12-16-02 - When I first started this piece I had a bunch of junk up here explaining things and what not. I changed my mind on that and deleted it all. Now all I want to say is this....

For everyone searching for the way home.... For anyone taking that long harsh journey.... For anyone who is sick of fighting and just wants a rest.... For all of those who feel like life is a dream and surreal.... For those that keep on fighting, and never stray from the trail.... For anyone, anywhere....

All she wanted was a soothing bath, and sanctuary from the world.

Senshi slammed the solid oak door shut, almost throwing it off its hinges as it blocked the others from following her. Softly, the lock clicked, the slight sound of sealed uncertainty, as opposed to booming confidence, and water fell onto the clothed girl as Senshi slumped into the porcelain tub with dark shadows swirling around her eyes as her hands mimicked acting real. But the liquid flowed of its own accord.

Falling.

Drip, came the sound as it echoed against itself and reverberated, hard, multiplying. 

Had she not done that enough?

Drip.

Hazy.

Drip.

No more answers, no more questions, and no more lies or misunderstandings, but for that, payment.

Sacrifice.

Alone....

The water washed over Senshi; it took over her thoughts, as well as manifesting them. Shards of preservation took formation and seized their companion (captive.) Stiff, Senshi did not move, did not speak, nor did she protest as she fell farther.

She never thought she could plunge further, but she did. To go deeper into the dismal abyss was only to meet herself; a great feat, considering no one else had ever done so. No one had ever earned the right to tread on the imprisoned ground, but now, from deep within, Senshi wanted control, wanted to meet the face of the puppet, but the puppet had learned tricks from the master....

Within the crystallized blood of the Earth time stopped, dead still.

Breathless, Senshi shot up as her eyes opened to a sea of obsidian that had been painted in many shades of black, courtesy the skeletal hand of one whose soul had crept into Senshi's sepulcher of a heart. Her hands began to help her rise but hit a smooth surface, so cold and glossy the words ice and mirror were mere hints of its material existence. The slick marble demanded colours not associated with the word somber would not dare touch the polished darkness, for fear of taint, or worse.

Panting endlessly, Senshi pushed herself away from the sleek, frozen unknown and felt her feet meet solid ground as a vociferous thud echoed around her and complained she wore lead, not sneakers. Perplexed as Senshi was on her whereabouts, the concern for safe passage and visibility also came to mind as she searched around the room and her murky blue eyes drank in the swirling black, which painted her soul windows royal purple.

Light flickered into the deep dark and allowed Senshi to see two rows of stout, sturdy pews standing to attention. Slowly, she turned to see what she had left behind and viewed an ebony alter with a large, blood red star in the middle with one needle sharp point for each limb of the human body and one for the head.

Her knees shuddered under her as Senshi walked away from the alter, and the once gentle illumination sprang from the dark on the legs of a tiger, engulfing the ancient cathedral in a bath of orange and red. Frightened, Senshi forced herself to run to the door as her journey echoed over pristine, polished, yet cracked, white marble.

In the safety of release, Senshi's feet sank gently into soft ground and she watched in fear and awe as tongues of blistering death sliced through the dilapidated, brittle wood of her intended tomb.

She had escaped, but into what horror had her instincts led her?

Senshi turned on her heels as the midnight sky, speckled with thousands of white balls of fire melted into the horizon and returned with a fiery vengeance. Soft, gentle luminance was replaced with the blinding intensity of a pale colour, starved of blue hues. In pain, Senshi flinched away and waited for her eyes to adjust as they blinked against blotches of green dancing across her vision.

The plane below her shifted to a more supple grain, almost pulling her feet into it. Puzzled, Senshi's still blinded eyes squinted about her as sanguinary sand whipped by her fragile skin, taking with it flecks of crimson to ride on the cruel breath. Burning pain flayed her skin from the very heavens as the light intensified, turning the sky almost white.

Whispers grew on the air, growing louder with maleficent objectives. Senshi was driven to her knees in the maddening din, until she found within it the will to cease its stubborn tirade. Angrily, she rose in the middle of the blazing infernal and sharp sand, which reflected the white pain of the sky above it, and she screamed, "Stop!" Peace came fast, slapping her in the face with its sudden arrival. Silence poured through Senshi's ears like an ocean, raging and roaring.

