Sailor Moon: Panorama


Interlude
"All Coming Back to Me"

I had no choice but to hear you
You stated your case time and again
I thought about it

You treat me like I'm a princess
I'm not used to liking that
You ask me how my day was

"Head Over Feet"
by Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard

I watch her in the Earthlight, gazing up at the blue-green sphere that has brought all of us so much trouble, and wish that I could bring myself to hate it and one of its denizens, in particular.

She is lovely beyond measure ... and yet, I cannot escape the fact that whenever I see her, the scent of worm dung and dust fills my nose.

It should ...

I had been out in the desert, training in the ways of our people as I had since my third winter. That day, I had hunted and killed an killed an exceptional worm -- not nearly as large, my Master told me, as those she had slain at my age, centuries agone -- but large all the same. I had done it in the lair, and we had quickly determined that it was otherwise unoccupied, and so made it our camp for that night. My Master even ceded me the hero's portion. It had been sour.

And I sat in the cave, nibbling at the worm, smelling its leavings, I thought, This is my life. I want nothing else than the hunt, and my sisters-at-arms.

The gods, if gods there be, heard me, and decided that my life wanted something more.

The communicator, our huntband's sole concession to the magick of the Silver Millennium, echoed in the cavern. "Hunter Nodens. Respond."

My Master grimaced as she lifted the communicator to her mouth. "Nodens," she barked.

"Prepare for early pickup. The Princess is called to the presence of the Khan."

There was deathly silence in the cavern for a moment, and then all the others began to swiftly pack their kit. I stood still a second longer than the others, and earned a harsh glare from my Master. I was ready a moment before we heard the low whine of the Ornithopter's engine, and rushed out to board it.

My thoughts were a desert storm. My mother had called for me, whom she had not seen in over a decade. I could not imagine why. But then, I did not pretend to understand her. My mother is ... was far more attuned to the power of flame that we command than I am or shall ever be. It showed in everything she did -- she was capricious, violent, and never ever under control. Tamed, perhaps, but never mastered.

After I had been returned from my ... first sojourn on Earth, my mother had given me wholly into the care of my Master, and sent us out into the wilderness. I had never asked my Master why this had occurred -- it was obvious that she desired that I be as far from her as possible, to prevent me from being softened and spoiled by the opulence of her court at Gravitas.

The thought that she might despise me rarely crossed my mind.

We came to Gravitas soon, and those of my sisters who had never seen the city before allowed themselves to be stunned by the sheer numbers of people and sounds and smells and things. For once, my Master did not look with contempt at their exhibition of feeling. She merely gazed at them. Perhaps I imagined the look of pity I saw on her face.

We landed, and I was rushed away by the eunuchs of the court from my sisters. As they guided me through the streets of Gravitas to the palace, they ignored my hesitantly phrased questions as to my mother's health.

I was being led to the doors of the throne room when I realized my shabby appearance. "Wait," I barked. "I must not enter the Khan's presence in this --"

"You will enter her presence as you are now, or not at all," the Chief Eunuch hissed.

And then the doors were flung open, and I stepped, covered in worm dung and dust, into the presence of Aten-Horus, Khakhan of Mars.

Anhur Khan.

My mother.

The aspect of flame was on her even as she lounged on her throne. Her red eyes seethed with it. Her red hair seemed ablaze. Even her dark skin, so different in hue than my wind-tanned flesh, seemed to simmer.

I knelt to one knee, lowering my head, but did not prostrate myself. I was no higher than any of those who paid her homage, but I would not abase myself.

"Rise," she said in a steamy voice. As I lifted my eyes to her face, I could see that she almost smiled, amused perhaps by my mingled impertinence and obeisance.

"Daughter of Mars, one has come to speak with you," she began slowly. "You will show her no less courtesy than you would --"

"HIIIIII!" the voice squealed off to one side, and I turned with a horrified expression to look at the one who so interrupted my mother's speech, before she reduced the malefactor to liquid flesh.

