The whole concept sounded so ridiculous and farfetched, honestly. Press a magic button on his secret Senshi smartphone and go to a distant star that he shared a name with and that was apparent connected to him in some weird soul magic sort of way. Yeah, sure, that was totally real and not at all a total delusion. It just seemed so completely fake, it was hard for Cleeia to really comprehend launching himself beyond the stars and....what? Wandering around a dead world with nothing there for him?
Because it had to be dead, right? There was no way there was a real living alien civilization out there, right? Like, there were the Velencians, sure, but they were different. Weird. And if Cleeia remembered what he'd been told correctly, they were on some kind of Quarian-style artificial world, anyway. So not exactly a thriving, still alive planet. And there were those weird Senshi from outer space, but Cleeia knew nothing about them and anyway, he was Sailor Cleeia, there wasn't some other still-alive centuries-old magic elf or whatever waiting for him on his world. That wouldn't have made any sense at all.
So, obviously, it would just be...barren and empty. And possibly weird. Weird seemed like a very high likelihood, after what that strange fish-man Senshi said. (Which was probably rich coming from a dude who looked like he had crawled straight out of the caves under Innsmouth, but hey, whatever.) Which meant that it was totally optional for him to visit and probably totally irrelevant anyway.
Except.
Cleeia couldn't stop thinking about it.
Couldn't stop wondering. Couldn't stop considering. Couldn't stop imagining what might have been on his world, what might have made it so strange, what might have made it so hostile. It sounded incredible, and okay, maybe he did want to see it for himself a little bit. Just to find out, maybe. Just to like...see what all the fuss was about. Going to space was supposed to be one of the cool results of leaving the Negaverse, right? He wouldn't have been able to do that if he stayed with them! So he should totally one hundred percent take advantage of it! Obviously!
But the thing was, it also sounded super terrifying. What if his world was hostile? What if it was unsafe, somehow? What if he couldn't breathe the air, there? What if it had been wiped out by a space plague and he caught the disease and brought it home?
Okay, the lack of ability to breathe the air sounded a little farfetched, when aliens could apparently come to Earth and breathe just fine, but what if. What if he was the unlucky b*****d who had a homeworld that hated him. Or what if he got up there and just happened to be near....a sulfur spring, or something. Those were real and a very real danger!
And thus. Cleeia debated back and forth. He'd been standing on the same rooftop, pacing back and forth, for....more time than he was willing to admit. Twenty minutes. Maybe an hour. Maybe more than that. The point was, he didn't know what he wanted to do, if what he wanted was to go to space or not. It seemed like a never-ending lsit of pros and cons. So many reasons to back out. So many more to take the leap. It was all....fuzzy. Hard to pick out the details. Hard to....be certain.
Maybe there was no certainty, but Cleeia hated that. He liked to know what he was getting into, liked to have all the facts laid out, liked to....
Liked to decide that things were going to go badly long before they went badly and then.....never do them. And it wasn't like he hadn't taken some major leaps, recently. Just leaving the Negaverse...that hadn't been spur of the moment, per se, it had taken him some time to come around to the idea, but he'd done it, hadn't he? And that had been incredibly dangerous. Still was incredibly dangerous. He had no idea if people were looking for him, trying to drag him back, trying to....he didn't know, there were any number of potential nasty consequences and he didn't want to think about them more than he had to.
And leaving had been a leap of faith. In Gelria, in Cosmos, in....all of it. But he'd done that. He'd taken that leap. He'd gotten out.
So maybe he could take another one. Maybe he could go to his world. Maybe he could find out what all the fuss was about. Because surely if it had a mysterious, dangerous reputation, he would find something fascinating there, and....and...
And before he could start the cycle of stress and overthinking all over again, Cleeia whipped out his phone and pressed the button.
And he found...beauty.
