onepassingnight | Where is Endymion?

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Where is Endymion?

There's a smell of ash in the air, though there is no crackling of fires or snap of flames. Nothing seems damaged, there is only the reminder carried on the wind. A hush pervades everything, quietly forbidding, mysterious.

At the top of a long set of marble stairs, there is a castle with sculpted columns and domed roofs, a symbol of wealth and luxury - and permanence. It sits against the backdrop of a darkened night sky, where even the stars seem dim and sparse.

Amid all this, at the top of the steps, a girl wearing a sailor uniform trimmed with lace and satin and pearls sits and stares into space as though oblivious to the muted atmosphere or anyone approaching; her face is utterly still. A tiara crowns her blond hair, worn in the signature style of the Silver Millenium royal dynasty.

The princess plays a small lap harp, the only notable sound. Her tune is gentle, but lonely and yearning, a constant ache for a past long gone. A close look reveals that the harp bears the sigil of Mercury.

(ooc: answers coming from

nihil_serenitas for icons)

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The princess looks at Reno as though she looks right through her, to something else, something further away. Satin-gloved hands pause, silencing the harp, and she looks Reno full in the face for several long seconds.

She has only one thing to say, and it is not even a question of who Reno is or where she came from. Her voice is as distant as her expression.

"Where is Endymion?"

At least she stops playing the harp. Soulful harp music. Really. What could be worse? Musically speaking, that is.

"Who?" The name's not familiar to Reno. All she knows about Earth's mythology is those few bits and pieces her planet seems to share with the other. Endymion is not included in that crossover.

The lack of reaction or emotion is weird. Reno does like to get a reaction, which is part of the reason her greetings are so very nontraditional, but she doesn't mind answering the question, not that her answer is particularly useful. "Never heard of 'em." She shrugs.

The harp is only a focus, an outlet for the feelings that rise from her search - a search, she understands by Reno's words, that has once more been thwarted. She lifts her head.

"Endymion," she seems to like the name very much to judge from the number of times she manages to say it, "is the only prince of Earth; young, but strong and courageous."

Yet he is not here. Not here in the Moon Castle, and not on Earth. She knows it. Where has he gone? Where has he been taken? Where must she go, and how far, to find him?

"That doesn't help me much. Never heard of "Earth" either. What, a place named after dirt?" She laughs. "Plenty of dirt where I'm from, but it's not called that. Don't got any princes, either."

She's not too concerned with the princess' quest, herself. "I ain't too sure you've got this 'looking for somebody' thing down. You're not going to find anything hanging around here playing a harp. Except maybe your own ass, if you're looking for that."

A pause. "It's right behind you, by the way."

"Endymion," the inevitable name is spoken yet again as the princess ignores - or perhaps does not register - the snide remark, "is neither here in this castle nor on that planet."

More to herself than to Reno, she adds, "Then where shall I look now?" What is the use of this body, borrowed from Sailor Moon, if it cannot seek him and find him? What is the use of this place?

"So, if I've got this right, Endymion is this guy you're looking for, and he's not anywhere near here, and he's not somewhere else, and no one knows where he is, not even you."

This was not a very exciting mystery, and even if she had any kind of suggestion to make about where Endymion might be (which she didn't), she didn't feel like it. "Is he your boyfriend or something? Or ex boyfriend, I guess, if you can't find him."

This is all accurate. The princess confirms it without hesitation.

"Endymion and I fell in love on that planet." It had not had a happy ending. "It was forbidden."

And thus her current dilemma: Endymion far away, where she cannot go or even see him. Where she cannot know what is happening. Where other eyes may be the ones to see him and other hands the ones to touch him.

That's a little more interesting, anyway. "Got it. You lost your boyfriend, and now you're--" Whatever she is, she seems seriously out of it. Reno makes a hand gesture that's meant to dismissively be indicative of this.

"Don't get so hung up on one guy it wrecks you. Big mistake. There's a lot of 'em out there."

Reno is wrong. "For me, there is only Endymion," the princess says precisely, without acknowledging the gesture or the label Reno gives her by it.

