Claraowl: May I now present (drum roll, please)… my long-awaited MoriHaru fic! I own nothing of OHSHC, with the exception of my two handmade Bereznoff puppets. Please enjoy the story and forgive its shortness.
Mori's gaze settled on the ceiling, his face as stoic as ever. Sitting quietly, as per usual, he set his body on autopilot and slipped into another one of his mid-club daydreams.
Where to this time? he wondered, mentally slipping away from the clubroom and entering a hallway - one he had nicknamed the Corridor of Dreams. It stretched on seemingly forever, a stone corridor dotted with deep oak doors of varying sizes. He had labeled the doors he had been through with what species of daydream they contained - adventure, circus, fighting, islands, cruises, and (most recently) a tanuki family. Smiling slightly at the memories of past dreams, he paused in his path, lost in thought.
A slight scuffling noise at his feet brought him back to his second layer of reality. He knelt down and stared at the small door, being forcibly reminded of a certain novel by Louis Carroll. The scufflings ceased as he reached for the doorknob; he nodded, remembering the last time he'd opened a scuffle-door (as he called them), and being more willing than he would like to admit to repeat the experience. He closed his eyes, turned the handle, opened the door, and imagined himself crossing the threshold.
The familiar blast of semi-musty air hit him as he felt the scene change around him. Releasing his grip on the door handle, he stood up, dusted himself off, and carefully opened his eyes. He blinked a few times, allowing the room to float into focus. Interesting, he thought, that the door should lead me here.
Next to a silver forest sat a small marketplace - if you could even call it one. Indeed, there were but two stalls, directly across from one another. With a small nod of his head, Mori comprehended the situation; one of the stalls was his. He walked up to it and sat down inside, pulling off the sack that had materialized on his back. After setting up the small wooden objects, he slowly raised his eyes to meet those of the merchant across the dirt path.
The merchant - a small, lithe mage, he now saw - had her back to him and was grinding something with a mortar and pestle. The crunching sound of something being smashed to a powder reached the whittler's ears as he slowly began carving his favorite animal out of a small piece of wood. For a few minutes, the only sounds came from the crushing of the unknown substance and the scraping of his knife upon the wood. He had just begun shaping the body of the animal when he heard the crunching sounds cease. He glanced up curiously to see what she would do now.
The mage, having finished grinding up one ingredient for her tonic, set the powder aside and began slicing some roots into cubes the size of alphabet beads. Absorbed in her work, she did not notice as the gaze of the whittler settled upon her. The earth-soaked root shuddered slightly in her hands as its outermost edges were sliced off, leaving it exposed to the lightly chilled air around it. The mage could feel the last of the root's fight seeping into her hands as she guided the blade slowly through its center, cutting the last cubes free. She then tuned to the violet liquid frothing violently in the bowl at her left elbow and, dipping the iron of her knife in it, allowed the dulled silver to absorb the chaos of the glowing purple. Sparks flew from the bowl the instant she withdrew the enchanted metal, dripping in faerie blood.
The whittler watched as the mage turned and allowed the violet liquid to drip sickeningly into her cauldron. The intoxicating scent of wood burning - his wood, the scraplings he had given her, the ones of no use to him - filled his nostrils and he glanced down to look at the figure slowly emerging from the wood. He smiled slightly as he realized that, yet again, his fingers had been doing their best work while his eyes were busy watching her - her, his rival for what little business came through these parts; her, his hidden obsession; her, his unobtainable passion; her, the source of his broken heart.
It was not that he had asked her and she had rejected him, no; it was not that she had someone else in her life, no - those were not the reasons for his broken heart. It was merely the fact - in his mind, at least - that he could never have her, even if he tried obtaining her. There was too great of a difference between them - not in age, no, but in the dirt path that separated them. It was impossible for him to cross; his was the booth closer to the woods, where all he needed lay. He had no reason to cross the dirt path, to get close to her; he could not, at least, think of a half-way decent excuse.
Rather, he had not been able to think of one - until today. Today, he had a plan, an excuse, a purpose for crossing that forbidden dirt path. He needed only to finish his project - and wait for the mage to finish brewing whatever she was mixing, as she could get rather upset if anyone dare interrupt her work. The whittler glanced down at the animal emerging from the wood and was startled to discover that it was almost complete - he merely needed to put the finishing touches on its scales, tail, and feet. For this, he needed to focus. He took a deep, steadying breath - watching her for extended periods of time always made him shiver - and turned his attention to the nearly-complete animal in his hands, forcing himself to keep his gaze away from the mage.
The mage briefly glanced up from her work to see the whittler hard at work, as ever. Smiling slightly, she returned to her work, carefully adding the ingredients to the cauldron one at a time. She sprinkled powdered bone and measured a vicious-looking liquid into the tonic-to-be, stirring once here, twice there, and thrice in an intersecting diamond pattern. Next, in went the powdered remains of a bear's claw, followed by three hairs from a lion's mane and two from a tiger's coat - one black, one orange. Murmuring under her breath, she sent a piercing stare in the direction of the whittler before withdrawing her gaze and tossing a handful of his wood chips into the cauldron. Whispering a tune's notes, she gave the cauldron a final stir before pouring half of the contents into a small glass.
It was ready.
The whittler, by this time, had also finished his project. He observed it carefully, making the finishing mark before setting it down in the mage's line of sight. He carefully cleaned up the wood shavings, sweeping them into a neat pile in case the mage had any use for them, and just as carefully cleaned his tools. Only then did he raise his eyes and chance a glance across the dirt path; what he saw made his stomach do a flip.
