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The semester wind down meant tests and papers to submit or receive, final grades to turn in, and some small space of the coming holidays for breathing room to patrol longer hours. So it was that the Knight's impromptu message found him in uniform and able to receive it promptly. And to answer.

Opportunities have been thin, excepting with Athene, to experience or explore far reaches. Let alone the Wonder of a knight. Knowing something tangible of the differences and similarities from a senshi world is something valuable. And more of what Knights of Cosmos are or were. The planets of the solar system are concrete to the mind as large celestial bodies which could have magically sustained cities, monuments, natural wonders. The asteroids like my own as worlds?....less concrete. Iris is an Asteroid. Polaris a star. Castor...Castor is really six stars in one with A, B, and C moreover binary. Chronos.....for the Surrounding, whatever it technically is or when it came to be. And she has her own knights. And the Zodiac senshi. Then what of Cosmos? It is a broad name, but what more than that? And what then are the knights attached to? What defines them? Or their bounds. The way to meet Hyperborea was swift and sure, but lengthy enough at a run and hopping the top of the occasional trailer. Time to try to consider and calculate how to best approach the time spent. Or the Knight herself.


The usual pieces of french came in greeting when he made final steps to her presence. "If you have no suggestions of extra gear, knowing the state of the environment. Yes. Ready. "

And he offered out his hand, "Does your magic of teleportation require touch as ours does?"

Is the verse a necessity? Ominous if so, to need a pledge each time. Does it mean more or less to knights with each utterance, stripped of meaning like the Pledge of Allegiance in elementary school homeroom period. That may differ from personality to personality.

Roman, growing, lush with not just simple grasses or sparse flowers, but trees in fullness of bloom enough to pepper a whole city's air. This place, as they appeared and stepped onto its stones, did not evince some catastrophe. It begged question of why it was not peopled, but not for lack or overabundance of hostile life. What is the difference?

Difference there was in every living petal and leaf compared to the skeletal twists and thorns, the stone-hard buds that would never flower and the petrified earth beneath the flagstones of his own Homeworld. What is the difference that makes this a garden more than ever was my heart's world in visits? Even now barren.

" 'Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.' " The quotation trailed quietly off. His eyes were outwards, hands unengaged at his side still moments more, not noticing her curtsy until thought caught up to current time. Attention and gaze found her instead of stars and petals and columns: "Your Wonder lives up to all such a title implies. "

"Have you much explored it? What conclusions have you drawn?"

Questions about what the glowing lines were and meant, the marks of a Transcended, as the knight picked out the word from the air, abounded. He had not voiced any of his musings on the possible ramifications of it this night, nor had he given flight with physical word on the reasons for differences. He'd only asked about exploration and her conclusions: it made her initial comments uncomfortablely shrewd. Unless she speaks out of pride for the difference to any she brings here. Is particularly proud of this as an accomplishment? And simultaneously parses it under the heading of 'conclusions' ? But not of exploration and archeology.

And where did the rest come from- statements spoken with calm confidence as reading a guidemap. " Ancestor as one dwelling still here, a spirit, as other knights have? Or from memories ancestral that you carry, as a reborn soul? The information you give is ...."

Hospitium was a specific, and very old word and concept. It wasn't one usual to high school girls, whether it referenced the medieval sense or the Homeric. It was as casually thrown out: a practice or theory of the people who dwelt here. What had told her as much? Or connected it to so specific a Latin second declension word, and Greco-Roman concept of Earth. "Fantastically specific. To a degree usually impossible in regular, Earth-based archeology. I would be delighted and honored to see more. Whatever you have a mind to share- of locations or this...code piece."

"How much time do you spend here? And what, if any, preparations or allowances have to needed to make for visits? My own asteroid requires a camp fit for mountain backpacking for anything longer than a day. "

"Don't they? Rather it may be that the ghosts do not answer. There are Earth Knights. Many have been the mysteries of things we thought we knew- no city on the Moon, no total monarchy in the history of the Earth, no human life forms on any celestial body of the Sol system. The questions of reincarnation at all, or the existence of an afterlife. No Ghosts at all....understanding the language of someone dead centuries to be able to communicate with them at all...." The musing shifted from aloud to whispers only half-voiced. Focus was drawn elsewhere to scan the things she pointed out while they walked. We've all fallen through a Looking Glass called Glamour, or Magic, and it has changed how we interface and understand the Universe. Is it not rather they may be like your Theseus, and prefer to speak to none but their successor? And thus so much is lost. The Wonders abandoned even though they could be carrying on tradition and memory. Lost. Everything maddeningly and pointlessly obscured.

