@awesomefrauellauniverse You’ve probably forgotten you ever prompted me, and this isn’t very good but I was determined to do something with your prompt. So here it is! Just under 900 words, in an AU where Uranus and Neptune didn’t awaken.

The Opposite of Destiny

Haruka
shot up from her tangle of blankets. “What was that?”

“It’s just the wind, babe, come back to sleep.”

But the wind alone was never so compelling. It had a
partner, sometimes, who was swift and direct and impossible to ignore.

“I’m going for a run.”

“What? It’s…” Sleepy fumbling for a phone. “It’s not
even four.”

“I gotta. I’m sorry, I’ll try and be back.”

“Try? Haruka-!”

But Haruka was already pulling on shorts and bolting out
the door. She would not be back, she knew, not really. It was hard to stay
still, stay rooted, when it found her. She had to escape to find her
peace. It always took time to catch up to her again.

Running
helped, when it was with her. Haruka figured it liked running too. She could
feel it beside her, keeping pace step for step. That was how she knew it to be
separate from the wind, although it seemed so similar. The wind did not have
feet. The wind came with her smooth and seamless. Its partner had a gait and a
pulse that matched Haruka’s.

“Maybe
I’ll tell her about you,” Haruka said a mile or so in. When she had a running partner,
she felt compelled to talk, even if she wasn’t sure how real it was. “Maybe I’ll
stay with her, with this job. What would you think of that?”

Her companion
said nothing, as always, but she could feel it calling her bluff. Sometimes she
moved on before it even found her.

“I’ve
always wanted to settle down with a woman, get married, the whole shindig. What
do you have against that?”

It was
not any of those things that it was against.

“One of
these days, you have to tell me why you’re here.”

But
that wasn’t fair. It tried. From the first moment she felt it, it had been
trying. Years and years of encounters, and it couldn’t get it across to her.
She felt the want, the compulsion to get her to somewhere, something, someone,
to make her understand. It needed something from her. When she was a young
teen, she’d fancied it a ghost, and in her secret heart of hearts, she’d hoped
the ghost was a girl who had fallen in love with her, wanted her, needed her.
The older she got, the more she knew that wasn’t right. It might be a ghost,
but not like that.

She let
it lead her today. The sun rose as they ran, through streets and parks and
trails. As much as she ran on her own, Haruka began to tire. Her partner slowed
for her, but drove her onwards. It had an urgency today. A hope. Haruka
wondered if it had figured out what to show her.

They
came upon a beach, and it let her walk. Haruka had always feared the water. She’d
had dreams of drowning as long as she could remember. If she wasn’t careful, one
day the water would swallow her up.

There
was only one other person on the beach this early. Haruka’s companion bid her
towards them.

Details
came into focus one by one. Long green hair, loose and frizzed in the sea
breeze. A canvas set up beside her, not yet painted on. A simple black dress.
Bare feet. The woman turned, then, and Haruka had the feeling they had met, but
she could not place her face.

“You’re…”
the woman started, but then frowned.

She had
something with her, too. Haruka could not say how she knew, but she’d never
encountered anyone like her before. “You have a ghost.” The words were out
before she could think of a better way to ask.

“Is that
what you call yours?” The woman looked out to the water. “I’ve always thought
of it as the spirit of the sea.”

“Mine’s
the wind, but also not.”

The
woman let out a low hum. She moved to the canvas and began to work.

“What
are you drawing?” Haruka asked, though she felt it was a stupid question.

“You
remind me of things I’ve seen in dreams.” The woman did not look away from her
paint. There were dark circles under her eyes, and wrinkles she hardly seemed
old enough for. “I dream often, and it’s always the same.” Her hands were
quick, the scene took shape on the canvas. Reds and blacks, a backdrop of
destruction, but in the foreground, a shining crystal cast light on what as
starting to take shape as a sword.

“Should
I let you be?”

The
woman hummed again. “The sea bid us to meet. It rarely asks more of me than to
paint.” She looked into Haruka’s eyes, then, sending a shiver down her spine. “Perhaps
you are the answer it can never give me.”

For the
first time, Haruka wondered if she wanted answers. She looked at the painting
again. Darkness. Death. A hope that hardly counted as such. She looked at the
woman. The sea.

The sea
would drown her, if she let it.

Haruka
turned and sprinted down the beach. She couldn’t face whatever the answer might
be. A life of wondering and wandering didn’t seem so bad anymore.

The
wind around her stilled as she ran. Uranus resigned herself to eternal sleep.