“What about you?” 

It started in my hands. Lungs. Little inconveniences at first. The quadruple digit days incapacitated me. Cera suggested I embrace the planet’s burden for being’s sake. If you’re going to be, then you might as well be better than you are. 

“Was something wrong with you before?”

Not particularly. No one starts from the bottom. I existed, but I wanted more than existing: an ambition bred from predetermined ranks — scratch that. Forget I mentioned it. 

“What was it like: the Rank system? I won’t tell. Pinky promise!” 

Like the sky was glass. Being-made. Being-preserved. Henry Lau was right about one thing: it outlived its warranty date. 

“People call him a ‘hero of his time.’”

People call us the Seeresses of Exo. Time moves on. Heroes and heroines come and go. We’ll always be here.

One more to end the day. The Sun’s drowning in the Moon’s tears. He mourns too much for his children. Should you ever find yourself in need of parental affection, just look up.

“Why didn’t you wear the dress?”

Good question. The truth is—

“Ssh.” She whispered, holding a forefinger to puckered lips. Footsteps barreled outside the front door. Voices yelled nonsensical messages. Something about rats. Trucks. Quiet. 

Wendy was six-years-old. An only child with a stuffed elephant she named, “Mr. Sniffles,” because “he’s always there when I’m crying.” Lost in the crowd to escape Sector B, her parents were nowhere to be found. Stumbling happenstance brought her to Sector A before the Bloom Project rendered it inaccessible. As distressed children do, she sat in a corner, soaking felt with soggy tears until she showed up: the Seeress of Exo.

Kai was twenty-two-years-old. Fortune granted him 12 brothers and a penchant for the selfish because “if you won’t take care of you, your highness, I will.” Made the better by their Seeress-Guardian relationship or not, he saw reason well enough. Persuading him to assist his capable brethren proved fruitful. Left without a trick up her sleeve, the Seeress of Exo huddled close to Neverland’s damsel.

The ground shifted again. Rock roared from beneath their feet. Going somewhere. The Council’s forces patrolled the shrieking asphalt streets — effectively preventing the two from going anywhere else. 

An idea struck suddenly; she was no mere heroine. “Go outside, cry your pretty little eyes out, and beg for safety. Can you do that, Wendy?” She received a shiver in response. Optimism was in short supply. She used it all up to say, “Whatever those Exotians believe in, it’ll get you to your parents.” 

“What about you?”

“How about this: pinky promise we’ll meet in Sector B. You, Mr. Sniffles, and I.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“A thousand times.” 

Tremors reduced Wendy’s forward march to a wobbling crawl. Thoughts and voices overwhelmed the seer. An undefined urgency rushed the soldiers on. Liberation almost slips through the child’s fingertips. A verbal command, “Go,” had her opening the creaking door. Concrete slid right to reveal a woman. Dressed all in black, Wendy’s appearance startled her — stopped her own forward march.

“What’re you doing here? 

As if on cue, Wendy wailed until her head turned blue. Mumbled how much she missed her parents between garbled warbling. It did the trick. As the two departed together, the radio against the Councilwoman’s hip buzzed, “Main Street’s clear. Any stragglers in the outliers?”

“Just one.”

Shadows passed across the blinds. Thoughts and voices drifted further away. Her royal highness dirtied her hands, digging through rubble. She found a blunt chunk of rock, brandished it in clammy palms, waited — single utterances breed anxiety aplenty within a telepath. Giant against the adjacent wall, a black figure loomed over her. 

Metal clinked. Breathing hitched. Wendy cried. “And another.” The foundation they’re standing on faltered and failed them. They go somewhere deep, deep down. The dust settled; quiet engulfed what remained.  

Sehun was at a clear disadvantage. The Bloom Project caved in several sections of the sewer system. Air currents were hard-pressed to squeeze through the wreckage. "Look, it's Superrat." 

