Cold Moon Rising
Madoka's room was cold. It was too early in the winter season for her to justify turning on a heater, she felt. This was more a personal rule than a family rule. After all, they had more than enough money to cover the cost of keeping her room sufficiently heated but it was barely December, after all but Madoka thought it would be good practice of self-restraint and discipline if she kept such a personal rule close to her heart even though she was currently suffering for it. Her room was frigid and no matter how she tried to sleep, she felt as though ice permeated her bed. No matter how she clung to her soft blankets and how she pulled her knees up to her chin to solidify her core, Madoka was unable to warm herself.
Thus, with a little bit of defeat, she drew herself from her bed. She took a breath and she swore, if she exhaled, she would see a mist in the darkness just before her eyes. Though, such a thing did not occur when she finally did exhale.
Madoka felt that her room was lonely feeling as she made the grand pilgrimage to the other side of it, where her heater was located. She passed her window and she felt a crescent moon's grace upon her from just beyond her silken curtains. She listened to the tap and scratch of a tree reaching out and touching the glass of her window.
Madoka knelt and she began fiddling with the knobs on her heater. It was located beside her desk and even with the poor light, she was able to understand how it all worked. Most of it, she felt was committed memory but through tactile touches, she was able to estimate on and off. She flicked a switch and gave a hard twist. The machine groaned and she smiled. She realised it had been quite a few months since it had last been in use so she made a mental note of asking her parents to bring in a maintenance man to check that it hadn't accumulated dust or anything else which might be hazardous. But, for tonight, for a few hours, Madoka felt like the heater would be safe enough to use.
She stood up to her full height and stretched. She yawned. She wondered what the time was. Perhaps just after midnight as she had been tossing and turning quite a bit, bristling with strenuous nervous energy and her mind racing with all sorts of things. Everything from items that she wanted to add to her to-do list to even just reliving exciting memories from earlier today. No matter how many times she transformed into Cure Selene, it gave her a rush. It was a lot like the first time she had shot an arrow and it had landed on the bullseye: it was satisfying and gave her a release from the humdrum, got her blood racing and her heart pounding. It was as wonderful as it was distracting.
Still, with her room slowly begin to heat up, Madoka felt that she might be able to put such feelings to rest and get some sleep. After all, she had school in the morning, she needed some rest. Madoka yawned again and she listened to the tap and scratch of twigs scraping against glass. It was funny, she thought, how one gets used to a type of white noise and then never notices it until a third factor came along. Or, at least that was what she thought before she had a striking resurgence of memories.
Day in, day out, she would leave from the adorned porch of her house in a limousine and she would go to school. Before that, they would circle back around the garden and then leave via the front gate. The grounds in which her house stood did not possess any trees; at least not this close to the house. Only some low shrubbery and some flowers all encased in sprawling green lawns. Therefore, the ambience emanating from her window now existed in a state of possibility.
Madoka's room may have grown warm but her body grew cold. Some sort of terror struck her as she walked towards the window. The curtain did not rustle or flutter nor did it seem particularly unusual. There was not a nary shadow cross its wrinkles and folds which did not seem out of place but as phosphenes spiralled, Madoka gave such a thought no stock.
She pulled it across, and the vision of the moon dazzled her. Madoka closed her eyes against the light until it dulled. She heard laughter.
"I thought you'd never come." A voice said.
Madoka sputtered as she opened her eyes. Blue Cat. It was Blue Cat. She was gawking directly unto the image and figure of the infamous thief. She couldn't believe her eyes. It was physically impossible, and all Mao could do was laugh as she so easily incurred such distraught from Madoka.
"H-How?" stuttered Madoka.
Mao shot up. Her plaited pigtails bounced as she did so. She stood and she still provided no illumination for Madoka until she drew in nearer.
Madoka placed her hands on the cold windowpane. She looked over and saw that Mao had with her some sort of device which allowed her to hover at eye level with Madoka who resided on the second floor of the mansion. The device took the form of a broomstick but rather than end in straw, it ended in a rocket booster-like adornment festooned with ribbons and bows.
