crushed diamonds and bent gold
Characters: Ur, Ultear Milkovich
Summary: It is the start of an eternal circle of beginnings and endings.
A long time ago, there lived a mother with her daughter. They were both widely known for their high intelligence and their magic. Many feared them because no matter how dark the future seemed, they always kept smiling and walked with their heads held high into every fight and when they walked away, they were victorious.
The mother was a woman of kindness and whatever she did, she did it for the sake of those she loved – but especially for her daughter. The people were afraid of even doing as much as breathing wrongly into the daughter's direction out of fear that the mother might take offence and avenge her child. But no matter how overprotective the mother seemed, her daughter was just like her. She loved her mother greatly and no matter what would happen, she would forever stand by her mother's side and support her.
For the longest time, they were quite happy and enjoyed life as it was. As powerful mages, there was hardly anyone they had to fear and they earned enough money to have a humble but happy life. But as in so many other cases, happiness did not last forever and a war was declared on their country. The mother was known as one of the most powerful mages and therefore, she was forced to fight in a war that was pointless from the very start.
The war was – as any war – cruel and disgusting but in the middle of the battle where blood was shed and lives were torn apart, the mother marched, eyes cold as ice as the fire around her sung to her. She could not die. She had a daughter to return to and she had made a promise.
In the end, it was a promise she failed to keep as a sword cut through her side and left her bleeding to death. It was a pathetic end for a woman who had been the probably strongest user of fire magic in the entire army but while this life ended, it was also a beginning.
Indeed, the day the woman was cut down and as she died, she swore that she would keep the promise to protect her daughter – if not in this life, well, there would always be a next time around.
And there was a 'next time around'.
They were reborn as mother and daughter a second time and this time, they are happier. They have a complete family this time around with a husband and father and a son and brother. They laughed easier and smiled more sincerely now because they were not scared this time around. The daughter grew and the mother watched her proudly as her older child became more and more proficient at the use of magical swords.
Along with the son and the father, they were a strong team of mages – especially since they had a better physical strength than most mages. As members of the guild Zephyr Heart, they ensured the safety of countless travellers and they made their living with things they enjoyed. Their happiness was not measured in wealth or successful jobs but in hours spent together.
But once again, happiness did not last forever.
The daughter fell ill and no matter how many doctors checked on her, they could not save her. For the family, this was the hardest time but for the mother, this was the hardest – to have to break the promise she had made in a lifetime she could not remember ripped her apart because as her daughter had been born, she had sworn that she would love and protect her forever.
And as mages of Zephyr Heart, going back on an oath was out of question.
The daughter was painfully aware of her nearing death but she, too, did not want to lose her mother and so she made the promise to be reborn at her mother's side again so that they could have the happy and long life they both deserved.
Those two promises were the beginning of the end.
They were reborn over and over again, always as mother and daughter, and they were usually happy until something bad happened. Due to their oaths, they could not be separated in any of their lifetimes and if they could remember, they might curse themselves because as long as they had not fulfilled their promises, they could not rest peacefully. If a comparison would be needed, the only possible would be the one to the celestial spirit Pisces which were the entwined spirits of a mother and her child and yes, this was the same as what had happened to them – with the difference that they were still humans, two human souls that tried to fulfil an eternal oath.
Mother and daughter were similar and different at the same time, two sides of the same coin.
In one of their lives, first the mother used a forbidden spell to save her student and than, many years and betrayals later, the daughter followed the path of her mother – and due to a trick of fate, they could meet before their next and final reincarnation.
The mother who had waited for so many years had not aged a single day since her death and so she sat on a rock and stared into the distance. The place where they met after all those years was their old house – or an image of this place because the real one had been long sold.
The daughter hesitated as she stood in the doorframe because so many years had been passed since she had last seen her mother and now, they looked more alike than ever before. She finally gave herself a last moment of encouragement before she stepped into the room.
"Mom?" she asked.
The mother turned around and smiled as she stood up. "Ultear," she said, holding out her arms. "I am so, so proud of you … dear, you have grown so much…"
"Mom…"
"Ssh, don't cry," she said as she hugged her daughter. "There is no reason left for you to shed a tear. Things … things have turned out quite well, actually. There, take a look. You saved them … your one minute, the minute you thought that did not matter saved a father, a friend, a brother and lover, another lover and a friend and protector. A minute does matter at times."
