Standard disclaimers apply.

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Erosion - teaser
by Rubie
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A sky.

A sun.

A mist of white snow.

A courtyard of painful purity, behind him.

A river, thin and shallow, lightly flowed in the distance.

And sakura fell like rain from the sky.

Path of stone bricks, once placed carefully face to face, were now broken with age. They scored their way through the soft, moist earth; through the delicate silvery grass fringed with ice and water; through the crimson chrysanthemums that painted themselves in the gardens; away from the house at the base of the mountain. And he followed it, not knowing why he was there or where he was going.

Around him, an elaborate design of a traditional garden carved itself on the slopes of a shallow mountain. The hardened sakura trees grew with their grotesque trunks rooted to the rocky soil, and stood next to one another so closely that he could not tell the arms of one from the other. The soft and fine grass was carefully cropped; no footprints marked themselves on its delicate face. There was a simple stone shrine to some lonely spirit of this mountain; he saw it out of the corner of his right eye as he followed the eroding path.

Hisoka knew this place well. He saw it every morning when he awoke, and he saw it every night before he slept. But he never stood on this path or approached the mountains, and he did not know why he was doing it now. He didn't remember how he got there either, but only knew that the land came to him in the night and held him in his sleep. And for some odd reason, and he felt at ease wandering through its terrain.

A simple rural village spanned out beneath him as the trail led him deeper into the mountains. It glowed under the coat of fresh snow. And more kept falling, entwined with the light pink petals that sailed in the sky as if dancing to an imperceptible song. Hisoka raised his hand and caught one as it flew by with trembling fingers. The flower looked at him in horror, its eyes widening in disgust. And as more sakura swirled around him, he saw faces on them as well, all twisted in hate, anger, and fear.

He walked on.

There was a pale lily, still young and not yet blooming by the cracks of a forgotten well. It faced away from the sun as if its rays were blinding and painful. And when he brushed the fragile petals with his fingers, it crumbled away like the dust of an ancient wood. He clutched at it in a desperate attempt to salvage it, but his hand came away with a handful of powdered white.

"I am eroding in this dying world," it told him. "Let me be reborn."

Even its soft voice was ghost-like, the cold of the dying winter cloaking it like a child to its mother. Like an enemy to its fiend.

"You are part of me," it told him.

He looked at it in confusion, his hand tainted with death. Even when he wiped his hands against the moist snow, the white coated his palm like a ghost.

He walked on.

The path was taking him steeply into the mountain. He wondered if that was where his legs wanted to go all along, but his mind refused to listen. The bricks of stone were crumbling, scattered about their original residence in broken pieces. Then finally, they gave out altogether, and Hisoka found himself wandering through a thick sakura grove, leaving fresh footprints engraved in the grass.

He pushed his way through the screaming flowers, his feet crunching in the frozen earth. Strangely, he did not feel cold, as if the ice and snow had been in him for a long time before.

There was a pale statue directly in front of him, overlooking the village below. A thick coat of snow had settled on it, hiding its body like a mask. He brushed the sculpture, revealing the face of one exquisitely carved and delicate features that appeared tired and peaceful at the same time. As Hisoka sweeped the frost from the figurine's tall frame, the man shivered and jerked to life. His eyes clenched then opened, disclosing purple like the painted sky, brightened by the sun's dying flame. The man grasped his hand before Hisoka could pull away; his hand was like fire to his skin.

"Only the living can feed from the living. Only the dead can feed from the dead," the man told him, his breath leaving no mist in the winter sky.

He pulled away from the man, struggling to free his hand. But his arm melted like water, staining the white earth. He could feel his skin giving away, his vision blurred, and his body collapsed like a handful of lilies crushed from above. Streaks of ashes scattered in the windblown snow, and he left with it, flying free from the world below.

"We are born to live and live to die." the frost whispered in his ears with a voice that scattered by the wind.

An avalanche of sakura had poured from the rich gardens and descended upon the house at the base of the mountain. It did not scream or protest, even though the faces of those petals were raging. But instead, the house seemed to welcome them, as if they were a break from years of tension. As if those pink petals were the long held breath of dying man, bringing him freedom in death.

And the world below was covered in that bloody snow.


End of teaser
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i am not smoking/drinking/eating anything funny...