Even in the face of the storm the small stone house on the hill bloomed green and yellow, the newly opened blossoms twining their way up the empty doorframe and into the glassless windows. The sight of them drew a smile across Tempesti’s tired face as she rode up the slope. She harbored no illusions in regard to the strength of her struggling planet, but the fits and starts of new life allowed hope to bubble within her.


The windflowers greeted her, their vibrant golden gleam a beacon in the tempest’s eerie dusk, the sweet soft scent enveloping her like the embrace of a long-absent friend. It would have been easy to remain, to sit and luxuriate in this small victory, but if she wanted to help this planet heal she knew that complacent relaxation would do nothing to achieve that end. Sparing her new friends a final wistful glance, the senshi passed through the door.

Before, it had been easy to dismiss the slow creep of the stone from the crumbling walls and across gaping hole in the roof as a trick of her imagination. Simply her mind showing her what she wanted so badly to see, but the oddly level section of cracked tile left no room for doubt. With an inner trill of delight she realized that it was just large enough to accommodate a small shelf for her samples. With a tarp over that hole in the ceiling and maybe one each for the door and window, she might even be able to make this place a sustainable base of operations.

The new plan went into her field notebook, a meticulously neat to-do list to accompany the dozens of maps sprawling across the already battered sketchpad.

But!

Making new plans didn’t do a thing to change that she still hadn’t finished her to-do list for today, the house was just Point A after all. Putting aside the dim tingle of an unpleasant memory, she needed to get into the palace that she still wasn’t entirely sure was a palace. She shed her rucksack onto the floor under a moderately shielded section of floor before trotting back outside and jumping on her bike.
The palace was not far from the old house, maybe a mile or so and the riotous red blooms around the altar had only grown more ostentatious in her absence. She fought her eyes’ desire to slide back to the cold stone beneath, their desire to see blood spilt across its surface. There wasn’t time for that, after all. She was here for the palace. The palace.

Nothing else. Not the time. Definitely not right now.

The palace’s remaining doors had obstinately resisted her efforts in cajoling them to open, but earlier scouting forays turned up a number of fractures in the defenses large enough to admit one small senshi. Consulting her map she managed to find the most promising entry point. The crack was just barely large enough, scraping and squishing as she squeezed herself through and into the darkness within. Swinging the light on her phone from side to side she swore softly. The crevice itself might have been accessible, but the chamber within lay on the end of an almost entirely collapsed corridor. A lot of effort for very little reward. Still, she’d gotten herself inside and that would have to be better than nothing.