Black Star

by Feral Phoenix

It was just one of those freak accidents... nothing more than bad luck. But then, you could never accuse Kuroi Hoshi of being lucky, only of perserverance. That, and having very supportive friends. [Cloudshipping, OCxOC. Mystarian OC fic.]

Black Star

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy: Unlimited or the song "Paper Bag" by Anna Nalick, and Ame belongs to Jessica Wolfe, but I DO own Hoshi and Arashi. Don't sue plz kthx. (Though, if you use my OCs without permission, my muses will kick your ass. :D)

Rating: T for graphic violence and detailed descriptions of crippling injuries, as well as some fairly mild sexual content.

Genre: Drama. Angst. Romance. Tragedy. It's a love story, and in the end it's a sad story. If they had the genre here on FF-Net though, it would really be "inspirational". :D

Pairings: Cloudshipping and Hoshi/Arashi

Warnings: So not for the squeamish. If excess of blood makes you cringe, stop now. Also, yaoi (see pairings) and original characters.

-:-:-:-:-:-
But someday we'll all be old and I'll be so damn beautiful—
So I'll hide my head here in this paper bag
'Cause if I can't see you then you can't see me
And it'll be okay, fly little bee away to where there's
No more rain and I can be me
-:-:-:-:-:-

It was one of those freak accidents—the things that happen so unbelievably rarely, yet frequently enough for irate parents to use to frighten their children into behaving.

There were so few monsters left in Mystaria that dared to come near to the cities. The wyvern must have been very young, very foolhardy, or a mixture of both.

No one could have seen it coming, and it was just bad luck that most of the city guard was off-duty at the time.

But then again, Kuroi Hoshi was never a boy who could be accused of being lucky.

---

Kiiroi Madori was walking back to the home where her lifemate and two children waited with a woven basket filled with fever-reducing herbs in her arms that afternoon. It was Kageshi's turn to watch them for once; Madori loved her children dearly, but at the same time, it was nice to be able to get out of the house and stretch her legs every now and then. Especially because her little Kiri was coming down with a major case of cabin fever and continually clamored to be let outside, though she couldn't afford to lose the spare pair of hands.

That was the thing about having a sickly three-year-old in the house. As sweet as poor little Kumo could be, he ran the entire household ragged, especially when he'd just come down with something for the hundredth time this year.

It was summer flu this time, and her little boy was in agony. Every time his fever went down, it seemed as though his stomach lost its ability to handle anything stronger than milk and honey. And as soon as the violent bouts of vomiting subsided, his temperature started to climb. Madori sighed. Children could be so much work sometimes. It wasn't as though Kumo could help it, but it drove Madori half-mad with worry every time he got sick, which was whenever a bug was passing through their city. At least now the healers were saying that Kumo would probably live to see his fifth birthday. Madori was sick to death of hearing their grim prognoses of her son's health.

And it kept her from paying as much attention to her other son as she would've wanted. Which didn't make Kiri happy in the least, though it was better now that he was six years old and mature enough to understand that Kumo's sicknesses could actually kill him if he wasn't properly cared for.

It was especially bad for the poor thing when a group of other children his age were outside the city gates, playing on the cloudscape. Kiri's studies already kept him away from them too much.

Madori had barely finished that thought when she heard the high-pitched scream slice through the air, stopping her heart.

She didn't know the voice, but she recognized it as a child's.

Dropping the basket, Madori tore towards the gates, shoving past other Mystarians who had stopped in the streets and turned towards the source of the frantic cry. She knew that neither of her sons was out there, but her instincts as a mother would not let her stand by if anything threatened any child enough to make him or her scream like that.

Emerging from the city gates, she saw it immediately, and her eyes went wide with horror.

A rogue monster—a grayish-purple wyvern, a serpentine dragon with short but wickedly clawed front legs but no hind ones—had wandered in from the wastes, and discovered easy prey within its reach.

Seven children had gone outside to play that morning, parading the bright colors of their clothes and their cheerful smiles. Two were dead, soaked in blood, and a third was seized in the wyvern's killing jaws, shaken about like a toy in its grasp. The other four were frozen in fear, staring as their playmate screamed on and on.

"You kids, get back here!" Madori shouted, running towards them with her heart in her throat. "Get away from there, hurry!"

A little girl dressed in the same rosy shades of pink as her hair turned towards her, staring out of huge, stunned sky-blue eyes, then took a few shaky steps towards Madori before breaking out into as fast a run as she could. A boy wearing green turned, watched her blankly, and then began to stagger after her, with the other two children still stuck frozen where they stood.

The wyvern bit down on its current victim with a rip of flesh and a crunch of bone audible even from Madori's distance as the tortured child's scream jerked up half an octave, then fell suddenly silent. Throwing the body callously to one side, the wyvern snaked after the boy and girl who were trying to reach Madori.

With her hands at her belt, Madori let out a long, slow breath of sun-golden Mist, ready to draw her ofuda and destroy the creature before it could kill anyone else.

But before they could reach each other, the little girl tripped, and the boy following her let out a sharp cry and threw himself in front of her.

The wyvern bit into his chest as his bones cracked viciously, ripping out his heart, lungs, and many of his ribs, its jaws dripping with carnage as it noisily chewed, then swallowed its mouthful. The corpse crumpled onto the trembling girl, who squealed in terror.

Madori yelled, but the wyvern drew closer to her.

And it was pelted with a ball of white.

The wyvern turned with a vexed-sounding shriek, even as Madori called out frantically—it was one of the other two children, the ones that the wyvern had ignored in favor of prey that ran: A girl dressed in purple, trembling violently but furious, with clumps of cloud—the only weapon she had—in either hand.

"No, don't!" Madori screamed at the girl. But the wyvern was already heading back towards her. It grabbed her in its claws, clutching her so tightly that there was a sick snap through the air; from the way that the girl's body instantly went limp, Madori knew that the wyvern had accidentally killed her by severing her spine.

There was only one child left out of the seven of them—a little boy in black, staring transfixed at the carnage before him out of huge blue eyes.

Madori swore bitterly as the wyvern lunged for him, catching him in its jaws with a crunch of bone and picking him up off the ground as it did so. The child let out a piteous wail; there was a flash of red behind Madori's eyes, and she let out a roar of hatred, throwing one of her spell cards with all her strength. It hit the creature's side, causing it to squall and drop its prey in a bloody, broken heap in the clouds.

Madori sprang into the air, leaping that last few yards, and letting out a hard breath of Mist, slammed her hand into the ofuda plastered to the wyvern's side with all her strength. The inscription lit and the little slip of parchment erupted into holy flame, beginning to wither the creature's body away. As the wyvern turned its head towards her, she slapped another into its face with such vehemence that it exploded, sending the monster's twitching corpse to collapse along the ground, splattering a rain of deep purple blood to mingle with that of the children along the cloudscape.

Breathing hard, furious with herself for not arriving in time, Madori stood there for a moment to get her senses back, then turned to her most painful task yet: Seeing if any of the wyvern's victims besides the little girl in pink still lived.

The girl in purple, she already knew, was dead, as were the three she'd been too late to get to, and the boy in green had had too many of his internal organs ripped out to have survived. Her heart aching, Madori turned and headed back to the little girl, gently pulling her playmate's corpse off her body.

"Come, now, let's get out of this place…" But Madori fell silent with a frown as she realized that the girl was not responding. The child's eyes were open, but she was staring blankly into space, and there were drops of blood on her lips and nose. Kneeling down, Madori placed her fingertips to the girl's throat and felt no stir of blood there, and finally realized what must have happened—her heart had probably burst.

It was a humane death in comparison to what would have happened had she befallen the nonexistent mercy of the wyvern, and possibly in comparison to the life she would've lived, seeing six other children slaughtered before her very eyes at such a young age. Still, Madori shook her head and cursed the heavens for her inability to get there in time.

Gently, she closed the girl's eyes, then turned to the little boy in black, the last of the wyvern's victims. Much like the child who had been in the monster's clutches when Madori had arrived onscene, he appeared to have been bitten straight through when the wyvern had picked him up, although miraculously the bite marks had missed his throat and the general area of his heart. His clothes were sodden with blood, with dark red splotches all over his face and chest, and when Madori knelt to look, she realized that his left hand was almost as black as his clothes with it and missing a finger. And as she turned back, feeling slightly sick, to consider his face instead, her stomach clutched as she realized that the rightmost of his three major horns had been broken off halfway down its shaft, and had the ooze of blood still clinging along its smooth length.

"Nallorn and Gaedrian," she whispered. This poor child had probably died half-insane and in blinding pain; she'd never known any Mystarian able to survive the trauma of having a horn broken, as the horns their people possessed from birth were how they communed with the Way, and were able to process and understand the ways of Mist. To lose a horn would be to upset the balance of that sense, distorting it so badly that it would be like suddenly losing any and all ability to discern color, depth perception, and shape clearly with one's eyes.

But as she stared at the body with morbid fascination, unable to tear her eyes away, the unthinkable happened.

The child let out a pitiful cough.

Somehow, he was still alive.

Galvanized into action by the sight, Madori leaned down and closed her eyes with her ear barely inches from the boy's chest. Yes, she could hear a heartbeat, though she couldn't hear breathing—which wasn't much of a surprise, as his right lung had probably been punctured in one or two places by the wyvern's fangs. Biting her lip—she was by no means an expert at this, and the lifegiving aspects of her Mist were relatively low—she tilted his head back, parted his lips, and forced a hard breath of her Mist into his body.

The boy let out another piteous cough, then gasped fitfully.

Madori gently lifted him into her arms. "I'm not sure whether or not you understand me, but I have to take you back inside—you need help right away," she murmured to him even as she sprang lightly into the air so as not to jar his terrible injuries by the rhythm of walking.

It took her only a few moments to get back to the city, and pausing only to snap out terse instructions for the other six bodies to be recovered by someone else, she headed straight for the healer's. This boy's wounds were not going to wait for the waffling of others—she had to get him taken care of now.

---

"I'm not sure how much more I can do for him," Kohaku the healer said bluntly, shaking his head and running a hand through his fawn-brown hair. "He's been through so much physical trauma that it's literally almost arbitrary whether he lives or not at this point, and to make it worse, no one will come forward to claim him as their child, so we don't even know his name."

"How heartless could his parents possibly be?" Madori asked incredulously, her hands balling into fists. "He needs them now more than ever!"

Kohaku shook his head again. "They may not want a crippled child; they may think he isn't going to live and have decided it's no use coming forward. Or he might not even have parents."

Madori glowered at him, then turned back to the child. "The poor boy…"

"It would be better for him to die," Kohaku said, closing his eyes. "He won't have much of a life like this. What could he possibly make of himself in the future, crippled like he is? No, it would be far better for him to die."

"You won't," Madori snapped.

"I wouldn't," Kohaku agreed. "Still, times like these, I almost wish I had it in me to commit a mercy killing."

Both of them fell silent, turning to look at the boy. He lay small and pale and swathed in bandages on the nearest bed in the empty ward, his breathing labored though he slept deeply. Kneeling beside the bed, Madori gently teased stray locks of his soft black hair away from his forehead.

