It's shortly after her fifteenth birthday that Akane gets the Vision. Hardly the first vision, of course… bits of Gaian lore choose the strangest times to bubble up from her subconscious and she takes a mischievous glee in letting others guess which of her prophecies are truth and which are fiction.
So a new one doesn't net her much interest.
'Not buying it,' Chihaya sniffs, arms folded.
'Don't make things up,' Lucia snaps, and Akane has to dodge a cuff to the head. Just for that Lucia is going to find a caterpillar on her bed—a big, brightly coloured one that'll make the girl squeal and swear eternal vengeance on her older sister once more.
Shizuru, ever the kind-hearted soul, frowns thoughtfully when asked. 'A tree? Hmm….'
Several minutes of silent musing pass before Akane gives up and slips out of the room only to find Shizuru already in the next, her passage marked only by the breeze that ruffles Akane's hair.
'Ask Kotori,' she commands, and vanishes again in the moment between heartbeats.
Asking Kotori proves harder than it sounds. The barrier of life energy around the town is enough to hold in most of its heat but not all, and the town was designed for the heights of a Japanese summer rather than an impending Ice Age. Rebuilding is necessary, and Kotori's treemen are in high demand.
Kotori does show up, eventually, her face flushed from exertion; construction might be easier using familiars but it's still hard work. Akane tells her story more hesitantly than usual and lets her childhood stammer return a little, hoping that a show of uncharacteristic humility will get Kotori to take her seriously.
By the end, Kotori's smile is wide and indulgent.
'Oki-doki, then! The Occult Club will find your tree!' she exclaims. Akane knows her technically-younger older sister doesn't believe the vision is anything more than a dream—her eyes haven't narrowed in the way they do when Kotori truly focuses her intellect from pleasant nightlight to cutting laser—but if she says the Occult Club will do something, they will. No matter how much they grumble.
No, it's only after the first failure that Akane really manages to interest her sister.
The tree is thick enough that Lucia can't fit her arms around it. It's in a clearing, which seems somewhat correct since Akane doesn't remember any other trees nearby. The bark has the right texture, even, yet vision-wise it's a bust. Akane draws mystic, half-remembered symbols on it in blood volunteered by the quick-healing Shizuru; pries off some of the bark when that fails. She even sends up a leaf bird to search the branches but finds nothing.
Chihaya knocks on the tree like she's visiting a deaf grandparent. 'Helloooo! Anyone in there?'
She's not even being sarcastic; this is Chihaya genuinely trying to help. In recognition of her sister's good intentions, Akane restrains herself from saying something caustic and counts it as her Good Deed for today.
'I see nothing,' Lucia announces grumpily. The closest the dark-haired girl wants to get to nature is a manicured lawn, although she does have a soft spot for wildflowers. 'Clearly this is another of Akane's delusions. Or misdirection for some act of skulduggery elsewhere.'
'Ahh, don't be like that, Lu-chi,' Kotori mumbles, napping in a pile of soft leaves.
'Yeah, her pranks make us look silly, not herself,' Chihaya points out, not entirely helpfully.
'Well, it seems a most useless vision. What are we to do with just a tree? Even if Akane isn't doing all this on purpose, the whole thing was probably just a dream.'
For doubting her abilities, Lucia receives no mercy.
'Oh, I don't suppose you'd understand, sister dear. After all, you're just an ordinary human.'
'…bad Akane. Bullying is not permitted.'
'Bullying? Why, I'm just complimenting her for having her feet on the ground, aren't I? She can't help not being mentally unstable enough to control familiars.'
'And you can't help being evil,' Chihaya mutters. If it were not unladylike, Akane's sure the noblewoman and the tomboy would be bumping fists by now.
Not that she minds—it's true, after all, and Akane takes great pride in her… moral flexibility. Nevertheless, letting the most loudmouthed of her sisters think she can insult her without punishment is unthinkable.
'Don't get me started on you, Chi—'
'Was there anything else to the vision, Akane?' asks the recumbent form of their shiftless leader.
Akane's mouth opens. Shuts. There's an answer there but it's private and—
'…s,' she mutters.
'Sorry. Didn't catch that.'
'Eyes. Gold ones.' Painfully familiar orbs that she somehow associates with hopeful awe and panicked terror in equal measure.
Kotarou's eyes.
'Is that so?' Her sister asks, shedding the lazy mask and rising to her feet. Kotori presses a hand to the bark and her eyes lid in concentration. The power of a druid; one that Kotori's never been able to share or explain. But whatever she's looking for isn't there.
'We'll just have to keep trying,' her sister says.
