Chapter 9 Serenity slowly opened her eyes. She was back in her room at the beach house, and somebody was holding her hand. Turning her head to the side, she saw a girl sitting in a chair beside the bed, her long pink hair damp and a blanket draped over her shoulders. “Ce…res…” Tears filled Ceres’ eyes. “Thank goodness,” she whispered, bringing Serenity‘s hand to her mouth. “I was so scared. So very, very scared.” “Where’s…the boy?” Serenity asked. “What happened…to the…boy?” There was a long pause before Ceres answered. “There was no boy, Serenity-sama.” “No, there was… I touched him… I held him...” “Vesta called the local authorities after I rescued you. Nobody has reported a missing boy.” “But I saw him!” she insisted, her voice growing stronger. “I did!” “It must have been a hallucination, a figment of your imagination.” Serenity shook her head. “He was real… As real as you and me.” Despite how tired she felt, she sat up and tossed her blanket aside. Somebody had changed her into a pair of dry pajamas. “I have to find him.” Ceres jumped up from her chair, placing her hands on Serenity’s shoulders and gently pushing her back down to the bed. “You are not going anywhere, Serenity-sama,” she said. “You almost drowned! If anything were to happen to you…” “But the boy --” “He doesn‘t exist!” Ceres’ normally gentle voice sounded rough, almost angry. “You imagined him, or maybe…” She bit her bottom lip, seemingly hesitant to bring up her other theory. “What?” Serenity prodded. “Perhaps you made him up,” Ceres mumbled, looking away from Serenity. Her eyes widened in shock, and Serenity once again sat up. “Made him up? Why would I lie about something like that?” “I… I don’t know. You were so upset before it happened, and we all know how depressed you’ve been as of late…” Serenity brought a hand to her mouth, understanding the implication behind Ceres‘ words. “You thought I was trying to commit suicide?” Ceres didn’t respond, but her silence was answer enough. Serenity shakily rose to her feet and embraced Ceres, who promptly burst into tears. “I’m sorry, Ceres,” Serenity apologized. “I didn’t mean to cause you so much worry. Yes, I‘ve been feeling depressed, but I don‘t want to kill myself. Helios wouldn‘t want that.” “I’m so glad to hear that,” Ceres said, sniffling. “Very, very glad. When you didn‘t come back up, I…” “I know. I’m sorry.” The two of them stood like that until the door to Serenity’s room opened and an older woman with blue hair came in. “It’s good to see you up, Serenity-chan,” Mercury said with a slight frown on her face, “but you should be resting. You just went through quite the ordeal.” Letting go of Ceres, Serenity asked, “Mercury-sama, what are you doing here?” “We called her on the communicator to check on your condition,” Ceres replied as Mercury helped Serenity back into bed. “Fortunately, Ceres pulled you out of the water just in the nick of time,” the doctor said, tucking Serenity in like a little child. “Had you remained in water for any longer, you could have suffered major brain damage from a lack of oxygen, hypothermia, or even worse. What were you thinking, going out into the ocean during a storm like this?” Outside, the storm continued to rage on, flashes of lightning visible from the rain- spattered window. “She claims she saw a boy drowning and was trying to rescue him, but she’s the only one who saw him. I saw no sign of him, and there haven’t been any missing children’s reports filed.” “I did see him.” No matter what Ceres said, Serenity knew what she saw. “He was a blond-haired boy, surrounded by a golden light.” Mercury tilted her head to the side. “Golden light?” “I’m not going crazy,” Serenity declared, knowing exactly what Ceres and Mercury were thinking. “I truly did see him.” Mercury and Ceres exchanged a look, obviously not believing her story. “Serenity-chan, it must have been dark out there,” Mercury said. “Are you certain what you saw wasn’t simply a piece of driftwood, illuminated by the light from a lighthouse or boat? Or maybe some large marine animal?” “It was a person, Mercury-sama.” Serenity wrapped her arms around herself, thinking back to the moment she reached the boy. “I touched him. I held him in my arms. I felt his…his sadness.” “Sadness?” Not knowing why she said that, Serenity shook her head. “Never mind. All that matters is that he really did exist; I know he did.” “Well, if he did, it’s unlikely he’s still alive,” Ceres said with a mournful sigh. “I’ll contact the authorities again, tell them to be on the alert. That’s the best we can do. They may at least be able to recover his body so his parents can give him a proper funeral.” “Thank you, Ceres.” “As for you,” Mercury said, talking to Serenity, “try to get some rest, okay? I‘m going to contact your parents and assure them you are alright. I‘m sure they‘re worried sick about you.” Serenity nodded, already feeling her eyelids begin to droop. After all the excitement, she was exhausted, and not even the threat of having another nightmare could keep her eyes open. Soon after Mercury and Ceres left the room, she fell fast asleep. ***** “I want to die.” At the sound of the voice, Serenity opened her eyes and found herself in a world of blue. *Where am I?