So I was looking at my beta profile, right, and I had the sudden urge to write some Alichino. So, here it is.
No particular time in the series, but wutevr. Myobi-ness.
No ownage, no matter how hard I press that restraining order.
Twine
The city is a corpse of rubble and scorch marks. Green vines crawl valiantly up stone pillars and across square blocks, the creeping field reclaiming the land as its own.
Flowers of all sorts, from black morning glories with red throats to blue honey suckles with pink edged petals, are in bloom. It's almost too disgusting. Greenery has its strangle hold here, wide leaves and green shoots and stalks choking stone and brown earth and older vegetation; plants from years ago, burned or uprooted or…
She is 'or', the not belonging, the unnatural, the strange, the abnormal. She is 'or' as she sits in the flowers, as she lays back and lets the sun soak her, lets her long, long hair pretend for a moment that I am nature's child, and spread like a spiders web amongst spring green sprouts. She is 'or' as she plays with the delicate petals of a midnight blue flower between her long nailed fingers.
She is 'or', even when she is not, because she does not belong with 'him', and she does not belong with 'them', even though Alichino are naturally solitary creatures.
She is 'or' even what the Kusabi looks at her just that way, full of contempt and anger and, underneath the underneath of the underneath, humor, or wonder, or happiness, or curiosity, because he is and he is also 'or'.
He, like her, is 'or' because he is not supposed to be alive. He is 'or' because he is the one, the only, the hunter of the hunter, and at the same time hunted by the thing he hunts. A strange, awkward cyclical thing.
Somewhere in the middle is 'him' and 'her'. 'He' is also, slightly, kind-of 'or', because as long as they are bound he will live, and she will live, thus is their contract. 'He' is not as 'or' as she and the Kusabi are, because 'he' is still human.
'He' has told her time and again that the Kusabi is human, too, but something in her screams 'No, he is not. He is 'or' and 'other' and 'strange' just like me.' But 'he' does not listen, because he is not the same 'or' that they are.
She is 'or' as the flower is crushed by her fingers, her nails puncturing its delicate, colorful petals. She is 'or' as she stands and dusts herself off, as she shifts from girl to owl, as she flies back, back to 'he who is not quite as or' and 'he who is or' and 'he who is not or at all.'
Because she is 'or', and because she is 'or', she must twine around her the people and things who are also 'or', and 'not as or' and 'not at all or'. Because, 'or' and 'not or' they maybe, they are still part of her twisted web of twine, still connected to someone who is 'or'.