The first things that I noticed about Serenity daughter of Serenity were her long braids that twirled behind the two priceless white diamond clasps on either side of her head. The next thing was the golden crown on her forehead. Next was the marking of the moon beneath that crown. Next was the paleness of her skin, unlike that of any Martian born.

And the very last thing that I noticed about Serenity daughter of Serenity was that she was smiling at me. And waving.

It was a day for reunions, it seemed. I had not seen my mother or the Princess of the Moon Kingdom since I had returned from being kidnapped more than a decade earlier. My memories of that sojourn had faded ... and she had grown and changed.

That was the reason that I thought that I stood stock still and stared at her.

We contrasted completely. She was fair, clean, and smiling; I was dark, dirty, and almost frowning. Complete opposites.

I found my voice after a moment. "Your Highness," I said. "Welcome to Mars."

She bowed, still smiling sweetly. I turned to look at my mother with a bewildered look on my face, and saw that she was rubbing her forehead in a way that I had seen some of my sisters do when they believed that my Master was not watching, and they could safely express irritation.

"The Princess of the Moon Kingdom," my mother said simply, "has decided to pay a visit upon each of the seven Heirs, and on Pluto. She has come to us first. We are honored beyond our ability to express by her presence."

My mother rose up from her divan, and crossed the distance between us, such that she was closer to me than she had been since my birth. "You, Daughter of Mars, shall be her guide to our world. You shall watch over her, and protect her life as though it were as dear to you as my own. Nay, dearer."

And then she smiled at me, and the smile promised me exactly what would come my way if I were to allow her to come to injury.

With gloom, I lead her out of the throne room, into the corridor leading to the baths. "Where are we going, Lady Mars?" she asked cheerily.

"I am going to have a bath. It has been several weeks since my last, and I feel the need for one." As an afterthought, I noted, "Do not call me Lady Mars. That's not proper."

"What should I call you?"

I opened my mouth ... and stopped still in my stride. She bumped into my back, and let out a yelp.

In the desert, I had not had a name. My Master had never seen fit to give me a new one, and the childish name I had born in the court of my mother had been long forgotten. Those few civilians whom we had encountered had called me, "Honored Hunter", and sought to keep away from me as much as possible. That was what it was to be a Hunter.

I resumed walking. "Call me whatever you please," I concluded, "so long as it is not Lady Mars."

"All right, Mars-chan."

I stopped, and this time whirled around, such that our faces were scarce a finger-length apart. "Mars-chan?" I asked slowly.

" 'Chan' is an Earther term implying affection for the one whose name is thus modified," she said as if reciting a lesson.

"Do you not understand that it is not right for you to call me by the name of my planet?" I bit out.

She was perplexed. "But I was told at the school that all of my Guardians had been named for the planet that they represented. Is this not so?"

"No! It is not so!"

The Princess began to look very upset. "But ... but I was told that you were a princess like me, that you lived in a wonderful crystal palace like --"

"Gods of Ice and Storm, you little twit, do you believe everything you were told in whatever nursery school you were put into to fill you up with propaganda?! I've spent the last ten years in the desert, becoming a worthy heir to my mother -- and until the very moment of her passing, she has the right to disinherit me! A princess? HAH! We leave that to weak-kneed sophomoric idiots like your people!" That last roared past my lips before I could consider it.

She stared at me, her eyes filled with tears ... and then she burst into sobs. "WAAAAAAAAAH! Mars-chan hates me!" she wailed, then turned around and ran away down the hall.

"Wait!" I exclaimed. But she was already out of earshot.

Shoulders slumped even further, I headed for the baths.

Even though I ached to drop myself into the hot water of the tub clothes and all, I disrobed and folded each garment carefully. I then set to washing myself.

To this day, I do not know how she approached with such silence. Had she been an assassin, I would have died, I am certain. As it was, my heart all but exploded as I felt another sponge touch the back of my shoulders, where I could not quite reach.

I whirled around, only just holding my fire in check, to see her with her head bowed. She kept on scrubbing my shoulders, even as I stared at her.

"I apologize for my immaturity, Honored Hunter of Mars," she said before I could say a word. "I was simply overwhelmed by the joy that I felt on finally meeting one of those who are my sworn Defenders, and I embarrassed you thereby."