"Lost are we?" a voice spoken with such gentle tones had never been so loud as it boomed in the silence, Senshi had discovered before her.

Quickly, Senshi turned to find a small girl, reflecting Senchi's own eyes and face back at her; but instead of murky blue-grey, her eyes mirrored the epitome of the word blue. It strengthened with passion ten-fold and vibrated through the girl's very being and made her impossible to ignore.

"I am not lost," Senshi said with blind certainty. "To be lost I would have to know where I was headed, and this I never knew to begin with."

"Ah-ha! But is that true? Or is that what you want yourself to think?"

Aggravated, Senshi studied her inquisitor with hasty infuriation and a steel glare, to which the child beamed at.

"What do you know?" Senshi finally quipped back. "You are a mere baby. Immature and have yet to bloom and live in the world."

The smaller one's eerie smile had yet to fade as she whispered into the perfect stillness, "And the same is with you," and then liquefied in the air, splattered the scorching land and disappeared without a trace, but from her point of departure sprung budding life, lush green carpet, sounds of insistent insects and the earth's clear blood.

Lost in the cloak of darkness, beneath a million stretched arms of sturdy brown, Senshi curled in on herself, confused.

Shadows waltzed along the ground, bounced off the trees as silhouettes played games against murky blue.

"Are you really sure? I could still give you a map?"

Senshi jumped at the restoration of a small voice and whirled around in a daze to find the mystical child grinning at her.

"I do not need a map to get to no where."

"No, of course not. But you need one to get out of here."

"Who said I could leave?" Senshi asked, puzzled, as she had believed the place she was currently in had trapped her in realm unknown to all humanity.

"You have to want to. Then you have to believe it, then you can."

"Your positive notions sicken me," Senshi bluntly stated as she twirled back to face the span of dark wood before her. In her heart Senshi believed that she only had one destination, or was that what her mind wanted her to think? Was that what the voices on the wind wanted her to believe?

Doubt surfaced as a small crack of ice resounded in the forest.

But pride shouted its intolerance as Senshi walked through the darkness laid before her, determined to decipher its enigmatic labyrinth with her own talents.

In a wisp of smoke, the child once again vanished into the air as Senshi made a rough trek through brambles and left a trail of red behind her.

When the brambles ran out, once more, Senshi was shoved into the burning sands and the wind forced her to walk the path she chose as it lashed her form with fire. 

"This is ridiculous!" Senshi said loudly no one. "I'm right back where I started!"

"That," said a cold, ageless voice, speaking from hidden view, just as the small child had, only, this word came from a mouth far beyond the happiness of the smaller looking Senshi; in fact, this voice carried a sneer in its tone that insisted for it to even be remotely close to the child one would have to stumble on a fountain of youth, a time machine, and possibly a tank of helium, though, even then the true nature of the voice would strongly rip through and still sound the same; "is what happens when you listen to obnoxious brats!"

Curious, Senshi's head whipped back and forth as her own eyes peered above her, mirrored through a darkened lens to create another blue shade of black. A girl of Senshi's own height stepped up to her in the guise of a solider with a long, flowing cloak that flourished in the wind, again, in black. With a long, sharp strand of leather curled at her waist, her hair long lost to the dangers of the wild around her, this hooded, darker version of Senshi was a complete stranger to the girl with the same face. 

With a startled whimper, she cowered back and asked, "Who are you?"

The other girl only snorted. 

"Please, listen. I'm lost, I'm tired, and I have no idea where I am. Can you not just help me out a bit?" Senshi said with a lost hopelessness grazing her mind. 

With a tilt of her head, the darker girl raised on eye brow and clicked her tongue with distaste. "Pathetic. You are here to beg me now? Can you not get out yourself?"

"I don't know where I am. To get out and go further I must know where I am, and I have no idea."

 A sharp line of resentment and loathing bled across the dark Senshi's face. 

Senshi gulped and felt undignified as she bitterly thought, 'She is sneering at me, as though I were nothing but a bug.'

Yet, even with obvious repugnance, Senshi's darker version pointed across the blazing sand, far beyond the lethal wasteland, and said, "That is your destination, then. You will get what you want there, but not a moment sooner."

