Title: Soul of the Gem
Characters: Yuzu, Masumi||Romance: Yuzu x Masumi/Masumi x Yuzu
Chapter Word Count: 4,710||story word count: 4,710||Chapter Count: 1/10
Genre: Romance, Fantasy||Rated: PG-13
Challenge: Diversity Writing Challenge, section J13, 2000 or more words per chapter; Pairing Diversity Boot Camp, prompt #46, control; Chapter Set Boot Camp, #10, 10 chapters; Include The Word Boot Camp, #25, sign; Valentine's Day to White Day, day #1, write a soulmate AU; Easter Egg Basket Advent 2016, day #5, include someone almost, but not quite, dying; Soulmate Challenge; YGO Femslash Week 2017
Note: This setting is an AU that involves magic of multiple kinds, magical creatures, and soulmates.
Summary: Only Masumi can hear that song that sings to her soul. There are stories about songs like that, and not all of them end happily. And then there's the matter of the name written on her arm since her thirteenth birthday: a name written in a language she cannot read, but which is said to be that of her soulmate.
Masumi's window was firmly closed, keeping out the chill autumn air and the dance of falling leaves that tended to blow in whenever the wind gusted and swirled. Her room remained warm and cozy because of this, something she appreciated as she slept underneath her blankets.
But the closed window and well-built stone home did not do a thing to keep out the melody that whispered through the air, sliding through the tiniest of cracks, and sinking deep into her ears and into her dreams.
Masumi dreamed of a silver-touched lake, hard by a circle of hills, green as emeralds. She stood beside the lake, one arm clasped in the other, as the song coiled around her, pulling her onward. She didn't know where she was going, only that the music called and she had no will to do other than answer.
Then she dug her heels in and shook her head. "What's going on?" She wanted to know the answer to that before she did anything else. She did not answer wild magic, and this could only be wild magic, the spells and witchcraft possessed by the magical beings of the world, quite unlike that woven by mortals and humans.
The music kept on tugging at her, wanting her to follow, to go somewhere. She'd be happy there, the music insisted. Someone wanted her to be there too, and they'd be happy together.
Masumi shook her head even harder, eyes narrowing as she tried to figure out where she was. Was it a real place? Had she been here when she was awake? Was she awake now and didn't know it?
Masumi didn't like dreaming in this kind of clarity. It offered too many questions and not nearly enough answers. She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against the agate hanging around her neck. Energy flared through it and she could feel something somewhere snap.
Her eyes opened at once and she found herself right where she belonged, curled up in bed. Her hand remained touching her pendant and she let out a long silent breath. Agate protected against bad dreams, and apparently that had been one. She hadn't liked it, anyway.
Where was that place? There'd been nothing scary or threatening in it, just the continual encouragement to follow the music and go where it wished her to. Masumi snorted softly to herself. As if she'd follow some ridiculous song.
There was magic in music, as there was magic in almost everything. Masumi didn't care to learn much about it, ascribing it to casual bards and those who liked to hum while they worked. She preferred the strength of stone in all of its forms when it came to her magic.
She pulled her fingers away from the pendant and let them rest across the letters written upon her arm. She assumed they were letters though they weren't like anything she knew of from her studies. For five years they'd rested there, from the moment of sunrise on her thirteenth birthday.
"Your soulmate," her mother told her, "that's whose name that is, when it appears." She'd told Masumi that many times, nor was she the only one. There were plenty of people in the village who had found a true friend or a true love because of the name that appeared on their birthday. Any time Masumi so much as glanced at her name, someone all but fell out of the bushes to explain that just because she couldn't read the language didn't mean that she'd never meet this mysterious person.
"They could show up on a trading caravan," her father suggested as he worked to carve an especially fine amethyst. He would enchant it later, but designing the gemstones themselves remained quite a task. Certain shapes took certain spells better, and he had a great deal of work to do make certain everything he sold was at its best. The slightest flaw could ruin weeks of work. "That's how I met your mother."
The two of them exchanged warm glances even as he spoke. Masumi loved them both, but if she heard the cloying love story of how their eyes had met over a basket of opals one more time, she was going to scream. Loudly.
"They might not be someone that you're going to want to marry," one of the village boys suggested during a break from lessons. "But they're always going to be important to you."
