Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Where the Sky meets the Ocean ❯ Galactic Knowledge ( Chapter 8 )

Tingling sensations crept from her fingertips up through her elbow, begging her to put down the load and let them replenish their warmth. She denied them and held firm, supporting a small part of her companions weight all the way back to their room. She had recovered quickly considering the dangerous virus that had been allowed to break forth by her body becoming vulnerable and weakened by the cold. The priests had told Michiru that the skinny girl would still need a lot of rest, but they had done their job well, and she had faith that her beloved would be strong again in no time. Meanwhile, the beloved in question was deep in thought, but there was color in her skin and it was warm to the touch. She had a lot of questions to ask, and upon their return she presented many of them to the priestess and was rewarded with a search for the answers over the next couple of weeks. Questions about life, about mediation and sickness, the objects used in the ritual, which she had found startling and comforting all at once. Michiru showed her the library cavern one day, carved out shelves filled to the brim with recently written books bound with imported leather from Venus's steer industry, and filled with paper from Jupiter's vast forests.

 

In Venus, though the cow was held highest of all, the wild bulls had been deemed unclean and became a symbol of vice. Milk bearing cows wandered the streets in harmony, settling down to graze in whomever's yard they pleased, and people would collect the milk as they did so and thus make product and coexisted. The steer, however, did not want to coexist, it trampled and bellowed and destroyed, thus a brilliant inventor developed a special type of bow that had enough power to take down one of the monsters, but was easy enough for the warrior maids to draw back readily. They were enchanted bows, drawing on the planets natural heart magnetism, and soon became adapted for other purposes.

 

But, the meat, bones, and tanned hides of the wild bulls became such an effective export and valuable resource, the queen wove a special lust spell and infused it in the cows, and now every May Day they are driven into an insane sex frenzy and run out into the plains to rape the bulls. They come back impregnated, and bear many baby cows, but there is a tradition in almost every village to drive out the males as soon as they are weaned by putting on bright masks and war paint, and using fresh willow branches to beat them on the hindquarters and shout until they flee into the fields with their dads. There is a lot of music and dancing associated with each holiday, and it is considered good luck to propose on May Day, there are fertility rites going on all over the place.

 

Paper that came from Jupiter was not produced by a company, nor was it made by cutting down the trees. There is a lot of competition between small clan owned guilds, and the variety of textures, grades, colors, and sizes is truly astounding. What they would do is send out the most physically fit in the family with the family horses or mules, meanwhile the elders, children, sick, and pregnant would go about their individual chores or crafts. The scouts would ride to either their normal collection site, or take a chance and delve deeper, and with a hatched carve up any downed branches or felled trees and put them in special wood carrying baskets that are like saddle bags, or a wood cart pulled by the horse depending on the terrain that had to be crossed to get there. Each clan usually had its own territory, but it often overlapped, and despite what you may expect about territory staking there weren't fights or squabbles over it. If somebody was getting a better harvest than you, it was simply because they were trying harder, so it was your responsibility to go try again somewhere else. The dead wood would be dragged back to the homestead, and sent through the villages “wood mill”, which is not what we may expect, its purpose was to grind the slightly decayed wood into a pulp, more similar to a grist mill, not carve it for building purposes.

In fact, most of the structures on Jupiter are built on, in, or between hills, and are composed of cob, which is a mixture of clay and straw. They are fireproof, wind resistant, and heat effective, and the process of building them helps bring together the community, and is physically therapeutic for those working with it. Clay is more abundant than felled trees, and their culture strictly forbids the cutting of timber, so they have become adept with cob and fine pottery has become a very powerful export. The pots that are made can achieve great stature, and are very durable, especially when lined with fermented tree sap, which makes them able to hold water. Those pots are especially useful for the next step of paper making, which takes the ground wood pulp, and puts it into a small, stone lined pond next to the home, along with water and sometimes dye. The elderly are usually called on to perform this step, as it is very calming and simple to do. They take large screens and scoop them into the ponds, collecting a thin layer of the pulp and then passing the screen to another worker who presses it out onto a flat, linen covered rock to dry. Many layers can be made a day, and while this step takes place the collectors go about their chores, and a healthy cycle of shared labor is established.

 

Anyway… Back in the library, there were collections of far more ancient scrolls written on cured kelp paper, and carved into tablets with dark letters. Each type of record keeping seemed to correspond with a topic, the newer ones had detailed records of how to use imported herbs, the older ones had directions for proper ritual technique, and the tablets had political and trade agreement type records. Over several days, they examined many texts, and Haruka began to get a feel for the secluded history of the planet.