"How is Kumo?" Kohaku wanted to know.

Madori shook her head. "He's mending, slowly. He's sleeping most of the time, but by now we understand that's how he heals. …I hope he won't keep getting sick for much longer."

"You never can know, with a child who started out like him. What about Kiri?"

Now Madori smiled. "A little calmer. Very worried about Kumo. You'd think that he would hate having a three-year-old tagging along with him everywhere, but Kiri actually likes the way that Kumo acts when he's healthy. Then again, Kumo does seem to think that even the winds dance for his brother. I suppose it's proof that even nowadays, flattery still gets you everywhere." She paused to wind a curl of the sleeping boy's hair around her forefinger. "If it weren't for Kumo's illnesses, I would offer to foster this little one, but Kageshi and I can't support another child right now." Getting an anxious look on her face, she turned back up to Kohaku. "How bad will things be for him, really?"

Kohaku grimaced. "Without him being able to speak to me, all I can tell you is that it could go two ways: Either he'll lose his Mist sense entirely, or he'll develop synesthesia in the extreme. If it's the latter, he may end up seeing, hearing, tasting, or even physically feeling the Mist currents of this world. It will be so disorienting as to be almost entirely crippling until he learns to cope with it, and few do. If it's the former…" The healer gave a small, helpless-looking shrug. "He'll be just as badly crippled. Having lived six or so years being able to sense Mist, it'll come as a blow just as cruel as forcibly losing any other sense. Either way, he'll likely never amount to anything more than a cripple. Living normally in this world demands the ability to sense the flow of Mist accurately."

Madori sighed. "Poor little thing."

But even as she spoke, the boy stirred, letting out a tiny moan. "Where…" he whispered, his voice barely a croak.

"You're in the hospital," Kohaku told him, joining Madori at the child's bedside. "Don't open your eyes, you've been hurt very badly and it might feel strange."

"Can you tell us your name?" Madori asked gently, stroking his forehead.

The boy moaned again. "Hoshi… Kuroi Hoshi…"

"Little Black Star," Madori murmured to him. "I've a son about your age, you know… Don't worry about anything now. Just hang on a little bit longer. We'll take good care of you."

But if the boy named Hoshi had heard her, he couldn't answer—he had lapsed back into unconsciousness.

---

One year later

The room was dark and relatively unfurnished, but nevertheless it was crowded by a group of twenty or so Mystarian children, all of them under the age of ten. The stone walls rang with their voices as they pestered the adults in the room or gathered in small groups to play; they appeared far more normal than many would have expected, largely due to the fact that most of them had been orphaned so young that they were unable to remember ever having parents or families other than the volunteers who had devoted their lives to taking care of them.

They seemed normal and surprisingly happy, yes—all, that is, but one.

Groping along the rough stone of the wall, Hoshi limped stiffly towards refuge, his eyes half-open and unfocused so as to lessen the dizzying effect of the Mist currents overlain across his vision. With his free hand, he pushed his bangs out of his face—as if that would help him any. Still, he didn't want his eyes any more obstructed than they already were. In the first few months, he hadn't been able to see anything through the swirling patterns of Mist flows that were invisible in the eyes of any other Mystarian; slowly, his vision had begun to clear, but it had stayed the same for a few weeks now and he was beginning to think that this was as far as his fractured senses would improve.

"Look, there he goes, crawling back to his corner to hide like a little baby," snorted one of the others derisively. Hoshi didn't reply. Let them talk. Talk was good, better than what he got some days when the caretakers' backs were turned.

"Disgusting. Have you ever seen anything so ugly?" said someone else.

Hoshi tried to pay no heed; the tips of his fingers bumped into the other wall, and he slumped down into the corner, curling up and peeping halfheartedly over his knees, brushing over the other children with a dispassionate gaze.

Still, bitterness laced through his heart. He knew he was far from the lovely kind of child who was able to find the rare couple who would take him or her home; thick, brown branches of scar tissue still traced along his body where he'd been bitten a year ago, forming a hard knot over where he'd had a finger, once. Not to mention the disfigurement of his broken horn. Yes, he knew he wasn't winning any beauty contests. But he still wished that they would just—

"Leave him alone," a familiar voice cut through the murmurs and giggles, spiky with annoyance. "It's not his fault, so shut up already."

Hoshi blinked in an effort to clear his eyes, and almost managed a smile. The flow of Mist changed, bending around the body of the red-clothed newcomer and the white-swathed form clinging at his side.

"Oh, we beg your pardon, your highness," a boy's voice drawled.

Kiri looked the orphan up and down. "You'll shut up about that, too. There are some things that people can't help, and it's stupid to pick on them for it."

"Yeah, you're so saintly."

"Look, he brought the brat with him today." The owner of this voice laughed. "Freaky little thing. Have you ever seen anyone so pale before?"

The younger child pressed even closer to Kiri, who slipped a sheltering arm around his shoulders. "Leave my little brother out of this," he said in a threatening voice.

"Then you should've left the whitey-locks at home."

"Niisama…" the little boy nearly whimpered.

"Don't pay any attention to them, Kumo-chan," Kiri instructed, smiling down at him. "Some people just don't understand how to be polite to guests."

"Why should we care about politeness? Did we hurt the little princeling's feelings?" mocked the first orphan who'd started laying into Hoshi.

That was when an unfamiliar form in gray shoved into the area, standing firm with hands planted on its hips. Hoshi blinked; like Kiri, Kumo, and most of the adults who oversaw the orphanage, the undercurrents of Mist in the air bent around this child as if to embrace him or her.

"What do you want, you little witch?" one of the orphans demanded.

"Bugger off," the girl said aggressively, "or I'll make you eat it."

Kiri bent down to Kumo, smiling at his brother. "Go wait with Hoshi, okay?"

"Okay," the young boy agreed, then scampered off to sit next to the older boy in black. "Hoshi-kun!" he caroled, snuggling into Hoshi's side.

"Hello," Hoshi replied with a smile. This close, he could see Kumo's features clearly; the white-haired boy had a serene, almost carefree look about him now that Kiri and the strange girl were facing down the meaner kids.

"I'll tell," whined a boy.

"You'll just get in trouble for picking on Hoshi," Kiri retorted derisively. "Now, like she says—get out of here. Everybody else knows better than to be mean to a kid like him."

Hoshi squinted, then smiled as the other orphans trailed off.

As he continued to stroke little Kumo's shoulder and side, Kiri and the girl that Hoshi didn't know turned to face each other. "Thanks for your help," the redheaded boy told her with a polite bow. "I don't think I've ever seen you here before."

"I just came last week." The girl looked him up and down and crossed her arms in an abrupt enough gesture that Hoshi saw it clearly. "Haiiro Arashi. You must be Akai Kiri. I haven't been around here long, and I may not know why he's like that, but it's stupid to pick on a disabled kid. They're all idiots."

Kiri shook his head, then turned to face Hoshi and Kumo. "Hey, you two—Akimi-san told me it was alright for us to go out back and get some space." Glancing at the girl named Arashi, Kiri cocked his head at her. "Do you want to come, too?"

Arashi shrugged. "Well, you're better company than them." She waved a hand dismissively to indicate the other kids. "Okay."

"Hoshi-kun…" Kumo stood up and held out his hands, used to the ritual of having to help his brother's friend to stand. The black-haired boy smiled down at his young companion as he accepted the arm up—one of the sweetest things about little Kumo was that he and Hoshi had met when the white-haired child was three years old, which happened to be far too tender an age for him to question Hoshi's crippling injuries. As a result, Kumo had accepted the way Hoshi looked and acted far before he was of an age to be able to understand the reasons behind those things.

As for Kiri, well, Kiri had known from the beginning and not particularly cared. As soon as Hoshi had been strong enough and coherent enough to endure company, his personal savior, Kiiroi Madori, had introduced him to her son. Kiri had a great deal in common with his mother, particularly a vicious hatred of prejudice and injustice; he'd taken up Hoshi's cause immediately and become a pillar of strength for the shyer boy. Unlike most other kids, Kiri cared nothing for Hoshi's disfigurements, and so he and his little brother had become Hoshi's only friends.

"Most people who've just come here don't do too well at first," Hoshi said haltingly as Kumo led him to fall into pace with Kiri and Arashi. "But you're different. Why did you have to come here?"

Arashi shrugged. "My father's been dead for a long time. My mother is… sick. I'm just staying here until my grandparents are allowed to come get me."

Hoshi gave her a short, pained smile. "You're lucky."

"So they say." He was close enough to her to see her roll her eyes, which he realized were not gray like her hair and clothing has he had initially thought, but some kind of pale hazel that was a mix of grays, greens, browns, and golds that shifted as they caught the light. But despite the sarcasm in her voice, when she saw him watching her, she smiled. "But I guess I shouldn't be complaining, not to you."

Charmed, Hoshi shook his head slightly. "It's fine."

"Oh, hey, wait…" Kiri turned to look over his shoulder at his companions. "I do know you. You just joined Sora-sensei's class the other day. I thought you looked familiar."

Arashi shrugged again, indifferent. "I wanted to learn to fight. My grandparents saw nothing wrong with that."

"It's no wonder," Hoshi said softly, that smile still lingering over his pale lips. "The way the Mist holds you when you move… I don't see many people our age like that."

"Hoshi-kun," Kumo called, tugging at his friend's sleeve. "Do I bend the sky yet?"

The black-haired boy squeezed Kumo's shoulders, his smile widening. "Only a little. But you're starting to."

Arashi cocked her head as she watched them. "You talk about Mist like it's a living thing," she said curiously.

"In a way… I suppose it is. It has a will, and those it favors. It's not just a thing, like some people think it is." Hoshi struggled to find some more cohesive way to explain, but couldn't, and shook his head slightly. "I don't know how to say it any clearer than that."

The four of them reached an empty circle of cloud away from other people, and Kiri turned back to Arashi. "Want to practice sparring while we're out here?"

Arashi smirked. "Well, why not? I guess we'll find out if you're really as good as you say."

"Kumo-chan, let's go someplace where we won't get in their way," Hoshi suggested quietly to the young boy who still led him along.

"Unn!" Kumo pulled Hoshi over to a few half-destroyed stone blocks that seemed to be from some wall or building that had been rebuilt in this prefecture and hadn't yet been cleared away.

As the two of them sat there, Hoshi squinted through the veils of Mist, watching Kiri and Arashi start to weave a complicated dance around each other and not bothering to stifle the envy winding through his chest.

He would never learn to fight, never wield a sword or run swift and free. His badly-scarred body was too stiff, his limbs too uncoordinated while the Mist dominated his fractured perceptions of the world. But, Nallorn and Gaedrian, he wanted so badly to be able to. He wanted to try his hand at flying, wanted to blaze through the air and feel the kiss of the wind. If only he weren't so badly crippled… maybe, just maybe he could've made something of himself…

Hoshi let out a short, bitter sigh and watched a puff of his own soot-black Mist join the fickle, swirling curtains that constantly screened his eyes. Of course, it would never be so. He no longer had the balance, he was all but blind, and no one knew if he would ever be able to perceive the Mist's waves and currents accurately again.

