's way of renewal. "Besides....we're in space...aren't we? That's rather a miracle. Magical. If that's possible, anything is."

Considering as he met her eyes, her gentle hand he caught again that was stained with his own tears and chastely kissed the very pad-tips of those fingers. "Here dwells the very heart of Mercy and Felicity, no less clad in beauty and queenliness. Keen as a lance, it pieces and despair must bleed away and be forgotten for now."

"I should have known. 'Enchantment' is a synonym for 'happiness'. "
"I am remiss. Welcome to...Thraen. What was apparently my home. I am sorry our receiving of you is so poor, a dark world with no friendship to offer but that of one man. But that I offer, Medea. You share this sight, and bolster my hope with your council. "

"Let our voices and footsteps be the echoes of new music of this place. We can explore the grey shadows and see what there is to see. New tidings and learning to better act on. Adventure and purpose, however weary we may be. "

"Shall we start here? " He looked along the spindles of what had been row and hedge, stone-forms of once trees bordering and breaking it further down, lifting their great limbs to the empty sky. "This was what we probably understand as an 'English hedge maze' I think. Maybe there were many kinds of gardens here. Maybe we can see if a path can be found to those ruins and that ....conservatory. If people lived there, there could be artifacts that shed light on an idea of culture. "

"We should have brought a spade if we wanted to do actual digging. Though that's a good idea for next time. Maybe a sifter. I should just buy one of those junior archeologist kits they sell for kids at the Science and History Center. "

"Have you ever done that sort of thing...'Earth-side'? " It was a very odd question to ask. That they were honestly in space, on a foreign body and seeing evidence all around of life once lived there was mind-blowing. How was it hidden away from so many centuries of men and women looking up at the solar system?

The explanation probably lies in the same court as the fact that you're all a bunch of youths, teens and pre-teens running around in magical suits having a war with living shadows and none of the rest of the planet seems to notice or be concerned except that there are 'terrorists'. And I was just as naive when ********* found me and I gave her cheesecake. She deserves a whole table of cheesecakes for putting up with out ridiculousness and just going along with the disbelief. Those locked all at once in the shroud of ignorance and bliss.

Some of the plants, stopping here and there along their twisting forms, were recognizeable- a rose here, a boxwood there, and at odds of comfort and unease to Thraen himself. As the strolled along the maze corridor, he paused and hovered a hand near petrified thorns, "It looks like a rose. What do you think? These the thorns, the hips...the leaves aren't preserved...but the shapes are the same. Only half of these plants seem familiar. Maybe others were unique here, or on other sailor's worlds. "

"Dizzying to think that there were people and trade. Did they trade plants, to have them in such abundance? It isn't a very large place...not much room for gardens, plants and people all. Were they all native, or did they come for planets or other worlds and decide they wanted to live on a ridiculous little rock in a shower of other little rocks?"

"Do you know what sort of body Medea is? Is it an asteroid?"

Watching her tug on the petrified flower was a little funny. They would have done better to have brought implements if they really intended to do any hardcore scientific exploring. This was more like a surveying and preliminary expedition. "Away team to enterprise...? Here...petrification makes things rock, so pulling won't be any good. "

He crouched and picked up one of the fallen hedge-wall stones and thwacked it a few times lower down the stoney stem until the stoned-rose broke free. He offered it out to her with a gentled, calmed mien, "A souvenir. "

"A main belt asteroid? depending where on the orbit it is, it may not be very far from here, in the galactic reasoning of distances. Earth is what....one AU from the Sun ? That's 90 million miles, roughly? Main belt asteroids orbit between 2 and 3.3 AU. I can't mental math the distance between ambiguous points on the ellipse of the asteroid belt. But who knows, maybe Medea the rock is closer to here than Earth. "

The whole of the world of Thraen, looking out over it, was like reading The Little Prince. Nothing that looked like a baobab's corpse was in their immediate area. They could probably walk all of it in less than an afternoon. Maybe the buildings, few as they were, delved? Not that there was much room to dig either. There was enough random rubble that they had certainly built up, though as terraces or building skyscrapers was impossible from where they were.

His mind was distracting to hundreds of books, "I wish there was a Lorax here. Or a Once-ler with seeds to offer. None of these will do any good." The path led on, turned in the opposite direction from the conservatory. That was no guarantee it didn't lead to an eventual exit though. Wasn't there something about always turning in the same direction to get out of a maze?
"Are you any good at mazes? We could try to just break through, but stone boxwood seems a little ...aggressive and likely painful. We can see where we want to go. It's a little sad to be wandering a medusa-ed maze of plants. "

"Tempting to play a version of that people-watching game where we'd just make up stories for things as we saw them, only this with little alcoves and garden paths, other senshi...Maybe there was trade. So small of a place as this must have traded for something. Exporting seeds or vegetables, exotic plants. Maybe they imported grains or meat. Raw materials like stone and wood that they didn't have in abundance. Nothing that requires a lot of land, like cattle, could be kept here in any number. Maybe there were birds and small mammals like squirrels. Decorative fish in water gardens. No telling if there was any indigenous liquid..." he trailed off.

