Fan Soundtrack
...actually, is this term even still used? ...was it ever used anywhere off LiveJournal? Because it should be! Either way: mixtape, personal OST, playlist...whatever you'd like to call it, here is mine for Lethe & Mnemosyne. I wanted to communicate their story, but also build up a 'musical profile', so to speak, of each of the twins themselves. YMMV and you might not agree that x song fits y moment, and that's fine -- that's the beauty of fandom and opinion! ♥
Translations are provided for non-English songs, and there are links to YouTube videos of the songs, Spotify links (if available), and individual files for direct download -- all of which will be 30kbps and in mp3 format; these are for sampling only -- please support the artists featured by purchasing the full albums!
desert sunset
梶浦由記 Kajiura Yuki
(instrumental)
Sailor Moon, Princess Kakyuu, the Starlights, and Chibi Chibi have arrived in Sagittarius Zero Star, the place in the galaxy where every planet and star was birthed...upon the banks what appears to be a great river of sand. The group are greeted by a shadowy figure in a small boat, calling herself Lethe, offering to ferry them across the river. Hesitantly, they accept..
...and the sand shifts, shimmers, and turns to water, as sudden as a falling star. The ferry capsizes, and the world shifts...
listen on YouTube | listen on Spotify | direct mp3 download
Whisper From the Mirror
Keiko Matsui
(instrumental)
The girl sitting on the swings in the middle of nowhere doesn't know where she is. She doesn't know who she is. But Sailor Lethe knows.
Sailor Moon sits there right in front of her, knowing nothing. The very creature who caused all this. Even in the midst of an illusion, with the waters of the Lethe seeping into all her memories -- she insists that to be alone is sad, which is why she thinks she has so many friends. It's so pathetic. It's almost laughable.
Lethe kills the moon cats without a wince, her voice smooth and cold as she tells Sailor Moon that everything that is born is meant to die. Memories have no worth. The only thing that has worth is power.
listen on YouTube | listen on Spotify | direct mp3 download
Desert Song
Dead Can Dance
"You've been afraid for far too long
I've been enraged in my song,
I've been a rose in my rage..."
Sailor Lethe is presented with the chance to let the fury out. She takes it.
"Galactica Mysotis Alpestris!"
The truth of the matter is that Lethe is tired, and she's afraid. She knows that her sister is even more afraid, and she's done with watching her, holding her mirror image in her arms while she trembles. And now, the cause of all the misery and war and disaster is right here, whimpering at her feet, snivelling about some illusory cats like she could understand for one moment what sorrow really is--
Lethe strikes, like the deadly soldier she is. She moves to rid herself and her precious sister of the plague on the galaxy that is Sailor Moon and her friends. But before she can do so...
listen on YouTube | listen on Spotify | direct mp3 download
奈落の花 Naraku no Hana (Flower of Hell)
島みやえい子 Shimamiya Eiko
"Break out, break out of this too-sorrowful fate;
You aren't a flower of Hell!
Don't blossom, don't blossom in this sort of place--
Don't go and get caught up in this!"
...her other half rises up and stops her, at the very last minute.
Mnemosyne knows and has never forgotten what Lethe had to cast to oblivion for the two of them to survive -- she isn't like this. She remembers her twin sister who she stood proudly beside, as the chosen protector of their twin stars -- her sister who would never truly want to commit the acts that they've both committed, trying to survive in Galaxia's iron grip.
She isn't a flower of Hell, even if they have to live within the confines of Hell. Mnemosyne will never believe that. Not now. Not ever.
translation | listen on YouTube | listen on Spotify | direct mp3 download
oblivious
Kalafina
"That mirage we see in the distance,
Even if it's frightening,
Will someday reflect the future for the two of us."
Lethe has always been the gentler of the twins. The one who would giggle where her sister would roar with laughter, the one whose tears formed rivers while Lethe stood among the downpoud and scowled. Her eyes the same colour of a hopeful dawn, where her sisters are tinged like the mystery of dusk. Soft where her sister was firm, offering empathy where her sister provided justice.
She disobeys orders, but she does what she knows in her heart of hearts to be right. She can't betray who she is, and she can't let the rot of Shadow Galactica seep into her sister, either. She loves her too much to do so.
translation | listen on YouTube | listen on Spotify | direct mp3 download
Lethe and Mnemosyne
Dark Dark Dark
(instrumental)
Meet the sister soldiers from two distant stars. Their story is one of sorrow.
The twin worlds they were born to protect were small, poverty-stricken ones -- forever wracked by war and in a state of continual chaos. When Galaxia eventually reached them, in her galaxy-wide march towards utter domination, she only brought death and silence in her wake.
