InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Once Upon an Inuyoukai ❯ Dark and Stormy Night ( Chapter 7 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Empatheia 
The fellowship takes cover in a cave during a storm. Is Izayoi really all she seems to be? And what is WITH this storm?
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Hentai / Romance | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 02.19.2006 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.8K | Visits: 268 | Status: Work In Progress
The fellowship takes cover in a cave during a storm. Is Izayoi really all she seems to be? And what is WITH this storm?
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Hentai / Romance | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 02.19.2006 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.8K | Visits: 268 | Status: Work In Progress
Wow... this incense shit is powerful. Whee.
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Chapter VII: Dark and Stormy Night
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It rained like the heart of spring. The wind gave birth to countless raindrops on the fly, and they were drenched. Truly soaked. The kind of saturated that only happens in a torrential downpour, where the skin feels clammy and bloated, and the hair clings to the face like stringy leeches. Their very bones were cold and wet. She walked as close behind him as she dared, searching for some shelter from the wind. She had been walking for the past hour, after her knees blistered from rubbing against his belt. It was a baleful night, that stank of decay. He walked tall and pretended to be unaffected by the suffocating dark that swallowed their joy and buried their clarity.
"This night has wings," she whispered. "Make them stop."
His brow wrinkled, but even as he did so he heard them. Flutterwhisper, flapthud, sssshhhhhh. The raindrop's rhythmic thudding did indeed sound like the flutter of millions of fae wings. His spine chilled. He was superstitious, all youkai were. In a world of priestesses and sorcerors, superstitions were more often than not valid. And so, the fluttering beat of the rotting night made his hackles raise. The air was so heavy, like a wet pillow over his face, and breathing was a dank struggle. The stars were cloaked and shuttered behind the roiling cauldron overhead. Fear and Apprehension alighted on his shoulder, black ravens, and for once he heeded their fell counsel.
"Search for shelter."
She gasped with relief, a wrenching sound that made his scalp twitch. His wounds were throbbing, almost healed, and he would welcome the chance to rest.
"My lord, if I may- perhaps I can be of assistance here." From within her sodden, pungent leather bag she drew a flat-faced amethyst. Its surface seemed dull in the lack of light, as though it was absorbing the darkness. Vague forms stirred uneasily in its depths, and he started before realizing that they were merely the heavily swaying branches above.
He felt... edgy. Unsettled. It was unfamiliar, and he fought the weakness it brought. There was nothing hiding in the dark stronger than himself. So why did the mocking fear not abate?
She held the blackened crystal lightly in her hands and stared into its inky depths. Her eyes fluttered, and to his great discomfort, began to glow faintly violet at their irises. Magic frightened him, like nothing else. Armies he could handle; blood was his element. Physical things he could merely rend with his claws and be done with. But this mystic, invisible flow was impossible to fight against. There was nothing to resist, nothing to throw his energy at. And so: he disliked magic. It was not under his power.
His attention returned to Izayoi. She was swaying, her eerie eyes silently trailing silverlilac tears. Without thought, he caught her shoulders and stabilized her. Her frail form trembled beneath his fingers, but he did not feel stronger than her.
"Aahhhh," she breathed rapturously, and the brilliance in her eyes became blinding, bringing a half-second of sunrise to the corners of their little cubbyhole. Then all the light fled and they fell into the warm, lascivious arms of shadow. She held herself up a moment longer, rigid with pain, or ecstasy, and then fell slowly forward into him like a lily wilting.
"There is a cave... two ri ahead, about a quarter ri up the hill on the right. It is covered in brush, and hard to see. There is..." she paused, searching for strength, "a tree on the left side of the entrance, split in two by lightning. Look for that."
She was exhausted, he could see. He wondered why. He had seen seers in action before, at least from behind around shoji-edges, and they always got up afterwards, seemingly without ill effect.
"Please... hurry. There is something strange here, I cannot see the whole of it- this place is flooded with mana. Once we get to the cave, I can set up a barrier, but until then there is nothing to protect us and we cannot survive long in this concentration." Another pause, longer, and he could feel her fighting for consciousness. "When the sun... rises..., I can use its power to carve a tunnel through the maelstrom. The moon is not our ally tonight- it's pulling the mana in tides. When it sets, the mana should stabilize..." she fell off in the middle of the sentence, abruptly folding into his arms like a house of cards.
