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Red Geraniums
In the Precinct of the Amazons there's barracks for the Saintesses’ use, and it's not uncommon that they're "inherited" from Teacher to Student.
This is the case of Eagle Marin, whose Teacher had left that cottage to her, secluded from the rest of the barracks, with view to one of the rare and small woods which barely survive in the untamed terrain of the Sanctuary.
This cottage wasn’t exactly within the Precinct of the Amazons, which was helpful to her when she had such a restless boy like Seiya as her disciple.
Being far away from the Precinct, from the Coliseum, from the Soldiers was something that the Eagle Saintess had taken a liking to when it came to training with her Teacher and when it was her time, in turn, to train the future Pegasus Saint, she was thankful for as well…
When she was little she didn’t need, or rather she never wanted to share her Teacher’s attention, who she had lost due to natural causes several years before she could even fathom the existence of her student, or the true identity of Athena. Maybe because she always missed Touma and her Teacher served as compensation to her loss, however, those memories were almost entirely forgotten… Marin also had to recognize that for some time Seiya was also sort of the substitute to the emptiness that her brother had left her, since it was impossible for her not to think about that.
She had come to the Sanctuary with the hidden purpose of finding him, something she could not openly admit since it was already enough to be underestimated for being an easterner, to add onto it that wearing a Silver Cloth wasn’t only due to her devotion to her Goddess, however, that started to change little by little.
Her Master, Aioria, Seiya and Athena herself… Her life in the Sanctuary started to grow more and more on her to the point that sometimes she was about to forget that red-haired brother she had once been searching for with so zealously. She could never entirely do so, since seeing how Pegasus looked to the horizon, towards the distant Athens with such decisiveness while the memory of his sister could be read in every muscle, made it impossible for the Amazon to leave her own brother in the past, and it even motivated her internally to reproach herself for not going out and look for him with the same motivation that she knew one day Seiya would leave to search for Seika.
However, it was hard not to confuse Seiya with her lost one, more so when there were just the two of them under that cottage.
Simple, small, with nothing but a wooden table and a bed when Seiya arrived, it was necessary to get another one upon his arrival, so a trip to Rodorio was in order to get it, which was postponed in the beginning due to Seiya’s reckless nature and to his constant rejection of serving Athena and leaving behind the memory of his sister, which made Marin think it was best to first put the kid to the test and judge whether it was worth it to adapt her life to a disciple that she might never finish training due to not being suitable enough for the Goddess.
However, Seiya was talented and Marin’s conscience always reminded her that it would be a hypocrisy to refuse to train someone who had entered Athena’s service for the exact same selfish reasons as her.
Besides, the Eagle thought that sooner or later the kid would go through exactly what she did and life in the Sanctuary would make the memories of his sister vanish.
She couldn’t have been more wrong about that.
However, that didn’t mean that Marin wouldn’t become an important part of Pegasus’s future, which she couldn’t have imagined until eight months had passed since the kid’s arrival, when the Amazon finally deemed it was time that the kid left the cloth futon he had brought with him and instead started sleeping on a softer bed, so the two of them set for Rodorio, more due her lack of trust to leave him on his own
Little did that precaution serve, as soon as the red-haired girl took her eyes away from the child, he fled, making gala of skills that he never showed while on training. So Marin had to look for him while carrying the thin mattress at her back, and honestly, quite upset with the reckless kid.
She took her time finding him, it was almost dawn when she saw him, all covered in dirt, sitting calmly at the rim of a common well.
It caught her attention that the kid was carrying some red flowers and, as she got closer, she noticed it wasn’t just a small bouquet, but rather a big flower pot with geraniums.
Marin knew beforehand that there was a small market on that specific day of the week and she immediately put two and two together, since the plant, foreign to the wild flora of the area, couldn’t come from anywhere else. It occurred to the watchful Saintess that the little scoundrel had stolen them, however, she also noticed a small and funny coin purse at the feet of the kid, which she instantly recognized. She had noticed that Seiya had with him the very little money that Graude Foundation had given him for his trip to Greece, since they had left him at the outskirts of Rodorio, not daring to go near the Sanctuary, leaving him to his own.
