DREAMING The sun was setting on the horizon and its reflex seemed to melt in the surface of the sea like a giant orange fireball. The breeze was cool, but soothing after a hot summer day, and Haruka looked amazingly beautiful standing on the pier, smiling at her. "Things are so different when we are together...it even seems like we could have a normal life, without the fear of loosing each other on a never ending battle". Michiru took a last glance at the sunset, and turn to face her lover one more time...but she wasn't there anymore. Her heart started to pound strongly on her chest, everything around lost the color of life, the sun just disappeared in the bottom of the sea, and the water on the shore turned completely black. The darkness spread rapidly on the rest of the ocean, and painted the pier underneath her feet like a bottle of black ink spilt over a white sheet of paper. ------------------------------------------------------------ The window hit the wall, pushed violently by the first winds of winter and Michiru woke up of her dream with a kiss of snow in her face. She was sweating profusely, and her hands were shaking. "Are you ok honey?" said Haruka while getting up and closing the window with one move. "Yes, I just had a bad dream Haruka, but I'm fine now" "If you want ...I can make it all better" and with a childish grin on her face she took her in her arms and both fell back in bed. ------------------------------------------------------------ "Oh my...not in my shift..." The keyboard filled the room with the fast clicking and the astronomy trainee shook his head in regret. He forgot to turn on the recording session while moving the giant telescope to search the skies, and missed the opportunity of his life being the only witness of a strange phenomenon: for a split of a second, the last planet of the solar system, Pluto, disappeared. It wasn't an eclipse. Even with the benefits of space-time, it would have lasted longer. It wasn't a magnetic storm, nor any other solved mystery of the physics. He saw it. It vanished. He took the telephone and called his colleague from the deserted astronomy lab beside the Andes. He didn't want to sound inexperienced. After an informal conversation about exams and lack of sleep, he went to the point: "do you have any records of anything unusual around Pluto's orbit? The bracket time is between 02.08.45 and 02.10.00 ?" "Well, to be honest with you we are gathering information about Ganimedes at the moment...but let me check out the satellite's readings". Said this, and the servers started their work, bouncing numbers all over the nets of the world. "Why did you ask?" "err...I just have a blank in my records, that's all, and I don't want my boss get on to me for that" "Forgot to push the red button, uh?...hahahha, well...let's see...hum... boring as usual, nothing new, pal, don't worry, you didn't miss anything." "Thanks...talk to you later". But he wasn't mistaken, he did see it vanishing, but now it was there, like laughing at him, after giving a wink with an evil eye. Pluto would be always a question mark in his astronomy knowledge, and he would have no explanation of what he saw, but he'd never talked about it. ------------------------------------------------------------ In a room not too far from Haruka and Michiru's, the young woman struggled in her sleep. Her expression had a mix of sadness and anguish, and the knuckles of her delicate fingers were pale and colorless from the close grip her hand had of her bed covers. "...I walked a lonely mile in the moonlight and though a million stars were shining my heart was lost in a distant planet that whirls around the April moon whirling in an arc of sadness I'm lost without you... I'm lost without you... Though all my kingdoms turn to sand And fall into the sea, I'm mad about you I'm mad about you." The music was like a whisper coming from the little speaker over the night stand, and the light of the alarm clock gave the room a red tint that painted the walls like a bleeding house. "And I have never in my life felt more alone than I do now; although I claim dominions over all I see, it means nothing to me. There are no victories, In all our histories, without love." A clarinet sounded in the background like a deep long sigh; with a sudden move the woman woke up, sat on the bed and opened her eyes. With that, Setsuna Meioh lost her control of the Gates of Time. It was 02.08.45 on her alarm clock.
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