He would spend the rest of his life watching from the sidelines as his friends achieved the honors of swordsmen, and continued to climb the sweeping scales of skill until he was left entirely behind.

---

As the four of them made their way back towards the orphanage, Arashi broke their usual silence after several minutes of watching Hoshi limp painfully along, leaning shamefully on Kumo's supporting shoulders all the way.

"You know, I bet if you exercised your legs more, the muscles would be a lot less stiff and you could walk normally again," she told him.

Hoshi stopped dead and stared at her, bewildered. "How could I possibly be able to…?" he began incredulously.

"Not exercises like running around or whacking targets with sticks or anything," she clarified impatiently. "Stretches and stuff. I bet Sensei would know some. She wouldn't mind helping you."

"That's a good idea," Kiri agreed. "It'd be one less thing for people to laugh at you about, you know. And if it means you wouldn't have to be in so much pain all the time…"

"I… don't know." Hoshi grimaced a little. "Aoi Sora-dono is a little… imposing…"

To Hoshi's surprise, Kiri laughed. "Maybe a little. But I can tell you that she'd love to help you. And that no matter how scary she might seem, she's never harmed any of her students no matter how angry she might get with us. She's not like a lot of swordsmanship teachers here…"

"I'd… have to get permission, but I suppose…" Hoshi said reluctantly.

When the four of them parted ways at the orphanage, Kiri let the smile slide from his face as soon as he and Kumo started on their way back home.

"Niisama…" Kumo slipped his hand into his brother's. "Are you sure?"

Kiri nodded. "Yeah. It might seem a little cruel of us, but… Arashi agrees with me, and Sensei won't turn him away once she sees him. Not with the number of bruises he has, or the way he crawls around, terrified of everyone around him he doesn't know. She doesn't have it in her to ignore that… and neither do I." He grimaced. "Is that wrong of me?"

Kumo shook his head vigorously. "No… I wanna help Hoshi-kun too, Niisama."

Kiri smiled and leaned down to kiss Kumo's cheek. "Then come on. If we stay out here any longer, Mom is gonna worry about us."

---

Aoi Sora had seen plenty of saddening things over her long life, and liked to think that she'd encountered enough of them to handle them with the cynicism deemed appropriate for a woman of her age. But this? Thiswas just too much for her to take with her usual calm silence.

She spat a curse as she watched her dearest students shepherd the black-haired little boy into the wide main room of her dojo, and strode towards the three of them in a determined staccato march. Despite being dangerously close to fifty, she was an impressive woman when she wanted to be and used that to her full advantage. Though she possessed the same tall and willowy body structure as all her race and topped several of the city's men at her even six feet, there was a hard layer of muscle along that height that told anyone with eyes and half a brain that she was a master of swordsmanship; the well-used but keen-edged Maken and smoke-blue Mist bottles at her waist were enough to remind others that despite her age, her skills were sharp as ever. She dressed in the swordsman's blues that clung close to her toned body; a silver stripe alongside the basic gray at the long shirt's hem, sleeves, and collar marked her status as teacher and master in this building. Her long hair, storm-blue streaked with gray, was pinned into a heavy braid that fell to her waist—as well as two slim ones, clasped with silver at her temples and above their ends, that framed her face—and her golden eyes were sharp and fierce as they ever had been.

She was the only Mystarian in the city—probably in all of Mystaria—to boast a nine-point rack of horns; the central five were all long enough, full enough, to be considered major, and the smaller spikes framing them were tiny but still deadly-looking.

By that alone, she was easily identifiable. For all who lived in Mystaria knew the use-name she had taken as a swordswoman, in those years when their people still suffered the threat of invading monsters ringing every city. "Tenkenshi Sora"—she who wielded the heavenly sword—was half-legend already, though she had barely made the decision to put that name aside and begin to teach the children of the city what skills she could.

Sora loved children, though she had none to call her own. And once those children got over their initial awe of her, they adored her in return. She could be a very strict teacher, but she was infinitely patient and kind and unlike some instructors she knew (but didn't often name, for politeness' sake), she never attempted to make a lesson stick with a well-placed smack or two.

Sora had seen horrors in her lifetime, but nothing had the power to incense her beyond reason like the sight of an abused child.

And she doubted she'd ever been this angry, aside from the day she'd first met little Akai Kiri those months ago, tearful and skittish and in almost abject terror of any swordsmanship master, cut and bruised with his poor maimed arm in a sling. She'd watched him hide behind his mother, listened to the tale of his last teacher, done her best to soothe the boy's fears, then gone off to have choice words with the man who'd beaten him nearly senseless for the offense of one slight act of impudence.

Under her tutelage, he'd lost that victimized look, and was swiftly becoming her star pupil; when he'd hesitantly asked for her help a few days ago, she'd listened to his tales about his friend and playmate, the abandoned boy with the broken horn. And agreed to at least meet with the child.

Shock had been her first reaction upon seeing the gruesomely scarred boy with the limp so pronounced that he was only able to walk with support from either side, quickly followed by boiling outrage at the meekness that dominated his demeanor and the defeated expression in those darkened, unfocused cerulean eyes.

Reaching them, she watched as the boy's eyes suddenly focused on her, then saw the blood drain from his face as he let out a little gasp and bowed almost straight down to the floor.

Sora paused, raised her eyebrows, then looked from one guilty face to the next.

"He wouldn't have come here if we'd told him this was where we were going," Kiri explained at length. "So we had to lie."

"We're sorry, Sensei," little Kumo piped anxiously, blinking up at her out of those wide green eyes. "But, but… we know you can help him!"

Sora just shook her head, knelt down, and ruffled each boy's hair. "I'm not angry… just curious as to why you felt you had to lie. You explained, with minimal excuses, which is a good thing." She looked at them for a while, making sure she saw understanding on their faces. "So, this is your friend Kuroi Hoshi?"

She looked pointedly at Hoshi himself. "Yes…" the boy finally answered in a tiny voice.

"You can look at me, I don't bite," Sora told him, and tilted his chin up to get a good look at him. Then stifled another curse, settling for a black frown instead.

"S-Sora-dono…" Hoshi was shivering, staring at her through wide eyes, and most obviously wondering what he'd done.

"Who gave you these bruises?" she asked in a soft voice. "Don't think to stay silent for any reason—by doing so you only protect them, and even if that's your intent, never doubt that I will just find out anyway. I would rather hear it from you. Who did this to you?"

"The—other kids. At the orphanage." Hoshi dropped his eyes. "I… don't know any of their names, I'm sorry."

Sora's frown deepened. "But if you've lived there for a year…"

Hoshi shook his head slowly. "If I could place a face with a name, then maybe… it's harder, with a name and a voice."

"It's that bad, is it?" She shook her head, and took his small, scarred hands in hers, feeling the touch like feathers over the heavy calluses along her palms. "Listen to me, child. Your disabilities are none of your own fault, and nothing to be ashamed of. And whatever I can help you to deal with, I will. Now." She turned to Kiri. "You have work to do." As he scampered off, she looked to Kumo. "And you need to work on meditation. Go on." The small white-haired child bowed to her and left. "As for you—you're coming with me, to see just how badly impaired you are by the depth of your scar tissue."

---

Now that Kiri and Kumo had proved themselves right that their exalted teacher wouldn't turn him away, Hoshi was almost more anxious than he had been before. Aoi Sora—the woman known as Tenkenshi in the war ballads that even he had heard people sing—was willing to help him, if he was able, and he wanted badly to prove himself able.

"Sit," she informed him suddenly, patting the mat they had been walking on. Hoshi blinked, then did. "Stretch your feet out in front of you, then reach towards your toes. And make sure to keep your legs on the ground—don't bend your knees. Stop if it hurts too much to keep going any further."

Hoshi looked at her a little uncertainly, then reached with a grimace, stopping short almost instantly.

Sora was close enough for him to see her frown. For some reason, he could see her clearly further away than anyone else; the way the Mist streamed around her was flattering rather than obscuring, and it enhanced her in his view instead of hiding her. He wondered idly if Kiri would ever bend the sky the way his teacher did. Being able to see his closest friend perfectly in the sea of disorientation would be a blessing.

"This is… as far as I can go," Hoshi said helplessly, shaking his head and hating the strain in his voice, the weakness of it.

Sora went over to him and put a hand on his back. "I'm going to push you down a few more inches," she told him gently. "If it becomes too painful for you to bear, tell me, and I'll stop."

Hoshi nodded hesitantly, and felt the gentle weight of Sora's hand between his shoulderblades increase, pushing him forward. His muscles tightened under the new strain—and twisted—

At Hoshi's sharp cry of pain, Sora pulled back immediately, helping him to sit up.

"I'm—sorry…" he began, but she hushed him, stroking his soft but unkempt hair.

"I didn't know it was this bad… little one, would you be uncomfortable taking off your shirt in front of me? I'd like to look at your scars, if you don't mind."

Still gasping a little, Hoshi shook his head and abruptly pulled it off. After so many visits to the healer, he doubted he would have minded even if she'd asked him to strip naked. As he closed his eyes and sat still, he felt her fingers gently probe along the twisted marks that ran in a semicircle over his back.

"I should have known as much. These scars are quite deep. Hoshi… the child attacked by a wyvern last year—that was you, wasn't it?" When Hoshi nodded, she pulled him close. "Then you've obviously gone through plenty of difficult things for your age… that explains why you're so mature. Hoshi, you know that you're the first young man in our city to receive injuries like yours and live, don't you?"

He nodded. "My horn… I know. It makes me a freak."

"Listen to me, Hoshi. That broken horn, these scars, the pain you live with every day… they do not make you a freak. Most people who were hurt as badly as you were would have died in a matter of minutes, but you didn't. You were stronger than that."

Hoshi blinked at her, surprised, as she continued. "And, Hoshi, I've seen many, many of our people with scarring almost as bad as yours recover from the damage to their bodies—and live perfectly normally again. And if you're that much stronger than they are, I'm certain that with enough hard work, you will be able to move just as easily as any of my swordsmanship students."

"Sora-dono…" Hoshi didn't know what to say.

"And…" She shook her head, her eyes dark. "Once I teach you stretches and exercises, and you learn how to deal with your body's limitations… I can help you learn other things. Holds. Defensive strikes. Enough to make the others stop bothering you when you tire of them, or if they try to hurt you."

Hoshi flushed. "I—I don't know if I could—"

Sora smiled at him. "You can… and you will, sooner than you think. When Kiri comes here for his lessons, you're to accompany him—Arashi can take you if his other duties keep him away. And while the students practice their drills, I'll work with you. Starting tomorrow, it's 'sensei', and I don't want any more respect than that."

"I…" Hoshi took a deep breath, then sighed, wide-eyed but happy. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me so soon—you'll likely regret it. I am going to work you so hard you'll wish you'd never been born," his new teacher informed him wryly.

Hoshi shook his head at her, knowing that she would only be angry again if he let her know that was something that went through his head every single day. "I wouldn't mind hard work… just to know and feel that I'm doing something would be such a blessing. Thank you… we've barely met and already I owe you so much."

