Kalani was restless. Her heart hurt. Her head hurt. Her head, actually, was still full of bees, which was at least part of the reason for her restlessness, but she couldn't blame all of that on the kicking caffeine.
No, she had spent - she didn't even know how long - staring at that spider, that poor sweet spider that had lived less than a year, but had
lived, and been loved. She had spent a long time staring at that spider, until she couldn't breathe and she had to get
out so out she went, into the wild beauty of the Garde.
It was different, exploring this place on her own, not amid a crowd of people competing - not even with Morgan and his easy chatter. His
usually easy chatter. Another frown, a more determined pace.
Until - being on her own did not mean she was alone, suddenly. She heard Pal before she came into view, and it brought a smile to her face. She had loved Pal in all her grotesque beauty from the second she saw her, and she was pleased to see her again.
–and pleased not to see her alone, too. Joy's ghostly ancestor had appeared, too, with an unnecessary but appreciated warning, at just the right time. (If only he could have warned them about the box.)
“Sit,” Kalani commanded, smile widening as Pal sat obediently. “Good girl,” she cooed, moving to quickly reward the creature with as many pets and scritches and snuggles as she could give. She kept her attention on Pal, but when she spoke, it was directed to the ghost nearby.
“Did you know,” she said softly, in-between licks and whining from Pal, “that there are humans that wish to be immortal?” Here she did glance, briefly, in the ghost's direction. “I think - I think they do not comprehend how terrible a thing it is, to live so long, and to live it alone.” Perhaps live wasn't quite the right word for him, but - it hadn't been quite the right word for her, either, not for a very, very long time.
rejam
“They must be very unwise,” he said quietly, after a long moment’s pause. He was not watching her or the beast; he had, as he had often had at the tournament, a strange attitude of keeping-watch, as if there was anything for him to watch for and anything he could have done, if there were.
For a moment it seemed as though he would say nothing more, but he did, finally.
(Strange, for him; a year or so ago he would not have volunteered a thought to a stranger. But things changed, and even in the absence of living, he had a life that brought its inevitable little revolutions.)
“You are, then, one of those long-lived ones. Like Grieve.” He had spoken to her in a tone of respectful deference, which seemed to accept her naturally as some sort of superior to himself, and it carried over into his next words. “The Cauldron has called a great many to suffer overlong in the service of our duties, I think.”
Kalani smiled, a little wryly. Was
anyone ‘like Grieve’? Kalani was fairly certain that she was singular, unique, throughout the whole universe.
But then. Weren't they all, by definition, singular?
Kalani's shoulders slumped slightly, though it was hard to wallow when Pal demanded so much love and attention.
“I am more like your spider,” Kalani admitted, many minutes of silence later. She actually did not know if the ghost was still there or not, but she spoke anyway. “Kuanians…my people,” she said, with a soft sigh, “I am the oldest a Kuanian has ever been. I suppose no one knows for certain when they will rejoin the Cauldon, but…”
Kalani sighed, sat down in the grass, and let Pal flail with excitement about this development for a few minutes before she spoke again.
“I–failed today.” It was not an easy thing for her to admit, and her eyes were far away, even as she accepted the stick - tree branch - small tree? - that Pal brought her, and threw it as hard and as far as she could. Being a Senshi, this was quite hard and quite far. “And I do not even know what success would have looked like.” She pulled her legs to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and sighed.
“Do you know of the strange box hidden in your beautiful boat,
kupuna?” Kalani asked, directing her words to Nail specifically for the first time - though she did not think to explain, the word was clearly an honorific, a term of respect for her companion. She remembered his name, but not only did she know with certainty that she would never come close to pronouncing it correctly, she felt that was - too intimate, somehow. She was communing with a spirit, Lady Joy's ancestor, and this was no little thing, to Kalani.
rejam
“No,” he said, turning towards her a little at last with a certain look of inquiry. “That was a thing of leisure.” He said this as if it required no clarification at all. Clearly he, himself, not being a thing of leisure, had nothing to do with it and never had. If he was suddenly more alert, perhaps it had something to do with Joy’s fondness for that boat. “But it seems that most of what has chosen to remain with us are not ordinary things. What did you find?”
