Um, I felt like producing content, so here you go.
Real quick, rating is for a small part in the middle, a minor mention of violence I guess? Just a sentence saying that some dude scratched his eyes out. Wanted to be safe and let you know.
He's drunk, not even pleasantly so, just overly warm and giddy. The other patrons are worse off, stumbling over each other. This is likely the last time they'll challenge a foreigner to a drinking contest.
Victor gets his feet under him and gathers his belongings. The air is warm and the breeze is just verging on comfortable. Absently, he makes his way to the shore, slipping off his shoes, he ties the laces together and lets them hang over his shoulders. The waves are quiet, and Victor wanders around the sand, gaze fixed on the stars.
He'll have to thank Yakov when he returns home, a vacation for him and Yuri had been a wonderful idea. Though, a barely on the map seaside town probably wasn't what the younger had in mind when Victor told him they were taking some time off. Victor hadn't even had to beg Yakov for the break, his coach had seen the change, seen how low he'd gotten. That realization led to noticing just how poorly Yuri was doing as well. Not poorly in the sense that his performance was bad, but in that he was getting far too frustrated with himself far too quickly. They're still in the off season, but something was wrong with the both of them.
The excess of dried blood in their skates served as evidence enough.
It's only the first night, but Victor doesn't feel as tense as he usually does. The stars seem to shine brighter the longer he walks, the further he goes down the beach. The air smells of salt, but it's not unpleasant. The warm air is comforting, if the slightest bit damp, but Victor finds he doesn't mind so much.
It's nice.
He walks along the bottom of the cliffs and he's just about to round the corner when he hears a voice.
"All right, all right, you act as though this is the first time you've seen me dance." Followed by a laugh like moonlight, the voice is serene and cool in the warm night air.
Victor looks around for the source.
"Only because you look so lovely when you do."
"Shut up, just don't expect me to do this again any time soon."
Victor follows the voice around the bend along the cliffs.
A short ways off, a low section of rock, juts out from the ocean. Two young men sit atop it.
One has dark hair and brown skin, he's laughing, dressed all in black and surrounded by a pale green glow. A cape of dark red flutters behind him. The other is younger, blond hair interupted with red. He's dressed in white, accented in gold, and his eyes are fixed on the water below him.
There, another figure stands.
Victor rubs his eyes. There's no way this is real, he has to be having some sort of drunken hallucination.
"Phichit, if you don't stop laughing, I'm not going to dance."
"My bad, my bad. Minami? If you'd be so kind."
The younger boy nods, then closes his eyes. He begins humming, but Victor has never heard a sound such as this. It flows, clear and clean like water, and Victor would think its source an instrument if his eyes were closed. The figure in the water raises his arms before taking a step.
Belatedly, Victor realizes that the figure is standing atop the waves.
The humming is soon joined by a low undercurrent, paired with the rhythmic beat of hands against stone.
Victor finds his eyes glued to the figure in the water.
Bathed in moonlight, he seems to glow, light skin illuminated to contrast dark hair. The clothes he's wearing ripple about his body, soft colors blending together as he moves, the blue mingling with that of the water beneath him. Then he begins to actually glow; his features soften, his hair grows longer until it nearly touches the waves he's dancing on. Victor's not sure what to think. But he knows there's no way his brain would be able to produce such an image on his own.
The two atop the rocks, Phichit and Minami, he thinks, bring their song to an end, and the dancing stops as well.
"Yuuri, you changed again," Phichit calls down, a grin on his lips.
The two of them stand up and Victor sees them step off the rock ledge, floating down like leaves. He moves a bit closer, able to make out their faces. Phichit has black lining his eyes, and sharp blue lines decorating his skin. Minami wears a headpiece of gold and red, dramatic slopes of silver on his face.
"And whose fault is that?" Yuuri asks.
"But that's the prettiest song! And your dance too!" Minami cries. The headpiece glows in his distress
"I'm not angry, Minami."
"Oh."
"We should get going, Leo wanted us back before sunrise," Yuuri says, moving from the water to the beach.
"After you, my lady," Phichit says with a wide grin.
"Phichit."
"What?"
"Shut up."
The group leaves with one last bout of laughter and Victor leans against the cliff, drawing in a breath.
They're all stunning, but Yuuri…
Yuuri is something else.
The first thing Victor does when he gets to his room is boot up his laptop. His fingers are clumsy as he types into the search bar. The internet is slow, it takes forever, and he almost gives up before the page finally loads. There aren't many results, but there's a site dedicated to the town's lore.
He clicks on the link and waits for the page to load, leg bouncing as he does so.
It's a simple layout, and he spends the night perusing the site.
Several hundred years ago, when the town was just beginning to bloom, there was a renowned dancer. The dancer was murdered by a foreigner, who'd fallen in love with him, and he returned as a spirit to guard the youth of the town against those who might do them harm.
The town history includes note of this dancer, without connection to the spirit. Victor finds it strangely charming that such lore exists. There's a tab that leads to a series of pictures, most are paintings, some are photographs of etchings that look to be hundreds of years old.