Sora just held up her hands. "This is what I enjoy doing. And besides… after the hell you've survived this past year, I get the feeling you deserve a good turn or two."

---

Two years later

Years went by, and the faces surrounding Hoshi changed. Still, he remained in his corner of the orphanage, and cherished his solitude when he could get it.

As the months had passed, Sora's tutelage had done wonders for his battered body, and though few noticed outside his circle of friends, he now walked straight and tall with only the slightest hint of the limp which had made it nearly impossible for him to move without assistance. Untended by the loving eye of a parent, his soft black locks had grown slightly shaggy, and hung into his pale face in a secretive but appealing manner. His warm cerulean eyes weren't so distant these days, and more often than not, they were intent on one of the books his friends or teacher had lent him. He was tall and even lanky for his age, but the subtle charcoal blacks of his clothes softened the sharp edges of his elbows and knees. Even the twisted marks of his scars had been gentled by time, with their deep ridging evening out and becoming only brown and pink lines across his skin. During one of her visits, Kiiroi Madori had given him the black-and-white circle of ribbon around his throat, similar to the ones her own sons wore, a gesture of affection that had deeply touched the young boy.

The workers at the orphanage admired his gentle spirit, his maturity, but even as other children found homes or grew too old to be cared for, Hoshi remained.

And that wasn't the only thing that hadn't changed…

As he reached to turn the page of his latest book, another pair of hands reached down and tore it away before he could so much as utter a protest.

"Well, well, what's little high-and-mighty reading today?" It was one of the boys whose names Hoshi could never seem to remember, one of the ones with cruel and teasing voices. "It's an awfully big book for someone with such a little brain."

Hoshi sighed and rolled his eyes, then stood with a vexed expression as the boy fingered through the book. It would be useless to whine and demand that it be returned, so he would wait for this pitiful excuse for a Mystarian to get bored. He hoped that would happen soon; he'd been at an interesting point in the narrative and wanted to continue as soon as he could.

The boy wrinkled his nose. "And just what is your problem?" he demanded, tossing the book over to the side so that it landed pages-down, bending the precious leaves of paper.

"…You shouldn't treat books like that," Hoshi said in an even but still disapproving tone.

"What's the big deal?" the boy taunted. "It's just some old fuddy-duddy rambling on and on, after all. Only an idiot cripple like you who can't do anything else would be interested in something like that."

A deep scream of frustration and hatred echoed in Hoshi's heart, but outwardly, he did no more than narrow his eyes and cross his arms, beginning to tap his foot.

The teasing smirk dropped from the boy's face, and ugly, hateful scorn took its place. "You. What the hell d'you think you're playing at, with that holier-than-thou look on your face? You are nothing. If this were the old days, you would already have learned to keep yourself out of everyone else's sight, and you'd be spending every day of your miserable little life picking refuse off the streets. Everyone says so. You need to learn your place, and stop acting like you're above us, you little—"

Hoshi's eyes still weren't good enough to see the blow coming, but he felt it somehow, and his rigorously trained muscles reacted as automatically as Sora had been counting on if he ever found himself in one of these situations without help. His heart slamming into his throat, he edged back, his left hand shooting out to catch the boy's wrist, stopping his fist mid-strike.

The boy's eyes went wide, momentarily slack-jawed in disbelief. Then his cheeks flushed and he drove forward in a vicious kick.

Hoshi stumbled, but managed to get enough out of the way that the boy's attack only landed a glancing blow on his side, allowing him just enough leverage to grab hold of the boy's leg and shove him into the wall.

"Leave me alone," he panted, wild-eyed and shaking. "Just—leave me alone, and don't come near me anymore!"

Hoshi's attacker, clearly angry and disconcerted at having been thwarted so quickly, lashed out with such sudden violence that Hoshi couldn't pull back quickly enough. The backhand punch connected sharply with Hoshi's scarred right cheek, sending the black-haired boy reeling backwards with a pained cry.

But just as the boy took a menacing step forward to commence yet another painful beating, the sound of one of the caretakers' voices cut through the air, shrill with horror. "Kori-kun! How could you even think of doing something like this? Stop it right this instant!"

Even as the angry woman dashed forward to scold the boy—Kori—a pair of callused hands rested on Hoshi's shoulders, and he jolted with surprise.

"I do believe that you'll have the sense to stop harassing my student now that you know he's fully capable of defending himself," a wry, familiar voice remarked, even as Kori blanched.

Hoshi peeked up, blushing a little. "Sensei…?"

Sora just smiled down at him, and he felt his heart warm as she rubbed his shoulders in a comforting gesture.

The caretaker turned to face Hoshi and his teacher. "I'm so sorry," she said, her eyes wide and worried. "I swear to you that this is the first I've seen anyone trying to attack poor Hoshi. Why would anyone ever do such a thing? After all, he's only a…"

Irritation crossed Sora's features. "Please, do not refer to my student by those terms ever again. If you truly must refer to Hoshi's disabilities, call them what they are. He is a disabled child, not a vegetable, and for the past two years he has been working hard in order to overcome those disabilities. I may not have the consultation of a healer to back me up, but I strongly believe that if he continues his training, within four or five years, he will be every bit as 'normal' and 'functional' as you or I."

And, shockingly enough, the caretaker actually blushed. "Yes. I know. I'm… sorry, Hoshi. A lot of us… need to change the way we think about you. Now, if you'll excuse me, Sora-dono, Hoshi-kun… there are a few things that Kori-kun and I need to discuss."

She grabbed the pale-faced boy by the shoulder and hauled him off until the distant currents of Mist screened them from Hoshi's view.

As Sora scowled after them disapprovingly, Hoshi hesitantly reached for the book that had been the cause of all the contention in the first place, then made a face as he saw the deep creases through many of its pages. Straightening them out, he closed the book and tucked it under his arm. He'd have to get back to it later.

Sora looked down at him as he turned back to her, and smiled. "That was excellent," she told him, kneeling down so that they would be more or less on eye level. "It's the first time you ever got the chance to use your skills in your own defense, and you did much better than even I would have expected."

Hoshi blushed. "Sensei… I didn't really… I didn't even think about it, I just…"

She shook her head at him. "Self-deprecate all you want, but trust me that you did an excellent job of defending yourself for the first time. Now… there are two very important things that I need to speak to you about today."

"Okay… what is it?" Hoshi asked, his face still flaming from her praise.

"Firstly, I think you're at a point in your studies where if you want to, you can be moved from a strictly self-defense program into traditional swordsmanship if you so choose. You'll be considerably behind the students of your own age level, but so long as you don't mind starting out with the youngest class, I don't doubt that you'll be up to speed in no time at all."

Hoshi gaped at her. Swordsmanship. After all his dreams, all the wishes he'd buried… and finally, finally it was right before him. "If… if I really could…"

"I couldn't joke about that, not after seeing you watch the way your friends walk into and out of my class with that awful grief in your eyes," she said with a smile. "You start next week."

"Oh… oh…" Hoshi covered his mouth with both hands, grateful tears stinging his eyes. "Sensei… I…!"

"Save the idol worship for when I deserve it, please," Sora reminded him gently. "You got here largely on your own. But as for the second thing… it's become very, very clear to me that living here is not conducive to either your studies or your personal state of mind. And we both know that if Kumo were only a little healthier, Kiiroi Madori would gladly foster you, but now and probably for the next few years, it would be too much of a strain on their family.

"But there is somewhere else you can go, if you're willing, that is. You are everything that any teacher could ever dream of—honest, hard-working, loyal, and obedient, not to mention wise beyond your years. And knowing you personally, I can say that you are one of the best and brightest children I have ever met. Now, I don't have any children of my own, nor have I ever been life-bonded. So I can't be entirely counted on to not make a mess of this. But, if you're willing… I'd like to see if I would be permitted to adopt you."

Hoshi stared at her in disbelief, consumed by a funny feeling of disconnection with his body. Shock set in, swift and unforgiving, and his legs gave out, sending him collapsing into a sitting position. He tried three times to speak, but found that he couldn't.

He shook his head desperately, and as tears came into his eyes, he finally found his voice.

"Mama…"

And he threw his arms tightly around his teacher with the knowledge in his heart that this was the kind of day that dreams were made of.

---

"And rest," came the call from the end of the room. Gasping, Hoshi staggered back a pace, his bokken nearly slipping out of his hand as he struggled to keep the Mist currents from blocking out the view of his sparring partner. He loved sword practice, and hated drills. After forcing his body through slash after slash of similar strikes as they were called out, his hands were all but numb and his abused muscles were screaming for a breather. Every one of his scars felt like it was on fire, and after all those jarring slaps of wood on wood, the knob of marred flesh on his left hand where he was missing a finger was doubtlessly worst of all.

Even after all his practice under his teacher—mother—'s eye, Hoshi still had trouble sustaining exercise for as long as he needed to in drills. He always had to stop to breathe at least once, gasping and shaking, begging for a few seconds of mercy. Sora told him that in time his endurance would build up again, but Hoshi wasn't so sure.

At least practice was over for the moment, he thought to himself, and sank down into a sitting position like several of the other students as Sora headed to the second class she had in the dojo today—the eight- and nine-year-olds, who were already forming ranks to go through their own drills.

Despite the fact that he himself was nine, Hoshi had barely started his training last month, and so he was in the very bottom class with the six- and seven-year-olds. Only through time and practice would he be able to advance to his proper place; you went up to the next class when Sora decided you were ready and not until. She told him that he would probably be in the next group before his tenth birthday, mostly because he'd already taken self-defense and his bigger, older body was more adapted to adversity than the other kids' in his class.

Letting himself slide unresisting until he was almost prone on the wooden floor, Hoshi sighed and watched his adoptive mother stride through each row with her polished shinai in hand out of adoring and only partially clouded blue eyes. He still couldn't believe sometimes that he was actually living with her now, out of the orphanage, free of bullies and allowed to linger with Kiri and Arashi whenever they had their lessons here. (Sora was passing Arashi now; she merely smiled and nodded to the girl rather than correcting her grip or stance as she did with so many of the other kids. As for Kiri, he was currently in the class of ten- and eleven-year-olds, as he'd displayed an aptitude for the sword that went beyond the rest of his age level, and wouldn't be coming in until later today.)

Fighting with a weapon was a lot harder than self-defense, mainly because Hoshi couldn't just go (literally) blindly along by feel, instinct, and training. Sora knew that—but she wouldn't let him use that as an excuse. What she had told him the first time he'd protested was that his problem came from the fact that his ability to sense Mist didn't differ too much from other people's except that the "volume", so to speak, had been turned up to levels that were unbearably high. He needed to work to control himself and his senses so that it no longer overwhelmed him until they could find a way to turn that volume back down to more normal levels.

And then, she'd told him something astonishing.

"You're not the only one who sees or feels the Mist like you do, Hoshi," Sora had said frankly, her gaze piercing into him. "You'll see mages, healers, and summoners raise a hand into the air for a moment to 'test the wind' before they perform a major working—they're feeling for a Mist current, judging how its flow will affect anything they do so that they can adjust beforehand."