He didn't carry a name on his arm. Not everyone did. If it didn't appear by one's fifteenth birthday, it was generally presumed that it wouldn't show up at all. Thirteen was only the most common time for the name to appear. Stories had it that there had been one person born with two names, but Masumi found it difficult to believe that. How could a baby have a soulmate, when they scarcely had a personality?
At any rate, by this point, Masumi didn't actually care who her soulmate was or when they would cross paths. She had too much else she was doing with her life, such as learning how to carve and enchant stones. That mattered so much more to her than encountering someone she didn't actually know the name of.
The name lived on her arm, in an elegant script, and in a language that no one she'd met knew how to speak or read. It could've been her own name in another language, for all that she knew, or the name of a King or a God. She didn't really think that it was, but it wasn't impossible, either, as far as she knew.
So she kept her attention on her work and decided she would deal with her soulmate, whoever it ended up being, whenever they actually met one another.
But now that music came, bouncing on the breeze, and worked its way into her head, and she could still hear it, subdued and more like a memory than anything else.
She twitched, reaching to pull her pillow over her head. She didn't want to keep on hearing it. It was late; the moon had already risen, casting a few half-hearted streams of silver light around. She had classes in the morning and chores to do in the afternoon. She couldn't lay here and listen to a song that she didn't know.
But the song refused to go away, still replaying itself in her mind, and the more she listened, the more it seemed that her right arm, where the name rested, trembled and the rest of her did not. She gave it a very annoyed look, but nothing changed. The song hung in the air, glistening and pure, and whispering that wouldn't it be such a good idea to go outside, to try to track down the source of the music, to find the place she'd seen in her dreams and know if it were real or not…
No, it would not! Masumi growled, sending a pulse of protective magic through the gemstones set in various places around her room. The stones picked up her energy and magnified it, and the music lessened a little.
No, not quite lessened. She just couldn't hear it as much. But it remained there, waiting for her to listen again.
By morning, Masumi was ready to strangle whoever had sent that song, no matter what their purpose in doing so was. She hoped it was some passing bard; she could strangle one of those and make a rug out of his skin and she doubted anyone would care.
"Masumi?" Her mother looked at her worriedly as Masumi poked at her breakfast. "What's wrong?"
Masumi's hair tumbled down her back in an angry snarl as she snapped her head up. "Wrong? It's that music! It just won't stop!" She had never been a fan of music before and this wasn't making it any better at all.
Both of her parents looked at one another, then back at her. "What music?" Her father wanted to know. "I don't hear anything."
Masumi started to ask if they'd gone deaf. Her temper hadn't improved at all by spending the night half-asleep and half-trying to ignore the melody that never stopped, replaying in exquisite perfection.
Then she stopped. A sound that she could hear and that her parents couldn't? There weren't any bards who could do that. Magical music worked best when the most people heard it, not focused on one person.
"I've been hearing it since last night," she said at last, worrying at her lower lip. "I had a strange dream and when I woke up, the music was still there."
Her parents exchanged glances again, then looked at her. "What sort of dream?"
Masumi retold it for them, a little surprised at how clearly it came back to her. Once again it was as if she stood on the edge of a lake, with the hills to one side. Only now she realized something else, and she didn't tell her parents that.
There had been someone standing in the hills. They couldn't be seen, but Masumi knew they were there, and they'd been waiting for her.
Was that who was singing? It could have been. Could someone have found a way to make magical music something like a summoner's call, but for beings that weren't demons or devils or djinn? Before she realized it, she'd asked her parents that very question.
Her mother tilted her head back, thinking. She'd learned much of magic before her marriage, and put it to good use in helping her husband with his spells and gemstones. But her skills reached beyond that.
"I wouldn't want to say that it's impossible," she said at last. "I haven't been to the great universities in some time, and there were people researching in that direction when I was there." She pursed her lips in a disapproving frown. "I never liked it myself. It's one thing for creatures such as a djinn, but for people?"
Masumi wasn't going to argue on that. She hated the idea of being called for, especially now that someone did seem to want her attention.
The moment she thought about anything that was even remotely related to the music, she could hear it again, all the more clearly. She turned her attention right back to her breakfast, thinking of how good it tasted, of how much she enjoyed being in here with her parents, and what she might learn in her classes today.
It didn't entirely block out the music, but it gave her something else to think about and that was enough for right now.
