Sand met her booted feet, shifting and sinking softly under her weight. By now the ride to her house required very little thought, muscle memory making its way through the ancient city’s silent streets as her mind wandered once more to the slow but steady growth of life on the planet. The possibility of seeing more as time passed, a possibility that bloomed bright and vital alongside the small stone dwelling as it drew nearer. It seemed the Tempestine summer came with a riot of fragrant color. Windflowers and brightly petaled plants for which she had no name ran rampant within the low wall that encircled what was once likely a well-tended garden and among the blooming throng, unfamiliar visitors.

Almost lost among the color, small forms bounced and drifted through the blooms. At first glance, they bore a striking resemblance to flying pompoms: round, fuzzy, and colored brightly enough to rival the flowers around which they danced. Given a second look, however, their appearance took on a decidedly more apian quality. A wave of delight washed over the senshi at the realization that countless tiny alien bees had deigned to pay her a visit. With painstaking effort she zoomed in on a small group, recording their merry gamboling with rising glee. In that moment Tempesti would have enjoyed nothing more than to take one in her hand to examine its tiny face, look into the glossy compound eyes on the sides of their perfect fuzzy little faces. They were far too small for any physical affection, but she welcomed their company as she took a few careful steps into the garden. Overgrowth always drew out an innate desire to prune and pull, cull what seemed invasive to strength what one “should” cultivate with firm, decisive hands. But in this moment, in this place, Tempesti couldn’t be a gardener, at least in any conventional way. Ebbs and flows of wild growth, of nature reclaiming its place among the stones, left the senshi irrelevant in the processes she documented. As interested as she was in unraveling the mysteries behind the shrines, she couldn’t entirely set aside her earlier projects. Leaving behind her inner cries for putting the garden in order, she meticulously photographed every inch of plants life, stealing time for the little bees who seemed indifferent to her presence as she went.

The two window frames in the south-facing wall impassively watched her work, the partial fill of stained glass making it seem almost as though the house was offering her a cheeky wink. Between them and the visible improvements to the frames and densely layered red clay tiles that formed the dwelling’s roof, it felt more likely than ever that it could provide more complete shelter from the elements in the near future. Each shift in the building’s composition found itself scrawled in one of her many notebooks, immortalized in her camera’s pixels. Satisfied that she had made note of all of the recent changes, Tempesti swung herself and her pack back onto the bicycle and resumed her journey to the shrine.