He lifted her easily and sprinted for the place she had described. The utterly miserable Jaken and jittery two-headed dragon followed, trudging through the mud despondently.
The cave was not hard to find. There the tree stood she had seen- scarred and witchbent, agonizingly rent into two claws of sundered black, reaching for the sky with bitter, raging fingers. Shuddering, he tore through the brush and hurried into the cave. It was small, but large enough for the four of them. And blessedly dry. He became conscious, strangely, of how large he was. He had to bend to fit in, where the dragon walked in easily. His black hakama were thick with mud, and his wine-red haori was in little better condition. There was no remedy for it tonight, so he sighed and tried to ignore it. The constant wet slap against his ankles was ferociously uncomfortable, though.
With some difficulty, he pulled the relatively dry blankets out of Ah-Un's packs, made a rough bed on the floor, and laid her down gently. She looked tiny and frail, lying wet and unconscious on the damp fur. He wondered how her injuries were- the bruise across her ribs must have been black and yellowgreen by then, and the internal damage from the demon's assault must have made walking sheer agony. It was so easy to forget when she never made a sound of protest.
It was a kind of strength, and Inutaisho understood strength, and tended to respect it. Perhaps it was not such a stretch to respect it in a human, a woman no less.
You would have liked that, Mai- always on about your precious humans, those last years. Marigolds and sunshine, golden shadows and gilded hair. Oh, Mai. She had loved the humans so, spending more and more time during her last years in their company, learning their ways. He had not understood. Did not understand now.
The human on the blanket stirred and moaned, and he started. This little ningen was no different- all full of twisting hallways and contradictions, and secretive, deep little passions.
He settled next to her, back against the wall. Jaken and Ah-Un were already fast asleep, the former's snoring somehow quiet and stertorous at the same time. The terrible aura had not lessened at all- it was playing merry hell with the little hairs on the back of his neck, and the old, primal thing that lived quietly at the back of his skull stirred uneasily at its touch.
He recalled her speaking of a barrier. She would have to be awake to create that. Though she looked very peaceful and it gave him a twinge of guilt to do so, he shook her gently. She moaned, and the twinge sharpened. Her shoulder in his fingers was cold. Youkai who were that cold were generally dead. It gave him an instinctual chill when the cold being before him moved, still alive. Nothing alive should be that cold.
"Did we make it?" she asked faintly, and he grunted in the affirmative. A great sigh flooded out of her. "Good. I'll try to make the barrier. Hand me my bag."
Wordlessly he complied, and watched as she fished a different crystal out, this one milky white but not opaque, somehow. She murmured over it a moment, brow scrunched in fierce concentration, and a then a tremulous shimmering bubble of the palest cyan, not unalike its soapy kin, expanded out to envelop the cave. The moment it was large enough, her chant changed indescribably and it turned faintly violet and steadied. Her relief was palpable as she returned the crystal and slumped into the furs, unceremoniously unconscious again.
He felt it too, the sudden silence of malevolent wings and the absence of curling darkness. The cave was faintly lit by the slowly pearling shield, holding the blackness at bay beyond its delicate walls. He felt as though a great heavy creature had lifted off his back, and breathed deeply in relief. Taking advantage of the safety, he stretched out next to her and joined her in oblivion.
Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvV
It was her screaming that woke him. Or possibly, whatever limb it was that had just smashed him in the gut. One or the other. He hauled himself into consciousness, into a world of impossibly agonized sound and terror. He turned to her, expecting to see her dying or in seizure, but was instead greeted by the face of her nightmare. Crazymadinsanepossessed... her eyes were wide open, unseeing, and her mouth stretched wide in the reverberating shriek that had woken him. Her limbs thrashed violently in the throes of whatever horror had a hold of her.
Youkai did not dream unless they wished to. When the wished to, the dreams were of their own choosing, and usually pleasant. Nightmares were far outside his realm of knowledge, and he felt strangely useless.
"No!" she keened, the agony in her voice raw and untouchable. Unable to stand the sound, he shook her violently, claws carelessly gouging her flesh, until she gasped and arched her back, hurtling into the real world as though falling from a great height, or possibly rocketing up from a great depth. Racking sobs, sick and choking, shook her in muscle-tearing spasms and she curled into the tightest ball she could.
Jaken stared wide-eyed and silent from the back of the cave, helpless before the sheer force of her agony.
