This is my first fic within this fandom, and I have not read the manga - anime knowledge only - so I apologize in advance for any headcanons that may have somehow made it into a... really short drabble. I haven't written any gen fics in forever, either, so this was refreshing. I do not own Natsume Yuujinchou.
Mornings are his favorite – bright in a really gentle way, long shadows interspersed with bright patches of dew sparkling on blades of grass and weaker youkai that generally mind their own business. He can watch them without fear, for they threaten nothing, and the day stretches out before him like an unpaved country road – wide and far from the horizon.
He's felt that way more and more since coming to live with the Fujiwaras. Before, the rising of the sun didn't mean peaceful days full of opportunity. The days back then were more like cages that promised more isolation, more loneliness. Sometimes another new school, a new family, a new set of people who would claim – as everyone seemed to – that he was a liar, a delinquent – crazy, even.
He regrets lying to avoid that, lying to hide his ability and the accompanying dangers from the friends he's finally made. But that's a part of the promise that every day holds for him. Maybe today, he thinks. I might be able to tell them today.
And, yeah, it'll take more than groundless thoughts to make that happen. He has to learn to trust those around him the way he trusts every morning. The sun doesn't fail to rise, and none of what threatens Natsume can menace that simple fact.
He'll understand, someday, that the bonds he treasures will never completely fade, that they will not break like so many spiders' threads. They are resilient – as resilient as the rays of sunlight that warm his back as he makes his way to school.
And there's another light, too – one less ostentatious, less blatantly there than the orange-yellow of fire in the sky. The moon – the silvery silhouettes that operate from the shadows and beyond the barrier of most humans' perceptions. Natsume is lucky, even if he doesn't always think so, because that light and those voices are forever there for him to turn to when the sun isn't shining.
He likes the mornings, now – likes the chance to interact with other humans – but he'll always have two worlds. He'll find a way to live in both of them, someday, just as soon as he can trust them to each other and grasp the opportunities that come his way.
