Ko Hass Sei Te Moku Ren

Player Information

Name: Mishi
Age: 23
AIM SN: ohsarjalim
email: ohsarjalim@aim.com
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Currrently Played Characters: Vincent Law

Character Information

General
Canon Source: Please Save My Earth
Canon Format: manga
Character's Name: Moku Ren Ko Hass Sei Te, also called Ren and Mokuren
Character's Age: 24 at the time of death, thereabouts.

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Abilities

Character's Canon Abilities: Mokuren is a Kiche Sarjalian. These extremely rare and specialized psychics are celebrated as holy icons of the goddess Sarjalim and identified by the four little red dots that adorn each Kiches' forehead. Their powers are believed to be a blessing of Sarjalim herself, and all Kiche Sarjalians are trained as priests and aren't allowed to marry, because if a Kiches loses their virginity, they also lose their powers. A Kiches' powers include:

+ Communion with plants and animals: Mokuren can actually hold a meaningful conversation with plants, and mentions that plants are some of her best friends. The manga never actually shows her communing with animals herself, but her next incarnation, Alice, did it all the time in Hokkaido, and the reason Alice has those powers is mainly because Mokuren did. The more complex an organism becomes, the more difficult it is for a Kiches to commune with them; with animals she just gets a sense of how they're feeling and what they're thinking. Alice compares it to reading body language.

+ Singing: Okay, anyone can sing, given a level of talent, not being tone-deaf, and the ability to carry a tune, but only a Kiches' song will make plants grow. As Mokuren explains it, plants are always singing and growing - these things appear to be synonymous - but they generally do it at a whisper. When a Kiches sings, they join in and rise up in a great chorus, and grow riotously. Just to be clear, she has no control over HOW the plants grow, so the ability is completely useless in a combat situation. The plants seem to especially like it when Kiches sing from their holy text, the Kisanado. They'll still grow if a Kiches sings secular songs, as shown by the tree outside the music class window where Alice practiced her singing, but the effect is not as potent.

A note about singing, Kiches, and the Kisanado: there's also a part of the Kisanado, called the Black Hymn, which is absolutely forbidden to Kiches to sing, because instead of making plants grow, the Black Hymn kills them. The hymn is so powerful that it's implied that this is what made the homeland barren, and the Kiches who sang it killed themselves in shame. Mokuren would never sing it, but she knows it, and she COULD sing it, if she was so inclined.

+ Telepathy: This is a pretty limited ability. Mokuren can sense when people are communicating telepathically around her, but she can't necessarily tell who is talking to whom about what, sort of like hearing a whisper but not being able to tell where it comes from. Sometimes she can make out words, but this is on a case-by-case basis. If she's touching someone, she can show them visions drawn from their memories, or, in one case, from the memories of their future incarnations. She can also communicate telepathically without touching people as well, but touching them makes it easier.

+ Precognition: Mokuren has also had visions of the future. The Kiches Elder had the power of prophecy, and her predictions for Mokuren hold true throughout her life. Mokuren's visions aren't so specific or controlled. At one point she dreams of being Alice the way the Earth kids dream of being the moon scientists. This is not something I intend to use here at all, since Mokuren's visions were tied to her fate, and her fate will be postponed while she's in Siren's Port.

One last note about Mokuren's Kiche - although it was supposed to dissappear if she lost her virginity, it did not go away after Shion raped her. There is much in-canon speculation as to why this is, mostly having to do with who didn't love who, and it's all wrong because the fact was that Mokuren DID love Shion. It is my theory that Mokuren is divinely blessed in a way that other Kiches aren't; the unprecedented circumstances of Mokuren's birth, the weird shit that happened when she died, the fact that she was the last surviving Kiche Sarjalian all make a strong case for it. I'm reasonably certain that Sarjalim/God has an actual presence and agency in this manga. Suffice to say that I think that by the grace of Sarjalim, Mokuren's Kiche is permanent, though this will not be put to the test in Siren's Pull.

Weapons: None

History/Personality/Plans/etc.