Inutaisho laid a clawed hand awkwardly on her shoulder, trying to comfort her and feeling as though he was reaching blindly into murky water. "Was it a vision?"
Mutely, she shook her head, and he knew she did not see him. The nightmare still had her halfway in its crimson claws, hissing in her ear.
"No," she gasped, voice wrenching from her tightly clenched chest. "A memory."
She blindly reached for him, and closed on the hand that rested on her shoulder in a death grip.
He stilled, and desperately tried not to harm her. How should she know his boundaries? Expecting that she should was unfair. But still... that cold, clammy hand made him want to retch and push her away. Mai's skin had been hot as his own. It took a long time to gain control again.
And when he’d finally reestablished the iron chains around that impulse, it was only to realize that he'd won the battle and lost the war. He felt scattered. Why should it be so difficult to control his thoughts and actions, when he'd kept them under iron control all his life? His mind seemed to be acting entirely on its own, wandering into realms he'd studiously avoided for seven centuries.
What demons rested in her memory that could do this even reaching through the years?
He felt protective. Also, quietly furious with whatever or whoever had done this to a woman who was normally so strong and proud. These were alien and most definitely unwelcome emotions.
Mai, with her power almost as great as his, and the protected life she had led, had never inspired this in him. He explored it wonderingly, and found it larger and more tangled than anything in his experience. He felt like a savage being shown a ship for the first time, and being told what it did. The strange feelings seemed ridiculous, and pointless, and useless, and... beautiful as polished pine strakes in the sorrow grey surf.
It was such a beautiful pain. He drank it in, savoring it, and wanted to spit it out like bilge. Scrutinized it like a rare gem and wanted to smash it under his fist.
She is unlovely, and weak, and shortlived as an insect. Pain is her lifelong companion. So why am I so angry that someone dared to give her more?
Bewildered, he only stared at the hand and wondered what came next.
So when she rocketed to her knees, stared him wildly in the eye, and mutely pleaded for... something he couldn’t define, he made a choice. Easy as rainfall, he slid out of his old, entrenched rut... and nodded.
Her wild hair billowed as she flung herself into his chest, forehead colliding with his collarbone, and sobbed her torn, mortally wounded heart out into his stillness.
His arms closed instinctively around her, as he had once cradled Mai. It felt like a betrayal, but he could not bring himself to push her away. She was so vulnerable, wound like a limpet into his robes and shaking fit to fall apart. She, who was usually so stoic. The duality of her engrossed him, and he picked at the tangle of her with absorption for long minutes, fruitlessly.
It took a moment to realize she was speaking.
"I'd forgotten," she sobbed, confusing him even more. "Locked it away in the darkest cranny of my mind. I wish it was still forgotten." He smoothed the hair from her clammy tear-streaked face in a parody of tenderness that also felt like a betrayal.
"Forgotten what?" A distant memory of his mother’s voice and her gentle lessons echoed in his head. Make them talk about it so it doesn’t fester.
Against his chest, Izayoi shook her head and clung tighter yet. "Don't make me go there," she whispered through the shivers, "please?"
"As you wish.”
They were silent for a long time then, hours perhaps, entwined around eachother.
Inutaisho's heart raged against him, longing for his beloved and hating itself for its enthrallment with the human. She was inferior, and that should have been all there was to it.
It should have, everything in him from his parent’s words in his childhood to the primal instincts that knew the difference between ‘human’ and ‘demon’ said so.
But it wasn't, of course that wasn't all. She was so fragile and so evanescent, that to his demon eyes she seemed briefer than a butterfly, a grace note on the score of time. Hardly even noticeable. But... in this moment, what she was was real, achingly true in every line.
He'd forgotten what reality felt like, cloistered in his everbright home away from the dark and uglybeautiful side of truth. She was the darkness that had been missing from his falsely light life, and here she was representing it with shattering clarity. His eyes wandered the midnight maze of her hair, and his thoughts awaited him there.
He was at the top of something now, he realized, something slippery and treacherous, and he couldn't decide which was worse- staying in the shining, careful world he'd made for himself, or falling into the endless dark she offered and remembering truth. There would be pain, in the latter, but also glory. In the former- there would be no pain, but without darkness to frame it all that light would fade and turn to grey death. There was life in the darkness. Truth in the pain.
