Sailor Moon: First and Last 3/5 (Setsuna)
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lexiewritesTitle: First and Last.
Chapter: The Whole Truth
Author: Girl Who Writes
Genre: Action, Drama
Characters: Setsuna Meioh
Words: 3,093
Spoilers: Up to the S series.
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fic_variations June challenge. The prompt for all five parts of this fic is ‘dark/light’.
Summary: Duty waits for no one. A five part fic chronicling defining moment in Setsuna’s life.
Disclaimer: Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi. I'm just a humble fan and make no profit from this fan based venture.
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery – Anais Nin.
“… Happy Birthday dear Setsuna, Happy Birthday to you!”
Setsuna beamed before she leant over and blew out the candles on her birthday cake. Her mother, Marianne, had spent the whole day previously making the cake to Setsuna’s specifications – frosted in white and purple, with dark red flowers all over it – and trying to keep Setsuna’s little sister away from the icing.
“Make a wish, sweetheart,” her father smiled as Setsuna blew out all the candles in one puff. “My baby girl is all grown up.”’
Setsuna smiled as her mother snapped another photograph. Her grandmother had sent her a brand new dress for her birthday, in gold and red, and her mother had red ribbons in her hair to match.
“Me!” Three year old Miranda cried out from her booster seat. “Me!” She tried to reach over to
grab at the cake.
Olivier Meioh relit two of Setsuna’s birthday candles for his youngest daughter to puff out, as Marianne snapped dozens of photographs of their oldest child in her birthday clothes, in the lounge room.
Setsuna breathed a sigh of relief when her mother’s camera ran out of film. Marianne looked disappointed. “I’ll have to make doubles so all your aunts can have a copy. You’re so grown up now!”
“I’m only eleven, Mama,” Setsuna shrugged as Marianne leant over the playpen in the corner, to check on the new baby, Rafael. “You still won’t let me walk to school by myself.”
“You’re right, I won’t. Now, Rafael’s still sleeping, so let’s go open some of your presents and have some cake before he wakes up,” Marianne said cheerfully.
There were packages and presents from all over the world – from Marianne’s grudging Santa Fe-based family, to Olivier’s globe-hopping Eurasian relatives, many of the packages from her aunts and cousins were looking rather beat up as Setsuna unwrapped them. Her parents’ gifts had come from a list Setsuna had supplied them – mostly books, heavy editions Olivier had had to pick up from the university bookshop, despite Marianne bitter complaints about giving an eleven year old books on astronomy and physics instead of dolls and clothes.
“Thank you, Mama, thank you Papa!” Setsuna threw her arms around her father as her mother wiped cake and ice cream off Miranda’s face.
“And we almost forgot,” Olivier said with a smile, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a velvet pouch. “A tradition, I believe.”
Setsuna’s eyes lit up as her father tipped the contents of the pouch into her cupped hands. A tiny silver crescent moon charm tumbled out. The moon was filled with a pretty red-pink stone.
“The charm with your birthstone,” Olivier explained. “Tourmaline or, more specifically…”
“Rubellite tourmaline,” Setsuna finished for her father, “because of its colour.”
“Very good,” Olivier chuckled. “Another one for your charm bracelet.”
Setsuna nodded. The charm bracelet had been a gift from her paternal grandparents at her christening – something that was insisted upon by her maternal grandmother - and every birthday since, she’d been given a new charm for the bracelet.
“I’ll get the charm put on your bracelet on Monday,” Marianne balanced Miranda on one hip. “It’s bedtime for Miranda and Rafael.”
While her mother put her younger siblings to bed, Setsuna gathered up her birthday presents and carried them upstairs – her bedroom was in the attic, the only place with enough space to build enough bookshelves to house all her books – from her beloved and worn childhood picture books, to the textbooks that amused her father so much.
Later, when Marianne came to tuck her in, Setsuna was curled up in her bed, with one of her books propped up in her arms. Her bed lamp flickered light over her face, and her music box played softly, the little dancer twirling in hypnotic loops.
“Sweet dreams, birthday girl,” Marianne kissed Setsuna’s forehead and placed the book on Setsuna’s desk.
“Sweet dreams, Mama,” Setsuna said, reaching for her stuffed rabbit. Marianne rewound Setsuna’s music box and switched off her lamp, before disappearing down the attic stairs.
