Quote:
It wouldn’t be a star festival without a meteor shower! Right on time, a beautiful array of shooting stars graces the night sky. 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 pink, blue, and even purple in color. 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.
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Cybele still spent a lot of time avoiding the stars.
A lot of it was based around concepts she'd clung to early in her senshidom about being a human, from Earth, not some sort of alien. Another part of it was not wanting to put any kind of faith in any sort of fate or destiny or anything other than her own two hands.
She'd worked through a lot of that. She'd been to space a few times, even to the asteroid Cybele, once. It had not made her any less strong in her convictions to protect her city. Still, she'd never gone back. Instead, she spent her days hunting youma. She watched the stars, sometimes. That was just something that happened when you were out at night as much as she was. She watched the stars and wondered why they seemed to do so much more for others than for her, even while she kept her feet firmly on Earth as much as she could. She hadn't left the planet in years.
She'd been busy these last few weeks. Festivals always gave her an uneasy feeling in her stomach. She'd seen too many go up in smoke, often literally, and a few more stalked by beasts from the outskirts. This one seemed to be falling more into the second category.
Youma skittered behind booths and around the edges of the festival grounds, looking for any energy that could be scavenged. There were agents, too. Cybele had been feeling their auras, but they were better than their monster counterparts at disappearing into the crowds. It was nearing the end of the festival, now, and tonight, there were no Chaos auras skulking about. Cybele sat on a hillside, away from most of the action, and she looked up at the sky.
That was when she saw the first shooting star. It was a streak of gold across the sky, so quickly that she didn't even have time to wish.
Then there was another, and another. There was one that had a bit of a pink tint to it, and then another, and eventually, one that she could have sworn was the same tint of purple as the flowers in her hair.
She knew that shooting stars were actually meteors burning up in the Earth's atmosphere. She knew that people always told children that they were good luck, and to wish on them as they flew by. She didn't know if there was any more to it than that, the way there was to every other rock in the cosmos.
And yet she knew, as she watched the many colored meteors, she knew that there was some sort of magic to it. She glanced down at the festival below, at the people shopping and laughing and living.
It seemed like too much to wish for the things that she'd used to, like wanting to be a movie star, or for the world to become a perfect place overnight. Yet, against her better judgement, she felt her lips moving.
"Don't let anyone die tonight," she said, letting her eyes focus on just one of the many stars.
And below her, for the next few hours as she watched carefully, not a single chaos aura came where she could feel it.