D.O wasn't amused by the levitation trick; a rodent spread eagle above Sehun’s palm, tiny claws flexing and beady eyes glowing, teetered on the border of cruelty and hilarity. Placing hands on wet concrete, the elder Sun Guardian knocked. Hollow, he guessed. The planet's constant groaning threw him off-kilter. If he proved wrong, this would be the fourth tunnel wall he's destroyed to no avail.

“Feeling a breeze?"

Sehun shrugged. ”I already told you: further down.”

D.O self-destructed. ”We can't go further down!"

Granted, Sehun didn’t deserve the scolding. Antagonizing his brother whilst juggling a rat didn’t make for the most endearing scene. Suho’s suggestion to split up into twos to hunt for Vernon Milford could’ve been executed better. With each quake threatening to engulf them whole, the priority quickly became to escape Sector A. 

Judging from the yells that echoed from unknown corridors, the Council’s forces were of similar opinion.

Engorged roots blocking the way “further down” Sehun described, D.O took to drastic measures. What’s one more wall in the grand schema: meaningless. D.O’s busted through with a good one, two, punch. “Wait!” Sehun warned. “Let Superrat handle this.”

“Vernon Milford.”

“No,” Sehun asserted. Sent his new best friend gliding through D.O’s newest renovation. “Superrat.” 

“No,” D.O shook his head. Stared at the figure standing under a drainage grate impaled by shrubbery. “Vernon Milford.”

Leader of the Council; Gardener of the Capital; The Bloom Project’s mastermind: Vernon Milford was left unattended. Head tilted. Mouth agape. Nostrils flaring as he inhaled deep. Finding meaning in the sentient vines growing before him, the grand schema fell to the background.

He repeated the same B word the entire way to Sector B.

When he later apologized to the Seeress of Exo for his transgressions, “You’re beautiful” drummed across his lips like a base line — containing an undertone impossible for the unenlightened to decipher.

She was a pillar of strength. Holding the planet on her shoulders. Hardly shrugging the duty. She was born in a specific time and place for a tailored purpose. 

Kai stopped counting the seconds to her happy ending as he moved through the crowd of Sector A’s refugees. Sector B’s northern section became the rendezvous point for the Council’s Forces. These same men and women became docile as night set in evenly across the street filled with cots, tents, Exotians. 

Vernon Milford had been captured. Shadows were driven away by lamplights and campfires. The last family sought safety with their fellow Beings over four hours ago. 

“Her highness?”

“Still missing,” Luhan reported to Lay in passing — the latter had his hands too full healing the wounded to join the Guardians’ search.

Four hours ago, a sinkhole opened up, swallowing Sector A into an abyss. Facilitating Chanyeol, Kris, and Dr. Dike’s  flight from Court, Kai wasn’t there to play back-up. He was taking his negligence hard.  Chen’s attempt at comfort only exacerbated his guilt.

“She’ll pull through; she always pulls through.”

“If she doesn’t?” Cruelty or hilarity. The difference was infinitesimal. “If she doesn’t, we’ve got a question to ask ourselves: why do we exist?

“To protect her, according to the Sun and the Moon. To make her live past her expiration date, because being is an endeavor worth living. We love her instinctively. What else but love can persevere against betrayals and pitfalls. Victories and successes. Highs and lows alike?”

Kai confirmed his brothers’ suspicions. “Love.” “Instinct.” Both came naturally to him; the two concepts were peas in a pod. 

“Don’t entertain the ifs.” Xiumin was the first to react. “Our love is stronger than that.” Positively — at that. “Your love is as strong as she is.”

All cliches aside, “she” made her entrance the next morning. She boasted more than strength as she carried an unconscious council woman on her back and a child at her side. Her Guardians felt more than love at first sight. Pulling through, she smiled, “Who’s up for breakfast? I know I am.”

She inspired just one and another thousand reasons to be better than they were.

And that’s why I didn’t wear it.

“I knew it!”

Predictability is my strong suit. I act, breathe, live for it: being the Seeress of Exo. While the dress was too tight, the shoes fit perfectly. Beautifully, as a man once said to me. 

A/N: It's been a long time coming, but we're not out of the Capital quite yet. Four chapters left!