Setsuna laid awake, listening to the music box and watching the shadows flicker on her bedroom floor. Her eyes drifted closed, humming the song under her breath.
The music lulled and clicked to a stop and Setsuna’s eyes flew open. Her parents had gone to bed, and the old house creaked in the wind. The tree outside tapped her window with its branches, making her jump.
One of her arms snaked out from under her quilt to switch on her bed lamp again. But whatever was there passed over her, and was gone. She huddled back under her quilt, and closed her eyes. The faster she went to sleep, the faster that whatever was there either hurt her or left her well enough alone. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed sleep to come…
And, then faint light of morning filled her bedroom and she pulled the covers tighter over her head – it felt like she hadn’t slept at all. Her mama and papa would be getting up – Papa would have gone to buy milk and the Sunday newspapers, her mama would be cooking breakfast and soon Marianne would come upstairs and ask her if she wanted to have breakfast with her early-bird father…
“Setsuna.”
“I’m sleeping, Mama,” she murmured, huddling deeper into her bed.
“Setsuna.”
“Please, Mama. It’s so early.” Setsuna shoved the blankets away and froze.
It wasn’t morning. The silver-white light wasn’t morning – it was a beautiful woman, who sat on the end of her bed, smiling sadly at her, glowing softly. Setsuna stared, her mouth open. The woman had two long ribbons of silver hair hanging down from two buns on either side of her head. She was clothed in the prettiest white gown she had ever seen – she looked like a character from her old picture books, except that she was so sad looking.
“It’s been a very long time, Setsuna,” the lady said softly.
“Papa… Mama,” Setsuna whispered, her crimson eyes wide with something that wasn’t quite fear. She wanted her mother to come upstairs and wake her from this strange dream. She wanted to run, to find her parents and crawl into bed with them like she was a little girl, her father to stroke her hair as he chased out the bad dreams with all sorts of magical stories.
“It was your birthday, wasn’t it?” the lady said, looking at the two purple balloons tied Setsuna’s desk chair, already sagging with time – helium balloons never lasted long, dipping at gravity’s whim. “It feels like a very poor gift.” A wand hung in the air before the lady – nothing like Miranda’s toy fairy wands, but purple and gold, with a big ball on the top, and two smaller ones on either side, topped with a gold star. “How old are you now?”
“Eleven,” Setsuna said, tearing her eyes away from the floating wand.
“Just a little girl,” the lady smiled.
“My Papa thinks I’m all grown up,” Setsuna managed.
“A parent always thinks that their babies grow up too quickly.” The woman stared off into space for a moment. “Do you remember me, Setsuna?”
Setsuna stared at the woman. “I don’t know you at all. I think I’m dreaming.”
“You need to take the wand, Setsuna. You need to remember,” the lady stood.
Setsuna looked at her and then reached for the wand.
It was like someone had lit fireworks of information in her mind. Her forehead tingled as everything was made clear again.
She cried out, clutching her head, dropping the wand onto her quilt cover, for the new knowledge to vanish when her contact with the wand ended. Her head felt like it was burning, like she’d tripped and fallen against the old stove again.
Motherly arms pulled her into a hug for a moment, before she was tucked back into bed. She curled up in a big ball, rocking as the pain rented through her mind. People, places and things filled her mind. Hands began stroking her head. Mama, Mama. She called out for her mother, sleeping just down the old stairs, but who was too far away to pat away the hurt now.
Selenity looked at the quivering little girl huddled in the bed, her eyes squeezed shut against the onslaught of information suddenly reappearing to her, her face buried in her arms. The child had only been eleven for a matter of hours, and now she would be thousands of years old, doing an ancient duty, and stuck in a child’s body, with only waning ghosts to offer guidance. The poorest gift the ancient queen could contemplate.
Selenity picked the Pluto transformation wand where it had fallen on the bedclothes and rested it by Setsuna’s pillow and rewound the music box on the bedside table. Setsuna was stilling now, a little ball under her quilt, her long dark hair fanned out on the pillow.
Selenity pressed a kiss to Setsuna’s temple, and rested her hand on Setsuna’s forehead, where the Pluto symbol was emblazoned. The symbol vanished and Selenity began humming along with the music box.
The lady – Selenity – rested her pale hand on Setsuna’s head and the pain vanished suddenly, and made her incredibly sleep.
“I am so sorry, Setsuna. I didn’t think you’d be needed again so soon. I thought, maybe…” Selenity shook her head. “Good luck.”
