Title: Celebration (clothing optional)
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Teenish
Length: 1300ish words
Content notes: Mention of totally made up Cephiran religion and fertility festivals.
Author notes: Borrowing Festival from Milieva, who prompted this... Umi&/Clef
Summary: "Anyway, it's hardly a surprise if there's a lot of people pregnant at the moment. It's nine months since Festival, after all."

"What's that got to do with it?"

oOo

There were a few things about Cephiro, it turned out, that even ten years on, no one had got around to telling the girls - mostly because, to the Cephirans, at twenty four they still were girls.

Umi was lurking on the balcony of Clef's study, leaning out over the railing in the thin gap left between the pots and pots of herbs that straddled the balcony rail and filled up nearly all the available floorspace. It was several stories up - high enough to not be too easily recognisable when people-watching, but low enough you could actually see what was going on better than from the bedrooms the Knights had way up in the tower. There was a good view across the geometric shapes of the most-formal gardens down below, where high hedges and walls made each one a sheltered little sun-trap; they were popular with a lot of the community groups that met up at the Castle still, even now people were living more and more in the rebuilt villages and towns spreading across the land.

Today, there was what looked like an expectant-or-very-new-mothers' group, a lot of very pregnant people and those with small babies all apparently listening to a talk given by a healer - Umi recognised the green robes.

"There's a lot of people really pregnant at the moment, aren't there," she said, idly, poking the plant by her elbow to make it puff lemon-scented pollen in the air again.

Clef tsked at her every time she did it, which only tempted her to do it more. "Stop that. It won't have any pollen left when it rains and then I won't get any seeds this year," he grumped, reaching up from where he was taking a cutting off some other plant for the potion he was trying to focus on. (She wasn't really helping with that.) "Anyway, it's hardly a surprise if there's a lot of people pregnant at the moment. It's nine months since Festival, after all."

"What's that got to do with it?" Umi stared down at him. Festival was the year-end and new-year celebration in Cephiro, the three days that sat between one calendar year and the next, which involved a lot of partying and winding up the year's Chronicle to officially hand it to the Clerks, or re-winding it, or - well, Umi'd never managed to get to that bit, she'd still been living in Tokyo last Festival. There were several fancy balls, and she'd been to a couple of them; some people had been getting fairly merry by the time Caldina had dragged her and Fuu and Hikaru off to play cards until the year changed. "People celebrate too enthusiastically a lot?"

Clef huffed, still focused on the plants in front of him. "No, because-" Then he paused, and Umi watched with sharp interest as his ears flushed brightly. "Well, yes, let's go with that."

"…Clef. What aren't you telling me about Festival?"

"Nothing relevant." He managed to get up and bustle back into the study without once looking in her direction, but even the back of his neck was pink now - he might have grown up, but they were mostly the same height, so she had a pretty good view of it even as he was walking away.

"Really? Because right now I'm starting to think maybe there was a whole lot more going on after Caldina pulled us out of those Balls than just tipsy dancing."

"No! Well- no!" He huffed and turned to glare at her. "The night doesn't generally end in a collective orgy on the dancefloor."

"Does 'generally' mean it does sometimes?" she asked, and watched with equal amounts of amusement and perplexity as he didn't actually deny this, just flapped a hand at her and turned back to the potion. "What, really?"

"No!" He set down the stick he'd been stirring it with (it was a wand, she was pretty sure, but he kept arguing that it wasn't inherently magical so it couldn't match her definition of 'wand' and they'd spent far more time than they should having that same argument over again in the last couple of years). "Look, it's - there's a fertility bit, okay? Everyone praying and willing the new year to be fruitful, and- sometimes it is. For them."

Snorting, she flopped down into a chair by the small stone stove he'd set up in the middle of the room. (The stones seemed to heat up with magic, so there wasn't any smoke or actual flame involved, or it would have been a terrible fire hazard. He was wearing a top with the wide draped sleeves that gathered up at the wrist even now, and though the gathering kept the cloth out of the cauldron he was using, the rest of it kept on brushing against the top of the stove.) "There's a fertility bit. That's very expressive."

"I don't know how to- it's not really something you can describe? Just - yes, people can end up celebrating the end of the year together, but when you get to the new year, it's - setting a collective hope and prayer for Cephiro in the year to come. And people enjoying certain activities together can be part of that, particularly when it comes to having a fertile year with a good harvest - the dancing is to see the year in with joy, so you get a joyful year, it's the same kind of thing."

"But clothed," Umi said, before she could help herself.

Clef rubbed a hand across his face, looking like he couldn't decide whether to laugh or to yell at her. "Anyway," he managed. "If you are looking to have a child, it's a good time to try, because that many people focused on something has a power even beyond magic, it can help make things happen."

Shaking her head, Umi contemplated this. "And no one ever told us! All these years-"

"You're children!" Clef snapped, his face still terribly red.

Umi rolled her eyes at him - she was used to his snapping when he was flustered. "I'm more than a quarter again my mother's age when she had me," she returned - a ritual of their own which had the settling weight of the custom of half a decade at least behind it, and Clef grumbled, but turned back to his potion again. "So, are there rituals, or, um. Group events, or is it more of a private kind of celebration? Just so I know what to expect this year."

"All of the above, depending on how formal you want to be," Clef told her, with one final sigh. "But it's impolite to turn up unless you're taking part, so I doubt you'll be seeing anything at all this year."

"Maybe," Umi said, and just grinned when he flicked a look at her - she wasn't interested in having a child anytime soon, but a private celebration to encourage a bountiful year to come? That could be… interesting. And she had just over four months to work out how to get him there with her. (Which would involve his admitting she was not a child anymore. Probably she needed to step up that argument.)

"I'm still going to complain at Caldina for not telling us, though," she said, thoughtfully, and Clef gave in and laughed.

"Go right ahead with that, and good luck. But right now, could you grab me some more of these leaves, please?" He held up the twig he was denuding into the pot, which was still far quicker than her trying to remember which of the plants was called what. "You distracted me, I only got half of what I need."

"Sure." She went back to the balcony, and took a moment to grin over it at the group below, who were mostly now just lounging in the sun and chatting. If she couldn't get more details out of Clef closer to the time, at least she had a good idea who to ask about all this.