The heat of summer winds down into the cool of approaching autumn. The heavy air is lightened of its humid burden. Daylight starts to dwindle in the ticking timeline to winter's grey skies. Autumn, a time of change, marks the passage of summer to winter. The transition gently drifts you along into the iciness of winter, wrenching you free from cloying heat that drips sweat from sun-exhausted forms only to plunge you into glacial waters.
When Tanuma turns 18 on September 17, he starts complaining about restless sleep and half-remembered dreams. A month later, he stops complaining. Natsume comes to wish that he never stopped.
Whenever Tanuma laughs, his mouth opens wide in a flash of pink and white. Today, it is less of a mouth and more of a gaping maw filled with far too many teeth. Natsume inquires at the sudden surplus of teeth. Tanuma laughs sheepishly and admits that his wisdom teeth grew in. He says, "Let's keep it between us. I'm embarrassed." He stops laughing free and careless.
When they walk into town together, the sun shines high in the sky at noon. In Tanuma's long, long shadow, there lies the vague outline of horns creeping from his head. Natsume points out the irregularity in his shadow. Tanuma laughs sheepishly and musses his hair. He says, "I suppose I need a haircut." His shadow loses the horns.
When they walk to class, Tanuma is soundless grace. His feet do not touch the ground. They graze it like a wisp of cloud brushing against a mountain and bisected by existence. Natsume marvels over his footsteps. Tanuma confides, "When I was a kid, I wanted to be a ninja. I guess my efforts paid off." His feet thump heavy and loud.
When they walk home, Tanuma teases, "You sure are paying a lot of attention to me lately, Natsume." Natsume flushes, caught between worry and embarrassment. There is something wrong with Tanuma. The outline of his figure is hazy with the dissolution of reality. He is a desert mirage waiting to disappear, all the while enticing you to ignore the edges of unreality.
When they step into the classroom, flooded with natural light, Tanuma's eyes change ever so slightly. His eyes had always been dark but today, iris and pupil are indistinguishable, even in direct light. Natsume stares stockstill, struck dumb. Tanuma smiles and laughs, "It's just the lighting. You worry too much, Natsume." His eyes shift to the earthy comfort of a dark brown.
When they relax in a clearing, they sit beneath a tree and watch Nishimura and Kitamoto lightly roughhouse with each other in a cool autumn breeze. Natsume leans against the trunk of the tree, the bark rough and firm against his head. Decaying leaves fall atop his head with every windy stir. Out of the corner of his eyes, he observes Tanuma glancing at his nails with a furrowed brow and a bitten lip. His nails are long and dark, as if he had applied nail polish. The shininess and sharpness of them noticeably draws Natsume' attention. Tanuma flushes and explains, "It's been such a busy week. I forgot to cut my nails. I've been meaning to for a while." His nails turn dull and matte.
When they stop by Nanatsuji for sweets in an effort to sate Nyanko-sensei's cravings, Tanuma declines any offered sweets. "I thought you liked dango," Natsume says. "Sometimes your taste buds change," Tanuma replies. "I guess I ate it one too many times." He does not eat much of anything with his previous enthusiasm.
When they make dinner at Tanuma's house, Tanuma rolls up his sleeves and reveals his leanly muscled forearms. In the dim light of the setting sun, overlapping scales blanket the skin of his arms in a hypnotizing gradient of white to black. Natsume comments in concern. Tanuma frowns and folds his arms from view. He says, "I have dry skin. I forgot to put on lotion today." His scales fade away and leave soft skin behind.
When he walks by a candle, the flame leaps up in a roar of displaced air. Natsume hovers in worry. "Must be a draft that fanned it," Tanuma explains. "I must move too quick." He smiles, a gentle upturn of lips accompanied by narrowed eyes.
When he stays home for an illness, Natsume calls him and hears a rough edge to his voice, reminiscent of the throat-deep growl of a predator. "Your voice," Natsume says, "what's wrong?" Tanuma coughs, "Sore throat." His voice evens out.
When it rains, the thin fabric of his shirt turns translucent and clingy. It highlights the planes of his form and most peculiarly, the two bumps on his shoulder blades. Natsume asks about them. Tanuma responds, "I've been working out lately. It's just muscle, Natsume." His smile crinkles the corners of his dark eyes.
When they walk around in the cold, his breath does not coalesce white. The smoke grey of his breath curls lazy and slow in the air. "It must be the air pollution," Tanuma declares preemptively. Natsume side-eyes him, a frown tugging down the edges of his mouth. His breath turns white.
When Natsume and Nyanko-sensei encounter Tanuma in the forest at night, they do not move and their eyes widen. A puff of air escapes Natsume's open mouth. "My skin," Tanuma groans, "is too tight for me. I want to rip it off." And he does—rip it off, that is. His hands turn sharply three-clawed, glinting obsidian, and dig at his chest. He peels off his skin like an ill-fitting coat. There is a strange ease to it all. His skin hangs in bloodless tatters. Within him, there lies the implication of scales and more scales beneath that false fleshy exterior. He had been too large for this body—this earthly prison wrapped around his molten heart. His previous sickliness shimmers under a new light—that light of realization.
In the moonlight, he is stunning—his scales as darkly iridescent as a crow. Were he smaller, he could never be precisely identified as a snake or a reptile. For all that his form is serpentine and reptilian, there is an otherness to him that renders him draconic and supersedes the mundanity of common species. Unreal, he skirts the edges of reality to unveil the phantasmagoric etchings of a world tangent.
That simmering heat that wafts off him and the strength in his claws implies a power unmatched by most creatures. His lean form winds around Natsume in the infinity of that wrathful, irksome hunger that would devour him whole. Hot, burning hot. He is a furnace warming the embers of his heart. He is volcanic, that steady, boiling lava hidden beneath an earthen crust.
"I had always hoped," Tanuma confesses helplessly in a voice that rumbles, "that I could be of more use to you. And now…look at me." His confession is accompanied by a toothsome reveal—carnivorous with saliva dripping from the keen cutting edges of his canines.
"You're beautiful," Natsume breathes out in the voice of the exultant god-fearing worshippers who would sacrifice in times long past. He strokes a hand across scales (Nyanko-sensei petulantly looks on from the outskirts, acutely aware and slightly envious of the petting). Tanuma is heat encased in the smoothness and shine of crystalline scales.
"Takashi," Tanuma whispers, "I had dreamt of a world underground, full of treasures, natural and man-made. And there I was…waiting." Waiting and guarding. In this life, he had grown accustomed to waiting idly and now his draconic manifestation would allow him his greatest wish—to guard that which he treasures most, his golden pearl encased in velvety flesh.