And the room went dark once again, the music box playing to the shadows, her dreams full of jumbled memories.
When the grey-pink light of morning finally crept underneath her curtains, Setsuna lay huddled with her head under the quilt. She’d been awake a long time, lying underneath her blankets and trying to sort out everything that happened, trying to arrange her thoughts into something resembling order.
Setsuna didn’t wait for her mother to come and wake her. She felt every tiny bit of forgotten grief and horror that had hung around her before she had … before she had died. The concept of her own death seems so foreign yet she knows that there was pain and a bit of blood and that’s all she can clearly recall. But she has read her father’s psychology textbooks, and knows that she could be repressing. Witnessing a death is traumatizing to anyone; but what about an eleven year old who is trying to recollect her own death?
And then there are thousands of years of memories – of knowledge, places and people – to recall and to quietly mourn.
The room is cold – it’s early, but she knows she won’t be able to sleep anymore. Her mother is awake; Setsuna can hear her in the kitchen already. An oddly comforting ritual; for a moment, she is tempted to run downstairs to her mama and her papa and cry out all her hurt – at dying, at living and at being reminded – and have them fix it all.
But the part of her that was a young woman when her father died, when her friends were murdered and was left in solitude for thousands of years reminds her that there is no way back – ignorance is only a blessing for the knowledgeable.
She moved stiffly across her room, kicking the flat balloons out of her way. All her movements felt mechanical – she put on her clothes, made up her bed and folded her nightgown like she did every morning. But she didn’t notice that her socks don’t match or that she’d missed a button or two doing up her blouse.
It’s when she comes to brush her hair that she looks up to the mirror, her hands resting on her cheek. She looks the same as she did yesterday, but with old eyes, she looks so young – her face round and her eyes large and her hair not quite long enough.
“Setsuna!” A knock at the door at her mother is poking her head up the stairs, with a smile on her face. “You’re already awake. Would you like to have some breakfast with your father?”
She turns, and takes in her mother – Marianne’s brown-black curls pinned up, her bright eyes regarding her oldest child, and the delicate lines at her mouth. The gold crucifix that rests just under her neat, practical blouse, and the rings on her hands. She yells about bills and children and religion, is a source of comfort, advice and the sort of maternal nature that comes from big families. She looks soft.
“Yes, Mama.” An image of a taller woman with long black hair and big garnet eyes, withering away in a big bed comes to mind and she resumes staring blankly into the mirror. She’s worn her hair the same way since her mama did it all those years ago – two braids at the sides of her hair, tied with ribbons, the rest loose and tumbling down her back.
It’s hard to style her hair – her mind tells her she’s done it a hundred times, but her fingers fumble with the pins; the half bun at the back of her head looks alien on such a young girl, but she pushes the last pin in. This is the person she was and will have to become again. The girl who wore daisies at the top of her braids; who spent days making dresses for her dolls with her mother’s material scraps and mismatched buttons – that girl had been pushed aside for duty once before, and would be again.
She knotted the blue ribbon around her hair and pulled on her sweater; it was always cold in the mornings. The house is draughty, and the entire family has given up any hope of Olivier repairing it – coats and gloves are simply donned in the early hours of the morning.
As she goes to leave her bedroom, she turns around the glare at the wand, sitting harmlessly on her bedside table. It was like it called her name, reminding her that it was there and it wouldn’t be left behind, or rejected.
She jammed it in the pocket of her sweater.
The kitchen was warmer, filled with breakfast cooking, her parents talking in low tones and the morning news filling any possible silence.
“Early morning, sweetheart?” Olivier smiles at her over the top of his paper, his reading glasses resting on the edge of his nose. “Turning over a new leaf?”
She manages a sickly smile, before hiding her face in the fridge.
“I suppose it’s too much to hope for that you’ll join me at Church?” Marianne hands Olivier a mug of coffee. Olivier snorts and Setsuna eyes the remains of her birthday cake – most of the lettering on ‘Happy’ and ‘Setsuna’ has been eaten away. Its official – the whole world is mocking her.
“Everything is already on the table, Setsuna,” Olivier drags her attention from the remnants of her cake. “It’s far too early for you to be scoffing sugar roses, too.”
Her parents talk over her head as she eats, one hand in her sweater pocket, holding the wand like an anchor. Her mother leaves to get ready for Church, and her father is left with the dirty dishes.
