Cross-Stitch: A Tale of Mothers and Daughters

by DQBunny

Four-year-old Princess Serenity was mesmerized. Safe in her hiding place in the shadows of the statue of the god Chronos, she watched as her mother pierced a cloth with a needle that had colored thread running through a small hole in the end. Today, the thread was green. Other days, Serenity saw her mother using silver, blue, pink, and threads of so many different colors that Serenity felt her mother must had stolen a bit of a rainbow and used it to create her work.

Serenity frowned. Of course, she had never seen a rainbow. Those appeared on Earth, and she lived on the Moon. Momma must go to Earth when no one is looking and takes a bit of the rainbow, she thought. Then she turns it into thread and puts it in that box she has sitting next to her.

Serenity's eyes shifted to a mahogany box with several drawers and a picture made out of glass on the cover. Every so often, Momma would lift the lid of the box and take out her silver scissors. With one quick snip, she would cut off the thread close to the cloth and replace the thread in the needle with another. Sometimes it was the same color thread, other times it was a different color. The thread Momma got from the drawers in the box. That must be where she keeps the rainbow, Serenity decided.

The cloth Momma worked on was called a tapestry. Serenity had only seen it from afar, and that had been the first time she saw Momma working on it. Serenity had eaten a few gooey brownies then ran to go see her mother. Momma had caught her before she could reach the tapestry and said her fingers must be clean before she could go near the tapestry.

My fingers are clean now, Serenity decided. And I wanna see it. But, I'm not really suppose to be in here right now, she remembered. Ever since the time she had run in her mother's study after eating the brownies, Nanny had scolded her for going into places where she wasn't allowed. As if Nanny had sensed Serenity thinking about her, the door to her mother's study opened and the older woman walked in. She looked exasperated.

"I can't find her anywhere, Queen Serenity," Nanny said. "She must had slipped off to play again during her nap."

"Have you tried any of the other visiting queens to see if Serenity is playing with their daughters?" the queen asked without looking up from her tapestry.

"That was the second place I tried."

"What was the first?"

"The kitchens."

The queen smiled, but still didn't look up. "Go on now, I feel Serenity is safe wherever she is. And she'll be one tired little princess tonight, which will make it easier to put to bed. Thank you, Nanny, that will be all."

"As you wish." Nanny bowed to the queen and left the room.

When the door shut behind the nanny, Serenity leaned against the statue and let out a sigh of relief. If Nanny had caught her, she would had to sit in the corner for an hour. If that had happened, Princess Rei of Mars would be teasing her the entire time and she wouldn't be allowed to defend herself. And then Serenity would had gone to bed with no dessert, the most dreaded punishment of all.

"Sere-chan, you can come out now," Momma's gentle voice said.

Serenity froze. She could hear her heart thundering in her chest. She clasped her small hands together and began to pray. I'll take sitting in the corner and I'll even take Rei-chan's teasing, but please don't take away my dessert, she prayed fervently.

"Sere-chan, it's okay. You're not in trouble," Queen Serenity said, finally looking up from her tapestry. Slowly, she could see one golden odango emerge from behind the statue. Then her daughter's face emerged, blue eyes wide with wonder. Then the other odango appeared. Princess Serenity crept out from behind the statue and stood before it, her hands clasped behind her back. But, instead of blushing or staring at the ground, she gazed at the tapestry.

"Can I see, Momma? Please?" Serenity asked. "Of course you can," the queen held her arms out. Serenity hesistated for a moment, then ran to her. The queen pulled her up on her lap and Serenity snuggled up against her. She stared at the tapestry suspended in the large, wooden embrodery hoop, which held the cloth taunt so Momma could work on it. The picture was of a beautiful castle surrounded by a lake, trees, and flowers.

Serenity stared at it for a moment. "It's very pretty, Momma," she said.

"Thank you," the queen said. "It's of the castle on earth where King Endymion and his wife, Queen Celeste, lives. They have a son a little older than you. His name is Prince Endymion."

"Like I'm Princess Serenity and you're Queen Serenity?" the princess asked.

"Yes, it's a family tradition for them too," the queen said. "It's another family tradition for our family to learn how to use needle and thread to create pretty tapestries." The queen shifted Serenity in her arms so she could see the portrait of a beautiful pegasus that suspended from one of the walls.

