Heritage Province, early 600's, Early Summer:

Tracker sighed and yawned as he opened the front window of his small cottage and let some of the fresh summer air in. He'd come to live in Heritage Province after he'd fallen in love with a nice Heritage Clan girl toward the end of the war. Thanks to General Solar's- the great general, the first general, and the only general of the Star Warrior Army so far- selfless sacrifice that ended Nightmare, Tracker and the other survivors were able to go home and start a family. He didn't have any family left, but his wife did, so they lived here in Heritage, although he often visited his old home in Reverence.

Many years after they married, they had two twin daughters. Both had grown up to earn Heritage Clan names and marry into Heritage Clan families, so he was the odd Reverence Clan member. But that was all right. This place had come to be home. 

Suiren, the older of the two daughters, had turned out to be a Time Traveler and vanished when her only daughter was only sixteen. Tracker's wife, Hana, had passed away not long after from early old age, quite early for a Star Warrior, but she'd still lived a few hundred years.

So now, he lived alone, except for when his granchildren visited him. His other daughter had moved to Startropolis and married there, but he saw Suiren's only child quite a bit more often. Her name was Heather.

Heather hadn't been around for about six months, but that was to be expected, since only three months ago she'd had her first child after trying for quite some time. Today he was looking forward to getting to meet his great-granddaughter for the first time, as well as seeing his granddaughter again.

With a smile up at the sunlight, he walked out onto the porch with a book and a pen, and started to work on writing about his time in the war again while sitting in his favorite old bamboo chair. After becoming a corporal after helping to deliver the sakuranoki to Popstar (per the good General Solar's orders, of course,) he'd risen through the ranks clear up to being a lieutenant over time, so he had quite a few stories to share.

About an hour later, he heard a familiar light laugh as well an excited, young squeal of "Poko! Poko poko-poko!"

A quiet voice agreed, "Yes, Yuki-chan, it's a mushroom ring. Maybe there's some fairies hiding around here somewhere."

"Poi-koi!" the little one squealed again, sounding even more excited than she had been before.

Grinning, he set his book down with the pen tucked in it and adjusted his glasses a bit. "Heather? That you?"

"Yes, Ojiisan," Heather's voice laughed in reply, and a moment later, the light-gray, sapphire-blue-eyed Star Warrior appeared around the bend in the path that led up to the cottage. Pausing, she turned and tugged a little bit at something. "Come on, Yuki-chan. There's nothing to be afriad of. It's just Jii-chan."

"Jii-chan poko," the little voice replied and allowed herself to be pulled into view. Tracker grinned wider when he saw the little one, who had her mother's face and a snowy-white color.

"I can see from here that she has Charcoal's eyes," he laughed and beckoned the little one to him. She hesitantly waddled closer but didn't get close enough for him to pick her up. "And she's shy like you, isn't she?"

Laughing again, Heather stepped over and glanced at the little one with a deep, pure, motherly love in her eyes. "Only around new people. Once she gets to like you, you'll never shut her up. And they're definitely Charcoal's eyes- he has yet to quit rejoicing over that."

Yuki waddled off to look at something, making Tracker notice that she was wearing two large leaves on her back like wings. "What's that?" he chuckled as he leaned against the railing of the porch and looked over at Heather, who was standing on the ground a few steps down, keeping an eye on the baby.

"Oh, they're supposed to be 'Fairy' wings. I'm not exactly a master seamstress," Heather slipped a semi-apology in, just like she'd always been prone to do. "Ever since she heard about Fairies, she's loved the idea. Fairy songs, Fairy stories, it all has to be Fairies these days." Smiling warmly, she added, "Well, Fairies and apples."

"Ringo?" Yuki perked up and glanced over at her mama expectingly. "Ringo, Kaachan poko?"

Shaking her head, the mother laughed, "No apples right now, Yuki. Maybe for lunch. You had breakfast less than an hour ago, snow-blossom."

"Ringo poko," the little one pouted a little bit, and then started studiously observing a caterpillar, even going to far as to lie down on her tummy so she could see it better. "Poko. Poko pooooooiko."

