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"There's a camp village of sorts about half a mile away, so it would make sense that there would be water somewhere nearby," said Cybele. Usually, when she came up here, she looked at everything with the eye of a senshi.

Well, to make a long story short, she'd clung to the tiny traces of civilization and combed the ruins for something that could transcend her. She'd gotten angry at a tree, and when that had passed, she'd fallen into the course of habit and stayed in the same areas.

Now, she looked at her surroundings with the eyes of a hunter, of someone who had lived off of sassafras tea and snared rabbits while she'd been on the run from the Negaverse, and who had done some survival trips after to prove that she could do it again.

Perhaps as the senshi of the hunt, those worlds should have overlapped some more, but here they were.

"Downhill," she agreed. "I'll let you lead." She'd given her lesson already, after all. She stepped off the path, and found the downside to all the new life was bushes that clawed at her wings and her dress, but she was no stranger to that, either.

"And if you want the easy way out, we can always go to my house."

Now she was curious about the exploration, and she didn't want to leave, herself, but she also didn't want Celadon to think they were trapped here.

Cybele was happy enough to let things fade into silence for a while. It allowed her to focus on the sounds of moss and underbrush beneath their shoes, and to see the insects fluttering through the air around them, and feel the crisp breeze on her skin. She watched the sky shift through the colors of dawn into dusty violet day.

In some ways, it felt like hiking on Earth, but in some ways it was different. There was crunchy underbrush there, too, and floating bugs, and sunrises, but the colors here were shifted towards cool tones just enough that you could notice it. The scent on the breeze was shifted, too, towards something sweeter, mustier.

Cybele had figured out that most of that came from the small purple flowers that were growing in just about every crevice and tree root along the path.

It was quieter here than on Earth. That much was certain. There were some chirps of insects, some birdsong, not as much. Not enough, said some part of her mind, of her starseed, that knew what this place was meant to be. Life might be creeping back in, but it wasn't all there, not yet.

Then, as they neared the bottom of the ravine, even those sounds began to quiet. They crossed the massive stones, and all she could hear was Celadon's footsteps, one after another.

The view was spectacular. There were stones, and rivers, peaks and valleys. The scorched ground cut across it like a knife.

"Celadon," she repeated, softly, and that felt right to her, too. "It's lovely here." She didn't step forwards. If this was Celadon's domain, then she was the visitor now. "But I can't help but wonder what happened here."

Normal fire wasn't like this. Normal fire didn't leave wastes for very long. All the same, she was suddenly very aware of the burn scars on her feet.

"Yes," Cybele agreed, because there was no denying that this place had seen better days. "But you've still got the view."

From here, she could actually see the sky, not just snippets of it from tangled trees, and the surrounding area was visible, too. She wasn't going to be positive to the point of being naive or ignoring the facts, though. This was a ruin, in a more natural sense of the word.

It was something that was hard to ignore as she followed Celadon into the depths of the blackened carnage of it, towards the sound of water. Celadon was saying that places like this bounced back after fires, and that made Cybele think. The usually did bounce back. They usually bounced back quickly. She'd seen pictures of regrowth after forest fires. It happened quickly. That made it seem like it would have happened recently, but Cybele knew the smell of smoke well. There was no hint of it here, no ash.

No, something about this felt off.

She came close to Celadon to look at the hint of a creek that she'd found. "There's a lot of places in space that are like this, when senshi and knights first show up." She kept her voice low, but was not afraid of breaking the silence. Of course Wonders on worlds that were still mostly dead were different from Wonders here, and so she thought, aloud, "The Code, the Knights' source of power? I wonder if it's specifically sending people to places that need a bit of extra help."

How did one describe the Code, exactly?

Cybele spent a few seconds in silence as she considered it, pursing her lips as she found a flatter stone to sit on. Her feet were starting to ache. Her gait was a bit off. At least none of her family members were here to give her a hard time about it, to tell her to take it easy.

"It's an entity," she said, "Sort of a swirling ball of light, from what I've seen of it? It grants power to the knights through connections with their wonders."

Cybele watched Celadon try the water. She did not move towards it, herself. Something about all the charred wood had her hesitating.

"If you'd ever like to go talk to it, it's on the Moon. We can go there. It's a common area for knights and senshi? The Code might be able to tell you more about itself than I can."

She scooted towards the edge of her rock.

"How's the water?"

"Maybe," said Cybele, and left it at that.

She was fairly certain that the strength and the magic that Celadon was looking for would come when she became a Squire. Did Cybele know how that might happen, any ore than she knew why she'd managed to become a Princess or even an Eternal? No. She did not, but directly asking the Code for answers directly did not seem like a bad place to start.

"I think the animals were a shock to everyone," said Cybele. "It wasn't too long after I purified that they started showing up, but apparently for years, that sort of thing was unheard of."

Something to do with the comet that Lyndin had tried to use to destroy them, she supposed. Although, she hadn't been coming up to space as much back then, so she'd heard the rumors of insects and creatures before she'd finally come to see a few of her own.

She reached down and scooped up some of the water, bringing it to her lips. Honestly, it wouldn't have had to be that good for her to like it. She was parched after the trip down here, but it was cool all the same, and crisp.

"I did find a few artifacts up in the camp I was telling you about. Trinkets, arrowheads. Although, it's interesting. The best preserved things seem to be imported from other worlds." The people here had been more focused on harmony with nature than they were about any kind of permanence, it seemed.

"I did find most of a gun that I don't think anyone really used."

“I’m supposed to know,” said Cybele, letting her fingers trail through cool waters. All at once, she was aware again of the metaphorical heaviness of the crown, and the wings. “Those past lives that I was telling you about? I’m supposed to remember mine. My sister is a Princess, too. She can tell you all these details.”

There were probably limits, but to Cybele, it seemed infinite. Ganymede could do anything. She was sure of it.

“But I still only get bits a pieces sometimes.”

She stared up at the sky, silently asking if it wanted to show her anything. Her world was silent, the way it always was when she got to desperate about answers or anything else. Still, she watched a cloud float for a few seconds, silent.

The. She took a breath and said, “Praxidike. That was one of them.” It took effort not to roll her eyes. Of course her past life self would have thought it was fine. Of course they wouldn’t know how things were going to turn out in a thousand years. It didn’t keep her current self from being embarrassed about it.

“I remember hunting with the senshi of that world. He didn’t bring weapons as a gift, though. He brought a beast as an offering, something to hunt. It was a bug, an electric one.”

And then they’d gotten married, but she kept that to herself. She didn’t need a thousand questions about that side of things.

Was it hard, keeping track of everything? "It could be confusing if I let it be, I suppose," she said. Sometimes it did make her wonder a bit why she could remember things from a thousand years ago, but not things from her childhood. She'd wondered about that more before she'd become a Princess, however. Now, it was becoming more and more clear that her ancient memories were broken, too.

"It's part of why I try not to overly focus on the past."

It doesn't matter much, she thought, but it felt rude to say that to someone who was so curious about the concepts of all of this, so she kept her lips pressed together thinly.

"As for the rest, it takes a long time until all of this information becomes second nature to you." She was saying this as someone who had woken up surrounded by magic and monsters, and the muscle memories of whoever she had been before. It had still been almost too much.

"It's all right if you're feeling overwhelmed right now. You don't have to be able to rattle this all off tomorrow. You'll pick it up over time, and I'll be here for you."

She considered the charred landscape once more, and considered how long it might take to see some growth.

"We can come back here next week, if you'd like."


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