Author's Notes: I watched this movie this week and knew coming out of the theatre that I was going to have to write at least one fic for it. Hope you guys enjoy. o/

Between the Lines

After "the end" comes the autumn, with long nights and red leaves and the start of a new story.

This story is about a young boy and his elegant, kindly grandfather. It is about a boy who never knew his father, and whose mother passed away in an unfortunate blaze started by festival fireworks.

It is a story the boy tells himself, and that the villagers tell each other, and that they all tell the boy's grandfather. It is a story that hides no sharp edges beneath the warmth of the words.

(Almost no sharp edges. Blink, and you will miss them.)

The story goes something like this:

Beyond high, craggy mountains and deep rushing rivers, far from the bustling streets of Edo, there is a village. Until this summer past, it was a small but lively place. Now half of the houses are hulking skeletons of ash and char, and the lumber for the ones struggling up to replace them is pale and new.

The people of the village are industrious and determined, and so no one will freeze when the winter snows set in. Families will share spaces until the spring, to make certain no one is left out in the cold.

(Two people will be left out in the cold.)

This village has a storyteller, a one-eyed boy with a quick tongue and quicker fingers. He spills wondrous tales from his lips, and he makes his shamisen sing, and he conjures fanciful beasts of paper to leap and dance in the dusty streets.

His name is Kubo, and he is a conscientious boy.

Like all the others, those clever hands grow calloused from hauling lumber, from smoothing wood, from toiling to raise a village from the ashes.

(Some nights, after he has fought all day to restore what his carelessness destroyed, his hands crack and bleed. He feels that this is deserved.)

Kubo lives with his grandfather, beyond the village, in a cave carved out from a jutting cliff that overlooks the sea.

He is a dutiful grandson.

As he did for his mother in her times of illness, he prepares the meals, and kindles the fire, and keeps the hard stone of the floor swept clean.

In the evenings, Kubo and his grandfather speak of simple things: the new village bell, and how they mean to see themselves through the winter, and what tales Kubo has concocted to charm the villagers.

Sometimes, Kubo's grandfather asks to hear stories of his daughter, whom he does not remember.

Kubo smiles for him – a small, crooked smile. Then he plays the shamisen for his grandfather's ears only.

He tells tales with no monsters or legends, but only a woman – brave, and strong, and loving. Sheets of paper in navy and silver craft her delicate form, and in his words she comes to life for a few precious hours.

(When the tales are over, the paper falls back to the ground. Kubo waits until his grandfather has gone to sleep before he allows himself to cry.)

By all accounts, Kubo's grandfather is a great man.

He passes out sweets to the village children, when he can afford them, and he aids in the rebuilding effort as often as his tired old body will allow. He dotes on his grandson, and will tell anyone who cares to listen how clever the boy is, and how talented, and how giving.

When he is in high spirits, he likes to spread a cloth along the rocky ground beyond the cave's mouth and spend his evenings gazing up at the moon.

"It fills me with peace," he tells Kubo once. "A sense of belonging. Won't you join me?"

And Kubo joins him there, beneath the heavy white round of the full moon.

(He sits on the very edge of the cloth, heartbeat loud in his own ears. Until the moon sets, he finds himself counting the steps it will take to reach the Sword Unbreakable, should he need it.)

The cave they call home holds few memories of days been and gone.

The sandals by the wall belong to Kubo's grandfather. The soup they drink each morning is tangy and sharp with extra miso, as his grandfather prefers. Even the flowers that Kubo brings to brighten the space are arranged with his grandfather's spare, stately aesthetic.

But on an outcropping of rock along the cave's wall, two figures of folded paper stand, and they are Kubo's.

The first, a monkey, stares soberly out at the world. The second, a samurai with armor like a beetle's carapace, holds a bow in one hand. They rest side by side on the shelf, close enough to touch.

When Kubo tells his tales, he does not use these figures. They remain on their pedestal, still and silent, as though the boy wishes them to be part of the audience.

Yet sometimes, they move.

At night, they camp inside a tremendous paper whale, and sail a ship made all of leaves, and sit beside a paper child to share a meal with him.

At night, when Kubo dreams, they walk again.

(And on the nights when the dreams are nightmares, Kubo finds them ruined in the morning, broken and tattered scraps of paper on the floor.)

The end.

Truly, the end. There is no heroic battle to bring this story to a close.

It is about a different kind of bravery – about moving forward, and leaving the past behind.

(It is about things too painful to leave behind.)

The words of this story are gentle things; they wind their lazy way out like the dying rays of a sunset, golden and warm, before it gives way to a moonlit sky. They tell of family, and of happy endings, and of just rewards.

That is all.

(Blink, dear reader. It is a better story that way.)