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 Posted: Sat May 18, 2019 6:13 pm
She’d let that basic senshi goad her into fighting. She’d let the fighting go on once it had started, and nothing she had said to anyone had really mattered, in the end. Titan had still fought them. The others had still seen him as the threat he was, and done what they had learned to do from a war that didn’t care who got hurt or what side they were on.
Now they were both gone, and she couldn’t stop blaming herself for it. She could have done more. She could have kept a better handle on herself, and refused to be pushed to something she didn’t want to do. There were probably a million things she could have done or said that would have changed the outcome. Focusing on those, her head down with her knees pressed to her eyes, kept her from straying to other thoughts. Like the way it had all ended.
The rumble of a collapsing building. The cries of senshi and knights, agents and youma. Dust so thick in the air she choked, blocking out the smell of blood that turned her stomach even now. It was different in a hospital, mixed with sterile chemical smells. It was too real, out here, too out of place. She could almost still smell it, threading beneath the smells of sun-warmed grass and blooming flowers. There was no blood on Ida, and there hadn’t been for centuries. There was no death here, no fighting. She was safe… but her mind kept circling back.
I should have done something. I should have said something.
It was always the same thoughts. Around and around, uselessly. More useful than she was.
Sitting in the grass, once so soothing, offered no comfort. The halls, when she finally entered her tower, were almost echoing-ly empty, as they always were. Lives lived here were gone. A life she had lived once, gone. She’d been useful then. Ida remembered some of it, as she climbed the stairs with a slow step. Worries nipped at her heels, tugged at her heart.
Once, she had been an authority. People had come to her, seeking help, protection, knowledge. She’d had it to share, then. She’d known who she was, what she was meant to do, and she had done it. Not like now. That Ida had faced death so many times, more times than she ever had, and still managed to mourn with grace, to accept it as a part of life and rejoice for the life that had come before.
All Ida could think of now was the loss of it all. The lives ended too soon, the potential ruined. The man she had wholey, faithfully believed was out there for five long years, waiting for his time… dead. A man she had loved, quietly and privately, with such hope. Dead. It was worse even than the first time he had died, serving their cause and saving the people they both cared for. And wouldn’t you know it? She had been just as useless then, playing sheperd while two of the people she loved sacrificed themselves.
Was this how it would always be? Would she always fail to be strong enough or smart enough? She’d been the one her people had looked to in her last life, and yet the proof of what had come of that lay all around her in ruins.
And how was she going to tell Laney?
She always came to Ida when she needed to center herself, find comfort. The embrace of the planet was almost physical, and usually it helped. But the tree nursery, where she had taken Hver once to find the last of the saplings, was as quiet as the rest of the planet was, if not so empty as some places. The machinery would come to life if she touched it, but the mother tree in its column was still lifeless and dry. All the little growing pods on the wall were dark. There was nothing here any more than anywhere else, and it didn’t soothe her any more than the other rooms she had wandered into and out of again, following the trails of memories like they might lead her to something better.
There was flotsam on the table tops and she picked through it idly, touching this and that, putting each back where she had found it when nothing came of the touch. The memories never really came when she wanted them to, but sometimes they could be triggered by the most mundane of things… like the little cut gem she picked up from a pile of similar such things, rolling it over in her palm.
It looked sort of milky inside, or like mist had formed inside of the smooth walls. She would have put it back like the others, if what was inside hadn’t shifted when she moved it. It was the motion that caught her eyes and made her lifted it closer, squinting into the depths.Word Count: 870
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Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 9:31 am
Maybe the gem was actual a casing with some liquid inside? The way the foggy color moved inside of it, that was the only explanation. There was no way to open it, she looked quite thoroughly, but it was a curiosity.
What was it? What had it been used for? Who had owned it? They were questions she might never answer and Ida sighed, dropping her hand to cradle the gem against her chest. The ghost of so many people hovered here, just out of sight... memories no one remembered now, save for the few she managed to recover.
The gem warmed in her hard, or she thought it did. Maybe it was the soft light she suddenly noticed, and when she held it up, a mark stood out in the fog now, lightning shaped...
"What are you doing?"
Ida whirled, fighting the urge to hide the gem behind her back.
"M..Mum?"
