[center][h1][color=yellow]Sailor Zenia[/color][/h1]


[i]&[/i]

[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/893273948526108742/894758899872317440/YUDAIEL.png[/img][/center]

[hr]

On an ordinary day, it would be a rare event to see a shooting star. To see a star moving upwards into the sky was no doubt impossible, even to the primitive societies making their home on the Galbar. Yet despite such impossibility, it was just such an impossible movement that could be gleaned in the sky. A golden comet burned bright through the upper limits of the atmosphere, before finally breaking loose of all resistance and no longer being visible to the untrained eye.

It wasn't a comet in the typical sense, of course, but rather a hurrying golden-haired goddess with no sense for the safety of birds nor the ridicule of watchers below as they'd eventually try to convince their friends what they'd seen. Zenia was on a schedule, or so she had convinced herself, and that imagined schedule allowed for no more lazy sight-seeing. She would nip to the moon and back, just to be able to answer honestly about what it was like. Then she could get back to what she was doing, whatever it was that she was doing. In the heat of the moment, she struggled to recall more than how weird it had felt to utter her decree.

Zenia could not focus on that either, as the satellite orbiting the Galbar dominated ever more of her vision and took up her attention. She marveled over its imposing size, and stared at it curiously, even as she felt that it was staring back at her. That big formation looked like an eye, but she wasn't sure it had always been like that. What if the moon itself had been the mysterious speaker she had heard and felt back then? How would she greet the moon?

Her question went unanswered as the distracted goddess crashed headlong into the surface of the moon itself, kicking up dust and gravel like a digging animal. A flattened vague imprint of her dented the middle of a new crater, and Zenia quickly rose to her feet to dust herself off after her arguably successful landing.

This was a cold, airless, and altogether eerie world. Though most were not so easily seen from the Galbar, the moon had too many scars to count; they spotted the surface like little pockmarks. Most of the lesser craters had been gouged by the ejecta of that first colossal impact that had set the moon into its dance, but there also were great chasms and rifts sprawled across the surface thanks to Iqelis’ work. 

The afterglow of the many ruinous powers that had shaped the surface muddled with the vast amounts of exotic mana in the crust, as well as with the even more alien and mind-altering magic that had come as a byproduct of Epsilon’s brief presence and subsequent explosive departure. But there was something more, something not so easily seen or accounted for:She who is Ever at the Shoulder. 

The Reverberation’s vastness dwarfed even Voligan’s towering body, and even now her nebulous sea of consciousness rolled across the moon. The invisible tides surged towards Zenia at the speed of thought, prepared to welcome a guest or destroy an interloper -- there was no telling, and there was likewise no stopping it. The imperceptible clouds wrapped all about her in a bubble, and it was suddenly as though she stood within the eye of a great cyclonic storm. It was only a single probing tendril that extended out from Yudaiel’s immensity to touch Zenia.

[color=9966CC]Spring erupted, and where there had been lifeless and blanched stone underfoot now blossomed grass and wildflowers. The soothing hum of bees, the homely scent of nectar, the lazy eddies of wind, and the warm sun bid her welcome.

But then something strange came: a shooting star descended, and where its fiery descent met with the ground came a great smoldering crater. Dirt was flung into the air, cherry trees were incinerated or blasted into splinters, and the grass was burnt black all around this horrific wound to the perfect garden. 

The sun darted like a hare across the sky, chased by stampeding masses of clouds that soared faster than any clouds ought to have moved. Time passed rapidly, but the grass did not regrow, for now it was autumn and everything was brown and withering. And then from the sky fell a single ominous portent.[/color]

[hider=The Threat]
[center][img]https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/2/real-snowflake-26-dec-2018-1-alexey-kljatov.jpg[/img]
[color=9966CC][i]It was a tiny, beautiful thing that fell upon the grass at her feet, and yet it was a seed that menaced with the potential to grow into a great tree aflame with icy rage. This snowflake heralded, perhaps even threatened, to bring long winter.[/i][/color][/center][/hider]

The golden-haired goddess' attention span was rivaled only by that of the speckled bark sparrow, which future zenii bestiaries would conclude never existed. As such, though her initial usually implacable smile shifted to worry for a brief time on partaking in these visions, it was swiftly replaced by a confident and almost sly expression.

