Welcome to Gaia! ::

Having never been to space before that she could remember, Cybele did, in fact, think that the sudden darkness might be part of the travel process. After all, when she'd been looking up at the stars right before they left, she'd seen plenty of black space in between the stars and the planets.

Then she saw Scylla's glow, and she saw the apparently annoyed senshi throwing open a door and revealing something else beyond. Cybele wasn't quite sure what she meant by a sense of humor, but she didn't waste any time in following her out of the hut and staring at the sights beyond.

"Oh," she whispered. So this was what another world looked like. The ocean glowed. The land glowed. Coral twisted into trees. She felt like she could stare for hours, just examining every otherworldly thing that she could put eyes on. The temple especially stood out to her. She recognized hints of the architecture.

On Earth, that style had shown up in ancient Greece, and she was wearing clothing that could also be described as Grecian, which might mean-

"Do you think these places had cultural exchanges, the way that countries near each other did?" she asked. "Because," she waved a hand at her outfit, which might not have explained much, before stepping forward to get a better look.

Only to have her eyes flick to the drop below, at which point she froze.

The panic rose quickly through Cybele's entire body, and also unexpectedly. She'd never tried hopping around on rooftops the way that some of the others had. It had always seemed dangerous, and just the thought of it had made her heart beat a bit faster, and she'd stayed safely on solid ground up until now.

The drop before them might have only added up to a few stories, but to Cybele, it seemed endless and gaping. Her breath caught. She could feel every heartbeat in her skull. That odd something tugged at her chest, something she should have remembered, but it couldn't have been anything good.

She could almost hear Scylla behind her, calmly listing off imports and exports from a thousand years ago. Eventually her voice broke through whatever it was that Cybele was feeling enough that she could take a step back again and close her eyes, leaning against the cool, solid stone of the building they'd come out of.

"It's beautiful," she managed. "I didn't know the ocean would be glowing, or that the architecture would be so familiar. I just also did not know that this would be how I would react to, um," her eyes fluttered open for a moment, although she was careful to keep them pointed outwards and not down, "Heights."

Cybele swallowed hard and then gave a small nod.

Scylla was being so kind about this, the same way that she'd barely blinked when hearing that Cybele had spent time in the Negaverse and lost all her memories in the process. She did not want to make her spend her entire trip huddled by this unfortunate storage shed when there was so much else to see.

"I'd like to see your temple," she managed in a hoarse breath. "Tentacles would be much better than-" she nodded sideways towards the drop, lips pressing thin just at the thought of it.

It took intense effort to peel herself away from the stonework and take the few steps to place her hands on Scylla's shoulders, but once she was there, the warmth of the contact helped, and she was able to squeeze her eyes shut again. "If you don't mind, we can go like this, and we can talk about other things, like mythology. I've been trying to learn more about that. There's just a lot."

She'd only had so much time to even start reading those stories.

Her voice settled into a steadier rhythm, now that she had something else to think about. "The stories change over time, too. I did look into Cybele. Sometimes she's just a standard fertility goddess, but then other times she's the rival of the huntress Atalanta, surrounded by packs of lions and inspiring incredibly vicious cults of worshipers."

It did make her wonder, in a hesitant sort of way, what was waiting for her on her own world.

That was a question for later, though. This place had its own secrets, she was sure. "You said Scylla's a monster, and that you're the Senshi of Krakens." She tilted her head, voice light even as she gripped a bit tighter. "Are you sure there's nothing here that I should be worried about?"

Cybele nodded, although as firmly behind Scylla as she was, the other probably wouldn't notice. "The water sounds amazing. I'm not afraid of that, especially if there are no krakens in it." Although perhaps if there were she would have seen something of a challenge.

"Oh, are there waves?" her eyes fluttered open, staying focused on Scylla's form in front of her. "Or salt? That would be exciting. Swimming in the ocean is one of the things on my list, that I'd like to try."

The pool had been nice enough, but everyone seemed to absolutely rave about salt water.

Although now that they were getting farther down and the shock of the height was wearing off, she was happy enough to be here even if this wasn't exactly what people meant on their small decorative plaques that said Ocean Life. The colors were lovely even as she glanced skyward, and Scylla's kindness meant the warmth in her chest had never faded.

"Is Zeus not Scylla's father?" she asked, curious. "Like I said, I haven't had time to read too much, yet, but I got that far. Everyone who's anyone is Zeus's child." She pursed her lips. "Not Cybele, actually. She might be his mom, with the Rhea connection, like you said. A lot of the monsters are, though, aren't they? They're the ones that Hera gets jealous about and curses."

