Title: Wisps
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 1000ish words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Post canon, pre Umi/Clef.
Summary: Another reason evenings in Cephiro can be literally magical.

oOo


Umi hadn’t meant to wander quite so far with the evening coming on, but the river that wound its way back under the branches of the wood by the castle had been gleaming invitingly in the distance for several hours while she was trying to study. Her exams at university were nothing like as important as the ones she’d taken to get into university in the first place, but she didn’t want to do badly. Also, both Fuu and Hikaru were studying hard, which made it a communal activity even though they were all studying different things.

But the sunlight glinting on the water in the distance was a constant call, and once dinner was over with she figured a bit of a walk would be good for her after so long sat staring at her books and trying to read them.

There was a fairly well-worn path by the river; she’d followed it sea-wards a few times; she and Hikaru had taken a few days last year and hiked all the way to the beach (and then transported themselves back, much to Clef’s ire; he hadn’t actually taught them to cast that kind of magic yet. But moving across Cephiro was a lot easier than moving to Earth and back - and, as Hikaru had put it, the mashin weren’t going to let them get lost between dimensions.

Today she picked the other direction, and walked upstream instead. When the trees started, the path continued, mostly clear of low-hanging branches, and she followed it into the growing shadows after a quick look to the sky: twilight was long in Cephiro, a slow dimming of the light, and she probably had an hour of light before she should send herself back to the castle either by foot or by magic.

The darkness was heavier under the trees, of course, but her eyes adjusted as she headed further in, and the coolness of the air felt good after a warm day. But she had to pay more and more attention to the path as the trees grew closer, and was close to calling it a day when the first speck of light floated in front of her and then vanished.

Blinking, she shook her head, a faint after-image all that remained until even that faded.

“...Does Cephiro have fire-flies?” she wondered, and looked around herself between the tree-trunks. It was darker than she had realised; the ground below her feet hadn’t been as hard to see as the trees a few feet away proved to be. Which… was odd. And still the case; the air around her seemed to hold a soft glow.

Umi looked up, and stared.

There were lights floating in the air, dancing above her. Each mote was a slightly different shade of soft and shimmering not-quite-white, and she could see no detail to them, just the glow they put off. Another floated in from the tretops while she watched, and then another, and one came down to float in front of her face before drifting back under the trees.

“Uh, hi?” she said, and in response several of them shimmered brighter a moment, dropping to dance around her.

She wasn’t worried, even with no idea what they were; she was pretty certain someone would have warned her about mage-eating lights in the woods. And she was one of the most dangerous people in Cephiro, she could generally look after herself. More than that, these things just felt friendly, somehow.

Still, when they started to swirl off between the trees, she’d heard enough stories about following creatures of light off the path and never being seen again that she hesitated a moment. Only a moment, and then she shrugged and started to follow them, making her way carefully through the trees, curious and ready to transport herself back to the castle if she needed to.

It was several minutes of scrambling on the tree-roots and trying not to crush too much bracken before spotting the glow massing up ahead, and another to make it to the edge of the clearing where her new friends rose up to swirl with hundreds of thousand others, all drifting around-

"Clef!?"

Sat on a rock in the middle of the glade, lights dancing about him, Clef startled visibly and nearly fell off his perch as he turned to look at her. "I - Umi?" He peered at her, and she stepped a little further into the open where the light was brighter. "How late is it?"

"What are you doing out here?" Umi asked, instead of making up an answer. She'd no idea how late it had become. "No, wait. What are these things? Are they fire-flies?"

"Fire-flies?" he said, with the slow and deliberate pronunciation that meant he was echoing back a Japanese word that wasn't translating. "No? These are glow-children."

"...Glow children. Well, that's… a name, I guess." She stared at him. "But why haven't I seen them before? And why are they all-" she waved her hands, trying to find a way of saying 'all up in your space' without actually saying that.

"They like magic," Clef said, looking up again. Now he wasn't looking at her, he started to smile again, watching the light dance. "They aren't quite… creatures, they're… flecks of magic themselves, almost. They're a sign Cephiro is healthy, not using all her strength just to heal anymore. It's been years since I've seen a flock so big…"

"Huh." Umi watched them swirl, her own personal cloud not as large as Clef's, but not abandoning her for him, either, though there were individual motes twisting back and forth between them. "They like mages?"

"They can do." He looked up a moment longer. "Back when things were bad, I never thought I'd see them again, and certainly not like this."

Umi stepped carefully across the grove, trying to move slowly enough she didn't run into any of the lights. There was enough room on the stone for her to sit there too, so she did. "Did you see them when you were younger?" she asked, carefully casual.

"Yes. Pretty often, actually. I used to walk out looking for them, when I was an apprentice, on summer evenings like this."

"What was that like?"

And slowly, absently, Clef told her little stories about his youth as they sat there, surrounded, all thoughts of getting back to the castle set aside for something far more important.