Kalani nodded in understanding. “It is a bad box,” she said, dourly. “It is filled with some - powder or - herbs or - something,” she said, “and when Morgan…it did something to him,” she said, a frown knitting her brow once more. “He was saying things. He did not wish to be saying them, it was like - like it was being
pulled from him, like–like it
hurt him even to
speak about these things, and…”
Kalani sighed, brushed her fingers through the blades of grass where she sat. “My friend is hurting and I do not know how to help him.” It came out plaintive. “I do not think
he knows how to help himself, but he is–he is in
agony,
kupuna, and I do not know how I did not see it before, but I cannot–stop seeing it, now.”
rejam
Gouvernail seemed strangely - perhaps cruelly - unmoved by this.
“Maus,” he said, using the knight name as if he could use no other, “is like a child, who has no other remembered pain to compare the present to, and like a child he will storm and be done.” And then, coolly and without emotion: “He has had too much, like a child, of wanting his feelings to be the obligation of someone kind enough to hold them.”
This did not seem like an accurate description of the situation. But Nail - like everyone - was working through the narrow lens of his own motivations.
Hm. Kalani considered this, and decided it was partially, maybe, correct. In some ways, Morgan was only a year old, like herself, and even on Kua’kua, grubs were hardly expected to be emotionally stable after only a year.
“I do not think the second part of what you said is correct, with respect,
kupuna,” Kalani decided, after another long moment of consideration. “Because I was
asking to make his feelings my obligation. That is part of what friendship means. I was–” she paused, pursed her lips slightly, and felt a new emotion tingle at her, in the pit of her stomach. Something almost like - shame? Or embarrassment? She reviewed her behavior in her mind, and couldn’t help but cringe.
Perhaps, on the boat, she had been too–too–
(The word she searched for was ‘needy’, or ‘desperate’, or ‘emotional’, but she would never find those words, so she gave up on them.)
“Anyway. He refused and was–
angry, almost, that I even asked. I believe–I believe he thinks that–that in some way his…his past or his…” Kalani sighed, frowned. “Childs do not bear so much shame and hatred toward themselves for their past. I have never met a species that is so capable of–of–” she paused, searching, “--of
loathing as humans are, for each other and for yourselfs. I believe he has so much hate in him,
of him, that he believes others would be correct to hate him too, so he–he smiles and smiles and smiles.”
Kalani shook her head slowly; how many of the times he’d smiled at her had been from joy, and how many had been to keep her from asking too many questions or looking too closely? How much of what he said and did was genuine, and how much of it was just another version of him running away?
rejam
Another small miracle for her to be unaware of: he volunteered his opinion.
“Perhaps your long life has made you too wise to understand the foolishness of those who are like children by your side,” he said, unruffled. “But it does not oblige you to grandmother them.”
Kalani half-laughed, a wry sound, and shook her head. She thought of the spider, in its little glass case, surrounded by
legacy - children and children and children. Did spiders have starseeds? Little eight-pointed crystals, nestled deep in their weblike hearts?
She - wanted to swear him to secrecy. But what did it matter? It would change nothing if he told Lady Joy, and if she told Maus, and if he shouted from the rooftops.
“I have more in common with the spider that marks this place’s new beginning than with humanity.” Kalani sighed heavily, shoulders slumping a bit as she returned her attention to the grass beneath her fingers. “The wisdom my people accrue not comes from an individual’s longevity, but from the people’s. We return to the planet and the stars much faster than your people do. That means we know how…how…brief, a life can be, and so we try to fill what time we have with goodness and peace, as all good creatures should, but…Kua’kua is a garden, planted and cared for by many generations, even though they knew they would never get to see it bloom.”
Or, at least, it used to be.
rejam
A pause so long followed that maybe it seemed that he was lapsing back into his habitual silence. But he broke it, at last.
“In all those things, then, you were more like us than like a creature whose only thought was how to fill her belly another day. It is -”
He hesitated. But it would, probably, be more telling to stop than to say whatever it was he had been going to.
“It is not for me to remember how brief or prolonged even a human life feels. But whatever its measure in years, or what passes for a year, you must be more like us than like that spider. I do not suppose a spider ever considered immortality, or deemed herself a failure.”
Kalani blinked, and chuckled, but a more genuine sound this time. “You are correct,
kupuna. Thank you,” she said, and would have bowed were she standing up. “I am more than a bug, even a magical bug that was born from a place as beautiful as this one,” she acknowledged, but she could not fully divest herself of the comparison.
A long silence followed, and she listened to the wind, to the trees, to the many other magical bugs and birds and fish that had appeared or been born here. They would sing and sing, even after having been dormant for so very long. There was beauty in that, immense beauty.
