“I’m going to miss you,” Uta whispered as her hand rose up and curled against the hard edge of Tera’s face, “I’ll look forward to seeing you again. Will you look forward to seeing me?” She tried to caress Tera’s face but Tera recoiled.
Uta got too close for comfort. She tried to touch the coral polyp that grew out of Tera’s forehead. Her coral polyps, the colour of cinnabar and just as dangerous, were small nubs, unusual for a coral sprite her size and age: proof of how she was not born alongside her kin but created from the splinter of Amasu’s more pronounced polyps.
She didn’t want Uta touching them.
Tera moved her head slightly to the left, her gaze was low and framed by long, luscious eyelashes. Her expression gave nothing away, leaving Uta little recourse but to falter. She was so difficult to understand, to touch: always so guarded, always putting herself down as she considered herself to be but a fragment of a larger self, as though afraid she was not allowed to be herself.
But always a fracture of Amasu.
A sort of in between: a person but not a person, a splinter of a damaged polyp and an harbinger of ill omen. She was tough and strong and cheeky: Uta liked all of that about her. Even as she had tried, and failed, to put distance between her and Uta but now look at them.
More than friendship budded between them.
Uta had tried hard for her. She didn’t let Tera push her away like she had the other folks of her home village. They cared for her and she cared for them but her strong feelings of protectiveness had caused a wall and a chasm, so many coping mechanisms to keep people away, but Uta was undeterred by it all.
Uta did her best to break down those barriers and with a song, no less, even though Tera had proclaimed – straight to her face, no less – that she hated idols. That she always had and always would: even if she could not recall the origin of this dislike, that it was an immutable and intrinsic part of her, no different to the colour of her eyes or the way she walked.
But now look at them. They looked like lovers. It was possible they even were.
They were face to face, chest to chest as they looked deep into each other’s eyes as they attempted a farewell on the cove by the village’s outskirts. Countless, silver stars shone overhead whilst they stood by the ocean’s edge, the water lapping at their ankles as they exchanged these final words.
The night air was cold, uncharacteristically so for this time of year. It made the longing in the salted atmosphere all the more prominent. They listened to the sound of the waves, a muted rush yet they were in no hurry whatsoever. Moonlight shimmered as they found themselves on the precipice of goodbye. Uta, along with her friends and fellow idols, had to go back to their home world but not yet. Uta wasn’t ready and Tera especially so.
Tera had waited a thousand years to see Uta again. She had curled up into a ball, tight and sorrowful, and slept with the hope that one day she would be reawakened and she would hear Uta’s beautiful voice again and see her smile. And that is exactly what happened. With their powers combined, they were able to defeat the forces of the Yami Jellies and bring peace back to Ai-Ai Island. Peace that Tera had no intentions of letting go of. It would be over her last breath, for real, if anything were to ever disrupt Ai-Ai Island ever again.
After all, she was Ai-Ai Island’s guardian. As close to a goddess as they were going to get with Amasu’s soul having passed on and her stone effigy no more.
The grandeur of this role made Tera’s skin crawl. Or maybe it would if she had a body to feel and experience as she once had. Everything was so weird now. New. Godhood was such a terrible thing, especially when she didn’t want it. She didn’t want to be in Amasu’s shadow, nor her splinter. She was her own person through and through as these changes made her unrecogniseable even to herself.
The length of her hair, the seriousness of her slightly older face, the experience of incorporeality and beyond. It made Tera sick. She just wanted to be a normal girl, free to like and dislike as she pleased in every which way that the salty sea breeze blew.
Now look at her, how she pined for the touch of a human girl and one whose ilk had once made Tera so angry with wanting. Amasu had been abandoned by her Showa Era Idol and Tera wanted to learn from that mistake but look at her. Doomed to repeat it with all the glitz and glamour of a Reiwa starlet.
Her heart lurched. Uta’s fingers were so soft and slender, even when the affection they embodied made Tera feel ungrateful. She wanted to keep that strong and stubborn facade up but the truth was.
She really was going to miss Uta.
Her eyes began to water. Her lips twitched and quivered, only for Tera to quash her own feelings with a stringent power from within. A stubbornness ignited. Tera clicked her tongue and returned her gaze, forceful, unto Uta who was surprised by the directness of Tera’s body language as at long last, she had a reply.