With a huffy breath, Madoka decided to open her windows. They swung out quietly, which she was thankful for. Cold air assailed her room in the form of a frigid zephyr, but Mao remained unperturbed. She preened before Madoka who held onto herself with freezing hands. They crossed in front of her and she bore her most responsibly stern look with a pouty, lower lip.
"So, what do you want?" Madoka asked. "You really shouldn't be here."
"You can say that again, huh, tuts?" Mao joked. "I know all about your Daddy's little game. Though, I have to admit, he's barely a player."
"Blue Cat." Madoka warned with a glare.
"I've stolen anything you; you haven't got anything of value to me. Well, not in the physical sense. Information, yes, I may have fossicked through a few things here and there." Mao replied.
She sat back down on the rod of her broomstick-like hoverboard. Sparks and embers jetted out of the end, not yet setting fire to the flammable decorations but close enough. Mao smiled. She looked so natural, sitting here in the midst of impossibility; bathed in the blue light of the moon and the wider cosmos. She was all too proud and dignified. Beautiful, too, from just behind those sunglasses she wore even now in the thick of the freezing night. Madoka shivered. Wasn't she cold?
Mao smiled. "I really should be going, wouldn't want to attract unsavoury attention from those who would profit to see me behind bars or worse but… I couldn't help myself. I thought I better say goodbye rather than leave without saying anything. I couldn't do that to one of my dear comrades from a previous heist. I'm not that cruel…"
"Well, I'm glad that you at least understand the severity of punishments in store for us both if my Father were to find out about you." Madoka said.
"It's a tough life being a part-time Defender of the Universe, a small-time thief, and all-round good girl for your parents." Mao teased.
"Goodbye, Blue Cat." Madoka said.
"Yeah, that's true. You're not a small-time thief. You helped me! That puts you in the big leagues." Mao teased.
"Blue Cat." Madoka warned again.
"I know, I know. You bought that Princess Pen fair and square with your Earthling donuts. Promise to treat me to them sometime?" Mao asked.
"Perhaps…" Madoka relented. "I just don't want you getting in trouble, is all. Be it with my Father or with other authorities."
Mao laughed. "D'aw, you're so cute, Selene. Worried about me before yourself."
"Some has to worry for you." Madoka said. "It may as well be me. You haven't anyone else, yes? Your fans as the starlet Mao but no one except us knows that you and Mao are one in the same. I doubt most your fans would take the news as well as Prunce did."
"Hm, yes, that is true." Mao mused and she smiled.
Her smile fell in between the shadows yet was starlit, nonetheless. Her glasses glinted and she took them off her face. She patted them down so that they sat, just jutting out of from behind the peak of her shirt and let them rest there. Her eyes looked so different without them, and in the dim as well. Madoka was awed by cranberry-like hue of them.
Both girls shivered slightly as a breeze whistled past. Madoka's heart ached. She really didn't want to stay up any later and she didn't think she had it in her to house an inter-galactic fugitive, even if it was the dead of night. After all, the dead of night always gave birth to the life of dawn. She couldn't risk it. She couldn't risk her friends like that, even if it meant giving the cold shoulder to another one of them.
Madoka was sadly enamoured with that smile Mao bore, even as her bare shoulders prickled in the cold night.
"I'll bid thee farewell soon enough, Madoka, don't you worry about that." Mao said. "I'm nearly done bothering you. Thanks for realising I was here."
"I'm glad I did as well. In future, perhaps, you could, um… you could just call my name. I'll hear you. I promise. No matter how cold the night or how deep the sleep. If you called for me, I would hear you." Madoka told Mao with a sincere passion limited by that which she could and could not afford. "Promise you won't catch a cold?"
"Promise." Mao replied.
A lukewarm smile embedded itself upon Madoka's lips and now, it was Mao's turn to be dazzled by such a demure smile.
"But," Mao added, "there is one last thing I would like to steal from Earth before I leave."
Madoka blinked. "Oh? What might that be?"
"Just a little souvenir." Mao replied.
