"Ohhhh! Look at that one, Natsu!" Lucy Heartfilia said with sheer joy as a grin appeared on her brightly lit face, a grin that could rival that of a certain fire dragon slayer.
"Uh huh." Said fire dragon slayer causally wrote off as he plucked some grass from the hill they were sitting on.
It was the clearest night in a good while at Magnolia, and Lucy didn't want to waste it. So she dragged Natsu along to go stargazing with her.
Stargazing was her favorite thing, ever since she could remember. The stars and their legends were always so interesting to her. She loves hearing their noble (and not so noble tales) and seeing them in the night sky. It also didn't help she was a celestial mage.
Natsu was reluctant, not finding stargazing any fun (of course, Natsu's form of fun was fight, fight, fight, eat, eat, eat). But somehow or another, the young maiden was able to drag the young dragon slayer with her.
"I see Loke's constellation, oh! And I see Aries and Virgos also!"
"Yeah, that's great, Lucy." With a bored tone in his voice, the destructive Mage sat back against the damp grass and closed his eyes, fighting the urge to sleep.
Lucky glared at her partner as he fell beside her.
"Honestly, you can't show some interest? I'm trying to show you something cool!"
Natsu shot up, throwing her a confused glance.
"Fighting is cool! There's nothing better than feeling the adrenaline pump through your veins and watching your opponents beat to a bloody pulp!
"Is fighting all you think about?"
She asked, with slight dejection.
"No! I think about kicking Gray's ass and getting some fish for Happy also!"
Lucy's head dropped in disappointment. She sighed, muttering that it was "pointless" and she shouldn't have "tried showing him a glimpse of her world."
"What's so cool about the stars, anyway?" Natsu asked.
The blonde almost wanted to hurl him to the other side of Magnolia, but refrained from doing so.
"You idiot! It's not about the stars! It's about what they create!"
The pink haired mage still looked as confused as ever.
"See there," The onyx eyes boy followed her finger as she pointed towards the sky full of stars, "that's Loke's constellation."
"Eh? Loke's conste-what?"
Natsu titled his head to the side, scrunching his brows and squinting towards the dark sky, not seeing anything.
The blonde sighed, knowing Natsu wouldn't have a clue to what she was talking about.
"A constellation is a group of stars that form in this pattern that is named after what it looks like. Usually, people associate these patterns with mythological beings, like my celestial spirits!"
The confused look on Natsu's face lifted slightly, like a light bulb going off in his mind. He pounded a fist on his palm as he smiled.
"So like pictures in the sky!"
"That's one way of putting it." Lucy giggled, a small smile on her pale lips.
"But Lucy, how do you see these pictures?! There's tons of stars everywhere! Where do you ever start?"
The frown that was once on the blondes face disappeared as the celestial mage yelped in glee as she exciting pointed towards the starry night.
"I'll teach you! It's easy!" She grabbed onto his sleeve and pulled it, suggesting for him to come closer.
Natsu complied, not denying the request of his partner.
"The shiniest star in the sky is the North Star! If you're ever lost, you look towards that star. And it can guide you home. But that's not the point. You can pretty much find any point of any constellation around the North Star. For example, the Big Dipper! The handle at the end is the brightest! See it yet?"
A grin the split Natsu's face as he saw the constellation in the sky.
"I see it! I see it!" He jumped into the air and breathed fire into the sky. "Yosh! That's so cool! Lucy! I wanna see more! Show me more!"
"Natsu! Tone down the fire! You don't want to make it so bright we can't see the stars anymore!"
He immediately stopped breathing fire and sat back down in his spot next to Lucy. He sat Indian style, his signature grin plastered on his face, and rocked in his seat like a child awaiting a toy on Christmas.
"Honestly," the blonde muttered, "what am I going to do with you?" A small smile settled on her lips as watched the dragon slayer grin in anticipation.
"Show me, Lucy! I wanna see more pictures in the sky!"
"Ara, ara! Okay! Are you paying attention? Because I'm going to show you tons more!"
The pair sat as Lucy showed Natsu the different constellations, who in turn kept shouting "that's awesome!" or "Lucy's so cool!" From Virgo to Gemini to even her meanest spirit of all, Aquarius, Natsu was fascinated.
And there were times where the blonde mage would go on tangents about the spirits, and other constellations, where she would get so wrapped up in the stories her mother once told her, which it almost seemed that Lucy forgot her partner was there.
Natsu's gaze from the sky turned towards his partner and he couldn't stop the redness in his cheeks as he gazed over his longtime partner. Her light, brown eyes danced with bright fire as her face lit up in delight. The pink haired mage couldn't remember a time he had last seen his partner so happy.
He couldn't stop the sincere smile from making its way on his lips as he watched Lucy so excitingly talk about the stars. The rapid pounding in his chest and fluttering in his stomach made him feel weird on the inside as he watched the smile etched on her pretty lips.
"-isn't that fascinating, Natsu?" She turned to him and he was immediately caught off guard at the look she was giving him. He blushed immediately.
Her over ecstatic look turned to one of skepticism at first when she saw the look in her best friend's eyes.
"Why are you staring at me like that for?!" With embarrassment, Lucy shied away, red adorning her cheeks. Natsu chuckled.
"No reason! Now tell me more about the stars!"
And when Lucy did, Natsu concluded that he really did have the best partner in all of Fairy Tail. Perhaps, even all the magical world.
