"Are you ready? I said, are you ready?"
Diana abandoned her usual patrol route almost before she consciously recognized the voice. The source was a little off the beaten path, as most of the students didn't bother going to the vegetable gardens and greenhouses outside of required classes. The gate was unlocked so she let herself in, but as she rounded the corner of the tool shed she paused in surprise, taken aback by the small crowd of faeries gathered there. Most were the usual trolls and imps in their bright orange safety uniforms, but there were also a smattering of fire spirits, and even a handful of the gnarled plant spirits that tended to the gardens.
Akko twirled on the low, broad wall separating the gardens from the path to the greenhouse, her mud-flecked skirt fanning out like a flower. Gouts of sparks rained from her upraised wand. It was simple magic – meant for children – but it became something else in her hands. The magic glowed, it danced, she gathered fistfuls of the sparks and flung them to the sky as if they were harmless fireflies. She didn't know she shouldn't be able to, and so she just did.
"Welcome to Akko's super secret magic show!" The sparks burst into butterflies, spiraling upward until they vanished into the rose-tinted sky. An homage to the Pappiliodya, perhaps?
Dusk was making the shadows draw long, but Diana found herself leaning against the wall of the shed, murmuring a spell that would make the eye slide right past. She should be scolding the other girl for staying on the grounds this late, but she was curious. She wanted to see what Akko was doing with her time if she wasn't studying.
Most of the time Akko looked more like a newborn colt, all elbows and knees and bright brown eyes. She ran in sputters and starts, stumbles and half falls. Bouncing to her feet as if she were never injured. Diana couldn't count the times scraped knees peeked out from under Akko's uniform skirt, or she saw Lotte pasting fresh bandages on the girl's face and arms over lunch. Yet when Akko was performing Diana could the beginnings of grace in the girl. She moved differently, with a confidence and control she didn't show in any of her classes.
Of course Akko's performance wasn't over. She played games with light and shadow, sleight of hand and outright illusion, some clearly drawn from Shiny Chariot and others of her own invention. Each new revelation made Akko's audience of faeries applaud with renewed vigor, rising to a dull roar when she managed to pull a confused fire spirit out of her hat. With her bare hand, of all things.
"Now where did that come from?" Akko gasped in feigned surprise, sticking her face into the hat and coming out wailing with a faintly glowing crab clinging to her nose. It ended in tears of course – and a troll gently tugging the angry crustacean from her nose - but before that there was something there.
"Man," she could hear Akko wail even from this distance, "I'm never gonna get that one right."
A rabbit made of solid light hopped lazily out of her dropped hat to graze on a mound of clover, and Akko's crocodile tears quickly turned to laughter. The faeries laughed with her, drawn in by her delight. Diana shifted against the wall for the first time, abruptly realizing that her legs had fallen asleep. Like this, Akko all-but had stars in her eyes. Even Diana couldn't deny that it made her heart race. There was an artistry to Akko's magic, something more alive than the power that jumped so obediently to Diana's wand. And she saw it so rarely. The light in Akko's eyes so often went out when she entered the room, jokes and laughter cut short by her mere presence.
Diana's hand tightened around her wand. The memory made her chest go tight. She never resented being an authority figure so thoroughly.
Akko stood up and dusted herself off, somehow making even more of a mess of herself. Then she bowed deeply, with so many flourishes it had to be slightly self-depreciating. "Thank you, Thank youuuu, you were a beautiful audience." Of course, they were glad to give her their attention – it was no secret she was their favorite among the students after she joined their strike. The fact that the success of the strike had nothing to do with her didn't seem to matter. They buffeted her with cheerful pats and a cacophony of affectionate noises anyway.
"Okay, okay guys you're gonna kill me! I've gotta get to bed before the teachers have me scrubbing out every cauldron on the grounds." Akko pulled such a face on that last part. She was never going to learn to be a proper Luna Nova lady was she?
Diana slipped away once she was certain Akko was returning to the school. With a little luck, Akko would make it back to her room before the last call for lights out. There was no need to intervene.
It followed her through the rest of her patrol - down dark corridors and up creaking stairs. Even when she closed her eyes in her own bed, Diana could still see the afterimage of that light. Later she would laugh at her own foolishness. In that time and place Diana couldn't name the flutter in her chest any more than Akko could recognize magic's ebb and flow by instinct alone. How could Diana Cavendish, the brightest star in any room, know what it was to be dazzled?