MUTSUKI
How fortunate I am
His footsteps sound
Before the snow
Japan strokes the blond head lying in his lap, long pale fingers lightly combing through the rough strands. Pochi sits on his haunches next to his master, his unhappiness at being displaced obvious. A whine to express his displeasure, and Japan raises a fingers to his lips in a request for silence, his other hand ruffling the dog's head in quiet apology. Only mildly mollified, Pochi pads over to his cushion, circling it three times before finally settling down.
The nation watches his pet's breathing slow into that of sleep, a hand absent-mindedly falling to rest on England's head. The tightening of arms around his waist brings his attention back downwards to the Englishman unconsciously burrowing his way further into Japan's stomach.
He delicately brushes away a stray strand of hair from England's cheek and thinks of the sun goddess in her cave, weeping with grief and rage and fear. America may have been the strong-handed god who pulled him out of isolation and back into the world-in him as well the fire god who burnt and destroyed, and Japan's bones ache in memory- but it was England who had stretched out more than a straw rope across his borders; the country on the other side of the ocean who loved tea as much as he did, who respected and upheld pride in oneself and culture and tradition, who stammered and blushed and looked the other way when bringing him gifts; it was for England he defied his bosses, slipping away in the night to draw his sword alongside the island of rain against a land of snow and ice.
They have exchanged many things between them over the years, culture and language and technology; but in the still hours of the morning like this, when England's heart thrums gently on his skin and England's arm is a comforting weight around his waist, he dares to think, if only to himself, that the greatest exchange of all was of that which is invisible and most treasured.
The hands of the hallway clock click sharply to two. There are not many left in Japan's land who remember the way of counting the hours by their corresponding animals. More than once he has found it ironic that the people they once called 'outsiders' eagerly drink in the ways and customs of his past in much the same way the young people in his cities chase after the latest trends from the lands across the seas and discard carelessly what flows in their blood, left to them by their ancestors of long ago. Perhaps it is the draw of the new and exotic, much like the wonder and insatiable curiosity Japan himself had felt when he stepped out from behind his paper screens and saw for the first time that the world outside stretched much further and wider than a map, filled with the strangest things he had never thought existed.
Soft laughter rings faintly at the edges of Japan's hearing. He turns to look, but there is nothing for him to see. The wooden floorboards under his knees tremble slightly as if little feet ran upon them. White mist curls, beckons at the corner of his eye, yet to him there is only the sharp darkness of the winter sky when he cranes his neck.
It is the hour of the ox after all, Japan remembers, and the tension drains from his shoulders. He wonders if England has brought any of his friends over with him on this visit, his fairies and pixies and dwarfs he loves to tell stories of so much. He hopes they will get along with the spirits inhabiting his land which he can no longer see, his children of fortune, his snow women and items brought to life by love and wear.
The sleeping man in his lap stirs, turns over and mumbles into Japan's thigh something about elves and rings. One of his hands falls from Japan's back; groping about the floor, it fumbles and finds the other nation. There is a sigh of contentment, then back into the comfort of deep sleep. The dark-haired man almost smiles and closes his fingers over the spaces between England's.
England holds onto Japan in his dreams, much as a child clings to his mother's neck. It is then that Japan is struck with the realization that despite his past self-imposed rejection of the outside world, if asked if he would exchange the past century and half for another two more of isolation for the sake of preserving himself, he would have to humbly decline and say that that is not possible anymore, bowing low in apology to his numerous emperors of before while holding tightly onto England's hand.
The world has changed, Japan muses to himself. And I have indeed grown old, to be sentimental about it. He bends over, and with the daring of the unwatched presses a cool kiss to the sleeping man's cheek. England must take responsibility for this.
Turning, Japan looks out to his snow-covered garden and writes in his heart a wish for the tiger to hold his steps and never come.