Prompt #2 Magical
Miaka has seen many firework displays before. As a little girl, her father used to take she and Keisuke to the New Year party at their auntie's house out in the countryside. She can remember sitting on her uncle's shoulders and giggling happily as she waved a sparkler haphazardly around. It's only a blurry memory now and she doesn't remember much else of her first encounter with fireworks, but it's still a precious recollection to her.
There weren't any more firework parties for quite a few years after the divorce, so Miaka and Keisuke only ever got to play with sparklers that Keisuke swapped his trading cards for at school. Not quite as responsible at the age of twelve as he was later on, Keisuke taught Miaka to play-duel with the lit sticks. It was a shame really, because one day their mother came early to pick them up from the childminder. That was the last time they were sent to the kindly but harassed woman, and the long lecture on things that the siblings were exactly 3000 never allowed to do was the beginning of 'boringly responsible big brother Keisuke'.
Miaka went with Yui to a couple of parties where the fireworks were bright and loud and every colour imaginable; fizzy ones and rockets and huge explosions in the sky that almost made the buffet table shake were the best addition to Miaka's first ever teenage party that she could possibly think of. But however modern and fantastic those fireworks were, they still could never compare to the small coloured explosions that Miaka is watching in Hong Nan.
There's something more than fun in these little cylinders of gunpowder that make up part of the emperor's birthday celebration; something that reaches deeper inside Miaka and touches her heart. And that little surge of joy breaks through the wall of pain that Yui's betrayal has caused, and Miaka turns to Hotohori. The emperor, standing regally beside her on the palace's best viewing balcony, turns his head and sees that the pained, sad expression has relaxed into one of contentment. Although the darkness of the night and the coloured illumination from the fireworks means that he can't see the colour of her face properly, he's fairly sure that the ghostly pallor has disappeared too.
Miaka hadn't realised before that she could feel so happy to know that a man loves her. She had thought that Tamahome would be her fairytale one and only love, but the last flickers of a fast, sudden first romance have died and revealed to her the hidden embers of a warmer, more lasting love. And this moment, with ancient Chinese fireworks exploding all around her in a royal display of festivity, feels as magical as the world she's found love in.