"Really?" He'd been shocked by this revelation.

"Would I lie to you?" She'd smiled at him. "We all know that the number and size of our horns also affects our ability to sense Mist. Well, sometimes, I see strange flashes of color and smoke out of the corner of my eye—something that I presume you see most of the time."

Hoshi had nodded, breathless with wonder.

"I learned to ignore it—and to see past it. And you will, too." She'd tousled his hair then. "All I can tell you, until that time… is to work at swordsmanship, and work at it hard. The rest will come to you in time, as you grow."

Hoshi sat and watched the other students work, and marveled at their skill as the drill progressed, speeding up and slowing down based on Sora's observation of how tired they were, how much energy they could still spare.

Finally, she called them to a halt.

"All right, that's enough—for all of you," she said with a glance towards Hoshi's class as well. "Dismissed. Go home; get a rest and a bath. I'll expect you here at the same time tomorrow."

There were groans, sighs, and cheers. Hoshi stood up, grimacing a little at the stiffness of his muscles, and slowly headed over towards Arashi.

Sora passed him on his way and reached out to touch his shoulder, one of those small, warm gestures that made his heart flutter with the knowledge that he finally had a home. He smiled at her, watched for a moment as she bent to speak with a few of her youngest charges, and headed on as the rest of the students trailed out.

As usual, Arashi was hanging back… but as he came nearer, Hoshi frowned. This was odd. A few of the other students were standing there too—a couple of bigger, older boys that he didn't recognize. They were talking. And… Hoshi's frown deepened a little as he felt the agitation in the air.

"You shut up," Arashi snarled.

"Look, all we're saying is, it's starting to get a little old, this uppity act of yours," one of the boys said with false patience. "Stop shoving your sword around so much and let some of us win every now and again. That's all it's going to take for these little talks to end."

Arashi snorted derisively. "Yeah, well, unfortunately for you, maybe I just don't feel like losing on purpose just to salvage your manhood. It really burns you to lose to a girl every day, doesn't it?"

The boys growled. Arashi paid no heed.

"Well, maybe if you spent a little more time really working rather than bragging about who's the biggest, you'd do better in class. Now let me through. I'm bored with you."

One of the boys stepped in, shoved at her shoulder. "Prissy little princesses who spend all their time with cripples, freaks, and highborns should watch what they say."

"Maybe she just works so hard because she knows she's not near as perfect as she seems," taunted another. "But who wouldn't want to forget their precious mommy's drooling in the nuthouse?"

By this time, Hoshi was close enough to see Arashi instantly go stiff. "You shut up about my mother!" she snapped, a desperate edge already in her voice.

"I hear that half the time, she doesn't even know your name," the same boy said with a sneer.

"Look at her now!" crowed the first. "Not so strong anymore, is she?"

"Shut up," Hoshi yelled, unable to keep silent. "You just shut up right now!"

The three boys whirled, surprise and then amusement crossing their faces.

"Oh, look, it's her little knight come to rescue her," jeered one.

"Just shut your mouth," he ordered, suddenly aware that he was holding his bokken out before him and tight fury had tensed him into a ready position. "No one has the right to talk about someone else's parents like that!"

"Maybe you're still too bitter that yours ran off on you to say anything else."

Something inside Hoshi's chest snapped, and the curtains of Mist in his eyes swirled red.

Without another word, he charged in swinging, catching all the boys off-guard as he swept in with furious blows to each of them before they could get their own practice swords up. Before a single one of them could defend himself, Hoshi had swung true with hits to their knees and bellies and arms, aiming for muscles that he knew already hurt and would keep them from fighting back.

One of the bullies growled, clutching new bruises. "You—we aren't gonna forget this!"

"I should think not," came Sora's low and unamused growl from behind all of them. As all four of the combatants yelped, she pointed to each of the bullies in turn. "You three and I are going to have a little discussion about propriety. And, Hoshi…"

He hung his head and bit his lip, ready for her disapproval.

"Next time I would look for an adult or an older student to settle things, but—good aim." And Sora was sweeping off again with the offenders in tow.

Once they were gone, Hoshi turned to Arashi. "Are you—alright?"

She just looked at him, a strange expression on her face. "I didn't ask you to do that."

Hoshi frowned. "I… couldn't just let them say things like that about you. About anyone."

Arashi crossed her arms. "You want to know if it's true, don't you?"

"No." Hoshi shook his head adamantly. "No—it's absolutely none of my business. And it doesn't matter, anyway."

"Well, it is true," she told him almost defiantly. "When I was still little, she got sick, and the healers say that the fever she had started destroying her brain. There was nothing anyone could do. So now—she lives there. In an asylum. And she doesn't remember anything, at all."

"Arashi…"

"You stop it," she snapped, stamping her foot. "Don't you look at me like that! Don't you feel sorry for me!"

"Arashi. I'm not… pitying you," Hoshi said, and it wasn't a lie. She'd had enough of that from everyone else. "But are you…"

"I am not crying," she said bitterly, with tears in her eyes. "I am not!"

Hoshi stood silently and watched her, searching for the words to say as she glared at him defiantly, shaking with badly suppressed sobs, ready to tear him to pieces if he so much as said one wrong word.

So Hoshi didn't say anything.

He just stepped forward, reached out, and silently took her hand.

Arashi stared at him for a moment, looking a little amazed, before her fingers tightened in his and she looked pointedly away, still shaking bitterly.

But she didn't let go.

---

Four years later

Kiiroi Madori and Aoi Sora reclined along the slope of one of their city's unused flights of stairs and watched their sons play-fighting on the cloudscape below.

"To look at them now, you would never have thought that either of them had suffered like they did," Madori commented with a smile.

Sora nodded agreement. Kiri's abuse by his first teacher was all but forgotten, and Hoshi had worked so hard since he'd begun swordsmanship training that he could almost be mistaken for any normal thirteen-year-old boy. However, since she'd watched him all that time, she knew—there was a certain slow caution to his movements, and the way that he'd still squint when he watched people—that betrayed the fact that his synesthesia still bothered him somewhat. "I haven't seen Kumo around lately."

Madori grimaced. "It's his scarlet fever," she explained with a sigh. "He's had another relapse. We're still afraid it might be serious, and he's miserable."

Sora made a face. "Understandably so. And it looked like he was just about out of the woods, too… it's a shame. At least he hasn't been getting sick as often as he used to."

"But he still needs rest and care," Madori said stubbornly. "His health will always be fragile. He'll always need to be sheltered."

"It's too bad. He always seems at his happiest when he can run around with Kiri."

"Too true," Madori admitted. "Kumo always has idolized his brother. I'm actually starting to wonder if Kiri is getting to be a bad influence on him. When he announced that he wanted to start learning the sword, I didn't even know what to think. The idea is unbelievable—his health is still far too unstable for something like that. And besides—I'm sure Kumo could be put to some safer, more constructive trade."

Sora smiled at her old friend. "Unfortunately for all your best wishes as a mother, I think Kumo's already made up his mind. He's a good boy, but he can be stubborn if he wants to be." She stretched a little, then resettled into a position where the stairs wouldn't dig into her back. "What does Kageshi think?"

"Kageshi," Madori said with a shake of her head, "doesn't seem to have any opinion. He's been keeping out of it as best as he can, wisely, I might add."

Sora laughed. "Sounds like he just doesn't want to fly in your face about it. But a little physical activity might just do Kumo good—make him a little stronger, a little healthier."

"Or wear him out faster, make him sicker."

"I know you aren't going to like hearing this—but there is a reason he's been so much healthier," Sora said pointedly. "Your boys didn't like hearing you say 'no'. Kiri has been teaching Kumo the basics of swordsmanship, and letting him practice with his own bokken; I've seen him at it."

Madori stared, then made to stand, her mouth in a tight, grim line.

Sora gripped the other woman's shoulder and made her sit back down. "Let me tell you what else I saw, in addition to sweet and sensible instruction on Kiri's part and a little healthy exercise on Kumo's. I was able to watch the two of them for quite a while, and neither of them noticed me, so I think I should be able to judge—for a boy who's never handled a sword before, Kumo is very good. He's a fast learner, and he has natural talent. This is good for him, and he's not hurting himself. I'd suggest that you let me start with him as soon as possible."

Madori shook her head in blunt denial. "He's too young."

"He's ten years old," Sora reminded her patiently. "Kiri wasn't quite seven."

Madori just sighed and spread her hands defeatedly. "All right, all right—I'll talk to Kohaku about it." She leaned back and closed her eyes. "He has a new apprentice, by the way—a little girl from the somewhat estranged branch of his family that rather hates me and mine. Her name's Ame; she's cute and tongue-tied and often makes pitiful eyes at Kiri when his back is turned."

"Really?" Sora shook her head, amused. "And how much of this has Kiri noticed?"

"None, thankfully. But I believe that she and Kumo are on the way to becoming friends. She's been helping Kohaku treat him lately." Madori smiled a little. "I'm glad to see Kumo finally making a friend his own age. Besides, Ame is a very well-behaved young girl, so maybe she can counter Kiri's influence a little."

"I most certainly do not predict that happening anytime in the foreseeable future," Sora replied. "It's like saying the sky's going to fall. Kumo's dearest wish is still to be just like his brother."

Madori rolled her eyes. "I get it, I get it already. So you can stop it with the subliminal hints." As Sora laughed up her sleeve, the younger woman just shook her head. "And Hoshi—how has he been doing lately?"

"Much better, now that he's trained his senses to the point where he can see without straining so hard it gives him a headache. He still gets disoriented sometimes, but he's not completely overwhelmed by the information that broken horn receives. Actually, he's begun to develop enough control that he can actually feel the Mist in the wind if he tries—only he and Kiri can do that out of all my students around their age. Hoshi tells me that he wants to try summoning as soon as he moves up to the next class level."

"Oh, so Kiri is a bad influence to more than just my other kid?" Madori asked wryly. "What about the others? Arashi?"

"Her horns have almost stopped growing," Sora replied. "She's already told me that she has no intentions of going down that road, since stunted horns run in both sides of her family. She knows that she's no good at magic of any kind, and she's fine with that."

"I hear Hoshi's actually gone with her to see her mother lately," Madori said pointedly.

Sora didn't reply, electing rather to stand up and stretch.

"I smell romance." Smiling, Madori stretched out her toes. "Ah, puppy love."

Sora just snorted. "We'll give it a few years."

"Now who's being the overprotective parent?" Madori teased.

"I don't know anything about it," Sora told her mildly. "Besides—I'm his mother, so I'm the last person he'd come to about girls."

Both of them laughed, then turned back to their boys.

"They sure are growing up fast," Madori said wistfully.

"They certainly are."

---

Three years later

"Hoshiiiiiii!!"

Hoshi paused in the slow and graceful swing of his sword and turned, automatically focusing to adjust his Mist-sense. Kumo and Ame were dashing down the cloudscape towards him.

As the two of them drew closer and slowed, Hoshi smiled at them and lowered his sword to the side. "Hello. How have you two been?"