The tree room had gone weirdly hazy around her, the familiar shapes there, but fuzzy around the edges, almost far away. Everything but the woman that stood before her, perfect in every detail and clear as a bell. Ida could only stare at a memory made flesh, dark eyes searching out every detail.
Farah looked as beautiful as Ida had always remembered her, even when her face had stated getting fuzzy despite the pictures ever present around the house. The outfit she wore was one Ida remembered too, though she couldn't place the last time she had seen her mother wearing it. A summer picnic, or a trip to the beach? It had been so long ago, and she'd only been four... She just remembered how much she had loved the white of the dress against her mother's skin, and the flowers around the hem.
"Don't gape at me like a fish, Orah... Come here and give me a hug." Farah said, her full lips curling in a playful smile. She'd always been the one to make her father laugh, to dance her around the living room singing at the top of her lungs... Ida rushed to her and was caught in strong arms, hugged tightly. She felt smaller around than she remembered... but Ida was bigger than the last time.
"Mum... I don't understand. God, I missed you so much..." Tears tightened Ida's throat and she struggled to blink them out of her eyes, fighting the sudden breakdown she felt looming over her. Hadn't she cried enough already?
"Stop that." It was like Farah could read her thoughts and Ida squirmed in her arms, burying her face into her mother's chest. Long fingers found their way into her hair, pushing back her hood. "Its okay to cry. There is never too much crying... only as much as you need. You need to stop fighting it."
Ida strangled a sob that wanted to worm it's way out of her throat.
"I'm sorry. I can't help it..." She whispered, her voice thick.
She could feel her mother's head shake, though her fingers still ran through her hair, threading through the curls.
"You need to stop that too." Farah said, a hint of iron in her tone. It made Ida feel four again, caught doing something she knew she wasn't supposed to be doing. She almost squirmed, cradled in her mother's arms. "Why do you let yourself feel so guilty over everything? This burden you carry is ridiculous... I thought I had taught you better than that."
Despite her tone, she tightened her hold, her hug as warm as it had ever been.
"You are not responsible for every evil you happen upon. Do you think people don't make their own choices? That they just blindly follow you? Do you think you're so important that if something goes wrong, it must be your fault?" Every word felt like a blow to Ida's heart, for all they were said with firm love. "Titan made his choice to continue fighting when you offered him an out." Farah said, more gently. "Just like Naeryofyord and Hvergelmir made their choices in the dark future. Like Bischofite made the choice to destroy that girl, and Painite made her choice to hurt you and your friends. You do not have the power to deny people their choices... and you would not be the woman I love so much, if you did."
Her mother drew back, her long-fingered hands cupping Ida's wet face. She'd started crying at some point, gazing now into eyes so like her own.
"I am not your fault either." She said softly. "Some things are simply meant to be. If it could have been changed, don't you think your father would have moved the stars themselves to make it happen?"
Ida sobbed softly and Farah smiled sadly, reaching to press a kiss to her forehead. It was one of her deepest and longest held guilts... If she had been better, somehow, her mother might have pulled through and survived the cancer that had claimed her. Even as illogical as she knew it was, a four-year-old's logic had been hard to grow out of.
"I don't feel guilty that I wasn't there for you... It was outside of my control, just as it was yours. But I'm so proud of the woman you have grown up to be without me. You are so strong... Stronger than I was, I think, with all of your father's compassion, and his ability to see the good in people." Her mother ran fingers over her wet cheeks. "You just need to learn to let go of the things you can't control, and let others take up responsibility. You are worth more than your failures..."
"Its hard..." Ida whispered, feeling herself... fading. Farah felt less tangible, though her touch lingered.
"I know, my love. But you're strong, remember? You'll figure it out." Her mother's smile was radiant, a smile that had graced the glossy covers of so many magazines and beamed from between the pages. She'd always known it best as the smile beside her bed.
Everything seemed to fuzzy out then, the shapes blurring together before they cleared. Ida felt drained, her cheeks wet, and she blinked about the empty room. Her fingers relaxed when she realized she was still clutching the gem she had been holding to her chest.
The swirling was gone, and the lightning shape inside. It was still pretty, but whatever that had been, whatever connection the gem had had... it was gone now.
You'll figure it out. Her mother whispered in her ear and Ida sighed softly.
Word Count: 1099
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