Welcome to Gaia! ::

Her shoes weren't good for running.

Oh, Hvergelmir knew that the fact that she had shoes at all was something to be grateful for -- because Zee didn't. And she knew that the fact that her shoes were flats, with no heel, was something to be grateful for, too -- because lots of people seemed to have been put in dufficult-looking stilettos. But the fact was, they really could've used some love in the Dr. Scholls department: her little starry flats were terrible for arch support and occasionally caused blisters, and they just didn't exactly render her a speed demon.

Still, today she'd crossed town in unusual haste: at a jog, the train of her dress bunched in one hand. Her friend was in trouble.

Her friend who was generous and kind and made her feel not just included, but welcome and wanted wherever they went. Her friend who had been a pillar of strength, offering confidence and comfort to a young page who was terribly unsure of herself.

Her friend who had never yet, in all these months, asked her for the least, littlest thing. Babylon.

And now here he was, just where they'd met the last time, when she'd been the one in need. He was sitting on the fountain as he had been before, but there was no mistaking the difference between then and now. Now he'd gone all wrong.

Babylon was leaking energy in a steady, ugly stream. It poured from his eyes, lit blue, shuttered only slightly whenever he blinked, and gushed through his fingers in great, liquid beams, casting his nearby area in a sickly, shifting blue glow. His hair had a lankness to it that betrayed exhaustion, and the dewy sheen of sweat was on his face, where the blue light caught and glittered.

Titan had been worried about Babylon, but it hadn't been on a level of worry that had led Hvergelmir to expect this. This wasn't just glowy. This was the levees inside Babylon being overwhelmed, some reaction to what Titan had explained was a second starseed. It looked like it was breaking him down from the inside, like a persistent tremor, a dissonance that meant to shake him apart.

"Babylon!" she said, running forward, his attempts at friendly chatter doing nothing to soothe her. Hvergelmir reached out to catch his face worriedly between her hands, crouching to his seated level so her head was close to his, to assess some kind of damage she couldn't even understand. "What's happened to you?" she asked, her voice at an anxious whisper.

Dying? Hvergelmir thought with rising panic. No -- you can't. You can't.

In her mind's eye she saw the man in the alleyway, the one she'd completely failed to save from Sailor Ate. She remembered his crushed-in face, the horrible stillness of him. She remembered the crushing realization of all that she wanted to do and couldn't -- a life lost no matter how badly she'd wanted circumstances to be otherwise. She didn't think she could bear it happening to a friend.

She clawed through her brain for an answer -- something she could do. He had two starseeds, but none of them knew how to draw a starseed out of the chest, and the Space Cauldron --

-- wait. She knew that name.

A dozen little memories had flickered at her each time she'd visited her Wonder. Mostly they were odd curiosities that made her speculate about her old life, or bits and pieces of recollection that told her tidbits about the Well and its purpose. She understood the basic gist of it -- a place of rest for a weary traveler -- but some things only made sense in retrospect. Only when other bits and pieces fell into place.

The Space Cauldron, the voice echoed hauntingly in her mind.

Babylon sobbed and Hvergelmir reached forward to curl him into a hug, wanting to sob herself. She knew what it was like to take a chance on something you knew could be foolish, because you couldn't bear not to try. Babylon didn't deserve to die for something like this. No one did.

"I thought that once," she said soothingly, arms around him like she could hold his collapsing frame together through strength of will, like she could staunch the flow of energy bleeding him out. "I thought no one knew anything. It's not true."

Hvergelmir leaned away again, placing a hand on either side of his face to look him in the eyes, such as they were. "Everyone knows a little bit, if you can just string it all together. You knew you could trust a Negaverse soldier with your problems, right? And Titanlåvenite knew you were in trouble." She tilted her head forward till their foreheads were pressed together. "I can't get you to the Space Cauldron, but -- I think I know the next little bit. Can you hang on just a little while longer?"

Babylon was holding it together pretty poorly -- he looked weaker by the second. If he had time left, it might not be much. Even his conversation was going, leaving nothing but scattered thoughts and fears, the raw pieces of him.

You never mentioned you knew Avalon, she thought. I told you her name, and you obviously have some kind of history, and you never said a word. I might as well have been talking about a stranger. What are you hiding?

But she thought she knew what he was hiding, after all. It was in his voice, too, when he said she'll kill all my friends. It was in his chipper tone and his cheerful smile in any situation: leading a kayaking trip, helping his friend run a training course. It was the elephant in the room of their friendship, this friend of hers who carried all his burdens all alone.

So when she answered him, she didn't say we all ******** up sometimes or you'll figure out things with Avalon later. Hvergelmir said the thing that seemed, to her, like the most important thing to say.

"It's okay not to want to die just for yourself, too," she reassured him. It was the kind of thing Carmine was always saying. "You don't have to explain why you want to live. You don't have to justify why you're worth the world's time. You're a good person and you deserve to live because life is worth having -- and you're my friend and I say that's it, so that's it, okay?"

Hvergelmir reached out a hand and curled Babylon's fingers between her own, clutching tightly so he couldn't lose hold. It was strange. Blue light poured down over the top of her arm.

