Homeworld Visit: 14th June 2020 (Backdate)
It was in full expectation of yet more desert based adventures that the man had brought water with him. It had taken practice of course, he'd had to estimate how much of it he could realistically fit in to his 'backpack' prior to his outing. He'd been impressed to discover that he could get a fair amount into it and with some wiggling he had managed to slot in some food as well. Nuts had been packed tightly against the bottles, alongside some snack bars and a pack of jelly babies - though he preferred not to eat too many sweet products there were times when they were absolutely necessary.
Satisfied that he had prepared as well as he could, the senshi had closed his space 'pocket' and clasped his hands together. A deep breath and what had previously been difficult finally seemed to make sense to him. The world shifted and what was once familiar found itself replaced by the more alien and exotic. However, as he descended from the 'heavens', a feature he was beginning to suspect he'd have to adjust to, he realised far more quickly that he wasn't in quite the same place as he had been the first time.
Yes, a desert lay below him... But from this vantage point as he fell through the air and hurtled towards the ground he took note of what lay beyond it. He had moved closer to the edge of whatever sea of sand he had been deposited in during his first visit. While he couldn't quite understand what he was looking at, the sea of beige sand became more structured and took a more hardened form. Beyond lay some sort of 'thing' and as he hit the ground he immediately rose and began to stride towards it. His ankles would protest of course and he would ensure he took the first set of steps carefully, but in the grand scheme of things they would be fine.
Lips pursed, he made otherwise short work of the distance between himself and what lay in the great beyond. Intent on discovering what lay beyond the sands, he became so focused on his destination that his stride against the shifting ground beneath him became almost natural. In normal circumstances he wouldn't have found deep, soft sand particular easy to walk in and yet here he was!
Forty five minutes of walking and at last he laid eyes upon what had lay beyond.
At first the senshi wasn't entirely certain of what he was looking at, it was yet another sea of beige to contend with. Stepping inside, it was only then that he took the time to really look around him and realised that what he had walked in on, was in fact, a jungle. Petrified and still, it had remained undisturbed for a millennia in a perpetually frozen state. An outstretched hand came to brush against a fossilised fern, only to be greeted by the gentle whisper of crumbling dust. A leaf once present, dissolved in to nothing before his very eyes.
At some stage, there had been life on this planet.
He'd never seen anything like this before, a place in a natural state of preservation, yet all logic stated that this world should have been battered by the elements and left as nothing but a flattened desert landscape. He peered up through the canopy towards the faintest sign of light; with no flickering leaves the canopy provided more than a little shade. It might have only been his second visit, but now that he thought about it, with the exception of that faint breeze there had been no indication of anything... Not even rainfall.
What had happened to this world to simply render it lifeless in a way that even its denizens couldn't destroy or leave it in disrepair?
His lips pursed into a thin line as he walked further in, taking care to avoid disturbing the leaves too much. If he were to hit one of these too hard then there was no telling what may happen to anything around them. He did not want to be the one to destroy an otherwise preserved world, regardless of what state of preservation it might have been in. For a millennia it had remained untouched, a moment in time that had been 'remembered', almost as if the planet itself had chosen not to forget what it had once been.
Athalia couldn't say that he blamed it if that was the case; if this world had once been covered in jungle and bursting with life, then he wouldn't have wanted to forget it either. At one point it must have looked spectacular, an assault on the senses in smell, sound and sight. It was a mere shadow of what it had once been of course, but he could at least try to imagine what had once been. His puzzles at home paled in comparison to what came to mind, this, if his assumptions were correct... would have been one hell of a sight to behold. However if this world was covered in this much life then where had his kind lived, where had society existed for his source's civilisation? With no indication that they had even existed he had to muse over the possibility that they may have been destroyed well before and the planet had merely recovered before it had met an undetermined end.
Answers weren't exactly forthcoming at the initial stages of his exploration, but as his feet led him through the endless and still forest, he finally ran in to what he thought was a wall. Monumental in size, it spanned as far as the eye could see and left him otherwise at a loss for how to get passed it. From his current vantage point it could take days, to walk around this thing and days weren't something he currently had at his disposal. A cursory glance upwards and what he needed to do seemed rather self explanatory, if he was to get anywhere quickly then surely he could make use of his new found 'gifts' and scale it... Right?
He cast his eyes left, then right, before finally taking a breath and launching himself upwards. He hadn't really been one of the best rock climbers in the world and scaling large walls without the necessary equipment wasn't the smartest thing he could have done, but if he could jump and land safely in this form from a few stories high then it seemed reasonable that he would be all right. Suffice to say, it was just as well that he had been in this form as what he was scaling turned out to be significantly larger than he had anticipated in the beginning.
A climb that he thought might take an hour ended up taking several.
He didn't quite collapse at the top but he certainly lowered himself to his knees quite rapidly before rolling on to his back and groaning. His legs were now exceptionally unimpressed with him and his arms would have been writing several angry letters if they had any dexterity left in their fingers. As it was, he had made it to the top and afforded himself a moment to breathe. He hadn't been expecting anything in particular by the time he got there, if anything he had been expecting to climb over it and hop off to the other side... What he actually got was something entirely different.
Having assailed the 'wall', he came face to face with reality.
What he had climbed was some sort of pillar-like structure, a monolith, and as he gazed out from the top of the summit of this one he could see several of them strewn at random intervals across the horizon, almost as far as the eye could see. They didn't appear to do anything, he couldn't sense or detect anything in them and even as he peered down at it... It didn't really seem to react either. What he was certain of was the fact that these weren't natural structures, they had been put here by something or someone; or if they hadn't then he was sure there were many scientists who would be intrigued to know how such things could have form naturally.
No answers would prove forthcoming for now and instead he simply took to admiring the view, not that he could see anything beyond monolith and jungle, but every now and then he took note of hills and mountains that did seem to litter the horizon. It was just another instance that reinforced his assumptions that at some stage this all must have looked quite spectacular.
Unsurprisingly the planet still remained silent, determined not to provide him with any answers to pertinent questions he may have had. Still; it was nice to know that there was something beyond the desert even if he didn't necessarily understand what that was.
He sat up, cross legged and peered down and the rather large descent he would need to make and sighed. If these pillars were a part of former civilisation then did they live in them, and if so, how did you get in to them? He gave it a pat with his palm and shook his head. There were no entrances up here that was for sure, but he hadn't seen anything resembling windows or doors on the way up either. Was he just supposed to phase through them or what...?
It was all very fanciful to say the least.
It was also something to muse over at another time though.
As much as he enjoyed exercise the senshi had concluded that after several hours of walking and climbing, that it was more appropriate for him to simply return home. He'd return again, but the next time, he'd be walking around the beast of a monolith. Truthfully, if he landed beside this one again he would try to walk towards the next one. In the process he might discover some form of connection or a sign as to what they might be for.
Eh.
One thing he did know for sure though was that he would not be climbing back down this thing today. The phone came out and it was with a sigh that he flicked the the buttons he was looking for and simply vanished.
Unbeknown to him, in the place he had once sat the tiniest flicker of light stirred and then abruptly faded. No doors were to be had, but something had sparked within the 'monument' before it was quickly snuffed out. It was a tiny blip on the radar across each within visible range.
Another brief and fleeting moment in which source and senshi had failed to notice one another's calls again...
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