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For weeks and weeks, nobody had seen Faustite at all, and Pendour had almost been letting her guard down a little. Then, all at once, Nectaris had been the one to run into him.

Nectaris, one of the people who Pendour was trying to protect from him.

Of course Pendour was out every night after she had heard the news. She'd been tracking the paths that she thought would give her the best, fastest routes through the pars of the city where a half-youma might be hiding. That meant that her beloved gardens were out. Faustite would likely just set the whole thing on fire and make a scene of it.

That meant she was left with the more concrete parts of the city. She walked around cinderblock building after cinderblock building. She peered down every alleyway she could find, although most of those only contained piles of trash and a skittish cat or two which she was quick to back away from.

The sight of a senshi was a welcome thing in comparison. The act that she was skittering after a piece of paper didn't even make Pendour blink.

"Oh," she murmured, "Did you, um, find something?"

Pendour held out her arms for closer inspection. The markings looked like mermaid scales, and they shone with a soft but steady light. From that angle, the senshi would be able to see the small, starlike scars that pockmarked her forearms and hands, but that was okay. There was no hiding those, not really.

"As long as it's safe here, that's what matters," she told the girl while she looked, her voice soft as soft. If that meant chasing a scrap of newspaper, Pendour was hardly about to be upset about it.

"It's called Transcendence. The glowing, I mean." The scars were from other things, each one of them different. "It's a symbol of my bond with my Wonder, and with Neptune. It comes with some other things, too, um, protection from Chaos."

She blinked once, and her smile was soft too. "Oh, and my name? It's Pendour."

How long had she been doing this? That was a question that Pendour hadn't thought about, really. She had to stop and think, to do the math, and it surprised her when the answer that came out of her mouth was, "Five years, I think?"

It still was nothing compared to the way that some of her friends had been doing it from the time they had been in school into their thirties, but in that moment, she realized it really had been that long that she'd been in this life, now.

"Well, on and off."

After she'd lost the eye it had taken time to build up the courage to come back.

"And Pendour is nice," she said, oblivious to the fact that Mneme had been talking about her name, and not her wonder. "It's this mermaid cove, this place of art, and music, and the sea. I'm proud to be its caretaker."

Really, there was only one answer that Pendour had when people seemed like they were interested in her Wonder.

"It's beautiful," she assured. "Would you like to see it?"

She held a scarred hand out, fingers upturned, an offering to the senshi."I can go often. It's one of the benefits of the blessing."

Pendour whispered her oath, and just like that, the two of them were whisked away from Earth.

Her Wonder was beautiful. It was all contained in a bubble under the sea, like one of those conveyor belts that went underneath an aquarium, but big enough to hold an entire resort city. Although, most of the city was on the upper level. The stairs to go up to that were to the left. To the right were the gardens, which Pendour had worked painstakingly to restore from the very beginnings, and even from this distance the green of trees and bushes and flowers were visible.

In front of them, a few minute's walk away, was the cove itself, a clear pool fed by many small waterfalls and one large on. The sound of flowing water reached the rest of the Wonder. The light rippled across their skin.

"Welcome," said Pendour, a proud smile playing across her lips. "We don't have to stay long, but I thought it was easiest to see, if you're curious."