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The Lantern Festival (7) : Scientists have been hard at work trying to understand the strange, glowing qualities of the luminescent caterpillars found in the caves by the reservoir. The caterpillars still shrivel up if they are taken out of the caves but their glowing secretions have been processed into an organic paste that can withstand the outside world. The city is selling paper lanterns infused with various seeds. The glow paste is full of minerals to support healthy plant growth without risking damage to the environment; all lantern purchases come with a small packet of activating power that will heat the paste up enough to mimic the effects of a candle without the concerns of flammability. When the glow paste loses its heat, the lantern will return to the Earth and upon the first rain (or any contact with water) the paper will dissolve and the seeds may begin to grow. All proceeds from the lanterns are put right back into the community to support local conservation and environmental protection efforts.
Feeling Chaotic aura signatures around the lantern festival would probably always put Murikabushi on his guard. Weaving through the park where he’d decided to patrol tonight, he stuck to whatever shadows he could find. Whoever the Chaos aura was attached to, they didn’t feel very powerful, but that might have been down to the distance between them and Murikabushi at the moment. If they weren’t too close, he wouldn’t be able to get the best read on things, like if they were some hapless Lieutenant who didn’t know what they were doing yet or a youma who needed to get dusted or anyone else.
On top of that, Murikabushi needed to observe the civilians. He paused several times as he moved through some trees and bushes that stood nearby the path where people were hanging up their lanterns. Nobody seemed to show any signs of energy-draining. Definitely no cases of starseeding tonight either, since……well, that would’ve been a lot more obvious. Somebody collapsed like that, not moving and probably barely breathing? Unless they were extremely well hidden, a sight like that really would’ve ******** up the atmosphere present in the lantern festival tonight. Instead, everybody seemed reasonably calm, peaceful. Kids smiled while their attached adults hoisted them up to hang a lantern. Young couples made starry eyes at each other.
Maybe Murikabushi had gotten lucky tonight, same as he’d gotten in finding the little rainbow-colored star charm? Maybe whoever had the Chaos aura around here just wanted to enjoy the lantern festival like everybody else.
When Murikabushi finally traced the aura to where he felt it most clearly, he realized immediately why it had felt so difficult to place. It also seemed, to him, that he was right about the person attached to said aura only wanting to enjoy the lantern festival. There, atop one of the picnic tables, sat a familiar, longhaired cat, mixed black and white with a green star on her forehead that very nearly matched her eyes. Soyala-hime, the Mauvian who’d found his starseed and helped take him to the Black Mirror. Sitting there by herself, which……didn’t feel entirely out of the norm. Murikabushi didn’t know what Soya-hime had going on for her outside their very occasional run-ins, but it often seemed like he found her sitting by herself somewhere.
Purified or not, Murikabushi didn’t like thinking about Soya being lonely in that way.
Softened up before even speaking to her, Murikabushi took a moment to dig around in his subspace. He didn’t need to have a gift when finding her; he knew that. But it happened that he’d found something the other week, up on his home-world with Yuki, and he’d kept it in his subspace because it had made him think of Soyala. For a moment, Murikabushi looked down at the little necklace in his hands: a choker made of thick, black silk ribbon—probably the right size for Soya when she was in her human form—with a cameo pendant. Although he didn’t know what the pendant had meant to its original owner, it had been lovingly carved from a layered gemstone, vividly violet in the background with the relief, the unsatisfied ouroboros symbol on his brooch with a rose blossom in the center, done in black.
Carefully cupping his hands around the necklace, Murikabushi made his way over to Soya-hime’s picnic table.
“Hey, himesama,” he said gently, fondly (because, purified or not, Murikabushi would never not be fond of Soyala, could never forget how good she’d been to him and the way she’d come to check on him after his first Star Festival as a newly awakened senshi, when he’d burned himself out on that and Pride bookings, and needed a weeklong nap). Taking a seat on the bench, thus putting himself more level with Soya, Muri kept his cupped hands visible and gave her a smile. “Didn’t anybody ever warn you about sitting by yourself where strange senshi might find you and kidnap you to space or something?”
It was affectionate teasing, nothing more, and everything about Murikabushi’s tone conveyed the truth: he would have taken Soyala to his world, any time, whether she was with Chaos or not, but only if she wanted to go. Kidnapping her would’ve been a poor way to repay all the kindness and guidance she’d shown him before.
Noir Songbird
