Chapter Two: Dreams

            The grass was waist-high and the delicate blades bent around her legs easily.  She waded through, laughing and half-running, stopping only to pick wildflowers to add to her colorful decorations.  She was only eight and three months, and considered the three months an important part of the total.  The sun shone warmly on the scene.  She laughed and waved her flowers toward it, and it glowed with affection.  It was her friend, her guardian. 

       “Gwyn!” The voice stopped her romping and the smile turned to face the woman, dark locks swinging around in the breeze.  She smiled.  “Come in, now.  Someone is here to play with you."

       "Who is it?" 

       "Her name is..."

       The image faded.

       The door opened.  The queen entered court and began to speak.  “On the evidence that has been presented to my person on behalf of both parties disputing this incident and with the discernment granted me by God and nature, I have deliberated the matter at hand and have reached the conclusion that the defendants are at fault according to the grievances brought against them in this court....” The rest of the speech was lost to her ears.  It was over.  The punishment came next.  “…and by the royal right invested in me and the position I hold, I hereby sentence the defendants to be stripped of all rights and privileges  as members of my court.  They will also….”  Again, Gwyn stopped listening.  The rest was fluff, thrown in to please the dignitaries.  They did not realize that the former was enough.  She glanced over at her friend, and saw her gripping the table, white-knuckled and full of rage.

       She looked at the girl beside her, who in turn looked back. There were no words. The mute anger and bitter betrayal burning in her golden eyes were enough.      

       The image faded.

        The blackness swirled slowly into color, a twisted and blurred image that resolved and widened.  It became readily apparent that she was horizontal, and she heard nearby crackling and the faraway drums she always did, as well as glimpsing the orange tinted shadow nymphs dancing, subsequently mocking and jovial, across the coarse and jagged stone.  She realized, if belatedly, that someone else was in the room.  She rose, and he turned.  His hair was tied in a braid that fell nearly halfway down his back.  He grinned at her.  “I found you in the forest.  Are you all right?”  He asked, a touch hesitantly. She nodded and thanked him for his concern.  He crossed the room and extended his hand, which she took uncertainly.  “My name is Corbin, from clan McLaine.”

       Then came the painful part.

       She was three when her father died.  Her mother had always been more distant, but together they transcended into a more blissful existence.  With her father’s death, the delicate relationship with her mother broke.  Her mother stopped loving her. Gwyn never knew why anything she did was wrong, but she seemed to mess up often enough.  She learned never to cry in front of her, though, because that always made it worse.  She saved that for when she was alone in bed, and every night she cried for the next day.

       The image faded, but the feeling of loss and abandonment remained. 

       She was five.  The bowl fell and shattered.  Her mother was displeased with that, and worse so at her crying. “Don’t think that you can win my sympathy by crying!  You know you shouldn’t mess with that.  If it’s too high for you to reach, then there’s a reason for it.  Why did you do that Gwyn?  Why?”

       “I—” she struggled to stop the stream of tears cascading down her face.  “I was just—”  Her mother cut her off.

       “Never mind.  I don’t want to hear your excuses.  Go to bed.”  She emphasized the last statement by pointing Gwyn in the direction of her room.  She walked over the delicate shards of glass spread around her, and watched the color seep into them, a rose-colored trail in her wake.  Her unfinished statement rung in her ears as she let the tears come.  I was just trying to make you love me again…

       In her mind she screamed because she remembered what it was like to be a child, to feel so completely, inexplicably alone.  She was used to it now, she had a hard shell covering the part of her that still desired so strongly to have love of any kind.  But reliving those early memories, she felt again the incomprehension and the vulnerability that she had as a child.  She wanted to see no more because she knew the next ones were worse.  And now she had no protection.

       When Gwyn awoke the feeling lingered, haunting the recesses of her mind as she tried to shake the images from her head.  Sitting, she tried to control her shaking hands.  The dreams had faded.  She couldn't even remember much of the first part anymore, only a feeling of belonging that she could never remember having had. 

       Gwyn stretched her legs over the edge of the bed that she had found herself upon, and blinked at the darkness.  The events leading to her arrival at this place were slightly confused, and as she sorted them out she realized that very little of it made the least bit of sense.  All she could derive from her experiences and somewhat battered present condition was that somehow, she had ended up in Japan.  And that there was absolutely no way her mother would believe a word of it.

       She sat in the darkened room, unbelievably still and focused, trying to find a solution to the problem she found herself in.  Eventually, her concentration was broken by a voice.  She turned to see the Japanese girl standing in the doorway.  Now in a state of mind more suitable to observation, she noted that the girl was probably about a year older than her, and she had amazing black hair, the kind that can accurately be described as "cascading" that Gwyn almost found herself envying, and for Gwyn, envy did not come naturally.  Although she was speaking in Japanese, Gwyn gathered that she was trying to ask her something and in return tried to convey that she didn't have the slightest inkling what that was.  Apparently it succeeded, because the other then spoke in a slow, unusually punctuated form of English.

       "You are okay?"

       "Mostly."  She saw confusion. "Yes.  Yes I am.  Thank you."

