A blooming flare illuminates the world in pure white until it’s all I can see.
W! - Augh my eyes
The world becomes properly visible after a few seconds of rapid blinking through the sudden light.
W! - I swear, one more day of this place’s godforsaken artificial day-night cycle and I’m jumping the wall to never be seen again.
W! - …
W! - …ha. Ha ha. Yeah.
Outside my sliver of window, it’s the same as it always is—shifting, iridescent darkness, the floating fragments of bygone realms in the astral sargasso sea.
Just like this morning is the same as every morning here always is—
Wake up at oh-six hundred sharp when everyone on first shift is forced awake with daylight lamps.
Try and remember how many days ago I stopped scratching tally marks on the wall.
Splash water on my face and do a round of calisthenics. Maybe re-read one of the handful of allowed books on my tablet.
(At one point I started writing a novel but, to be perfectly honest, it sucked.)
Wait for my tray of breakfast (slightly rubbery scrambled eggs; orange juice from concentrate; vegetarian sausage) to appear through the slot in the door.
W! - Didn’t even bring me coffee. Typical.
(Probably Lt. Brenner. She treats me with a sense of distant disdain, which means she’s scared shitless of me.)
At least some of the techs from the flight deck slipped me a few packets of instant the last time I went out, and the defense commission has yet to determine a way I could kill everyone with a kettle. So I get one of those.
(Even if I don’t get anything resembling dignity.)
Then it’s time to pick out one of my rotation of three outfits and putter around until I am finally un-jailed at oh-seven hundred.
…”jailed.” Really, a funny joke.
Click.
There we go. Right on time; time for my date with the Commander.
I don’t have to knock; the door swings open on my arrival.
W! - You know, it’s kind of overkill to make all the cadets go back in their rooms to watch me walk down the hall by myself.
W! - Even if it’s a little cute to see them press their faces agains the little windows.
W! - Anyway. Sup, Commander.
C! - That's "Sup, Sir."
W! - We have this argument every morning. You know what I'm going to say.
She pinches the bridge of her nose.
C! - Yes, I know, I can't fire you.
W! - C'mon. I basically watched you grow up. Seems like just last year you were the softie bringing me cocoa on night watch.
W! - I'll call you Sir when I've got a commission and a salary. Until then, you'll just have to keep paying me this way.
She sighs.
C! - …I’m going to have to actually insist, if there’s a chance anyone might hear. Fed's cracking down on military discipline.
Ah. She’s been weird all week, not meeting my eyes, frowning more than usual, when she’s always been kind of an open book.
W! - What haven't you been telling me.
C! - A couple of our veterans got arrested at a protest in the capital last week. Pretty tame, but it seems like you might have radicalized them.
Snort.
W! - You know I didn't. Fucking hell.
C! - I know you didn't. Intentionally, anyway. But it looks bad to the commission, and to Congress.
C! - I’d… have thought you'd look gladder to hear it, though.
W! - It's too late, anyway. What do they think they're going to do.
C! - I guess they couldn't feel good about leaving your situation as it was.
W! - Fuck's sake.
C! - ...
W! - Well. What's on the docket for today, Sir.
C! - Survey team reported some unusual activity readings overnight. I need you to suit up, confirm, report size/strength, and eliminate any threats, if possible.
W! - Long grocery list, but I'll do my best.
C! - Don't forget the milk.
W! - Sure. It's going on your tab, though.
W! - Sir.
CLEARSTATUS CLEARSCREEN - They used to have a name for what I am. They might still, if they’re still making seasons of Miracle Girls Vanguard.
Although at this point, is that cultural appropriation?
A young girl warrior with magic at her disposal, champion of a faraway magical land… hiding in plain sight as an average everygirl while she protects everyone around her from the forces of evil.
A “magical girl.”
My family emigrated from the Dreaming Isles a few generations back—I guess, really, went into exile.
So, someone could say I’m “from” the lands across the Astral Sea, but I’ve never been there.
My granddad started a shop selling imports, and my grandma… still had a few heirlooms from home. What she could flee with. One of them had a legendary power sealed within in case of great danger.
So when the Hollow Empire came calling here, too, she donned her tiara and opened the Sweet Dreaming Music Box—
—and became the first publicly known magical girl.
…which, yes, means I could, by some technicalities, be a princess.
That’s beside the point, though, since it’s not like I can ever go to the Dreaming Isles, and if I did—
They don’t exist anymore, in any meaningful way.
So it’s sort of a moot point. Participation badge of a title.
By the time I was a kid, there was a decent-sized immigrant population from the Lands of Magic and a tradition established.
Most kids at least went to Magica Scouts for a little bit, got their transformation sequence, all that jazz.
If you stuck it out and didn’t decide it was uncool or weird, then you’d probably end up in a troop of three to seven by high school and those would be your best and closest friends forever.
More or less, anyway. Everyone's different.
For me, though, it was like that.
It was my life.
CLEARSCREEN CLEARSTATUS - The techs who work on the flight deck are older and less fussy than the kids who mostly populate the corridor by my room.
Some of them were even around in the earlier years, when people only sort-of cared about regulations and a lot of them remembered magical girls operating in their cities, fending off attacks from the Hollow Empire.
(Or any of the other two-bit opportunists who tried to operate on the edges unnoticed.)
These days they stay behind the glass, though, on the observation level above.
You know. Regulations.
T! - Great weather for flying, Maisie. Forecast looks clear.
W! - I never envy anyone trying to make weather forecasts over the Sea, but knocking on wood, anyway.
There's no wood in here. Not even my broom is wood; those went out of fashion ages ago.
I knock on the handle anyway. Carbon fiber was just coming into fashion around the time of the Alien Otherworlders Act, and it's held up.
Who knows. Maybe it's luckier than wood.
(If I could ever be said to be lucky.)
Also, one of them tied a little parcel of snacks to the handle. That's... nice. At least.
T! - Safe travels. Call in via the relay if you don't think you'll be back by 2200.
W! - Yeah, sure, Mom.
There's some laughs over the loudspeaker. Might as well give the trainees a little something to rib their captain about, as a free service.
I grab the broom handle in my left hand, roll my shoulders back, stretching not unlike an animal packed in a carrier finally getting let out.
If I close my eyes, I can almost pretend it's sixty years ago and dreaming still meant anything to me.
W! - Tower, initializing transformation in three. Two.
W! - Stars Revolve! Shine Bright!
The world drops away from under my feet.
There's something peaceful about freefall. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just kept going forever. Is there even a bottom to hit, over the Astral Sea?
It doesn't feel so much like falling—more like floating, as the star I am descends like a firework into the dark ruins between worlds.
Then: I snap my fingers. The brooms sparkles to life, and we're flying.
It's never escaped me that even for all the security theater, there's technically nothing stopping me from—leaving. Taking myself and the broom and going to who-knows-where.
Going as far as I can go. Maybe, someday, washing up on the shores of the Starlight Kingdom. Why not?
But I can never think like that for long.
I know why.