"Whatever we were in the past, we could be in the present or future. I could trade you stone flowers. Finest in the galaxy. " It was a little platitudinally sportive, and for that he hopes would get across a try at friendship more than else-wise.

Leaving pebbles would be a good idea if there weren't so very many and so much petrified bracken. Their footsteps were plain on the paves behind them, but if they started doubling they'd need a way to indicate direction. He picked up another fallen wall-stone in his good hand and used it to scratch a pale arrow into one of the paving stones of the path. If they came to just ground, it would make for easier arrow furrows, so he kept his impromptu writing utensil to hand.

It took about fifteen minutes and a handful of arrows later, following the always turn left formula, and they ewre standing outside the little hedgemaze, looking across a dried waterbed and stepping pole path of something like a Kaiyū-shiki-teien garden before the stacked stone ruin of what must have been the dwelling or a connecting piece to the conservatory. The patio outside the Consertavory was visible from where they stood, hints of rock sculpture, an fallen in grotto, and most likely moss garden evident.

As they crossed the petrified polls-like-stepping-stones, they could see weird, twisted shapes that were no longer recognizable melting vaguely into the faded, tiled patio. "Maybe that was furniture. This was probably water here. My story for here is going to be that this was a very private and exclusive veranda where everyone that lived here stopped daily and had a royal tea to break up the work day. The macaroons were universe renowned, as was the unique blend of pekoe. "

"How about you? What do you think?"

"Neither really, " He chuckled, "It's what I make up. I could as easily say that this terrace was where they had fencing competitions once a month with long-stem roses from those bushes we walked among. The Combatants had to go choose their 'sword, then fenced, and the first who's weapon had no flower crowning to top was the loser. The winner was given an orchid boutonniere and treated to free scones for a week. That wreckage is the remains of the judges stand, in that case."

"Or maybe this was where little festivals were held every week, and that was once a Punch and Judy booth that entertained tens of children come from all over the cosmos to see puppets made entirely out of plants. "


Listening to her compliment an invisible, unknonw past was strange, but appreciated nonetheless. "We must have all been happy. At least to some degree. It feels....different, standing here. Like I finally found where my heart has been searching for- a home I never knew, but was looking for with all my trips and travel. It was here all along, my heart. And the star's heart in my breast, all the way on Earth, where something still lived. "

"I don't know what I think yet....obviously something bad. Everything dead in a flash, or near a flash, and .....decaying for more than centuries. This is the sort of ruin and dust you see at Petra, the empty faced-houses of Cappadocia...places like that where people haven't been for generations. "

"I'm no geologist. What hasn't fallen apart here....it looks petrified. Some melted together. I know petrification can happen by immersion in liquid, highly mineral liquid. The mineral slowly replace the cells of the thing that is petrifying. I can't say that is what happened here though. I don't know. But it looks like everyone and everything died, suddenly. Maybe some version of Herculaneum or Pompeii....maybe some made it through the initial catastrophe in sealed rooms further in those ruins there, but perished with no water or food. I'll know with some exploration maybe. Or maybe I'll never really know..."

"If I could get a team of specialists, maybe then answers would come to light. Its all guesses until then. "

"Grim ones."

"How do you read the clues?"

“It is a lot to take in, just the initial look. At least we do still have a living place to go return to. ” He considered, looking her over more carefully- a darkened translucence at her eyes belied her energetic bearing and voice. It supported her admission. Exhausted isn’t kidding. “You’ve not been work-life balancing much. “

“We should go back...except the lay of the land,without the right equipment and state of mind,I don’t expect we’ll discover much more here today. Its enough to think about the desolation to begin. It's " He paused, swallowing, looking around them, "an experience. Knowing it's possible and having done it- coming to one of our worlds. A real end-of-world scenario seen with our own eyes. Research and development of hypothesis can come first, then field archeology. “

He held out his good hand, palm up in entreaty, to her across the few steps of the veranda. “Let’s go home. This place may be that one day, for me. For others. It may be the house of the soul in my breast. But for now, this body comes from Earth, and rests there the hours of Terran night or day at need. As I suspect you should, if you’re going to keep your feet. ”

“We can go back, I’ll show you how to scan other senshi into your phone. You can scan me and then you can call me at need, any time you ever need help. “