He couldn't decide. So he laid himself down and surrendered for the twilight hours between him and dawn. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would see what he had become in these mana-drenched hours of darkness and choose accordingly.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO XOXOXOXOXOX
A/N- rereaders may notice that I've changed the length of time since Mai's death from one hundred to seven hundred years. Other than that, only aesthetics changes this chapter.
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Chapter VII: Dark and Stormy Night
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
It rained like the heart of spring. The wind gave birth to countless raindrops on the fly, and they were drenched. Truly soaked. The kind of saturated that only happens in a torrential downpour, where the skin feels clammy and bloated, and the hair clings to the face like stringy leeches. Their very bones were cold and wet. She walked as close behind him as she dared, searching for some shelter from the wind. She had been walking for the past hour, after her knees blistered from rubbing against his belt. It was a baleful night, that stank of decay. He walked tall and pretended to be unaffected by the suffocating dark that swallowed their joy and buried their clarity.
"This night has wings," she whispered. "Make them stop."
His brow wrinkled, but even as he did so he heard them. Flutterwhisper, flapthud, sssshhhhhh. The raindrop's rhythmic thudding did indeed sound like the flutter of millions of fae wings. His spine chilled. He was superstitious, all youkai were. In a world of priestesses and sorcerors, superstitions were more often than not valid. And so, the fluttering beat of the rotting night made his hackles raise. The air was so heavy, like a wet pillow over his face, and breathing was a dank struggle. The stars were cloaked and shuttered behind the roiling cauldron overhead. Fear and Apprehension alighted on his shoulder, black ravens, and for once he heeded their fell counsel.
"Search for shelter."
She gasped with relief, a wrenching sound that made his scalp twitch. His wounds were throbbing, almost healed, and he would welcome the chance to rest.
"My lord, if I may- perhaps I can be of assistance here." From within her sodden, pungent leather bag she drew a flat-faced amethyst. Its surface seemed dull in the lack of light, as though it was absorbing the darkness. Vague forms stirred uneasily in its depths, and he started before realizing that they were merely the heavily swaying branches above.
He felt... edgy. Unsettled. It was unfamiliar, and he fought the weakness it brought. There was nothing hiding in the dark stronger than himself. So why did the mocking fear not abate?
She held the blackened crystal lightly in her hands and stared into its inky depths. Her eyes fluttered, and to his great discomfort, began to glow faintly violet at their irises. Magic frightened him, like nothing else. Armies he could handle; blood was his element. Physical things he could merely rend with his claws and be done with. But this mystic, invisible flow was impossible to fight against. There was nothing to resist, nothing to throw his energy at. And so: he disliked magic. It was not under his power.
His attention returned to Izayoi. She was swaying, her eerie eyes silently trailing silverlilac tears. Without thought, he caught her shoulders and stabilized her. Her frail form trembled beneath his fingers, but he did not feel stronger than her.
"Aahhhh," she breathed rapturously, and the brilliance in her eyes became blinding, bringing a half-second of sunrise to the corners of their little cubbyhole. Then all the light fled and they fell into the warm, lascivious arms of shadow. She held herself up a moment longer, rigid with pain, or ecstasy, and then fell slowly forward into him like a lily wilting.
"There is a cave... two ri ahead, about a quarter ri up the hill on the right. It is covered in brush, and hard to see. There is..." she paused, searching for strength, "a tree on the left side of the entrance, split in two by lightning. Look for that."
She was exhausted, he could see. He wondered why. He had seen seers in action before, at least from behind around shoji-edges, and they always got up afterwards, seemingly without ill effect.
"Please... hurry. There is something strange here, I cannot see the whole of it- this place is flooded with mana. Once we get to the cave, I can set up a barrier, but until then there is nothing to protect us and we cannot survive long in this concentration." Another pause, longer, and he could feel her fighting for consciousness. "When the sun... rises..., I can use its power to carve a tunnel through the maelstrom. The moon is not our ally tonight- it's pulling the mana in tides. When it sets, the mana should stabilize..." she fell off in the middle of the sentence, abruptly folding into his arms like a house of cards.
He lifted her easily and sprinted for the place she had described. The utterly miserable Jaken and jittery two-headed dragon followed, trudging through the mud despondently.
