A/N: Soo... I don't know if I need to explain the inspiration for this or not.... Well, I might as well. Okay, so if you're a creepy stalker-obsessed reader of mine, then you'll know that I was diagnosed in January of 2009 with Tuberculosis. By the way, I love all you creepy, stalker-obsessed readers, so keep at it! Anyway, lately I've been through random bouts of sickness and everything is a little bit like a roller coaster rode gone wrong. My body has me utterly confused.... So, I convinced myself to write this. My muse needed a little coaxing, and after crying over Full Moon o Sagashite Volume Four and writing a PM to my dearest IceJournal she was pumped and ready to go. I lie. I had to read an old Role Playing Game of mine about Vampires, in which I used (without permission from, but soley out respect for Matsuri Hino) Zero Kiryuu from Vampire Knight. I find that it jumpstarts my muse like a kid on crack and sometimes she just can't write enough... which is probably the only reason this note turned out as long as it did.
By the way, it should be mentioned that there is a point in the story where the sun is referred to as 'her'. The reference is to the Japanese Godess, Amaterasu, who rules the sun. Just thought I'd point that out.
And no, this is NOT a subtly-hinted funeral notice. -huffs- I'm not even dead yet.... Cheese....
Awaiting the Night
As I walk across the meadow,
The sun begins to sink.
I'm not alone but with my shadow
As I watch the sky turn pink.
I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Sleep doesn't come at all these days.
Why is that, now?
It never comes. It eludes me, no matter how laden with sand my indigo eyes become. Though I am awake, however, I am not present. My mind is elsewhere, among rolling green fields filled thick with lush grass and stark white daisies. There is a small cluster of sakuras crowning one of the taller hills, and he stands there to wait for me. I am at the crest of another hill, and he is waving me on closer, beckoning me to join him in the dappled shade. And though I tell him I'm coming, I cannot run - my fantasy has been ruined several times over by damaged lungs, a part of me that I despise. I know that, now, the only way I can see him again is if I make it to the sakura-crowned hill because he is waiting for me there. With open arms, he awaits the day I am able to run to him and let him hold me, because I know that is what we want.
Somehow, though he left me nearly five weeks ago, it has been as if he has always been here. Now, as I draw nearer and nearer to something I used to fear and dread, I have begun to warm up to the thought. The fantasy I continue to have - it is not a dream, and I have slowly realized this - has become longer and longer the past two weeks. I am able to sustain it just a little longer now. And it is always, always the same.
I am standing, staring out towards the end of the thicket - toward the ocean. The sour smell of washed up algae and kelp, salt water, fish, and various water birds does not travel this far; and somehow I have been gifted a deep breath of fresh, crisp air, scented as if a rain has just passed. The sun has risen high, and embraces me gently, wrapping me in Her warmth and protection. I close my eyes against the sensation of a cool breeze replacing the security of the sun and chilling me slightly. My hair billows softly on the winds, and carried in from behind me is a small storm of cherry blossoms dancing a beautiful, but previously uncharted, dance around my frail frame. Cherry blossoms.... I turn slowly. It's as if everything I do has been nearly paused for examination purposes. Finally, though, I am able to face the source of the pastel rain - the cluster of sakuras on his hill. He is smiling gently, head cocked very slightly of one side as he waves to me. But, along with cocked, his head is also bowed so I cannot see his eyes. But he beckons nonetheless, and I know it's him, because shortly after, he calls out, "C'mon, Kinan-chan! I'm waiting for you!"
"I'm coming!" I call back, and begin to lift my feet, but I've been slowed again, as if I have stepped in half-frozen molasses. I lower my foot again, furrowing my brow under cinnimon-honey tresses and stare down in wonderment and mounting frustration as I try again. I can't lift it. "I can't move!" I call back over, but he just frowns.
"Kinan," he growls with impatience. I hang my head with shame. This was the tone he often used when he scolded me. "We're going to be late. They're all waiting for you!"
I wonder what he means by that, but disregard it quickly. I still can't move my feet, and his smile is beginning to fade. I become frantic - my heart races. "Chishio-kun! My feet! I can't—"
"Hurry up! They won't wait much longer!"
Finally I rip my feet from their roots and move toward the edge of the hill. I have regained human speed, but as I pick up into a run, the oxygen in the paradise seems to disapate and I can no longer breathe. I cough and gasp for air, releasing blood with every raspy, chest-jerking heave. With one hand, I claw at my chest, wishing for this all to end - the pain, the suffering, the lonliness.... The other hand is laced into the dirt as soon as I hit my knees, spattering crimson among the perfect white folds of my sundress. Hot liquid builds up in my eyes, stinging as it exits, leaving wet stains on my cheeks as they heat with suffocation. I suddenly realize that I can no longer draw breath and I fight against it as my heart halves in speed.
And then it's over. Just like that. Of course, as it progresses, the onslaught becomes less and less violent, the words become clearer, and he raises his head just a little bit more. I know that when Shitsuren Chishio's full face is in view, then I will be permitted to travel across to his hill and finally be with him again after so long. I think he is trying to hold me back. I think he wants me to stay on this side of the hill. At first, I couldn't comprehend the point of the fantasy, it's true meaning, or why Chishio was there in the first place. Then, as I finally began to grow weaker again, I realized where he wanted to take me. Chishio wouldn't have wanted me to know, or for me to even be there in the first place. He probably thought I would go easier if I just didn't find out, and that's why he hadn't yet told me. But I've always been known to be a stubborn girl with an empowering fighting spirit, and he knows that I won't hide it from myself forever - and he decided to leave it that way.
He was most likely pushing me to live until I could accept it. After five weeks I had barely accepted the shock that a fatal accident had caused us. I was a model. It was my dream - before I became too weak to stand anymore - to walk the runway alongside my idol, Kimimitsu Airi; I've always had weak lungs.... And it was his dream to be the photographer of a gorgeous woman - the one he someday wished to make his wife. The one who had collapsed in her moment of stardom as she fulfilled her life's greatest wish, brodcast nationwide on live television. The one he had flown onto the catwalk to whisk away into the night rain, driving too blinded by panic to see that the roads were slick... and soon - too soon - rain wasn't the only thing that wet the pavement.
Truthfully, Shitsuren Chishio is dead.
Truthfully, I, Koimizu Kinon, will meet him at his sakuras... to be in his arms once again....