It was night. A thousand stars lit the sky, in patterns that were completely different from those on Earth. Around him, a city of clay and plaster, crumbling to bits from time and wind, rose out of a desert that expanded far beyond his sight. He could see what looked like it might be the empty basin of....something, maybe a lake or an oasis, in one direction, down a long open street; perhaps this city had been built around an oasis. And here, in the little square--or whatever the round equivalent of a "market square" was, Cleeia didn't know, did the shape even matter really?--where he found himself, central to what might once have been a residential neighborhood or a series of shops, was a well. The rope that attached to any bucket, if there had ever been one, had seemingly rotted away, and frankly, Cleeia was hesitant to go any closer because a mysterious well felt like trouble. And yet, at the same time--
Cassilde laughed, spinning around, delicate silks swirling around his ankles. "Don't be such a coward, Tess. He's perfectly friendly." His friend--Tess--shook her head, dark curls bouncing around her delicate, silvery-filigree mask, her House symbols worked into the twirling twists of delicate metalwork, and when they bounced just right, revealed elfin ears that came to a delicate upcurved point. Cassilde's own mask was designed around his Senshi symbol, the Sign that had been associated with Cleeia and its Senshi for centuries beyond counting.
It was still night. Perhaps it was always night. Perhaps that was a blessing. The desert still rolled in the distance, its winds blowing sand into the city--there were piles of it in corners and between rocks--and day in that kind of environment would be unforgiving and harsh. But when Cassilded turned briefly, there was that open avenue that led to the oasis shore, and the basin was full of water that shimmered in the perpetual starlight, reflecting the strange and wondrous constellations that dotted the Cleeian sky.
(What had they made of them, Cleeia wondered. What shapes had his people drawn in the sky, a millennium ago.)
"You choose the oddest creatures to attach yourself to, Cassilde," she said, but there was a fondness in her voice. They had been friends for years, long before Cassilde became Cleeia, long before the burdens of Senshidom were place don his shoulders.
But on this eve, he was not a Senshi, mask proclaiming his place notwithstanding.
He laughed again, walking over to the well and sitting on its edge. He extended a hand, and there was the sound of movement in the depths, a splashing of water and a wet sort of slap against stone. From its depths rose a single inky black tentacle, and the creature--whatever was in the well--laid it across Cassilde's extended palm.
"There we are, Hali. See, Tess, he's perfectly friendly." The creature's tentacle wrapped around Cassilde's hand and squeezed, and there was a slightly echoey trilling sound from the depths. "And the wellbeasts help keep the water clean and pure. The city couldn't stand without them. We could all do to show them a bit of gratitude."
In a sudden moment, Cleeia found himself jolted back to reality, staring at that well. The one that Cassilde--that he--had sat on, and laughed about his strange, tentacled friend. A wellbeast, a creature that helped clean the water...
Cleeia approached. Sat down. Extended his hand.
He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but all he got in return was silence. The desert wind blew, whistling between buildings and creating an eerie melody, but there was nothing from the well.
Whatever had lived there, it seemed, was long gone. Just like everything else on this world, Cleeia supposed.
It had been a thousand years. Whatever had been here once--it was long gone. There was so little left.
and yet.
And yet Cleeia was captivated. Instantly, and thoroughly. This place--it was a mystery, an enigma, a thousand secrets ready for him to discover. There was so much here, and it was so beautiful, even if it was the haunting beauty of something long destroyed and crumbling to bits. He hadn't thought he had the adventurous spirit, but perhaps he did--perhaps this place being His brought it out in him.
Perhaps he had just needed the right push.
He'd thought of them as "his people," after all. And they were. They had to be. Strange, slender, golden-skinned elves who wore elegant, carefully crafted masks and silks in so many colors, though gold and yellow had seemed to feature prominently in everything that had been colorful in that...dream? Vision? Whatever it was that Cleeia had experienced, that had showed him his world as it had once been.
It had him hooked, instantly. Had him craving more. Craving an understanding of what had been--what could be again, perhaps. Weren't worlds supposed to not be completely dead? Wasn't there supposed to be a way to bring them back? Maybe if he worked at it, he could....he could do it. Could make it his again.