She concentrated so hard on that, she almost missed the way her parents whispered to one another. She didn't want to take her mind off of her distracting thoughts enough to ask what they were talking about since it would probably be the music and that would get it going in her mind again.
How am I supposed to fix this when just thinking about not hearing it means I start hearing it again?
"I'll speak to some of the others," her mother said at last, resting a hand on Masumi's shoulder. "We'll see what we can do about blocking it from bothering you. If you want to stay home and rest today -"
Masumi shook her head quickly. "No. I'm going to class." At least there she would have other people around to talk to and lessons to focus on, so the music wouldn't be able to get to her that much.
She hoped not. She was already tired of hearing it.
"Masumi!" Yaiba waved at her as she came up to the school building, her steps much slower and more sluggish than usual. He frowned the moment he got a really good look at her, but he didn't hurry over. Instead, he and Hokuto both sauntered toward her as if absolutely nothing in the world was wrong.
"All right," Yaiba growled as soon as he was close enough that no one else would hear them. "What's going on? You look like you're halfway dead."
"Is there someone we need to incinerate?" Hokuto trailed his fingers through the air, leaving a line of stardust behind that hung for a few moments before fading away entirely. His family line had always been talented with star-related spells and incantations, and there were plenty of people who thought he'd be on the front lines in battle one day, raining down the wrath of the stars on the kingdom's enemies.
Yaiba had no gift for magic in general, except where it related to battle, combat, and strategy of all kinds. That wasn't to be frowned upon at all: mostly because Yaiba would slice someone in half who dared.
The three of them had been friends since they'd first met at the school, mostly because Masumi decided these two idiots needed someone to look out for them before they got themselves into some kind of trouble and ended up in pieces. Now they both wore protections gems that she'd crafted and enspelled herself. It wouldn't protect them from everything, but at least she didn't have to worry about them as much anymore.
Masumi shook her head, not bothering with a smile. These were her friends. She didn't have to pretend with them. "There's something going on."
Both of them came to attention, Yaiba's hand going right to his sword, while the stars on Hokuto's circlet glimmered without warning.
"What is it?" They asked in unison. Masumi gestured them to a quiet place they could speak for the few minutes until classes began. She wanted to get this done as soon as possible, so in as few words as she could manage that would tell what was going on, she did so.
As soon as she was done, Yaiba stood up. "So let's go find out who's trying to call you and explain why they should learn how to send a letter first."
Masumi let out a very long breath and gestured for him to sit back down. "It's not that easy. This doesn't feel like human magic."
"So?" Hokuto didn't look as if he cared any more than Yaiba did. "We can still teach them a few lessons. I've wanted to practice my aim anyway."
"We are going to find them," Masumi agreed, rubbing her arm almost absently. "But Mother also suggested that this could be some human using non-human magic, and that gets even more difficult to work out."
Yaiba rubbed the back of his head, confused. "So why would they want to call you, anyway?" He flushed when he realized what he'd just said and how it could be interpreted. "Not that you're not a great person, but -"
Masumi ignored him. It was safer for them all that way. At least Hokuto hadn't put his foot in his mouth today. Yet.
"It could be my soulmate," she said, staring at the words. "They could be trying to get in touch somehow and if the laws about magic are different where they're at, they might not know that blending human and non-human magic isn't legal."
Yaiba stared at her, rubbing his hand over the hilt of his sword continually. "Could summon magic even reach that far?" He shook his head a little, more in a denying fashion than anything else. "I don't know anywhere where blending magics is legal. Too dangerous."
"I know." Masumi admitted. "Mother couldn't think of anywhere that's allowed either."
Hokuto leaned his head back, thinking. "You don't think it could be a non-human then? Some of them do have really weird magic."
Masumi didn't say anything to that for several minutes. "I don't know." That was something she had not discussed with her parents, and it hadn't really occurred to her. Though, she was willing to grant, with the way that melody kept flowing in the back of her mind, never giving her a moment's peace, she wasn't surprised it hadn't at all.
"Then as soon as we can, we'll go look up what kind of non-humans can do summon magic and how to block them out," Hokuto declared without a breath of hesitation. He pulled himself completely to his feet, the stars on his circlet glimmering with determination. "And once we find out, we'll find who they are, and really teach them a lesson!"