Ame giggled. "Just wondering where you've been! It's harder to practice for the ceremonial dance with only two people, after all…"

But before Hoshi could answer, Kumo gasped, his face lighting up, and pointed. "Oh my—Hoshi, is that—?!"

His smile widening, Hoshi brought the brightly gleaming Maken up before him. Their reaction had been perfect—he could never have hoped for better. "You mean… this?"

"But this is huge!" Ame squealed, her eyes wide. "You could've told us you were going to be getting yours!! What was it like? What did you do? You were gone so long!"

Hoshi looked fondly down at his new blade. At times, it didn't even feel real to him that he finally had this badge of skill, this crucial marker on the path to wholeness. The hilt and tooling of the sword were deep gray, with the actual blade the deepest black Hoshi had ever seen. The Mist jewel embedded at the blade's base was a deep and lovely blue-violet. In Hoshi's eyes, it was the most beautiful sword ever forged.

"Well, the first day or so was mostly meditation and such, preparation… lessons on what it means to be a swordsman," he explained. "Then, we went down to the forge, and Sensei helped forge a mind-link between me and the smith."

"That was why you weren't eating much before you left, isn't it?" Kumo asked, blinking. "Those… are supposed to hurt a lot if you haven't prepared right…"

"It still felt a little weird, but you get used to it," Hoshi said with a shrug. "Anyway, while that was happening, she was actually forging the blade. Once that was done—it must've taken a while, 'cause it was already sunset when I started noticing things again—then, Sensei told me to breathe Mist, but that I had to reach deep for it, as deep as I could. I can't—explain it. You'll know what it's like when it's your turn, but it was the best feeling in the world…"

A Maken was part of its wielder's soul, and so to forge one, the wielder-to-be had to offer up part of his or her soul to be shared in its creation. It was an intense, incredibly euphoric feeling, and to prepare Hoshi for it, the swordsmith had likened it to the spiritual aspect of sexual intercourse.

To Hoshi's very, very limited experience, it was actually a pretty accurate assessment. Still, he thought he'd better not share the analogy with Kumo and Ame.

If it ever got back to Madori, she'd skin him.

Some risks, it was better not to take.

"That's so awesome," Kumo sighed, his eyes glittering as he stared at Hoshi's Maken with reverence.

"What's so awesome?" asked a familiar, cheeky voice from behind them.

"Niisama!" Kumo looked past Hoshi and started his usual headlong dash at his brother, then stopped short, gaping. "No way! You never told us you were getting yours too!"

Hoshi looked past the fiercely blushing Ame and the ecstatic Kumo to see that Kiri was indeed beaming as he held out his deep crimson Maken.

"I am sorry, but we were under strict orders by Sensei not to brag," Kiri told the kids with a laugh. "After all, getting our swords at our age is kind of a big deal."

"Especially because we're graduating early as it is," Hoshi added, nodding, his expression growing a bit more serious. "Even though the worst of the bullies have gotten better and more accepting with time, there are still those who aren't happy that we're this far ahead of schedule."

"It's as bad for Arashi as it is for us," Kiri admitted. "'Cause it's you guys and it's probably pretty obvious by now, I figure it's okay to admit that she's in the middle of getting her Maken done, too. Since she's graduating from the straight-swordsmanship class when we are, too."

Hoshi did worry a bit about that. Even though swordsmen and –women who didn't choose to compliment their studies with summoning or magic or some other art tended to graduate a year or so ahead of those who did, making her a graduate at about the same interval as Kiri and Hoshi, she was still only fifteen, and there were plenty who thought that was far too young for anyone, no matter how skilled, to be declared worthy.

He kept silent about it, though—Arashi would only be annoyed with him if he voiced his concerns. Besides, she was strong; he didn't doubt that she could take care of herself, and that if she couldn't, she would turn to his mother for help.

"Still, it's so cool," Kumo sighed, staring at Kiri's sword with pure swordsman's lust on his face. Watching him finger the smooth blade of his shinai with impatient longing, Hoshi covered a smile. He hadn't been much different when he was that age.

At least, not his attitude. Back then, he'd still had trouble with his senses, and now his control was good enough that so long as he remembered to adjust, his sight was almost normal again. He'd gotten taller, too, and he now sported the same light layer of muscle as Kiri; his lighter scars had continued to fade so much that now they only seemed as though they could be birthmarks, instead of the disfiguring wounds they'd once been. He'd also started to grow his hair out a bit—although it didn't rival the tumble of scarlet over Kiri's shoulders that now reached past his waist, he wore it in a rattail these days. His mother often told him with a smile that he looked very adult now.

He still had years to go, of course, but it always felt good to have her praise.

"Well, now that you two are finally back, can we at least get some practice in?" Ame asked them, tearing her gaze away from Kiri to look at everyone. "This is a big deal, you know, and it's a little bit… nerve-wracking…"

Kiri shrugged and sat down. "If you say so, kiddo. Still, this whole ceremony kind of takes it out of you, and Arashi's probably going to kill us if we try working on the dance when she's not here, so why don't you work on your spells for a while? We'll give you feedback."

Ame sighed and turned to Kumo, who looked at her apologetically, then took out her practice wand. Much in the way that Hoshi and the others had graduated from the use of bokken to shinai, then had their personal swords forged to mark the completion of their training, as a healer who was now training to become a Guardian, Ame would use her wand until her staff was forged. She'd had this one since she'd begun her training, and it was a short length of crystal topped with the design of a clover leaf; the whole thing was a shade of blue-green and much as a Maken did, it served as a conduit to help focus the user's will upon his or her Mist.

Letting out a slow breath, Ame traced her wand in a lazy circle, then closed her eyes and spoke. "Ardescat."

Hoshi allowed his control to slip a bit, then watched Ame's Mist and the dissipated Mist already in the air gather over the tip of her wand, then condense and burst into a bright pillar of soft orange flame.

"Not bad," Kiri remarked with a grin. "Now, I remember how back in the day you couldn't even get an easy little spell like that to work—"

"Quiet, Niisama," Kumo admonished with a laugh as Ame huffed at the two of them with an embarrassed expression. "As if it was any different for you or me!"

As Kiri laughed the two of them off, Hoshi watched them all and smiled. Even as time sped past them, it seemed that some things would always remain the same.

---

"How does it fit?"

Hoshi looked into the long, waved panel of glass at himself for a long moment. One extra stripe at the sleeves of his swordsman's blacks was not really that much of a difference, so why did it feel as though it had added an extra three inches or so to his height?

The fabric of these new clothes was a bit lighter, in addition to the double stripe at his wrists, and it hugged the contours of his body, defining the light muscle over his body far better than his novice's uniform had done. And the cape fixed along the back was longer and much more voluminous—he was sure he could wrap himself in it and still have half of it left to trail behind him. Still, these were small changes, only really noticeable to someone who knew well the difference between the attire of a swordsmanship student and graduate.

Graduate. The word was strange as he murmured it beneath his breath, as ticklish and foreign as the word "mother" had been when he'd first started staying with Sora. Come tomorrow, he would be authorized to carry his Maken and a brace of Mist bottles belted at his waist at all times, and when he left the city, he would be required to make use of the heavy steel mask that would cover the lower half of his face and prevent him from breathing Mist by accident. After tonight, his Mist would grow in power unchecked, and he would be able to fight if he ever had to.

In essence, the ceremony only a few hours from now would make him an adult.

"Hoshi?"

"It—fits fine," he replied, remembering the question very suddenly.

"Then come out and let your poor mother see—I'm dying of curiosity," Sora admonished from outside the dressing room, her voice teasing.

Obediently, Hoshi pulled the curtain back and stepped out. Sora spent a long moment looking at him, then smiled and took his face in her hands.

He wondered what she was thinking as he noticed that her eyes were very bright, and there were traces of what might've been tears in a lesser woman on her face. He didn't deserve her tears, her pride—in the eyes of their people's unspoken laws, he was still a child, and his every day was still a desperate battle with his synesthesia…

Then, Sora spoke.

"You've come so far, Hoshi."

And because she understood—because she was also right—Hoshi smiled back at her.

"…Yes."

---

The ceremony passed in a dizzy brilliance of light and sound and sensation.

The graduates' names had been read first, Hoshi recalled. He'd sat between Kiri and Arashi, and they'd tightly held each other's hands with shining eyes and screamed and applauded with everyone else as each person got up and walked down to the master to be blessed. There was only one other sixteen-year-old besides him and Kiri, and no fifteen-year-olds other than Arashi—most of those gathered were seventeen or eighteen. But none of the graduates seemed to care about their ages. They had all made it through vicious, rigorous training that they'd all been in for as long as a decade or more. In the eyes of every graduate, every other graduate was more than worthy of the title.

Then there had been the dance, when graduates and students alike who'd been selected by the masters ringed the fountain in a complicated pattern of footwork and gestures and Mist. Hoshi had seen Ame on the other side of their ring, seen the nervousness go out of her eyes, to be replaced with rapture as she moved. He'd seen Kumo slip in next to Kiri, seen them dancing close, felt the strength of their bond in the air between them. He'd seen Arashi right beside him, seen the way she laughed and smiled, her face bright with excitement.

After that there'd been food, and then fireworks, a wonder of wonders prepared in secret by the teachers and mages. Hoshi had been amazed by the bright trails of Mist that lingered bright and excited in the air after the lights died, and had proceeded to make himself almost sick with dizziness by sliding in and out of control of his synesthesia so he could watch both—at least, until his friends had gone from hysterical at his antics to worried and had gone to fetch Sora, who'd laughed at him, hit him over the head, and told him to stop it or she'd make him sit in seiza position through their daily meditation tomorrow. Hoshi had stopped then, but only barely.

And then, between the cotton candy and the laughing and the joy and the kinship between him and his friends that buoyed him high above all the pain he'd ever experienced, Hoshi had found himself a short distance away from the others, hand in hand with Arashi. And before he'd been able to stop himself, he'd leaned over and briefly, shyly kissed her.

And she'd looked at him in utter surprise, but before his shame had grown too deep and caused him to run, she'd grabbed both his wrists and kissed him back.

As he lay on his futon and stared sleepily up at the ceiling, Hoshi touched his lips wonderingly. Arashi's had been sweet with the cotton candy they'd both been eating, and warm in a way that had made his belly quiver with the buried beginnings of desire.

He closed his eyes and smiled into the invisible curtains of Mist that surrounded him even now. Tonight, he thought, had even topped his adoption by Sora as the best moment of his life.

---

Two years later

"Hoshi, may I talk to you for a moment before you head out to the festival?"

Blinking, Hoshi turned back towards his mother. Sora was folding up a few of the mats she'd used in training the children, looking at him with her usual calm smile.

"Yes—what is it?" He went back to her and helped her finish up the last one. "I've a little bit more time before I join the others to celebrate that you announced Kumo will be graduating early."

"Hoshi… what would you think if I told you that I've been considering taking you as an assistant master here at the school?"

Whatever Hoshi had been expecting, this most definitely hadn't been it. He stared at his mother, his jaw dropping.