"Don't let go," she insisted, meaning her hand, meaning his life -- trying to inject more bravado into it than she felt. "The next step is a very long journey."

She hoped she sounded reassuring; she was trying to be. Hvergelmir didn't think her friend would be served well by Hvergelmir panicking and losing her head, not when his hold on life was so tenuous.

In reality, though, she was counting back days in her head. How long had it been since she and Zippeite had slipped across the galaxy after his school had let out for the summer? Fourteen days? Fifteen?

Not enough, not enough by far. She needed three weeks. She knew that. She'd tried it before, whenever the urge to run away from her life again for a little while came upon her, and it had never worked. The connection always floundered and faded again. Without the full three weeks, it never came.

But she'd never needed it to this badly before. And her friend didn't have a few extra days to wait. She had to at least try.

Hvergelmir squeezed Babylon's hand hard with her own, leaned forward, and shut her eyes tight. She called out to her Wonder in a single, desperate reach, straining not to lose the thread before she could catch it. And there it was, invisible and fine as a single strand of hair, a faint connection thrown back to her like a lifeline: not much to hold onto, but not nothing.

Hvergelmir, please, she beseeched her Wonder desperately, gritting her teeth to try to bring that faint connection into bright focus. Give me strength.

Then she grabbed onto the thready line of connection, the one that tied her irrevocably to her Wonder, and with the slimmest, barest hope like an ache in her chest -- she pulled on it as hard as she could.

* * * *

The world that Hvergelmir and Babylon reappeared in was quieter than the one they'd left. There was an oldness to the air, a peacefulness to the great emptiness of it. Overhead and on all sides of the island, as far as the eye could see, space yawned with billions of glittering stars, unimpeded by bright suns and light pollution. The only sound aside from their own movements was so faint as to be nearly absent: the soft churning of swelling water nearby. A curious light illuminated the atmosphere enough to see by, but it lacked a visible source, emanating instead from everywhere and nowhere, pale and inobtrusive. There were no lamps and no daytime stars, nothing to obstruct their view of the glimmering sky -- only an honor guard of Doric columns rising high into the air overhead, standing sentinel over them.

They'd been by a fountain a moment ago. Now they were somewhere far across space, where the galaxy found root, at the Wonder that had claimed Laney's predecessor so long ago as its knight. The Well was mere steps away -- its liquid tumbling gently about, reflecting back the night sky with the near-perfection of a mirror that could move. She'd made it.

Hvergelmir sank back, exhausted, trying to catch her breath.

"Babylon?" she called out worriedly. "Are you okay?"

It would not have comforted Babylon to know that there was no plan to speak of. As a result, Hvergelmir didn't bother speaking of it; she focused on what she could do in the here and now, trying not to give in to panic. She was going to have to figure something out pretty soon now -- but for now, she was sticking to the philosophy of just putting one foot in front of the other.

And she still had one or two tricks up her sleeve.

"Sorry about the trip," she said, seeing how rapidly it had drawn his energy down. It had nearly drowned him -- he didn't look like he'd survive a return trip. This was it, then: they were committed. If they were going to find an answer for Babylon, it was going to have to be here.

In all honesty, what Hvergelmir had told Babylon earlier was mostly true. In these circumstances, she knew precious little that could help her friend's situation. She could neither take him to the Space Cauldron nor draw the starseed out of his chest. All she had were a few scattered fragments of memory -- no answers. But there were two reasons she'd brought him here, even with the chance that making such a long trip might have killed him.

The first reason was very close at hand.

"Alright, up we get," she said brightly, trying to keep up a running stream of bolstering chat. She rearranged his limbs a little, then started picking up the much heavier Mercury Knight in a practiced lift. "As my esteemed colleague may recall, I am a world-renowned people carrier. Which is -- " She grunted, hefting him a little higher before giving up and letting him slide back a bit to get his feet to the ground and help crutch just a little bit of his own weight. In her powered form, she should've been able to manage him -- but the early jump to her Wonder had taken a lot out of her. It was lucky they only had to go a few feet. " -- lucky for you, because you are world-renownedly heavy, as it turns out. Lay off the freeweights maybe."

Hvergelmir got them to the lip of the well, circling around to where the stone steps began their descent down into the water. "In you go," she instructed, keeping them carefully to the stairs. "Very exclusive day spa, VIPs only. But stay here by the edge, where the steps are -- just sit down and hang out. I'm, uh, not actually sure the well has a bottom. Just sit in the water, take a drink, catch your breath for a minute. It'll help."

The wellspring Hvergelmir was a cosmic wonder in and of itself, but she didn't expect that it would solve Babylon's problem. It was a place of renewal, not of healing. This was a fuel source. A place of energy. She didn't think it would fix him. But she hoped it would buy them some time.

The other reason she'd brought them here was the one she was less sure of. It was the bigger gamble. She knew only a little bit about her Wonder or her place in the cosmos, her connection to the Space Cauldron, but that didn't mean there wasn't someone else who had more answers than she did.