Character History: Please Save My Earth is the story of seven children, well, teenagers mostly, who begin to have similar, recurring dreams about a team of alien scientists observing the Earth from a base on the moon. They eventually realize that these are no mere dreams; what they're seeing is the memories of their past lives. The story centers mostly on 16-year-old Alice Sakaguchi, who was Mokuren in her past life, and her 7-year-old neighbor Rin Kobayashi, who is the reincarnation of Mokuren's 'fiance' Shion.

Mokuren was born to two former Kiches, Marj and Rojion, who had been unhappy in their positions as designated saints. It's important to mention that the chances of a Kiches being born are one in a hundred million. No Kiches has ever been born to a Kiches mother or Kiches father. The fact that both of Mokuren's parents were Kiche Sarjalians is just so statistically improbable as to be nothing short of a miracle. Not to mention, Mokuren's conception cost both her parents their powers, and there are few Kiche Sarjalians willing to give that up, on top of suffering discrimination and scorn from all of society for stepping down from such a holy position. When Mokuren was born, the mark on her forehead cut her father, Rojion, to tears.

See, all Kiches are taken from their parents at the age of three and raised in Paradise, a state facility where they teach Kiches the scriptures and ceremonies of the Sarjalian faith. Parents of Kiches receive a lavish, life-long pension from the government in compensation. But to Mokuren's parents, being a Kiches was suffering, and they didn't want that for their daughter. They moved to a winter country, where the plants slept almost in perpetuity in an attempt to hide Mokuren's powers, but they were eventually tricked out of their custody of her by Marj's parents. Mokuren's grandparents adopted her and sent her to Paradise, but her father broke into the facility and kidnapped her, and they went into hiding. But male Kiches have very short lifespans and it may not even have been a year before Rojion died. After his death, Marj lost the will to live. She sent Mokuren back to Paradise, and followed her husband in death.

In Paradise, she missed her parents terribly, and her unorthodox views on what it meant to be a Kiches gave her a lot of trouble. She dreamed of going to Earth, a planet for which she felt a strange sort of nostalgia, but she was told that her duties as a Kiches would prevent her from going. In order to go to Earth, Mokuren made plans to get rid of her Kiches powers by falling in love and losing her virginity. Her first opportunity came when she was in her early teens. A boy, whose name turned out to be Sev Oru, climbed up to her window ledge to talk to her. Mokuren snuck out of the Paradise to hang out with him and told him of her plans to get married, so Sev Oru said he'd marry her. They went on several dates, but when Sev Oru told his father about them, he opposed the union, so Sev Oru broke it off the relationship. Mokuren was disappointed. She never expected to see Sev Oru again, but one day he rushed up to her and told her his father had been in an accident and and would die without a miracle. But Mokuren was only a fledgeling Kiches and even most adults couldn't heal injuries as grave as Sev Oru's father's. Mokuren tried to arrange to see the Kiches Doyenne, who she figured was the only one with the power to help, but it generally takes months before an audience with such an important woman could be arranged. All Mokuren was able to do was attend the funeral, where Sev Oru refused to even look at her. This experience reinforced an idea Mokuren used to hear a lot from her parents: that Kiches are no more equipped to ease the suffering of others than any other person, and that their status as holy icons makes other people expect impossible things from them.

While Mokuren continued to dream of love and marriage throughout her teenage years, she didn't do anything about it and concentrated on studying. When she turned twenty and was allowed to attend university, she majored in biology in order to eventually apply to go on the next scientific mission to Earth. In University she dated a lot, but always found that, like Sev Oru, they backed down immediately when the subject of committment came up. In the meantime, she had also become somewhat of a star among Kiches, often landing solos for the various Galas and ceremonies. Her schedule was jam-packed with events and appearances, but she jumped at her first chance at going to Earth. She had to fight against the state to obtain the permission to go, but she got it in the end, before ever meeting the man she would fall in love with.