He hadn't thought himself given to wanderlust or long, wandering trains of thought, but....he wandered, here. Let himself move between buildings and squares, taking the place in. It was easy to see that it had been a bustling metropolis, once. As he wandered, he found more of the well-courtyard-square-things; too round to be "squares" but too large to be defined as mere "courtyards," which to Cleeia evoked the sort of thing you found in the backyard of a house, or something. No, these were open-air markets, or debate centers, or...or something. He didn't know. It was hard to tell, even with the ruins left behind--perhaps the things that might have made it more obvious had more fully rotted away.
No more memories were forthcoming, which did sort of leave him to guess, but that was fine. He could guess. Could dream. Could wonder. And perhaps, if he came here enough, there would be answers forthcoming. That was all he could hope for, he supposed; that putting in the time and effort would mean that he learned more about what had been and what could be.
Sometimes, he swore he heard a snippet of music, or saw a flicker of bright, vibrant silk, but it never lasted long. Residual flashes of memory, perhaps, but nothing long enough to be a real thought, like that bit of a scene he'd seen between Cassilde and Tess. He wondered if every one of those wells had been the home of a wellbeast to keep it tended, or if they were rarer, or what. Hard to say, with the little snippets of information he had.
But the point was: as he wandered, as he marveled, he Got It. He got why Senshi were so enthused about their worlds. Why some of them apparently gave so much to them, they ended up bound in a more permanent way, marked with those strange glowing lines that protected them from Chaos. He wasn't sure if he was there yet, if he was that totally obsessed with his world, but....well....he did kinda see how you could get that way.
It just made sense, didn't it? In the weirdest sort of way? To want to give so much to the place that gave you your Senshi name and your power, to become one with it--if all homeworlds were like this, if all of them presented this level of majesty and mystery, yeah, Cleeia Got the whole "spend enough time up there ot get your world to reward you with protection from Chaos" or however that whole thing worked....thing.
Maybe one day. Maybe he could pour that kind of love and dedication into it. Or maybe he was too late, maybe he'd already shown himself insufficiently attached by taking so long after his purification to come and visit. Maybe his world was judgy that way. Maybe that was part of why Cleeia had apparently had weird rumors about it--the planet itself was picky, somehow, with its people.
Okay, that sounded like a batshit theory, but really, what did Cleeia know. Nothing, obviously. A planet could do whatever it wanted, as far as he was aware. So maybe it could get super picky about people, and maybe people it didn't like disappeared in the desert or something crazy like that.
The point was: his world was incredible and he wanted to know more. Wanted more of the visions it had teased him with--surely there had to be more to uncover. Cassilde had felt like he was in his mid-twenties, maybe; certainly he thought of Tess as a friend for many decades, and maybe Cleeians lived longer or aged weirder than humans; considering their elfish appearance, that didn't seem impossible. That meant that there was a whole previous life for him to discover, inextricably entwined with whatever it meant to be Sailor Cleeia, Senshi of Inspiuration.
Maybe he would finally get some answers and some understanding about what that meant. Maybe he would finally Get why his magic worked the way it did, why it gave and took away in such harsh measure. Maybe the answers to all of his questions about being a Senshi were here, buried in these ancient sands.
But it was getting late. He had no idea how long he'd spent on his world; time didn't seem real, here. It felt like an isolated pocket of the universe, where anything could happen and anyone could be lost forever. And that was probably a problem. After all, he couldn't stay here for the rest of his life, no matter how much he liked this place; Camille Augustine still had things to do on Earth, and none of them could be accomplished on little sleep after spending his entire night wandering around a distant planet. He needed to go home.
It felt like a loss. One he wasn't quite willing to accept. But he had to; there was no food here, no water, and if he wanted to stay for longer than this, he would have to be more prepared.
But he knew now. Knew the beauty and majesty and potential danger of his world.
And he was, utterly, enthralled.
[wc: 2516 words]
