A/N: Saiyuki, its characters and affiliates, are all property of Kazuya Minekura. I am using her characters without permission and for no profit.
Hello and Happy Halloween! I am working on the next installment of "Breakroom", I swear, and also a bit on "Blackjack" as well, but this took precedence. It is my take on a Halloween fic. Oh, dear.
The title is, roughly translated, "Of a book of drafts". I commend you if you also know that it is the title of a rather lovely Debussy piece that not only inspired the fiction but was part of my time limit. This was written much in the style of "Spoon", in that it had to be a little ficlet with no dialogue, but this time my time limit was three times through the song that was the inspiration and it was to be more impressionistic than anything. Give or take, that means I had about sixteen minutes for both planning and execution. My friend again thought this one up, and while she's sadistic it's always fun to play along.
Warning: 58
Cross-legged against the dry-cold, rough bark of welcoming, embracing roots, he sits and pores through a slipshod volume, skimming his fingers over the rough, yellowed edges of the pages. This is sheet music for the soul, and a symphony of words pour forth into his waiting eyes. His incongruous, strange eyes. They reflect the world around him in muted brown and sick yellow and vibrant teal. The sky is just gray enough to be able to see it, and the clouds layer jaggedly over one another, swirling shadows in the air.
This air is too dry for white frost, too cold for yellow sun, too black for blue sky and green grass. And so into his brown hair fall leaves in orange and red, chewed and battered by their violent, fluttering descents. He takes one into his white hand and places it between the pages in his lap, marking a place with red-pen fingers. He breathes the dry, cold, black air and warms it in his chest, expelling the heat with the faint scent of spring and the sweetness in the back of his throat. His eyes wander, resting away from the plain words and reveling in the dull fires around him. The symphony does not stop, but shifts into the tangible crispness of flight and the hot, wet rot of landing. Leaves cycle past him thus, shuddering and flexing and catching against the fingers of black tree trunks that jut into the air.
With great care, he brings his knees up to close the book. The soft scrape of cloth binding against his pant legs is blasphemous, a sneeze in the middle of nature's great aria. Gently, he fingers his stolen bookmarker, running fingertips over the delicate, dead veins. The wind heaves a sigh, and he sighs back to it, hot and sweet and smelling of stale tea.
The book rests in his lap, held carefully in reverence and because of a broken binding. With one hand, he traces the title sewn into the cloth cover, and with the other he strokes the heavy hand beside him on the ground. His soft hand wraps around the other, massaging with his thumb. He smiles with pale, chapped lips and raw, red nose and cold, tired eyes. Red-leaf eyes turn to him and he gazes right back, spring-bright eyes reflecting the fire in dull brown. A fiery head meanders over his shoulder and cold lips press against his cheek.
He stands, taking the book under his arm, shakes life into his legs, and holds out a hand. Their hands apart are cold and hard. Together, they are cold and hard. This matters little.
They walk through the blaze as the world crashes down, unfinished, unpolished, and complete.