That man was Shion. Mokuren could not have chosen a more damaged individual to fall for. Shion was a war orphan. Shion had killed men on his war-torn home planet of Tess before he turned five years old. Shion had never known the love of a parent, and denied displays of affection towards him out of a false sense of pride. He resented Mokuren's privilege, and her connection to a goddess who had never been kind to him, while simultaneously being attracted to her. So he picked on her. He played tricks on her, he insulted her, he gave her a hard time. She bore this quite well, and continued trying to befriend him undaunted, though it shouldn't be said his words had no effect on her. Sometimes Shion would manage to make her cry. The plants on the base would try to cheer her up by coaxing her to sing, and and when she did, Shion would get his come-uppance. See, in Paradise and in places where Kiches were likely to sing, there were growth-suppressing mechanisms to prevent the plants from growing out of control. Not so on the lunar base. Weeds would sprout all over the place, breaking computers and machinery, which Shion, as the team's engineer, would be forced to fix while the other scientists weeded. This happened at least seven times over the course of their stay.

Shion also had a 'childhood friend' named Gyokuran, with whom he had a bizarre and somewhat destructive rivalry, and he was also one of the moon scientists. Gyokuran would more often than not be there at Mokuren's side when she was feeling down to try and cheer her up, because he had also fallen for her. They also generally got along, and part of the reason Mokuren ticked Shion off was because she reminded him of Gyokuran, whom he saw as a constant reminder of normal life Shion would never have. And when Shion was convinced that Mokuren and Gyokuran were on their way to being a couple, he didn't even realize himself why he was upset. But while Mokuren did consider hooking up with Gyokuran when she was despairing that Shion would ever treat her kindly, Gyokuran never looked past her Kiche, so he never really stood a chance. Mokuren loved Shion all along. This misunderstanding would later have tragic consequences.

Everything went according to plan for the first few months, or even the first year. But then their entire civilization, which had been at war when they left, blew up. That's four planets, and one inhabited moon, and countless other colonies out in space. Everything they knew and loved, gone in one horrifying instant. This plunged the entire group into a depression lasting weeks, until Shion and Mokuren had the idea of going to live on the Earth. Gyokuran was against it, because it went against regulations, and he would not accept the argument that regulations meant nothing now that their entire civilization was gone. Their leader agreed with Gyokuran, but Shion would not accept that decision. He started going around to the other scientists one by one, asking for their passwords and trying to talk them into going down to Earth. He suggested that, with the help of their futuristic technology, they set themselves up as gods on Earth, and he was subsequently locked up.

Mokuren wanted to re-open the debate about going down to Earth, but she thought it wouldn't work unless the entire team came to a unanimous decision, and they couldn't do that without Shion. So she asked him to reconcile with Gyokuran, and he made her a deal. Shion told her he loved her, and said that he would reconcile with Gyokuran if she had sex with him. She agreed. She was doing it because she loved him. He was doing it because he wanted to screw over Sarjalim by stealing Her last Kiches from Her, and screw over Gyokuran by bedding the woman Gyokuran loved. When Mokuren realized Shion's motives, she refused to go any farther, but he forced her. He effectively raped her. For the next few days, Mokuren was ill while the other scientists decided what to do with Shion. They had just decided to sentence him to permanent isolation when Mokuren found out about it. Despite what he had done to her, and what it meant regarding his feelings about her, she told Gyokuran and the others that she and Shion were engaged, and that the sex had been consensual. Everyone could tell it was a lie, and a bad one at that, but they relented and released Shion. Once free, Shion expressed his astonishment that Mokuren had forgiven him. Most of his behavior was meant was a shell to protect himself from his own pain and loneliness. He was lashing out at an unfair world, and he knew he had gone too far in involving her. His crime was inexcusable and unforgiveable. He could not understand that Mokuren could still even stand to be in the same room. But saw his need, and she forgave him, and offered him her love. For a little while afterward, it looked like the two were beginning to work through their issues when the plague struck.

The plague definitively ended the debate about going to Earth, as the scientists concentrated on survival. They couldn't bring a deadly pathogen to an alien planet, of course. From the moment Gyokuran fell ill, Shukaido, the team's doctor, was working on a cure for the disease. Gyokuran was only the first to die. The others dropped off one by one, until there was only Mokuren, Shion, and Shukaido left. At last, Shukaido managed to created the cure, but there was only one dose. At first he was going to administer it to himself, but it was too late; he had contracted the disease, so he had to decide whether to give it to Shion or Mokuren, or to split the dose in two, knowing that it wouldn't work.

