Commentary: This is a story about growing up: into soldiers, but mostly into strength of all sorts. Expect five chapters at least, one for each of the Inners, and a tie-in epilogue. With that being said, at the moment I have all intentions of keeping this story Inner-centric, but might incorporate my beloved Outers too if all goes well. We'll see. =)
If you know me at all, you know already that there will eventually be implications in this. You have been warned.
Each of these chapters, excluding notes and titles and things, will be exactly 1,000 words. These are fun exercises for me—sorry that they're short, but hey! A gal's gotta have a good time!
I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
CYCLE
PART I: Mercury
or
Next time she'll just skip the refreshments
It begins, as many fortunes do, with a cup of tea.
Approximately six months after the battle with Galaxia, Mizuno Ami is writing a paper for her ethics theory class. It is exactly three o'clock in the morning. Light from the clock on her desk paints her fingers neon blue. Her desk lamp burned out an hour ago, and though her eyes strain in the darkness, her mother only just made it to bed after working a double shift at the hospital. She—Ami's mother, that is—is a light sleeper, and for that reason Ami refuses to go rifling through the hall closet in search of a new bulb.
She yawns. Her fingers splay over the cavern of her lips. Her jaw cracks too, for good measure.
When the yawn is done, she plucks free her glasses and rubs the ridge of her palm over her eyes. Inhaling sharply and pinching her cheek, she attempts to stave off encroaching drowsiness. She succeeds only in sucking from the still air of her room a goodly amount of dust.
Her cheek also hurts now.
Her complaining sinuses tingle. She winces and squeezes her eyes shut, but the damage is done—it's too late. She is going to sneeze. Her shoulders quiver and she turns her head to the side, grappling for a Kleenex, but the sneeze comes upon her before even that preventative measure rises. She expels the dust, her breath, and an embarrassing ribbon of saliva straight into the cup of tea that's been sitting for hours nearby her keyboard. She bonks her head on the desk lamp. It squeaks, sorrowful.
"Ugh," she hisses into the darkness. She finds the Kleenex then, of course, and after she wipes her face, she moves to perform the same service for her teacup.
She is astonished to find it covered in a thin sheen of ice.
She jerks backward first, arms thrown comically upward, a shriek climbing the rungs of her throat. The memory of her mother's exhausted face flits through her head, though, and she staples her teeth over her lips before the shriek can manifest. Her spine arched in a feline kind of startlement, the rest of her body all rigid wonder, she stares at the ice-glazed cup.
She stares at it, in fact, until that ice begins to look shiny and slick and near-melting. Only when her heart rate has eased back to fifty-ish does she ease forward in her chair again. Her socked toes crawl over the floor, pulling her back toward the desk; her hands quest out. She furls them, speculative, around the cup. The ice slides wetly under her palms. She peers into the cup and notes that her tea has transformed into brown slush.
Tightening her hands, she lifts the cup. She studies it by the glow of the clock. Azure effervescence ripples through the ice's shell, lending it an eerie glacial cast. Lips parted, Ami holds the cup away from the keyboard. Where her thumb presses, the ice drips a little.
"What," she says to the room. While normally the word signifies a question, Ami feels like she already halfway knows the answer to this particular ponderance.
She looks up to the mirror resting atop her bureau. Because Ami is not vain, it is only a small oval hung from a spinning hook—mostly she uses it to check her hair in the mornings before school. Now, caught on the night's underbelly with an anomaly in her hands and a problem potentially far more severe than a cowlick weighing upon her head, she uses the mirror to check her identity instead.
Mercury, who wields ribbons of ice in her fingers, is not there: has never been there. The same face Ami sees every day at six o'clock sharp gazes back at her. The bags under the girl's eyes are more pronounced than usual, yes; her mouth wrinkles in want of sleep, sure. Still! Her reflection is that of average, everyday Mizuno Ami, a dedicated schoolgirl pulling an all-nighter. There is no sapphire-set tiara, no battle uniform.
Her eyes flick away from the mirror, back to the object she holds in her hands.
But there is an ice-covered teacup.
So… where is Mercury?
Ami checks the mirror one more time, just to be certain she doesn't see the soldier in it.
No. Just a somewhat wild-eyed perhaps-genius (okay, she's being modest) with bristling blue hair and a slackened jaw and oh, yes, let's not forget the ice-covered teacup.
The clock reads seven past three in the morning now.
"I wonder," Ami whispers, and she does. She always wonders. Tentative, she draws the teacup near. She almost touches her cheek to it. She darts out the tip of her tongue and the ice has thankfully melted enough that the pink appendage doesn't stick to it. Cool liquid trickles against her lips, between them too.
She leans away again, staring at the cup. She squints. She tightens her fingers and she thinks, intent, feeling a little stupid, Cold.
Nothing happens.
She feels more than a little stupid, abruptly. Shoulders heaving in a small sigh, she replaces the teacup on her desk—this time on a coaster—and gazes at it. She rubs her finger over her cheek in the dark. Said finger is still cold and damp from where it touched the cup, and it leaves a line of faint moisture just beneath her eye.
A winking idea occurs to Ami. Almost as soon as she put it down, she picks up the teacup again. She thinks this is foolish, but—
She wills silently, Cold!
And she breathes into the slushy tea.
Her exhale crystallizes in the small space between her lips and the cup. The tea stiffens, crackles, freezes. Brittle bubbles burst over the brown surface and the ice on the rim of the cup thickens.
"Oh," Ami says. Her fingers fall nerveless. She drops the teacup.
It shatters into pieces on the floor between her feet.