She gave a light sigh, although it was definitely not directed at the other senshi. She'd just reached the stage of reading Greek mythology where she'd started heavily judging Zeus.

"I understand sources disagreeing, though. The night I was reading all this about Cybele I ended up at the primary sources at about two in the morning. Very interesting, but they were fragmented, and they jumped around, and they were all from different eras.

"There's decent records on her cult though, and that's fascinating. The eunuch priests started out as leaders for these wild, um, fertility parties."

Back in the day, her namesake had apparently given Dionysus a bit of competition for most intense worshipers. She'd been the goddess of the wild in just about every way that could mean.

"Then later in Rome, they existed outside of the strict gender roles of the time, but were marked as outcasts for it. After that it seemed to die out a bit with the rest."

Cybele listened with interest. She didn't know half of the names that were coming out of Scylla's mouth, but that was all right. The other senshi obviously cared a lot about these stories, and as Cybele listened to her the rhythm of her words, her grip on Scylla's shoulders loosened, just a bit.

"I'll definitely give you my real phone number after that. You should send me the links to those stores," she said. "You've got me interested. The one where she's a lioness? Now that one sounds very interesting."

Perhaps she was grasping for connections where there weren't any, but when Cybele had such strong associations with lions of course it made her want to hear more.

"I'll read the others, too, though, even the ones where the men have no sense of boundaries and the women start backstabbing over it. It's not the best trope, but the stories are fascinating enough that I can handle it."

It helped that people these days seemed to know how problematic it was. It hadn't taken much digging at all to find plenty of classicists on the internet who were committed to making fun of Zeus.

She raised an eyebrow at the question of Cybele's parties, though. "Oh, you don't have to cut yourself off," she said. "They were called Orgia, which is exactly what it sounds like. I'll send you things to read about that. There's plenty of contradictory eunuchs for you to giggle at."

She paused, sucking in a breath before she started giggling. "And then maybe you can send me Earth beaches that are good to go to, as well? Yours sounds lovely, but I did buy a few swimsuits during all the shopping. I'd love to get to use them, and maybe a fancy umbrella."

She was still staring pointedly at Scylla's hair, keeping her eyes off of anything else. "Which, um, how close are we to the water here?"

The sound of something being recited was soothing, almost. It was not familiar exactly. Whatever memories she might have had once of dressing rooms and running lines had been lost in all the starseed trauma, but she'd hung onto the concept of it and read things over and over again until she could remember the words, even back when she'd been living in the Negaverse barracks. Scylla's poem made her smile again.

"I like that," she said. "It's just a shame it's basically an epitaph. All the mythology is interesting enough as it is, but I think it could be even better if they let the bull slaying lioness who feared not Persephone live, and if Zeus got a bit of comeuppance for being so-"

She pursed her lips, trying to think of a decent way to say it before she just said, "Terrible." He was a fascinating character, but she wasn't sure how he was ever seen as any kind of hero.

"And your opinions on all that are completely valid," said Cybele, leaning in close and lowering her voice to a whisper, broken up by a giggle or two "I mean, according to the cult of Cybele, you don't actually need the appendage to-"

She couldn't say any more than that, though. She was laughing to hard. Not just giggles anymore, but the kind of laughter that was loud and heavy, that took moved her whole body and left her breathless. She didn't think she could remember ever laughing like that, before. She loved it.

She didn't even care that they were up on a spindly path with a drop down to the water on both sides. For that one moment, she was fine. When she recovered, though, her breath coming back in small giggly gasps, the fear came back a bit too, and she gave a small nod at Scylla's back.

"All right," she said. "If we're almost there."

A ten foot drop was probably not awful, at least in theory, but if the path was there, she saw no reason not to take it.

"They should have had the lesbians write the myths," said Cybele with a final giggle. "That would have fixed some things."

She went quiet for the last bit of the walk, though, counting her steps in her head. She wasn't sure if it distracted her nearly as well as laughing about the exploits of Zeus had, but it was something, and focusing on the numbers and her head and the feeling of something solid under the soles of her feet kept her from slipping into any sort of extreme panic. When she got to 38, Scylla was telling her that she could open her eyes. They were only three feet up, apparently, which didn't sound so bad. She could easily step down from there.

Her eyelids fluttered open, and she froze. It wasn't from fear this time. No, it was all awe. The view from above had been lovely, but it had been difficult to admire with everything else happening. From down here, she could see things in more detail anyway. She could see the beaches, and from here the water seemed to sparkle, not just glow.

"All right. This isn't bad," she said, in case Scylla was worrying. "Also, I keep finding new things to admire. I think I love your world."