* she thought, treading her arms and legs through what appeared to be some kind of blue liquid. It seemed as if she was underwater, though she had no apparent trouble breathing. *What is this? This isn’t my usual dream…* “I want to die.” She turned around. It was that voice again. She couldn’t tell if it was a boy’s or a girl’s voice, but it sounded young, like that of a child. However, despite the water being crystal clear, Serenity saw no one else around. “I want to die.” Serenity finally looked upwards and noticed the reflection of the moon dancing on what must have been the water’s surface. She began swimming toward the light, surfacing in the middle of a large lake -- a lake she knew quite well. *What am I doing in Elysion?* she wondered, recognizing it as the lake in the middle of the Crystal Forest where she had first met Helios. She shook her head. That wasn’t important at the moment; she needed to find the source of the voice. Serenity looked around the vicinity, her eyes landing on the figure of a young boy, standing at the lake’s edge. He didn’t seem to notice her. “Let me die.” The boy’s lips didn’t move, yet somehow Serenity knew the voice belonged to him. “I don’t deserve to live… It’s all my fault.” As Serenity looked on, the boy began wading through the lake’s waters, still fully dressed in a white tunic and pants. He looked straight ahead, seemingly unaware of her presence. Serenity tried to catch his attention to no avail. When the boy was submerged to the point where only his head remained above the water, Serenity jumped into action, swimming toward him at top speed. “Stop!” she yelled, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu as she attempted to reach him. “Please, stop!” Unlike earlier, the water was calm and clear, but he was at least half a mile away from her. It was impossible to get to him before he fully disappeared under the surface. When she got to the point where she last saw him, Serenity dived once more into the blue world she had awakened in. The boy continued sinking to the bottom of the lake, making no attempt to save himself. Though it should have been an easy task to catch up with him without waves or other disturbances to push him further away, it seemed to Serenity as if the distance between them increased the faster she swam. Physics was never one of her best subjects, but she knew enough to realize something was definitely not normal about that, just like the fact that she could once again breathe underwater. She didn’t ponder too much on the mystery, however, attributing it to the nature of the dream world. Instead, she grew even more determined to reach the boy. Serenity remembered Helios once told her that if a dreamer was aware that he was in a dream, it was sometimes possible for the dreamer to control what he saw during the dream. Though she had never tested his claim, Serenity closed her eyes and willed herself to breach the distance between her and the child. When she opened them again, he was only a little more than an arm’s length away. “Take my hand,” she ordered the boy, reaching out toward him. To her amazement, he was still conscious. Slowly, with some hesitation, the boy extended his arm, grasping her fingers. Serenity breathed a sigh of relief, but just as she was about to pull him up toward her, she felt a squeeze…then nothing. Beneath them, a black hole had appeared out of nowhere. The boy was being pulled toward it like a magnet. Serenity once again tried to reach for him, but there seemed to be an invisible barrier of energy between them. She could only look on in horror as the boy, now glowing with a golden light, disappeared into the darkness. He said one more thing before he was consumed: “I’m sorry.” ***** Serenity bolted upright, gasping as if she had just resurfaced from underwater. It took her a few moments to realize that she was no longer dreaming. The room was pitch dark, but lightning from the still raging storm outside provided enough illumination for her to see that she was back in her room at the beach house. She reached over to turn on the lamp on the nightstand beside her bed. It didn’t turn on. Thinking that the bulb had gone out, she climbed out of bed and walked over to flip the light switch. It, too, didn’t work. “Great, a power failure,” Serenity mumbled. “What is this, the 20th century?” She shuffled back over to the nightstand, blindly feeling around until her fingers wrapped around a drawer knob. Serenity pulled the drawer open and felt for the flashlight she hoped was inside. When she found one, she turned it on, grateful that the batteries still worked, and walked out into the hall. She had expected to find one of her senshi standing guard outside her door, but it appeared that everybody was sleeping in their own beds, a rumbling sound coming from the room across the hall from hers. That would be Juno, whose loud snoring was infamous among the members of their group. At