She leaned in and, like the thief she was, she stole a kiss from Madoka. Madoka stiffened. Her eyes widened. Mao smiled into the kiss. It was sloppy and there was a sense that it was ill-practiced. All instinct, going full steam ahead with no thought to technique or anything else which may have made it more pleasant. Yet, Madoka relaxed into the kiss, nonetheless. She closed her eyes and she kissed back.
Mao was rather dashing in her impulsivity and her own quirky strain of how she demonstrated the suave element of her phantom thief persona. Mao tasted of things that Madoka couldn't begin to identify. Perfumes from distant places and sweets using ingredients that Madoka couldn't begin to imagine the possibility of. Her hand reached across and caressed Madoka's face. Madoka crooned into the kiss, kissing back as chastely as she could but this thief incited something a little less than ladylike within her.
The kiss ended all too abruptly. Mao's hand fell away and she laughed to herself. A small, almost forlorn chuckle before she fidgeted with her sunglasses again. Madoka blushed.
"I'll be seeing you." Madoka said.
"Hopefully not." Mao replied. "After all, we might be amiable, but our goals are the crosshairs, remember? I don't want to trample your little heart, is all."
"But those crosshairs meet somewhere. I still have some of the Princess Pens that you are after…" Madoka replied.
"That you do… That you do. For now, anyway. Who knows? Maybe I'll send you a post card." Mao teased.
Madoka shook her head. "Mm, no, you're too honourable for that. Surely you would duel for them, fair and square."
Mao's lips quirked. She wasn't so certain of that. Her expression, and therefore her thoughts, were unreadable to Madoka as she wore her sunglasses, even in the loom of such nightly darkness. Madoka's heart wretched as she placed her hands on the windowsill once more. The distance between them was so little yet so great.
"Farewell, Mao, stay safe." Madoka bade her with a tender voice.
"Bye, bye, Madoka." Mao murmured.
She took a breath and a gust stirred up. Her broomstick rocked upwards in almost hiccup-like motions. She waved her hand nonchalantly at Madoka then jetted off. Madoka's hair fluttered back in the wake. Sparks, orange and yellow and maybe pink as well, danced in Mao's trail before she became an inky blue blip like all the other stars of the sky.
Madoka closed the window and she closed her heart, as well. Blue Cat was not her enemy, but she wasn't her friend either. Even if her heart did yearn otherwise and the tingling sensation on her kissed lips begged otherwise. Regardless, Madoka did wish Mao nothing but the best. She knew the girl's goal to be true of heart, even if it put them in unfavourable positions juxtaposed against one another. At the very least, with a clear conscious, Madoka could say that she wanted the phantom thief to be safe.
She took a breath. Her room was cold once more. She could hear the low, rumbling whirr of her heater regardless. Her mood became crestfallen. It had been strangely warm with Mao, she thought, even though she had endured gust of cold wind after gust of cold wind whilst talking with her. Her heart heavied. She had barely left and Madoka missed her sorely already.
But, unfortunately, she could not spend her whole night pining; she chastised herself. After all, she had archery practice in the morning, followed by school, followed by studying. And that is assuming that she doesn't get cajoled into having fun with the other girls or tasked with defending the peace of not only the town of Mihoshi, but the whole planet or other planets too from the Notraiders and their devious forces as well. It was a lot of work for a fourteen-year-old girl, but it was work that Madoka adored, nonetheless.
She just wished that she could simplify it. Just like how Hikaru and the others had simplified her life by giving her space to breathe and have fun, she wanted to do the same for Mao. She wanted to invite her along and let her have some fun as well as it was more than evident to Madoka that there was something very harsh in her past and it was that pain which compelled her forward, no matter to what trickery or thievery that it took her; she deserved relief from that, Madoka felt.
Madoka sighed as she climbed back into her bed. Her sheets felt alien around her as she wrapped herself up and dearly wished that she could do the same for Mao despite the reservations her mind put forth, but the heart wanted the heart wanted. No matter how silly, it seemed. Madoka sighed and closed her eyes. She tried to will herself to sleep but still, she was ailed but now, with new thoughts which were all hued an electric blue and in feline shape. Worse still, she was still cold.