Shortly afterward, he overheard Shion and Mokuren promising each other that whoever died first, the other would not take their life, so that they could be reunited in their next lives. And Shukaido made his decision. He went up to them claiming he has two samples of the cure, but one was just a dose of multivitamin. The cure he gave to Shion; the placebo he gave to Mokuren. Shukaido died shortly after, and Mokuren hung on a little longer. Shion stayed alive for 9 years, surrounded by the bodies of his dead teammates, having lost the love of his life, and unable to kill himself to spare the agonizing loneliness. Shukaido didn't know how long it would take for his antidote to wear off, but the rest of the effect was completely intended. He wanted to punish Shion for having raped Mokuren, for (in his view) forcing her into an unhealthy relationship with him against her will. He was also jealous of Shion, because he himself was in love with Mokuren, and wished he could take Shion's place. The effects of this betrayal continued into their next lives as well; Shukaido was reborn into a body which looked the spitting image of Shion's, while Shion reincarnated 9 years later than the rest of the moon scientists, with Shukaido's looks, and now had to contend with a 9 year age difference between himself and Mokuren.

When Mokuren was still alive, she didn't know that all she had was a placebo. When she began to succumb to illness, she felt guilty for dying before Shion would. Their short time alone, when everyone else on the moon base had died, was probably their happiest memories as a couple, despite that business about how neither of them believed the other really loved them because she still had her Kiche. They genuinely loved one another, and Mokuren thought she was being very selfish in insisting that neither of them commit suicide solely so that they could meet in their next incarnations. She considered killing Shion, and letting the disease take her, but she couldn't bear it. She had no idea how long it would take before Shion died in turn, but she still thought it was very cruel not to outlive him.

Point in Canon: Right after her death.

Two minor things happened shortly before her death. The first one was she had a dream of being Alice. Specifically, she dreamed the entire beginning of the manga, from Rin's accusing Alice of not being a virgin (not nearly as funny in hindsight) (he was seven) (he didn't actually know what the word virgin means) to Jinpachi and Issei telling Alice about the moon dreams. In a strange bit of synchronicity, Alice's first moon dream was of the scene immediately after Mokuren's dream, when she mentionned it to Shion.

The second thing is actually not so minor. It took place on the day she died. She thought she was having a good day, so she got up and went to the observatory, where she had a seizure. But while she had this seizure, something else happened. As near as I can tell, Mokuren's spirit travelled into the future and went down to Earth at the very moment Alice pushed Rin off the balcony. Her spirit became the wind that broke Rin's fall, and most likely saved his life. When her spirit returned, she had an epiphany. Shion had rushed to her side and she was dying but she had to tell him that she had seen it, that she knew that they would be reincarnated on Earth, that the reason they loved Earth so much was because it would become their home. Again she asked Shion not to take his own life, so that they would be reunited in their next lives. And then she died.

Character Personality: When Mokuren's father died, her mother told her this: "How can they expect us to understand pain and suffering without ever knowing love? A Kiches is to teach love, to advocate it to others, but she's never allowed to marry, herself. How could we espouse what we never understood, what we never experienced, because it was forbidden? The grass and the flowers may suffer, but we can only cry and sing. The people we know suffer too, but what can we do about it?" Kiches have special powers, yes, but these powers don't allow them to see into people's hearts. The people in Mokuren's society tend to see Kiches as miracle workers, but there isn't much they're really able to do. Older Kiches might have the power to heal, but even they can't bring people back from the dead. And when they failed to make a miracle, the people blamed them. It is this sense of helplessness that drove Mokuren's parents to renounce their Kiches, and it's also at the core of Mokuren's beliefs, and informs a lot of her behavior. It's part of why she wanted to follow in her parents' footsteps.