“Did you have any plans for today?” Olivier asks, elbow deep in washing up, his eldest staring blankly into the garden.
“I might go for a walk.” Her thoughts are wandering, and Setsuna hopes her mother won’t notice the chip in the coffee cup.
“I’ve got papers to mark, based on a thesis that I think you’d enjoy,” Olivier watches as one of Setsuna’s hands slip back into the pocket of her sweater, like a child cuddling a security blanket or sucking their thumb. “Perhaps after lunch, we can sit down and discuss it.”
Finally, her father releases her, and she heads into the back of the garden. Beyond the half rotten fence lies a dirt path that weaves through trees and overgrowth for several hundred meters, where is disappears into a stream. A worn out swing hangs above the stream, ‘1954’ engraved on the seat.
It’s the most private place she can think of – she fell off the swing when she was seven, and broke her arm, and no one heard her screams for her mother and father. The trees cover her house – and the neighbours – from view.
“Pluto Planet Power, Make Up!”
The mauve energy wrapped itself around her, and it was euphoric; safe and familiar and exactly the same. The Time Staff materialized in one hand – shrunken to accommodate her smaller stature.
“Dead Scream.” The murmured attack blasts into a tree across the stream, splitting it halfway down the trunk. It wasn’t as strong as she remembered her attack, but the logical side of her mind pointed out that it would get stronger as she was able to control it.
As her senshi fuku melted back into her skirt and blouse, the Time Staff hovered in front of her.
“Watch over the Time Gates in my absence,” she said softly, the Garnet Orb blinking lazily, as if it understood her, before vanishing.
Perching on the old swing, Setsuna examined her henshin wand, staring at the dirty looking water just below her feet. She wondered where the other princesses were – where they even born yet? Where had they ended up?
“I can tell you that your compromise is there to take. It will not greatly ease the pain of what is to come, but it is a future.”
The old monk’s words came to the front of her mind, as she began to swing back and forth, staring up at the sky. She wasn’t ready to return to the empty Time Gates, to the quiet and isolation, and listen to the low, incomprehensible mutter of past guardians. But something good was coming – the darkness had finally passed and maybe this time, she could save them all.
Chapter: The Whole Truth
Author: Girl Who Writes
Genre: Action, Drama
Characters: Setsuna Meioh
Words: 3,093
Spoilers: Up to the S series.
Notes: Written for
fic_variations June challenge. The prompt for all five parts of this fic is ‘dark/light’. Summary: Duty waits for no one. A five part fic chronicling defining moment in Setsuna’s life.
Disclaimer: Sailor Moon belongs to Naoko Takeuchi. I'm just a humble fan and make no profit from this fan based venture.
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery – Anais Nin.
“… Happy Birthday dear Setsuna, Happy Birthday to you!”
Setsuna beamed before she leant over and blew out the candles on her birthday cake. Her mother, Marianne, had spent the whole day previously making the cake to Setsuna’s specifications – frosted in white and purple, with dark red flowers all over it – and trying to keep Setsuna’s little sister away from the icing.
“Make a wish, sweetheart,” her father smiled as Setsuna blew out all the candles in one puff. “My baby girl is all grown up.”’
Setsuna smiled as her mother snapped another photograph. Her grandmother had sent her a brand new dress for her birthday, in gold and red, and her mother had red ribbons in her hair to match.
“Me!” Three year old Miranda cried out from her booster seat. “Me!” She tried to reach over to
grab at the cake.
Olivier Meioh relit two of Setsuna’s birthday candles for his youngest daughter to puff out, as Marianne snapped dozens of photographs of their oldest child in her birthday clothes, in the lounge room.
Setsuna breathed a sigh of relief when her mother’s camera ran out of film. Marianne looked disappointed. “I’ll have to make doubles so all your aunts can have a copy. You’re so grown up now!”
“I’m only eleven, Mama,” Setsuna shrugged as Marianne leant over the playpen in the corner, to check on the new baby, Rafael. “You still won’t let me walk to school by myself.”
“You’re right, I won’t. Now, Rafael’s still sleeping, so let’s go open some of your presents and have some cake before he wakes up,” Marianne said cheerfully.
