Title: Matchless
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: G
Length: 1500 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Post canon, Umi and Clef and the other girls
Summary: They didn't have that much need for fire in Cephiro, and when they did need something to burn, well. Hikaru was normally happy to do the honours.


oOo

Cephiran matches were a strange item - a little more like a flint and steel than they were a little stick of wood with strange chemicals on the end. It had taken Umi a good half hour to actually get one to strike, the first time she needed to - normally, of course, she didn't, because they didn't have that much need for fire in Cephiro, and when they did need something to burn, well. Hikaru was normally happy to do the honours.

But she'd picked up a few of the Cephiran traditions here and there, and one was to keep a light burning in the window through the longest night of the year - and the shortest. As the Knights had all received their own spaces when they officially moved over - Hikaru giving hers up almost instantly to move in with Presea (Umi hadn't entirely anticipated that, but they were cute together) and Fuu had turned hers into a study and generally slept with Ferio - Umi was on her own in the evening, that first year.

She was rather glad of it, to be honest. University back on Earth had been ridiculously easy compared to the fight to cram all the knowledge in her head for the Iru exams, but she was determined to pass at midsummer. Her days were full of studying, her nights could do with a bit of peace and quiet, and she was so worn out from the constant magic use that there was no trouble going to sleep.

The trick with the 'matches', demonstrated once by Presea when she bought them, took a while to replicate. But eventually she got the oil lamp wick to catch, and sat back with great satisfaction to watch the warm glow.

Waking up the next morning, she regretted it rather a lot more. Her wrist and her fingers ached horribly where she'd been gripping the metal piece hard and flicking her wrist to try to spark it.

"Okay," she announced to the breakfast table, flopping into a seat next to Hikaru. "Cephiro may have cool gems which carry things and fancy magic, but it needs to have lighters too."

"Those spark-strikers are a pain, aren't they?" Fuu said, nodding in agreement from the other end of the table. "I got Ferio to light our lamp last night."

"I didn't have any trouble," Hikaru said, with a grin, and Umi stuck her tongue out.

"Maybe not, but you need to use your relationship with Cephiro's top maker-of-stuff to get her to come up with a better solution, okay? I'll, I don't know, owe you a favour?"

"Maybe we've got better things to do with our free time," Hikaru told her, and Umi pulled a face at her.

Through the next few months, as her training went on and on, she thought about it now and again. Once, she was in Clef's study demanding he explain what one of the set texts actually meant if you used words that made sense, and there was an oil lamp sat on the middle of his desk, currently being used to hold down the corner of a very large map. "Do you have trouble with those spark striker things?" she demanded.

Clef looked up, and frowned at her. "Do I have- oh, lamp, you mean the match-striker? No." He turned back to the text. "I don't know what you're finding so difficult about this passage, but if you can't even start a fire, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised-"

"I can start a fire! But it's painful."

Rolling his eyes, Clef lifted his fingers and snapped them, not even bothering with a spell. A tiny crack of light shot from his fingers and through the air, hitting the wick of the lamp, which smoldered a second and then began to glow as the spark caught.

Umi started, and then turned to glare at him. "That," she said, voice firm, "is cheating. You can't just say you have no trouble with something because you don't use it! Do those things only exist because anyone who could come up with something better is cheating at lighting candles?"

"Probably," he said, with a sudden sharp grin at her. "But I meant this passage makes more sense if you understand some form of combustive or conductive magic."

"How?" she demanded, and he shook his head, reaching over to snuff the fire out.

"That is also hard to explain if you do not have-"

"Combustive magic, fine, then teach me." Umi folded her arms and glared at him, as Clef blinked at her.

"...Don't you have enough studying to do right now? Surely a general understanding of the topic does not require you understand every single piece of theory written about it-"

"This was on the reading list," she pointed out. "That means it's part of the course. Which means I should understand it. Plus, I'm not letting it beat me!"

Clef huffed, shaking his head. "Of course," he said, doing a bad attempt at not looking like he was on the verge of cracking up. "You are now in a battle to the death with a slightly obscure passage of magical theory written three thousand years ago by someone you will never meet. I should have known. That still does not make it a safe notion for you to go about learning to set things on fire at this particular moment, particularly given we are inside and surrounded by-" he reached over and grabbed her hand suddenly, fingers closing over hers with a particular sharp sensation, like a static shock but worse. She flinched.

"Hey!" Umi snapped, trying to pull her hands away and failing. "Clef, let go, what do you think I'm about to do?"

"Do you have any idea what your hands were doing just now?" he said, and it was - it should have been funny, as a sentence, because the opportunities for innuendo were endless. But Clef looked horribly serious, and he wasn't letting go. "Umi, we are surrounded by paper. Paper that I will have a lot of trouble doing without should you burn it up in a fit of enthusiasm."

"I wasn't doing anything?" She didn't feel so certain of that, anymore. She had no particular memory of doing anything with her hands, just... twisting her wrist, because it was still aching a little from the other day, and...

"You were practicing the hand gesture that the match-striker requires," Clef told her. "And your fingertips were beginning to flicker."

Umi blinked at him, then down at her hands, that biting shock as he grabbed her coming to the front of her mind. "...I wasn't doing it consciously?" she said, a lot more quietly. "Clef, I wasn't, I wouldn't try to burn your study up, you know that-"

"But you are tired, and impulsive, and you don't need to learn this tonight," he said, softer than she'd have spoken to someone who'd nearly set her place on fire. "Get some sleep, Umi - at the weekend, if you manage to actually get a decent amount of rest, we can try to teach you how to set only what you want on fire." He glanced down at her hands, lips twitching slightly. "And how to only throw lightning at things you actually want to hit, for that matter, as you seem to have started down that path rather than straight fire."

There was some kind of a joke in there about preferring Clef's style to Hikaru's, but Umi wasn't quite prepared to make it. Instead she pulled her hands back, as Clef finally let go, and stared at her fingers. "Lightning, huh?" she murmured. "I guess I could get to sleep a little earlier, if it meant getting lightning-throwing lessons. Especially if I'll never have to bother with one of those lamp-lighting things again."

"Spells aren't always the best course for lighting lamps and candles," Clef said, wry. "But I'm sure a full year will give you time to persuade Presea to come up with a different solution. So long as you don't manage to set anything of hers on fire while you're trying to talk, at least."

oOo

Both plans worked. By the time longest night came around again, Umi had lightning available at her fingertips and a new lighting device in the palm of her hand.

"What's the problem?" Clef asked, watching her stare at the unlit lamp in her windowsill. "The sun's almost down, if you want to light it, go ahead."

"I can't decide how to!" Umi told him, laughing, and in the end she reached out with the lighter and flicked it on at the same time as she snapped the fingers of her other hand - and which method got there first, she couldn't have said. Either way the light from the lamp was just as warm and comforting as the year before - but this time she wasn't going to end up regretting it in the morning.

"You were still wrong about that bit of theory," she said, happily settling to watch the flame. "I still think it made no sense, combustible magic or not."

Clef handed her a cup of tea, taking a seat beside her. "So I take it your thesis for your mastery is going to be proving him wrong?"

"Maybe." She grinned at him. "Maybe it's just about proving you wrong."

"You can try." He saluted her with his tea, and they sat watching the flame dance a little, peace settling about them as the dark grew absolute outside and the whole of Cephiro prepared to wait the long hours until the light returned.