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 Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 10:39 pm
A cool breeze swept across the rocky ground. The remains of once-tall buildings funneled it down alleys, only to expand again over the open spaces where markets had once been. It blew Irene's hair out of her face as she took one shaky step, then another, becoming only the third thing to move any part of the asteroid in hundreds of years.
The other force couldn't be felt, but Irene could see its effects even from her spot in the open. The towers off in the distance didn't tower the way they probably had, once. Pitched roofs were sliding off of their supports, missing shingles and beams. Some pillars were still standing, while others had fallen on their sides, and there was no sign of what, if anything, they might have been built to support. The ground beneath her feet was paved with cracked stone, scratched and worn and wobbly. A few flowers sprang up between particularly large gaps in the pavement, reassuring her a little bit. At least she wasn't the only living being there.
The flowers were unusual, and she knelt to examine the closest one better. It had a thick stalk topped with one huge petal that seemed to wrap around the overly-large stamen. Irene felt her nose begin to twitch and gently pushed the flower away, trying to avoid its pollen. To her surprise, the stem bent and broke easily, the remains of the flower resting on the ground.
"Ahhhh-choo!"
Too late, she realized that the sneeze was caused the the ample quantities of dust, rather than the pollen. Rummaging in her purse, Irene pulled out her pillbox and swallowed a couple of antihistamine tablets. She made a face as they went down, and they didn't fix anything immediately. Her nose still itched, the back of her throat tickled, and she could feel a tightening in her chest.
"Of course there would be dust," she muttered, fumbling for her inhaler. The smart thing to do would be to leave, but she wasn't willing to run away so soon after making her mind up to come. One puff, two puffs, and then things loosened just a little. Once the other meds kicked in, she'd probably be fine, as long as she was careful. No running, no jumping- not that such things would be safe to do in heels on uneven ground. And she'd have to pay attention to her breathing.
Bending down again, Irene picked up the flower she had inadvertently plucked and raised it to her face. What pollen there was didn't seem to exacerbate her symptoms, and the flower had just a bit of a scent, gentle and warm, reminding her of summer. Holding it was a reminder that she needed to take it easy, but it was a pleasant reminder.
A full-scale exploration would have to wait. Not that she could reasonably expect to get through an entire asteroid in less than a day. But there were crumbling buildings nearby, and what looked like the remains of a forest, and something like a mountain beyond that. Even that was too much ground to cover all at once, but it gave her plenty of room to get started.
"So," she told her flower, "let's see what this is all about."
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Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 10:40 pm
The area she had appeared in was fairly wide and flat. There were some designs worked into the stone of the ground, but everything was so broken and covered with dust that it was impossible to make them out. She supposed it must have been pretty, once, which meant that it was someplace worth putting effort into. Some sort of plaza, possibly. Maybe a meeting space. If there had been any furnishing beyond the patterns in the floor and the columns scattered around the space, they were gone now, lost to time.
Irene walked carefully, being mindful of each step, until she reached one of the pillars that was still standing. It was much shorter than she would have expected; at most, twice her height. There were carvings looping around it, but they had eroded and the detail was gone. At best, she could work out something that looked like a leaf, and maybe another one that was a flower. Or a bird. Or a fluffy cloud.
Maybe she was doing this too soon. She would be in college in the fall, finally able to start taking classes about things that truly interested her. Culture, language, anthropology. She could take an introductory archaeology course too, and maybe then she would be better prepared to interpret the information her asteroid was trying to give her. Maybe some of the other senshi would be willing to help her. This was too much of a project for any one person to handle.
But that was all the more reason to get started. While it was true that she couldn't realistically expect to catalog the entirety of a celestial object on her own, and certainly not in one visit, she could make a start. The more she discovered that day, the less she would have left to do on future visits. It would be slow, like chipping away at a mountain, but any progress was better than nothing.
"Rome wasn't built in a day," she told herself, smirking. Her father hated that expression, and whenever anyone used it, he gave them an earful about how the Romans had stolen all of their culture from the Greeks. What she'd had to endure from him and his lectures on architecture. Everything from the types of marble used to the orders of columns-
An idea occurred to her, and she looked up, towards the top of the column. If the design came from one of the classical orders, maybe she would be able to recognize it. But there were no curlicues that marked Ionic columns, nor leaves and scrolls for Corinthian columns. There weren't the simpler capitals of Doric colums, or the even simpler ones of Tuscan columns. Instead, the shaft widened slightly at the top before ending abruptly, as if the capitals had been sliced off. Or had never been built in the first place.