In days after this, when I was past caring, I first heard the old Martian proverb, "When a Lunar apologizes, prepare to be in the wrong."

"No, no!" I said rapidly. "I should apologize to you for causing you embarrassment. The Moon Kingdom and Mars are not close, and so you should not be expected to know of our ways ..."

She looked up then, and smiled again. I found myself smiling back. "We are not so different," she said. "Both our peoples scrub before soaking ..."

So I scrubbed her back in turn, and we soaked together. It was very relaxing. Suddenly, a thought came to me. "Your Highness --"

"Serenity."

"Your Highness, why --"

She hummed an aimless tune, and I gritted my teeth. "Serenity," I bit out, "why did you come to Mars first?"

Her tune broke off, and she seemed almost startled. "What do you mean?" she replied.

"The Moon Kingdom is almost on the opposite side of the sun at this moment, and you would be closer to Venus, for an easier and safer trip."

She blinked. "Oh! Well, it is largely because I know Venus -- the Princess Venus, I mean -- very well already, for she was very often at my mother's court when we were children." She smiled, her eyes dancing. "Such games we played together, and the scrapes we got into ..."

I was not surprised at this -- for I knew well that the Moon Kingdom had dominated Venerian politics since the death of the Senshi Inanna, over a decade past -- but I was envious, that she had had another Heir as a close friend. I had met only one of them, Melusine, the Heir of Neptune, when she had come to Mars a year before, and I was not about to tell her of such as her. I did not think that she was ready for such things ...

... although, strangely, she reminded me of Melusine, even though the capricious humour that sometimes took cruel turns in the Tritonian was muted in this Lunar, and she seemed more given to random acts of kindness. Everything that she did seemed to be an act of grace, just as Melusine seemed to define elegance when she was off the field of battle.

I did not bother to consider what the Princess would be like on the field, for I knew far too well that the Heirs had been born and trained for her defense. She would not have needed to undergo any sort of combat training.

After our bath, I escorted her to the guest room reserved for visiting royalty. She looked at the huge chamber with amazement, and I was pleased, until she uttered the words, "It's so small!"

"Small?" I asked. It was perhaps the second largest room in the palace, after the throne room, and possibly my mother's chamber, which I had never entered.

She nodded swiftly. "Much smaller than my room back home ..."

I swallowed a retort easily. I had learned to do that during my first week of training. "I hope that you will not be inconvenienced by its small size," I bit out at last.

"Oh no," she said dismissively. "This will be nice and cozy!"

I nodded, and turned to go.

"Honored Hunter?" she asked suddenly. I turned to see that she was looking at me anxiously. "Should I have need of you ... where will you be?"

I visualized the map of the palace. "My chambers are located two floors beneath this one. They are the third door on the right from the nearest stairwell leading to that floor."

She bowed to me. "Thank you. Good night, Honored Hunter. Sleep lightly."

I turned and left, reaching the stairwell before I realized that she had given me the traditional Hunter's farewell. Slowly, unsure what to make of that, I descended to the servants' chambers.

The chamber in which I had slept before my kidnapping was still there, not occupied ... but not maintained either. I contemplated the thick layer of dust that had built up on the bed.

I could have slept there. I have slept in far, far worse places -- caves, canyons, ditches, sewers ...

But I wondered if perhaps this was a sign, from either the gods or my mother (and in truth I doubted there was much difference), that I should spend my nights in the palace in the Princess' room, guarding over her as she slept.

I closed the door to the small room, and returned to the stairwell, climbing up to her room.

She had, of course, locked the door.

That night was a strange one. I had been able to sleep in caves, canyons, ditches, and sewers ... but on that night, as I sat with my back against the door, I could not sleep. I bowed my head and dozed.

Towards the nightsend, but before sunrise, I felt a presence approach long before I heard footsteps. I held my head and pretended to sleep. The presence paused before the door, standing over me ... and I felt its heat.

It was my mother. She said nothing. Perhaps I made her a fool and she thought that I slept. Perhaps not.

