[MMA Round 5] The Gate of Ishtar

She hoped to not stay too long. This place, a point beyond space and time, existed in paradox to corporeal beings. It had become her watchtower out of necessity, a vantage point from which to overlook the souls of her sisters remotely. She spent too much of her time here, though beyond any temporal being, one might say she was always there and never there at all.

But she was corporeal. She was temporal. And her time here was making her forget that.

“Are you in that body?” a rich and familiar voice curiously questioned. Damkianna smiled and clutched at the length of her skirt, as though she were bracing her heart from leaping into her throat. She turned without hesitation, drawing a sharp gasp, yet she could swear she was breathless.

Adana stood upon the endless horizon, bathed in auric glow. Luminous. She always was.

At her feet, a cherub clutched at Adana's skirt, wide-eyed and smiling. Choking on tears and thick, heavy breath, Damkianna fell to her knees. She might have crawled to them, or perhaps they were simply right there next to her, but Damkianna wasted no time scooping up the tiny child in her arms, enveloping her in a blanket of kisses and hot tears. “My darling. Oh, my darling one,” she wept over and over.

Damkianna had not seen Liv since the battle of Cecily and Cosmos, and when her body did not appear on the field with the other sisters, she had feared her beloved child had slipped into the void, or consumed by darkness. But she was here, and she was new and she was innocent, and she gripped at Damkianna's dress, engulfed in Mother Messier's arms.

“She slipped back through time,” Adana spoke gently, placing one hand upon Damkianna's shoulders, and kneeling down, ran her other hand through the honey threads of Liv's hair. “The battle must have brought her so close to the edge, but perhaps Sloan saw it fit to intervene one last time.” Damkianna had all but lost hope when Liv's soulburst had not reached her, like the other fallen sisters. And while she was able to come to this place and guide the souls back to their bodies, Liv's was missing. But now she understood. It had never left her body.

“My darling Liv, you have ventured your life backwards. Perhaps you are not temporal after all,” Damkianna mused, her voice falling just above a whisper. She looked back up to meet Adana's eyes, and welcomed a tender kiss from her wife.

“Damkianna, we are beckoned elsewhere.” Adana helped Damkianna to her feet, and grasped Liv's tiny hand, turning her gaze to the lapis gate that had appeared in the distance. “Home?” she bid.

“Home.”

----
References

The concept behind Liv's age regression is her soulburst, through the guidance of Sloan, reverted back to childhood in order to protect itself. Liv is in a fragile state, and may not have been able to be saved like the rest of the sisters in the battle. 

At this point, Messier 1 has seen all the soulburts back to their bodies, as each sister wakes up in her own bed. It is from this place beyond time that Damkianna finds the Terran bodies of the sisters in which to place their souls.

In the background stands a newly finished Gate of Ishtar, symbolizing the passing of the family from the Messier world and into Damkianna's world.

Adana/Messier 70/NGC 6681 (c) SailorAlcyone 
Liv/Messier 19/NGC 6273 (The Queen of Roses and Thorns) (c) nickyflamingo 
Damkianna/Messier 1/NGC 1952 (c) GabiStar 
بوابة عشتار‎ (The Ishtar Gate)
Characters are a part of the OrderOfSloan universe.