Now the only thing that she was wondering was why Seiya would want an ornament flower.
The kid, who was just over 8 years old, was quick to answer her question, since, just at the very moment he saw her, raised the pot which was almost half his size, and with the border filled with soil almost to its limit, which made him drop some of it on his feet (probably they left the kid to plant it on his own) and, with an ample smile, said:
//Happy Birthday. //
The Saintess didn’t understand how Seiya knew that her birthday had just been a couple days ago, she couldn’t wrap her head around the possibility that Aioria might have told the kid, since he was the only one that knew but he hadn’t been in the Sanctuary that entire month…
Seiya didn’t know how to answer, too distraught with the idea of the food since he was still very hungry thanks to his little run away and soon after, already back home, his new bed got him to sleep within seconds, and the next day it was already too late for him to remember.
The flowers lasted way longer.
Even now, after so many years, those geraniums still survive close to the wilderness on the window of the Eagle Saintess’s cottage.
She had never been good with plants, so she opted to plant the red flowers outside of the window, thinking that they would have a better chance of living in there, which ended being not only that, but the geraniums, taking advantage of the shadow that hit that wall, along with the humid weather that was caused by the water sink nearby, had managed to grow all alongside the wall, tall and strong and with their red flowers leaning into the cottage through the window, making that corner their own spot.
Once, some time ago, after Saga’s death and after the Sanctuary had been brought back up under Athena’s rule, the Golden Saint of Leo came to see her and, without daring to knock on the door, he had stayed to contemplate the flowers, whose green leaves made a contrast as big as the red on the dilapidated wall to which they leaned.
Marin didn’t know how long he had been there, since she wasn’t there when he came looking for her and when she arrived, the Lion was so calm that it was hard to guess whether it had been minutes or hours that he had been waiting.
That afternoon she had invited him to come inside and they talked for hours, a lot longer than any other time since they had known each other. They spoke about Aioros, about Saga, about Athena, about life outside of the Sanctuary, and at some point she remembered having heard Aioria thinking out loud about how it would be to have a family, having it again, to be exact. Marin had responded that she, too, would like to know.
//Maybe someday.// They both said, and the Golden Saint went back to his Temple, waving her goodbye with a gesture that Marin would never in her lifetime forget.
Those red geraniums had survived even Artemis’s take of the Sanctuary, when almost the terrain had been flooded with that cursed water. And to the terrible fight that had happened with the Angels, which had brought Seiya’s conscience back…
And Artemis and Apollo, upon leaving had left something behind.
Shaina had seen her with terror when she saw Icarus recover from his wounds in that cottage, since that Ophiuchus was sure that the Angel, even in his worst condition, was able to fly it in atoms alongside his sister. Marin knew that the Silver Saint disapproved of it due to such danger, but she never heard a word about the matter, Shaina was as if she hadn’t seen Marin accommodating one of the executioners that were sent to kill her own Goddess, turning around and soon after learning that she had made arrangements for none of the Bronze Saints to go close to that place.
Marin could never thank her enough.
However, it was only necessary for a very short time, Touma still didn’t remember her, or at least not entirely, and once he was back to full health, his first thought was to go look for his Goddess, Artemis. Marin tried to dissuade him, to open his eyes to the fact that Apollo would surely kill him for his treason, or even worse, maybe Artemis herself would be the one to kill him.
Nothing of that mattered, Touma was soon back on his feet, with the Sun shining by the East, standing beside her geraniums, ready and willing to leave.
//Good bye.// Was the last she heard from him, maybe because he knew that his sister was right by telling him that, if he got back to Artemis’s side, his dead was certain, and he wouldn’t dare lie to her with a “See you later”, which the Eagle would have preferred a thousand times over.
Something funny about her geraniums, was that they always gave flowers, but the only ones that had a sweet scent were the ones about to wither away…
Due to that, even though Seiya no longer lives with her, Aioria no longer lives and Touma will never be there, the only thing Marin has to do to remember them is look outside her window and smell the scent of those flowers, which the more they dry out due to the aggressive heat, the more they give off that sweet scent that dazes the Saintess, while she tries to get lost in her memories.
Before the image of her Red Geraniums.
-o-