Olympus
If she were to lower her foot, if she were to break the surface of the water with the tip of her shoe, then the image would be destroyed, the ripples spreading out through her reflection until she was unseen, forgotten, lost in the movement.
Once her hand reached for her Mirage Pen, once the glistening shape of the Sky Tone was disconnected, so also would she be lost, the understanding of her circumstances forgotten in the confusion of who she was in the moments before her hop, before that step, before a jump.
Don't be so quick to grow up, that's what they told kids even older than her, but she was different, gifted a bridge to being older every time the Sky Tone made contact with the Mirage Pen, and she was losing herself each time she was forced back into the small box of being an infant.
There was so much no would had told her about being older, so much they assumed she would understand in time, and now she did not have time; now she was two people, a girl with complicated feelings about the world she lived in, and a child.
She lifted her foot from the shore, closer now to the water, and spitefully, she made to stamp down into the water before pulling back. If she never changed back, if she remained a teenager forever, who was there to stop her?
Being older, she could argue her point, she could refuse—she could refuse Ageha, she could even refuse Tsubasa. She was brighter, faster, stronger than any teenager, why would she accept going back to being a child when she knew that, without the magic of the Sky Tone, by the time she reached adolescence naturally, her lustre would be dulled?
All she needed do was refuse, dress differently maybe, become Majesty forever; allow the dream of being Elle to be as distant from her as were the infant recollections of anyone else who had reached this point naturally.
A year of fighting the Undergu Empire had prepared her for change. Any problem in the human world, she could solve it. War? She could end it, the Majestic Chroniclon was capable of purifying everyone, right? Famine? She could end it, all she had to do was rearrange the world's resources. Illness? She could end it, a glistening Sky Tone in her hand.
She had gifted Sora with her powers just as surely as she had seen the good in Mashiro, in Ageha and Tsubasa. Once purified, she would make the world Precures.
If she was really the child of destiny, if she was really a scion of change, then why should she settle for making a difference in increments? If she had prophecy on her side, then surely, letting slip her powers except when threatened was a disservice to those she served, those she fought alongside; she could save the world—all she needed to do was never go back to being Elle.
The first sign of rain danced upon the surface of the water, change that had occurred outside of her, ripples made by her inaction. If she chose to do nothing, her feelings would not be heard and things would still change, so why not change things for the better?
She could make a difference, all she had to do was take the first step.
Her foot came down in the water, ripples spreading from glistening patent.