[color=yellow]"The cold is, you know, nothing to be scared of. There are tons of fun things to be, like, done with the snow and stuff too."[/color] Zenia spoke to the presence. To prove her point, she conjured the same miniature ball of ice and snow that she had made to resemble Chailiss, and held it up to show its harmless nature. [color=yellow]"Things will always change, but that's, like, no reason to be scared. There will always be time to, like, appreciate life."[/color]

This breezy confidence did not manage to last either, as somewhere deep inside the goddess a niggling doubt took root and dared to analyze her experience further. To look beyond the surface of the message and make a basic attempt at interpretation. However her subconscious handled such a task, the Zenia on the surface did not like the result, and her smile faltered again to give room for a thoughtful, distracted frown.

[color=yellow]"Are you who I heard?"[/color] Zenia asked to distract herself from further analysis. Further suggestion that responsibility and planning was something that became her in the slightest. Still, a dent had been made.

[color=9966CC]A moon shoved aside a swathe of grey cumulonimbus clouds, but it was definitely not the Galbar’s moon. She had already landed on [i]that[/i] moon, after all, and this one was alight with a brazen gaze… vast volcanic eruptions made its surface swirl with ash, even as an infernal glow came from an ocean of magma in the middle of its face. The distant volcanoes erupted with renewed fury, and even through the void of space, their rumble was audible and felt. It was the sound of the land being sundered apart, or mountains being ground to dust and gods suddenly looking like mere flies as they were incinerated by inordinate and incomprehensible forces. [i]That[/i] evil moon was the speaker and the source of these strange sights.

Even as Zenia remained still, the land marched underfoot, and now waves of cold snow danced overhead as they fell. The hills and glades stampeded all around as the horizon sprinted ever closer, until suddenly Zenia was somewhere very familiar. 

There were all the obelisks that she had left to sustain and care for the Zenii, and yet there was no sign of life. Compelled by something that she didn’t understand, she approached one of the black pillars and stooped down to brush aside a layer of snow. The stuff was soft and fluffy, and it tickled, almost like fuzz… beneath the snow, her hands had brushed against a head of hair matted with hoarfrost. The snow came alive and threw itself off of the frozen body as easily as any other blanket, and then she was met with the grim sight of Masol. His face was anemic yet his extremities, where the blood had pooled, were gross shades of black, blue, and purple.[/color]

Zenia was stirred by something deep and primal, a fearful recognition of oblivion and the stillness of death. Her eyes were wide, as distraught over her obelisk's failure to ward away the chilling frost as she was the horrific sight of her bloated mortal trustee. Her fists clenched, her only security at first, trying to reconcile what she experienced with her view of existence itself. Of course, there was no celebration to be found in such a bleak vision. Only dread, and it took a visible toll on the golden-haired goddess expression as she struggled to contain herself.

[color=yellow]"Wh-Why would you show me this?"[/color] she accused with shaky conviction. [color=yellow]"What good can, can come from… this sort of darkness?"[/color]

[color=9966CC]The air grew palpably hotter, though Zenia might not have noticed.[/color]

Zenia did not remain idle after her accusation. Her feet squared and buried themselves in a firm stance on the cold surface where she stood. Her expression now permanently tainted to a worried frown. She bid her eyes closed several times to sort reality from vision. To a deity, was there a difference? That question was beyond her ken.

Yudaiel saw that her [i]threat[/i] seemed to have gone entirely over her head; whatever emotion that the ideabstracted projected having done little to guide Zenia’s bubbly, vapid thoughts.

[color=9966CC]Zenia’s consciousness and perspective were wrenched free of whatever ephemeral body they’d been arbitrarily confined to in that dreamscape. From an omniscient perspective, the goddess saw a beautiful marbly palace as it was shattered and set aflame by some brazen star that fell from the sky. Fury guided her to investigate the damage, but when she came upon the smoking crater that had once been a thousand rooms, she saw herself laughing in the center.