"Dear, don't stare so. I've been thinking of this for quite a long time now," she went on nonchalantly, giving the mat a few extra pats to fluff the thin straw into better places. "The war is distant from here so far, but swordsmen from this place will likely be drawn into it soon. It may even spread here. If that's true, then I need to devote more of my time than ever to the children who will be fighting it in a few years' time. I can't really do that now, Hoshi. I'm getting old."

"You're barely fifty-five," Hoshi retorted, alarmed. "That's not old."

"Maybe not compared to how long I'll live, but it means I'm getting a lot of inconvenient aches and pains that are hard to deal with if I'm to be teaching rough-and-tumble children. If you take over the lowest two classes for me, it'll be a load off my mind."

Hoshi shook his head frantically. "But I'm only eighteen, and I'm not qualified, and—"

Sora gave him that mild look again, and he shut up. "You have better control over your Mist senses than me. Out of all your peers, only Kiri and Kumo are better swordsmen than you. You are endlessly patient, and you're already famous as The Little Boy Who Could (And Did). There's no one better to put the love of the sword in young hearts than you."

---

"And she just… kept at it until you gave in?" Arashi asked, clearly amused.

"Yes," Hoshi replied, not sure whether to be proud or worried or outright humiliated that his mother could still manipulate him so easily. "I don't know what I'm doing, though, so I'm bound to make plenty of mistakes. Who knows if I'll ever manage anything like what she's done for me and so many others."

"You'll do fine," Arashi assured him, waving a hand absently. "Heh. I always figured you'd end up being something like a teacher."

It was a festival night in their city, and the entire population had turned out in uniforms and fine traditional wear, sharing food and conversation beneath the stars. Hoshi and Arashi were making their way around nearby people, weaving for the outskirts of town and the ruins of the oldest buildings, where they could talk without interruptions upon their privacy.

"So what did you want to talk to me about, anyway?" Arashi asked once they'd cleared most of the crowds, turning to Hoshi with a curious smile.

"Well, I…" Hoshi shook his head, suddenly unsure of what to say—all his carefully planned words had deserted him. "Part of it is… I just wanted to thank you, for being such a good friend to me, for being someone who cared about me so much. I—never believed I could come this far. My synesthesia is as good as gone unless I want to feel it, and everyone around me now thinks of me as if I'm as normal as the next person. That's mostly because of you—because I wanted to be strong like you, and to be strong for you when you couldn't be strong for yourself." Hoshi looked at the ground, feeling a steady blush rising to his face. "Arashi, I—"

Before he could finish his sentence, Arashi silenced him, putting her fingers over his lips. As he stared at her, crimson and confused, she shook her head and jerked her shoulder over at the ruins ahead. There was a thin pink flush on her cheeks as she leaned in and hissed, "We have company."

For a moment, Hoshi wondered what she meant. Then he saw it.

They hadn't been the only couple who'd decided to escape the crowds for a little alone time this evening, apparently. There, sheltered by the angle of a mostly-collapsed building just up ahead, were the entwined figures of a pair of young lovers, fully celebrating their bond.

Hoshi and Arashi just stood there and stared. Hoshi knew it was wrong, it was the worst way of spying on someone, that—that they were doing—was private and intimate, but he couldn't leave or even turn away. As an afterthought, he cut some of his control over his synesthesia, thinking to screen the pair in the Mist surrounding them all, but that actually made it worse—the aura of Mist around both of them haloed and accented their bodies, and their personal Mist had synchronized perfectly, giving off a tone in fifths to Hoshi's Mist-sensitive ears.

In fact, as he hastily restored his normal sight, Hoshi realized to his dismay that he recognized the dominant aura.

"I think that's Kiri," he whispered to Arashi, his already vivid blush deepening.

Still, they couldn't tear their eyes away, couldn't leave. The movement of Kiri's body was strangely hypnotic, and it pulled them in.

So Hoshi was watching closely when Kiri arched back, his lover clinging close to him, nails raking down his naked back. Not only that, but he was intent enough on the scene before him (and his guilt at being so intent) that he clearly heard the almost-pained cry that followed: "Ugh… unnnh… N-Niisama…"

Hoshi looked quickly to Arashi, who was looking back at him with the same dumbfounded expression he himself wore. "He—he's with—?!"

Up ahead of them, there was a sudden squeal as Kumo saw them standing there, then an embarrassed and panicked "Hey!" from Kiri. Even though it was far too late to hide what they were doing (and that they were doing it with each other), Kiri had lurched over and was staring at them warily, putting himself squarely between their stares and Kumo, as if to shield his brother (lover)'s naked and incriminatingly flushed body from the eyes of the world.

"W-we're sorry," Hoshi managed.

"We're, uh—we're leaving," Arashi added quickly. "And, uh—we're not telling anybody."

"You two—?!" Kiri yelped, but Hoshi and Arashi were already busy finding a less occupied place in which they could finish talking.

Or… well, not finish talking. Not after having seen Kiri doing that, with Kumo, no less. All Hoshi and Arashi were really able to do then was stare at each other, shocked and guilty-faced.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait!!" Both of them jolted to see that Kiri, half-dressed and panting, his face as scarlet as his hair, had chased after them, with Kumo on his heels, holding the front of his kimono closed with shaking hands.

Hoshi and Arashi exchanged panicked glances. Now what?

"How—how much of that did you see?" Kiri demanded in a low hiss.

"More than enough," Arashi replied in a wry tone.

"We're—sorry," Hoshi said disjointedly. "We didn't mean—"

"We didn't know—" Arashi added, regarding Kiri with an uncertain stare.

"Of course you didn't know. We—kind of wanted to keep it quiet for a while longer that we're engaged, alright?"

Hoshi felt some of the knots in his belly loosen. "Then, your parents—"

"They know," Kiri said dryly, shaking his head. "Obviously we had to get their permission if we want to be life-bonded at all. We've been—hiding this from all of you for a while."

A lot of Kiri and Kumo's closeness over the past few years was now starting to make all too much sense to Hoshi. He could tell by the look on Arashi's face that the same thought had crossed her mind.

"Please—don't tell anyone," Kumo said softly, desperately. "If this got out too early, things could…" He looked down, apparently unwilling to meet anyone else's eyes. Kiri put his arms around his brother's shoulders, watching his friends with a defeated, hopeless expression.

Something about the two of them standing there waiting for the blow to fall hurt something in Hoshi's chest. When he'd been young, they'd defended him so fiercely. Should he not now do the same for them, to help repay their kindness as much as he could?

"It's—not up to us to pass judgment on the way you feel," Hoshi said slowly, looking back to Arashi again. Would she agree with him, or…?

"He's right. We know how ugly things could get for you two if the wrong people saw or heard something about this. Hoshi and I won't tell anyone. You've just—got to be a little more careful with, um. Where you decide to, uh…" She trailed off, running a hand through her hair in an impatient gesture.

"Yeah." Kiri averted his gaze, still clearly mortified at what they'd seen.

"Thank you," Kumo whispered from around Kiri's shoulder, the green of his eyes soft with unshed tears.

"You two had better get back and get dressed," Arashi told them. "If anyone asks after you, we'll make something up, but try to come back where people are soon. I guarantee you we're not the only ones who're gonna want a break from all the noise back there."

"We owe you big time for this," Kiri said with a grateful sigh.

"You owe us nothing," Hoshi told his friend gently, over his initial shock by now. "After everything you've done for us… how could we not support you…? It would be an insult to your kindness."

"All the same—thank you." Kiri just shook his head. "Kumo and I… this means a lot to us."

---

Hoshi never did get around to asking Arashi that night, but he didn't want to lose out to his own shyness. This was important. He had to have her answer, even if it was a bad one.

The problem was, he didn't seem to be able to get her alone anywhere lately. Preparations for Kumo's private graduation celebration seemed to be endless, and between work and rest, every time Hoshi got up the courage to ask, someone else would butt in or Arashi would wander off.

Through all this, Hoshi began to help Sora with the lowest swordsmanship class. Just as she'd promised, his students gave him the same wide-eyed adoration they gave her—except that they seemed to find him a little easier to talk to… after all, he'd been where they were once, and at a distinct disadvantage, too. He found that he actually liked teaching—the trust and obedience and adoration of the children was a precious, if bewildering, thing.

He often caught Sora staring off into the distance with a cold, sad look on her lightly lined face. Although he was almost as afraid to ask her about it as he was to pursue Arashi, he had to know.

"News from the other cities is going from bad to worse," was what she told him. "Many of our warriors and mages have been injured, some fatally. At this going rate, the conflict will spread here soon. This could turn into a bloodbath the likes of which we haven't seen since the Last Uprising."

"Is it really that bad?" Hoshi asked, deep fear in his heart. He didn't want to believe, and yet he knew his mother wouldn't lie.

"Our enemies aren't monsters this time, but humans like and unlike us," Sora said, her voice cold. "They are summoners, as well, and they are powerful. Their assaults come from beyond the skies, and I hear that our warriors who've gone beyond the Stellar Arch into the battlefields of the stars have met their match in the long-range weapons they carry, these 'guns'. Sooner or later, I'll have to go to aid them, if this place doesn't come under attack. Your generation will follow within a few weeks or months. This is very bad, Hoshi. Mystaria is too used to peace. It's possible that we may not survive this war."

"…………" Hoshi didn't know what to say or think. He'd heard whispers of battle, and yet… here, in this charmed place untouched by bloodshed for so long, it didn't seem real.

Sora put her hands on her adopted son's shoulders. "Hoshi, please. If you're going to tell her at all, tell her now. You can no longer afford to wait. The future of this world is no longer certain. If you have any chance at happiness, you must seize it now, before it's too late."

"H-how did you…?" Hoshi managed, going pale.

Sora just smiled at him. "I'm your mother, Hoshi. It's my job to know these things. If that girl loves you at all, she'll listen to what it is you have to say."

---

Hoshi lay back on the clouds, closed his eyes, and very purposely snapped every mental tie that held his synesthesia under his control.

He paid close attention to the light textured feel of the wind on his still-scarred skin, listening to the faint chime as it moved, echoes of the tone of each soul who'd ever let loose their Mist here. Out on the cloudscape, the delicate sounds weren't nearly as overwhelming as they were in the city. People's Mist tones rang loud and clear now that he'd learned enough to decipher sound and touch from the invisible wall of sensation that had always surrounded him as a child, and between the residual traces of Mist that clung to everything in the city and the fierce chords of the seals protecting the buildings, the noise could be deafening if he let it all in.

When Hoshi opened his eyes, bright curtains of color dimmed the sky above him. Every color, a part of someone living or dead, he mused as he watched them dance in the wind. Each one, part of a separate soul. So very many lives…

His life had begun here—or somewhere around here; Hoshi wasn't certain if he had the exact spot. Some twelve years ago, he'd come out here with a group of friends to play, and every one of them had died. Because of the massive physical and mental trauma, part of him had, as well—his memories of his own past. His parents had never claimed him. He'd never known how to identify them, and so he'd never been able to find them. He should have died there; he knew it very well.