There was Nephthys. Nephthys who had lived and maybe died here, who had been the knight of Hvergelmir in her time, who had been born and reborn as Laney Sutton, and who had seen and done things Hvergelmir was still struggling to remember. Laney had been Nephthys once -- and those memories only came back to her here, in this place, feeling the marble beneath her feet and the old stone under her hands. There were answers to Babylon's questions waiting in her mind. She could almost feel them, pressing their phantom fingers against the walls of forgotten memory, like they were trapped under the ice of a frozen lake and trying reach the air.

Hvergelmir sat down on the ledge of the well, dangling her feet in the water. She had to get a memory to surface somehow -- but how could she make sure it was what she needed? Maybe she needed some kind of a prompt -- some way to pick through the ice.

"How much do you know about the Space Cauldron?" she asked Babylon, hoping something he'd say would trigger some kind of a memory.

Babylon got better, mercifully -- if barely, and not, she suspected, for very long. He was well enough to answer her question, though, and that was what she needed. There was little else she could do if nothing came to her, so she waited, going over what he'd said, picking apart each word to see if any of them rang any bells.

Then Babylon jammed his hands against his eyes and cried out in pain -- begging her to make it stop.

She froze. There was nothing she could do -- nothing at all. He was in agony, and he was dying, and neither of them knew what she could possibly do about it, but she was all he had. She was his last resort.

"Okay," she said, leaning forward to pull Babylon into her arms and cradle his head against her shoulder. She rested her cheek against the top of his head and closed her eyes. "Okay."

Out loud, just to try and offer what comfort she could, Hvergelmir started humming, then singing -- The Beatles' Let It Be, because it was the first soothing song she could think of that didn't have a creepy death vibe like Tiny Dancer.

Inside her head, she was running through his words over and over, picking ones to focus on. She needed something soon.

It can be bargained with. It's got some kind of intelligence.

When Hvergelmir opened her eyes again, there were two women standing near the edge of the well. One of them -- the one that had Laney's same gold eyes -- seemed almost to be staring at her.

"Stay as long as you like," Nephthys was saying. "You won't find much ahead. There are no Wonders at the Cauldron -- the Princess keeps her own senshi to guard it. I'm not sure how hospitable you'll find them."

"Which way is it?" the other woman asked.

Nephthys pointed to a glimmering light out in the distance, shining brighter than the rest. "Straight on from here to the gates, a long way on. This is the last stop."

The woman followed where she pointed with a quiet laugh. "Have you met any of the famous Cauldron recluses?" she asked. "Are they utter boors?"

If she'd met any of the Space Cauldron's guardians, though, Hvergelmir didn't find out. Nephthys looked down at the Well, almost seeming to look through her again, and then the two women faded away.

Hvergelmir stared for a moment, her voice lowered to a quiet hum again.

Well, there it was. That was what her memory had to offer her.

"Babylon," she said slowly, her voice still low. "Can you still communicate with your ancestor? Could you ask him something?"

"I'm sorry," Hvergelmir said, stroking Babylon's hair lightly. "About your dad. Avalon seems . . . " She struggled for a word for it, wondering what it was that Avalon, exactly, seemed. It was unfair of her to presume she knew -- but as Babylon's friend, she felt an obligation to guess. "She seems like she's burning her bridges so she has nowhere left to go back to." Hvergelmir cast her gaze aside to find the mark tattooed on her arm. Here at her wonder it glowed, trailing light -- it didn't do that back on Earth. She supposed she'd burned a bridge, too, setting herself on a path she couldn't turn back from. "Too much freedom can be terrifying, sometimes."

Now wasn't the time for idle musing, though. "Tell him hi for me," she said. "And ask him -- ask if there's a connection between knights and princesses. If he knows of any time when they can sense each other."

Alright. Alright. Hvergelmir could work with that. There it was, the last breadcrumb they had left to chase down. The princess of the Cauldron herself.

"Living is an honor," she said firmly, kissing Babylon on the forehead. "Living is the highest honor. She's the princess of the Space Cauldron. She'll come."

She had to come, if she really was alive, Hvergelmir thought. If Babylon's life was worth less than her time, she was no sort of princess at all.

Brimming with sudden, painful hope, Hvergelmir resettled Babylon against the edge of the Well and got up. The bottom of her dress was soaked, shimmering with starlight even darker than usual. "Wait here."

Hvergelmir hurried off to the temple. It was still dusty, for the most part -- she hadn't begun her cleaning there yet -- but she'd been inside, and there were pockets that were shielded from time and age, protected from the blanket of dust that had settled elsewhere in what had once been her home. She made a dash for the kitchen.

The island itself was fairly small. As a result, Babylon was treated to one or two yelped curses here or there -- "Crap!" -- "oh, come on" -- and then, finally, a particularly memorable, "Why is every version of me such a slob?"

Then "Ow. Ow. Nggggh-owwww."

Gradually she fell silent, then -- a few seconds later -- reappeared, returning to her place at the edge of the Well.

Her left hand dripped blood, trickling slowly down her fingers. On her palm she'd taken a knife and carved out the Star of Cosmos, the only thing she could think of under the circumstances.

She sat down again, curling her good hand back around Babylon protectively. "I think she'll get the message," she said with a wry laugh. "It's kind of on-the-nose, don't you think?"