Pale, nervous fingers ran through long red hair, still trembling despite the days that had passed since she witnessed the Dark Star. That moment when that celestial void occupied the entirety of her being. The helplessness. The overwhelming rage that roared through her as she hung suspended in some space between worlds. The dread and horror that couldn’t quite fit within her psyche, seeping and bulging through the cracks whenever she allowed the whirlwind of her mind to slow for more than a few moments. After all, she still had so much to do, a long checklist to which she was continually adding items. Bite sized pieces. Idle hands and all that.

Finals.

Damage assessment.

Senior performances.

Preparing for the new job.

Damage assessment.

Booster shots for Reginald.

Damage assessment.

Continued botanical observations.

New spaces to explore.

Damage assessment.

Stabilizing magic.

Damage assessment.

Paperwork.

Damage assessment.

She told herself that the damage assessment was for Tempesti, after all the storm had battered the planet. Who knows how much work that would be to repair so of course she had to set aside time to examine the damage. She was, of course, this place’s guardian. That it also served as a distraction from horrifying confrontations with her own mortality was simply a welcome side effect. A few days into her visit, it didn’t seem as though Hungry Hungry Harold had done too much damage to the place, it might have actually knocked loose some of the more stubborn pieces of debris around the city’s eastern docks. It was of course, all but impossible to tell if the buildings were more or less worse for wear without checking her older footage, but for now the best she could do was to document them in the moment. Like she had every time she’d come since realizing that the city was somehow repairing itself. The specifics of the hows and whys had to retreat to the nebulous realm of “it’s magic, go with it” with so many other aspects of her life in the past few months. With a soft sigh she rode up the hill, her goal the largest of the city’s buildings. Even in their current state, the structures that overlooked the rest of the region demanded attention, their monumental size and elaborate construction insisting upon the magnitude of the power they contained.

A few more digital clicks of her phone’s imaginary shutter, a few more crumbled stones strewn across the green-streaked cobbles, a few more shards of vibrant glass in the formerly paneless windows. For all her struggles in remembering the location of cracks in the pale stone or whether there were more or less pebbles in the walkway, the return of color to the ancient city’s formerly lifeless sprawl made itself impossible to forget.

The lines of long forgotten, half-formed figures and the stories they told became more visible with each new visit to the planet. Still, they held little meaning to her beyond a vague sense that they were as much a part of this city as the stone beneath her feet. Maybe even more so. She’d told herself before that she would make another attempt to enter the palace if the main entrance became more hospitable, the smaller crevices having proven less than effective ways to get in. Still, that promise drew a grimace as she realized that the debris had shifted enough to allow her to squeeze in.