"That's a pretty horse, Momma," Serenity said. "It's called a pegasus. Your grandmother made that tapestry when I was about your age. I used to do the same thing you did too. I would wake up and sneak out of the nursery then watch my mother work on her tapestry."

"How long did you know I was there?" Serenity asked.

"Oh, let's say you haven't had a nap in three days because you've been a busy little spy," the queen hugged her daughter. "When my mother caught me, she sat me on my lap like I did you, and then taught me how to cross- stitch."

"Really?" Serenity craned her head back so she could look into her mother's sky-blue eyes. "I can learn how?"

"Of course," the queen picked up the needle from where she set it on the tapestry and placed it in Serenity's hand. Then, slowly and patiently, she taught Serenity how to cross-stitch on the tapestry. Serenity smiled as she pulled the thread through the cloth with her mother's help. Now I get to use the colors of the rainbow too, she thought.

Present-Day Tokyo

She was gone.

Mamoru reached for his wife and grabbed her pillow instead. No, not fair, he thought. I want to hold Usako, not her pillow. He forced one eye open to see if she happened to be sitting on the edge of the bed or standing by the balcony doors. But, she was not within his limited eye range. He sat up and rubbed his eyes with the back of his right hand while reaching for the alarm clock with the left. He held it up and squinted as his eyes adjusted to the light and saw it was past 1 in the morning. He sighed and put the clock back on the nightstand.

He and Usagi had been married for a month now, and it seemed to be a nightly occurance ever since they got back from their honeymoon. Around 8 or 9 o'clock, they would give into their desire for each other and rush off to bed as fast as they could, at times not even making it to the bed. They would drop off to sleep around 11 and wake up around 6 a.m. so he could be at work and Usagi could make it to her classes at Azabu University.

But, Usagi always left the bed in the middle of the night. It was the damnest thing to him. At first, Mamoru assumed she was getting up to use the bathroom, but she stayed away too long for it to be that. At times, he would see a light go on in the other room and figured she would be studying. Still, even though she made it to college, Usagi was not that fond of studying and to do so at 1 a.m. would be unthinkable for her. But, by the time he thought to get up and look for her, she either came back to bed or he fell back asleep.

Mamoru threw back the covers and got up. He walked over to the bathroom door and saw it was empty. He then went into the living room and saw it was empty as well. One look to his left revealed she wasn't in the kitchen as well. He frowned. Where was she?

He walked back into the bedroom. There wasn't a youma attack, he knew that. He could feel it when she transformed into Sailor Moon. He sat on the edge of the bed facing the balcony and thought for a moment. Maybe she went to the store or something, he thought. But, she would had told me first, I thought.

Mamoru glanced up at the closed balcony curtains for a moment, sighed, then laid back on the bed. After a moment, he sat back up and stared through a small gap in the curtains. Then he got up and walked over to them. He pushed back one of the curtains enough to see his wife sitting outside, bent over a wooden hoop with a cloth suspended in it.

His eyes widened. I didn't know Usako could cross- stitch, he thought. He squinted to try to see her work, but could not see it. She sat on a low stool, bent over a free-standing wooden hoop. A candle sat on the small table next to her. The bright moon provided the rest of the light she needed to work. It also turned her hair a silvery-blonde. Mamoru smiled. She looked so beautiful like that. He reached for the door and opened it.

Usagi looked up to see Mamoru coming outside. She set her needle down and stood up, blocking her work from his view. "Mamo-chan, is something wrong?" she asked.

"I want to know why my wife keeps leaving me every night about this time and stays gone for about an hour, then comes back. I suppose this is my answer," he said.

Usagi nodded. Even though she stood in front of the hoop, Mamoru was tall enough at 6'2 to see over Usagi's small 4'11 and look at what was on the stand. He squinted at it, trying to make out what she was stitching. Realization dawned on him as the building sprang up in his memories. It was the palace that Princess Serenity had lived in during the Silver Millennium.

"Usako, that is beautiful," Mamoru said, moving past Usagi to take a closer look at the tapestry. It almost looked like a painting to him, done out of thread instead of oils. He looked back at her with appreciation. "Why haven't you told anyone about this? How long have you been doing this?"

Usagi moved away from him and walked to the ledge and propped her arms up on it. She gazed up at the moon. "Isn't it pretty, Mamo-chan?"