This is not to say that Mokuren's parents thought being a Kiches was all bad. It was Rojion who taught her the empathetic side of being a Kiches, that a Kiches' singing celebrates life and that it is a gift to the world. That she must always put emotion into her singing, and never just mouth the words. Marj told her that a Kiches must be strong in the face of suffering, learn to bend and adapt, as she and Rojion could not. I think part of the reason Mokuren turned out to be such an exceptional Kiches is because she had such a strong bond with her parents. Kiches are taken from their parents at such an early age, that they don't get much familial love, except, possibly, from their attendant Lim Lians, and they are more like teachers and mentors than mothers. Parents are allowed to visit their children once a month, but it's a fragile bond, easily broken. Marj's parents, for instance, behaved absolutely disgracefully when their daughter got married. Since Marj was no longer a Kiches, their pension was cut off, they demanded that they hand Mokuren's custody to them in reparations for, and I quote, "ruining their daughter." "Going back to work at our age?" they said. "We can't even face the neighbors. Oh, the humiliation of it all!" It's clear they cared about their daughter only insofar as her existence gave them a life of comfort and indolence that they had never earned. Thus I ask how Kiches could possibly preach love and peace when they barely even know and experience familial love, let alone the romantic love Marj and Rojion sacrificed their powers to find. That Mokuren did know love from her parents at least must have added extra sincerity to her belief in the message of peace Kiches are supposed to spread. Eventually.

For a long time, Mokuren blamed her Kiche for everything. It was because of her Kiche that she was taken away from her parents. It was because of her Kiche that she had to stay in a strange place where the other girls gossiped about her and teased her. It was because her father had been a Kiches that he died so early. (Rojion's death is very sudden in the context of the story as well. The idea that male Kiches die very young is introduced just then, with no warning and no explanation, and struck me as arbitrarily unfair the first time I read it, as it may have struck Mokuren.) And her Kiche was a huge obstacle in her goal to go to Earth. This was one part of the reason she wanted to get rid of it.

The other part is that Mokuren is a hopeless romantic. When she was a teenager she dreamed of giving herself wholeheartedly to The One, and even wrote a speech about how 'at last she was free to be truly, merely human' now that someone loved her for who she was. She was so excited when she thought she was going to marry Sev Oru. When turned 20 and went to Grad school she enthusiastically plunged into the dating scene. Hell, she's even boy-crazy enough to pray to Sarjalim to let there be handsome men on the team, and spends most her last months on her home planet before she goes to Earth gushing about Shion. She dreams of being the Earth's atmosphere, of envelopping it in a tender embrace. The reason she wanted to go to Earth in the first place was because the colour reminded her of her father's eyes.

But she's not flighty. She has brains, and she's stubborn. When Mokuren wants something, she sticks to her guns, and she's not afraid to work for it. The state would never let her go to Earth willingly; she was a precious rare Kiche Sarjalian, and one of the highest in demand, so Mokuren didn't just have to prove that she was good, she had to prove that she was the best person for the job, bar none. She wouldn't budge even for the Doyenne or for a mountain of prohibitive paperwork, and she didn't give in until the fight was won. And she did all this while keeping up with the endless parade of appearances and ceremonies and concerts and appointments that a Kiches' duties consist of. And seeing a pretentious, gratuitous French-spouting Paradise fanboy on the sly. Unless she dumped him the night he told her about the complete team turnover at the moonbase. I'm not sure about that last part.

Pity-dating nerds aside, Mokuren is kind-hearted and considerate. It hurts her to see others suffer. She wants nothing more than to help them out. She had been seeing Sev Oru in secret and risked serious consequences if she was found out, but when he asked her to save his father she did not hesitate to expose herself in her efforts to fetch help. Even though she had never really gotten along with Shusuran, during her homesickness Mokuren didn't think twice about using her powers to show Shusuran visions of home. She's not stingy with her powers and if she can help in any way, she does so immediately. And when she's made a mistake, or when she's unable to help as she'd like, she is full of regret. When Shukaido told her about how the state was forcing Shion to go to Earth, her immediate reaction was to find him and appologize. She does a lot of appologizing to Shion, even if he doesn't deserve it. It took him saying "I hate Kiches" and reinforcing it with a telepathic message to get her to stop trying to be kind to him.

