High Hopes

It was so weird being back in Halcyon, like in the city proper, the haunted house and portaling back to Wolfe Island but in like two weeks it already felt weird being in the big city. Which was extra weird given Maria and Elena had both lived in the city for most their lives. Hell Sapphire did too but they had been there less and less with time. Between time travel with EliZe, Wolfe Island with the Luminaries, and now their quest it was it had been less and less time on Wolfe Island since EliZe defeated her old cult.

Sapphire was sitting on the top of a skyscraper waiting for Astra to join faer. Fae were in a purple tank top and skirt combo. The girl in the twin tails leaned back on her little picnic blanket ready for what could be their last date for a long while depending on how they decided to go forward with things. Fae just hoped that fae could give their shining star  a good day.

On the plus side fae weren’t meeting the parents just yet, so Sapphire got to avoid having to impress two goddesses for the moment and just focus on Astra for now.

After a little while, Astra arrived on Nebulim. “Hey Sapph!” they greeted with a bright smile as they jumped off to the skyscraper. They were dressed in bright white slacks and a multicoloured galaxy button-up.

The star child was excited to see Sapphire again after fae and the rest of Fearless left the team to pursue their own goals. They skipped over to the blanket and landed gracefully next to the girl to give faer a hug. “I’ve missed you!”

Sapphire hugged Astra and said with a sound of relief in her tone “I am so glad to see you again, the north pole is so cold but we’re basically done there anyway. The main point was to find some of Morgan’s hidden stuff. Sadly all we found of Mara was a picture from before 1955 so it didn’t help us learn anything. Except that Morgan kept a picture of Mara with her I guess but it got left there so who knows what that means?”

The half fairy waved around her fingers and the food began to lay itself out. Sapphire proudly said “I made all of this today! I had Elena’s help though but I did all the actual cooking. ”

The half demon broke the hug and asked “So your moms are back, How has that been?”

Astra, who had been nodding attentively along as Sapphire recounted their adventures, broke into an excited grin when they saw the food. “Gosh, my moms, it’s uh been interesting? Like obviously I love them very much, and it’s been super nice seeing them again, but seeing them here in Halcyon has been *an experience*,” the star child laughed. “But yeah, it’s been fun showing them around, and having them meet some of my friends. You know, I think Maria would love my mama, the patron goddess of thieves.

So what’s on the menu, by the way? It looks really good!” Astra said, eyeing the picnic food.

Sapphire gulped a little but, oh gosh even Astra thought that his mama would like Maria more, dammit, no Sapphire calm down, you are stunning and cute with all of the skills of both Maria and Elena, mostly, sometimes, if she tapped into them, ya, calm down!

Fae giggled nervously and asked “has she been stealing a lot? We could totally show her some nice places to steal from.”

Sapphire turned faer head to the food and said “I made us some Pastel, which is like a little fried bread and cheese thing, well the kind I made, you can stuff it with a lot of stuff but I figure it’s an apptizer so I should keep it simple.”

Then Sapphire pointed to the main course “Then I made us cubanos which is a nice sandwich.”

Then she held up her dessert and proudly said “I made some conchas which are a sweet bread.”

It felt pretty basic but fae wanted to do it as much by faerself as possible, after all it had to be special, for all fae knew it be  years before they saw each other again.

“Wow, that sounds amazing!” Astra said, reaching for a pastel. “Yeah, she steals from rich hoarding assholes and stuff, so helping her do that here as well would be super rad.”

Munching on the delicious appetizer, Astra swallowed before complimenting his datemate. “Gosh, you’re so cool, Sapph, making all this. Should I maybe have brought something too? Ooh, maybe you can come over when I’m back in my world, and I can make you something too?” The demigod’s eyes were shining with excitement.

Sapphire blushed, Astra always knew how to make faer feel better. She grabbed a pastel for herself and after a bite said “Wow your moms sound so good, before they leave we should have them meet my mom too, I bet Izel would love them.”

The demon fairy blushed a bit at the idea of Astra cooking for faer or anything like that, it sounded really nice. Then fae remembered what they and Elena talked about before. Sapphire said brimming with excitement “I’d love to come to your world and taste some food from it.”

Then the former superhero leaned in and asked “Elena actually suggested we ask you about maybe going over to your world for a while, if you were going back. We don’t know where Morgan le Fay has been plus there is probably no one better for Maria to train with than your mom. Of course you can totally say no, we got other ideas too but that was one we’ve been talking about.”

“And I bet my moms would love Izel too,” they grinned, munching on their second pastel.

As Sapphire gave faer suggestion however, they shone bright and blush. “Oh heck yeah, that’d be super rad! I’d love for you to come stay with us for a while. You can try our amazing sun-food, meet more of the family, I can show you around in my world, gosh, that’d be sooo cool.”

The star child was very giddy with excitement. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of inviting Sapphire and the Fearless trio to his home-world, but it seemed so obvious and amazing of an idea.

Sapphire grabbed Astra’s hand that wasn’t holding food and said “I can picture it now, Sapphire the outsider. I can learn about your world like you did about ours, it would be amazing.”

Obviously leaving EliZe behind would be sad for all members included but also EliZe was a timeless time traveler so she didn’t actually have to wait for us, she could just skip ahead to whatever day they planned on coming back, she could even then portal them back to whatever day they left and not have missed any earth days. Ya so it shouldn’t be so bad, other then them themselves missing people but, ya it be fun. Plus it wasn’t like they didn’t intend to spend lots of time away from people, the north pole wasn’t exactly close to home and neither was Avalon or the past. It was just a feeling they had to get used to but if they could have one person they loved around, in this case Astra then it be great.