There were packages and presents from all over the world – from Marianne’s grudging Santa Fe-based family, to Olivier’s globe-hopping Eurasian relatives, many of the packages from her aunts and cousins were looking rather beat up as Setsuna unwrapped them. Her parents’ gifts had come from a list Setsuna had supplied them – mostly books, heavy editions Olivier had had to pick up from the university bookshop, despite Marianne bitter complaints about giving an eleven year old books on astronomy and physics instead of dolls and clothes.
“Thank you, Mama, thank you Papa!” Setsuna threw her arms around her father as her mother wiped cake and ice cream off Miranda’s face.
“And we almost forgot,” Olivier said with a smile, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a velvet pouch. “A tradition, I believe.”
Setsuna’s eyes lit up as her father tipped the contents of the pouch into her cupped hands. A tiny silver crescent moon charm tumbled out. The moon was filled with a pretty red-pink stone.
“The charm with your birthstone,” Olivier explained. “Tourmaline or, more specifically…”
“Rubellite tourmaline,” Setsuna finished for her father, “because of its colour.”
“Very good,” Olivier chuckled. “Another one for your charm bracelet.”
Setsuna nodded. The charm bracelet had been a gift from her paternal grandparents at her christening – something that was insisted upon by her maternal grandmother - and every birthday since, she’d been given a new charm for the bracelet.
“I’ll get the charm put on your bracelet on Monday,” Marianne balanced Miranda on one hip. “It’s bedtime for Miranda and Rafael.”
While her mother put her younger siblings to bed, Setsuna gathered up her birthday presents and carried them upstairs – her bedroom was in the attic, the only place with enough space to build enough bookshelves to house all her books – from her beloved and worn childhood picture books, to the textbooks that amused her father so much.
Later, when Marianne came to tuck her in, Setsuna was curled up in her bed, with one of her books propped up in her arms. Her bed lamp flickered light over her face, and her music box played softly, the little dancer twirling in hypnotic loops.
“Sweet dreams, birthday girl,” Marianne kissed Setsuna’s forehead and placed the book on Setsuna’s desk.
“Sweet dreams, Mama,” Setsuna said, reaching for her stuffed rabbit. Marianne rewound Setsuna’s music box and switched off her lamp, before disappearing down the attic stairs.
Setsuna laid awake, listening to the music box and watching the shadows flicker on her bedroom floor. Her eyes drifted closed, humming the song under her breath.
The music lulled and clicked to a stop and Setsuna’s eyes flew open. Her parents had gone to bed, and the old house creaked in the wind. The tree outside tapped her window with its branches, making her jump.
One of her arms snaked out from under her quilt to switch on her bed lamp again. But whatever was there passed over her, and was gone. She huddled back under her quilt, and closed her eyes. The faster she went to sleep, the faster that whatever was there either hurt her or left her well enough alone. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed sleep to come…
And, then faint light of morning filled her bedroom and she pulled the covers tighter over her head – it felt like she hadn’t slept at all. Her mama and papa would be getting up – Papa would have gone to buy milk and the Sunday newspapers, her mama would be cooking breakfast and soon Marianne would come upstairs and ask her if she wanted to have breakfast with her early-bird father…
“Setsuna.”
“I’m sleeping, Mama,” she murmured, huddling deeper into her bed.
“Setsuna.”
“Please, Mama. It’s so early.” Setsuna shoved the blankets away and froze.
It wasn’t morning. The silver-white light wasn’t morning – it was a beautiful woman, who sat on the end of her bed, smiling sadly at her, glowing softly. Setsuna stared, her mouth open. The woman had two long ribbons of silver hair hanging down from two buns on either side of her head. She was clothed in the prettiest white gown she had ever seen – she looked like a character from her old picture books, except that she was so sad looking.
“It’s been a very long time, Setsuna,” the lady said softly.
“Papa… Mama,” Setsuna whispered, her crimson eyes wide with something that wasn’t quite fear. She wanted her mother to come upstairs and wake her from this strange dream. She wanted to run, to find her parents and crawl into bed with them like she was a little girl, her father to stroke her hair as he chased out the bad dreams with all sorts of magical stories.
“It was your birthday, wasn’t it?” the lady said, looking at the two purple balloons tied Setsuna’s desk chair, already sagging with time – helium balloons never lasted long, dipping at gravity’s whim. “It feels like a very poor gift.” A wand hung in the air before the lady – nothing like Miranda’s toy fairy wands, but purple and gold, with a big ball on the top, and two smaller ones on either side, topped with a gold star. “How old are you now?”