 

Having her fill of studying, even though only a third of her questions had been soothed, urges for excitement were churning in her stomach. They had brought a few books back for a lazy Sunday afternoon of information soaking, but Haruka noticed yet again how distracted she was as she brushed a stray blue hair out of her partner's intent eyes. Michiru looked up and smiled sweetly before turning the page and getting lost again, and the blonde found her thoughts wandering off into scenes of spontaneous gratification. Before she was interrupted altogether by a change in textbooks, she had been engulfed in a daydream involving the two of them, a sudden breach of temperance, and the resulting violent flurry of notes and near destruction of the table. Very much tempted to put her plan into action, she glanced anxiously over the priestess's shawled shoulder and considered tapping her on the shoulder. But she thought better of it upon seeing how intently her blue eyes were skimming over layer after layer of endless text, and her heart was doing flip flops trying to satisfy the urges of her mind, and more urgently, her body. Pondering her options proved to be more than a challenge with the current state of her attention span, thus she quickly concluded that the only thing she could be sure of was getting out of that room would be in everybody's best interest for the most part. After all, the papers were valuable, and paper cuts are not much fun.

“Hey, Michiru could we uh, maybe grab something to eat?”

“We just ate a little while ago…” she replied in a zombie like, incomplete trail of thought, though the questioner was too impatient to notice fully.

“Yeah like six hours ago!” came the very masculine pout in return.

“…myeah, nkay five more minutes…”

She sighed, and rummaged through a new stack of text in the hope of finding something that would grab her attention long enough for the priestess to have her fill. Amidst some maps and notes about the application of quadratic functions to the construction of subterranean tunnels, some discolored manuscripts threatened to tumble from their tarnished bindings onto the ground. She plucked them carefully out of harms way, and commenced in arranging them back into order, but the familiar texture of the pages drew her in. They were a brief account of a Uranian conspiracy that had occurred nearly a century ago, written in letterform and addressed to a Mercurian monk named Lelia. Haruka had never heard of the incident, and she read frantically through the details, brimming with questions, denials, and accusations, but absorbing little consolation from the words. They had been lovers, the author and that priestess; they had met when the lady monk came to Uranus to study the atmosphere. Nothing could divert Haruka from the uncanny parallels as she skimmed through details of the various assassinations and bribes that had led the author to this final cry for help. Both of them were placed in danger by the powers that be in the council of Uranus, several cutthroats were moving silently through the streets of the great mountain city, searching for that one voice that had discovered too much about the plot to invade Nereid and use it as a foothold to gain access to Triton's vast natural resources.

Nereid was a holy place where the most devoted priests were sent to gain cosmic wisdom in total isolation, and Triton had long been Neptune's most successful moon colony, rich with liberal art and new technology born from the combined intellects of the outer planet's great wanderers. As Haruka read on, she interrupted the plot described in the letter with a mental reassurance that the plans were never realized, Nereid is very much a territory of Neptune despite its vulnerable orbit, and Triton was as peaceful and fertile as ever... but similar ideas about achieving new territories had been broached at council meetings just before this mission to Neptune. Haruka could feel their sarcastic remarks echo in her head, words about the need to dominate and take control of resources other nations were not taking advantage of.

“Those silly monks, they are too busy praying to appreciate the tons of good salt that could be harvested and exported to Jupiter. Oh, the empire they could build if they only had a mind of business rather than balderdash!”

 

“There is never enough! How can we spread our love of freedom and justice without resources behind us? We have earned the right to reach out and take them from those who do not have the vision!”

 

“This illustrious history of stability and dignity must continue to flourish!”

 

She dismissed these voices and read on to the end of the letter, ignoring Michiru's announcement that she had completed her study, the words jumped eagerly out at her as though invested with the very breath of the young lady author's cry for justice. The papers fluttered to the ground. Hot, savage tears welled up in the guardian's eyes. They fell, one by one, highlighting and magnifying that fateful accusation at the bottom of the page, bringing all of the conferences, and orders, and scorn from her superiors to a climax,

 

“The blood in his veins is not of this Uranus. I know now that he is an imposter from Saturn. Our hopes and dreams have been corrupted so gracefully; even I did not see it until too late, our ideals have been lost to greed. It could be that the entire council body has been tainted for a long time...”

 

Papers fluttered all around her as she moved like deep storm through the corridors, seeking solitude, the only explanation offered to a startled priestess was, “We are in danger...”