A couple hours later:

With a sigh, Cherry continued to stare at one of the blank metal walls of the interior of the starship, still carefully holding the little sakuranoki to herself. The absence of life (aside from the pilot and passengers) inside the stark, plain spacecraft obviously made the poor little tree uncomfortable, and Cherry had to admit that it put her a little bit on edge too. Star Warriors seemed to be such colorful creatures, so why were their ships so, well, bleak?

"I know. It kinda bothers me too."

Looking up suddenly, Cherry noticed the white Star Warrior observing her in a somewhat curious manner. With a blush, she stammered back, "Wh-what do you mean? What are you talking about?"

Laughing, Petal shook her head and apologized, "Sorry, but weren't you just thinking about how plain and colorless it is in here? A lot of people ask about that the first time they ride in one of these aluminum-alloy cans. Besides, it was written all over your face that you were a bit uncomfortable. You're not exactly hard to read, sweetie."

"Oh," Cherry murmured with a bit of a smile. "Yeah, I get that a lot. It's the eyes mostly, or so I've been told."

"Same here," Petal chuckled, then sighed and explained, "It's so bleak in here on purpose. If it was colorful, we Star Warriors would grow to feel at home here, and that wouldn't be good. We want to be able to end the war and go home, and if something related to the war started to feel like home... it's hard to explain, I guess. Star Warrior logic." Changing the subject suddenly, she looked over at the little tree fondly. "It's been a long time since I've seen a sakuranoki. This one seems almost... familiar to me. Which is strange, she's obviously not that old and I've never been to Ripple Star before this morning, so I don't know when we could've met."

There was a snort from the puffball lying in the corner with a beret pulled over his eyes, suddenly revealing that he wasn't asleep like he'd seemed to be ever since not long after they took off. "Not you too, Petal. It's- not 'she's,' 'it's'- a plant. A plant. Plants can't think or feel, for crying out loud. And they're NOT 'she's' or 'he's.' They're 'IT'S.'"

Rolling her eyes at Cherry, Petal argued with Tracker, "Who says they can't? I personally think that all plants have a bit of emotion to them. Maybe not a lot, but a bit. Besides which, sakuranoki aren't like most plants. They're magical. They can speak, too."

Chuckling, Tracker muttered disbelievingly, "Trees can't speak, I don't care if they are magical. It can't happen."

Cherry glared at him. For someone who seemed so level-headed and kind, he sure could be a bit thick-skulled. "You can't say something can't speak just because it's never spoken to you. Maybe they just don't think you're worth talking to." The little sakuranoki whooshed indignantly in agreement, making Cherry chuckle.

"You tell 'im," Petal laughed as she reached over and patted the tree's flowerpot gently. When Cherry looked at her in surprise, she shrugged. "I can't quite understand the language of the sakuranoki, but I can get the gist of what they're saying, or at least the emotion they're saying it with. It's like, I can hear the language, I just don't quite understand what it means. Like if you were talking to someone who spoke a different language than you, even if you didn't know what they were saying, you could guess some of what they meant by how they said it: angrily, happily, shyly, etc. She sounded indignant, so I was agreeing with her." The tree giggled at finding someone else who understood her a bit, making Petal grin. "And a laugh is the same in any language. You don't need to know how to share words to share a laugh."

Smiling, Cherry nodded once, then suddenly frowned. "Who's flying this thing anyway?"

A strange look came over Petal's face as she muttered, "Shotzo," then hopped up. "I need to check on the autopilot before we go flying straight into a star or something. I'll be back later."

"Autopilot?" Cherry wondered in confusion as the Star Warrior hurried forward into the cockpit, an automatic door sliding and open and shut again as she did so. "The ship's been flying itself the whole time?"

"Welcome to the second century, Fairy," Tracker chortled, then sighed and snuggled farther back into the corner he was sitting in. "So Petal thinks they can talk too... I still think all of you are a bit crazy. Of course, Petal's always seemed a bit weird. The way she talks, her accent that doesn't really sound like any clan's in particular, the songs she sings that I've never heard before... It seems almost like she's from somewhere else sometimes, you know? Maybe she was raised by Halcandrans or something." He snorted a bit, then muttered, "Never trust a Halcandran. Just magic and science geeks with no real concept of reality, every one of them."

Frowning over at him, Cherry questioned, "What makes you say that?"

Sitting up, Tracker ranted with crossed arms, his beret still in his eyes, "Well, when we asked them to help us out and be our allies, they just said 'no.' They didn't want to get 'involved.' So far, their perfect little utopia has remained completely unscathed by the Lord of Nightmares, and they'd like to keep it that way. I don't blame 'em for that. It's just that all these other planets out there are getting trashed while they're just sitting pretty there in their fancy marble/crystal alloy cities, inventing stuff and using dangerous and unpredictable things like magic and ignoring the rest of the Galaxy. Weird puffball-animal-hybrid people. Eesh. Rabbits, cats, dogs, birds, butterflies, even spiders..." He shivered at that last one. "Don't trust Halcandrans. Ever."

A little bit irritated, Cherry observed, "You seem to have a kind of narrow way of looking at the world, Tracker. Have you ever actually met a Halcandran yourself?"

"Uhh... no," Tracker admitted, calming a bit. "But then, have you?"

Shrugging, Cherry grinned, "Only if dreams count, Tracker."

"I think your dreams probably do count, seeing as how you're an Oracle Fairy," he acquiesced sheepishly, then grinned teasingly. "So, what sort of Halcandran did you dream about? Someone tall, dark, and handsome?"

