2018-06-16 - LOTUS AWAKENING: Setsuna Meioh
| Title: LOTUS AWAKENING: Setsuna Meioh | |
|---|---|
| Summary: Setsuna wakes up from nightmare to a perfect morning in a perfect world. | |
| Who: | |
| Where: A beautiful dream | |
| OOC - IC Date: Sat June 16th, 2018 - ??? | |
"Puuuu!"
The world bounces, and Setsuna Meioh bounces with it, dragging in a great whooping breath to vacate lungs filled with darkness. She was drowning in the stuff, she's sure. She digs at shut eyes with the heels of her hands, every muscle painfully tight. Where is she? In- in the sky? Where's Ka--
Just as the tall young woman drops her hands and begins to curl upward she gets bowled over, arms filling with something, no, someone who is light and cottony-soft. Her opening eyes see only pink, and hair tickles Setsuna's nose. She thuds back down against a bed her back knows, a pillow her head remembers. She's in her bedroom, in Meioh Tower. How?
"PUU!"
Setsuna's arms tighten in a hug, a heartbound reflex rather than a decision.
"Puu, wake up...! The beach will get all crowded if we don't get there early! You promised!"
Of course. Of course. It's summer, and she has plans with... "Small Lady!" Who receives the squeezing of a lifetime. "How about toast and fruit for breakfast? Something quick, so we can be on our way." Setsuna can't seem to stop hugging Chibi-Usa, and there's an overwhelmed quaver in her smooth voice. "It's so good to see you again."
The precious armful of child pulls back a bit in her arms. Chibi-Usa has to signal with a push of small shoulders against Setsuna's hug, and she's finally given the space for it. Big bright red eyes glimmer up at darker garnet. "Puu...? What's wrong?" Clearly something is wrong. There's an anguished wrinkle between evergreen eyebrows. "You tucked me in last night..."
"I..." The anguish increases, confusion altering the sad slope of Setsuna's eyes. "I think... perhaps I had a bad dream...?" Her arms slacken, and she gets a distant look as she tries to remember. Then, "I tucked you in?" with a blink and a refocusing on Chibi-Usa.
The look on the girl's face starts puzzled and ends in an adorable pout. "In my room. The one we decorated together! You said it was mine whenever I came over..." That look asks if Setsuna Meioh is playing takesy backsies. And over a bad dream...!
A big smile breaks over Setsuna's face. This is no day for worries or lingering nightmares, no matter how strange, how gripping. Today, today is for an outing with her beloved Small Lady. "Of course," she says, and all the confusion smooths from her brow. "Of course. Come, let's have breakfast and get our beach towels."
-=-=-=-
It's a beautiful day for it, the only clouds up there fluffy and friendly ones. They beat the crowds after all, and everything is perfect: the sand that soaks up sunlight and radiates it back as warmth; the music of seagulls overhead; the scuffing and splashing of Chibi-Usa at play, her giggles and the occasional splutter-shriek of outrage when a wave sneaks up from behind and dunks her. Perfect.
Setsuna lays out on her towel, eyelids baking in the sun with the rest of her, aside a fashionably-cut swimsuit rendered in deep violet-red to match her eyes. She listens and sinks into a Setsuna-shaped furrow in the beach beneath the towel. There's a weariness deep in her bones, and it just feels good to relax, to not move, to not worry. Like she could lie here forever.
Gradually, the seagull cries recede. The warmth of sun and sand lulls and subsides.
Instead Setsuna hears the waves: white noise like whitecaps, a sibilant quality at the surface of the sound like the whispering of secrets just out of earshot, and underscored by smooth low pressure of the ocean beyond. Instead she feels the breeze that skips along the ocean's surface and carries the brine with it, a rush of air as playful as it is insistent, and it tugs at her long unbound hair.
She opens her eyes.
Setsuna hasn't heard Chibi-Usa's giggles in a while, and that particular silence triggers an instinctive wariness parents would recognize. Where is Small Lady and what is she up to?
A pink puff of color atop a brightly-swimsuited girl is not so hard to spot, silhouetted against deep shadow. Small Lady is down the dunes a ways, standing at the edge of someone's great purple umbrella, or rather at the edge of the pool of darkness it has created.
Setsuna pulls herself up and walks their way, a strange feeling in her stomach. "Small Lady," she calls as she draws near.
"Aah, Puu!" Chibi-Usa says in a voice as shiny as a picked-up penny. "I was just fetching my beach ball, it rolled onto her blanket..."
The girl beneath the umbrella looks up from beneath sharp black bangs, and her eyes are so large and bottomless Setsuna feels a shock of dizziness, looking into them. The rest of her that can be seen -- she's wearing black leggings and long sleeves, even here, so her hands and face and feet are the only visible skin -- is so pale, perhaps she has always dwelt beneath this beach umbrella, always hidden from the sun.
She's smiling up at Chibi-Usa, and Chibi-Usa is smiling back.
"Sumimasen, miss. We did not mean to interrupt your morning," ventures Setsuna, and then she holds her breath and she is not sure why.
The girl plucks up the errant beach ball and offers it with bone-white hands and a sweet expression. "You didn't interrupt," she says in a voice just as sweet. "Here! You looked like you were having fun."
A cheerful Chibi-Usa takes the ball back. "Uh-huh! Thanks!" She pauses there for a moment, looking between the girl and Setsuna. Then she tucks the ball under her arm and reaches for Setsuna's hand, and the clasp is as warm as the sun and the sand and all of the rest.
"C'mon Puu! You haven't even gotten wet yet! Let's play!"
The girl smiles and waves goodbye as they turn to go.
Hand in hand they walk away from the dark-eyed girl beneath the umbrella's shadow, toward the crashing surf, and everything is perfect.