Impatient to see better, Senshi stood right behind the dark clothed girl and stared right along the ridge of her arm, directly where her finger pointed, as though aiming a gun, and her widened when they found the target. For Senshi's arm did point directly in front of her, but to an angle that led high above the desert floor into the same sky Senshi had seen after the flames of her death bed licked the night, and directly to a brilliant, glittering globe that shone fervently into the black ribbon of sky, right next to the contrasting, blaring white one just above Senshi and the other girl. Senshi's mind went blank as she stepped back from the other girl's arm and stood, inert, and her eyes caught, transfixed, on the horizon. 

With great effort, Senshi swallowed back sour words, and shortly said, "A star. I have to get to a star?!"

"In a word, yes."

Cynical, Senshi's mouth and face scrunched up as though she had been forced to eat a lemon, and had it shoved into her throat with the juices running down every taste bud as they choked her and burned her lining. "How the hell am I supposed to get there?"

"You're so negative," a familiar voice cheerfully exclaimed in the darkness, and Senshi twirled to find the younger looking version of herself precariously perched on cactus, as though she too were peering off into the distance and gazing at the blinking diamond, only her expression insisted she would get there with no difficulty. 

A guttural rumble emerged from the dark clothed girl as she turned to the little child, and her mere gaze was enough to throw the little child from her resting place and back onto the burning sand. With contempt, the older girl, with venom lacing her words, said, "I told you not to return, or I would kill you; damn little monster!"

Happy to give an example of her monstrous qualities, the small Senshi pulled her eyelid down to touch her eyeball, and promptly stuck out her tongue while simultaneously giving the girl with the whip only one finger; a finger which Senshi was quite sure the darker girl would not approve of. 

Indeed, she took it personally with indignation and flickered out of Senshi's view before appearing in front of the smaller Senshi, as though there was no passage from her previous existence and the one the dark clothed girl had now. Quickly, before Senshi's eyes could read the details, the darker girl's hands flew out and slashed the across the small child. 

With an aggrieved squeak, the younger Senshi crumpled low to the ground and waited for the other to finish her physical tirade, but instead she continued on, owning no intent to stop. 

The Dark Senshi, for Senshi still had trouble thinking of a name for the two people that looked exactly like her, dressed all in black persisted to assail the smaller version, with her long, darkened nails, and they sliced through the smaller Senshi like a sword cutting butter.

Entrails flew about, clung to Dark Senshi's nails, and spilled about the child's tiny chest as red liquid pooled beneath the tiny figure and stained her garments in it's sticky path.

In horror, Senshi lurched forward as her stomach swam in her gut, and she fiercely said, "Stop it!"

Curious at the interruption, Dark Senshi stopped with a strip of red drenched peach hide hanging from her fingers, and she turned to give her blood flecked face to Senshi as she inquired, "Why should I?"

"Because she's never done anything to you!"

"Yes she has!"

"And how so?"

"Just by living, breathing, existing. She's weak, and powerless. She makes the mistake of trusting idiots who turn on her, and in the long run, we just end up hurt because of her stupidity. Why should I have to suffer that path any longer?"

"You can't just kill her! That's no reason to hate her. She holds nothing against you. She does not hate you!"

"That's the problem; she doesn't hate anyone. She goes on forever allowing anyone and everyone to hurt us, and she never holds back trust, or kindness to strangers who don't care! Don't you understand what that is like? Do you have any idea how it feels to suffer the pain and humiliation of that trap, over and over?! DO YOU?"

"Of course I do. We all do. We all suffer it. But also, we all learn from it, and move on. And if it happens again at someone else's hand, well, we could have known better, but how could we? It's a different person, they could be different, no?"

"I say, it's better to hold back then to find out."

"Then, how would you ever know? Maybe the next time will be different, maybe even better than that, but you might never know because you are too afraid to try."

"I am not afraid."

"Yes you are. And besides, part of growing up and learning is about making mistakes. It's okay to mess up. It's okay to be afraid. It's all right if you get lost, or you need help, or you wish someone was there for you. There's nothing wrong about it. There's nothing wrong with having hope, or being foolish. It makes you real."

"She is still hindering my full potential, so she must die!"

"But that's not true! She is the part of you that remembers what it is like to find joy in life. She is the part that loves to live and shares with others. She is that part of you that persists, and transcends all. Without her, you would die, not because you are weak, but because you pushed so many things away to be strong, that you will no longer care about living or dying, and therefore, will die of a lack of desire to survive. Not because you cannot survive, but because you are nonchalant on the matter, as you are with everything else."