Were it not for the caffeine and the general emotional turmoil of the day, Kalani may not have asked what she asked next, or she may have asked for permission first, or she may have asked someone else. But she was here, she was speaking with a spirit, and the words came out before she could stop them.
“If, tomorrow, you were granted a beating heart, bones and blood and flesh once more, able to come and go as you would wish…how long do you believe you would you live? Assuming you did not perish once again in defense of the light, or fall victim to disease.”
rejam
He was indeed startled by this unexpectedly direct appeal, hesitating before he answered.
“I do not know,” he said. “In my time, I may have said - ten years, or fifteen. But things are not now what they were then.” And there was a pause where, perhaps, he might have asked why she asked, if he was anyone but himself.
Kalani nodded. “That is about what I thought,” she said, though to say her estimation of the ghost’s living age was rough was generous. “Perhaps double, or maybe double-double that number, to allow for things as they are now.”
Kalani fell silent, this time for so long that it may have seemed, to anyone other than a ghost, that the conversation - or at least Kalani’s part of it - was over. Perhaps Kalani thought she could convince herself of this, if she could just keep her mouth closed long enough.
“If I were on my planet,” she began, finally, so soft even she herself could barely hear it, “as it was then, as the age I–I appear to be, now,” she said, looking dubiously at her hands (
your arms, your legs, your everything–) as she spoke, “I believe I would perish in half the time you would have then.” Kalani swallowed. “This is not sad. This is how it is
supposed to be. There is
supposed to be a new Sailor Kua’kua, every few cycles. It is the way of things. But..but the planet, the planet that blessed me with this strength, it…”
It sounded ungrateful to her own ears, and like Maus, she simply could not justify complaining about her life, no matter how quickly its extended length may find its end there on Earth, to someone who had nothing more than a shade of himself.
She had wanted to die. For
so long. And now that she would, soon–
She
was selfish. And stupid. Maybe she was no better than the spider after all, and maybe pretending to be otherwise was the
real source of her issues. For as much as she had bitten down truisms to Maus - one person’s pain does not disqualify another’s - it was–disrespectful, somehow, to complain about a gift that had been harshly taken from another, in front of them.
So she only had a year, maybe two. That was more than he had. More than the people on Kua’kua had.
Greedy, she thought to herself, then shook her head again and kept her lips tightly closed.
How much more could you ask for? You are alive, you have friends. How much more can you demand?rejam
“I had thought,” he said after a moment, “to observe that we are strange beings - that we have been chosen out for strange things, and cannot guess the time we have been given to do them. But that,” he said, “is a thing already true, I believe, for any living thing that can think and feel. When has any of them ever guessed the measure of his own life?”
The thing about studying a language - and that was, in fact, what Kalani had been doing for the past year, between Wee-kee-pee and the sound-and-image box in the living room and the noise-only people that were in her phone - was that you, by default, learned the meaning of words. And in Earthling, one word could have many meanings, which made it confusing for Kalani at times–including this time.
Measure.
Length of time.
Quality of time.
Did you ever really know either, until it was over?
“You are right,” she acknowledged again. “Thank you.” She realized, as she turned over his statement in her mind, trying to determine what she wanted to disagree with him about, that the truth was less the time itself; on Kua’kua, when
everyone had lived that long, before they knew it was possible to live longer lives than their own—
It hadn’t been sad. Not for the person who was doing the dying, anyway. It was simply the way of things. Your family would have grown up and old with and around you, and you would not mourn for what you would miss, perhaps because you knew there would not be so much
to miss.
But here? Now?
She had a flash of Maus, and old man - older than Sir Joy by half - old like the men she had seen when she lived in the park, playing chess and feeding the birds. She saw him, in her minds’ eye, the same impish smile on a wrinkled face, the same little mouse creature curled up against his drooping ears, the same urge and interest in the world around him undiminished, just fed more slowly than before.
She thought of Joy - difficult though it was to imagine someone as beautiful as Lady Joy ever succumbing to the grip of age, it would happen eventually, no matter what strange poisons humans found to fill their body with to hide the fact. She imagined Lady Joy, elderly, squinting into the setting sun, with elderly Maus seated next to her. She imagined her thunking him over the head with the cane she would walk with, detailed with vines and flowers and the imagery of this beautiful, perfect place.
The problem was, she realized - she wanted to be there with them. She did not want to miss the time between her own death and theirs, because there was so much
more of it, and humans packed so much
life into their lives. She wanted to see it all. She wanted to pick them up when they fell, to celebrate with them when they triumphed.
