Where is Endymion?

[waterfell]

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)

Comments

[tasercopter]

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.

[nihil_serenitas]

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."

[tasercopter]

"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.

[nihil_serenitas]

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.