Some depict a young woman, dark hair down to the ground, framing a pale face with warm eyes. Others portray a man, appearing much the same, though his hair is shorter, and his features are more rounded out. Both are draped in long fabric, varying shades of blues, a few strips of silver or black, but overwhelmingly blue. The eyes are the same. The lore states that both spirits are in fact one in the same, the same dancer, just with a different visage.
There's no question, it's the very same Yuuri that Victor saw on the beach.
Various other sources claim that the 'Weeping Dancer' has ghostly partners to assist in protecting the population of the town. Victor can recognize Phichit and Minami easily enough, but there's another. A young woman with dark skin and long hair, and brilliant purple eyes; she'd met a suspicious end, found at the mouth of a sea cave. There are no names attached to any of them, simply titles. Minami is 'The Child', Phichit is 'The Guide', and the woman is 'The Defender'.
Victor leans back, ignoring Yuri's grumbling, it's something along the lines of 'get some sleep you old man', and just rubs his eyes. Yuri throws a pillow at him and Victor moves to the side as it sails past his head. He looks up to find Yuri face down on his bed.
According to the lore, Yuuri's dance career was the whole reason the town got any sort of traffic at all, people would come from all over to see him dance. In his performances, Yuuri tended to dress towards the more effeminate side, but it was all rather ambiguous. Regardless, his hair was long as well. There's not much information leading up to his death, only that when he was found, his hair had been cut off.
Victor would have thought he'd hallucinated the whole event if there wasn't proof sitting before him.
He peruses the pages a bit longer, finding a few paragraphs that read as a sort of warning.
Though these spirits serve as guardians, do not be misled, they are not all perfectly kind. Ill wishers who find themselves at the mercy of the Weeping Dancer are often never seen again, and those that are have undergone some form of acute panic. The Dancer's helpers enact no such level of vengeance and often-
Victor blinks slowly.
Never seen again? Are they dead?
What does Yuuri do to them?
Victor hovers his mouse over the link to the testimonies of those who'd encountered Yuuri, but he can't make himself click it just yet.
It's difficult, matching his first vision of Yuuri to what the warning claims. Yuuri had seemed perfectly normal, smiling and dancing, his friends certainly weren't afraid of him.
He closes his eyes and clicks.
The most common outcome of an encounter with the Weeping Dancer is acute paranoia and unusually high levels of panic. Several victims have had to be institutionalized and many more are left with the inability to verbally communicate what exactly transpired when they were confronted by the Weeping Dancer. However, it seems that the Dancer's victims garner no pity from the people around them, as they often have histories of harassment and of similar charges. Still, the results are alarming...
The few children who've met the Weeping Dancer experience no adverse side effects, and report that the Dancer's behavior is nothing but gentle. Seven years ago, a young girl reported that the Dancer rescued her after she'd gotten lost in the woods. Compare this to a man eleven years ago who scratched his eyes out within a week of being hospitalized following his own encounter with the Dancer…
Those who've come into contact with the Dancer's helpers report no such levels of violence or fear. Witnesses are less frequent in the past years, but the number of disappearances attributed to the Dancer have risen...
He closes his computer for the time being, he'll ask around tomorrow to see if the locals have more to say.
Makkachin looks up as he moves away from the computer, bounding happily to his side.
"Come on, boy." Victor climbs into bed and Makkachin lays down over him, falling asleep in a moment.
Victor plays the scene out in his head on repeat. Every turn, every step, every move Yuuri made was astonishing. Even without his ethereal appearance, there's no doubt that Yuuri would look just as graceful as he did beneath the moonlight. It was in the way he moved, fluid but controlled.
It was beautiful.
The following morning, while Yuri is still dead asleep, Victor makes his way downstairs to the communal area.
Most of the patrons aren't from the area, so he takes Makkachin outside to make small talk with the various stall keepers that line the main road. His hunt for information turns up nothing until he gets to a small jewelry stand just off the beach.
The old woman sits in a folding chair, a polishing rag in hand. The shell necklaces on the table before her gleam in the morning light.
"The Weeping Dancer?" she asks, sitting up a little straighter. "What's your interest?"
"Innocent curiosity," Victor says quickly, though it's clear that the woman doesn't believe him. She's silent for all of a heartbeat before she gasps.
"You met the spirit, didn't you?"
"Say that I did, what could you tell me?"
Makkachin lays down in the sand as the woman pulls an extra folding chair from beneath her table for Victor.
"The spirit has been here as far as back this town has existed. In life, they were a dancer, a magnificent one that drew in people from all over. There were even rumors that they were one of the gods here in human form because they were so beautiful and mesmerizing."
"I read that the dancer has two forms, why is that?"
"A handsome young man and a beautiful young woman, I couldn't give you a fully certain answer if I wanted to. We don't know. Those who've met the spirit report seeing one or the other. The common thought is that the dancer was a man who dressed as a woman when he danced. Though, my grandmother told me that the dancer was both and that's all there was too it."
"Oh, what else did your grandmother say?"