 Finally, a look of understanding flooded the darker Senshi's face.

"You need her, as much as she needs you. There is nothing wrong with failing. It happens. But you have to forgive her and move on, because if you don't, no one else will.

Don't crush her to just save yourself; that is weakness."

"You...you are right...."

A silent turn of lips that had only known pain,

I don't need your help!

No, that's only pride speaking:

Their confrontation over, Senshi fell to her knees besides the broken and torn pieces of the child, and tears lashed the edges of her eyes.

"See, like I said. Negative. Did you know that you're really cynical too!"

Senshi's ears perked up and immediately caressed that impervious, ever delighted voice as she turned and fond the younger Senshi, who grinned, standing behind her, completely whole.

Baffled, she looked at hers hands as the words, "But you...." died on her lips. The pieces she had grasped in disbelief had long faded, and not a drop of red liquid was left to stain the ground.

"She's impossible to get rid of, trust me," Dark Senshi muttered as she hid an affectionate smile by quickly frowning at the two. "Now, are we going to leave and get started, or were you planning to waste all of your time by sitting there in shock for the next day or so."

A quick smirk played across Senshi's face, as the young Senshi silently approved, and Senshi lifted herself off her knees and started courageously across the desert sand.

After a few feet into through the gleaming sand, the terrain shifted once more, but instead of stranding her again in a haunted forest, a lush carpet of green, lightly dappled with gold and pale pink. Senshi looked up to see a canopy of lightly pink kissed, white blossoms shuffle in a brief breeze before they cascaded and danced towards the ground as they flickered from bright to dark between the filtered light that shone from the sky above. 

With her mouth agape, Senshi twirled in the rain of petals and breathlessly said, "Cherry blossoms?"

"Yeah. Aren't they gorgeous," they younger version chirped as she skipped along side Senshi and the brief patches of gold that were dimming as their source plunged towards the welcoming horizon. 

Dark Senshi walked behind them and added wistfully, "Too bad they don't live very long."

And through the mist of white flowers, a darker, disturbed voice grated against the beauty and stabbed through the peaceful air: "Yes, just like you."

All three Senshi's turned to find yet another with the same face, but the eyes...these eyes were swirling with blacks and reds as blue was tortured and chased from sight, and the pupils were abnormally dilated. This Senshi wore disintegrating threads that once might have been Dark Senshi's attire, but it was impossible to tell with they state they were in. 

Dried strings of hair spilled from her head and wildly flayed her skin in the wind of the cherry grove as night clenched the land and locked. Even Dark Senshi stared at this bizarre version with a sliver of fright, and the Young Senshi cowered against Senshi as she watched the new comer, carefully. 

"All of you must not go a step further. I cannot permit that, for what right do you have to exist when I am nothing but a memory here?"

None of the three understood her words, but her intentions were all too clear. 

When the frenzied Senshi moved forward, Dark Senshi immediately ducked away as she screamed, "Look out."

The other two followed suit and ducked down, with Senshi's arms around her younger version, as a burst of green flame filled with umbrage that had festered in the depths of acidic contempt for years, unknown to anyone, blared out, and while the others cowered away from it's immense force, its owner crept forward, but shifted from view. 

Dark Senshi looked up when the blast was spent, but could not find the perpetrator. Senshi and Young Senshi also looked up to find her, and then Senshi hurriedly shouted, "Behind you!" too late.

Long, blackened nails protruded through black cloth, and Dark Senshi looked down with large, wide eyes. The hand eagerly lifted up, then pulled inside Dark Senshi and grabbed the beating drum of life from within her body. Dark Senshi slumped to the ground as the hand left it's invasion and held up it's prize. Then, with Senshi and Young Senshi unable to turn away, it brutally squeezed the dark red organ. Gleefully, the demented Senshi licked at the sticky liquid running down her arm, and turned her sights on the other two, cowering together. 

But to Senshi's surprise, and horror, her smaller version suddenly sparked with fierce power. Quickly, she shoved Senshi away, and glowed in the cloaked world as she glared at the murderer with outrage and righteous intent. 