He moved over to join her, putting an arm around her waist as he did so. "Hai, it is. But, that doesn't answer my question."

Usagi stared at the moon for a moment longer. It was a full moon, just as it was on her wedding night. She leaned into Mamoru's embrace. Her throat clogged with emotion. This was a secret no one knew about, not even Luna. All of the years when everyone had joked about her inability to be good at most things, this had been her carefully concealed secret. The one thing she could look at, besides her drawings, and know she was truly good at it.

The last link to her mother, Queen Serenity. Usagi stared up at Mamoru, who still gazed at the moon. He's a wonderful man and everything I could hope for, she realized. If destiny is what we saw it, we get to spend the next thousand or so years together. He's my everything, and I don't want to keep any secrets from him. Not even this.

"Mamo-chan?" Usagi asked, hesistantly, to see if she had his attention.

"Hmmm?" Mamoru responded, still gazing at the moon. He squeezed her waist.

Usagi gazed back up at it as well. "Back during our first visit to the Moon Kingdom, we got back our memories. I didn't get back just my memories of the destruction of the kingdom, but of some from my childhood as well. I remember being a little girl and would wake up from my nap and sneak into my mother's study and watch her create a tapestry." With those words, she slipped from Mamoru's embrace and went back inside the apartment. He followed her.

Inside, Usagi turned on a lamp and went over to the dresser. She opened the top drawer on the right side where she kept her valuables and reached in the very back of the drawer. She withdrew a square object wrapped in tissue paper. She carried it over to the bed and laid it on top of the rumpled covers. Carefully, she removed the paper and unfolded the cloth that was wrapped inside it. Mamoru walked over next to her and saw it was a picture of a castle surrounded with a lake, trees, and flowers. Like the tapestry Usagi was working on, this one was gorgeous as well.

"Momma said it was the castle that you lived in when you were Prince Endymion," Usagi said.

Mamoru stared at it in disbelief. Although he could clearly remember the destruction of the Moon Kingdom now too, his memories of his life on Earth as Prince Endymion were extremely cloudy at best. He ran a fingertip down the old tapestry and closed his eyes, hoping for some memories of his former life to come back to him. Nothing. He sighed.

Usagi squeezed his arm. "Well, when we were on the moon, I found the tapestry near the place where we talked to my mother. I figured it must had been the ruins of where her study was. I kept it the entire time, folded up into my fuku skirt. When we got back to Earth, I missed you and my mother so much. That was when I decided to teach myself how to cross-stich. The first thing I did was repair Mother's tapestry. Then, I sat down and drew the Moon Kingdom palace as best as I could and fitted the colors to it and started stitching."

"You've been doing this for five years?" Mamoru asked, incrediously.

Usagi nodded. She walked back outside and over to her tapestry. "It took me a long time to get the palace drawn right and the colors I needed for it. I started on the actual tapestry around the time you left for America." Her voice dropped down to a whisper. "I couldn't sleep at night because I missed you so much. So, I would go out on my balcony and work on the tapestry. I felt that under the moonlight, I was closer to you and Momma that way."

Mamoru had followed Usagi outside to hear the rest of her story. He put his arms around her waist and held her tightly. "Gomen ne, Usako," he whispered in a pained voice. "The hell I put you through when Galaxia was here..."

"It wasn't your fault," Usagi said, quietly. "There was nothing you could do about it."

He didn't reply to that, just simply held her in his arms. Usagi stroked the tapestry lovingly. "I didn't tell Luna or the other senshi about this because I felt this was my last link to my mother. When I am outside under the moon working on this, I feel so much closer to her. I can feel her spirit within me. That tapestry and the skill she taught to me as a little girl are the only things I have left of hers. I want to hold on to them and pass them down to Chibi-Usa when it's time for her to learn how. Because my grandmother taught my mother how to sew, and then Momma taught me. I want to teach our daughter."

Tears filled Usagi's eyes. "I wish...I wish I could still see my mother," she said, the tears rolling down her cheeks and splashing onto Mamoru's hands, which were joined at the front of her waist.

"You do see her, Usako," he said, taking one of her hands and running it down the tapestry. "You see her every time you look at yourself in the mirror. And you see it everytime you work on your tapestry, because you're not only putting your love and spirit into this tapestry, but a little piece of every woman in your family who passed this skill down from mother to daughter for thousands of years."

