onepassingnight | [011 ☿] Silent Planet Mercury

Unearthly quiet falls over everything. This place is empty and barren; nothing grows in its desolate grey soil. It's a void without atmosphere, but those who arrive here find themselves able breathe normally and withstand the incredible heat of planet Mercury's sun-turned side.

To the daughter of this planet, it's breathing the nostalgic air of thousands of years ago. Here, she is at her strongest and her best. She thrives in the sun that appears several times larger than it would on Earth, she basks in its intense rays despite the dark sky of space.

Without turning around, Mercury speaks with her eyes fixed on the sky. "Watch," she insists. She nods to where the sun travels towards its highest point - and stops for several long moments before beginning to unwind its arc backwards. It's a sight only seen here, and only now while it's been sped up enough to be observable.

Before she can say more, a second brightness flares so strongly that it almost overshadows anything else. Mercury suddenly lets out a pained whimper and shields her eyes from the holy light of Venus. She has that flesh-crawling feeling of a nightmare somehow.

(ooc: artist conceptions of Mercury sunrise. The effect described with the sun's path is due to Mercury's orbit and happens over the course of a Mercury day - about two months of our time.)

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He would normally turn away from her, but now he stands from his spot to just barely brush the back of his hand with hers.

"You know what this is, don't you?" He says quietly as the brightness flares, his own eyes closed against the bright light almost enveloping everything. Like her, he's dressed in all blue, to reflect Mercury.

For a moment, she thinks about pretending to be ignorant. But the moment he says it, the moment he asks, she's sure, as sure as if she could see it through his powers.

"Planet Venus flared into a new life." She couches it in the half-mystical, half-astronomical terms. It says so much about what this means to her to note she doesn't pull away from that touch.

More than that, she sincerely doesn't know, and that's why, even as the pain of the light recedes, she is disquieted. She asks it more of herself than of him, "What happens next?"

Do they become hunters, perhaps even butchers, of a child? A baby? Unthinkable. Do they allow the girl to become a powerful threat, as surely her regrets from her last life would make her in this one? They cannot.

And so Mercury stands motionless, still.

Riku breathes out something of a sigh as they stand together, and it's only then that he shifts a little away. He puts a hand against his head and winces, then lets his hand drop at his side. There are more new paths to take. He knows that and he knows she knows that. He breathes in and then out.

"I can't tell."

And they both know that's a lie, to cover something he may or may not want to say.

He hesitates.

He brings a hand up to her shoulder and gently pats her clothed back.

She thinks of forcing him, if she can. This is too important to leave to chance, when an answer is right beside her.

But it's wrong, for the simple reason that she knows what it is to be wanted only for her powers and abilities. She can't treat him like that. She tells herself the decision is only that, and nothing to do with also being unsure whether her powers would be strong enough.

She grabs at the faint hope that it's irrelevant. Venus was once born on Earth, but once born in the Heavens where her planet still shines, dimmed to its normal brightness now. Perhaps she will be born somewhere else.

If she has been born.

Mercury stiffens as she squares her shoulders, perhaps from nothing more than determination. At the very least, she will have to search and find out.

"Next time," she instructs Riku when she finally speaks, "Just say 'I won't'." Remove the lie.

"Hm."

He regards her quietly.

Concern hides behind his exterior, but then he straightens and looks back to the heavens. "I will."

Maybe.

Riku breathes in and drops his hand, closing his eyes, shaking his head.

"There's nothing more to be done here," Mercury speaks almost to herself. "We'll keep going forward."

Through the crater, through the rubble that can barely be called ruins, through the uncertainty. She says something so irrelevant.

"It's better to be sure of a threat." Whether she means sure of the threat before meeting it, or sure of removing it, she doesn't say. Perhaps she still doesn't know herself.

"You don't have to keep moving forward relentlessly." He says slowly, tries to reason. It's hard to see it from her point of view.

He walks further along, in front of her. "Take a second before you go."

Besides, he'd like to learn more about this than her goals for fighting. Fighting never turns out a victor. He's well aware of that.

But she does. The second she stops, it'll all collapse. Fall down. She might even break.

So she doesn't stop. But she goes slow enough for Riku to easily stay with her.

"This couldn't be called a place worth fighting for," she remarks of the landscape in front of them. "But in the past, it was."

"Tell me about it. I can see it, but I'd like to know what I'm seeing."

Riku turns from her, dipping his head down a little low. He wants to know of this kingdom, this place, now ruin and once thriving. Maybe, whilst going through history, they could both be a little more comfortable where they were.

"This was the Mercury Kingdom," she announces. "Mine. Of all the planets, it was the one that contributed most to the amazing technology of our race. It was also a center of commerce and ideas." A strange role for a planet at the fringe of the inner solar system; yet nonetheless true.

"However, it was destroyed along with the others, by my enemy." She does not even say 'the moon princess', though she'd be very pleased to specify. She doesn't want to see that girl as anything that could have been closer to her than this.

[011 ☿] Silent Planet Mercury

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/squees!

<3

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