Her antagonist became immediately impressed and intrigued, and she too faced the other, unwaveringly,  but before Young Senshi could fly forward, the new Senshi appeared beside her and again repeated the burst of flame from earlier. In shock, Young Senshi felt frozen in place as the blaze seared her soul and her body was wrenched apart. 

When the brilliant faded this time, Senshi was left at the hands of her homicidal doppelganger, and voices once again strangled through the mist as the deranged Senshi dug paper thin, razor sharp nails into Senshi's throat and trapped her against a tree trunk. 

Despair clenched Senshi's heart as her legs refused to move and she collapsed against the thin tree trunk supporting her back with petals falling all around her. She slipped down to the ground and stared at the lost copy of herself, unable to speak or move. 

Where to go?

The unhinged Senshi's voice rasped, "It's all your fault, you know, their deaths are all your fault! Everything...is your fault."

No, that's just self-hatred talking.

What does your heart say?

With a stuttering voice choked by tears, Senshi whispered into the night, "I don't know...I can't hear it."

Listen!

"All your fault!"

-Damn you!

"But I can't!"

Listen!

What does your heart say?

The din grew louder, mimicking a swarm of bees, and approached closer to Senshi's ears as it drowned out anything else other than the insults and pain. Air was now scarce, and trapped away from Senshi's lungs, while she clawed for the answer, and strained her ears beyond their reach. Briefly, they caught a soft ghost of a voice, next to Senshi.

With a jolt, Senshi turned next to her and found another, solemn, child version of herself. Slowly, child Senshi put a finger to her mouth and said, "Shhhh."

Time started to slow until everything around Senshi blurred. She stared at the rain-splattered world from behind the safety of a water-drenched window, and turned to the little girl.

"...."

Still, nothing could be heard, but now it was silent as the ocean of voices from before crashed against the shore.

"...up...."

"I still can't hear! Why can't I hear?"

Listen!

Senshi said with a desperate, far away whine, "But I can't hear."

Yes you can.

And she could see as well. The little girl turned to her as she rose from the ground and approached Senshi. Her form glimmered the smudged air as obscure images trailed behind her, like afterthoughts of herself. Closely, Senshi observed the soft edged doubles and her heart trembled when they sent back the faces and eyes of the younger version of herself and the darker version of herself that she believed to be dead. 

"Wake up."

"What?"

With great intensity, the voice redoubled its efforts and pounded out the incessant remnants of the chatter that tormented Senshi from before and loudly proclaimed: "Wake up!

Ice shattered and clattered to the floor as blue eyes opened to the world, crusted with flecks of frozen water that soon melted and dripped down Senshi's uncovered frame.

Slowly, she pulled herself from the tub and reached for a fluffy, grey towel to dry herself off.

Because Senshi was wont to consume after a long sleep, she smiled boldly at the world around her and flounced downstairs as the aromas of berries and pancakes cooking on the stove reached her and pulled her downstairs towards the morning's meal. 

However, when Senshi's feet touched the floor after her last step, the floorboards around her shuddered away and trembled violently. Senshi was thrown back on the stairs, hard as her bones struck the rounded edges of the carpeted wood, then even the stairs fell out from beneath her and her eyes closed as darkness over took her senses.

When she awoke, Senshi looked around her at the world that should have been bustling with the morning's rush as people water their lawns; rushed off to school, or work; threw papers in other people's yards; chased children; walked dogs; or just lived, instead she was met with white, lifeless, listless sand. Her hands curled angrily in it as she ground her nails into it and cursed it silently.

She had strongly believed everything was over, but yet, here she was again. Then she understood. It would never be over until the end, and she had never reached it. She still had a long ways to go.

Bravely, Senshi pulled the piece of her that welcomed this new adventure, the little child that ached to reach the end, and she took the wise, hardened piece of her that logically suggested caution, but had the strength to make it through, and with them she closed the door on the empty shell she had called home and faced the white shining light that glistened in the distance on a ribbon of black. 

Without looking back, not even once, she plowed forward with her head up high and shouted to the sky, "I will get to the star! You just watch me! You can't stop me!"

And they headed off to find their dreams, to find reality, to make mistakes, to triumph, to prevail, to fail, and to finally live, no matter where life took her. She knew, no matter what, it was always better than standing still.

Just keep on; keep on running, keep on singing, keep on writing, keep on believing, keep on hoping, keep on fighting....