Taking a few steps back, Irene tried to get a better look at the area in front of her. Her column was in a group with three others, making a sort of uneven rectangle. There were others off to the sides, making other shapes, but there was no set distance between each cluster. As she walked through the groupings, she could see that the designs carved into the columns looked to be the same for each set. There were five columns decorated with what seemed to be waves, and four more off to the side with tiny ovals. Each oval had a carved dot near one of the ends, and there were more flowers mixed in with them, tiny ones that she was sure she recognized even in their eroded state.
All at once, the pieces clicked. "Olives!" It had to be. Considering her attack, and the traditional meaning of olive branches, it all made sense. Sort of. Knowing that this place knew of olives didn't explain what they were doing on a column, or what the columns were for, or any of the other mysteries she hadn't even touched on yet. But it was a start.
"So there were olives. Possibly. And flowers." Irene took another deep breath, smiling as the scent of the bloom she held relaxed her a little more. "And other trees, it looks like." She turned her attention to what appeared to be a forest, a short distance away. There were a number of tall buildings between her and the trees, and she could only see glimpses of green and brown between crumbling stone walls. Above everything else, a mountain loomed, and above that, clear blue sky.
It was a cloudless day, perfect for seeing what else her asteroid had to show her. Taking another whiff of the flower's scent, she began to walk towards the buildings, and the forest, and whatever lay beyond.
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Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 10:41 pm
As she got closer, Irene could see that the buildings she approached had balconies all each side, on every floor. Stone railings ran around the edges, sculpted into shapes that reminded her of the carvings on the columns in the plaza. Several spots showed gaps in the railings, and there were enough loose pieces of rock underfoot that she had to question the structural integrity of not just the balconies, but the buildings themselves.
The walls of the first story were perforated with wide, airy arches, some of which had collapsed. Irene stepped around a pile of rock and peered through the closest opening. She could see large cracks spiderwebbed across the ceiling, which made her nervous, but there were no missing pieces that she could see. The inside of the room was quite bare, with just a few shelves carved into the walls, and a long stone counter at one end.
It looked like something was resting on the counter, but it was hard to tell. Since it didn't look like the ceiling was about to fall on her, she took a few steps inside, kicking up an enormous cloud of dust as she moved. Right away she began to cough, and she held the flower she carried over her nose and mouth as a sort of mask while backtracking hastily. Once she made it out of the room, it became substantially easier to breathe, though she left the flower up by her face as a sort of safety measure until the dust began to settle.
Indoor explanation was clearly out of the question. There was too much dust, and she had no way to know if the buildings were safe. It was disappointing, but, she told herself, a temporary setback. Now that she knew what she had to work with, she could prepare better for next time.
Because there would be a next time. Irene wanted to know more about the place she had once lived, the place she had been charged to protect. That continued to fill her with power an eternity later. If she was all that was left of a thriving civilization, she owed it to those who had come before her to find out what they had gone through, and pass that information along for as long as she could.
With that at the forefront of her mind, she continued along the narrow path, having to make odd turns since the buildings weren't built on a grid. Some streets ended abruptly as they met other buildings, or meandered leisurely before leading into courtyards. She lost sight of the forest a couple of times, and the time spent in such close quarters was beginning to make her feel claustrophobic. Whenever she jostled a loose piece of stone with her feet, she had to look at the walls surrounding her, just to make sure they weren't really closing in on her.
And then, all of a sudden, she was through. Wood and stone rose up in front of her, for as far as she could make out. Now that she was up close, she saw that the base of the mountain was surrounded by more structures. These were much shorter than the buildings she had just passed by- thankfully- and built in a very different style. Tall pointed roofs peeked above the tops of the trees. Every visible inch was carved into far more ornate designs than those that decorated the columns she'd studied earlier.
The nearest archway was almost heart-shaped, and was draped in dark vines. Irene reached up to touch one, and jerked her hand back when she realized that it, too, was stone. Or was it? Biting the tip of her pointer finger gently, she pulled off one of her gloves, then reached out again. The vine was stiff and heavy, but felt waxy under her fingers. Maybe it was just well-polished, or maybe something else.
She smiled. Another mystery to think about. And, eventually, to solve.
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Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 10:42 pm
"This is incredible," Irene breathed.
