[011 ☿] Silent Planet Mercury

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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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She never knows what to do in the face of trust she doesn't feel she deserves, any more than the girl she used to be had felt right accepting Usagi calling her a kind person when she knew her thoughts were anything but that, or that person saying she could be better. It makes her feel pressured to become what they claim; she'd even once said she wanted to. It makes her feel she can't and that they simply don't see the parts of her that she thought were finally so obvious.

Where she had once worried about the inside part of her no one saw, and tried to hide it behind the good, now she knows: There is no good in her. She knows her motives, her thoughts, her intentions.

But the words touch something else, something she's not even sure she can name herself, and she finds herself echoing them. "Who I am?"

Herself through another's eyes. Who is the person he knows? Is it the same as the person she is inside, the person she looked for herself for so long? A part of her says it couldn't be.

"I'm..." but she hesitates even now, brushes the word away herself, no more need for the memories to be disrupted before they reach her mind.