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Maya Fey always makes sure she's referred to as "Maya Fey, Future Master of the Kurain Channeling Technique." Name, then title, never the other way around.
It goes against tradition, technically, though the occult magazines and channeling newsletters requesting interviews don't know that. The only people who do are the rule stickler town elders, who've known Maya her entire life and learned many years ago to choose their battles with her. (Not that she isn’t learning the same lesson herself, trying to uproot the village’s entire status quo.)
In the years since she became Master in all but name, since the events at Hazakura Temple, a lot has changed, and yet it seems like nothing has. Pearly is as short as ever, her long-awaited growth spurt seeming less and less likely to come. Nick's been disbarred longer than he was barred in the first place.
And Maya is still terrified of what will happen when she finally finishes her training.
Terrified isn't the right word, is it? She hopes it isn't. Kurain Village, despite its flaws, is her home, and spirit channeling is her passion. There’s a reason Mia was the one who went down from the mountain.
But every day when she gets up, the early morning sun providing only just enough light to make out the room around her, the old wooden floorboards creaking underneath her bare feet, her tightly tied robes loosened from tossing and turning in the night, she passes by the talismans in the halls. Mystic Ami's urn is on display, of course, but with it fans, paintings, handwoven charms, calligraphy, staffs, an endless line of sacred objects owned by an endless line of Masters all long dead before her time, remembered only by whatever records of their policy changes lie covered in dust and cobwebs in some storage room.
She wonders, would these people judge her? The crickets are chirping outside in the garden as she tiptoes down the hall to her room, a water glass in hand. Her mind is exhausted from a long channeling session, but her body is unable to sleep.
Her ancestors. Perfectly framed artwork and glowing, foreboding presences, never to be channeled, even if one had enough information to attempt it. Mystic Ami may be the only one with golden statues in her likeness, but that's how Maya pictures them all in her mind, cold and hard and dead.
If being a statue is her duty, then Maya worries she doesn’t have it in her blood. She doubts she'll ever be nearly as regal as her mom, as diligent as her sister. The elders might respect her spiritual power, but they'll only ever think of her as a lost, ditzy little girl, and despite how much that makes her blood boil, she can’t help but think they’re right.
She spends a long, long time staring at the ceiling from her futon but can't convince herself that she’ll make her ancestors proud.
Her nights aren't all spent like this, though. Every once in a while, she and Pearly go down to visit the Wrights. When she's up late those nights, it's lively, conversation over games of cards or cheap herbal tea, a welcome distraction from the world around them.
"I can't believe you have the same exact flip phone you had when we first met. How old is it now, 100?" she jokes one night after Nick left the room to take a call. They’re gathered around his kitchen table, an empty box of pizza pushed off to one side to make room for a game of ERS.
"Hey, it's only 10 years old. It still works just fine!" Nick sits back down in his chair, shoving his phone into the pocket of his hoodie. He scoops up the cards in front of him and shuffles them with the speed and precision of someone who’s been doing this daily for years now.
Maya rolls her eyes, taking a sip of her sparkling apple cider, Nick’s idea of an age-appropriate substitute for champagne. They ‘have to celebrate Trucy’s big show,’ after all. "10 years old is ancient for a phone. That's like using a black and white TV because it 'works just fine.'"
"And don't try saying it's too hard to use a smartphone, Mr. Nick!" Pearly chimes in. "Mystic Maya helped me save up for a used phone, and even though I’m really bad with technology, I can still use it."
"Oh, really?" Nick raises an eyebrow and starts dealing out the cards. "That reminds me, Maya, don't you still carry your old phone around?"
Maya’s smug grin falters for a moment, and her fingers find themselves running over her magatama, which sits hung around her neck as always. "My old phone gets better reception out in Kurain than my new one, that's all. A city slicker like you has no excuse, though!"
"Aha!" Trucy leaps to her feet, her newly purchased blue cape flaring out dramatically behind her. Her finger is pointed at Maya's right hand, currently wrapped around her magatama. "Miss Maya, I think you’re lying."
Trucy pushes back her chair, adjusting her hat. She then clasps her arms behind her back and starts pacing the room, a mannerism she either picked up from watching too many detective shows or spending too much time with a certain prosecutor. "First of all, I know you mess with your necklace when you're nervous. Especially when you’re lying about things. Second, Daddy told me your old phone never got good reception in the office, much less in Kurain. Why would it suddenly get better reception now?"
She turns to face Maya. "The answer is clear: it wouldn’t. You’re lying!"
The next card that Nick deals out falls short of Pearly’s pile, landing lightly in the center of the table. His shoulders are shaking with silent laughter, and when he looks up at Trucy, Maya swears his eyes shine brighter than usual. " That's my girl!"
Trucy beams, giving the group a quick bow before hopping back into her seat. Pearly has her hand over her mouth, looking between Maya and Trucy with wide eyes, as if Kurain's spotty cell service is somehow news to her.
"Alright, kiddos. You wanna know the real reason Maya won't get rid of that phone?" Nick asks, leaning forward in his seat. The girls nod eagerly. He cups his hand around his mouth and, making eye contact with Maya, stage-whispers, "It has a limited edition Steel Samurai strap, and her new phone doesn't have anywhere to attach it to."
