Day 15

Brightest Stars

(established Lera/Yuki)

"Boys! I told you to be down here five minutes ago! We're leaving!"

"Coming!"

Lera shook her head. No matter how many times she told them that they had to be ready by a certain time, Sirius and Rigel never seemed to be able to stick to it. She'd got into the habit of telling them to be ready at least fifteen minutes before they actually had to leave.

Sirius, brown-haired and the spitting image of his father, came bounding down the stairs ahead of his brother, one shoe still not tied.

"Ah-ah," Lera tutted, pointing. "You're not leaving this house until that's done."

"But it keeps coming undone!" he protested. "It's not fair! Rigel still has velcro!"

"Rigel's younger than you. When he next gets a pair of shoes, he'll have laces," Lera pointed out. "Now, do your shoes up properly. Rigel, go and tell your father that we're leaving. He's out in the garden."

There was a tug at her trouser leg. "Daddy's always late, isn't he?" Saiph asked, looking up at her mother with wide turquoise eyes.

"He gets distracted by his telescope," Lera agreed, ruffling her daughter's brown hair. Of her three children, only Rigel had inherited the bright pink that she had (he was quite proud of it, actually; he though it made him look a bit like Starbreaker's Jack, whom he idolised). "At least I know where your brothers get it from."

"There, all done!" Sirius announced, sticking his foot out to show his mother the birds-nest of a knot he'd made in his laces. It wasn't as bad as it might have been, though, and as they were going to miss it if they left any later, Lera decided to leave it just this once.

"Good. Come on, now. We'll be late."

Just as she was helping Saiph put her coat on, her husband arrived, Rigel riding piggy-back. Lera tutted. "Honestly, Yuki. I told you we had to be ready to leave at seven."

"But Venus was on the horizon," Yuki exclaimed. "I couldn't miss it!"

She squashed down the temptation to roll her eyes. "Of course not. Now, hurry up!"

It wasn't actually that long a journey to the hill that they were heading for, but it always took longer on that particular night, mostly because they had to carry the chairs and telescopes up it as well. Saiph proudly carried the telescope stands, being very careful not to drop them, whilst Sirius had won the brief but loud battle to carry the actual telescopes. Yuki had the chairs, Lera the blankets and Rigel had been landed with the box of binoculars.

To Lera's relief, they reached the flat top of the hill without any major incidents. As soon as they arrived, though, Rigel dropped his box of binoculars and tried to snatch his telescope from Sirius. Unsurprisingly, this didn't go down too well, and Yuki had to step in to confiscate all of the telescopes before one of them got broken, as had happened the year before.

"Settle down, boys," he ordered. "I need some space to set these up. Go and help your mother with the chairs."

Sirius took off immediately, not towards the chairs but towards the nearest tree. The eldest Mizusawa boy had always been one for climbing. Lera snagged Rigel's shoulder before he could follow.

"No," she said sternly. "Help me first, then you can go and play."

"But-"

"But Sirius will have to help put them all away at the end. Come on."

As Rigel unwillingly took one of the deckchairs and started fighting its unwieldy form, Saiph plopped herself down a few feet away, more interested in the tiny flowers in the grass that had already closed for the night than in the show they were here to see.

"Look!" Sirius called suddenly, running back up the hill. "I've got a sword, Mummy! Hah! En garde!"

It wasn't a real sword; as usual with Sirius it was just a very large stick. "Be careful," Lera warned him. "Don't hit your brother with it."

"I want a sword!" Rigel piped up, dropping the chair he was meant to be putting up. "Sirius, where'd you find it?"

"Not telling!"

Luckily, just before the two could launch into an argument, Yuki interrupted. "It's nearly time; come on boys. Sirius, put the stick – I mean, sword – down. You can have it later."

But just as the little group were getting settled on their finally-constructed chairs, a bank of clouds swept in from the north and covered the sky.

"Ohhhhh," Rigel whined. "Now we can't see them!"

"This is boring," Sirius announced about five seconds later. "Who wants to watch clouds?"

Lera's mind immediately presented her with all her knowledge of the earth's atmospheric phenomena and the way they interacted with weather systems; all things she needed to know in her day-to-day work. But it wasn't the kind of information that would keep the attention of a nine- and seven-year old.

Just as she was about to suggest that they come up with a game whilst they waited to see if the clouds would clear, Yuki interrupted her thought process.

"Actually," he said. "Have you ever tried to see things in clouds?"

Sirius gave him the most supercilious look that a nine-year-old is capable of. "Of course not. And anyway, it's dark, Daddy."

"That doesn't matter," he said. "The light from the town will be enough to see by. The first one to spot a beyblade in the sky wins."

That got their attention. Both Sirius and Rigel were beyblade-mad, which wasn't all that surprising as they had the Legendary Blader of Mercury and a former World Championship competitor for parents. Sirius's prize possession was his Rock Orso, a gift from Uncle Nowaguma for his eighth birthday, and Rigel was counting off the days until his own eighth birthday. Naturally, considering who his idol was, he wanted a Befall.

"Extra points if it's a Pegasus!" Sirius yelled.

Lera smiled at her husband, who gave her a quick glance before moving over to where the boys were now sitting and staring up at the cloudy night sky.

"I've got a dragon with three heads," Rigel said. "Does that count?"

"He said beyblade," Sirius retorted. "I've got a hippopotamus."

"Hmm," Yuki said. "You know, we could make that into a story."

"Don't be silly, Daddy," Rigel laughed. "You can't put a hippopotamus and a dragon in the same story."

"Of course we can." Yuki told him. "The three-headed dragon has stolen the hippopotamus's beyblade, and the hippo has to go and get it back with the help of a - " Here, he pointed at Sirius, who blinked before realising what his father meant him to do. A long look upwards provided the next part of the story.

"A crown with a tail!"

"Very good. With the help of a magical crown with a tail. The tail was important because that was what gave the crown its magical powers, and so the dragon wanted to cut it off..."

The story was long and complicated, and the characters changed as quickly as the clouds. It might have begun with a dragon, but the final protagonist was a shape-shifting rabbit with a grudge against a quill pen with magic powers. By the end, Sirius and Rigel were staring at their father in awe. Saiph, who had ignored the whole thing, had crawled into her mother's lap and was now dozing off, a bunch of closed flowers clenched in her fist.

"And that's how the grass in our garden ended up going brown!" Yuki finished. "Oh – look! The clouds are gone!"

Indeed they were. The stars were out once more, and as the boys tilted their telescopes back to the correct place, tiny flashes of light were beginning to appear; the meteor shower they came to this hilltop every year to watch.

"Thank you for that," Lera murmured, squeezing Yuki's hand as he sat down next to her.

"You spent all your life using above-atmosphere telescopes," he smiled. "I know how to entertain myself when my grounded telescope can't see through clouds."

"Apparently you make up stories about a three-headed dragon, a crown and a hippopotamus."

He seemed to be hiding his grin. "If that's what's there." He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss. "Come on. Now that the clouds are gone, we'll be able to see the Leonids properly again."

Lera leaned back in her chair to look up. Maybe this would go on long past the children's bedtime, and maybe they would be cranky tomorrow, but it was worth it. Perhaps it wasn't the most romantic way to spend an evening - taking care of three young children was a full-time job in and of itself - but it was enough for her. It wasn't every day (well, night) that she got to spend several hours watching the tiny points of fire streaking through the night sky with her husband.

After all, it was their wedding anniversary.