There was never anyone else. There was never anyone else to look at her and truly see her; just as now, she looks at no one else.

"He was the only one."

Reno thinks she's right. Doesn't matter if she actually is. Getting hung up on one person is stupid. People die. Things change. This mystical, fictional, so-called "true love" is nothing but a steaming heap of bullshit. She rolls her eyes.

"So what're you gonna do about it? Play your little harp some more?"

For a second, a stubborn look crosses the princess' face. There is so much she will do to find Endymion, to claim him, to bring him to her side again. Surely he must want this, too. She hasn't bothered asking him, anyway.

But just as quickly, a feeling finally shows itself that might be regret. What happened before... was terrifying in its scope, a part of her still knows.

"In the past, when he was taken away, I destroyed that planet," she says; and her voice does not catch with emotion. The words are spoken as simply, as tonelessly, as the rest.

Reno sobers. "Great. Just great. So you're fucking batshit." She's had enough of people wanting to destroy planets, or wipe out all human life, or conquer the world, or whatever these megalomaniac lunatics get it in their heads to do. Maybe she should be afraid, but she isn't. It could be the fact that this is a dream, but it's not as if she hasn't faced off against a few potential planet destroyers before now. Who'd've thought that that would be something she'd experience multiple times? It was more than anyone should have to deal with.

She looks like a more or less ordinary human (or an ordinary princess, anyway) to Reno's untutored eyes, but ordinary girls don't destroy planets.

"What are you, some kind of monster?"

It's the first time someone's called the princess that to her face. There'll be a certain amount of satisfaction for the true dreamer, who agrees with the conclusion.

Serenity seems to consider it before answering. She is responsible for acts done in passion, done in panic, perhaps done - as Reno says - in madness. But she is not a monster. She is a girl born to a throne and a great power.

"I am an immortal of the Silver Millennium," her answer to Reno is measured and simple - and for once does not include that ubiquitous name.

She's seen a lot of monsters. Maybe she's been one herself. Not that she ever wanted to do something as insane as destroy the world. There are a lot of different kinds of monsters.

"So what? So since you're some immortal silver thing, you get to do what you want and wipe out everybody cause you can't get the dick of your dreams? Give me a break."

Yeah, Reno's bullshit detector is still going off.

Except, and this is the part that will be disturbing upon waking, she hadn't wanted it. It had happened amid her shock and confusion, from desperation and not malice. For that moment, she had thought she couldn't possibly face a world without him- and the ginzuishou had complied.

That was all. Just that moment. And now, whether she wills it or not, it has happened. Now, whether she wills it or not, her place will be taken by the girl she is certain will do the same thing, for the same reason.

Somehow, though this conversation couldn't be called friendly, it feels important to speak the truth. "When Endymion died," she says slowly, and there's a slight shiver at the very thought, "I could no longer stop my feelings, or that power."

"Am I supposed to feel sorry for you cause you lost your shit? Because I don't."

Reno is perhaps less forgiving than others would be, having lived through the cataclysmic results of someone who experienced a moment of despair losing their mind.

"Everybody dies. I don't care if you are immortal." Yes, this makes no sense, literally speaking, but if Reno were more eloquent, she might say that death, loss, are things everybody has to deal with.

There is someone else involved here who is perhaps even less forgiving than Reno, someone willing to go to great lengths for vengeance that seems justified because of the act the princess is speaking of right now.

"Without Endymion," she says, "there was nothing else." If the myth had existed in Reno's world after all, she might recognize the same grasping feeling that led that Selene to send that Endymion to sleep, simply so as not to lose him, even if he was nothing but a beautiful shell - an immortal fretting for the fate of her mortal lover.

The words, no matter her feelings, cut out the vast numbers of people who lived on that planet, and even her own companions and guardians and those who should have been in her heart.

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Where is Endymion?

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princess may be deadpan but i am giggling XD

ha ha, i'm glad to hear it

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i'm a horrible person for laughing. XD poor reno. normal!fell agrees.

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