It was a temple. No, a whole series of temples. She could recognize some common features, like altars and friezes, from her studies of other cultures. There were plenty of statues as well, though many were missing limbs, and others were tipped over. None of the figures were familiar to her, or even wearing a familiar costume, which she might have expected. But that was silly, she chided herself. Just because she was a senshi didn't mean there would be statues of her on her home world. Who said that she had done anything worth building a statue for?
The temples themselves, amazing as they were, weren't the incredible part. Nor was the forest, which surrounded everything closely enough that she felt completely cut off from the part of the asteroid she had walked through. And maybe that was the point. The tall buildings she had passed were certainly part of a bustling city. The forest was much more calming, even though it was no quieter than the ruins she had left behind.
The incredible thing was the way the forest and the temples mixed. Literally, in some cases. Pillars were pushed aside by trees that held up heavy stone roofs instead. Branches and vines wrapped around statues and columns and sometimes entire buildings. Roots tangled with everything, creating their own natural paths and stairways. It was a perfect blend of nature and design, and Irene loved the effect. There was no way to tell if this level of integration had been planned, or if it was merely the result of living things being left to their own devices. Personally, she hoped that it was intentional, and that everyone who lived there had gotten the chance to experience it in this way.
The trees themselves seemed to be mainly of the same type, thick and dark, with thinner branches that liked to work their way around whatever got in their path. Irene's left hand was still bare, her glove tucked neatly into her purse, while her right one continued to hold the flower she had accidentally picked. With her free hand, she touched the trunk of the nearest tree lightly. It was surprisingly cold, and the bark didn't give under her touch even when she applied more pressure. If anything, it felt more like stone carved into the shape of a tree. But that didn't make any sense. Nor did it seem like the right conclusion.
Adding it to the pile of puzzles she was collecting, she moved on, picking her way over roots and across tiny trickling streams that she hadn't even noticed at first. Each temple that she passed was more ornate than the last, and they seemed to be leading to a larger structure further on, with the largest, highest, pointiest roof. That, Irene decided, would be her goal. But that didn't mean that she couldn't enjoy getting there. As long as she didn't wrench an ankle or something.
The path became more difficult to traverse as she went on. Eventually, she needed to use both of her hands to get to the top of one rather steep ledge. After all the time she had spent holding her flower, she was reluctant to set it down. Instead, she thrust the thick stem through the place where one of her braids looped. It flopped into her face awkwardly, and she had to twist it a bit until it stayed put. Then, she put her glove back on and began to climb, wondering if whatever she was looking for would be worth all of this effort.
The view from the top of the ledge was definitely worth the effort, as she turned back to see just how far she had come. Until then, she hadn't noticed that the path sloped upwards the further in she traveled. The forest didn't simply surround the mountain, but climbed with it. She looked up, but couldn't see where the forest ended and the mountain began. Looking from afar, she could make that distinction, but from the inside, it was hard to tell.
A pointed arch loomed ahead of her. Irene tapped it lightly as she walked through, then checked to make sure she hadn't lost her flower. It was, she felt, odd that there were no flowers in the forest. Nor was there any grass or moss. It seemed as though the trees grew out of the rock of the mountain, but surely that was impossible.
It would explain why everything was so hard, though. Why the trees and vines felt like stone, and refused to move. It didn't explain where the plants got their nutrients, or how they were able to root in the ground. But these weren't earthly trees. Maybe what little she knew about biology didn't necessarily apply here.
Through the arch was a courtyard that led to another arch in the same shape. There were statues at either end. One was a man, dressed in a knee-length garment with long, wide sleeves and a high collar. Raised patterns mimicked embroidery, and even wrinkles in the cloth were sculpted. He wore pants, but no shoes. His hands, held in front of him, were hidden by his sleeves. He seemed to be looking at the statue across from him, a woman in a long flowing gown that wrapped around her. It looked a bit like a bathrobe, actually, but like the man's coat, was covered in lavish "embroidery." Both her hands and feet were covered, and she wore a large conical hat with straps that tied under her chin.
She seemed to be looking across at the man as well, and something about the way they were set up seemed sad to Irene. How long had they been across from each other, staring, unable to go to the person they wanted? Had they been set up so far apart from each other on purpose? And if so, why?
"They're only statues," she told herself scornfully, but that didn't make her feel any better. Instead, she took the flower out of her hair and laid it across the woman's outstretched hands, which were enveloped by her sleeves. Only when she was sure it wouldn't be blown off easily did she step back and admire her work. It wasn't much, but maybe it would help her be a little less lonely. Especially if she thought the man had brought it for her.
