Rowan had spent the past several weeks waiting for a chance (and the nerve) to return to Tempesti despite the storm. If it was damaging homeworlds, her obligation to the planet was greater than ever. There was nothing she could do about whatever hungry space snakes might be lurking in the sky, but as far as she was concerned that shouldn’t stop her from continuing her work with the local flora.

Double and triple checking the contents of her rucksack, she released a soft huff before retrieving her henshin pen.
“Tempesti power, make-up!
She was getting more used to space travel, bizarre as that sounded. The sudden vanishing of her apartment no longer felt quite as foreign to her, even as the alien landscape materialized before her. Strangely enough the senshi had come to feel an increasing sense of comfort among the city’s ruins, even with the ambiguous sense of shame that continued to needle the edges of her mind every time she looked across the bay.

With a graceless grunt she hefted the rucksack from her back, rifling through its depths before fishing out the half-filled sketchbook she sought. Every marked page contained meticulously labeled hand-drawn maps, each plotting an area of the capital she’d managed to cover during the course of her excursions. She marked significant buildings (or at least buildings that looked significant) with stars and tentative identifying notes. Tempesti knew that she would have to make a lot of amendments as she learned more about this forgotten world, but for now it would have to do.

Flipping through the pages, she arrived at the one that marked her goals for this visit. It constituted a woefully small area of the city, the only place she’d been able to find any significant variety of soil types and any real representation of the reemerging diversity of flora among the crumbling glass and stone. The youth of the plants made her wonder if it was the return of her starseed that encouraged their growth. She wasn’t eager to offer herself as fertilizer, so she hoped that if that was the case they would be receptive to more traditional foods. It would be a shame for the planet to renew some of its life only to succumb to a Little Shop of Horrors scenario.

For the moment, the lightning seemed content to harry the eastern edge of the city. That left the sandy clay loam out of the question for the day, but going after the silty clay soil along the river’s edge shouldn’t be too dangerous. For a while, anyway. With her plan in place, she pulled the rucksack onto her back and made her way through the meandering city streets.

Tiny spears of green pressed through the cracks in the stone, seemingly ignoring the theatrics of the sky. They climbed through in places she suspected they didn’t “belong” in a city, splitting slivers from the crumbling edges of the pavers. As she strode across the pale boulevard, she knew her brisk pace would betray an edge of nervousness to any ghosts that may be watching. Among the clusters of new growth her gaze alit upon a low stone structure, seemingly rooted into the ground, a spirit altar.

Dead and dormant as it might be, Tempesti knew exactly what it was. There was no telling if she’d ever seen this specific altar, but the vaguest memory of painful rites spilled upon similar stone skittered across her psyche. Unconsciously rubbing her forearms she tilted her head slightly to the side and scrutinized the source of her discomfort, there should be life here. Tendrils of green and innumerable colors embracing the stone under gently glowing gossamer wings, the Teruda. The shadow of a smile flickered across her face at the thought, a barely unearthed something tickling at the back of her mind. A memory of a near-ghostly touch as tiny legs alit on the back of her hand. The butterflies, well, not really butterflies unbothered by even the most forbidding altars, glowing serenely in the face of the most vitriolic priest. Silent companions in silent rooms. Their absence was a presence in itself.

The chorus of her rational mind faded into the sense that this dead altar was a void in the city, even as the threads of memory slipped from her fingers. From experience she knew that it would be pointless to attempt to press these senses of the past further than they were willing to stretch. All that had ever earned her was a headache. Still, “Teruda” was a new word, something to do with whatever should be flitting above the altar. The flash of purple in her peripheral vision snapped the senshi from her reverie. She was here for a reason, and as tempting as it was to slip into speculation, there was nothing to be accomplished by navel gazing. Turning her back on the altar, she continued following the path she’d traced toward the river.

A swell of relief coursed through Sailor Tempesti as she saw that her hardy little plants seemed unharmed in the storm. Living alongside the brackish waterway, they had to be tougher than the average plant, and as tempted as she was to attempt to mitigate the salt in the soil, she knew that she had to let Tempesti sprout on its own terms. Of course, that didn’t stop her from trying to find other ways to help it along. It stood to reason that before…everything died there would have been natural sources of nutrients for these hungry friends. It wouldn’t disturb the balance too much if someone tried to create substitutes until the planet could get back to making its own. The pile of botanical textbooks and geological textbooks she’d borrowed had allowed her to develop a limited understanding of what kinds of natural fertilizers occurred in what kinds of soil, and with the assistance of the other books she’d found on creating fertilizer at home she’d been able to make a few small batches she thought might help.

A few quick strides brought her to the edge of the small patch of green that sat serenely on the riverbank.
“Alright, let’s get to work.”