The cave was not hard to find. There the tree stood she had seen- scarred and witchbent, agonizingly rent into two claws of sundered black, reaching for the sky with bitter, raging fingers. Shuddering, he tore through the brush and hurried into the cave. It was small, but large enough for the four of them. And blessedly dry. He became conscious, strangely, of how large he was. He had to bend to fit in, where the dragon walked in easily. His black hakama were thick with mud, and his wine-red haori was in little better condition. There was no remedy for it tonight, so he sighed and tried to ignore it. The constant wet slap against his ankles was ferociously uncomfortable, though.
With some difficulty, he pulled the relatively dry blankets out of Ah-Un's packs, made a rough bed on the floor, and laid her down gently. She looked tiny and frail, lying wet and unconscious on the damp fur. He wondered how her injuries were- the bruise across her ribs must have been black and yellowgreen by then, and the internal damage from the demon's assault must have made walking sheer agony. It was so easy to forget when she never made a sound of protest.
It was a kind of strength, and Inutaisho understood strength, and tended to respect it. Perhaps it was not such a stretch to respect it in a human, a woman no less.
You would have liked that, Mai- always on about your precious humans, those last years. Marigolds and sunshine, golden shadows and gilded hair. Oh, Mai. She had loved the humans so, spending more and more time during her last years in their company, learning their ways. He had not understood. Did not understand now.
The human on the blanket stirred and moaned, and he started. This little ningen was no different- all full of twisting hallways and contradictions, and secretive, deep little passions.
He settled next to her, back against the wall. Jaken and Ah-Un were already fast asleep, the former's snoring somehow quiet and stertorous at the same time. The terrible aura had not lessened at all- it was playing merry hell with the little hairs on the back of his neck, and the old, primal thing that lived quietly at the back of his skull stirred uneasily at its touch.
He recalled her speaking of a barrier. She would have to be awake to create that. Though she looked very peaceful and it gave him a twinge of guilt to do so, he shook her gently. She moaned, and the twinge sharpened. Her shoulder in his fingers was cold. Youkai who were that cold were generally dead. It gave him an instinctual chill when the cold being before him moved, still alive. Nothing alive should be that cold.
"Did we make it?" she asked faintly, and he grunted in the affirmative. A great sigh flooded out of her. "Good. I'll try to make the barrier. Hand me my bag."
Wordlessly he complied, and watched as she fished a different crystal out, this one milky white but not opaque, somehow. She murmured over it a moment, brow scrunched in fierce concentration, and a then a tremulous shimmering bubble of the palest cyan, not unalike its soapy kin, expanded out to envelop the cave. The moment it was large enough, her chant changed indescribably and it turned faintly violet and steadied. Her relief was palpable as she returned the crystal and slumped into the furs, unceremoniously unconscious again.
He felt it too, the sudden silence of malevolent wings and the absence of curling darkness. The cave was faintly lit by the slowly pearling shield, holding the blackness at bay beyond its delicate walls. He felt as though a great heavy creature had lifted off his back, and breathed deeply in relief. Taking advantage of the safety, he stretched out next to her and joined her in oblivion.
Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvV
It was her screaming that woke him. Or possibly, whatever limb it was that had just smashed him in the gut. One or the other. He hauled himself into consciousness, into a world of impossibly agonized sound and terror. He turned to her, expecting to see her dying or in seizure, but was instead greeted by the face of her nightmare. Crazymadinsanepossessed... her eyes were wide open, unseeing, and her mouth stretched wide in the reverberating shriek that had woken him. Her limbs thrashed violently in the throes of whatever horror had a hold of her.
Youkai did not dream unless they wished to. When the wished to, the dreams were of their own choosing, and usually pleasant. Nightmares were far outside his realm of knowledge, and he felt strangely useless.
"No!" she keened, the agony in her voice raw and untouchable. Unable to stand the sound, he shook her violently, claws carelessly gouging her flesh, until she gasped and arched her back, hurtling into the real world as though falling from a great height, or possibly rocketing up from a great depth. Racking sobs, sick and choking, shook her in muscle-tearing spasms and she curled into the tightest ball she could.
Jaken stared wide-eyed and silent from the back of the cave, helpless before the sheer force of her agony.
Inutaisho laid a clawed hand awkwardly on her shoulder, trying to comfort her and feeling as though he was reaching blindly into murky water. "Was it a vision?"
Mutely, she shook her head, and he knew she did not see him. The nightmare still had her halfway in its crimson claws, hissing in her ear.