Let's talk about that pity-dating thing for a second. I mentionned that Mokuren was all jazzed to be an official adult and leave Paradise and date guys, but she quickly discovered that although by all appearances, she's perfect, (kind, polite, gorgeous, intelligent, spiritual, on top of being a Kiche Sarjalian), few people actually like her. She's popular with guys, but her Kiche keeps them at bay. They say they love her, and if they do, it's partially because of the exoticness of her Kiche, but that very part of her means there's a line they daren't cross. If they ever had sex with her, she would lose her Kiche, and they would be responsible for 'defiling' her. As for the women, they just gossip enviously behind her back. Which means that Mokuren is actually pretty lonely. I think she dated the nerd because he asked and she was so jaded by men who only saw her Kiche that she didn't care anymore. She knew he would never dare to be serious, and she was just dating for the sake of dating. When she was meeting the team for the first time, she prayed for handsome men, but she also prayed for a woman with whom she could be friends. She did luck out on the handsome men, but never really became friends with Enju and Shusuran.

Mokuren can't stand people only seeing her as a Kiche Sarjalian. This is the reason Mokuren ultimately chose Shion over Gyokuran. Instead of fawning over her because of her status as a living saint, Shion outright shunned her and on a few rare occasions, seemed to forget that she was even a Kiches. She notes at several points how kind Gyokuran is to her, how he's clearly trying to get to know her, BUT he sees her as a Kiches first. It's nearly always the first thing out of his mouth. The final straw was when the homeworld was destroyed. Gyokuran begged her to do something, to save their home, to create a miracle. But she can't resurrect an entire planet, she's not Sarjalim, and asking her to do the impossible when she felt just as helpless and consumed with grief could only added to her troubles. It's speculated that the other scientists on the team heaped their on hopes on Mokuren as their last Kiches as well, all except for Shion. Shion did not expect her to do anything. He took it as a matter of course that she could do nothing about her situation. She was, after all, only human. This is how Shion was able to hurt her so badly.

He's also one of the few people who sees Mokuren's faults as well as her qualities, and the only one on the moon base who will call her on them. In the wake of the homeworld's destruction she actually felt safe with him, she could let herself be vulnerable because she knew he wouldn't ask her to do the impossible. The reason she agreed to have sex with him is because he told her he loved her, and she believed this, wanted to believe this, because she thought he didn't care that she was a Kiches. She only resisted when she realized he was doing it for the wrong reasons.

But hers is a love that transcends death two-fold; in the next life, Alice and Rin get married, and her spirit and Shion's inhabit the atmosphere and watch over them. She alone heard Shion's silent cry for help and such was her love for him that even though he betrayed her, she went against the other moon scientists to rescue him from his imprisonment, claiming that they were engaged. Even though she didn't think he loved her back. What Shion wanted, what he needed, Mokuren thought, wasn't her love. What he wanted was to let someone know, anyone, how lonely he felt. What he wanted was for a Kiches to redeem him. But even though her heart was breaking, she forced herself to put on that act which she thought he wanted from her, because she loved him, and she wanted to be with him.

I mentionned before that Mokuren spent a long time resenting her Kiche, but by now she has long since come to terms with it. While Mokuren doesn't agree with the institution of the Kiches, and she has had a turbulent relationship with Sarjalim, she does believe in the message of peace and tolerance and environmentalism that form the core of the Sarjalian faith. She saw the necessity of her duties, and even enjoyed them. Her Kiche, despite the blame she heaps on it, is very important to her. One of the few things she is completely confident about is her singing. She loves to sing, and she's good at it, and song is a direct connection between her and plants. Being able to communicate with plants is very important to Mokuren. Most of her best friends are plants. In fact, when the Doyenne gave Mokuren a prophecy, she said that Mokuren would never lose her Kiche, because there was no way she could ever endure never being able to speak to plants again. Ultimately, she only decided to lose her Kiche because she was absolutely sure it would be worth it, because she would be giving it up for the man she loved. She was wrong, but at least she got to keep her powers.

Character Plans: There's a lot to do with Mokuren, I think. AGI might be interested in her because she's gorgeous and has a beautiful voice. She's practically made for showbiz. On the other hand, SERO might be interested in her ability to make plants grow and she is, after all a talented biologist from a civilization much more technologically advanced than Earth's. And Sarjalim help her if either side discovers the secret of the Black Hymn.