The Princess was surprised to see me outside her door in the morning, and did not bother to hide it. "Why didn't you knock?" she asked, confusedly.

"That is not how things are done on Mars," I said shortly.

Such was the tone of the days that I was to spend leading her around the Palace and Gravitas. I would show her something, she would ask a question about why things were such a way, and I would answer that that was either the way that things were done or not the way things were done, when she made the inevitable comparisons to things in the Moon Kingdom.

She asked many questions, and did not seem to understand my shame that I could give her no better answer than "That is how things are done." I had never before realized how tradition-bound my people were.

On the sixth day of her visit, I realized that she was bored.

"You have shown me much of this wonderful palace, and this marvelous city," she explained when I asked her about it. "But I would wish to see the rest of the planet, as well!"

"That would be dangerous," I said quickly. "Very few Martians travel the wastes, for fear of the worms."

Then, of course, she wanted to know more about the worms. Of course, she had already known that there were things like the dragons out of storybooks living on Mars, but she knew little or nothing about the reality behind the legend. I swiftly disabused her of the image of winged reptiles that breathed fire and possessed great sagacity.

On Mars, the worm is both respected and despised. They are truly stupid beasts, and yet they are spectacularly dangerous. Swift yet powerful, their teeth are usually dull, due to the intense acid that they use to digest their prey, and which they are easily able to spit at one who dares to challenge them.

Which is why they are usually killed from a great distance, using modern weapons, by those who would process them for food. Hunters, however, never use such weapons.

I made the mistake of telling her about the cave where I had slain the worm the night that she came. Of course, she wanted to see it, and eagerly reminded me that my sisters and I had made sure that the cave was safe when we were there.

So, telling myself that I did this to shut her up, I "borrowed" an ornithopter from the airfield, and took her with me out to the cave.

There was not really much to see. What was left of the worm's body had rotted away before we got there, though I could show her the scars in the rock that its acid spews had left. She was suitably impressed, I suppose.

But then she turned to me and asked the question that changed everything.

"But why did you kill it?"

"For the meat," I answered, staring at her.

"Did you not carry provisions with you?" she pressed.

"Well, yes, but --"

"Then why?"

"Because ..." I was suddenly furious. How DARE this impertinent Lunar question the ways of the Hunt?! "Because that is what Hunters DO, you fool! What of it?"

"But why is it so important that you be a Hunter?" she asked with a calm, curious expression.

I strode up to her, my face red with anger. "Because there is nothing else for me to be!" I screamed. "I know nothing else!"

She stepped back, so that she was standing against the wall of the cave. "Not so," she said quietly. "Only those who are dead can be nothing else."

The arrogance of that statement, from one who had never known the training of a Hunter, shocked me beyond my ability to speak. I raised up my hand to slap her soundly.

Moving swifter than I could imagine, she moved out of the way of my blow, thus leading me to lose my balance. I went sprawling, landing face first ...

... in a pile of worm dung.

Fresh worm dung.

I heard the Princess' scream before I looked up to see the worm at the entrance to the cave.

It was larger than the worm that I had slain, nearly as large as the stories that my Master told of the worms that she had slain, and I did not have my blade with me, only my knife, and only a fool would attack a worm with a knife, even my Master had said that ...

And so there was only one option.

"FIRE SOUL!" I screamed, hating myself.

The worm let out a scream as it burned, and in that I found some small shred of honor, that I did not allow my anguish to show. The moisture on my cheeks was sweat, I told myself, from the heat of the power.

When it was dead, I felt her eyes on me. Go ahead, mock me, I wanted to scream. I knew that I deserved only contempt for killing the worm in such a base and ignoble fashion --

"Magnificent," she said, standing only a small distance behind me.

I turned around rapidly to stare at her face, so close to mine, and saw that her eyes were filled with wonderment. "What do you mean, magnificent?!" I demanded.

"I have never seen such a wondrous display of Elemental Fire -- even the great magi cannot command it with such ease --"

"You fool!" I shrieked. "I am no magi! I am a warrior! Warriors are not meant to use --"

"They do in the Moon Kingdom."