Laughing, Heather warned, "Don't eat it, it'll taste funny," before turning to Tracker again. "She eats anything and everything if you don't watch her. Silly little snowflake." Pausing a second, she sighed and added in quiet happiness, "I'm so glad to have her, Ojiisan. She lights up my every day."

Smiling warmly, Tracker teased, "She eats everything, huh? Just like someone else I used to know." Heather blushed and laughed before he asked, "Does she keep you busy?"

"Very," the other grown Star Warrior nodded with a grin. "She go-go-goes until about an hour after lunch, when she'll just slump down on her tummy wherever she is and nap for about an hour or so. And then it's go-go-go again until bedtime, sometimes later if she's not in a mood for sleeping."

Chuckling, Tracker looked over at the little one again. "Fairies, hmm?" Raising his voice just enough for the little girl to hear, he mused, "I knew a Fairy, once. She was a good friend of mine."

Yuki snapped up and dashed over to him just like that. "Poko?" she questioned excitedly, hopping up and down in an effort to make her leaf-wings flap. "Poko poiko pokoo?"

Chuckling again, Tracker pulled the tiny puffball up into his lap. "Many, many years ago, back when there were still soldiers and monsters, me and a Fairy named Cherry took a special tree to a faraway planet named Popstar. And inside that tree, Cherry left a treasure. One day, you'll have to go to Popstar and see if that treasure's still there for me. What about that, Yuki?"

"Poko poko," she giggled, and then hopped off and started chasing a butterfly while squeal-gurgling happily.

Watching her in contentment, Heather sighed, "I don't think she'll ever go to Popstar. Call me silly, but I think she'll always be a bit of a homebody. If all goes well, she'll take over the medicine business for me when I'm older."

"Don't count your chickens before they hatch," Tracker reminded her with a half-smile, mostly joking.

Yuki and Heather stayed until late afternoon, when Heather said they needed to get going before it started to get dark. A bit tired out from playing with Tracker all day after she'd warmed up to him, Yuki dozed off sitting on her mother's head and gumming on her paw happily as Heather walked away.

With a tired but glad sigh, Tracker turned to go inside, but then noticed a Star Warrior he didn't recognize standing just over inside the edge of a plum tree grove. The puffball, who was dark blue with chestnut eyes, looked rather lost, and was wearing a light gray cape that seemed to match her mood. Frowning a bit, he glanced down at the porch steps as he climbed down them to go offer her some help, but when he looked back up, she was walking toward him with a big smile on her face. Strangely enough, the cape was now a relieved sunrise-pink. He could've sworn it was gray a moment before...

"Excuse me, Ojiisan, but can I speak to you for a few minutes?"

At first, he frowned deeper when she called him 'grandfather,' but then he remembered that it was a sign of respect among Heritage Clan members to call their elders 'grandfather' or 'grandmother.' "Of course," he replied. "Name's Tracker. What's yours, if you don't mind my asking?"

Still smiling, she answered, "You can call me Skye Knight." Pausing a second, she leaned against the railing and crossed her arms. After seeming to think for a long moment, she used the tip of her light-gray magic glove to trace a symbol in the dust on the porch.

He glanced over at it, recognizing it right away as the Time Traveler's Mark. "So what brings you here?" he asked in surprise, looking back at her.

Rather than answering right away, the Star Warrior (who seemed to be much younger than a hundred to him) replied, "There's lots of important stories in our Galaxy that have a habit of getting lost over the years. I'm the Historian Time Traveler; I collect those lost stories and take them back to my own time."

"So you're here to ask me about a story?" he murmured in surprise.

As she nodded, her cape changed to a thoughtful sunset-orange, prompting him to ask, "Why does your cape keep changing color?"