Sapphire grabbed a faer cubano and took a bite, fae were impressed by their own cooking, it had it’s own special flavor. Sandwiches really were amazing. Sapphire kissed Astra’s check and teased “You look so cute when you blush, I love how you light up.”

Astra blushed brighter, their freckles glimmering from their internal starlight. “Oh wow, you charmer,” they giggled. Munching on one of the cubanos, they comment “Gosh, these are really good.”

Astra liked faer food, yes, fae were so excited, they were filled with passion wanting to try again next time fae could. Sapphire put her legs over her shining partner and said cheerfully “I’m glad I can charm you and cook for you. I’m basically a whole package.”

Sapphire wrapped faer arms around Astra’s shoulders “So are you thinking about leaving next week? A few days, longer, shorter? Do you know what you’ll be doing back in your home world?“

Astra leaned into the embrace. “Yeah, I’ll be doing all kinds of epic demigod heroics, saving the people of my world from catastrophic beasts, machinations of evil gods, and of course various tyrants. Gotta earn my spot as a god of stars if I want it.

So about next week or so is the plan. And then we’ll be off. Oh! Would you need extra time to pack and stuff, since you're coming with us?” Astra looked back at the half-fairy, while chewing on their second cubano.

Sapphire shook faer head no and assured Astra “No I mean, we were just on a trip, our bags are still packed, we planned on leaving in a week no matter what. It was just a matter of where and when.”

The retired big team member pulled out a journal and flipped it open showing a list of locations and times and said “This is everywhere we can think of to find leads on Mara and a list of places we could go to train around those areas as part of a daily routines.”

Sapphire giggled then realized “We’re not even really here for the week. We’ll be on Wolf Island and Avalon for like 2 of those days. We are so busy but that happens when three people share a body I guess.”

Sapphire went over their weeks plan in faer head, day with the James family and Izel, day with teen morgan, day with the luminaries, help Signe move in, same day check on the Owlnights and make sure Alison is ready to be their Big Team replacement, maybe squeeze in some time to hang out with Boon and Maggie if thy aren’t at the James’s place and lots of cuddling with EliZe. Yup, exciting week before they go to another dimension for a while.

“Oh wow, you are really busy, yeah. If you need any help, just let me know, but yeah, I’ve also got some stuff I need to do before leaving, though it’s mostly just packing and convincing Principal Crossover to let me finish my schooling year remotely or earlier or something.” Astra said, reaching for a concha, not being able to reach without getting out of their comfortable cuddle, and instead using their starlight baubles to levitate some over to the both of them.

Sapphire grabs faer Cconcha and takes a bite to stop faerself from  giggling at the idea of Astra still taking human classes remotely. Astra’s girlfriend asked “wait is there internet that connects to our world on the sun of your world?”

Then more curiously added another question “Also have you talked to A-vis about leaving?”

“Internet? Uhh, no, I was just thinking of like getting a study plan and go from there, but I guess we could try and establish an internet connection. Could be cool.” Astra pondered while munching on the sweet dessert bread.

“I have messaged Johnny about me leaving yeah. They took it pretty well, but I guess we kinda need to actually talk about it face to face.” They giggled, just a little bit nervously. “I don’t think they’ll come with me to my world like you after all, since they’ve got all sorts of stuff rooting them here, like AEGIS, the Ruelles, Smithton education, uhh the moon itself as well... So yeah, gotta have to talk about long distance relationships. Woo!” They said, adding a healthy dose of sarcasm on that last part. They were pretty sure his and Johnny’s relationship can handle some extra-dimensional physical distance, but it was uncharted territory for the star child, as was many relationship things.

Sapphire thought for a moment about the internet thing and said “I have no idea how to do it on mass but we did manage to get our phone to magically work as if it was coming from inside the haunted house no matter where we were. Although we’ve only tried from Space and Morgan’s place. So I could maybe set up your phone to connect but a study plan is probably better, I never went to school...or I did but I didn’t know it was me, or I did know and my internal sense of self shifted, whatever, anyway, stuffs complicated.”

Sapphire had recently realized that she, or an earlier version of her might have been the primary version of Maria before...everything happened in their life. Fae weren’t totally sure but some earlier  Maria memories felt like faer? This was all so complicated, it was kinda easier when she thought she just swapped into existence when Maria and Elena fused instead of being a fusion of two selves that were very similar but mostly ignored by Maria and Elena. Meh it was better knowing for sure.

Sapphire would hold in her relief that she wasn’t going to be rooming with Johnny in Astra’s world, she could only imagine how much fighting would happen between him and Maria. Fae smiled and said with confidence “I am sure you personally can handle long distance, mostly for selfish reasons cuz we plan on settling down back here and Wolfe Island.”

Sapphire chose to ignore the potential that Morgan would try to take over her world and could succeed and then be queen and ask maria to move in, that wasn’t something fae wanted so fae were just gonna suppress that possability.

“Oh yeah, totes! It’ll be long distance eventually with the both of you, but it’s not like we don’t have transport methods. It’s just gonna be, ya know, different. But still looking forward to it.” Astra grinned, finishing their concha.

Sapphire started to think maybe it was time to drop the L word fae had said it before, with The Lumaries, Luna first...or was the first time fae said it under the bleachers with Mal in freshmen year...or was on a date with Mara? The girl pulled on her pig tails in frustration.

Taking a breath and calming down faer instead confessed with a huge and honest smile “I am really glad I am gonna be able to come with you, I want to give you memories there like I have memories here in the city with you. That way even when we’re apart we’ll have nice reminders until the next time we can talk or see each other.”

Astra gave faer a brilliant smile in return, and hummed in agreement as they nuzzled in closer, looking over the skyline of Halcyon.