Warnings: Characters -die-. Although it's not graphic, dead people are mentioned. If you can't stand the thought of them being dead, it's probably not good for you to read it.
_The Beginning of the End__
The Sakura trees were beautiful, Kayura noted, eyes roving over the pale-pink flowers of the mortal realm. Somehow, she found herself enjoying the passing of seasons here more then the perpetual spring of her Quarters at the castle, and though the Warlords did not blame her nor comment, she knew they also could not understand. All but Dais had been born in that realm, and Dais himself still pined for lost love. The Ronins, perhaps, but one by one, they too had fallen, and now just dust and memories remained.
Wildfire had been the first to fall, as Ryo succumbed to disease a single short year later, leaving behind one young wife and an unborn son. Kayura had not known at the time; she had been heartsick to visit and find a four year old with his father's name and bloodstone coin.
It made her understand why never had he feared death. Why always he rushed into their traps and ambushes and never did the Warlords comment on his will to live.
One petal, fallen and gone, and she too late to witness.
The second to depart had been the one she had pleaded to Fate not to take, and yet, Strata's death had been a bitter, hollow victory in her womb.
Only Sekhmet's toxins kept her drowsy enough to not lay waste to the African landscape.
Cale had retrieved the body.
Dais had deliciously dealt with those responsible, viciously and sadistically, and then he locked himself in his quarters, and Kayura didn't see him again until he was called in to the birth of her children.
They had Rowan's hair and eyes, and her lungs were a beacon to her father's favorite marble.
Kayura had never mourned so hard before then, and she had never been more proud when he grew up more Casanova and less Don Juan, and she brought home a blue griffin feather and asked to marry that grinning northern Fox.
The second petal fallen, too close yet too far away for her to see.
The third to go was surprisingly the one they had all least expected, although no one could accurately say why they had anticipated him to live forever. And really, it had been such a quiet affair, Cale had just gone out and not returned for some time, and when he had, it was flanked by a black-blond with his grandfather's freezing gaze.
He trained him for four long years, and then they all followed him back to the Date residence, and Old Man Date-sama's funeral.
Pale and almost perfect, Yoshino blossoms drifted on the wind, heralding the departure from one form to the next by the light of the world, and his physical death was marked by the dismissal of spring.
Kayura didn't so much as see the final petals blow away so much as she knew that they had fallen, when a wicked scorpion invaded their Emperor's war room and drove a javelin through his chest before his own heir's eyes.
The whole country mourned for Cye's death, and his funeral was a somber day of white and punctuated by the public execution of the assassin who had succeeded in killing an old king and failed at murdering their young prince.
Kento was never seen again.
But when one flower dies, another opens in bloom. This was a lesson Kayura had learned only recently, after watching the petals open and fall for years.
"Ancient One?"
She turned, surprised at being found masked by a gentle, welcoming smile and her conical hat.
It was the same tree, but new blossoms, and thus, a new hope. She could enjoy the flowers just a little longer, but first she would have to guide this branch first.
"Ronins, Warlords." Her son, Cruelty, and her daughter, Strata, and her husband, that trickster Fox; Halo, in all his striped glory, and his mentor, Corruption; young Wildfire, in his vestments.
"Lady Ancient."
The group shifted, revealing Cye's heir, the former prince and new Emperor.
"My Lord...?"
Torrent grinned, cupping the petals in his palms as a way to garner attention. "Do tell Lady Night, is it in the blossoms wake, I find whom I seek?"
Gently, Kayura flattened his fingers, spreading the digits as the wind played with her hair. "The petals know child, the way to him is the wind; you must go as well."
Like the sakura flowers, the west wind drew them away for the single petal which had not fallen and refused to succumb to summer.
--End