A/N: For this oneshot, I decided to try my hand with a totally new character that I've never used before (Wizard). I don't know if the end result really fit the prompt "Cold" as well as some of my others, and the title is super unoriginal, but this was another really simple fic written in only a day on short-term notice (I usually plan my stuff far in advance), so it's still better than nothing! And thanks to Emo Cowboy and therainydaykids for organizing this whole thing, it's been fun writing these so far! I have you to thank for getting me back into writing over winter break, haha. -CCM
Coffee and Starlight
In a small house at the edge of Harmonica Town, the resident Wizard of Castanet sat alone as he normally did at such a late hour, his silver hair falling forward out of its braid into his face as he prepared himself a coffee; he had a long night of research ahead of him. The wonderfully rich, pleasant aroma of roasting coffee filled the air inside the warm little room, which created a safe haven from the growing cold outdoors. His solitary comfort.
And then, to his surprise, there was a knock on the door.
The Wizard paused, pondering the sound for a moment; then turned away from his coffee creation to see who in Castanet could possibly be waiting outside his home at this hour. Were they really looking for him? He rarely ever got visitors, if at all; especially not at this hour.
So he was completely unprepared for the young woman with short brunette hair who flung herself at him as soon as the door was opened.
"Ah! A-Akari?" With the smallest sigh of relief, he recognized the girl as his closest friend in town; the only mortal who ever regularly visited him, in fact. But this wasn't right...
More flustered than he had ever recalled feeling before, the Wizard awkwardly pulled away just enough to catch sight of the farmer girl's face. There was no possible way he could take the tears streaming down her face as a mere trick of the dim light.
"I-I'm so sorry," she said, stifling what was unmistakably a sob, and backed away from him just as unexpectedly as she had hugged him in the first place, wiping the tears from her eyes with a shaking hand. "I didn't mean to… you know. I just… I thought you could tell me... m-my fortune?..."
The Wizard was more than confused now. This was much more than just a simple fortune-telling request, judging from her emotional state at the moment. Even he could sense that. "But Akari… what is wrong?"
"Owen!" she hiccupped, her voice hitching in her throat. "He… he broke up with me! For Kathy! On the Starry Night festival of all days, can you believe it?"
She took a deep, shuddering breath, as though struggling to hold in all of her bottled up emotion. "I had just gone to meet him for our date, just as we had planned, and… he…"
"Oh…" So tonight was the Starry Night festival? The Wizard hadn't paid much attention at all to the town's various festivals in ages, but he definitely remembered what that one in particular was all about.
And Akari… Glancing down at her miserable, tear-stained face, he groaned inwardly. He certainly didn't have the right experience for these types of matters! Why had she come to him, of all people in Harmonica Town?
"You're… cold," Wizard finally noted, his mismatched eyes softening with concern for the young woman who sniffled and sobbed before him. It was obvious that she was hurting, and the frigid air surely didn't help. "Did you… walk all the way here… in the snow?"
Akari nodded dejectedly, her eyes downcast. "Yeah," she admitted. "I've been out for a while… I kind of just stood out in the snow alone before I even decided to finally come here to visit you. I-I didn't know where else to go."
She looked back up at him, and the Wizard could clearly see the hurt deep in her lovely coffee-colored eyes. She looked so cold, so utterly heartbroken.
If only he could tell her that this would soon blow over, that the chill the breakup had placed in her heart would be replaced by a multitude of new feelings and emotions as she moved on. After all, to someone who had been living for what seemed like an eternity, even a hurt such as this passed by in the blink of an eye.
Nothing would last forever, and that fact was both a blessing and a curse.
"Let me… help you warm up. It is… the least I could do."
He opened the door wider and wordlessly gestured for the farm girl to come in and sit down. Akari quickly obliged, slumping dejectedly into one of the wooden chairs at the table. He did not fail to notice the way her eyes locked onto his crystal ball as she took a seat, the magical orb safely nestled upon a swathe of rich purple velvet in the center of the table like an egg in its nest, unassuming in its significance.
It was dark and empty now, merely a large, seemingly ordinary ball of clear unblemished glass to the untrained eye, but the Wizard could easily use a spell to see whatever images the ancient magic of the crystal wished to show him, to look deep into the hearts of the other inhabitants of Castanet.
The Wizard draped a soft, deep blue quilt over Akari's shoulders, hoping to help her ward off the cold. He then swiftly turned to finish his interrupted coffee preparations, confirming that he had made more than enough for both himself and the farmer, and poured the steaming dark brown liquid into two mugs taken from the cupboard. One of the mugs, a funny purple one with bright orange spots, he handed to Akari, who was still seated motionless at the table, staring at his crystal ball.
To his surprise, she finally tore her attention away from the crystalline globe and giggled as she took the spotted mug from him, though it sounded particularly halfhearted. "Coffee… this late at night?"
Wizard took a satisfied sip from his own mug, a dark, almost-but-not-quite black cup with a sparkling swirled design on it, like a spattering of stars across the sky. "Coffee… is good at any time… especially for nighttime stargazing…"
At the mention of 'stargazing,' Akari's face fell again. Ah, that was right. Starry Night.