The mage was gazing intently at him, her eyes and hands beckoning him towards her, across the stretch of what had previously been considered forbidden. He looked at her, questioning if she was truly calling him, and received another beckon in response. He did not wait to be asked a third time. Standing, he exited his booth - only to reenter so as to grab his most recent, most perfect carving. He had seen this, his favorite animal, around her before - he could only hope that a shared fondness for the animal would lead to something… something he could not attain without an outside source of help - or so, at least, he believed.
It took almost everything he had within him to take the six steps it took to cross the previously-forbidden dirt path, not very well-trodden in the past and less so now. It was not physical strength he lacked - rather, he had quite a supply of it, from all the wood-chopping he had to do for his work - but emotional strength. He had dreamed of crossing this invisible barrier every day since the time the mage had set up her booth across from him what seemed to be eons ago. He gathered his strength, closed his eyes - and moved. He was across, feeling spreading through him as if for the first time… and only then did he realize how numb he had been, and for how long. He felt, truly felt, the fire searing through him… and then it was gone. Gone, as if it had never been. He opened his eyes and found himself in front of the mage, his fingers unwrapping themselves from the wooden animal as he felt his arm extend towards her, his hand open and offering.
She smiled at him, the scent of the tonic heavy upon the air. She quietly took the animal from his hand, nodding her thanks, and put the glass full of tonic where the carving had been. "Drink it all quickly, when you do," she whispered, curling his fingers around the glass. "It's a tonic for what ails you."
He nodded, his fingers touched with the flame from before. He lifted the glass to his lips and drank the liquid inside in one gulp. The flame seared down his throat, spreading until it filled him to the top. He gasped, audible only in the silence that surrounded them. The mage nodded, stroking the back of the carved animal. He took a step towards the mage, placing his hands on her makeshift counter and leaning over her. She glanced up at him, her eyes widening slightly as his shadow crossed her face. A small smile played about her lips; he reached forward, tracing her jaw with one finger. Her face tilted up towards him willingly; he drew close to her. Why, he found himself wondering moments before their lips touched, isn't this happening in real life?
"That," the mage whispered, drawing back from him and pressing something into his hand, "is something you're going to have to see about for yourself."
And just like that, the dream shattered.
Mori shook his head slightly and looked around; he was back in the Corridor of Dreams. It was unusually silent; he had grown used to small scufflings emanating from behind the doors, leading him to different parts of his mind. Now, however, he was surrounded by an unmistakable silence. He began walking down the hallway, his footsteps echoing like the beats of a drum. Door after door slipped past him; flickering torches took the places of the electrical lights. Mori continued walking, watching the changes as he continued down his path to an unknown destination. Suddenly, his feet stopped; he could move no further down the hallway.
Before him stood a tall, dark set of double doors inlaid with nearly clear purple gems. He raised his left hand to touch the doors, to open them; in doing so, he brushed one of the gems with the object in his hands. The gem's interior appeared liquid, as if deep violet ink had been injected into the center; it swirled and shifted within the gem, forming shapes… the carved animal, a teacup… a mask on a table… the dirt path, the marketplace stalls… an hourglass, its sand nearly run out. The mage's words - her words - echoed in his brain: "Drink it all quickly, when you do. It's a tonic for what ails you."
He glanced down at the objects in his hands and pushed open the double doors, appearing in an overly-familiar music room. He had been here before - not only in reality, but in both types of dreams. His eyes blinked; he was sitting where he had been when he had left for the Corridor of Dreams. Glancing around, he confirmed that club was - as per usual by the time he resurfaced from his daydreams - almost over. The ladies were preparing to leave; they were gathering their belongings and saying their temporary good-byes to the hosts. He raised his right hand slightly to bid his regulars farewell; he blinked, the mage's words running again through his mind. In one movement, he raised the teacup in his hand to his lips, downed the liquid inside it, and felt the fire searing his throat and filling his body once more. He stood up with a clatter, his chair falling backwards without his notice; disregarding the attention that his sudden movements and unexpected noise had attracted, he walked up to the mage and pressed the carved dracling - the kind he had seen crawling over her shoulders so many times through the doors in the corridor - into her hand.
"Forgive me," he whispered, and committed the only act possible of truly curing what ailed him - the thing he had missed in his daydream, the thing the mage's tonic of bravery had allowed him to do. Their lips brushed for a fraction of a second, and then parted, the whittler waiting for the mage to vanish, as she always did in his daydreams. The silence surrounded him as he stepped backwards, realizing that he had reentered reality as the stares of all those around him fixed him in place. He remained there, hovering inches from her, frozen to the spot, his gaze locked with hers, until she blinked and broke the spell.
"I won't," Haruhi whispered in reply as she stroked the scales of the young dragon carving, causing Mori's heart to drop. "I won't forgive you," she continued, something previously unseen creeping into her eyes, "because there is no transgression to be forgiven for when you are merely following instructions I gave to you, Sir Whittler." With that, the mage - not one to stand for mushy scenes or pointless back-and-forths - cut straight to the point, cutting off what few words he had been forming with her lips.
And now, as the rest of the room collectively gasped in varying levels of astonishment, Mori knew the answer to his question. The reason that this hadn't been happening in real life was that he hadn't dared to cross that dirt path… the forbidden dirt path that ran between his reality and his passion.
Claraowl: I hope that you enjoyed the story! I realize that the writing style used here is a bit different from what I normally use, but I hope that it came across well. Kindly drop a review for me in that lovely little box, and feel free to ask me any questions you have (whether they're about the story or the fruit-world-domination-theory).