Author: Hiko Mokushi
Rating: G
Summery: The musings of a koorime and the hardships a life of confusion can bring. KuwabaraxYukina Absolutely NO Kuwa-bashing.
A World without Ice
The waning moon was low in the sky, clouds shadowing it in silvery blankets and waifs of feather-like fluff. The young girl smiled, pushing a lock of robin's egg blue hair behind her ear. She glanced over her shoulder, staring back at the party that was still going on a little ways back. Despite the comfort, and despite the love that she felt for these people, she still didn't understand it.
That young girl wasn't so young. But of course, she mused, I'm not as old as Kurama-kun. Or Hiei-san. They're still fairly old.
She turned her back on the bonfire, steadily walking away from it, into a nearby field. It was late summer, the fading hues of greens and yellows finally fading from the flowers that the inhabited the field. It was still beautiful. And she slowly marched her way towards a patch of earth where the flowers had not grown and she stepped into it, feeling the dirt beneath her feet and between her toes.
Using her hands, she smoothed her dress down as she sat, gazing up at the stars that littered the night sky.
Her eyes were a deep crimson, that of a ruby or garnet. Though their color was harsh, her eyes held a kindness to them, a kinship with almost anything that she looked upon. Her eyes betrayed her feelings and in many words, the girl's eyes were the windows to her soul.
She sighed as she glanced back over her shoulder, toying with a lock of hair that refused to stay behind her ear. The party was one of celebration; a time to look back and enjoy the simpler times. The firelight of the bonfire caused her eyes to dance, looking like liquid pools of red.
The woman reached out a hand and touched a low-hanging yellow flower, the petals instantly whitening with the frost her fingertips provided. Her eyes danced with the fire and her fingers danced with a cold, yet gentle, wintry blast that had the entire area around her silver-blue and white with ice.
"The place for Koorime is in the Ice World," Ruri had said softly to her as a child. "To live anywhere else is painful for us. We need to feel the cold wind on our face and the ice on our fingertips. We are one with the ice and it is one with us. To part from it is to part with part of your very soul."
The woman picked one of the frozen flowers, staring at the myriad of reflections she saw of herself within its chasms of ice. "Is this what I am feeling?" she asked herself, twirling the ice flower between her fingers. "Is my soul mourning its detachment from the ice?"
She watched her crimson eyes dance in her reflection and she glanced back over her shoulder at the fire. Her eyes found the chibi demon clad in black, separated from the dancing and the eating and the laughing. His face made her pity him.
But his eyes...
They danced as much as her's did.
A bird flew down from the sky, landing with a soft thud upon the frozen earth that had formed beneath her body, still sitting gently upon the ground. She gazed at it with compassion, abandoning the flower as she held her hand out to it. It instead perched upon her shoulder and she chuckled to herself, though she knew that birds loved shoulders more than hands.
Hands were dirty from work. But the shoulders were roosts where they could whisper secrets.
"Am I so different from they?" she asked the little bird, as it observed her through oval, glass-brown eyes. "Are they so different from I? What truly makes us different, if, but the fact of our birth?"
The bird chirped slightly, and shook its tiny head as if to disagree. She was glad.
She continued on, lifting a finger up to stroke the bird as she gazed around her, still voicing her worries. "And if in fact, as you have so politely agreed upon, our birth un-inhibiting, what is it that truly makes me feel so far apart from they?"
The bird cocked its head to the side, and if as, for its answer, took flight and stole into the night. The woman sighed and nodded her head. "I had feared as much so," she murmured, stealing a glance back to the flower, listless on the ground beside her feet.
She looked up as someone called her name, aloud and from the party, and she saw at once the joyous soul of the one who'd she come to see.
"Yukina!" he called, waving a hand in the air, his face alight with glee. "Yukina come dance with me!"
She slowly rose up to her feet, and sighed, brushing dirt from her kimono. With a quick glance back down at the frozen flower, she dipped her hand into the arm of her kimono and brought forth a bright red ribbon. She tied her hair back, with it, thankful that it was finally withdrawn from her face.
She began to walk, following the sound of the music still playing, though it was softer and sweeter this time. But her eyes kept drawing back to the shadow, whose face was so melancholy calm.
She bit her lip slightly and paused in her place, before kneeling down and taking up another flower before picking up some speed. She paused beside the man, and held up one finger to stay him, before rushing to stand before the man clad in black.
She held out her hand, the flower still clutched between her thumb and her index. She smiled at him and held the flower out to him, watching a burst of cold air turn the flower to stone. The man stared at the flower for a moment, his ruby eyes wide with wonder. Before he sighed and reached out to take it, glancing up for moment before leaning back into his sea again.
"Thank you."
She smiled at him before replying softly, "Of course, Hiei-san," and turning around to run back to the man with the face full of glee. She smiled as he accepted her into his arms, the warmth of the fire spreading through her body. She glanced over her shoulder, staring at a tree where the bird she had once held climbed into a nest, greeted by another.
Yukina smiled and closed her crimson eyes, leaning into the warm arms that enveloped her. It was true what Ruri had said after all. To part with the ice was to part with a part of one's soul.
End Notes – It's kind of short, but I really like it. I wanted to go into more detail, but my mind wasn't working tonight. But let me say, you can kind of see where my mind went out of "short story" mode and into "rhyming poem" mode. Made it a bit more difficult.
It was originally supposed to be just about Yukina and her relationship with Kuwabara, but I realized that Hiei was too important to leave out. And I actually hadn't planned to have her name said (or written, if you like) until the very last part. But I couldn't avoid it.
The bird made me smile. I think birds are smart.
Constructive criticism is very much accepted. Flames that have no real purpose will be ignored.
- Hiko Mokushi