Solaris stretched with a grin, watching how the blue-silver metal of the stacked rings and bracelet glinted in the warm glow of the sun. The silver nearly seemed to turn golden itself in the direct light, and she was reminded of the impression of feathers fanned out against the sky…
The winds played with the double skirts that billowed around her legs, almost like someone was investigating the fabrics, and she just… was happy. Thanks to Viatrix, she stood once more as a Super Senshi, and that was one step closer to regaining the full extent of her power she'd lost. What did that mean for her world, though?
Wasn't like she'd seen any influx of new plant life or something, the weather didn't seem any better…
The Chaos was still here, still probably at full strength, and regaining her own at least would give her more of a shot of clearing it the <********> off her planet. There was a comfort in that, a visual for actual progress that she'd not experienced in…
…a long, long time.
The wisp hovered by her shoulder again, and Solaris tipped her head to nudge her cheek against the warmth, the little tingles from the energy making her chuckle. "Thank you," she murmured, unsure now how many times she'd said the words to the little thing. She never specified for what, but she hoped the little ball of energy could understand the extent of how much it'd aided her. Another presence that kept her from wandering alone on this world…
She released the magic surrounding her, and Kyrie smiled a bit to see the rings stay on her finger as she headed back into the bunker. She'd already dropped off her supplies inside earlier, refreshing what she had been keeping there since her last trip. Aelith's records were more expansive than she'd expected compared to newer, more recent accounts kept. But then, it fit didn't it?
Aelith always was a step above others around her.
Kyrie's smile was gentle as she walked back into the sort of living-dining main room, pulling out a stone chair that groaned against the floor. Flopping down into it, she let out a huff, eyes scanning the piles she'd left last time. Frustration about how to cross the seas was still eating at her, and she knew she was no closer to an actual solution. She had no boats, no ships, no nothing, and even attempts at trying to glide on the currents had proven…
Well. She didn't need to grant herself more broken bones any time soon. The weather was no more stable than it'd been in the past, and she knew now at least she'd be returning to Earth soon enough. Going back with a broken arm or more wouldn't be useful with Negaverse agents running around the city with their youma. Nor was she very interested in getting scolded by Réalta…
No, she needed to find a practical solution over the waters, it just… was overly frustrating that she hadn't yet in all this time.
"I can yell at myself all I want that I should have stored away a boat or something and fuel for it, but I never exactly figured I'd need to leave here… or want to. Plus, even if I did, back when I had access to all that, there were still people around. People who had those and I could figure out how to barter with." Her explanation might have fallen on deaf non-existent ears, but she didn't mind speaking to the wisp. Helped her organize her thoughts, and sometimes its little hums or warm nudges let her host the fantasy that it really understood her.
Her fingers drummed idly on the table, reaching for the closest pile of journals and papers, and beginning to scan through them. She'd brought sticky note tabs each trip now, packs and packs of them to help her highlight bits of information to go back to later, using a Sharpie to make a tiny indicator note on each tab to assist her in later reviews. Helped her not fall into rabbit holes over interesting bits, trying to focus on…
To be fair, she didn't know what she was looking for here. Thus far, it'd just been getting bounced from cache to cache, shelter to shelter, encampment to encampment… following the ancient trails of people and their migrations over time, backtracking trade connections and threads of information. Everything at least pointed that she wanted to keep going east, but east consisted of sea, and even if she backtracked all the way to the west, she'd still hit the edge of this continent and be hitting ocean on over there, too. East was the shortest route to the places noted to have examples of this… strange, dark ice and sickness.
Hours ticked on as she skimmed and marked, flipped pages and dragged her fingers through her hair. Hours ticked into days. A week passed, and Kyrie was at least organizing the documents into general piles around the room for information to look up later, taking photos with her phone and organizing them into files she could at least check out digitally later.
One slight benefit to her world's current status? The extreme lack of organisms to help with the decay process. Most of this wouldn't have survived as well as it had, she knew.
She'd take any blessing she could get at this point.
An older journal of Aelith's held her attention the longest, when she at last unearthed it from the piles of other documentation the Synādyle had kept filed away for so, so long. It'd taken Kyrie a while to realize… these were all from before the Synādyle and her forces settled into this bunker long-term. There was mention of ships that could still ferry people across the waters, though she saw repeated notes of how difficult aerial travel had become due to the intensity of the storms disrupting weather patterns. A discrepancy that troubled Kyrie, though--she didn't see later mention of the boats, and hadn't located anything in the area… she finally had to attribute the loss to later generations and settlers, or wanders even, passing through and making use of the equipment. They wouldn't have had much reason to record everything like more militant-minded folks had.
It did finally occur to Kyrie, surreal as it was, that some of these journals could cover the time when she'd split from the Synādyle's forces, before she joined them in this sector…
There was a wistful sensation in that, to finally hear some of the accounts of what happened. Everyone she'd spoken to back then, from what she could recall, had said it was relatively peaceful for a transition, and the region wasn't overly hostile as others they'd dealt with previously… it'd sounded like a relatively relaxing time, for all that had been happening in the world.
