Inspired by this prompt: pin/242561129909674396/
The number of worlds in existence was infinite, each one with its own history, culture, landscape, and people. Many shared languages or similar technology or magic and some worlds were so alike it was hardly possible to tell them apart. Some worlds were so unique, so entirely different from all others that it seemed unlikely to many that they could even be real. They were the ones glimpsed in dreams and told to young children like fairy tales and myths, the stories of forgotten worlds that seemed to be made of only magic and fantasy with no logic or sense to those of more average and commonplace worlds.
But one trait ran true in every world, across every dimension and universe; there was one attribute to every living soul that could be found on every world. Every person in every world had a soulmate and all people bore the marks on their skin.
Kurogane would never tell anyone, but he loved to draw.
Part of his education as a child in preparation to become the lord of a small land had included basic knowledge of the arts, along with the day-to-day issues like taxes and disputes between citizens. Reading and writing were necessary, of course, but calligraphy and literature were close companions to the two and the young lord had been required to know the more creative side of language, as well as the practical. His mother had spent a few weeks teaching him what she knew of flower arranging and painting and instructors had been brought in to explain and demonstrate the finer points of the more traditional forms of fighting and weaponry.
Kurogane had dutifully learned what he could and practiced each new discipline with determination and focus, if not always enthusiasm. Flower arranging was nice, he supposed, and it made the rooms in the castle smell better, but no amount of persuasion could convince him that it was better to them placed in exactly a certain way rather than to simply put a pot of growing plants in the room just as they were. He usually enjoyed the books and ancient tales that told of Japan's birth and growth, the legends of heroes and emperors and warriors who defended the nations borders from demons and invaders for centuries. The young lord had known long before the lessons ever began, however, that learning to draw would be his favorite.
The marks and first appeared when he was just a few months old. The young priestess had been changing her infant out of his old clothing and into something clean and fresh when dark lines began spread across the baby's wrist, curls of some strange design streaming along pale flesh like an inky river that stained his skin. She kept pulling the swaddling aside all day, periodically checking the markings and watching late that night as they seemed to get scrubbed away, the black lines dissipating in ragged swipes and crumbling bits.
The priestess paid close attention to her son's body after that, noticing that her child's markings behaved strangely, sometimes staying in place for days on end before being wiped clean and sometimes disappearing as quickly as they appeared, there and gone in the blink of an eye, so fast they would be missed if she had not been watching at that very moment. It was as if the markings had a mind of their own, staying in existence only so long as it pleased them and fading without rhyme or reason. She wondered about what it meant.
Kurogane could not remember the first time he saw the marks appear, probably because they had first shown up when he was still just a baby so to him it was as if they had always come and gone in their fickle way. Sometimes he could only catch a glimpse of tangling lines and swirls out of the corner of his eye before the flashed out of existence, swiped away and leaving only smudges and flecks of ink on his skin that would fade shortly after. He could spend days tracing the same pattern over and over again with his fingertips, eyes roving over the marks and memorizing every curve, every angle, ever fleck that marred his otherwise flawless skin, hoping to discover some meaning.
It was years later, when his small mind had begun to understand writing and reading and he began to see the inherent patterns and like qualities in it that he realized none of the marks on his arms were Japanese. Kurogane was troubled for a short while, but decided that drawings were just as good as writing. Tanigawa-san had always said that art spoke and told more than words ever could and Kurogane thought that the curls and dots and jagged lines were beautiful.
Drawing and art was his way of trying to understand the mystery of his strange markings. Perhaps learning about the history and culture of art would explain a little better what he saw on his skin.
Everyone else had more normal markings, ones that appeared steadily and gradually faded over the course of a few days, disappearing along with the ink they drew into their own skin. Most often the marks were Japanese, words and notes and reminders, sometimes messages and letters to the one who would see them. Sometimes it was artwork, everything from random doodles to stuff worthy of the palace itself and most people would find bits of all of them from time to time, changing day by day. The marks could appear anywhere, though they were most often on a person's arms, but those who were covered in artwork could often be seen with impermanent tattoos on every inch of the body, depending on the day.
Kurogane was different. Weeks could pass between one mark disappearing and another crawling along his skin and then suddenly the marks would fly onto his flesh so quickly his body would be nearly covered in inky lines and swirls, all of them blending together and covering each other, piling on top of one another until they all vanished, seemingly at once. The marks were only ever on his wrist, too, hardly ever going higher than half-way up his forearm and rarely did they end up on the right side. His left arm was a mystery and he spent days studying the marks when they appeared and staring at his blank flesh when a particularly long period of emptiness had come around. The art was strange, the markings' behavior was strange; Kurogane hoped that strange markings were the only strange thing to worry about.