But then she suddenly saw herself standing among the Zenii from that same bird’s eye view. Masol and the others had been restored to life, she noticed, and much needless worry and ache was lifted from her by that. She tried to push aside those momentary horrific visions of them dead in the cold, to consign those memories to oblivion and forget them forever, but the she heard a clamor among the Zenii and looked up: the auspicious moon was ten times larger than it ought to have been, and it was growing larger [i]fast.[/i]

It was falling right out of the sky and it was going to crush them all.

Some Zenii fled in terror, taking to the forest and vainly thinking that they might stand a chance at making it some safe distance away. Others sat catatonically, accepting the end of times as readily as they might accept the rain. But far more of them flocked all about [i]her[/i] as they begged and pleaded for salvation. But Zenia had her gaze locked upon the moon, and she felt strangely slow, weak, and powerless -- frozen, in a word.

Reflexively she raised her hands up above her head in the last moment as the moon tore through the sky with a hellishly bright glow, and then when the ground and half of Galbar was instantly obliterated, those hands were the only thing that kept the horrible eye of that pupil from pressing itself against her face.

But then the nightmare ended.[/color]

Zenia was left standing with her arms raised protectively, something akin to a reflexive fighting stance. The dread that suffused her being now - an incoherent jumble of confusion, worry, fear and frustration - was apparent on her features; how she crouched together to protect zenii that were no longer there, how her typical lazy smile could not find its way back through labyrinthine worry-lines and anguished, deep-set frowns. The experience was visibly making the goddess reevaluate her haphazard approach to meeting others. Despite still being stood in an impact crater of her own making however, it grew increasingly unlikely that she would ever recognize her faults.

Then a miracle occured, borne either out of desperation or frustration, or perhaps due to some measure of both. Zenia squared her shoulders and shouted at the threatening presence - at Yudaiel. [color=yellow]"Look,"[/color] she began like an angry barfly boiling over. [color=yellow]"Whatever, like, made you this way, I'm sorry. I just came up here to, like, check on the voice I heard. Out of kindness, you know?"[/color] 

Despite her lackluster apology, Zenia appeared in no way apologetic. As a matter of fact, her features had warped to an annoyed frown; the antithesis of her typical existence. [color=yellow]"I come here to, like, help out, and you're making me feel all kinds of, like, gnarly stuff. Not okay."[/color] She lectured, raising an accusatory finger towards nowhere in particular. [color=yellow]"You could do with some fun, like, seriously. You need it more than Homura, you know! And that's, like, no small feat."[/color]

The wispy tendril that had touched Zenia’s mind withdrew. She remained within a bubble of sorts, a void surrounded by the whirling storm of the moon goddess’ unseen essence. The sphere all about Zenia grew thicker; no longer content to merely reach over from her place in the moon’s socket, Yudaiel brought her entire form to bear. The storm grew wilder, and motes of lunar dust were animated by latent, barely restrained, telekinetic potential.

And the dome of the invisible sphere that enclosed Zenia suddenly turned inside out, and the sensation of a pupil’s fiery gaze boring into her was manifest; no longer merely within the eye of some storm, now she was inside of an [i]eyeball[/i] of sorts. And the eye was still angry!

So much heat radiated from the glowering eye that the regolith beneath Zenia’s toes began to soften and melt. The puddle bubbled, and with a spurt, belched up a thousand tiny sparks and droplets. The tiny things began to drift back down slowly in the moon’s gravity, like a strange sort of glowing rain, like falling sparkles. By the time they were reunited with the ground, they had been reforged into tiny diamonds. Most of the jewels were just the size of grains of sand, some were most like motes of dust, or even too small to see. 

The poetry of ideabstractions evidently incapable of imparting any real understanding in this one’s mind, Yudaiel was made to stoop down to crude and primitive speech in the way of sound-sending. Just the thought that this one made her debase herself in this manner was enough to incense Yudaiel even more.

A thought was all that it took to telekinetically gather up a powdery cloud of the fine jewels, [i]and then ram it into Zenia’s ear.[/i] The diamonds were sharp and they cut and tore, but moreover, they resonated, and from their guided vibrations came the sound of a voice. It was odd and disorientating and uneven, that tiny whisper that came only from one ear,

[sub][i]”I have watched you from afar. Never did I deign to strike, but I[/i][/sub] [i][b]C̴̗̮͛̊̿Ǫ̸̰̟̰̒Ǔ̸͈L̷̺̲̲̭̀̂̐̂D̷̡͖̔͜,[/b][/i]” the voice mused, the last word made deafening and punctuated with just a hint of telepathy; it evoked the ugly memory of Masol’s frozen corpse.

