Crystal-Bright

[splinteredstar]

Last week on my tumblr, I asked for femslash drabble prompts.

Edmondia responded with “I want to say cute bitties Agnes/Olivia but I also don’t want spoilers and haven’t started chapter five yet.”

It is not quite a drabble, but nevertheless. Agnès/Olivia, pregame, a total lack of spoilers. Just adorable teen girls with crushes and a slice of time to themselves.

They are just girls. Yesterday they were and tomorrow they will be more - Crystal-Brides and Holy Lights, their bodies and souls not their own but filled with Holy Purpose. But today, tucked in a corner of the garden, they are just girls and it is wonderful.
 
The elder - though only barely - tucks blue hair behind her ears. Her hair has a wave to it, one her best friend has always envied a bit. The blue of Olivia's hair looks like the ocean Agnès has only seen from a distance, like the twists of the rivers around their home. There has never been any question of the crystal Olivia is attuned to, and in her weakest moments, Agnès envies her certainty.

Olivia catches Agnès' stare and smiles. Agnès looks down, feeling her cheeks heat. That happens when Olivia smiles at her, sometimes - heat and a strange fluttering feeling in her stomach, a strange distraction in lessons where she finds herself thinking of Olivia instead of the Church. The feeling must be shame, she thinks, embarrassment at her failure of duty - but shame that tastes sweet somehow, shame that makes her want to smile in return.

Warm fingers tilt Agnès' chin up, but do nothing for the flush now ever stronger on her cheeks. But Olivia doesn't look angry, and it's not the odd sad look that the Mother Vestal gets sometimes either, so Agnès just swallows. She thinks about pushing the fingers away from her chin. Such touch can hardly be proper of a vestal.

But today, they are just girls. So Agnès lets herself react like a girl and not like a vestal - so she curls her own fingers around Olivia's and smiles back. Her smile is shaky, shy - but Olivia's face glows like sunrise over the ocean, her smile glittering like the light from the crystals -

-and it is wonderful.