That evening, Akane finds Lucia in her room, sitting at the end of the bed. The jab is instinctive—and gets cut off when her sister turns to her with reddened, moist eyes.
'Help me,' her sister demands, her pre-emptory tone contradicted by her beseeching expression.
Akane stutters, her quick tongue tripping over itself. 'With what?' she asks eventually.
'Black magic.'
Good. This is more familiar ground. 'For yourself, or someone else? If it's that boy you stare at in class, I can make him yours with a love potion.' A manipped photo and a threatening email. 'Or give him boils, if you prefer.' Old-fashioned itching powder, home-made from the barbed seeds of Platanus acerifolia.
Lucia sniffles.
'I-I want to have a familiar. Like you or Chihaya o-or Kotori. Everyone else is useful and all I can do is c-complain.'
It's very rare for Akane to regret saying something. She still forgets, even after all these years, that her words can be heard by other people.
'I know you can do it!' Her younger sister's voice lowers to a whisper. 'You're the h-holy woman. Please…'
Lucia's words are stifled when Akane wraps her in a hug. 'Are you asking me to make you depressed?' she murmurs, amused. 'You're fine the way you are. Ahh, and you're on the path of a superhuman anyway, with that go-getter attitude. Silly girl.'
The black-haired girl wriggles indignantly, furious that her sister isn't taking her seriously.
'But,' Akane continues, holding on. 'I will find you a familiar. I promise.'
She means every word of it. If Lucia doesn't have an affinity for familiars, then Akane will simply have to make a familiar that has an affinity for Lucia.
Nothing that she tries works, not even the patched, worn doll that was Lucia's only possession when their little family came together.
Yet after another dream, Akane (foolishly, irrationally) has a solution.
She does some research.
Most of Gaia's summoners were killed fighting Guardian, fled to the City of Stone, or took their own lives once they realised that the peace they'd sought after would not be handed to them guilt-free. Their expertise is lost forever, and there's nothing on the internet about human-shaped familiars.
Kotori snaps at her when she suggests it but the girl looks speculative for days afterwards and Akane's sure there's something there; when you can't talk, you get very, very good at listening.
Still, some instinct tells her that this is the right thing to do.
(Deep in the memories of the world that she accumulated from Kashima Sakura, a red-eyed man chuckles at her and slips back into her subconscious.)
Over the next two months, the Occult Club investigates no fewer than twelve different trees and traverses half the forest in so doing. For normal humans, such behaviour would be close to suicidal; for two extremely talented summoners and one of Guardian's most promising recruits, it's a walk in the overgrown park.
Alas, their search accomplishes nothing besides convincing Touka that they're up to no good. Busy with her teaching, she orders a reluctant Imamiya into the role of babysitter and Akane immediately punishes this gambit by lacing his burgers with sedatives and Touka's with laxatives. Superhumans have no willpower when it comes to food.
But as spring turns to summer and Akane outgrows her old shoe size, her dreams become clearer.
She's drawn to the tree on the hill, the one that's grown more than ten metres in the last month. Kotori's visited it several times before in her neverending quest to prove the existence of supernatural phenomena beyond superhumans and familiars, and always come away disappointed.
But it isn't difficult to convince Kotori to try once more.
'Hey, did you hear?' Kotori asks her one day. 'The City Council is knocking down the tree on the hill, poor thing. Not that I blame them, it's chilly enough without a big green parasol blocking all the light, but it's kind of a shame. The big guy was trying so hard!'
'Perhaps we should go and see it off,' Akane says, careful to keep her face serene. 'In the spirit of commemoration.'
Kotori smiles a conspiratorial smile. 'You know, I was just thinking the same thing.'
Is this the one, prophet?
Hu…my prophecies have never been wrong.
I think they have…
They have.
Ninety percent were wrong.
Enough nitpicking! This one's right!
…
Do you think… it'll work this time?
…
What's wrong, Kotori?
…eh? …nothing, I just spaced out a little. It feels…very familiar.
…
Okay, that's enough chit-chat. Let's do this thing.
Get in a circle, everyone.
Time to count down.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Come on out!
It's my theory that the best fantasy settings are those that allow for many more stories to occur than the ones we are actually shown, that have layers and depth. In this respect, Rewrite as a whole and the ending in particular are criminally underused, so I ended up writing a few moments in that cosmos.
I love Bonds by Trisomy and I'm looking forward to seeing what becomes of Rewrite: Terra Plus by Sekai. Why don't we start filling in this post-Terra world?
Yours sincerely,
DeusPascitCorvos