[sub][i]”I do not need more enemies,”[/i][/sub] Yudaiel suddenly realized aloud, [sub][i]”but how am I to react to this RUIN you have wrought upon my moon? To these insults you level? Your idea of ‘fun’ might not be my own.”[/i][/sub]

Zenia had barely shown she was listening, even though hearing Yudaiel's furious message rumble in her mind was hardly optional. Her ignorance continued instead in a physical act of defiance, more intent on digging her finger into her ear in some skewed attempt to nurse the pain and fish out the intruding motes - an impossible and futile feat. To her meagre credit, Zenia did not appear particularly intimidated by the imposing psychic storm surrounding her, nor did she seem to reconsider at hearing the venom transmitted into her ear. Despite failing to engage with the threatening visions, they had by far rattled her the most.

When the goddess of revelry gave up on spelunking in her own ear with a few bitter hisses of pain, she glanced upwards with a firm, unyielding expression. [color=yellow]"How can you know if you don't, like, try?"[/color] she challenged with a shout. The firmness in her stance suggested she was aware of the threat even if she didn't acknowledge it. [color=yellow]"If you think I, uhm, ruined something, I guess I'll just fix it. No need to, like, be such a clod about it. What sort of things do you like? I'll, you know, make you something nice. Flowers?"[/color]

The rattling and churning inside her ear canal ceased and offered a brief respite; the demon who lived on this barren world seemed to be thinking for a moment. Maybe it’d finally gotten where she was, like, coming from..?

[sub][i]”I can See, and so I know,”[/i][/sub] the voice declared with infuriating certainty muddled with a hint of smug superiority and consternation. [sub][i]”My forgiveness would come at a price -- just a measly thing, for this [b]SCAR[/b] upon my work could be undone. You should surrender gladly what I ask, anyways; you are not fit to guide them.”[/i][/sub]

And a tendril of consciousness shot forth from the storm to lance Zenia through the temple of her head, and this cryptic ‘price’ was shown as clear as crystal:

[color=9966CC]The familiar homeland of the zenii was made to recrudesce. It was night that looked cold, and there were some snowdrifts that smelt of dreams. In the gloom the shadows were long and the sky an otherworldly lilac as the moon glowed bright behind a half-cover of clouds.[/color]

[hider=The Price]
[center][img]https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/200000/velka/moonlit-forest.jpg[/img]
[i]It was beautiful, but eerie, and it did not feel right; Zenia instinctively tried to shiver, but in the dream she had no body.[/i][/center][/hider]

[color=9966CC]The zenii appeared, each and every one of them. They did not move and seemed almost ghostly, as though weaved from fog, but the tailor that worked clouds into people seemed to have taken great care to portray them exactly right. Every one of these dreamy zenii had a living equivalent somewhere down on the Galbar, and every living zenii had an immaculate simulacrum in its likeness to represent it there. A select four hundred of the assembled mass were suddenly alight with argent light, while the moon’s harsh rays dispersed the cloudy forms of all the others.[/color]

Zenia watched with care, eyes shifting greedily over the scene and wheels turning in her head. The fortitude with which she applied herself now implied she could have done so prior, but it seemed that only now had Yudaiel garnered enough attention to make the golden-haired goddess partake properly of this dreamlike vision. Indeed, much as her previously undaunted self, the demand for four-hundred of her zenii did not particularly seem to bother her, even though her gaze flitted over each of the incorporeal simulacra. If she recognized particular zenii among the chosen she did not show it or remark upon it.

[color=yellow]”With a lead-up like that, I thought you were going to, like, demand something way more wicked. They’re yours, of course, I don’t, like, mind.”[/color] Zenia concluded matter-of-factly. She assumed a rough approximation of Homura’s voice and tone, straightening herself out in idle mockery. [color=yellow]”I am loathe to gift you these people after such aggression.”[/color] she bobbed her head left and right in negation, as if she imagined the goddess of honour would ever do such a thing. [color=yellow]”To seal our deal, you must swear never to harm my children as you threatened. You shall not lay your own hand ‘pon their skin or mind.”[/color] Zenia finished with a lecturing shake of her finger, then cleared her throat and glanced up nowhere in particular at the psychic storm.