Masumi smiled, standing up as well. It sounded like the best idea that she'd had ever since first waking to hear that song. "Right."
Only it wasn't that easy. It couldn't possibly have been, Masumi decided two days later. The library at school had a very large section on non-humans and it seemed many of them were capable of summoning magic of many kinds. What made it even more frustrating was that no one seemed to have any idea of how to block it out, either.
The music hadn't changed. It didn't grow any louder and no one else could hear it but her. Her dreams remained filled with it, and she saw that lake every night, with the person standing where she couldn't see them but knew they were there all the same. She could still break out of it with the power of the agate, but nothing stopped the dream from forming in the first place.
On the third morning she woke up with the song in her mind, she just remained where she was, not even bothering to open her eyes. The melody tugged at her, wanting her to go to that place, and she didn't move either.
I'm not going. Why do you want me there?
And the song changed. Not very much, still recognizable, but now it had a hint of absolute shock. As if whoever sang it had never considered that Masumi would ask such a thing in all their days.
Masumi blinked. This was the first sign she'd ever had that whoever was on the other side of this thing was even truly aware of her. Could this be a way to communicate?
She tried again, forming the words in her mind. Who are you?
Again the music changed, or the emotions bleeding through it did. Instead of shock or allure, now there was confusion and a hint of worry. Masumi's eyes narrowed, adrenaline coursing through her veins now.
Who are you? She repeated the question and the confusion got even worse. Then it shifted a fraction, and now what came through was … affection? Affection she'd never had directed toward her, and Masumi shook her head a little, not sure of how to take this.
She focused instead on what she could do right now. I want you to stop singing this song. I don't know you. I don't know if I want to know you.
Now confusion surged again, on a grander scale than before. The alluring remained as a sort of undertone, as if they still wanted Masumi to come to them. She steeled herself.
Why do you keep singing it? What does it mean?
The alluring grew a little, but was now joined with that sense of affection. If Masumi didn't know better, she would've sworn that the singer meant I like you.
No way. That couldn't be at all. They truly didn't know each other. If Masumi had ever seen this person, she didn't know it, and she had no idea if she wanted to. They had to be non-human, that was what every bit of her research and her parents told her. Non-humans differed in many ways, ranging from vampires to werewolves to merpeople to the strange Fliers and far more. Their cultures ranged from ones that traded and made alliances with humans to ones that humans had only barely heard of in myth and legend.
None that she'd heard of involved singing on this scale, though, and she'd read a lot about non-humans over the last couple of days.
Masumi ground her teeth, then got up and headed to get cleaned up. Today they didn't have lessons, and she and her friends intended to do something that had nothing at all to do with the song in her mind. She needed some kind of a break from that, even with this new information.
The music remained curious in the back of her mind, still with that allure and affection. Masumi tried even harder not to pay attention to it, but now that she knew the singer could understand her to some degree, it was hard to ignore the slight shifts that seemed to involve their answers to what was going on.
It's not like they're watching me, she thought as she made vague answers to her parents about how things were going. And they can't read my mind. They wouldn't have kept singing if they knew exactly what she thought about it at all times. No one would have. But they're sort of… aware? It was the only word she could think of that fit.
When she left their home, Masumi was still so involved with thinking about and not thinking about the music, all at the same time, she didn't see the way her parents looked at each other, worry in every line of them. She hadn't been that distracted since this strange event began, and they feared for their daughter.
"I'll give them a cut like this!" Yaiba declared, bringing his sword up at just the right angle to pierce flesh, though he only fought against the opponents of his imagination. "And when they're bleeding and begging me to spare them, I won't!"
Masumi sipped at a cup of sweet spring water she'd bought, a small smile on her lips. "Of course not." Yaiba declared war against bandits, robbers, and anything else that got on his nerves multiple times in a day. She'd seen this all before.
Leaning back, she cast her gaze around the clearing. They'd come here so many times over the years that she'd almost ceased to think about what it looked like at all. A small stream wound its way through the far side of it, speckled with the rocks they used to cross it without getting too wet. Their village stood on the other side of the stream, not very far off, but not close enough that they could hear the noises of it, either.
To the other direction there rose a range of hills that climbed up into mountains. Traders and travelers came from there more than anywhere else. Masumi wondered if any of them had heard of some non-human magic-using people who could sing songs of wondrous beauty and compelling power.
