Title: A Water Dragon
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: G
Length: 1200 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Selece and Umi fluffy waterfight nonsense? Because I love the Knights and their Mashin~ (Encouraged by Milieva - well, she laughed at me about it, anyway, that counts - so at least a little your fault, dear!)
Summary: Umi doesn't quite just summon Selece so she can have a waterfight. (Because persuading him to appear without summoning is much more fun!)

oOo

This year, the summer heat in Tokyo was thick and oppressive. A few people revelled in it: most endured, moving from building to building, only relaxing where there was air-conditioning. Cephiro was a tempting alternative. It was still summer, and indeed something of a heatwave, but there was nothing like the stickiness of Tokyo’s humid atmosphere.

Neither was there anything like Japan’s air-conditioning units. Mostly, the temperature wasn’t so bad, but there were a few hours in the middle of the day when everything stilled under the pressure of the sun, people retreating to the quiet shade indoors – many taking a nap, others sitting to quiet tasks which didn’t involve much motion.

The stillness felt …foreign, to the three girls. While Fuu was content to stay high in the Castle towers, reading a book and enjoying the breeze so high up, Hikaru wasn’t much bothered by the heat and dashed about as usual, though she at least took more breaks to rest and have something to drink than most days. Umi, too, felt restless when she tried to stay quiet, while most of their friends were working, but she wasn’t able to ignore the heat as Hikaru did. She walked, instead, hiding in the dappled shade of the closest woodland.

Lake Camry, too, was not all that far away. A few miles of easy walking through the edge of the Forest of Eleru where it spilled down over the plains at the heart of Cephiro, and there it lay, a mass of water glimmering in the sunlight and stretching into the distance. It was large, though not precisely large enough to be an inland sea; the water was clear, and clean, and stayed cool even on the hottest of summer days.

It made a handy retreat for Umi when she couldn’t stand hiding indoors any longer, but found it too warm to do stay outside unless she lurked in the shadows – or went swimming. The first day she arrived there mostly by accident, and jumped in fully clothed. The next she was better prepared, swimming costume under her clothes which dried quickly enough once she decided she’d had enough. She had even tried to persuade the others to come with her – but Umi wasn’t too disappointed when they preferred their own methods of waiting out the heat, because there was something luxurious in being alone in the vast expanse of water.

Or not quite alone, because as soon as she touched the water she could feel Selece’s attention resting lightly about her, drawn to the lake… or, perhaps, to her enjoyment of it.

The Mashin had left Cephiro in some ways, but they were still tied to the land and to their Knights in others, and Umi talked to Selece fairly often. Mostly about magic, and other things she didn’t understand – though their conversations had a habit of devolving into nonsense as she rambled about her life and he seemed content to listen. Today, she turned to float on her back in the water, and reached back to that presence.

“Hey, Selece? Why don’t you come swimming with me?” She asked, impulsively. “Camry’s a big enough bath even for you!”

/Thank you, little one. But I do not need to bathe. This dimension we Mashin dwell in currently has no matter of the kind which can dirty one./

“Maybe, but what about swimming for fun?” She grinned up at the empty air, lazy hand-motions keeping her in place against the faint current. “You’re a god of water, right? Don’t you like it?”

/Liking is not the matter. There is no need for it. If you merely wish for a companion to indulge in a water-fight with you, then certainly you are capable of persuading one of your friends to come and join you./

“Well, so what?” Umi was fully aware that her parents, if they had seen the grin now on her face, would call it ‘mischievous’ at best. “Maybe I want a decent opponent! Is there a law banning you from having fun sometimes?”

Selece grumbled slightly, a noise rumbling through her thoughts like the undertone of surf on the sand. /It is… unseemly./

“You can’t be dignified all the time! You’ll burst of it.” Umi declared, and twisted upright in the water, sculling her hands to stay steady. The sun was still beating down, and the water slipping over her shoulders was like silk, and it held a sliver of the same energy that Selece was brimming with. Her senses seemed to stretch through it, somehow, magic connecting her to the vastness and filling her in return with delight at being a part of it.

Something she wanted, suddenly and determinedly, to share with Selece.

/…Perhaps./ He said, and she knew from the hesitation that he was wavering.

“Come on! Please? I’d – like that.”

There was a pause, and then the air grew heavier about her head and her shoulders – grew, for a moment, very like the dense atmosphere back home.

Then there was a great shape swooping out of nothingness to slide into the water, curling about and flaring his wings as he went, deliberately sending a great wave in her direction. Umi laughed aloud the moment before it struck, then she was letting it wash her back and away, under the surface: she had never been afraid of water, though she respected the dangers it could present. Now, though, she was safe in the knowledge that Selece would never let it harm her – safe to twist into the current his entry had formed and reach out to it, spreading her fingers wide and gathering power for a moment before she finally turned and kicked for the surface.

She unleashed the spell as she broke into the air, calling out the words of her attack as she pushed a wall of water back at the dragon – and laughing again as he snorted and ducked underneath it, wings spreading wide and angled so the wave would wash straight over himself.

The whole lake was their playground, and their toys, and it danced with their game: the water spirits of the lake, normally shy of Umi, were lured closer, and couldn’t resist joining in – even some of those who lived in the rivers which fed the lake heard the commotion and came to play. The still water was shaken and stirred and alive with laughter.

oOo

It was far more than an hour later when Umi stumbled up onto the shore on tired legs, Selece walking out more steadily behind her. The heat wasn’t so oppressive anymore, and when he stretched out on the grass by the waterside, wings stretched out to dry off, Umi dropped down by his head and rested against one foreleg, sighing happily.

When she fell asleep, Selece shifted sleepily, and brought one wing higher to shade her rest.

oOo

(That evening, back at the Castle, Ferio leaned across the table and asked if she’d really summoned her Mashin just to have a waterfight. The news had travelled back to the castle long before she had – gossiping spirits and creatures and humans alike all incredulous, but everyone who knew Umi personally, well. They could believe it.

Umi just grinned, and started planning for the next day's trip to the lake.)

oOo