Telekinetic power tore into the ground before Zenia, hewing out a slab of stone The next pulses of psychic energy came faster than the eye could follow: bits of stone were blasted away or vaporized as a precise will chiseled it into a new shape, polished it perfectly, and finally saw that it was vitrified by a searing heat. The end product was a hollow vessel with a handle on either end, and its pale surface was impossibly smooth and lustrous. The ewer radiated palpable divine power, too. Yudaiel had been silent and swift throughout the work; it hadn’t taken her long, but the pregnant pause was still enough to make Zenia squirm.

[color=yellow]”That’s only, like, fair, isn’t it? It would be a total bummer for me, you know, if, like, I gave you my kin and then you, like, hurt the others.”[/color] Zenia added with what she thought was impeccable logic. It was clear by the smug expression of her face, which came with the hint of her original smile. She was answered by another wave of vivid imagery.

[color=9966CC]A familiar one of the zenii stood in a clearing: Curious Medaka she’d first been dubbed by Zenia -- the goddess remembered at least that one, and she also recalled naming her for her festive and thirsty spirit on meeting the goddess. [i]Andromeda[/i] was what she had taken to calling herself, though, for reasons Zenia could not fathom.[/color]

[hider=How it had actually played out]

A throng of zenii, each pushing another in desperate urge to be the next - to touch the goddess and receive her blessing; a name of their own. The luckiest among them managed to stay in place to feel the goddess with their own hands and hear their given name in full. Others were shoved aside after a brief word from the goddess - their luck ended at not being trampled in the shifting crowd numbering in the thousands.

Among them was a woman, caught up in the reverie and passion of naming like all the others, muscling her way forward with elbows to seek a path to the Lady. She struggled and strained, fighting a tide of her kin to receive her destiny. She found herself before the Lady, and the golden-haired creator took her in with an inviting smile. She touched her forehead, filling her spirit with elation, and spoke, most of it drowned out and hard to hear due to the frenzied elves all dying to ger their own turn.

[color=yellow]"Uhm, like,"[/color] the Lady had begun, but someone pushed the eager zenii woman from behind and disrupted her focus. [color=yellow]"...and… or… Meda..."[/color]

Anxiety rose in the woman, she only heard fragments of the Lady's words. She tried to tell the Lady, but the golden-haired goddess' attention had already moved on. She tried to follow, but the stream of people forced her aside. Don't be greedy, someone had said and shoved her aside, filtering her away from the hubbub. It was leave, or be crushed. She'd have to make do with what she heard. Figure out what the Lady meant.[/hider]

[color=9966CC]Andromeda stood before a great assembly of other zenii arranged into a crescent. With her included, they numbered twenty score. She held in her hands the ewer, that thingie that had just been made, and before a gawking crowd she lifted it above her head. A ray of moonlight danced inside the open vessel’s burnished interior. For an instant the silvered mouth of the decanter scintillated and gleamed like a prismatic jewel, but then the moonlight was distilled into a mystical fluid suffused with light and magic.

Before them all, Andromeda overturned the ewer and showered her face and body of anagogic water and moonlight. She and her dress were drenched, but she looked only nobler for it somehow, and did not shiver in the night’s cold. Baptized, she finally spoke, but not to the throngs of zenii assembled. Instead, she turned around to face Zenia. The goddess was invisible, formless, just a disembodied and dreaming viewer, and yet somehow Andromeda Saw her. And when she spoke, Zenia wasn’t sure whose voice she heard.

[b]“The others are safe from the goddess. We are her faithful chosen and enact her will upon this world, for her hands are bound to another, higher plane,”[/b] the high priestess, for that was what Andromeda was, spoke in soft, gentle words that nonetheless echoed like thunder. Some discordant power gave weight to each syllable, and the words carried more than sound -- a kaleidoscope of color flashed to the tune of each word; Zenia Saw all of that through the lens of a third eye that she hadn’t ever known she had.[/color]

The eerie show captivated Zenia enough to leave her staring dumbly for a time - perhaps finally thinking each experience and expression through properly. She touched her forehead briefly, as if to feel for a change. The smile was gone again, but it was not worry that replaced it, but a thinned and firm concentration. Eyebrows digging deep into an intense, thoughtful frown.

