Back To Krypton

Chapter 35

Kara shifts in the seat of the pod her mother previously rescued her in. Alura is piloting it whilst Kara is looking out the front windshield, her eyes darting over the fields as they fly overhead, waiting impatiently to see the city of Kandor as it comes.

They aren't flying fast, nowhere near as fast as they were on the way here from The Scarlet Jungle, that's for a simple reason, they are now in city lines, even if they haven't reached the hustle or the bustle yet.

Alura is keeping a close eye on her through her peripheral vision, purposely not turning her head towards her so Kara doesn't feel like she's being watched, especially not now when she's experiencing Kandor again for the first time since she was a child, a place made up of vague memories that mould into nothing more than a fleeting illusion.

Blue eyes match the blue of the fields beneath them, rows and rows of endless berry bushes lined up ripe for the picking, workers dressed in lightweight robes doing just that, today being an ordinary day, all of them completely unaware of the day that will soon come, the end of their lives as they know it. The end of their lives.

Kara swallows but it's a struggle, the lump in her throat making it difficult. Just flying overhead fields with a few people in them is a challenge so she's terrified of what's to come when she's walking through the streets of Kandor with the knowledge that every face she sees and every shoulder she brushes is one that will cease to exist in less time than she can comprehend, doesn't want to comprehend.

Without really being aware of it, Kara's fingers find the skirt of her dress and she clenches the material tightly in her fists on either side of her thighs. Alura spots this and so desperately wants to cover her hands with her own to see if she will relax enough to release the dress but this is Kara and she knows her daughter, or at least she knew her back when she was a child and she knows that comforting Kara when she's on the verge of tears will only free her of any restraint she has remaining and while their fancy getup won't attract attention, tear stains will so she has to let her handle this one alone. That's something Alura gets the feeling Kara has done a lot of throughout her life anyway.

What she doesn't know is that Kara can see the way her hands twitch like she's about to reach towards her. She sees the need to help but the restraint stopping her mother and all she knows in her fragile mind is that she's not good enough because she's not her mother's daughter. Not this mother, this is the mother of her past, not her present. This is someone she doesn't know, someone that, unlike her mother, doesn't have her best interests at heart, someone that will allow her to be in pain and do nothing at all.

The pain in her chest eases partially when they get closer to the roar of the city, the quiet of the fields giving way to the thunderous noise that Kara had almost forgotten exists outside of the strange bubble she's been in for weeks while they have been trekking through lands that Kryptonian feet have hardly trodden on.

In what feels like mere seconds as they round a single corner to skirt around a giant monument, a spiralled cone that somewhat resembles a Christmas tree with the way it tapers at the top, a resemblance unknown to anyone on the planet looking at it other than Kara, her small group and the tiny number of Kryptonians with enough knowledge of Earth to know human traditions. Each spiral contains endless glyphs, rows and columns on them, all of them marking the passing of houses no longer living, ones that hold the weight of history and keep their memories alive, even when they are no longer.

There are pods similar to their own whizzing past them, alongside them, and behind them, some older models, some new, although not as many given the status of the great house of El. Kara feels like she's just hurtled out of a sensory deprivation room right into the middle of a highway, all the noise of the city hitting her much harsher than it had when she was just beginning to hear the sounds she's missed, it's overwhelming.