"So can you read my fortune?" she begged, that nagging thought entering her mind once more. "Please? I want to know… if I'll ever find love..."
She slumped back in her chair bitterly, letting her coffee splash around the mug in her shaking hands. "Or maybe I'll just be alone all my life. Just me, and my cows and chickens, growing old and wrinkly together on the farm."
Akari laughed resentfully at that, her voice cracking.
"No need… for such drastic ideas…" Wizard reprimanded gently, recognizing that she was only speaking out of pain and desperation over her broken heart, but he agreed to read her love fortune all the same, if only to soothe her mind.
Gazing into his crystal ball, the Wizard mumbled the appropriate ancient phrases under his breath, sprinkling some sort of silvery, glittering powder over its surface from a pouch he kept on him, and watched as strange shimmering swirls began to form deep within, like an unsteady fog that gave off its own unearthly light, gradually billowing and undulating and finally condensing inside.
Soon, a single indistinct image appeared in the swirling glass surface of the orb, though there was no mistaking its form to the properly trained eye; it was the very image that the Wizard had expected to see within.
The farm girl, however, was too consumed in her coffee to notice the dark, hazy face that appeared for but a brief moment there in the Wizard's crystal ball.
"Well… yes, Akari…" he finally mumbled, speaking slower than usual. "It seems… that there is indeed someone in Castanet… who cares about you very much."
Akari immediately jumped up from her coffee mug with newfound energy. "Really? But who?"
"That is… for you to find out… on your own…" Wizard smiled solemnly at her, and Akari managed to return it, though she still looked a little disappointed. "All I can say... is that they are closer than you think."
The brunette farmer sat in thought for a moment, the mug of coffee still grasped in one hand, the other hand tracing the faint worn lines etched in the surface of the Wizard's table, formed from many years of use.
"Okay... I see what you mean," she admitted, much quieter than before, but her voice no longer shook. "I have to let fate play out on its own, is that it? If I know who you saw in the crystal ball, I might storm out there right now and mess things up before they even had a chance to come into bloom, or something like that?"
"Something... like that." The ghost of that musing little smile still tracing his lips, the Wizard stood from his chair and gestured toward her with one hand. "Come... perhaps you can still celebrate Starry Night... after all."
Akari looked surprised at the suggestion, though she did not hesitate to join him, still sipping on her coffee. "...Where are we going?"
"You... will see." In the corner of the room, just beyond the enormous telescope on its raised platform that he used in his studies of astronomy, the Wizard pulled back a violet curtain that Akari had never noticed before in all of her previous visits, exposing a twisting staircase leading upward.
"It will only take a moment. We can go up here... to watch the stars. It is my secret... little spot for stargazing."
Tentatively, the farm girl followed the Wizard past his telescope up the slightly rickety flight of stairs toward the roof, accessible through a sturdy trapdoor in the ceiling just above their heads. He helped her step up onto the surface of the roof outside, and as she ungracefully stumbled out into the starlight, the blanket still draped over her shoulders, she couldn't help but gasp as she looked up to the sky.
They really didn't call this the Starry Night festival for nothing.
The entire black backdrop of the night sky was sprinkled with what looked like hundreds upon hundreds, maybe even thousands, of stars, much too numerous to count. They sparkled and glittered above the pair on the rooftop like minuscule white crystals, or perhaps silvery sequins, scattered in endless swirling patterns that extended far beyond the treetops.
At this height, the sight of the star-flecked sky was truly mesmerizing, and Akari could hardly bear to look away from the breathtaking view. She almost felt as though it were entirely possible to simply reach out her hand and touch them, they were so clear, so real. And though it was cold outside, it was easy enough to try and ignore the iciness against her skin; these stars were just too perfect, too ethereally beautiful to ever pass up. Nearly everything else in the world - the cold, the pain, the heartbreak - was forgotten in this moment, pushed to the far recesses of her mind for now.
"I often come up here to observe the stars alone... to study them with the naked eye, and reflect," the Wizard explained, following her gaze upward. "It is... meditative for me. And in winter... the air is so crisp and clear, perfect for stargazing."
"Wow..." Akari breathed, her eyes wide as though attempting to take in everything around her at once, completely oblivious to the chill of the wintry night. "This is absolutely beautiful."
She finally tore her eyes away from the starry sight to face him. "I can definitely see how this would be meditative. It's so peaceful up here."
The Wizard nodded, a serious expression on his face, still looking out at the sky. "While I do appreciate my solitude, and the quiet it brings... it is nice to enjoy another's company up here from time to time."
As they sat on the roof watching the stars for a few moments, or perhaps an eternity, each clutching a mug of coffee in their hands, their clouded breaths visible before them in the cold air... something clicked into place in Akari's mind.
"This must be such a special place to you..." she murmured. When was the last time the reclusive Wizard had ever brought another living being up here?
Akari stared into her half-drained mug of coffee thoughtfully, feeling his mismatched eyes turned to focus on her. "I think I do know… a person who really cares about me, after all."
She turned to the Wizard with a smile – a wide, somewhat sad but still entirely genuine smile, with not a hint of the previous cold or hurt that had tormented her when she first stepped through his door.
"Thank you. For everything."