"Apparently, the dancer caught the eye of a foreigner and they fell in love. However, shortly after, the dancer was murdered by the foreigner. Their body was found in their home, hair shorn off, skin baring bruises and a number of broken bones. They appeared as a spirit a few years later."
After a few more minutes of conversation, the woman has told him all she can and Victor thanks her for her time.
Yuri's waiting for him in their shared room, looking very much like he's ready to kill someone.
Namely, Victor.
"Remind me why I agreed to come with you," he mumbles, slipping out of his bed.
Victor just arches a brow.
"Because you were as stressed as I was," he says simply.
Yuri just rolls his eyes.
"You're paying for breakfast, then we're going shopping."
He walks the beach that night, and the next. It's not until the third night of searching, Makkachin at his side, that Victor finds himself staring.
Yuuri is once again on the beach, sitting in the sand, the loose fabric ends of his clothes fluttering in the warm sea breeze. Like the paintings, he's dressed all in blue, darker tones that appear to mimic the night sky. If Victor stares hard enough, he can almost see stars amongst Yuuri's clothes.
His hair is short again, and he looks just as he did when Victor saw him first. He's alone, the other two are nowhere to be seen. The lapping tide goes around him, as if the waves aren't allowed to touch him, or they're too afraid to.
It's hard to match such a lovely visage to the horror stories he'd heard from the testimonies.
Yuuri's humming a melody, one Victor's never heard before.
Makkachin decides he should investigate this entity and runs, ripping his leash right out of Victor's hand.
Victor runs after him without thinking.
Yuuri immediately stops humming, letting out a soft giggle as Makkachin settles in his lap. Victor pauses a moment, a split second of fear ignites in his gut, snippets of the articles he'd read flash in his mind. But Yuuri just smiles and scratches Makkachin's head, and Makkachin is certainly fine with that.
Yuuri turns back, eyes fixed on Victor.
Blue. That's all Victor can think. Blue and white, swirling, no pupils, no difference from one end of the eye to the other.
"Hi." Victor mentally beats himself up, of all the times for his brain to blank, it just had to be this one.
Yuuri chuckles, light and airy.
"Hello there, come on over."
Victor complies, moving closer as Yuuri pats the sand beside him. Makkachin barks happily and moves out of Yuuri's lap to sit between the two of them.
"It was you then, watching those nights go."
"Uh, I'm sorry for-"
"No need, it was nice having a fresh audience."
"Right."
"What's his name?"
"Hm?"
"I'm assuming he's your dog, what's his name?" Yuuri asks with a smile.
"Oh, this is Makkachin."
"Hello, Makkachin," Yuuri says softly, giving the dog another scratch.
They sit in quiet for a few minutes, until Victor can't hold back his questions.
"So, you- you're a spirit? I read- this town has a legend-"
"Partially true."
"Huh?"
"The legend is partially true."
Victor waits for him to explain further, but Yuuri only shifts to look at the moon. He's not sure if he should be afraid or not, Yuuri doesn't seem all that vengeful.
"Um, the other two with you that night?"
"My friends, Phichit and Minami. They're not as old as I am, but we are close."
Victor nods as though that's the clearest possible answer.
"Are you visiting?" Yuuri asks after a few minutes.
"Hmm? Oh, yes, only for a few days longer, I'm taking a break from my profession."
"And what would that be?"
"Figure skating."
Yuuri's eyes very nearly shine as he turns to face Victor, a brilliant smile on his lips.
"Really?"
"Yes."
"That's truly amazing. I never did get to try it when I was alive," Yuuri says softly, turning his gaze to the waves. "I was a dancer, you see? I couldn't afford to injure myself if I slipped and fell down, so I stayed away from the lake whenever it froze over."
Victor's about to mention the lost look in Yuuri's eyes when the spirit speaks up.
"What exactly did you read? You read the legends?"
Victor coughs, busying his hands by burying them in Makkachin's fur.
"Um, well…"
"You read testimonies of those that I've driven to the point of panic and derangement? I'm assuming based on your lack of will to tell me to my face. I did say that only a portion of the legends are true. Most of those I confront, I send away. Those I don't, simply invent a horror in their mind. I don't particularly care what they say, so long as those I protect are kept safe. There really isn't anything to worry about. Now, anyway. Though there was a time, I faintly remember, being what they claim, those days are over."
"Oh."
"I apologize if I needlessly worried you."
"No, not at all, there's no need to apologize."
Yuuri gives a soft laugh, turning his unearthly gaze to Victor.
"You're a very strange man, Victor Nikiforov. I must go now, but it was a pleasure to meet you, and your dog as well. Perhaps we can speak again before you go."
He rises, all fluid grace, and begins walking along the shore. He stops a moment, and turns back to Victor.
"I do believe it to be in your best interest that you don't cause any trouble while you're here, Victor, I quite enjoy your company."
Victor can only nod. Yuuri smiles softly before he fades from sight.
It's not until later that night, as he's getting ready for bed, that he realizes: he never told Yuuri his name.
Yeah, not sure where I'm going with this. But I couldn't get the concept out of my head. Let me know what you think!