He followed as she led, mourning privately the lack of proper documentation and approach to archeology. To the War as it stood, a knight with a wonder Alive and Vital was more important and valued than recovering exacts of prehistory and analysis. How long did the ancestors stay around? when and why did they leave? If ever. What determined which one remained, if a long line of knights there must have been in the millennia. Their answers may be as variably detailed, forgetful, erratic or accurate as the answers from one senshi to another on what to do to fight the Negaverse.

The Code. "Next to nothing."

It was easier to start from the beginning each time. Every person might have a sliver of information that others didn't. The standardization had to begin somewhere, sometime, but lack of documentation in most things between their orders, and between each other within each order made it sisyphean. "Start like you would with a Knight come to their power this very hour, if you are willing to go over it. "

What determines places as Wonders. Holdings of 'Code pieces" "Knights call on the Code, not their wonder, for magic?" What she was saying indicated just that, but it was inimical to how he'd thought it worked, which was something more similar to the Senshi and their homeworlds. Of it was so, it meant there was nothing extraordinary or important about the 'Wonder' or any knight. It was just a location, like any other, that might have historical or natural significance. Still just a place, and with no pull or significance to the health of the world they were on. The Earth Knights could not be taken as a gauge of hopefulness for a celestial body.

Thraen pushed the business about 'godliness' aside in his mind. Her opinions on the definitions legitimacy were questionable, followed by so immediate a recognition of corruptibility. Power to be fractured and given into others, and age, together as the sole determinations of godhood make Deity of Metallia, if what can be conjectured is true. And greater than the Code, for needing no permission to take dominion over it.

'During the assault on the Negaverse'...'Knight Academy of Earth'...'Olympus on Mars'... The chamber was as impressive as the rest, crafted with the pomp and circumstance befitting most religious or noble-caste works of mankind. It begged how much of the Sol System had been peopled with Homo Sapiens, or hominids in general. If the race had originated on Earth. Giorgio Tsoukalos memes came immediately to part of Thraen's mind- distracting and inappropriate for the weight of the occasion. The conversation. "You call it entity and being. Is it sentient, this way? As a piece? Only the core pieces? Or only as a whole? "

His eyes did not leave the mist and the glow at the center, like looking for edges on a raincloud rainbow.

'Complicated' insofar as flavoring, at least. He didn't know if it was good or bad that the thing couldn't act of it's own volition. Whatever the Code was, why-ever it was, and for-whatever motivations it followed. Does it give more, or less, guidance than the Mauvians afford us? They are variable. The Primer made by our own stumbling in the dark. And what of the ancestors, comparatively?

"How does the Code, " calling it 'this thing' was probably too rude for converse, "interact or relate to the guidance by the ancestor a knight has? Do they interact with each other? Or can they? Do they help each other in guiding new knights? And has there been any information regarding timelines of the lives of ancestors? If they were all of an era, or variable? "

" I suppose if they could interact. They could do so when a living, new knight wasn't present...in which case it would be like trying to decide between bundle and substance theories, with the added conjecture about how one wanted to define perceiving beings." The Anthropocentrism of most source material on the subject had been nerve-grating long ago, with the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness and the many studies before. The world of Magic beyond the glamour made the whole thing ludicrous.


If the thing had considerations or feelings about being looked at wasn't likely enough a motivation to impart wisdom on them. Still, there was the intrinsic, human-to-alien life form curiosity about what the thing thought or felt at all about anything an everything. In a personal way, about senshi compared to knights. Or if there was a difference with them both being homo sapiens. Had there been other kinds of knights, of alien race, long ago? And did the Code know, or would it impart a definitive answer to what 'long ago' was? And where would I go with that information? The existence of any of us is hidden by magic anyway. What would such an answer provide...or is it just treading wheels? Curiosity for curiosity sake? It doesn't feel so, neither am I sure of an answer.

"Where would you look for....Theseus..? In a specific room? All over the wonder? Do the walking places of the dead vary, to each wonder? " His gaze wandered still, slow panning over each feature and occasionally back to her. "Or does it take a ritual to hear you? The Mauvians, so far as I have experienced, are like any incarnate being, and exist in body where they are precisely as an individual would perceive. And to call and talk to them would need volume and hearing distance expected to any individual cat's hearing and person's voice. Theseus....it's such a surprisingly Classical name, for something so far away. A place in the stars.... "

"...It's so difficult to tell what to expect of 'magic' or of the 'magical science' such as seems to come from before. You use 'Silver Millennium' as a term— where and how did you hear it first?" There was a panic that maybe he himself had been the source, but also the possibility that he hadn't, which was important in cross sectioning. Interest and learning could so easily overwhelm prudence. Don't pollute the cross sections and confirmations of information with missteps, Thraen.