[color=yellow]"So be it."[/color] Zenia affirmed at last, with no alteration to her voice or added pomp. Again she turned away from the vision in front of her as if Yudaiel was wherever she directed her vision. The vision of gathered zenii did not appear to keep her attention, despite her urge to keep them safe both from the Moon and each other. Perhaps she had already made up her mind. [color=yellow]"Now, what's, like, your idea of fun? Since you, you know, said it's not like mine."[/color]

[color=9966CC]Dimensionality and the shape of everything became oddly distorted. Mighty pines became specks of dust, and the zenii were in one moment lanky and in the next they were so horizontally compressed and vertically taut that they resembled strings of spidersilk, so narrow as to be nearly invisible. And they were all tangled into one sprawling, discordant web. There were no horizons, for the web was infinitely vast and it sprawled here to infinity and there back to the dark beginning of time, and still a ways further back from there. Great twin looming shadows stood menacingly in the direction of either end; they seemed distant, but also were near impossibly large, such that there was no perceiving just how near or far they were. But an unbreakable will mandated Zenia not examine them too closely, and so she could only see them out of the corner of a corner of her third eye; some parts of the spiderweb were not meant to be seen. 

Aside from that foreboding mystery, everything was pretty in a sort of way that made your head hurt.

In some places, the spiderweb was fixed and petrified, all the colors immutable like dried paint. In others, the webs were ephemeral and not even truly there, and somewhere between were all the spiders, some tiny and some incomprehensibly vast. There was one big one skittering about wildly that Zenia suspected to represent herself, but that was a very odd thought. Not because she could not see herself as a spider, but because viewing herself in any capacity brought about a strange sensation niggling in the back of her mind and rushing down her spine. It was enough for her to seek focus elsewhere.

Occasionally the spiders made some particularly hideous configuring of strands, and a helpful moon (it existed somewhere both inside of and above the web; Zenia didn’t know how she hadn’t noticed it at once!) danced into perspective and righted the shape into something more palatable.[/color]

Zenia tapped her chin in thought, viewing this vast and nigh endless web, following the correcting moon with due diligence. Her observation this time around indeed suggested that the golden-haired goddess possessed the ability to pay attention when it suited her, for now there was enough movement and dizzying detail for her ever-bored mind to satiate itself with imagery both shallow and deep. She attempted to reach out and probe the illusory web with a finger, out of curiosity more than anything else, but thought better of it before she ever touched anything. Perhaps she did not dare confirm the nagging thought that this was more than a simple representation deep in her mind.

[color=yellow]”You-.. Like, look at what goes on and, like, jump in to change things when you need it?”[/color] Zenia professed as much to herself as to Yudaiel, as if speaking the words aloud made it real and tangible, and possibly correct. Zenia tilted her head, her previously unknown third eye still following the skittering spiders wherever they went. Except that which might be her own. And the shapes at either end. [color=yellow]”That’s pretty exciting, I guess.”[/color] she continued with a barely enthused tone. [color=yellow]”I mean, I can, like, see how it would be kind of exciting to, like, you know, follow events and see what happens and stuff. Seems kind of hectic, though, you know?”[/color]

Her own words inspired a rush of excitement in the goddess, and Zenia whipped around with grand reverie as though Yudaiel would be standing directly behind her. [color=yellow]“I know! If you ever get tired of this sort of fun, I’ll make sure to, like, mix it up for you! Just let me know and I’ll uhm, rattle some threads! Yep! Make sure it’s all, like, exciting and unpredictable and compelling.”[/color] Zenia put her hands to her sides confidently. This was a good idea, she surely thought to herself. A good idea and a generous and kind gesture. Such was apparent in her expression, a smug self-serving smile lacking any and all deeper consideration.