"You … you have been watching the entire time…?"
"Being dead is not exactly the most interesting things in this world and yes, watching was the only thing I could do from this place," the woman said. "I could watch … and I couldn't be any prouder of you and your brothers. You did so well … you have made me the proudest mother in this world…"
"What is this place, mom?" Ultear asked as she looked around. "Is this our home? Will we stay here?"
"No," Ur replied as she shook her home. "We cannot stay here yet. This is the place where we stay between two lives or so I was told. We are not scheduled to be reborn yet but we – or at least I – will be reincarnated soon. It seems like there is some promise we have to fulfil."
"A promise? What kind of promise?"
"According to the person in charge in the afterlife, our souls are bound through a promise we have made multiple lifetimes ago … he didn't want to explain and so I thought about it for a longer time … if the last life we had is any indication, we never a full life, always died way too young, way too early. Your death is just further proof for this. So if we are reborn, we have to live a full life … a life of happiness and laughter and tears and everything."
"A life … that is the complete opposite of what we had the last time around…" Ultear said slowly, the sensation of having died and having met her mother, fading away quickly. She had been prepared after all and now, that her dream of meeting her mother again had come true, her nerves had calmed down quite well.
"A happy ending, yes," Ur nodded. "If we couldn't get it in this life, we will have it in the next one and … we shall be happy, really happy. We shall smile and laugh … live like we never lived before. We will have a completely clean slate, both of us."
"You always had one, mom," Ultear said. "You didn't pile up sins to go back in time…"
"Not in the last life, yes, but … I did so in previous lives, in lives I can no longer remember. You are not the only one who believed that with enough sins, a better world could be created," Ur said as she sat down again. "I believed so as well … and I believe that our last life with all its pain and all the losses we suffered … that was our redemption for other sins … the life lived to settle the old scores, to clean our slates before the next time around."
"M-mom…" Ultear whispered as she sat down next to her mother. "How can you be so collected?"
"Because I died seventeen years ago … when I chose to," the older woman explained. "To me, there was no other possible decision … it was something I had to do, damn the consequences."
"So we are on the same page regarding our deaths?"
"Very much so, yes."
"In that case … if I died for a reason … if my death had a meaning like yours, than I am okay with the way things turned out in the end … I believe that things were fated to end like this … without anyone to stop me … to sacrifice myself … if it was not in vain, than I am fine with it."
"This is very wise, Ultear," Ur said as she rose. "In any case, I shall be reborn soon and since time works differently here than in the world of the living, I will have to leave you again soon. No matter what will happen, Ultear, I will love you in the next life at least as much as I loved you in the last one. This is the promise I will never break."
In X798, seven years after the disastrous Grand Magic Games of X791, Miyuki Vastia was born and after years of studying ice make magic under a mage of Fairy Tail who was a friend of her father who had died after her birth on a job, she became one of the most skilled users of ice magic of all times. Her teacher sometimes told him about his own teacher, a great woman called Ur, and her daughter who had once save the world and somehow, Miyuki felt a connection to those two women – a connection that went deeper than the fact that they used the same style of ice make magic.
But Miyuki never wasted many thoughts on those circumstances and kept training very hard. She was eighteen when she passed the S-class exam of Lamia Scale and in the same year, she met the man who would later on become her husband. Her mother remarked – as she babbled about love just as much as usual – that this man was unusually similar to her own late husband but Miyuki merely shrugged as she kept being happy with her husband.
She was twenty-four when she gave birth to her daughter and to make a point out of her greatest respect for her teacher and her father and the magic and the philosophy they had shared, she named her daughter Kouriko.
Their life was happy in many ways and when they had a harder time, they always found ways to keep going because there was hardly another way. For Miyuki and Kouriko, things would always turn out right in the end and they smiled more in a day than some in a week.
Miyuki died after her eightieth birthday, peacefully on the couch as she took a nap between two parts of the training she put her grandchildren through. Her granddaughter found her and for a moment, she assumed that her grandmother was only sleeping before she realised that there was no longer life in the ice mage.
And so, after so many years and so many lives lived to fulfil a promise, the soul of Miyuki that had been the soul of a mother who had loved her daughter too much to break a promise, found peace. Many years later, Kouriko would follow her mother and after so many lifetimes spent in vain, they would be happily united in the afterlife where they met those they had known along the years.