What was she even going on about? Shaking her head, she went through the exit arch and continued, though her strength was beginning to wane. A glance up the mountainside and an assessment of her energy levels told her that she wouldn't be able to reach the central complex. Not on this visit. But she could still make it through a couple more temples before she had to leave, especially if the ground wasn't too rough.
She walked through a grove of trees lined with friezes, and past another building, its roof lying in pieces inside its walls. Not one she wanted to check out in person. Skirting it led slightly off course, to a less-forested area. Thin columns lined either side of a passageway to a smaller temple with a more rounded roof. She took a look at the tops of the columns, expecting them to be bare like the ones in the plaza. Instead, the tops were carved to look like flowers, with one large petal wrapping around the column's stem. Just like the one she had been carrying.
Curiosity overcame her, and she practically ran along this side path, only tripping once. She slowed down when she reached the entrance to the temple, warily eyeing the heavy-looking roof. It was rounded rather than pointed, though. That meant it probably wasn't as heavy as some of the others, and domes were good, strong choices to bear weight. There was fairly little cracking in the stone. If it had survived this long, it probably wouldn't bury her under rubble. Or so she hoped.
Even though she knew it was silly, Irene crossed her fingers before ducking inside.
This temple didn't have walls. Its roof was supported by arches at the front and rear, and pillars along the sides. Which made Irene nervous, but she quickly realized that it was for the best. If the space had been enclosed, it probably would have been full of dust. Not to mention pitch black. As it was, enough light came through from the outside for her to get an idea of what she was looking at, and the dust wasn't oppressive.
The reason for that last one was clear once her eyes started to adjust. They widened as she looked around, at the space between the pillars. It was filled with flowers just like the one she had picked. There were dozens of them, maybe even hundreds, swaying gently as she passed by them. Once, she went a little too close, and a couple of the stems snapped. Irene bit her lip and picked them up, holding them close to her chest. Then, making up her mind, she picked a few deliberately. There were enough flowers growing that nobody would miss a few. And it felt good, holding her steadily growing bouquet like something precious. Which it was.
There was an altar at the far end of the temple, behind which she could just glimpse another arch. It was carved with more images of the flowers she held, and a woman tending them. She was smiling warmly, and her smile made Irene smile too. In front of the altar was a stone basin, and in front of that, a sunken pool filled with what seemed to be water. Not that she was about to stick her hand in and find out. When she came closer to the pool, she was surprised to see that it was deeper than she had expected it to be. More flowers seemed to be floating inside, submerged in the clear liquid, out of reach.
The basin, she found after skirting the pool, was empty and dry. But it also wasn't attached to its pedestal like she thought it was. When she leaned against it, the bowl moved. Maybe it was meant to be filled from the pool? But it was so big, and made of stone. There was no way she would be able to budge it.
"You don't know until you try," she told herself, setting her bouquet down on the altar. The bowl was heavy, but not too heavy to lift. She held onto the rim with both hands and dragged it to the pool, letting out a shriek when she accidentally dropped it in. Her legs were splashed with a viscous liquid that definitely wasn't water. As quickly as she could, she reached in with both hands and pulled the bowl, now full of the thick substance, out of the pool and onto the temple's floor. Then she stared at her gloved hands, which were dripping, and her legs, which seemed to have congealed patches on them. "Yuck." It felt a little bit like cooking oil, but it looked nothing like that. Something else, then.
Wincing, she stripped off her slimy gloves and draped them over the side of the basin. Lifting from underneath, she was able to pick it up and plop it back on its stand, spilling more of the liquid on herself in the process. She would definitely need a shower when this was over. But first, she needed to finish what she had started.
The basin dripped sluggishly from where she had spilled over the side. The wet parts glistened in the dim light. She stared, waiting for it to tell her what to do, but nothing came. Even tampering this much with an archaeological site was a bad idea. But it didn't feel like tampering to her. It felt right.
Her flowers were still on the altar. They would never last there, but they might if she put them in the... not water, but whatever the liquid was. Maybe that was even why the basin was there. And if not, all she would do was have dead flowers in a bowl of goo, instead of dead flowers on a rock. Since there was nothing to lose, she set about arranging them, laying their stems in the bowl, perching their blooms atop the rim, working until she had a full circle going around.
It looked nice. Maybe it meant something. Even if it didn't, Irene felt accomplished. And slimy. Not the worst combination in the world. She looked around once more, taking in enough to last until she would be able to come again. Then she fumbled for her phone, and was gone.
Word Count: 4135
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