For the very first time -
ever - Kalani realized that not only
did she want to live, but she wanted to live as long as Kua’kua would allow her to. It felt - strange, but she told herself it was the same as it had ever been: Kua’kua nourished her people. Kua’kua was their most ancient ancestor, their eldest sister, who would give everything she could for them, and they had a duty to give everything they could back to her. It wasn’t - well.
Maybe it wasn’t greedy to take what was being offered. Maybe, it was just - maybe she could just - be grateful. Grateful and hopeful for the life she had, and the life unpromised, but also unrestricted.
She would die when she died. That was true for all things, as Sir Joy said. They lived strange lives, called to strange purposes, but no amount of magic in the world could change that fact, and there was, perhaps, something comforting in that.
“You are very wise,
kupuna,” Kalani said, a little smile on her face. “I hope Lady Joy appreciates your counsel.”
rejam
He did something, then, that very few people ever saw him do: he laughed. It wasn't much of one, quiet and brief, but it was a laugh.
“You flatter me,” he said. “But if I can be of use, it is as much as I ever want. I had not known that I was giving counsel. But it is for the best, or I may not have spoken so wisely as you give me credit for.” He paused, watching Pal, across the green, rolling on her back. “We are grateful you have come to us. It is good to see the Garde once again receiving guests.”
Kalani’s smile widened slightly, the noise a pleasant one, and she couldn’t imagine that there was much to laugh about, as a lonely ghost, so she was pleased to have given him even a moment’s worth of joy. It was a small gift in return for what he had given her, however unintentionally.
“I do not know if you were with us, earlier, when we were walking, so please forgive me if you heard this already, but - I believe that the Garde is
Raiā. I have been trying to think of a translation all day, and the closest I can think of is…blessed. Holy. A place fit for the gods and goddesses.
Sacred.” Kalani shook her head faintly.
“I cannot tell you how - important it is to me. That the Garde…that any place once ravaged can…can come back.” Kalani smiled as Pal returned to her, climbing into her lap and all over her, making her laugh again. “Yes, you are important to me as well, you beautiful creature.”
rejam
Joy had responded to that sincerity in a particularly cynical and unkind way. And maybe that was, at the center of itself, because Joy herself was constantly plagued by the knowledge that as living as the place might seem, the heart at the center of it was dead.
At some time he had gently hazarded to her the idea that she, not he, was at the heart of it, and what could be more alive than Elaine - and she had turned away from it in one of her rare fits of genuine rage at him, which were always, of course, a fit of grief at the root.
Gouvernail, however, for all that he was in many ways a much colder and crueler person than Elaine, was in many ways much kinder, and had had a lifetime before death to be cruel in. Little wonder, if he wanted some softness now that he was beyond nearly all of it that did not come to him in the shape of some occasional, too-short dream, at the hands of a woman whose softness only came in the form of cruelty anyway. So he did not pass on that observation, or turn it aside with some callous remark, or even remind her that this was not a real place, and that they could not even sail a boat on that river to some other Wonder, with other living things on it, and so do what all real, true life needed to do, and connect to other life.
He said, instead: "Yes. It is a blessing. It is sacred to me, as well. I am always glad to meet another who can share that feeling with me."
He turned slightly, then, towards the river which he could not see beyond the courtyard walls, and to the thread of smoke rising from the riverbank against the still-blue sky, more sensitive to those little things that moved around the Garde than Kalani could be.
"Your friend has finished his sulking," he said, with a respectful bow as he went to take himself to wherever it was that he went, when he was not interacting with the living. "It is early yet for a fire, but to be young is to be impatient." He hesitated, adding at last, in lieu of a farewell: "I do not think he is in so much agony as you imagine, but I am sure that he is glad to have so many looking after his pain. By all means summon me, if you require anything."
Kalani stood, gave Pal a final hug, then followed his gaze and nodded - to be young was to be impatient. Another true thing that she tucked into the corner of her mind with all the other things she’d learned since arriving on this strange planet with all these strange people. In many ways, Maus was only a year old, and Kalani needed to remember that.
Kalani looked back to the spirit and gave a deep bow. “I hope you find your rest soon, Sir Joy,” Kalani said, having finally remembered both the word for ‘not-Lady’ and how to pronounce it. “I will carry your words with me. Thank you.” Kalani bowed again, gave Pal one last round of scritches, and then began back the way she had come, following the smoke that billowed high into the perfect blue sky.
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