And yet, Madori had been there, and she'd taken him to Kohaku. And she'd introduced him to her family—grave and softspoken yet infinitely kind Kageshi; brash and charismatic Kiri; sweet, innocent Kumo. He'd survived long enough through their acceptance and love to meet Arashi and Ame. Sora had taken him as her own son. He'd been granted another life… in a sense, he'd been reborn.

He could wonder, as he often had, why it had only been him who'd survived the wyvern's attack. Surely the other children, his faceless playmates, had deserved life as much or more than he. Instead, however, he thought about the lives that had been lost here, and the lives he'd touched throughout his years. Each one of them separate, each one of them infinitely precious, because they had all been born into this world, with the same tie to the Way.

If Hoshi strained his senses, he could feel his world's vague unease and know that something was deeply wrong at an elemental level here. Sora had been right, as usual—Mystaria was in grave danger.

When the time came, Hoshi would raise his sword—the sword he'd gained because of the love and support of his friends and family—and do battle. He would fight to save this precious, precious world.

Until then, though…

Hoshi sighed and breathed a steady stream of his own Mist, feeling the fine mesh of control knitting, almost hearing the ties snapping and fusing back into place. Assured that his senses were back to normal, he opened his eyes again and stood.

He had work to do.

---

"Arashi. Could I talk to you alone for a moment?"

The two of them headed into one of the city's few gardens. It was twilight, and the children who usually occupied this place had already gone home. It was filled with dear memories—he'd sparred with her here, and with Kiri too, trying to get in extra practice so that he would be able to move up to his own age group in training. He'd watched Ame work on her spells here, had attended Sora's small summoning classes here, had meditated here and dreamed here.

Those rocks, those ruins—he and Kumo and Ame had played hide-and-seek there once. That bush still had a small place where branches wouldn't grow after Arashi had accidentally hit it in training. There was the tree that Kumo had tried to climb on a dare from another boy who'd only been there that day—he'd fallen, hadn't caught himself in the air, and had sprained his wrist and broken his nose in the landing. It was still slightly crooked at the tip, if you looked closely.

It had to be this place, Hoshi knew. It had to be this place, where there were already so many important memories. For good or ill, this would be the last one.

He faced her and held her hands in both of his, then took a moment to still the fearful beat of his heart before he spoke.

"Arashi… I tried to tell you this before, but we were… interrupted." He smiled a little; she shook her head at him, but smiled back. "There are no words that can describe just how much you mean to me. Since we were children, you've been so much a part of who I am that I don't think I could live the rest of my life without you. It's that simple. I wouldn't be the person I am today unless I'd met you at the orphanage back then.

"What Kiri and Kumo have… that's something that I think we all want. Someone who loves them, accepts them, eternally and without question. Even though they have to hide their relationship for now, they're… otherwise living every couple's dream. There's a—a depth there, something that goes back from the moment Kumo was born. They were meant for each other, there's no two ways about it.

"I don't know if that's what you and I have. But… I do know that there's no one in this world I care about more.

"My mother told me that the war is getting worse, and that all of Mystaria may be endangered by it. I believe her. I can feel it in the Mist… we're facing an unprecedented threat. So—if anything's going to happen, it has to happen now, while there's still time.

"Arashi, I—I love you. No matter how much time we have left, I… want to spend that time at your side." Staring deep into her mottled hazel eyes, Hoshi knelt down, still covering her hands with his—he leaned in to lightly kiss the soft edge of a knuckle in the gap left exposed by his missing ring finger. "Will you—consent to form a life-bond with me, and share your life with mine?"

Arashi removed one of her hands from his and pushed her bangs back from her face in an embarrassed gesture. "…Hoshi, just stand up. It feels weird talking to you way down there."

He did, fingering a stray tuft of hair and looking away from her, suddenly feeling foolish. It—was somewhat clichéd, he supposed. It had felt a bit… dramatic. That was probably why he'd done it.

Arashi turned away from him, took a few steps forward, and laced her fingers together behind her back. "Hoshi, do you remember that time back when we were kids when you learned why I'd been in the orphanage?"

"Yes." It was hard to forget one of the few times he'd seen her cry.

"I was so mad, so humiliated at having my nose rubbed in something I'd had no control over. Ever since my mother got sick, it'd always been all, 'Oh, poor Arashi, just a baby and look at her, poor motherless thing'. I hated it. I was sure you were going to react the same way, and I'd worked up a nice mad by then so if you'd said even one wrong thing, I'd've torn you to pieces on the spot. But you didn't say anything, not even one word. You just took my hand and let me cry.

"I've known since then, Hoshi. Even if I didn't have the words for it when I was all of eight years old. It was going to be you or no one. So…" She turned back to face him, and she was smiling. "Yes. I'll weave my life with yours. I'll fight at your side; I'll share your bed." She laid a hand to her lower belly and closed her eyes, an utterly female warmth in her expression that made Hoshi's heart flutter and his insides twist. "I'll make children with you, as many as we desire. I will bind myself to you, and you alone. There's no one in this world I love more than you."

Hoshi wanted to speak, to tell her of his gratitude and relief and love, but found that he couldn't. Tears blurred at his vision, blinding him as effectively as the currents of Mist had done when he was a child.

Arashi closed the distance between them, took his scarred face in her hands, and brought their lips together.

That said it better than words alone.

---

He'd been a little nervous, a little uncertain. She'd told him it was alright, and they'd undressed and lain together in the starlight from the window.

He'd touched her gently, reverently—her body was all lean lines and delicate curves, toned with the strength of her training and beautiful. He'd traced her breasts, and she'd kissed his scars. When she'd laid her hands on him, he'd quivered fitfully, all nerves and desire.

They came together under the light, guiding touch of her hands.

She flinched, and he felt her body go taut as her breath caught in her chest. He could feel her bleeding even after she'd eased back and told him the pain had passed. They moved slowly, faster, and he came perilously close to losing himself in her warmth.

Suddenly his control over his senses, usually so well maintained, broke; her body beneath his was haloed and accented in Mist, and he could hear the tone of her soul harmonizing with his. For the first time in his life, his synesthesia's overwhelming him brought no fear or disorientation—only euphoria.

Her hands were fiercely clenched on the sheets, and she'd closed her eyes tightly. Her breathing roughened until she was panting.

Hoshi moaned her name, then sobbed it. Then screamed it.

And then everything was color, and light, and pleasure, and love.

---

They lay tangled together on the wreckage of their futon. Hoshi was exhausted, shaking slightly, and very sleepy. Arashi was still beneath him, but he didn't think he could move. She didn't seem to care. She was stroking his hair and the nape of his neck in an absent motion, whispering his name over and over.

Basking in the afterglow, Hoshi closed his eyes and sighed, soothed by her touch.

Never in his life had he felt more whole.

---

One year later: The last days of Mystaria

Hoshi closed his eyes and cast his senses out, probing the sky.

Nothing. Nothing but the endless scream of the stormy wind and the faint sound of the Mist that made up so much of their world, crying in despair and fear.

Sighing, Hoshi gave up, opening his eyes and turning to look at Arashi, who'd been watching him with a bleak expression.

They'd all known things would be bad, but never that they'd be this bad. One by one, many of the cities with fewer swordsmen had fallen. Their world was now eternally cloaked in gray, and the spirit of Mystaria had become damaged, weak.

The worst of it was that they had no way of knowing if they'd given as good as they'd got. Over and over, Mystaria was bombarded by powerful magical attacks and summons alike, attacks of strange kinds that they hadn't known how to counter at first. They fought on the battlefields of stars between their world and their enemies', and they sent attacks back and forth, but Mystaria's number of able warriors was dwindling and they'd been forced onto the defensive, and it was beginning to seem hopeless.

There were only about twenty of them left now, with half as many civilians still taking shelter here, since it was too dangerous to cross the cloudscape in search of somewhere safer. Kiri had taken charge of their small force. Kageshi and Madori and Sora had all left a few months ago in order to help one of the other cities, and not one of them had returned. People still spoke of the hope they would bring back, but Hoshi knew in his heart that they were dead.

Most of their people were asleep now, taking what rest they could while there was time. Aside from the howls of the storm outside, the only sound was the harsh breathing from the pallet across the room from Hoshi and Arashi where Ame lay. She was their last Guardian and one of their last healers, and though they'd all tried to shield her in battle, she'd taken a hit in the last assault on the city, and things were looking very bad for her. The bandages on her face and her healer's blues were caked in blood—she'd lost her left eye and nearly lost her left arm, and the blood loss was telling on her; she was burning with fever, and Hoshi feared it wouldn't be long before they lost her.

The only other member of their force who was still awake was Kiri, who stood at the window, looking out into the storm-torn cloudscape with his hands fisted on the sill and determination chiseled into his face, the lines made harsh by fear and worry and the tears he was barely holding back. They'd all tried to make him get some rest, but he wouldn't hear it—he just kept scanning the surroundings, watching for attack but mainly for Kumo.

They'd needed information and they'd needed it badly. Out of everyone in Mystaria, only Kumo possessed the critical power to slip from their side of the battlefield of stars through the barrier and into the enemy's world. He'd gone last month, and he wasn't back yet. Many had given up; still more had joined them in fearing the worst. Kiri was stubbornly clinging to hope. Hoshi understood why—already having lost his parents and carrying so heavy a burden, there was no way he could take the loss of his lifemate. And Hoshi hoped for all their sakes that Kumo was still alive, and would come back to them soon. They needed help, and they needed it very badly.

Arashi squeezed his hand, her hazel eyes dark. Hoshi leaned over and lightly kissed her cheek, hope and despair and frustration wrestling in his heart, peaking over pain as he saw that her free hand rested along her belly, clenched over her grays.

It wasn't soon enough for anything to show, but they'd known almost since it had happened—ever since Hoshi had felt her Mist change, had heard her tone begin to ripple. Two months. They hadn't meant for it to happen, and it would be disaster if her time came in the middle of a battle, but—they were going to have a child. It was frightening, and it strengthened them—now they fought not only for themselves, but for their baby's sake as well, so that it could be born into the same world they'd enjoyed as children, a world free from fear.

They were fighting. But they were losing.

Arashi took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and spoke, her voice low but raw with emotion. "…Well, we've come this far…"

His heart almost breaking with pained love, Hoshi leaned into her shoulder. "…Yes…"

They had made it this far. All they could do was see it through to the end.

Owari.

Author's Note: Hoshi and Arashi are original characters of mine who have appeared in many of my works, although I haven't ever had the chance to write much about them. Since I really wanted to write about their backstories, I started this oneshot about Hoshi—it was meant to be a submission for my oneshot service, but then it kind of mutated and now it's way too huge. So it gets posted on its own. Uh, yay?

Synesthesia is an actual medical condition in which two or more senses overlap. It can be either really cool or really annoying to the person who has it, depending on which senses overlap and what that overlap means for them. It's rare for anyone in the real world to have synesthesia as severe as Hoshi's, however.

There are slight alterations to Hoshi and Arashi's story for Kokoro no Hanashi and all stories related to it, which can be intuited by the reader for the most part. This is their background for the canonical FF:U universe.