Nile jerks when he feels it snap. His left rubber band. The last one he had to keep the two small orange tufts that dangled over his ears from mixing with the brown.
Bending down, he scoops it up from the dirt and ties the pieces together, then straps it back into place. It was a solution that was all too temporary, he knew, but it wasn't like there was another choice, besides letting it mix of course.
"Did it break again?" Demure asks with a light smile. Nile snorts softly instead of answering, knowing he knew the answer already. Demure just chuckles and rubs their mule, Choir's, nose and the crossbreed lets out the loud annoying sound that got him his name.
"Demure, you better not be making him sing!" Kyoya calls and Demure laughs.
"Oh c'mon Kyoya, you know you love his pretty voice!" Demure calls back and Choir adds in a comment of his own.
"Stupid mule..." They hear and Nile can't help snickering, his hairband predicament already forgotten.
It wasn't often Kyoya was so willing to engage in friendly bickering, so when he did, it made the trail a whole lot more pleasant and put them all in good spirits.
"Hey Kyoya, d'you think Choir would be willing to sing along with me?" Benkei asks and Nile and Demure begin smirking, already anticipating the obvious outcome of this conversation.
"Benkei, if the stupid thing will sing with Nile after stepping on a tac, it will sing with anything."
"OK, you try stepping on one barefoot and keep silent!" Nile yells.
"Look Nile, all I'm saying is whatever that Arabian meant, I don't think it was child-friendly." Kyoya says and Demure nods with a laugh.
"'Course it was child-friendly! I am offended that you'd think so lowly of me!"
Laughter echoes around him and he smirks. Then Benkei lets out a loud, extremely off-key Japanese song and Kyoya groans. "Really dude? You do not do Miku Hatsune justice!"
Demure sputters and chokes on his own chortling, as Kyoya had shown them the famous nonexistent singer before all this had happened. Their visit to Japan was the main reason they were all together.
Sometimes, Nile found himself wishing this was just a training outing. Training outings never involved escaping a flooded island in the middle of the night though. Training never had them watch people thrashing as they were carried out to sea, or other horrible things. Training didn't leave them waking from nightmares. And training certainly never happened during the end of the world.
The others seem to notice his sudden sullenness, and they say nothing when Kyoya switches with Demure. Nile notices, with dry humor, that Kyoya doesn't even utter a sound when the 'stupid mule' decides to bite the new hand taking it's reins.
"What are you thinking about?" The greenete mutters to him.
Nile shrugs. "Just how we ended up in this situation. Feels too long ago..."
Too long since he and Kyoya had been separated from Demure and Benkei on that fateful night. Too long since the world flipped over on its back and became unfamiliar and harsh. Too long since it was possible to casually view that well loved vocaloid on a laptop in Kyoya's apartment.
Nile shakes his head with a frown. His thoughts were becoming too repetitive and bleak. You didn't last long with a darkened mind.
"Yeah. It was. Its over now, and we have plenty of opportunity to move forward. I'm not gonna call us lucky, because its too clique and if that were true, Benkei'd have learned to carry a tune before this. But I do know that we still have a lot of hope, and we're all stuck with each other." That wild smile appears and it seems to push away Nile's doubts as it had so often before. "Not even the world's destruction can crush team Wildfang."
That old team name reminds Nile how Kyoya had taken control of their small band and kept them alive. There was still one thing right. Kyoya was the alpha lion of his pride, and Nile was still his right-hand man. Wildfang was too strong to die as long as they plugged forward.
Stupid of me, we're better off now than we have been in weeks! There's no reason to be so depressed, none at all. Kyoya won't tolerate it and neither will I!
Nile returns Kyoya's grin, his confidence restored, and Kyoya motions for Demure to switch back. They all smirk as Choir bestows one last bite and a screech in the ear to Kyoya before being returned to the gentle hands of his favorite caretaker, and Kyoya feigns a kick to the mule's rear when he takes his spot behind it.
"They just can't get enough of each other, huh?" Demure says and Nile shakes his head good-naturedly.
