They said that space was cold, Hollywood did. Cold. Empty. Dark.
But all you feel right now, rushing up through the atmosphere in your little rocket, is warmth. It took you three months. Walpurghis came and went, Madoka finally was Homubombed, Asunaro, Tokyo... They all fly past you in colors of fire. A flurry of golden embers, rising higher and higher, screaming your ascendance to the skies.
And then, almost startlingly quickly, the fires die, and everything is silent. Truely, completely silent, with only the sound of yourself and your passenger's breathing. You let it sit right there, as your craft continues to streak through the exosphere. A hand blindly, weakly grasps for your own, but when you look over, she's not looking at you. Mami has her eyes closed, and seems to be listening intently.
You concentrate on not breathing. It takes a bit more out of your gem to do, but it's worth it. Slowly, even the slight rustles of fabric and the tiny eddies of breath die out, leaving behind nothing but void. Perfect, encapsulating silence, that seems to stretch on forever. You shut your eyes too, listening to nothing for a while. And while you do...
Unbidden, you and Mami open your eyes together. All the grief that made up your rocket has become perfectly clear, the only visual barrier between you and infinity a few feet of air. All around you, stars gleam like looking at the sun through perfectly black velvet. The Milky Way stands bared before you, and you feel a sense of vertigo as you look back eons on stars so far away that no Human could ever reach them. No Magical Girl could ever go there. But you might... If Mami asked you to, you'd find a way.
"Wow..." Mami breathes, softly. The sound echos loudly against the perfect silence of a vacuum. Like church bells on a clear day.
It almost feels sinful to respond to that... wonder, in her voice. "We're almost there."
Mami smiles, and it's hard to tell if it's a sad smile, even when she starts tearing up. "...We're in space."
"Yeah."
"We're in space!"
"Yeah!"
"WE'RE IN SPACE!" Mami laughs, giddy with excitement. "It's beautiful! We-" Mami stops to sob in happiness, wiping at her eyes with the heels of her hands. "We're in
space, Sabrina. How many people have been here, in all of human history? How many,
plus us?"
"Five-hundred thirty eight, now." You say, getting swept up in the excitment. Then there's a soft chime from your grief rocket.
You've arrived.
"I guess it's time to get going." Mami says sadly, looking around as if she wants to remember this moment for the rest of her life - which, probably the both of you do.
Well, you for different reasons. You can come back up here, but you'll only be able to do this next bit once.
"Yeah. I'm going to open the door behind you." Mami nods and closes her eyes again, and you can see the small lattice of clear ribbons quickly form a dome around her head. You do the same with your grief. Then, with a twist of your will, you open a hole into the heights of Low Earth Orbit. The wind rushes around you briefly, but eventually it dies down in favor of leaving you and Mami floating, unsupported, high above the world.
It only takes a small push for you and her to link hands and begin your descent, this time wrapped far more personally. Ribbons and grief entwine to block friction, and you and Mami fall faster and faster towards the surface of the planet. You hear Mami cry out in exuberance as the fire lights up again, wreathing both of you in the flames of reentry. As the air begins to grow thicker, you and Mami both begin spreading wings. Magical ribbon and solid Grief are stronger than any man-made material, and the two of you shudder through your pseudo-hug as all four wings extend out to one hundred meters each, with the flames stretching even further, painting a brilliant angel across the sky in the colors of a setting sun. The clouds are still far below you, but above you, the whorls of disturbed atmosphere and burning fire stretch across a span larger than some countries.
As the furthest layers of cirrus clouds grow closer, you tap your helmet to Mami's. "Hey!" You shout, over the rushing wind. "Let me in!"
"What?!"
"Open up! I want to do something!"
It takes Mami a moment to finagle her ribbons in such a way that you're able to make contact with her without any impediments (or your flesh burning away), but she's Mami freaking Tomoe, and it happens.
"W-what did you want to do?" She asks. But she's blushing a little, and you think she has a guess long before you jump in and kiss her on the lips.
Mami freezes, but eventually relaxes further into the kiss. It almost makes you regret deciding to do it this way when you start to lose track of time, and nearly miss your mark for starting to level out your descent.
It's dark, when the two of you hit the ground with a roll, wings vanishing into glittering gold and a bevy of disintegrating spheres, respectively. But you survive. You survive jumping out of a space-ship in orbit. You survived Walpurghis Nacht.
You survived the most nerve-wracking moment of your life, when you kissed Mami Tomoe.
The two of you take a moment to catch your breath, panting and giggling in equal measure. But eventually you both calm down, and it's silent for a few moments.
It almost takes all of your courage to ask, but you manage to make it sound nearly as cool in real life as it sounded in your head when you ask Mami, "So... What did you think of your first kiss?"
Mami's silent for a few moments, and you feel a thrill of fear when a tear rolls down her cheek,
but then she smiles, and reaches up at the first stars glimmering in the evening sky. "I think I have two new Most Beautiful Things in my life."
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Most Beautiful Things