She may initially be kind of distressed and confused by the fact that her reincarnation cycle has been interrupted, but the novelty of actually being on Earth within her lifetime might balance it out.

Appearance/PB:

Writing Samples

First Person Sample

[Video; the feed shows the familiar ground of the baseball diamond in the Darkness. The woman on the screen seems lost and somewhat frightened, but is trying her damnedest to stay calm. She appears to be wearing a plain nightshirt and a bedsheet.]

Err, hello, I was wondering if anyone could tell me where I am? I could swear I died, but I can't imagine it's normal to find pocket communicators in the afterlife, and anyway I don't feel dead at all, so evidently there's been some sort of mistake. I was supposed to be reincarnated. On Earth. I don't remember much of my visions but I think indigo sweaters and oden were involved. [Her gaze drifts off for a moment as she tries to recall something else.]

There was a good deal more plants and less spooky atmosphere, as well.

[A thought seems to strike her.] Oh, dear, and has anyone seen a tall, dark-skinned young man? He's very handsome and has longish black hair. His name is Zai Tess Shion and he's my... [The pause is a bit too long to be natural.] He's my fiance. I'd hate to think I left him behind, however I got here.

Third Person Sample

Mokuren opened her eyes in great surprise.

Surprise was not an unusual reaction for newcomers, but the source of their confusion was generally tied to their abrupt transposition to a new locale. This was a minor concern for Mokuren. So was the sight of the Darkness-shrouded night sky. That Mokuren could see her surroundings clearly at all was a surprise. That she even had the strength to open her eyes was a surprise. That there even was a "her" to make these observations was the greatest surprise of all.

She lay on her back in the baseball diamond, completely dumbfounded. Eventually her flabbergasted mind managed to register three things: one, that she wasn't finding it hard to breathe, and that her fever was gone, two, that she had a headache at least as bad as that hangover she had the day after she heard about the Doyenne's death, and three, that it was extremely uncomfortable lying in the dirt in the middle of the field and a stone was digging into her back. She sat up and nearly fell over again, knocked off-balance by her own momentum and the ease with which she was commanding her body. She had been bedridden for weeks and it had taken a herculean effort to get up and visit the garden on the day she died, so how was it that sitting up was so painless? She put a hand to her forehead and checked her temperature.

"Am I cured?" she muttered incredulously. Had she even died? Maybe a group of Shian survivors had arrived at the last minute and cured her, and any minute now they would burst in and announce that a colony had survived the annihilation of their civilization and they had come to take her and Shion back with them where they would get married and have three beautiful children and that was complete bullshit, as Shusuran would have said. How many times over the course of her illness had she daydreamed such unrealistic scenarios? The entire team had spent at least three days in the communications room trying to contact someone, anyone, and failed utterly, as Shion would remind her when she told him about these hopes. It broke her heart the day he started humouring her. Near the end she stopped talking about impossibilities and instead started planning for the future.

"Whatever happens," she told him, "You must not commit suicide. If you take your own life, you won't be reincarnated." She made him promise, and promised him that they would find each other in their next lives on Earth. She had seen it. Would Sarjalim have granted her that vision, only for it to turn out to be false? Could a Goddess be so cruel? Mokuren's thoughts drifted unbidden towards the memory of her father's death. No, don't go there. She shook her head and stood up, in an effort to distract herself from her thoughts. It was no use feeling sorry for herself. She had to find out what was going on. She wasn't even sure if she was alive or dead! After she found that out, then she could figure what to do next.

She wrapped her drape around herself, more for the comfort of something familiar than because she was cold. She looked around, for the first time really paying attention to her surroundings. She was standing in a field covered in rotting grass and dirt. Over the fence she could see buildings that looked like they were of human design. She looked up and this time actually took note of the blackness of the sky as it stretched across the city. She had never heard of any place like it in the known universe or in the Kisanado's tales of Sarjalim's realm. There was not a living thing that she could sense. She had so many questions and no one to answer them. Well, she wasn't going to get anywhere sticking around here. She began walking in search of someone. God or mortal, it didn't matter, as long as she could get her answers.