-.\
Lightning streaks the sky and Nile pulls his jacket tighter around himself. Traveling through lower Eurasia may have been hot, but it was not without these random storms. Unfortunantly for everyone, Choir was afraid of lightning.
"Sit! Down mule!" Kyoya yells to the frightened animal as it shrashes at its reins. He continues to hold fast to them as he struggles to calm it. As much as Nile wanted to help, he knew there was too much of a chance that he'd make it worse or get hurt, so he stands a few feet away as Kyoya fights the stubborn thing.
Demure would have normally been in Kyoya's position, as he had been the only one to befriend it, but he wasn't strong enough to keep it down in it's panic, and Benkei didn't have the reflexes to avoid its hooves. Nile's left arm was still sore from an incident with a rockslide in China. That left Choir's most disliked owner to contend with it's frenzy.
"Down! Lay down you stupid-" Kyoya gasps as it rears and lifts his feet from the ground for a moment. He's caught off guard and can't hold on when it whips its head left and right, and suddenly he's on the ground below Choir's flailing hooves.
"Kyoya!" Nile shouts and watches as his friend dives to the side, leaving only one leg to be struck by it's feet. Demure and Benkei rush forward, but Nile pulls them back to stop them from panicing the animal further.
Kyoya, now covered in mud and limping, jumps onto Choir's back, hooking his legs tightly under the mule's belly, and grabbing the flopping reins. After some fighting with it, Kyoya calms him enough that Demure can run in and finish the rest, stroking his muzzle and murmering to it.
Kyoya slides off and mutely hands the reigns to Demure, then staggers towards Nile.
"Stupid, good-for-nothing horse-donkey..." He mutters bitterly and Nile helps him to their makeshift shelter. He flops on the floor and allows Nile to roll up his pant leg, and Nile hisses sharply when the already forming bruise is exposed.
"Does that mean its bad?" Kyoya asks tiredly.
"Well... Yeah. I'm kinda thinking you might have a broken leg..." Nile tells him. Being as gentle as he can, Nile runs his hands down the hurt area to feel for breaks, pausing whenever Kyoya inhales sharply. He can't be sure still, so Nile goes out and grabs two short branches and makes a brace with them, using bandages to secure it.
"You may be needing a walking stick or something tomorrow," Nile tells him and he answers with an irritated snort.
Demure and Benkei crawl in a few minutes later and Nile unrolls the blankets. They take their usual places by each other and two fall asleep quickly. Nile was too much of a light sleeper to be out quickly like them, missing the white noise of the sand from his home, and it seemed safe to say Kyoya was still in too much pain from the injury.
The darkened shelter seems to prompt a Nile to ask the question he had been pondering over for a while now.
"Hey, Kyoya? Where are we going anyways?"
The other is quiet for a moment before replying, "To a place where people aren't too desperate to work together. Maybe America. Or Switzerland. Just somewhere safer where I know you'll be fine."
"What about you? Are you leaving us?"
"... Probably. There are a lot of people dying out there, and besides, I still need to find Ginka."
So he still hasn't lost hope for Ginka... Even though most people in that area drowned... And everyone else is probably stranded.
Nile sighs. "I'll come with you."
"Nah, I want you to stay with them. Someone has to keep Benkei out of trouble, yeah?"
Nile doesn't reply. He hated the idea of Kyoya venturing off alone, especially when things were this tough together. He wouldn't say it, but being beside Kyoya made him feel stronger, and he wasn't so sure he could do this without him.
Kyoya seems to catch on to his silence, and holds his own for a few moments before murmering that he was going to sleep.
The darkness suddenly seemed very lonely and cold with the possibility of separation once again hanging over their heads. It was bad enough in the flood. I don't want to face that again. I want to know that everyone's safe, by my side. Not in another country in danger.
Phew. Probably my longest 1st page for anything.
Don't worry reader friends. I plan on dimming the happiness in this story by a lot.
Can't have the end of the world without suffering, right?