Fairy Dust and Starbucks Cups 5
I don't own Harvest Moon or Starbucks Coffee
There wasn't any more to be had, even after an hour of struggling with the tangled dream-threads. He couldn't access it. The future of that round-faced young 'hero' girl was blurry, fuzzy as a teenage summer memory. Such complications usually simply worked themselves out, nine times out of ten, with no assistance on his part. His head hurt extravagantly.
He took his fingertips off the warm glassy surface of his crystal ball and grabbed a scrap of paper from the table, producing an abused and ink-stained ballpoint pen from a discreet drawer in the table.
He drew a quick flow chart that speedily ran out of branches. There was no one logical, predictable path she could take based on his observations. He needed more information.
He began pacing, hesitating at the window and contemplating the full dark backdrop for a second.
The stars said nothing, did nothing.
Tonight it seemed as though they were nothing, for all they could help him.
He thought back to an old story he often heard parents tell their children- that each star represented a departed soul.
An old familiar pain spouted up from somewhere, tingled in his throat, and departed as quickly. If that immaterial fantasy were proven true, what a great many would be tied to him. He would be dragging along millions of soul-stars behind him, fiery balloons on crimson threads, physical proof of the baggage of people he had known, used, manipulated.
This hero-girl, wasn't she just another small star (perhaps even a small planet unto itself, uninhabitable to others, but a just-right capsule for her)? Another person whom fate had attached to him.
Now, what would become of her in relation to him? Surely the reason he couldn't observe the outcome or even deduce her path was because she was going to relate to one of the MASCA members. The Wizard was physically quite unable to access the futures of any other magical creature, or anything or anyone that would relate to that. He was unable even to determine the exact member with clarity. Time and again, he obtained a colourless shape only, an inconsistent, pale ghost humped over and clouded by the ether of the dream-plane.
It was difficult for her to breathe around the massive lump in her throat. What had she agreed to that was so important to those people, that woman in black with the sultry eyes and the empty head, and the ponderous man with the braid and cloak? What was it that they expected of her?
She was not quite present, not fully settled into her skin that morning, after Wizard had laboured long and hard to deconstruct her destiny and failed, subsequent to the kidnapping (or strategic surprise business meeting).
It was a placidly cloudy day, a Tuesday set aside almost religiously for chores. Hikari had arrived later than normal to the supermarket, and was perusing poultry and peppers sullenly. The produce was battered, the herbs a dejected and limp brown with the beginnings of rot.
And, minding her own business, in fact, rather mostly absorbed in it -as people who are in accidents often are- the elbow of her jacket was grasped by an acquaintance, Candace.
She was a gifted tailor but almost certainly destined to be a spinster, with a careful, fumbling demeanour that matched her practical clothes and hairstyle, a limp twin-braid affair with bangs. The two chatted amid the shoppers and old unsellable vegetables. Her sister (free, impulsive, and the very textbook Definition of youthful carelessness) was pining away in a new flame involving the mayor's son, an uptight, supercilious fellow who could never quite mash down his stubborn blond cowlick, and whose sizeable income could not be determined with definite accuracy.
Then Candace herself had recently sent away a manuscript to be published- not for the fame, mind you, but for the mere warm joy in knowing that someone knew her name, had deemed her work worthy enough to purchase.
She was one of those siblings who is completely overshadowed and overtaken by the other. Likely her ventures were part of a longing that Hikari knew to be typical of her, a longing for recognition as a separate entity, rather than 'that one girl's sister'. There must have been some wicked sibling inadequacy that had left in her a still-roiling desire to prove herself.
Their chat diminished to an awkward comment every now and again, and with a promise to look for the book when it made its untimely debut (any debut that was not immediate was untimely, according to Candace), Hikari continued her mission. The store was becoming unbearably stuffy, and the chat had been enough to distract her a little from her worries. Besides, she found housework to be comfortingly tedious, like a pale-painted childhood room on a rainy Saturday.
Boring.
Average.
Safe.
What had she been thinking? They had probably been some kind of group for frustrated, ousted business advertisers or something. There were going to be weirdos everywhere, she reasoned blithely, and they would constantly be menacing the more normal population. That was all.
The witch had been doing some shopping of her own, albeit for something rather different from Hikari's boring groceries indeed.
She was doing a little recon, a particular favourite of hers that she hadn't partaken of since her days training under Master.
She sat on a park bench, sweating under a heavy and complicated spell to alter her appearance without detection. To passersby and to her target as well, she appeared as a young girl, and kept her phone out to complete the look, set to record.
A harvest sprite chattered with another animatedly, flailing their buglike arms and sending errant cascades of light into the noon air. The sky was an unbroken, solid grey, and rain spattered hesitantly in short, gentle bursts before ceasing altogether.
The harvest sprites were notorious gossips, though frail, tiny and magically weak, knew everyone and everything at all times.
There weren't many magical creatures to speak to that could be trusted to either faithfully take a side and stick to that side, or to get involved at all. Many were just simply not smart enough to keep their mouths shut and their ears open. The two sprites were dissecting an earlier conversation they had had with the Harvest Goddess. Though they served more-or-less as her indentured servants, the sprites and the Goddess were very close. She was seen as more of a goddess to them than she ever was in the eyes of humans. The more developed magical creatures saw her as a boss, a friend, a figure of mild authority.
They turned their mutant-sized heads close to each other and yapped away, the occasional stream of tears dripping from their huge, vapid black eyes.
" ...She knows it too, isn't that awful?!"
"Yes! I think she better do something quick, because if she... dies, we know who'll be next in line."
"Harvest King! ... But he- I don't..."
"Wizard is..."
They had trailed off and floated on, pausing for a hug break on a tree branch.
Perfect. Suspects.
And although she doubted Wizard would accept the spot in the limelight, let alone fight (or kill) for the privilege, it would be fun to tease him about it later, at least.
Granted, MASCA was a relatively small, close-knit group, and conflict this early in the game, even a light schism, would begin to tear apart the fragile loyalty to the group as a whole. If they could pit them against one another or unite them against one member, she could certainly very easily find the culprit who was plotting to steal the Goddess' powers for themselves when she finally kicked the bucket. Someone had to take it. Her power would not die with her. She would likely become like a punctured bottle, where the fluid it once contained would leak out for the ground to absorb.
Would it be a matter of preventing the suspect from obtaining such a sphere of influence in the group, or something altogether Messier? Wizard would know. She'd ask him.
Thanks again, sorry for the break, etc. etc.
No promises this time. None. I write when the mood takes me, but it doesn't take me often. Review if you want.