“Eleven,” Setsuna said, tearing her eyes away from the floating wand.
“Just a little girl,” the lady smiled.
“My Papa thinks I’m all grown up,” Setsuna managed.
“A parent always thinks that their babies grow up too quickly.” The woman stared off into space for a moment. “Do you remember me, Setsuna?”
Setsuna stared at the woman. “I don’t know you at all. I think I’m dreaming.”
“You need to take the wand, Setsuna. You need to remember,” the lady stood.
Setsuna looked at her and then reached for the wand.
It was like someone had lit fireworks of information in her mind. Her forehead tingled as everything was made clear again.
She cried out, clutching her head, dropping the wand onto her quilt cover, for the new knowledge to vanish when her contact with the wand ended. Her head felt like it was burning, like she’d tripped and fallen against the old stove again.
Motherly arms pulled her into a hug for a moment, before she was tucked back into bed. She curled up in a big ball, rocking as the pain rented through her mind. People, places and things filled her mind. Hands began stroking her head. Mama, Mama. She called out for her mother, sleeping just down the old stairs, but who was too far away to pat away the hurt now.
Selenity looked at the quivering little girl huddled in the bed, her eyes squeezed shut against the onslaught of information suddenly reappearing to her, her face buried in her arms. The child had only been eleven for a matter of hours, and now she would be thousands of years old, doing an ancient duty, and stuck in a child’s body, with only waning ghosts to offer guidance. The poorest gift the ancient queen could contemplate.
Selenity picked the Pluto transformation wand where it had fallen on the bedclothes and rested it by Setsuna’s pillow and rewound the music box on the bedside table. Setsuna was stilling now, a little ball under her quilt, her long dark hair fanned out on the pillow.
Selenity pressed a kiss to Setsuna’s temple, and rested her hand on Setsuna’s forehead, where the Pluto symbol was emblazoned. The symbol vanished and Selenity began humming along with the music box.
The lady – Selenity – rested her pale hand on Setsuna’s head and the pain vanished suddenly, and made her incredibly sleep.
“I am so sorry, Setsuna. I didn’t think you’d be needed again so soon. I thought, maybe…” Selenity shook her head. “Good luck.”
And the room went dark once again, the music box playing to the shadows, her dreams full of jumbled memories.
When the grey-pink light of morning finally crept underneath her curtains, Setsuna lay huddled with her head under the quilt. She’d been awake a long time, lying underneath her blankets and trying to sort out everything that happened, trying to arrange her thoughts into something resembling order.
Setsuna didn’t wait for her mother to come and wake her. She felt every tiny bit of forgotten grief and horror that had hung around her before she had … before she had died. The concept of her own death seems so foreign yet she knows that there was pain and a bit of blood and that’s all she can clearly recall. But she has read her father’s psychology textbooks, and knows that she could be repressing. Witnessing a death is traumatizing to anyone; but what about an eleven year old who is trying to recollect her own death?
And then there are thousands of years of memories – of knowledge, places and people – to recall and to quietly mourn.
The room is cold – it’s early, but she knows she won’t be able to sleep anymore. Her mother is awake; Setsuna can hear her in the kitchen already. An oddly comforting ritual; for a moment, she is tempted to run downstairs to her mama and her papa and cry out all her hurt – at dying, at living and at being reminded – and have them fix it all.
But the part of her that was a young woman when her father died, when her friends were murdered and was left in solitude for thousands of years reminds her that there is no way back – ignorance is only a blessing for the knowledgeable.
She moved stiffly across her room, kicking the flat balloons out of her way. All her movements felt mechanical – she put on her clothes, made up her bed and folded her nightgown like she did every morning. But she didn’t notice that her socks don’t match or that she’d missed a button or two doing up her blouse.
It’s when she comes to brush her hair that she looks up to the mirror, her hands resting on her cheek. She looks the same as she did yesterday, but with old eyes, she looks so young – her face round and her eyes large and her hair not quite long enough.
“Setsuna!” A knock at the door at her mother is poking her head up the stairs, with a smile on her face. “You’re already awake. Would you like to have some breakfast with your father?”
She turns, and takes in her mother – Marianne’s brown-black curls pinned up, her bright eyes regarding her oldest child, and the delicate lines at her mouth. The gold crucifix that rests just under her neat, practical blouse, and the rings on her hands. She yells about bills and children and religion, is a source of comfort, advice and the sort of maternal nature that comes from big families. She looks soft.
