Title: Flourish
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 650ish
Content notes: None
Author notes: Hikaru & Presea, post-canon
Summary: This was the only time Hikaru had ever seen Presea getting her hands dirty.


oOo


Hikaru was used to finding Presea working on something – for a while it had mostly been whole buildings, sometimes including the furniture, as Cephiro’s rebuilding continued.

At first, she had assumed that Presea only made weapons and armour. That had been far from true; ‘smithing’ in Cephiro wasn’t limited to any single kind of material or product, but was the art of working any physical material into a new form with either magic, tools, or a combination of both.

Presea’s specialty was weaponry, and magic, but she’d used a couple of tools when doing some fine detail work that Hikaru had seen, and when literally all buildings but one had been destroyed, well. The skills to use proper materials and create something good and strong to be a new home was in high demand.

But this was still the only time Hikaru had ever seen her getting her hands dirty.

“What are you doing?” she blurted instead of a greeting, leaning in curiously to where Presea’s hands were buried in a large pot filled with earth.

Presea rocked back a little, and Hikaru would have apologised for startling her, but she grinned at Hikaru so brightly the moment she looked up that Hikaru failed to say anything at all.

“Experimenting!” was her cheerful answer.

“…Experimenting?”

“With plant pots.” Pulling dirt-streaked hands out of the pot, Presea waved along the low table beyond it, where a dozen other pots stood, all slightly different in colour and shape. “We’ve got some plants in the Castle which the gardeners haven’t found a good area for yet, outside of the garden rooms, and some of them aren’t doing great in there either. It seems to be a lot about the soil, what it’s made of, what nutrients are in it – each of these clays has different properties, and some have more drainage than others, so I’m planting the same few seeds in each of them to see which work best in which pots so we can make a whole lot.”

She pointed at a small box as she spoke, and Hikaru peered inside; there were three small twists of paper, each with seeds of a different shape; one almost like grass seeds, long and flat; a second more like tiny nuts than anything else she could think of. The third were teeny little balls that glinted iridescent where the light caught them.

“It’s a bit of guess-work. We used to have garden-smiths who specialised in this kind of thing, but none came through – there were never that many. And none of their records came through very intact. But I’ve got a couple of apprentices who are showing an aptitude for this kind of thing who are helping with this project, so I’m hoping it’ll bear fruit.” Presea paused. “Not actual fruit, none of these plants should – well, do seeds count as a fruit?”

Hikaru blinked at her. “I… I don’t think they do in Japanese, but I don’t know in Cephiran?”

“I guess that complicates it even more.” Presea didn’t seem put out, just amused. “I’ll have to ask the gardeners, I guess. Yet more questions. Anyway, I’ve a half dozen more of these to fill, I’m afraid, so if you were here to ask me anything…”

“Just whether you wanted to come have some tea and catch up. But if you don’t mind showing me what to do, I’d like to help.”

Presea glanced at the nice dress Hikaru had on to come visiting, and then back at her face, but shrugged. “If you really want to?”

“Yes!”

“Here, then. If you pick one of these empty pots…”

Hikaru spent the next hour helping Presea planting seeds, and then Presea laughed and insisted she went and touched all the other pots too. “In case being touched by a former Pillar makes a difference,” she said, and Hikaru blushed. But even with the slight teasing, it was one of the best hours she’d spent in Cephiro.