Urei's face grew pale as she listened to what her mother said. All sorts of thoughts raced through her mind, threatening to overload it. She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands, her elbows on the table to support her head, as she tried to collect her thoughts and sort out all that had just happened. In only minutes, she had transformed, from the lonely elven outcast to a half-elven, half-fairy princess, who's sole duty as Princess, and someday Queen, was to protect an entire galaxy of planets that she had known nothing about until this very night. And not only that, her own mother, who had abandoned her at birth, comes home, not to visit her family, but to ask the daughter she had never known to help other senshi she didn't know in an entirely unknown galaxy, which she didn't even know where it was, or if she would even see her father or brother again. And all for what?

      Urei's hands dropped to the table, and she gripped the edge of it until her knuckles turned white. "How dare you?" she whispered fiercely. "How dare you do this to me, disappearing as soon as I was born, never visiting, never even WRITING, and now you expect me to leave my family, abandon them like you did, just to help some strangers on a planet that only the gods know where it is, just because you WANT me to? How DARE you ask me to do that!" Looking up, Urei glared at the woman who was her mother, this woman who had never been there when she needed her most, her mother who finally comes only days before her 16th birthday to deliver such a gift. This gift of a burden that Urei just couldn't, and wouldn't bear right now.

      Pushing her chair back behind her, scraping the floor with it as she did so, Urei left the table and pulled the heavy wooden door open and left the little house, slamming the door shut behind her. Urei ran for the forest as fast as she could, running blindly through the trees and not even paying attention to where she was going. Urei ran until a cramp in her side caused her to drop to her knees, gasping. As the cramp subsided and Urei caught her breath, she looked around her surroundings. Right in front of her was a familiar old tree, unique because it was one of the few vallenwood trees this far into the forest, and also because it had been the much loved climbing tree of Urei and her brother when they were children. In spite of all her inner turmoil, Urei smiled to herself, and wondered is she was still as good a tree climber as she had been back then. She decided to find out. "And besides," Urei thought,"it'll be safer up there, and most likely no one will find me up there."

      Urei didn't know how long she was sitting up in the tree, but some time later, she heard a rustling on the forest floor below. Not knowing what to expect, Urei readied her dagger and watched the ground below the tree, hoping that it was only a raccoon or a deer, anything but.... Suddenly, she heard the creak of a branch, and a hand clamped down on her shoulder. Startled, Urei swung her arm behind her, hoping to catch whoever had her in the gut, but the hand quickly let go, and losing her balance, Urei fell off the branch she was sitting on. Nimbly flipping in the air, Urei landed on her feet in a crouching position, waiting for her assailant to reappear. Hearing a thump, she turned to face him, and saw that it was her brother Kage. "Dammit Kage," Urei whispered furiously, picking up a stick off the ground and throwing it at him,"you're lucky you're so quick." "You're telling me," Kage replied grumpily, batting the stick away with his arm. "And here I was worried about you." Sighing heavily, Urei sat cross-legged on the ground, and said,"I'm sorry Kage. I just needed to get out of there, and be alone for a while. I just..... I couldn't believe that our mother would just show up one day, dump all of that on us, ask me to go to another world to help complete strangers, and expect me to go along with it all, like nothing was different. Like it would erase the fact that she was never there for us, and we could just start all over, and be one big happy family." Urei's voice was breaking now, and the tears were sliding down her face. Kage walked over to her and sat next to her, wrapping his arms around her. Urei began to sob uncontrollably, and Kage said,"You're right. She had no right to do that to you, and she has no right to ask you to leave. And she didn't TELL you to do anything, she only asked, so you don't HAVE to go anywhere. She'll just have to do it herself. It's HER job, after all. So stop crying, all right? You look like hell when you cry anyways." Urei laughed a little at Kage's sorry attempt to cheer her up. "Thanks a lot big brother. But you're right. She didn't tell me to do anything, and even if she did, I still wouldn't do it." Urei wiped her face and stood up. "Let's go home, Kage," she said, and headed back to her home.