She laughed in a way that seemed familiar, and the cape changed to a cheerful starry-yellow. "I guess you could call it a 'mood cape.' It was a gift from my parents when I earned my name." Growing thoughtful again as her cape changed back to sunset-orange, she seemed to think very hard for a moment before asking, "Have you ever heard of an artifact known as the Cherry Star Sword? It's also commonly known in lore as the Cherii no Hoshi no Ken, or the Sakura no Hoshi no Ke-"

"Of course I've heard of it. I knew the Fairy who designed it," he shrugged. "So you want to know more about it? I'll tell you what I know. Sit down, this might take awhile." Smiling a bit, he gazed off into the early sunset and mused, "If you want to know about the sword, Miss Knight, first you have to know about Cherry."

**********************************************************************

Dreamland, Year 1178:

This concludes the story of Cherry, her tree, and her star sword. Here I must make a confession and wrap a few last loose ends up.

First of all, the confession: I am not a Human, as I have pretended to be throughout this tale. Rather, I am a Star Warrior. My mentor, the Princess Rose, suggested that I write from the point of view of another sort of being in order to widen my talents. Since I already felt confident in my writing because I am from a family of bookworms, I resisted at first, but much like my father, the good Princess has a tendency of being right about everything. As she said, it has been a good exercise. My next task- learn how to write in a more informal tone, one more like the way I normally speak.

The Cherry Star Sword was wielded by that Waddle Dee most of the time following that day in the Star Warriors' Garden, except for a few times when she was made to go without it for several different reasons over the years. That Waddle Dee later became my mother, the one whom I inherited my Time Traveler abilities from. To this day, she still possesses the sword, although at the moment, times are peaceful where we live and she therefore currently has no need to wield it.

As for Cherry... the rosebush my great-great-grandfather Tracker took to Ripple Star bloomed at two different times. The first rose, the pink one, bloomed a few years before the Dark Matter attack on said planet. The second, the purple rose, blossomed a few years after that. Both of Cherry's Daughter Fairies came to be a part of their own important destinies... But that's a story for another time. Oh, and as the prophecy promised, the sakuranoki guarded them long after.

Tracker lived for many years after I was able to speak with him, and was one of the Star Warriors evacuated to Nintendo City by the late Princess Baika about halfway through the second stage of the War Against Nightmare (which is indeed what the 'Lord' of Nightmares came to be called, and is still very rarely remembered as to this very day.) He passed away not too long ago, but not before he was reunited with his granddaughter and great-granddaughter, and was able to meet both his great-great-grandchildren and the first of his great-great-great-children. It was, to put it lightly, 'great.'

And the sakuranoki? That tree will always be an important touch-point for my family for various reasons. Just as Cherry predicted, Noki became a mother sakuranoki, for as soon as the inhabitants of Dreamland learned that there could be more, they gathered many cherry trees and grafted them all with small twigs from the mother tree, who still resides in the Star Warriors' Garden and is now a dear friend of my mother. Dreamland is now dotted with sakuranoki here and there all over the landscape.

The pieces of the narrative that Tracker did not know and/or remembered incorrectly (due to the diabolical acts of an old villain who plagued our Galaxy for a long time) were mostly corrected by my mother, who was never around when the villain removed certain things from the common memory, such as General Stellar, among many other things. The rest, I was actually blessed enough to learn from Noki herself, but that is- guess what?- a story for another time, and possibly, another storyteller.

I suppose that is everything that needs to be included in this epilogue. Well, dear Reader, maybe your days be filled with Light, and may the Star Power guide you. And may the story of our Galaxy never come to an end.

Off to find the next lost story,

-Skye Knight

..............................

~P.S.~

Princess Rose said that to get a head start on learning how to write more informally, I should end this note in a more relaxed way, and Shotzo, I still sound like an old lady, don't I? And now Mom is laughing at me over my shoulder as I write, not to mention my younger brother. I think even Father is starting to chuckle a bit. I'm glad you all find me so amusing, guys.

Fine, everyone, fine. I'll sign it with what my friends call me. And I'll do it informally, too. Yes, Mom, I know Stellar would have loved how professionally I write. Stop reading over my shoulder.

Over and out,

-Aoi