"No," she gasped, voice wrenching from her tightly clenched chest. "A memory."
She blindly reached for him, and closed on the hand that rested on her shoulder in a death grip.
He stilled, and desperately tried not to harm her. How should she know his boundaries? Expecting that she should was unfair. But still... that cold, clammy hand made him want to retch and push her away. Mai's skin had been hot as his own. It took a long time to gain control again.
And when he’d finally reestablished the iron chains around that impulse, it was only to realize that he'd won the battle and lost the war. He felt scattered. Why should it be so difficult to control his thoughts and actions, when he'd kept them under iron control all his life? His mind seemed to be acting entirely on its own, wandering into realms he'd studiously avoided for seven centuries.
What demons rested in her memory that could do this even reaching through the years?
He felt protective. Also, quietly furious with whatever or whoever had done this to a woman who was normally so strong and proud. These were alien and most definitely unwelcome emotions.
Mai, with her power almost as great as his, and the protected life she had led, had never inspired this in him. He explored it wonderingly, and found it larger and more tangled than anything in his experience. He felt like a savage being shown a ship for the first time, and being told what it did. The strange feelings seemed ridiculous, and pointless, and useless, and... beautiful as polished pine strakes in the sorrow grey surf.
It was such a beautiful pain. He drank it in, savoring it, and wanted to spit it out like bilge. Scrutinized it like a rare gem and wanted to smash it under his fist.
She is unlovely, and weak, and shortlived as an insect. Pain is her lifelong companion. So why am I so angry that someone dared to give her more?
Bewildered, he only stared at the hand and wondered what came next.
So when she rocketed to her knees, stared him wildly in the eye, and mutely pleaded for... something he couldn’t define, he made a choice. Easy as rainfall, he slid out of his old, entrenched rut... and nodded.
Her wild hair billowed as she flung herself into his chest, forehead colliding with his collarbone, and sobbed her torn, mortally wounded heart out into his stillness.
His arms closed instinctively around her, as he had once cradled Mai. It felt like a betrayal, but he could not bring himself to push her away. She was so vulnerable, wound like a limpet into his robes and shaking fit to fall apart. She, who was usually so stoic. The duality of her engrossed him, and he picked at the tangle of her with absorption for long minutes, fruitlessly.
It took a moment to realize she was speaking.
"I'd forgotten," she sobbed, confusing him even more. "Locked it away in the darkest cranny of my mind. I wish it was still forgotten." He smoothed the hair from her clammy tear-streaked face in a parody of tenderness that also felt like a betrayal.
"Forgotten what?" A distant memory of his mother’s voice and her gentle lessons echoed in his head. Make them talk about it so it doesn’t fester.
Against his chest, Izayoi shook her head and clung tighter yet. "Don't make me go there," she whispered through the shivers, "please?"
"As you wish.”
They were silent for a long time then, hours perhaps, entwined around eachother.
Inutaisho's heart raged against him, longing for his beloved and hating itself for its enthrallment with the human. She was inferior, and that should have been all there was to it.
It should have, everything in him from his parent’s words in his childhood to the primal instincts that knew the difference between ‘human’ and ‘demon’ said so.
But it wasn't, of course that wasn't all. She was so fragile and so evanescent, that to his demon eyes she seemed briefer than a butterfly, a grace note on the score of time. Hardly even noticeable. But... in this moment, what she was was real, achingly true in every line.
He'd forgotten what reality felt like, cloistered in his everbright home away from the dark and uglybeautiful side of truth. She was the darkness that had been missing from his falsely light life, and here she was representing it with shattering clarity. His eyes wandered the midnight maze of her hair, and his thoughts awaited him there.
He was at the top of something now, he realized, something slippery and treacherous, and he couldn't decide which was worse- staying in the shining, careful world he'd made for himself, or falling into the endless dark she offered and remembering truth. There would be pain, in the latter, but also glory. In the former- there would be no pain, but without darkness to frame it all that light would fade and turn to grey death. There was life in the darkness. Truth in the pain.
He couldn't decide. So he laid himself down and surrendered for the twilight hours between him and dawn. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would see what he had become in these mana-drenched hours of darkness and choose accordingly.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO XOXOXOXOXOX
A/N- rereaders may notice that I've changed the length of time since Mai's death from one hundred to seven hundred years. Other than that, only aesthetics changes this chapter.