Her mind was wandering, drifting through the years, admonishing herself for her reckless behavior, how she'd alternated over and over again from hiding to demanding she be on the front lines, to hiding again, to--
- Kyrnsūl'vel
Her memories crashed to a halt, that single word sending electric waves through her system. She wasn't sure if she wanted to jump to her feet, or curl into a tight ball. Be elated, or shove the journal away, ignore it, forget it. Her hands shook where she held the book, and the wisp's gentle humming by her ear did little to dispel the contrasting chills and warmth that warred inside her.
Slowly, she refocused on the text, scanning the script till she again located that famous--infamous, depending on which side of the conflicts the person had been on--word. Name. Identification.
Kyrnsūl'vel. The Kyrvel, as Kyrie had always referred to it and was pretty sure the name spread, always vying for some less formal rendition of unit names. Or in this specific case, a less formal name of a very specific ship.
It'd been originally based on some of their aerial combat ships--fighter jets was a close enough approximation she'd learned of on Earth. Originally, it'd been meant for an accomplished, skilled pilot. A soldier who proved over and over, their skill ranked above those around them. In the prime of Solarian technological creations, it'd been a visual and technological marvel by their planet's standards. That it went to their best only made sense.
And when they died, it was given to Kyrie.
She'd had other ships before that, but none had been of the caliber the Kyrvel had been. The only constant had been…
"Enoch…"
Saying the name of her old AI was bittersweet--it wasn't a person, no, it held no emotions or any such thing. But it'd been a constant in her life for years. It'd adapted so well to the Kyrvel's systems, or any other ship's that she put it into. Flying with Enoch as a co-pilot, assistant, navigator… all of it, had just become second nature after a while.
And now, she was pretty sure the last remaining copy of its code was…
"...on the Kyrvel."
Oh that was painful.
She could feel the tears starting to well, her throat tightening as she tried to push down the sobs, though only succeeded in making her shoulders tremble and jerk. It was an unexpected swell, and Kyrie was unsure how to properly suppress it--she wasn't even really sure what caused this one. Just, a heavy sensation of loss. One that never really faded, but now just… somehow a drop heavier, even so many centuries later. She missed Enoch. She missed her home. She missed her people. Every reminder of all that was gone, was just… painful.
Kyrie hadn't noticed she'd continued to leaf through the journal, till the page fell out. Her mind was too gone, her eyes unfocused and blurred by tears. It took her a while to even register the paper on the table, hanging out of the pages of the book till she finally set the latter down to pick up the former.
She stared blankly at the yellowing page, taking in the script and markings across it. Drawings. Her brows furrowed as she tried to calm her breathing down from the broken sobs.
- < The Island of the Siverbird >
< We will not dismantle it, but we can protect it. Hide it away. Someday, it might yet take flight again. >
Kyrie couldn't remember the last time she'd moved so quickly.
She flew up the stairs of the bunker, scrambling out into the open air, ignoring the winds and the sea mists that tangled her hair and teased her clothing. She held the paper up, bouncing it along the horizon, the landscape, none really matched--
She clambered up the hill that had formed over the roof of the bunker, hands and bare feet and knees skidding and sliding on soil and debris. The wind pulled at the paper, but she refused to loosen her deathgrip on it. At the top of the hill, she held the paper up again, lower to account for the difference in height even as she crouched low, moving it along the horizon, along the landscape.
Her breath snagged in her throat when lines of the drawings matched up with parts of the landscape.
Aelith had drawn it. This… < Island of the Silverbird >. She'd drawn how it looked to view it from the bunker.
Kyrie stared out, mouth agape, eyes darting this way and that to take in the landscape. In Aelith's drawings, there was water between the mainland and the island. But not so now. The waters were lower than in Aelith's drawings, with long, albeit relatively slender, stretches of land curving and running outward. The coast extended out further. A strip of land stretched between the mainland and… the island. It was off in the distance, a hell of a trip but…
She compared the drawing to the visual before her a few more times, even eventually climbed back down from atop the hill to hold it up to the horizon from the other side of the bunker. They still matched--it'd have been easier if she'd done that from the start, but hey.
Kyrie knew better than to hope. She knew better than to let herself be excited, to let her mind wander on the what if. She knew, as she collected her things, and plotted the course out on what maps she had--unreliable, as they all treated the path she was about to take as underwater, but still. Her mind tumbled over why the waters were lower, anyway, but they'd given her a path.
A land bridge. To the island.
The trek wasn't going to be easy. It was out in the open, no shelter to protect her from the elements, and she'd need to be mindful of the waves and how things could get worse in the storms out there. The terrain wasn't smooth--it undulated and dipped, swerved and tumbled up and down, just enough to stay out of the sea.
It would take her a few weeks to get there, as all she had was to go on foot.
Kyrie pushed as many of her supplies as she could into subspace, and into her secondary bag, before powering up. Super Sailor Solaris was faster, had more stamina.
She looked over Aelith's belongings, the pieces of herself she'd left behind after so, so many years, the messages she'd left for Kyrie.
"...thank you. Aelith."
There weren't any more proper words for everything. Her gratitude to the dead meant little. As she set out on this new trek, a new goal finally in sight along the horizon, Solaris knew the only real way she could thank Aelith, or anyone for that matter, was to remove the Chaos from their world.
Give them a place that their starseeds could maybe be reborn to once more, someday. Someplace safe. Their home.
She owed them that.