“Yes, Mama.” An image of a taller woman with long black hair and big garnet eyes, withering away in a big bed comes to mind and she resumes staring blankly into the mirror. She’s worn her hair the same way since her mama did it all those years ago – two braids at the sides of her hair, tied with ribbons, the rest loose and tumbling down her back.
It’s hard to style her hair – her mind tells her she’s done it a hundred times, but her fingers fumble with the pins; the half bun at the back of her head looks alien on such a young girl, but she pushes the last pin in. This is the person she was and will have to become again. The girl who wore daisies at the top of her braids; who spent days making dresses for her dolls with her mother’s material scraps and mismatched buttons – that girl had been pushed aside for duty once before, and would be again.
She knotted the blue ribbon around her hair and pulled on her sweater; it was always cold in the mornings. The house is draughty, and the entire family has given up any hope of Olivier repairing it – coats and gloves are simply donned in the early hours of the morning.
As she goes to leave her bedroom, she turns around the glare at the wand, sitting harmlessly on her bedside table. It was like it called her name, reminding her that it was there and it wouldn’t be left behind, or rejected.
She jammed it in the pocket of her sweater.
The kitchen was warmer, filled with breakfast cooking, her parents talking in low tones and the morning news filling any possible silence.
“Early morning, sweetheart?” Olivier smiles at her over the top of his paper, his reading glasses resting on the edge of his nose. “Turning over a new leaf?”
She manages a sickly smile, before hiding her face in the fridge.
“I suppose it’s too much to hope for that you’ll join me at Church?” Marianne hands Olivier a mug of coffee. Olivier snorts and Setsuna eyes the remains of her birthday cake – most of the lettering on ‘Happy’ and ‘Setsuna’ has been eaten away. Its official – the whole world is mocking her.
“Everything is already on the table, Setsuna,” Olivier drags her attention from the remnants of her cake. “It’s far too early for you to be scoffing sugar roses, too.”
Her parents talk over her head as she eats, one hand in her sweater pocket, holding the wand like an anchor. Her mother leaves to get ready for Church, and her father is left with the dirty dishes.
“Did you have any plans for today?” Olivier asks, elbow deep in washing up, his eldest staring blankly into the garden.
“I might go for a walk.” Her thoughts are wandering, and Setsuna hopes her mother won’t notice the chip in the coffee cup.
“I’ve got papers to mark, based on a thesis that I think you’d enjoy,” Olivier watches as one of Setsuna’s hands slip back into the pocket of her sweater, like a child cuddling a security blanket or sucking their thumb. “Perhaps after lunch, we can sit down and discuss it.”
Finally, her father releases her, and she heads into the back of the garden. Beyond the half rotten fence lies a dirt path that weaves through trees and overgrowth for several hundred meters, where is disappears into a stream. A worn out swing hangs above the stream, ‘1954’ engraved on the seat.
It’s the most private place she can think of – she fell off the swing when she was seven, and broke her arm, and no one heard her screams for her mother and father. The trees cover her house – and the neighbours – from view.
“Pluto Planet Power, Make Up!”
The mauve energy wrapped itself around her, and it was euphoric; safe and familiar and exactly the same. The Time Staff materialized in one hand – shrunken to accommodate her smaller stature.
“Dead Scream.” The murmured attack blasts into a tree across the stream, splitting it halfway down the trunk. It wasn’t as strong as she remembered her attack, but the logical side of her mind pointed out that it would get stronger as she was able to control it.
As her senshi fuku melted back into her skirt and blouse, the Time Staff hovered in front of her.
“Watch over the Time Gates in my absence,” she said softly, the Garnet Orb blinking lazily, as if it understood her, before vanishing.
Perching on the old swing, Setsuna examined her henshin wand, staring at the dirty looking water just below her feet. She wondered where the other princesses were – where they even born yet? Where had they ended up?
“I can tell you that your compromise is there to take. It will not greatly ease the pain of what is to come, but it is a future.”
The old monk’s words came to the front of her mind, as she began to swing back and forth, staring up at the sky. She wasn’t ready to return to the empty Time Gates, to the quiet and isolation, and listen to the low, incomprehensible mutter of past guardians. But something good was coming – the darkness had finally passed and maybe this time, she could save them all.
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