Author's Note: I originally just meant for this to be a short Kamui meets Destiny fic but had to go and write Kotori and Delirium because I just loved the image of the two of them together... I may have to draw this at some point too. XD

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Two

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"What a pretty girl!"

Kotori looked up to see a girl with rainbow-dyed hair, braided on one side with a delicate little ribbon and styled into a sort of Mohawk on the other.

"You have lovely eyes." She replied immediately, taking in the two different colored eyes of green and blue.

"Ooooh a compliment! Thank you! Have you seen my doggy?" She asked, her voice wandering between high and low, whispers and yells, as though it had forgotten where it was supposed to be, just as the girl herself appeared to have forgotten.

"A doggy?" Kotori wondered at the small fish that buzzed around the girl like flies. They flitted to and fro like butterflies, their rainbow scales shimmering in the sunlight.

"Yeees. I lost him. Or he lost me. Maybe both. Have you seen him?"

"My brother brought home a puppy once." Kotori's eyes glazed in memory. "Such a cute little puppy who couldn't even walk yet and he was soaking, soaking wet." She pointed at a fish, or tried to, following it with her finger as it wandered erratically in the air. "Just like they should be."

"I like you. Let's be friends. Do you want to go swimming with me?"

"Can the fishies come too?"

"They aaaalways come. Except when they don't, or when I forget that they're me."

"Fishies follow me sometimes too." Kotori took the girls outstretched hand and leapt feet-first into the pool with her, feeling the walls fade away to coral and ocean.

"I have… a brother too. I have three and sometimes four."

"Sometimes four?" Kotori's thoughts stumbled over the strange assertion and for one brief moment, the confusion was a kind of clarity. Then it was lost again in a hazy, colorful and unquestioning acceptance. "I have a brother too!"

"Yes. Your brother is kind of like one of mine." The girl agreed. "He is really dark and serious. And he looks after you like my brother does for me sometimes."

"Your brother must be a nice person."

"I don't think so."

"Oh." Kotori watched butterflies dance in a field of cotton candy as brilliantly beaded bumble bees buzzed by. "Where are we?" she suddenly asked and for a split second, her mind sobered again. The world came into focus and then… and then the girl took Kotori's hand again, leading her through puddles of iridescent paint splatters, shimmering in gossamer sunlight.

"We just are." She replied vaguely.

"Can I go back?" Kotori wondered aloud as she stepped over a creek full of running poetry, the words tumbling over one another in a fluid symphony of prose.

"Some people go back." The girl admitted. "But most people don't." She paused to study a frog made of cellophane. "Sometimes I lose them though."

"Like the doggy?"

"What doggy?" She pulled Kotori into a finely woven basket attached to a hot air balloon filled with fireflies.

"Is my mother here?" Kotori asked softly, watching pirate ships sail by upside down, making ripples in the clear blue sky.

"I dunno."

"It's beautiful." Kotori commented, staring at the waves in the sky above. "I love blue things… like the world."

"The world isn't blue. It's macaroni and pizza and concrete and all other sorts of things."

Kotori wasn't listening though. "I need… to return…" she felt feathers brush her cheek, leaving behind something wet. When she raised a hand to her skin, her fingers came back smeared with blood. "Kamui…"

"I have to go back." She cried out to the girl. "I have to go back now! There's someone… that I want to protect… before it's too late…" She was distracted by the creaking of the bottom of the basket. She stared at it in horror, realizing what was about to happen even before the wood gave way and she fell, down, down, down… down a rabbit hole where clocks flew past, every one of them striking midnight in perfect, uncanny unison.

"People don't usually stop being mine." The girl whispered in her ear. "Until they become my sister's."

Then everything went dark and Kotori blinked once, seeing a smiling woman with frizzy black hair and she knew.

Everything was going to be alright.