[color=9966CC]A monstrous gadfly buzzed loudly into the plane. It was bigger than most of the spiders, much bigger; in a perversion of the natural order of things, the fly preyed upon the spiders. It tore through webs as it went, sending wild ripples through the whole web and leaving gaping voids, sowing chaos as it snatched up and consumed tiny spider after spider. Muddled with the fly’s buzzing was the sound of rushing water, of a great black tide surging forth to drown the world. The fly buzzed closer to Zenia, and seemed to grow larger as it did -- she saw curious details like one of its eyes missing. And when it was right in her face, trying to bite -- she could not swat it, for it was too agile -- its mandibles opened and dark, poisoned spittle Flowed out.

Mercifully, the cyclopean fly shrieked as a sudden beam of moonlight impaled it. Its wings were torn off by unseen hands, and then it was slowly, cruelly, crushed into a pulp.[/color] 

Zenia stood quiet for a time, staring at the remnants of this unpleasant appearance. Like a doe captivated by a distant flame, it wasn't so much that she was frightened or worried as simply stuck in place. Her thought process was almost visible from the outside as she mentally decoded what she experienced.

[color=yellow]"Oh, I get it!"[/color] Zenia exclaimed excitedly soon after she finally blinked. Whatever revelation she had reached it appeared to please her greatly, judging by the constant that was her reappearing happy expression. [color=yellow]"You are, like, devoted to fighting evil, just like me!"[/color] This guess seemed to excite her enough to box against the shadows, as if to contribute to destroying the unknown. [color=yellow]"To be honest, I had a feeling. Don't worry, I am, like, totally devoted. I made a promise to Homura to, like, fight for good. You know? You can count on me. We've made, like, a big trade and everything. Just call if you need help, and I'll, like, strike down the bad… uhm… flies."[/color] Zenia rambled on, apparently deciding that Yudaiel was worthy of sharing with based on her own assumptions. 

If leaving meant assent, Yudaiel seemingly agreed. Or perhaps she had grown too exasperated instead. The ideabstractions collapsed to make way for Reality’s return, and the swirling clouds of consciousness that had encased Zenia and animated the lunar stone and dust seemed to be retreating back to that one vast crater from whence they’d come. Zenia was left alone once again on the surface that cold, barren, [i]alien[/i] world. The jewel looked pretty from afar, but perhaps less so in person. The Galbar was suspended overhead, a much more welcoming sapphire of deep blues and greens, with a few wispy white clouds and one icecap. At least the diamonds had finally, like, dislodged themselves from her ear canal -- that was sort of, like, a goodbye, right? Oh, and there was a parting gift too! The resplendent Moonstone Ewer remained on the ground just before the goddess where it’d been set, but, like, she couldn’t even keep it for herself or she’d be stealing!

Zenia frowned and scratched at her temple as she made ready to return and give the pretty bauble to that Andromeda girl. She dreaded having to fly around and look for one zenii in the crowd. But a promise was a promise, right? With that thought lingering, the goddess of revelry leapt spacewards and thus left the bleak and alien landscape with the same burst of speed as she had arrived. Fortunately, it did not damage the moon… much. 


[hider=Summary]

Zenia arrives on the moon above the Galbar, damaging it in the process. Yudaiel rapidly arrives to berate and threaten Zenia for her vandalism, but Zenia is too dumb and/or stubborn for it to be more than awkward. 

Finally Yudaiel relents and installs a headset in Zenia’s ear so they can communicate. She threatens her some more, but realizes that declaring war on the ditzy goddess outright may be a waste of resources. They enact a trade of zenii for promise of safety from Yudaiel's wrath for the mortals. Yudaiel crafts a very cool wine jug for her chosen elf products to baste themselves with, and grants Zenia further visions of what may yet come to pass.

Zenia takes this unsteady deal and visions of threats as a declaration of camaraderie against the forces of evil and promises to assist if Yudaiel ever needs help. Pleased, or tired of Zenia, Yudaiel ditches the convo. Zenia takes the goblet of fire and leaves, damaging the moon again.


[/hider]
[hider=Vigor Expenditures]
Yudaiel begins with 4 vigor.
1 is spent on the Moonstone Ewer, a divine artifact that ‘distills moonlight’ and fills itself with some kind of magical water.
3 vigor remains.

Zenia begins with 4 vigor.
4 vigor remains.
[/hider]