"-- magic, it is the province of scholars and bards and --" Her words penetrated my consciousness.

"Every unit of our military employs a ... warlock, is the term used. It originally meant oathbreaker, because there was once some oath that kept magi from the battlefield, but it is a mark of respect in these days." She gazed at me with a feeling that I had never seen in any eyes -- not pity, not contempt, but something ... gentler. "I once spoke with a magi about how it felt to deny the magic that surged in his veins ... and he said it was a greater pain than I could imagine." She was silent for a moment.

"If you came to the Moon with me, Mars-chan, your pain could end."

I stared at her, not knowing if I should believe a word that she said. She had no reason to lie, but ...

We contrasted again; she was clean and calm, while I was dirty and confused.

I lifted my hand to begin rubbing away the worm dung on my face. She silently produced a handkerchief. As I reached out to take it, she lifted it up to my face. My hand closed over hers.

It made no sense. She had scrubbed my back. Why should this contact, so much less intimate, thrill me to the bottom of my soul?

We could have stood there for hours, or seconds. It didn't matter. She broke the silence, at last. "I return to my Kingdom tomorrow," she said.

"Ah," I replied eloquently.

"There is a final place that I wish you to show me before then," she continued.

"Where would that be?" I asked.

"Your room."

We were silent in the ornithopter, silent on the way back to the palace. She only said, "No," as I started towards the baths. I led her down the stairs, to the servants' quarters, to my room.

She studied it in silence, dragging a finger along the edge of the rough bedframe, and staring at the dust that accumulated on the fingertip for a brief moment, before turning to gaze at me.

Her blue eyes never left mine as she slowly unbuttoned her gown and let it fall to the floor.

And then we made love.

And it was wonderful.

And the smell of her and the smell of dust and worm dung were one and the same.

After we were done, she slept, and I rose up to go to the toilet, wrapping myself in a robe. I relieved myself, and returned.

My mother stood outside the door, wrapped in a robe of her own.

"You must not go with her," she said.

The aspect of fire was gone from her, perhaps that was why I only said, "Why?", neglecting to address her as "Great Khan".

"If you go with her to the moon, they will say that she has bound you to her, and that you are no longer fit to be my heir," she said slowly.

I am told that in the myths of the Earthers, the Moon has been a source of madness and irrationality from the earliest times. Perhaps that was why I said, "Am I?"

She gazed at me, her red eyes dull. "Of all the children I have borne in this past millennium, only you may outlast me to rule when I am gone. And you have the fire. You are the only choice."

I had the fire. And I felt it building in me, slowly but surely. "If I am the only choice, then why have I been made to be constantly tested through endless training that made me HATE MYSELF FOR HAVING YOUR DAMNED FIRE?" I shrieked at the end.

She simply looked at me, not answering.

"I will go to the Moon with her," I said shortly as I walked past her to my room. "She has bound me to her. I love her."

"Love is only a trick that nature plays on us, to exploit our loneliness," she said quietly.

I paused before I went back into the room where the Princess of the Moon slept. "Love is what could have come from letting me be your daughter."

I shut the door behind me.

The next day, I left Mars forever.

No one came to bid me farewell.

My mother did not disown me, though the khans pressured her to do so. They finally had their way when she perished, and I was disqualified from becoming the next khakhan. I wonder, sometimes, as I hear of the strife on the world of my birth, whether the fact that she refused to set me aside was due to the fact that she truly did love me, or that she was simply too stubborn to let the khans have their way when it was opposed to what she wanted.

But it does not truly matter.

Every time I look at her, gazing up at the Earth of her Prince, my heart aches as I remember that once she looked at me like that, in a cave that was filled with the stench of worm.

And then all that came after it comes back to me, and my heart's ache eases. She has given me what she could give me, and it is more love than I have ever known before.

And the smell of worm dung and dust fills my nostrils.

And it is wonderful.

The End
(For Now)

Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi and brought to North America by DIC. The preceding story, while incorporating aspects of this motion picture held under copyright by others, is copyright 1997 by Chris Davies.

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