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Pendour wasn't always the best at keeping appointments. Things slipped her mind, often. For example, it wasn't too long after she'd walked away from her talk with that new Page, the one that was all bright-eyed and overwhelmed, that she'd realized that she'd never asked her name, or what planet it was that she served.

Her face stuck in Pendour's mind, though. Her smile did, too.

She'd seemed interested in space and Wonders, and that was always something that made Pendour's heart feel warm as warm in her chest. She wanted to show the girl what it was that they were working towards, before the rest of all this could get to her, and she was sucked away in the mire and violence of war.

So, Pendour came to their meeting place, a week later, and she brought a bag of her brother's muffins, enough to share if the girl came, too.

In the meantime she'd brought a sketchbook, and she curled up next to the wall of a building, drawing out the details of some fallen leaves that she'd picked up on her way over.

She showed up quickly, and her smiles and enthusiasm didn't bother Pendour in the least, just had her send her sketch and the leaves off to subspace, where they would end up forgotten for a few months. She smiled, herself.

Lysithea. Okay. She remembered seeing Lysithea as a Princess that night with Faustite. Maybe that meant that she was strong enough to have Knights, or to have the Code want to work with her, or however it was that those things happened.

"It's good to know your name, Mechelen," she said, then held out her hand, not scared by the questions either. "We have to hold hands for it to work, and, um, this is the ring, by the way." She ran her thumb over the signet, a turtle with the Neptune symbol on its shell.

"It's helpful. You can send messages with it, but you don't have to get it tonight."

She tilted her head, and took half a step forwards. "For now, let's go to Neptune."

"I'll show you," said Pendour, voice soft as soft, the kind of tone that she always used trying to soothe people. It was easier, to be gentle as she took the younger girl's hand and whispered her oath, allowing the two of them to be whisked away, then it would have been to try to explain that NASA was wrong about some things, that magic stretched farther than it was easy to imagine.

Instead, she let her open her eyes and see for herself.

They could breathe. The air tasted a little salty, but that was all. There was no bright blue gas visible, but there was water above them, and to the sides, kept at bay by a glass dome and some crumbling stone arches.

To their left was the grand marble staircase that led up to the upper levels, balustrades carved to swirl like crashing waves. In front of them, down the mosaic path maybe a quarter mile, was the cove, fed by waterfalls. Earth flowers and even some trees were growing in every place that Pendour could squeeze them into the artifice, including in the old garden beds off on the other side, and that scent washed over them a little, too.

"Welcome to Neptune."

"I was looking for auras, asking questions, and I met someone Transcended, which is this," she said, pointing out the bright scale shapes on her arms. "The glowing. You get it from, um, spending time at your Wonder, restoring things, sometimes? It's a little different for everyone, but she was telling me about it, and then we ended up on her Wonder so she could show off."

Pendour must have been as wide-eyed back then as Mechelen was right now, only instead of a sea spread out above them, it had been a sea of stars.

"And then a few days later, another Knight came up here with me for the first time. He was Saturn, dark and strange, but-"

He'd been kind enough, and she wondered sometimes what had happened to him, after.

"I had a lot of help. And I can do that, too. I can show you how to go up to your world when you're ready."

"You have to, um, focus on it? It's hard to explain, exactly, it's one of those instinctual things. I always look up to the sky, and I can feel this place calling to me."

It was a sixth sense, like the auras, almost, and she liked to think that she could hear it singing to her even stronger, now that she was standing here with her solid two feet on the mosaic floor.

"And you say your oath. For me, it's 'I swear my life and loyalty to Pendour, and to Neptune. I humbly request your aid, so that in turn, I may give you mine,' but it would probably be about Lysithea, for you?"

They could figure that out later, though. Tomorrow, maybe. For now they were here, with the rumble of waterfalls and the scent of salt air.

"Where do you want to start? We could swim, or go to the gardens?" She looked like she might like flowers. "Or there's views and the performance area upstairs, although I haven't gotten to fixing that up as much, yet."

"We can have a pool party," said Pendour with a soft smile. "Maybe even a real one, later on. I've been thinking it might be nice to get a group up here."

In the meantime, she was more than happy to lead Mechelen over to the cove. It was a few minutes walk, but in the meantime, she was happy to keep talking. It was nice, seeing how Mechelen smiled and hung onto her words like a puppy when she explained things that were like second nature to her, now.

"Fixing this up is how I Transcended, actually," she said, and there were so many stories about this place that she could have kept saying them for a while.