Sailor Tempesti grasped the bicycle’s metal frame firmly with her left hand, allowing the indignantly swiveling tire to rest against the soft red waves at her temple while carefully shielding the action camera she’d strapped to her chest. Unwieldy as the whole ensemble was, it was an unexpected windfall and she wasn’t about to let it go to waste. She wasn’t entirely sure how much contact she needed to take this thing with her, but she knew that it would be impossibly draining to attempt two trips to bring it and her rucksack so it would be better to at least try. With effort she managed contact between her fingertip and the home button, sending herself hurtling through wherever that little icon sent her before landing on the pale sands of her homeworld. The process was, as always, painless but that still didn’t prevent part of her from wondering if she’d undergone disintegration and reassembly each time she went off world.

Turning a wary grey gaze to the angry sky she wondered just how much the snake understood about the places it touched. If even the Moon Kingdom couldn’t know where its origins lay, she doubted that she would recognize much about whatever thoughts it might have. Queen Serenity, or her holo-ghost anyway, made it clear that its hunger spanned eons even as it consumed worlds. For what felt like the thousandth time she wondered if there was a mind behind that hunger. Was there a will driving the storms or was it simply a force of nature, a blindly rapacious blaze consuming everything in its? Any psyche Tempesti could comprehend would harbor a lust for vengeance after countless years of confinement, but if this thing was as ancient as she thought she could only imagine that the passing of centuries might feel more like an inconvenience than a lifetime’s landmark. A brief shudder passed through the senshi as she tried to push the creature from her mind. An odd shape in the sand interrupted her best efforts, an almost coral like formation protruding sneakily from beneath drawing her eye. Tempesti crouched beside it, trying to brush off enough of the sand to see what she’d actually encountered.

“Dammit!”

The mild oath burst unbidden from the senshi’s lips as the tiny branch fractured at her touch, the splinters dropping unceremoniously to the sand below. The uncooperative object was vaguely familiar to her. A half-remembered high school science lesson about the formation of glass after a lightning strike. To her great frustration the word for the formation dodged and ducked her every attempt at recollection. At least the gist of it remained within the jumble of information she’d retained. There was no way for her to know if the strange, blackened form came from the Very Hungry Caterpillar or if it was the outcome of a simple, natural, not particularly hungry storm. Removing her rucksack, she pulled out one of the faithful mason jars that currently served as specimen containers and with significantly more caution and frustrated grumbling, managed to transfer a decent sized length of one of the finicky glass tubes into the jar’s waiting mouth. She opened her rucksack, wrapping the jar as securely as she could within the small blanket folded inside before reclosing it and hauling it back onto her shoulders. If it splintered more in there, well, at least she’d have the pieces to examine.

For now, however, her plants had to be her priority and with the new additions to her exploratory kit she hoped to have a much easier time getting between each plot in a timely fashion . Hiking up her skirt before inelegantly stuffing the hem into the waistband of her shorts, she swung her leg over the bicycle’s frame. She’d bound up her long hair before gathering her supplies, so barring wardrobe malfunctions, catching anything in the bike’s gears was one matter on which she could remain unconcerned.

It was becoming easier to remember the routes between the little experimental gardens that dotted the southern area of the city, even as her maps grew more complex with each day of exploration. Small stone buildings glided past as she pedaled up the now familiar hill from the shore through the city gates. They’d been larger once. Grander. She could almost see the gleam of gold leaf against the metal and stone that sealed the passage through the walls, though the panels were long since scraped bare. The single remaining monumental door lay pitifully on the ground within the delicately pointed arch, its corroded face bearing the scars of years of sand and salt.

She made a mental note to examine them more closely later, it’s not time for that.

“Plants. Plants. Plants.”
Nearing the crest of the hill, she pushed with a steady reluctance toward the towering ruins marked on her map simply as “Palace?” Her label’s question mark felt less necessary every time she read it, but an odd resistance rose within her whenever she gave the building too much thought. Irrelevant. The shrine in front of the compound was the important part. The soil up there wasn’t particularly remarkable by Earth’s standards, but the semi-circle of dirt around the shrine’s large, round altar was the most hospitable she’d encountered in the city.

The brilliant red barely registered as Tempesti approached, its presence a shock against the quiet paleness of the surrounding stone. The flowers’ name stubbornly refused to emerge from the dark recesses of…wherever those memories lived, but they greeted her like a long lost friend, welcomed home from a long, meandering journey. The bicycle toppled over as she ran over, giddy excitement bubbling within her chest as she dropped unceremoniously to get a closer look, the purple sparking of the sky forgotten for a few moments. Each blossom on the creeping vines would completely fill her cupped hands, some would spill over her palms’ edges should she pluck one. With a cautious, gentle touch she lightly caressed the scarlet petals, pale skin on blood on stone.

An echo of pain sliced through the undersides of her forearms, a blinding memory of blood spilling onto the smooth stone of an altar very much like this, sliding quietly down the edges as she pressed her trembling lips together and forced back the tears that nettled her eyes.

The Rite of Lustration was the price of safety, for her, for Tempesti, for every soul her presence threatened.

A few inhales, not too deep, not too sharp before she passes the blade to another faceless figure. Eyes forced wide open. She must see. She must see. She cannot hide from the price. She cannot give in to the nauseous exhaustion that wants to drag her from her feet.

She is stronger than the pollution within her.

A soft murmur of approval from the featureless mass as she remained standing, arms outstretched. One stepped forward, clad in gold soft hands roughly binding the wounds, staunching the flow.

Tempesti emitted something between a groan and a gasp as she exploded back into her trembling body, eyes scanning the area wildly, listening for whispers from the shapeless grey. Her hand still hovered motionless above the blossom.

Whatever that was. Whatever that meant. It couldn’t take this victory from her.