Mamoru fought back the jealous thoughts in his mind he was about to voice. More than anything, he wished he had a link like this to his parents, his mortal ones or his parents from the Silver Millenium. Instead, he bit down on his self control and dropped a kiss on top of Usagi's head.

"Each tapestry contains the spirit of the women in your family, Usako," Mamoru said. "When each new generation creates her own tapestry, she adds her own spirit to the quilt of others already nestled in it. It's only right you do this now."

Usagi nodded. The two of them gazed at the tapestry for a moment longer before she looked up at him and he kissed her. They clung to each other for a moment before he led her back to their bedroom.

Outside, the moonlight still shone on the tapestry. In the rays of the moonlight, a very faint sihoulette slowly formed of a woman with her silver hair done up in odango. She smiled upon her daughter and her husband, now eagerly expressing their love for each other in their bedroom, then faded back into the moonlight.

Crystal Tokyo

She was mesmerized.

Four-year-old Princess Usagi "Small Lady" Serenity stared at her mother, who sat in a recliner across from her father. Momma was using a needle to run a brightly colored thread through a piece of cloth. The cloth was suspended in a wooden hoop which had legs so it could sit on the floor. Poppa sat across from Momma in another recliner, his reading glasses on. He was reading some reports aloud to her.

Chibi-Usa pressed herself closer to the statue of Chronos which stood in her parents' study. She didn't want either of them to see her. After all, she was suppose to be taking a nap, and no one had missed her...yet.

She watched as Momma took up a pair of silver scisorss and cut the black thread she had been working with close to the cloth. Momma opened a drawer in a small box and took out some hair that was silver, just like her hair. Then, she threaded the needle and started to work on the cloth again.

Chibi-Usa thought Momma must had gone outside and stolen a bit of the rainbow to use as her threads. Well, not Momma exactly, maybe Aunt Makoto or Poppa did it. They were tall. So was Pu. One of them could reach for the rainbow and get a piece of it for her mother. She sighed. One day, I want to see what Momma is making using the colors of the rainbow.

A small communicator on the table next to Neo-Queen Serenity beeped. She set the needle down and picked up the communicator. "Hai, Ami-chan?" she asked.

"Usagi-chan, Chibi-Usa-chan's gone," Ami's voice came over the communicator. "We've looked everywhere for her."

"Have you tried Hotaru's?" the queen asked.

"That was the third place we looked."

"Oh? Where were the first two places?"

"The second place we looked was the time gate to see if she was with Pluto. The first place was the kitchens."

The queen grinned. She looked up from her communicator at King Endymion, who returned the grin. The queen nodded to him, then pressed a button on the communicator.

"Don't worry, Ami-chan, I have a feeling wherever she is, Small Lady is just fine." Neo-Queen Serenity turned off the communicator and set it back down. She gave her husband another look, and he nodded.

Chibi-Usa relaxed, leaning against the statue.

"Small Lady, you can come out now," Momma's gentle voice said.

Chibi-Usa froze. After a moment, she saw a large shadow crossing the room. Then, the next thing she knew, she was in Poppa's arms and being carried back over to the chairs where he and Momma had been sitting. He sat back down with Chibi-Usa on his lap.

The little girl fidgeted. "Am I in trouble?"

"Of course not," Neo-Queen Serenity smiled. "You wanted to see what I was doing, ne?"

Chibi-Usa nodded and slid off her father's lap. She walked over to look at her mother's hoop, but it was too high for her to see. Serenity picked up her daughter and placed her in her lap. Chibi-Usa stared at the beautiful portrait of a palace on the cloth.

"This is called a tapestry," Momma explained. She pointed to one hanging over the fireplace. "Your grandma did one of the palace your father grew up in a long time ago when he was part of the Earth Kingdom. This is the palace I grew up in as Princess Serenity."

"It's pretty," Chibi-Usa whispered.

The queen picked up the needle and carefully placed it in Chibi-Usa's hand. "Small Lady, my mother was taught this when she was your age, and so was I. Would you like to learn how?"

Chibi-Usa nodded. Slowly, Serenity helped her to make her first small cross-stitch in the tapestry. Chibi- Usa smiled with satisfaction. Now she would get to learn how to use the colors of the rainbow.