another time, Serenity might have giggled and rolled her eyes, making plans to tease Juno about it over breakfast the next morning, but instead she ignored it, tiptoeing past the rest of the senshi’s rooms and down the stairs. Serenity had no idea where she was going until she slid open the sliding glass door leading out onto the veranda. Though it was still raining, the storm seemed to be letting up some. Without bothering to grab an umbrella, Serenity walked down the veranda stairs to the beach, the rain soaking her hair and pajamas in mere minutes. She knew it was a bad idea to go out in the rain when she was still recovering from her recent illness, but she didn’t care, falling to her knees just inches away from the ocean’s shore. The flashlight fell onto the sand, the light flickering twice before going out completely. With no light coming from the house and the lightning having ceased, the world went black. Serenity felt a shiver of what might have been fear crawl up her back, and she hugged herself tightly, both to comfort herself and to fend off the sudden chill that had come over her thanks to her wet clothes. She was old enough to know there was -- usually -- no reason to be afraid of the dark, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Fortunately, as the rain began to lessen and the clouds began to dissipate, the moon and a handful of stars became visible through the darkness, providing at least enough light to see the waves in front of her. Serenity stared out at the ocean, struggling to hold back the tears that threatened to fall as she remembered what had happened earlier that night. Somewhere out there, in those cold, black waters, a young boy had lost his life. She didn’t care what Ceres had said; she knew what she had seen. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the ocean, the boy‘s watery grave. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. Why am I always so…useless?” She swiped the damp sleeve of her pajama top across her eyes, but it didn’t do much good. Standing back up, Serenity squinted her eyes and scanned the beach. During the storm, several pieces of driftwood and other debris had washed ashore. She found two thin planks, one a couple of inches shorter than the other, and arranged them so that the shorter one sat horizontally over the longer, vertical plank. She couldn’t find any rope to tie them together, so Serenity pulled out the white drawstring from her pajama bottoms and used it to attach the two planks in a makeshift cross. A few feet further from the shore, so that it wouldn’t be washed away, she built up a mound of sand and erected the cross at the top. Serenity completed the memorial by placing a variety of different shells around the base of the mound and the cross as decoration since she didn‘t have any flowers to offer. Though she wasn’t raised Christian, she kneeled in front of the memorial and prayed to whoever was listening that she hoped the boy’s soul was at peace and that his family and friends would somehow find the strength and comfort to get through their grief. At the end, she also added a short prayer for Helios, that he would one day awaken from his coma and come back to her. When she finally stood back up and turned around, intending to go back to bed, Serenity was startled by the sudden appearance of a bright light, shining directly at her. She shielded her eyes with her hand, struggling to make out who the shadow was who was holding the light. The shape looked feminine, wearing either a long dress or nightgown, and held what appeared to be an umbrella over her head to shelter her from the drizzle of rain that still continued to fall, but it wasn’t until the shadow spoke that Serenity recognized her as the leader of the Sailor Quartet. “Serenity-sama?” “I-I’m sorry,” Serenity apologized, feeling very much like a child being caught making mischief by her mother. “I know I shouldn’t be out here so late at night, but I couldn’t sleep, and… Ceres?” Ceres had lowered her flashlight so that the beam fell upon the wooden cross of the memorial. Serenity started to give her an explanation, but Ceres shook her head; she already knew who the memorial was in honor of. To Serenity’s surprise, Ceres handed her the flashlight and snapped her fingers. Out of nowhere, a beautiful bouquet of pure white lilies, held together by a black satin ribbon, appeared in Ceres’ arms. Ceres motioned for Serenity to step aside, then kneeled in front of the memorial. After whispering something that Serenity couldn’t understand, Ceres placed the bouquet of lilies in front of the cross and stood back up. “Thank you,” Serenity said softly, touched by the gesture. Ceres wrapped an arm around Serenity’s shoulders, bringing her underneath the umbrella. “Come,” she said, leading Serenity back to the house. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes and back to bed.” DISCLAIMER: Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takeuchi. AUTHOR'S NOTES: Any comments or criticisms can be sent to me at ElysionDream@aol.com. Special thanks to my editor Starsea.