Title: Dedication
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 1000ish words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Post-manga, Presea - Presea/Hikaru. For wings and also shinies - inspired by elisem's necklace-crowns. (For 'shinies' I went back to the original prompt, to do something based on one of Elisem's pieces which I like going and looking at and have done periodically since the prompt the first time, and ended up wandering through all the necklace-crowns~ particularly 'Where you find it' - there are pictures linked to the shinies from dreamwidth.)
Summary: Presea needs to dedicate the forge in the new Guildhall.

oOo

It was several years before Cephiro stabilised well enough that most people started moving out of the castle, and started moving elsewhere; it wasn't until she started authorising requests for Guildhalls for the smiths in outlying towns that Presea started considering rebuilding a central one, rather than continuing to operate out of part of the Castle.

There was a fair town building up outside the castle gardens by now, and she found a chunk of land close to the market and up against the castle's bailey wall - as soon as she'd mentioned building a Guildhall, Clef had asked if she would mind it acting as an emergency exit for the Castle - she had nearly as much access to the spells holding the bailey wall together as he did, but it would, he said, be a far less obvious choice than either the Guard's station or any building for the general Mages' guild which Clef might put up, when he got around to it.

Presea had grinned at the idea. "A secret door! And I can set traps on it - plus, if it's near the armoury, we'll never be out of weapons to defend it-"

Raising one eyebrow, Clef tilted his head at her. "Any would-be attackers might also take advantage of that proximity."

"In my Guildhall? They won't get near them."

Laughing, he'd left her to her planning, with a promise to come along once things were ready and help put in a secret door that only a dozen people would know of.

Plans had been made, approved, and put in place; the building itself had a central block and two side wings, one with bedrooms and studies and a kitchen and dining hall - all the things apprentices or visiting smiths might need. The other side had a series of forge rooms, materials storage, rooms to hold finished items that didn't need to live in the armory. The main building had a suite for herself - she'd contemplated coming across from her current rooms in the castle, or finding herself a private house close by in town, but both those ideas seemed far too much effort when she was likely to be spending most of her time here for the next few years. So she had rooms tucked into the roof, and the floor below her had the administrative rooms and the main guild meeting place. The ground floor, however, consisted almost entirely of one single forge-room.

It was possible to use her kind of magic anywhere, but a specific space dedicated as a forge had several advantages. It was free of superfluous materials which could interfere with a making if you didn't control your power enough - even highly skilled smiths could have a slip of concentration and find their new sword's hilt made from a chunk of the tree next to them instead of the carefully selected and seasoned hardwood they'd planned. But a room dedicated to a certain type of magic… helped that magic along, made things possible which just weren't quite achievable outside. You could hold a spell longer, change your mind more easily. It was easier to reach into your power and really tell Cephiro what you intended to make.

This one room was the heart of the building, and the last task Presea had before she called Clef across to finish that door, called the smiths still at the castle to come move things in, was dedicate that forge.

As with most smithing work, dedication was far simpler than it was for the priests, or the mages, or pretty much anyone else - you simply had to use the room with intent, and it would stay.

To get the right intensity for a dedication, however, the pieces made generally had to be… personally significant in some form. Presea had done it before. The ornamentation on the dress she normally wore for more challenging work - the one she'd worn to shape escudo for the magic knights, to help Clef lift the Castle into place in defiance of the tearing apart of Cephiro - was one she'd made the first time she'd dedicated a forge of her own. But this time… she didn't know what she wanted to make.

The last time had been the shrine in the Castle, in the first desperate days when they'd been searching for survivors as far and as fast as they could while monsters spread through the shattering remains of their world and threatened those who had managed to avoid the earthquakes, the crumbling. She'd made a sword of her own, and taken it out with her, and used it.

These days, her feeling of Cephiro was… different. Warmer, brighter. More hopeful. Since the moment Hikaru had become Pillar, she'd believed somehow things would come right, and every day was proof of it.

But that left her with little idea what she might need or want badly enough for it to have meaning.

In the end, she let herself wander through her personal supplies store and pick materials at random; a few pieces of fine metals, a handful of precious stones, a few gems cut to take magic. She found her hands drawn to things that were amber and gold and red, and let herself take them and drift into the forge, letting her tunic fall away and the softness of her work-dress wrap around her as she closed her eyes, opened her hands, and fell into that deep sense of hope, let it guide her.

Power wrapped about her, warm and gleaming and welcome, brushing against her skin like a familiar lover might. She saw again Hikaru coming back to them, blazing with power. The smile beaming on her face when she gave that power to the rest of them - and that smile, again and again, in the visits since.

Some time later, she opened her eyes and raised her hands to the delicate piece of jewellery which hung in the air before her, three colours of metal twined and wrapped together in a circlet that was wider at the front than the back, sized well enough it might be worn as a circlet or a necklace - it had a clasp at the back hidden in the coils of wire. And she took it with trembling hands, already knowing how well it would fit on Hikaru's head, nestled in her hair like a crown, gemstones gleaming with the inner fire of her magic, or lay regally about her neck.

Taking a breath, she looked at it, and her hands shook slightly.

Well.

Apparently there was something she wanted, in this new Cephiro, and she wasn't certain quite what to do with that.

The room was thrumming about her, the faint pressure of power singing through the walls - it was certainly dedicated. She would take that result, and take this away, and keep it safe and secret until she knew what she wanted to do with it.