Cherry just had to burst out laughing at the thought. "No, he's nothing like that. More like average height, vibrant, and loud-mouthed. And squeaky, too. He's funny, and he's important. He's part of the Master Crown saga of my dreams, and the Returrning Darkness..."

"What?" Tracker looked at her, lost. "What's a master crown or a returning darkness?"

With a sigh, Cherry shook her head. "They're both long stories. If you want to know, you could read my dream books."

Although Tracker looked curious, he shook his head. "Nah. Maybe some other time. Right now, I'm going back to one of the tiny bunkrooms to actually try to get some rest."

"Okay," Cherry nodded. "Sweet dreams, Tracker."

"You too, Fairy," he grinned at her, then left.

After quickly getting sick of sitting there with only the now-dozing sakuranoki for company, Cherry decided to go spend some time talking to Petal and getting to know her better. Up in the cockpit, Petal was humming to herself while leaning spacily on the T-shaped steering wheel, her mind obviously somewhere else. It was the sort of look Cherry often had on her own face. "Hi," Cherry tried, making the white Star Warrior jump a bit, then laugh. "What are you thinking about so hard?"

"Trying to remember some things. If I concentrate hard enough, I can usually grab a memory or two from when I was younger to enjoy. They just always go flying away again a minute later, back to wherever they're locked up at," she shrugged, then smiled. "But enough about me. What do you need, Cherry?"

Locked up? What does she mean, locked up? Cherry wondered, then sat down on a little bench that Petal pointed to, setting the snoozing baby tree down on the steel floor beside her carefully. After being quiet for a moment, she suddenly blurted out, "I don't know why, but I feel like I know you from somewhere, and it's driving me crazy."

Petal nodded, a knowing smile on her face. "Time-Travelers like me run into that a lot, sweetie. That, and people they know who don't know them. That's how me and Tracker met, actually."

"Really?" Cherry murmured in surprise, leaning forward subconsciously, eager to hear a good story. "You're a Time-Traveler? Mother used to tell me about those, she had a friend who was one. A friend I never met, because she eventually-"

"Don't remind me," Petal shivered, looking very frightened for a moment. After taking a deep breath, she then smiled and relaxed again. "Sorry about that. I get kinda... panicked, when I think about Time-Traveling at times." For a minute, she was quiet, then started, "About two years ago, I went on a time-trip to Reverence Province a few decades back. There I got lost in the woods on the mountain, when this little boy showed up and helped me get out. Apparently he often found people lost in the woods and helped them home, especially when the weather was bad. His earned name was Tracker, but I personally think that the name Finder would fit him better. He's good at finding the lost and helping them home, in more ways than one." After pausing a second, she then continued, "I was only there a day or two. A couple of days after I returned to this time, I met that same little boy, only all grown up now. A Scout in the Army, trying to work his way up through the ranks, trying to protect his family and planet, trying to do what was right. I guess you could say that more than anything else, he's trying to find his way. The Star Warrior who can find the way for anyone except himself... That's Tracker in a nutshell."

Cherry mulled this over for a minute, then wondered, "So did he recognize you as the one who he helped out of the woods?"

Nodding, Petal answered, "Yeah. Except he thinks it was all those years ago for me too. He doesn't know that I time-travelled, or even that I can. I don't usually tell about my Time-Travelling to just anyone, because all it ever gets me is pity, distrust, or someone I care about being worried. It's so much simpler to just keep it to myself, you know?"

Confused, Cherry questioned, "Then why'd you tell me?"

Glancing over at her, Petal sighed and then resumed looking out the front windshield of the good-sized star-shaped plain-white starship. "You're the last of a kind, so am I. It's pretty much impossible to explain to someone who can only see time as a straight line instead of a flowing river that bends and twists and turns back on itself, always flowing back around to where it came from in a strange, semi-circular way; but I'm the last Time-Traveller. All of the other ones gave their lives for the cause of Light around the same time, leaving just me. I can still run into them if I visit their past selves, but those are just echoes, people they've already been and things they've already done. All of them have already reached their end, all except for me." Smiling a bit, Petal shrugged and finished, "So I feel like I can trust you. Besides which, it's not just your tree friend that seems familiar to me. You are too, almost like someone I've met before in my dreams, or something..."

Surprised, Cherry explained, "That's kind of what I've noticed about you, actually! That's weird, not to mention confusing. I always dream about the future, so that means that I must meet you again someday, right?"

Smirking, Petal reminded her, "Well, you might meet me again someday. If you seem familiar to me, that means that I've already met you. Your tomorrows are my yesterdays, Cherry." Glancing over at Cherry and noticing the confused expression on her face, she laughed and then murmured in a jokey-but-sad way, "Welcome to the life of a paradox, sweetie. I'm not even a hundred years old yet (I don't think so, anyways,) and I've already seen several lifetimes' worth of things. That's probably why my memories get locked up to where I can only get to them if I'm in a place where I need them: if I had them all in my head at once, I'd probably go crazy from all that conflicting and confusing information, you know?"

After thinking over it for a minute, the young Fairy agreed, "Yeah, I see what you mean." Out of nowhere, she gave a huge yawn. It'd been a long day of Warp Star riding, arguing with Fairies, and riding in a starship for the first time, so she was starting to feel pretty tired. Sensing this, Petal started to quietly sing some song she couldn't quite understand since it wasn't in a language she knew, or even one she had ever heard before. Even so, it made her feel very sleepy and relaxed all of a sudden, so sleepy that she almost thought she could see a light-pink, softly-glowing thread floating over her head in a caring and protective fashion. Just a minute later, she sighed and curled up on her side on the bench, falling soundly and deeply asleep.

Well, it was a deep sleep until she started to dream again, a dream that wasn't quite like any other she had ever had before...