He started drawing when he was five, simple sketches at first in shaky lines and bad proportions, but he learned quickly and his hand grew steady. As his sword arm grew stronger his drawing hand became smoother and soon the sketches became more realistic, more beautiful, and scenes of his daily life found their way to his skin more often than he probably realized. His wrist may have been bare more often than not, but his legs and arms and chest were constantly inked with flowers and trees and the tatami floors, the horses as they ran in the field and nipped at one another, the way the sun glinted off his mother's hair pins or the smoke from the incense swirling around the shrine, and the blood dripping from his father's clothes and armor when he strode through the palace gate.
He did not know what he was hoping to convey with the pictures, but he drew them. His eyes searched and watched everything and everyone, always on the lookout for something beautiful or meaningful to render. His memories and feelings were inked onto his skin with brush and charcoal with finer detail each day as his skills of observation grew; the tiniest shifts in expressions, the smallest traces of light and color, the barest hint of movement or change became clearer the more he watched the world around him until little could slip by him unnoticed. Kurogane saw everything and his art grew more beautiful.
Suwa fell and with it went Kurogane's heart. Suddenly the marks no longer seemed important and black vambraces were donned. He covered his wrists and ignored the black swirls that sometimes appeared the edges of his armor. The boy who studied art and turned his body into a canvas was weak and sentimental and no longer necessary. Art did not make a warrior stronger and strength was all he needed. He stopped drawing.
When he saw the mage he found his eyes drawn first to the swirling pattern stitched into the broad cloak and then to the fake smile stretched across his face. The lines were familiar, somehow, something nostalgic in the way they flowed smoothly and then suddenly altered their direction and had dots and thicker lines scattered throughout, but his instincts made him divert his attention to the person who wore the clothing and the empty blue eyes he found dispelled any thoughts about swirls and patterns that made him think of drawing and hours spent tracing inky marks on his wrist. Something about this man was strange, something about him was dangerous, and that was more important.
It was not until the ruined Tokyo in the reservoir that Kurogane thought again about the scrawls on the mage's coat, not until he saw the his magic used for the first time by the kid and saw symbols scrawled in the air with light and energy that were so very familiar. Two decades had passed since he had looked at his wrists with more than a passing glance and for nearly half that long he had not even seen a glimpse of black ink flitting into existence at the edge of his vambraces, but the moment he saw the magic swirling around and exploding throughout the room he remembered so vividly that everything else faded for a moment.
Chaos followed and Kurogane could not spare another second pondering markings and art and strange symbols and it was a long time before there was even a second to spare to any thoughts that did not revolve around feathers and blood and a mad wishes and fighting desperately to protect those he cared about. But he knew; he knew it down in his very soul and somehow the way his eyes had been drawn to a white cloak and blue eyes before anything else suddenly made so much more sense.
Kurogane had never been good at speaking what was on his mind or on his heart. He could teach and he could say what he needed to well when it was necessary, but art was how he had taught himself to express what he felt and thought and he decided that maybe it was time to start drawing again.
In the lull that followed their emergence from the ruins of Clow Country, the warrior found himself seeking out a servant to bring him ink and brush or charcoal, something he could use to mark his skin with. He sat on the balcony to his room, gazing out into the distance, seeing blue eyes and golden hair instead of an expansive sky and a sea of sand. He let his fingers drift slowly, letting his body remember the skill his mind had left absent for so long and watched as images emerged underneath the brush with each stroke.
He drew for hours, painting onto his flesh the moments he remembered best, the antics that had made him want to smile, the expressions that made him furious, the choices that baffled him and the remarks that surprised him. He drew every memory of significance, the good and the bad, everything he could remember from their journey from its beginning up until the last few days, trying to explain through the depictions how he had changed and grown, how he had felt and how his feelings and changed throughout. Over and over again, a pair of eyes was traced onto his body, each time the face they were set in becoming more and more beautiful, starting out blurry and getting clearer in each depiction as the journey had continued and he had come to know the man better with each passing day. He drew what he saw and what he saw was lovely and beloved and he hoped to convey that with each line and curve and stroke of his brush.
It was some time before the wizard sought him out where he sat on his balcony, his back braced against the wall and his long legs splayed in front of him. He came in quietly and stood at the doorway, staring out toward the horizon for a long time without saying a word.
The sun was nearing the horizon when he finally folded his long limbs and sat down beside the warrior, sitting motionless for a moment before reaching slowly for the brush where it still sat in its inkpot and bringing the soft bristles to his left wrist. He wrote slowly, carefully, tracing jagged yet elegant symbols across his wrist in an ebony stain that were nearly lost where they were squeezed tightly between the images gracing his pale skin. He wrote and then he placed the brush back where it had come from and leaned back against the wall with a slow breath, his hands resting gently in his lap.
Kurogane traced a finger along the symbols newly inked onto his flesh, marveling at the familiarity of it despite the long years since he had seen them. He wanted to say so much, wanted to ask so many questions that he felt like he was choking on them, but settled on the simplest one, the one that mattered the most just then.
"What does it mean?"
The magician smiled.