"Wh-whuh? Why do you still remember that, Nick!? How?”
“Huh, I wonder. It’s not like you used to mention it to me that often or- hey!”
“Mystic Maya, don’t shove Mr. Nick!”
Before long, the group is back to slapping at cards on the table. It’s a good night, a night away from the Fey family name. And, lucky for her, no one realizes what Nick said wasn’t entirely true.
One of the reasons she keeps that phone is the strap, sure. Yet another mark against her qualification to be Master, but she’s a failure in so many other ways that liking a (well-written and engaging!) kid’s show isn’t doing much to tip the scales.
The other reason is her sister.
After that first trial, when she’d gotten her phone back from Nick, she’d wanted to listen to the recording they’d played in court one last time. Looking back, it seems silly, but she’d needed to know exactly what her last words to her sister were. It had felt significant, in that way little things do after a tragedy.
In the recordings section of her phone, she’d found that conversation, and along with it, recordings of every other call she’d ever made. She’d always wondered why her phone had no storage space, and, well. There was her answer.
Over the next couple of days, she’d listened to every single accidentally recorded call, every conversation filled with static and tin can audio, every promise to go out for burgers. And, after deleting all the irrelevant recordings, she was left with hours’ worth of calls and no idea what to do with them.
In the end, she kept them. Copied them to not one, but two separate flash drives, one hidden away somewhere in Nick’s office and the other in her room back home. She still has the originals, though, and whenever she feels like changing her name and running away, she lies on the ground and listens to them.
Sometimes, she talks along with them, too. She’ll whisper the lines into the receiver, just loud enough to drown out her side of the conversation. It’s not the same as talking to Mia, but if she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine her sister is alive and breathing on the other end of the line.
Did her golden statue ancestors ever make themselves as quiet as they could so their crying wouldn’t wake their younger cousins?
They must have. Premature death runs in her family like a curse. Like a legacy, almost. Maybe that’s the price they pay for a life spent walking the line between the living and the dead.
But even so, it isn’t like Maya has any way of knowing for sure. She’s asked everyone she can think of and everyone they can think of, scoured barely legible records for anything resembling answers on who these people were.
All she finds are the same old descriptions, neat little museum plaques without a hint of personality. Name, date of birth, date of ascension to Master, and one notable feat, if that.
There’s a growing suspicion in her mind that her ancestors are not the problem. Not all of them could have taken the life that was thrust upon them in stride, dedicating themselves wholly to the role they were assigned. Some of them had to have had struggles, hopes, a- a personality, something!
If Maya goes along with tradition, lets the sands of time erase who she was, will whoever comes after her feel the same way?
Will they look at what she’s left behind and think, “I’ll never be good enough for her”?
As part of her training, she does calligraphy. It’s meant to clear the mind of distractions and teach the practitioner to fall into a state of calmness. She’s been doing it since she was old enough to hold a brush, and the whole time, she’s thought she was garbage at it. Her strokes are always too shaky, her characters top-heavy. The goal isn’t to create something beautiful, but still. If her calligraphy just happened to look good, she wouldn’t exactly mind.
It’s during one of these training sessions, grinding her inkstick back and forth against the cool, dark inkstone, that she wonders what Master Mari, whose calligraphy hangs across from where Maya sits to eat breakfast, thought about all this.
Whatever she thought, it doesn’t come across in the illegible scribbles framed and admired for the past two hundred years, at least not to Maya. All they speak of is the guilt she feels for sucking at such a culturally important art form.
But beyond that, the person who made it must have been someone with favorite foods and pet peeves and annoying habits. Master Mari, scroll on the wall, may not have had those, but Mari Fey, actual person, did.
Maya is convinced of this much, at the very least, because otherwise she’d fall apart.
She’s convinced of one more thing, too: she is not going to let herself become Maya Fey, the statue. Never in a billion years.
Acting purely on muscle memory, she dips her brush into the ink and pulls it across the page. When that sheet is done, she moves on to the next, then the one after that, until she’s finally through the pile of washi paper set out before her at the beginning of the session. And then, shoving the still-damp papers into a messy stack, she grabs her inkstone and dumps the remaining ink out onto the corner of the pile.
She watches the ink bleed through each sheet of paper with a smile on her face and a lightness in her heart.
Later, she’s told to take more care with her ink, so as not to sully her work. It’s important to leave these things in good condition and set an example for the next generation, after all. She does her very best impression of someone who cares. The older she gets, the less convincing her impression becomes.
It's the smallest, most childish act of rebellion anyone could think of, but isn’t that what she’s always been? Small and childish. If she's not going to live up to expectations either way, there's no use pretending to be anything other than what she is.
So Maya Fey, Future Master of the Kurain Channeling Technique, makes peace signs in all her photos and pins her hair back with Pink Princess hair pins, and she plans to keep doing so until the day she dies. Whichever unlucky soul gets stuck navigating centuries-old family drama after her will have one less thing to worry about, because she'll be so much of a screw-up (so human) that it will be impossible for them to even think they could disappoint her.
She’ll never actually know what her ancestors think of her, but she thinks Mia just might be proud, if she could see her now, and that means more than any approval a voiceless statue could give.