“I won’t miss you.” Tera lied, mumbled really. She pouted and waited on Uta’s reaction.
Uta flinched but was cautiously optimistic, her kind eyes told Tera that she knew more was coming. Even if she had been surprised to hear what came out of Tera’s ever so abrasive mouth.
“After all,” Tera shrugged, a tear streaked down the side of her chiselled cheek, “you’ll come to the next Super Miracle Idol Festival, and the one after that and the one after that. It’ll be, like, no time at all. What’s ten years to someone who has waited a thousand?” She flashed a grin all cheeky like she wasn’t wounded by how much she would miss Uta in between.
She was so selfish. She really was no better than Amasu.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Uta swooned all giddy, her hands flung in front of her face to poorly hide the pink blush to her face, “I would love to keep coming to them!”
“Then I’ll see you there and until then…” Tera said and she turned to face Uta again, a mistake, by the way as Tera knew she couldn’t handle how blinding and dazzling Uta was, like the sun, but it was worth it because dang, she was pretty when she smiled, “Take care.”
Tera’s voice turned into a whisper and she stepped forward, her resolve overflowing off of her and she kissed Uta. She had never done anything so romantic and brash before. She had never dreamed of it before, and she had never imagined it before but there was something about idols which seemed to make even the most impossible of reveries come to life.
So, since this was going to be goodbye, Tera knew she had to make it last. Human lifespans, their experiences and sensations were so ephemeral so she really had to take it all to heart. Love loud and full until it was no more. That’s what went into Tera’s mind as she closed her eyes, hard, and through the tears that she shed as she kissed Uta so desperately to the sound of the crashing ocean waves by their heels.
It was nothing less than magnificent. Uta eased into the kiss, she kissed tera back and finally, she was able to touch Tera the way that she had wished. Soft hands on Tera’s firm skin, gentle and affectionate but not going anywhere. They would make this last as a memory between them both for all eternity.
The softness of Uta’s lips, the feeling of the sea breeze on their skin and in their hair. It was all so wonderful as time itself seemed to stop for them as they used each other’s kiss to its fullest extent, until only breath ran out between them.
“I’ll see you again, yeah?” Tera asked in the tiniest voice.
“Mm, of course you will.” Uta tearfully replied, her own eyes aglisten with tears that were shed of gratitude and the realisation that she was already missing Tera before either of them had even left.
Tera hazarded a small smile. She placed her own hand over Uta’s. Uta’s hand was small and soft whereas Tera’s hand was coarser. Unlike Tera, Uta had never seen a hard day’s work the way that Tera had, days spent spearfishing day in and day out, and other village activities that cultivated calluses and such.
“So until we see each other again at the next festival,” Uta said, a touch flirty but mostly sincere with worry, “you take care, too, and take care of the people of Ai-Ai Island too as their goddess.”
Tera felt the word “protector” jump to her throat alongside the urge to correct Uta but she knew Uta only meant well. If Tera could come to appreciate idols despite her insistent hatred of them, maybe she could come to appreciate herself as more than a guardian of Ai-Ai Island but their goddess, too. She certainly felt divine in her own right when Uta, her own personal priestess and idol, looked up at her with such devotion her garnet eyes. Oh, it made her heart flutter.
Tera’s eyes softened and she leaned into Uta. She bumped her forehead into the middle of Uta’s, obscured by her fluffy, brown fringe as it was. The result was almost like a nuzzle but also not, a call back to the caress that Tera had previously denied Uta. She let Uta brush up against the coral polyps that grew from her head in this gesture to affirm the love and support that Uta had given her so far.
Love and support that Tera fully intended to channel back towards Ai-Ai Island.
“It would be my duty, pleasure, and honour.” Tera whispered. She choked out a chuckle. That was way too fanciful for her to admit but it got her point across. She was growing up, becoming more mature and responsible. That couldn’t be a bad thing.
Especially if it made Uta smile and giggle. Bittersweet as it may be as dawn cracked and Uta’s friends called for her to go. But they both knew that before long, in no time at all, not really compared to a thousand years, they would see each other again and once more, their wish would have been granted. So that once more they could stroll in the moonlight and bask in a shower of shooting stars. Fate could shift and change over time but this was their heartfelt promise to one another but until then, this was their goodbye.