And perhaps...that was a price worth paying. A little pain now, to reach a future with the galaxy unified under one power, a chance to find some kind of peace.
What else could they do but follow her? What other choice was there? Who else was going to end all this madness? Sailor Moon wasn't going to. Sailor Moon's mere existence caused the power struggles that rippled through the galaxy.
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Presence of the Moon
Keiko Matsui
(instrumental)
All the twins want is a world free of the constant war and hunger for power. All they want is peace.
But that's just it -- that's all that Sailor Moon wants, as well. So she tells them, one Sailor guardian to two others.
"If it would stop the fighting...then kill me."
Sailor Moon fights to end the constant wars, the pain, the uncertainty. And she knows as sure as the stars in the sky, so do Lethe and Mnemosyne. This is their shared role, their sacred mission, the innate prayer of every single Sailor guardian in the whole galaxy.
listen on YouTube | listen on Spotify | direct mp3 download
Disremembrance
Dannii
"I feel my anger now vanishing without a trace...
I feel so different, now that it's time to face my soul..."
A moment, a heartbeat, a mere breath...but that's all that needed. Mnemosyne loosens her grip on her sister; the tension fades from Lethe's stance.
"Go on, Sailor Moon."
In that moment, Lethe, Mnemosyne, and Moon understand each other, wholly and completely. Sailor Moon is not their enemy -- not really. How could she be, when they're struggling for the same thing? They're all weary, dispirited, struggling. All of them. Every Sailor senshi in the galaxy. But here, in the midst of all of that, in this tiny moment -- there's understanding. There's hope. A mere flicker of it, yes -- but it's still there. That is something that both of the twins remember, always.
This is not their fight.
listen on YouTube | listen on Spotify | direct mp3 download
Everyone's Memory Is Snow
PHILDEL
(instrumental)
There's some kind of vicious, horrific symmetry to it all, really.
Another moment. Just a moment. It happens so quickly, the sisters barely see the other twins arrive -- there's hardly time to do anything except clasp each other's hands in shock.
Sailor Χ and Sailor Φ appear, and with little ceremony, the Star Gardeners destroy the keepers of the Rivers of Oblivion and Remembrance. A throwaway remark from Χ -- "you stupid, useless people" -- and Φ raises her staff and obliterates them both, their bracelets snapping cleanly in half and their bodies reduced to nothingness, like snowflakes melting before touching the ground.
The last words they speak are each other's names.
listen on YouTube | listen on Spotify | direct mp3 download
forget-me-not
梶浦由記 Kajiura Yuki
(instrumental)
But the story of the desert twins doesn't end there, because no Sailor senshi's story ends. No matter how heartbreakingly tragic nor unspeakably beautiful, no matter how matted with snarls of hatred and strife, or woven with ribbons of love and light, to carry a Sailor crystal is to be a part of forever -- to be reborn over and over again, to love and protect, lifetime after lifetime into beautiful eternity.
Lethe and Mnemosyne will be no different.
Perhaps, at the same moment a certain couple on a blue planet on one edge of the galaxy celebrate their wedding alongside their chosen family...perhaps there's a moment on the other edge of the galaxy, upon a world basking in the light of twin stars...
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Disremembrance
(Flexifinger's extended 'orchestral' mix)
"...will you remember me?"
...perhaps a certain young woman clad in evergreen is watching her little sister in front of the bedroom mirror they share as she fixes her hair for the morning. Perhaps she watches as her almost-mirror-image she twists her waist-length hair that lapses into natural corkscrew curls -- the same that she herself is blessed with -- into her customary double twintails. Perhaps the younger twin feels the weight of her sister's violet gaze, and turns her own towards her, blinking round eyes the colour of a dreamy sunset -- the only thing that separates them in looks, really.
"Lethe? Is something wrong?"
"No...no, Mnem. I was just thinking."
"Thinking what?"
"I don't know. I felt like I was remembering something...or maybe forgetting something, I'm not sure. Actually, I kind of felt like I was waking up from a long dream this morning."
Perhaps the younger twin smiles at her big sister.
"You know...it's strange. I felt the same way, too, when I woke up."
"Really?"
"Mmhm. I can't even remember if it was a good dream, exactly, or a bad one. Just that it was a long, long one."
"Yeah. Like it was a story, almost, right? That kind of feeling."
"How does the story end, do you think?"
Perhaps Lethe reaches out and twines her fingers between her sisters'. Their wrists are slender and lovely, mirror images, and there are no heavy bracelets upon them.
"I don't know. Maybe we'll find out as we remember more?"
Perhaps. Just perhaps...