Title: Make a splash
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 700ish words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Post-canon Umi accidentally pays a visit
Summary: She didn’t even mean to visit.

oOo

It had been almost three years since Umi had been to Cephiro. University abroad had been a hard choice, but probably the right one: she wasn’t sure if she was going to stay on Earth or if she was more interested in moving to Cephiro – Earth had some neat things, but the lure of magic and feeling like you could really make a difference was huge.

Still, she had been accepted onto a post-graduate course in Japan now, so here she was moving back. Only… her degree had finished at the beginning of June. The academic year in Japan had started in April. She had done some travelling before her official graduation in August, and then packed everything up, which left her with a bit more than half a year to fill.

She’d kept in touch with Hikaru and Fuu, but neither of them were in Tokyo right now – Hikaru was at some event for her veterinary degree, and Fuu was on holiday with her sister for a few weeks. They were all meeting up in three weeks for the first time in – well, it had been almost as long since the three of them had been together at once as it had been since Umi had been in Cephiro and seen any of her friends there.
Her parents were happy to have her back, but three days after she was home they headed out for a massive week-long conference, so she was left to her own devices.

Unpacking three year’s worth of collected belongings could have taken that long but she’d sent most of what she’d decided to keep by surface mail, and it was going to be a while before it reached her. Instead she just… took a break.

It wasn’t like she meant to try to leap to Cephiro, precisely. She just… thought she could wander out to Tokyo Tower like a tourist, for old time’s sake.

Standing on the observation deck, she grinned out at the view, remembering the trips they’d taken all through high school.

The next thing she knew, a rush of light was wrapping around her, and she said some particularly rude words she hadn’t known last time as the magic flung her from one world to another.

It took her by surprise, and she didn’t know how the Castle might have changed the last few years – how Cephiro might have changed. So even as she tried to grab hold of the magic, focus on one spot, she couldn’t fix on one thing – and she kept thinking of that first trip, their first fall from the sky towards the ocean, and all she could think was ‘but I don’t want to fall!’

Somehow it wasn’t actually the surprise it should have been after that when she appeared not three miles in the air, but about three metres from the gleaming blue of the ocean, and she was laughing helplessly even as she splashed down into it.

The water wasn’t horribly cold, but she still didn’t really want to be in it – in a pair of jeans and an oversized shirt that ballooned up about her, and with shoes on her feet that didn’t want to flex to let her swim easily.

Shore wasn’t too far, and she was contemplating how she would deal with appearing back in Tokyo minus her shoes when a familiar noise overhead had her looking up, at the smooth-scaled belly and iridescent wings of Fyula as the huge fish flew a happy circle about her then splashed down into the water, coming up underneath her, and the wind was actually cold through her sodden clothes.

It couldn’t stop her laughing happily as he carried her back to the still-familiar spikes of the Castle, but after a dizzying array of greetings and explanations she had to admit it was nice to get into a dry set of clothes and sit with a hot cup of tea in her hands, wrapped in an exceptionally fuzzy blanket as Clef summoned chair after chair for each of her friends who wandered in and Caldina led the conversation to catch her up on what everyone had been doing for the last few years.