The Meteor Shower (3) : It wouldn’t be a star festival without a meteor shower! Right on time, a beautiful array of shooting stars graces the night sky. This time of year is unnaturally clear and it’s incredibly easy to see the stars. Most meteor fragments appear to be little white or yellow lights streaming across the sky, but if you watch closely enough you may find that some of them seem to be a whole rainbow of colors. The scientists have reported that it’s just different components burning up as they enter the atmosphere, but there’s something undeniably magical about it.
The weather forecast beeped along as a reminder of the meteor shower tonight, letting Mina know that the time was slowly approaching. This would be the first time she would see something like that in the city. With all the light pollution, she saw a lot fewer stars than she was used to. It felt a bit lonely in a way even though she knew a lot more people now, it would just take some getting used to like the rest of the city stuff.
One thing she was happy about, in a weird way, was joining the dark mirror court. Yea, there were a lot more weird things going on but it added a lot of excitement to her otherwise laidback life. Now she could explore and get to places she couldn't otherwise reach normally, as long as there was a mirror that she had been to before there. That weird water feeling as she stepped through didn't bother her as much now either, it was just one of those things that used to be weird but now was normal for her. The other thing she had welcomed with open arms was having her subspace, it was nice to have an invisible backpack without having to lug it around.
Tonight she had loaded some extra things in her subspace for her goals, she wanted to try capturing a long exposure photo of the whole meteor shower. If she could get it done right, she could submit it as one of her final photos for her photography class as well as maybe submit it for one of those space photo contests online. The past few nights she had practiced on the moon, making adjustments as each night went to try and get the clearest photo. It had taken a lot of small little adjustments to get the aperture and shutter speed set for doing a long exposure. She needed to make sure there was just enough light to get the photos but not too much that the whole image would just be light.
Stepping through the mirror in her closet, she popped out on the roof of one of the warehouses that were used in the past for movies where she and Hybris had dueled recently. Nobody came by and the roof access door was rusted shut so she didn't have to worry about being disturbed. Everything was falling into place as she set up the tripod and aimed the camera up toward the sky. If she was lucky, she could get a few good photos at slowly increasing time frames to get more and more trails to appear on the photo. She would start with 20 seconds and then increase by 20 seconds for each additional photo.
With it being so clear, it was also a bit cold for being a summer evening. She was glad that her senshi outfit was warmer than it looked, normally she would have had to add a few extra layers to keep warm. Sitting just a little bit away from her camera, she watched the sky and waited for the shower to begin. Part of her wondered what would actually show up within the bubble of light that the city gave off. Every streetlight, building, and airport gave off a lot more light than most people thought. When she was riding the bus into town, she could tell from miles away that the city was full of life and light. It was so different from the dark and quiet place she and her parents lived, once she got her photos she would send some to them too. They always asked her how uni was going and tried to make sure everything was ok since she never really had left home like this before.
It was nice that they checked in on her without actually coming up to visit, she wasn't sure if it would be a good idea for them to see all the weird stuff that Destiny City had to offer. Maybe over the break, she would find her way home and tell them all about her classes and the friends she was making.
With the sun finally descending beneath the horizon, the first twinkles of the meteor shower began. Hitting the button on the wireless remote, she heard the sound of the shutter opening. The meteors rained down in a rainbow of colors, it was... actually magical. Mina watched them in awe as they fell clearly against the light pollution in the background, burning brightly to stand out against it. She had never seen them do that before and honestly, she could get behind the weird crap if it spit out more beautiful things like this. While she was deep in thought, she heard the click of the shutter closing. She hit the second button on the controller to start the next shot while she watched the shower continue. Part of her wondered if Malory was watching the sky too, he seemed like the type to be interested in something so beautiful and dramatic.
The seconds ticked by as she watched each colorful meteor streak across the night sky, there were a lot of them this time so it must have been a huge shower. She was used to only seeing a few out in the countryside when showers happened out there, probably due to how the hills and forested mountains blocked a lot of the night sky unless she climbed up to the top of one of them.
The second photo finished so she started the next one, reflecting on how quickly things were moving both with uni and her photo business. Malory had commissioned her services for a few things and word was slowly getting around that she was a decent photographer at school. Her goal of living a comfortable life on her own terms was looking more and more realistic as the money rolled in from her doll sales and her photo packages. Her parents would be proud either way though, they were happy to see their daughter off to college on a scholarship as the first one in the family to go.
The night went on, one photo at a time until the meteor shower slowed and eventually reached its end. All of the photos were beautiful and filled with the colorful magic she had witnessed over the night. Even if she was alone when she took the photos, she was sure she could share the experience properly with them. Packing everything up took her longer than setting up but she didn't mind. She went through the careful motions and tucked everything back in subspace, making sure nothing would be damaged in the middle place she could toss things.
Looking into the full-body mirror that she had carefully bolted by the rusted door, she smiled a bit at her outfit and the powers that came with the whole thing. Magic was everywhere in Destiny City and she would enjoy it when she could and fight against the things that harmed others. It really was so dramatic, maybe she could try adding a bit more thematic flare to her magic one day. Creating likenesses of people was sort of interesting and spooky in its own way, like how people talked about voodoo dolls in old cartoons. Smiling once more at her reflection, she stepped into the cool water of the mirror and made her way home. Now it was time to sleep so she could get working on printing her photos in the morning.