       "I am Rei."

       "Gwyn."

       "I...if is..." Gwyn realized that she was having a temporary communications breakdown.

       "I can understand some Japanese.  If you speak slowly."  In the laborious half hour that followed this statement, they established the events pertaining to Gwyn's arrival in Japan and that neither wished for her to return to her home.  "We will talk more, but now you must have a bath."  And so yet another half hour passed before Gwyn found herself being introduced to a diminutive man who had a smile comparable to that of the Cheshire cat and turned out to be Rei's grandfather and four other girls who were apparently Rei's friends and that all were equally cheerful.  They also talked incessantly, except for one of them who wore pastel and became embarrassed about just about anything.  Gwyn shied from her armory of dirty jokes.  They probably wouldn't have gotten them anyway.

       Rei contemplated.  She had asked the girls over to talk to the American, but not for purely jovial reasons.  She had a feeling that there was something more to this girl than there seemed to be.  Over the past several years, Rei had gained an identity and a past which sometimes amazed her to possess.  She had found extraordinary powers and connections to long dead monarchies that nobody even knew had ever existed.  She had been, at one point, princess and heir to the throne of Mars, and protector of the Princess of the Moon.  Which was an unusually unfocused girl who had discovered also a strength and power within her.  And her friends--Ami, Makoto, and Minako--they had each come into her life, most of them as lost as she, all of them the holders of an extraordinary secret and responsibility.  And then, after facing waves of evil, off and on, they found the future, and the others--Hotaru, Michiru, Haruka, and Setsuna.

       They had developed an awareness at this point, and she felt a strength in Gwyn that even diminished that of Usagi, Sailor Moon herself.  It troubled her and shocked her.  When Gwyn left, they talked.

       "Did you feel it?" she asked them.  They had.

       "I've never felt anything that strong."

       "It was hard to characterize.  It seemed very untamed, at first, but I also sensed...control.  It makes no sense."

       "She could be an enemy."

       "We must keep her here at all costs."

       "We will need to find the others."

       "Do you think they might have the answer?"

       "Setsuna perhaps...."

       "Time.  That's what we need.  In every sense of the word."

       The night did not pass quietly.  Rei slept, and then was awakened.  Aware that this was not a normal crisis, she moved quietly and cautiously.  Concentrating, she was able to pinpoint the disturbance and put a name to it.  It surprised her.  These forces had been inactive for a long time...It was coming from Gwyn's room.

       She waited until she was out of the window before she transformed.  Changing from an ordinary teenage girl to one with extraordinary power and an unusual costume that should have been too bright for stealth, she called for help and proceeded to creep along the wall toward the source of the disturbance.  The situation at hand was somewhat different from what she had expected.  It was attacking Gwyn.

       She shouldn't have been surprised, but she had apparently convinced herself that Gwyn was one of the bad guys.  Maybe she still was.  She watched in fascination as Gwyn returned every punch the youma threw at her.  Most people ran, screamed, or fainted.  Sometimes all three.  Eventually, its strength proved the greater and she was held helpless and struggling.  Rei, aware that the height of drama had been reached and no plot was of yet to be revealed, prepared to leap through the window. 

       Suddenly, there was a burst of energy and a flash of light ruined her plans of entry.  She squinted and sought the source.  As the light began to fade, she saw the residue of a fait symbol on Gwyn's forehead.  In shock, it took several moments to realize that Gwyn was unconscious, and once this conclusion had been reached, she upheld her civic duty. 

       It died quickly, in one shot from her fire sniper.  The ashes were still smoldering when she entered from the other end of the spectrum, as a teenage girl awoken from sleep to find a small congregation (consisting of her grandpa and the American) after an inexplicable noise in the night.

       Later that night she consulted the leading scientists of her field--Sailor Mercury and two small cats by the names of Luna and Artemis.  They crowded around the table with the other three and Sailor Moon's boyfriend, who happened to be her fiancée from ages past and a prince to boot.

       "Tell me again what the symbol looked like," Ami said.

       "It was a circle with a dot inside. Like this."  Rei drew a diagram. 

       Ami's face gained that distinct quality one always gets when one has a revelation.  "Oh yes," she exclaimed (although without the excitement of most normal people). "That's the sign of the sun!  I can't believe I didn't think of it before now.  That would mean she's the sailor of the sun, wouldn't it?"

       "There is no sailor of the sun,"  Luna pronounced.

       "There must be,"  Ami insisted.  "That's the only thing that makes sense.  It's exactly what happens to us when we're attacked.  It has to be...unless....  She could be trying to trick us.  Which would make her an enemy.  That would be bad because it would mean we would probably have new threats to deal with."

       "So the best thing would be to leave it unmentioned and try to get to know her."

"She could have some association with us, couldn't she?  It'd be awful for her to turn out bad, even if she doesn't talk much."

"That's because she doesn't speak our language, Bunny."

"Nothing else to discuss.  Let's get some sleep."

"I hope she's not an enemy," Rei said to herself as they left.  "She feels like a friend.  I hope she is.  I really do."

BACK