She looked at the hills again, then sat up slowly, blinking. Is it… could it be...
She hadn't really looked at them in ages. It wasn't the same view, but it looked almost… so very much like…
"Masumi?" Hokuto tapped her on the shoulder. "Are you all right? You look a little...spaced out?"
She whipped her head around at once, letting the wave of her hair lash against him. "You're the one who spaces out, not me."
He backed up a step or two, waving one hand to clear the air before him. "Right, right. So, are you all right?"
"I'm fine." She leaped to her feet, not wanting to look at those hills anymore. "Come on, let's get out of here."
Those were the hills. She knew it. Seeing them in her dreams again every night just made her all the more certain about it.
The song kept on calling her and whoever was on the other side of it, Masumi could tell her refusal to answer it worried them. That didn't make any sense to her, but as it approached a week since she'd first heard the song, not much else did make sense to her. Her sleeping had been erratic, the stress of wondering what was going on helped not in the slightest, and she didn't know much else that would distract her from the music anymore. It was just always there, thrilling under her skin, no matter what.
But through it all, she couldn't really feel any threat to her from it. Whoever it was, they wanted to meet her, but they weren't going to hurt her. It took days for her to work that out, but once it dawned on her that there'd never been a moment of menace in the song or in what feelings she could feel from them, she understood it.
It all came to a head on the dawning of the seventh day. She didn't even both to make up her mind. She just got out of bed, left a note for her parents, and headed into the woods to those rising hills.
So far as she knew, almost no one had ever been here before. Village rumors said that ghosts lived here, or existed or whatever it was that ghosts did. Masumi hadn't made up her mind on if she believed in ghosts or not, but she did believe in the music, and if it wanted her to go there, she was absolutely exhausted of fighting it.
Maybe I can get some sleep once this is over with. She wanted that more than anything else. She could talk to whoever it was that sang to after she slept for three or four days. She had several things she wanted to say to them.
She made her way through to the hills. On the other side, the lake she'd seen so many times in her dreams spread out, glimmering underneath the stars. She turned back to the hills, searching, until a particular shape in the shadows caught her eye.
"It's you, isn't it?" she said, taking a step toward it. "You're the one I hear singing."
"Of course it's me." She didn't recognize the voice that answered, except that it sounded so much like the one singing to her for the last week. "What took you so long? Why didn't you sing back to me?"
Masumi blinked; she knew she was tired, but that should've made more sense than it did even now. "Why would I sing back? I don't sing." She'd hummed before, but singing hadn't ever crossed her mind, even before all of this.
The shadow moved and now Masumi could see them a little clearer. It was a young woman of about her own age, with dark pink hair and eyes as blue as summer skies. She wore a dark red gown, fastened with a belt the same shade. That was about all Masumi could see of her at the moment.
"Why wouldn't you -" Her eyes widened even more, shock filling them that mirrored what the music told Masumi now. "You're… you're not a siren, are you?"
Masumi slowly shook her head as the other bit her lip, resting one hand at her mouth at the same time. "I'm a gem mage." Technically one in training as she wasn't a full master of the art yet, but she didn't want to get picky about it. "Who are you?"
"My name is Hiiragi Yuzu, and … I am a siren."
Masumi thought she was blushing. But then Yuzu reached out for her, then pulled her hand back. "I am so sorry. I didn't know. I thought I was calling another siren. I've never heard of a human who could hear the soulsong."
Masumi had had enough. None of this made any sense and she'd pushed herself to her limits already. Her legs refused to carry her another moment and it was only by grasping onto a nearby tree that she kept from falling. "Tell me about it later. Just turn this music off so I can go to sleep." She did not say please. Masumi was not asking, not now.
"Oh-of course. I'm sorry. But to do that, I have to… I have to touch you." Yuzu said it as if it were some kind of great taboo. Masumi didn't care. She just held her hand out, expecting little more than a light touch and blessed silence.
Yuzu's fingers touched hers, and Masumi knew what was meant when poets spoke of being struck by lightning, and the peaceful darkness of sleep that followed.
To Be Continued
Note: I have actually had this in reserve since Lustershipping week last year and this day for FemSlash Week was just the right day to bring it out. I will update it in two more weeks, since I've got a lot on my plate (as I forever will and do).