A/N:
I'll be able to post the last chapter tomorrow. :3
At eleven years old, a boy confided his desire to explore the unknown. . .with her by his side.
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.
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At twelve years old, Miki fell in love with a dear friend.
"What? What did you just say?!"
The enraged shout frightened a flock of birds that had been peacefully nesting in a nearby tree only a moment earlier. Unlike the boy standing defiantly in front of the furious princess, however, they had the good sense to flee.
Miki was fairly vibrating with anger, her eyes snapping heatedly and hands balled up into tight fists. Her irritation only increased at the calm picture Yohio presented, his expression as mild and as a soothing summer's day in comparison with the raging storminess that was hers.
"You know that I'm right, Miki." His gaze held hers steadily, dark crimson boring relentlessly into light cerise. "And it's for the best."
"And why the bloody hell do you get to decide what's best for me, Yohio Lloyd?!" Hands planted on hips and eyes narrowed at his sheer audacity, Miki hardly even noted the familiar profanity that was more commonplace coming from Yohio than it was her. "You're not my mother, and you're most certainly not my father — you don't get any say in what I do!"
Yohio decided to stay silent, waiting for the small Princess to finish.
Miki swallowed hard. "We're best friends." Her voice cracked pathetically, the soppy words tumbling with abandon from her. "You said I could come. You said whatever happened, we'd go together. Don't you. . . d-don't you want me anymore. . . ?" The thought was too upsetting to finish.
She had been raised in a household where a friendship once formed was absolute, and love was something you couldn't just turn your back on. Having Yohio suddenly announce a change of mind and tell her she was better off staying ensconced behind the boring castle walls while he went gallivanting away to distant lands was therefore a wholly unexpected and wrenching surprise.
"Of course I want you to come!" The strangled yell, coming from her ever laid-back friend, was enough to shock her into silence, quelling the arguments that had been coiling in her mouth.
Yohio ran an agitated hand through his messy locks of hair, ruffling them even worse. Perhaps noticing her surprise, he sucked in a deep, measuring breath. "I want you to come, Miki," he repeated, the words slightly more somber this time. "I always — always —want you. You shouldn't doubt that."
Ignoring the gentle rush of heat that his stark statement caused in her cheeks, she instead focused on the flare of her temper at his stupid, contradicting words. "Then what's the problem? Why would you suddenly just tell me not to go with you when you leave for your adventures?"
"Miki, you're not thinking about this clearly!" His hard hands, unnaturally calloused from his daily work in the smithy, rose to clasp tightly onto her shoulders. But not painfully, never painfully, because he was Yohio and she was Miki and he'd sooner have cut off his own hand than deliberately cause her hurt.
Well, physical hurt, at least, she amended in her head. Because emotionally he was wreaking havoc on her quickly-shattering heart. Distantly she wondered when he had gained this degree of control over her innermost feelings — him with his stupid red eyes and stupid floppy blonde hair and stupid light-hearted smile.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid Yohio.
Miki hadn't realized she'd voiced this last part out loud until he gave an exasperated sigh. "Mii-chan. . ."
Before he could further chastise her, casting her back into the role of helpless, air-headed little girl, she said lowly, "I have thought about it, Yohio. Long and hard. I wouldn't be going if I hadn't!"
"And what will your parents think, Miki? When you don't come home one day? If you just up and leave without a word?" His voice was just as fierce as hers. "The people who love you most in this world. . . how do you think they're going to react when they find you gone?"
"Probably the same way yours reacted when you decided to up and come east, Yohio!" she retorted.
His hands flew off her shoulders, as though they'd transformed into hot coals that scorched.
The boy before her shrugged, a slightly melancholy look entering his red eyes. "I wouldn't know," he said shortly, tone changing from impassioned to utterly flat in the blink of an eye. "Me mam died when I was five. Sickness."
Miki stared at him, mouth slightly agape and the aggravated words on her tongue quickly forgotten.
The succinctness of his tone told her this wasn't something he spoke of often. And indeed, in the years they'd kept company as friends, she'd never once heard him discuss the subject of his parentage at any length or with any willingness. Small mentions here and there but — no word on their fates, and all of her tries at broaching the subject ended in blank stares or uncaring shrugs.
Sympathy snuck into her heart, a slithery shiver running down her spine at the visualization of a world without her high-spirited, lovely mother. In her sheltered little world, death wasn't something she was often given reason to contemplate — and her parents abandoning her in such a final way was too horrible to even consider. "And your father?"
"Passed 'fore I was even born," he told her with a dismissive wave, though his gaze was distant.
Her hands wrung together, clasped tightly against her breastbone. "Yohio. . ." Miki's throat tightened and she trailed off, her heart aching for her friend. "You've been alone? All this time?"
As though reading the sentiments thrumming painfully alongside her heartbeat, all traces of sadness were immediately banished from his expression, and his usual cocky grin was fixed firmly back in place. "Not alone," he corrected with a scolding air. "I've had you, haven't I?"
Rather than giving Miki the familiar warmth at his silly, self-assured smile, however, all that it succeeded in doing was twisting her gut in a tight knot and causing her eyes and nose to become annoyingly damp.
He wasn't trying to make her stay because he didn't want her.
Miki scrubbed hard as her eyes watered further at the realization.
He was trying to make her stay because she was the only person he had left to cherish. . . and he didn't want her to ever know such a lonely feeling.
"Stupid Yohio!" This time she knowingly cried it out, catching the boy by surprise as she did a most un-Miki-like thing and launched herself at him.
Princess and pauper went flying backwards into the snow in a flurry of limbs and yelps and long red hair that tangled with short, spiky blond.
The resultant cloud of snowflakes floated softly back down to decorate the entwined bodies, melting on the flushed cheeks of the girl holding closely onto a wide-eyed boy.
Miki's nose was pressed gently into his tanned skin. She couldn't help the faint smile at the soothing scent of steel and smoke that was uniquely Yohio — vaguely she wondered if someday soon, when he finally embarked on his sea-faring voyages, it would turn into that of the salty tang of the ocean.
That gave her pause.
Would she still recognize him, even then? Would he still be Yohio, underneath the fragrance of the rolling waves and the burden of new sights and trials lining his face and darkening his eyes?
Yes, she decided. No matter what, she would always know her Yohio the instant she laid eyes upon him. Distance and time and adventure could separate them, but she would know her Yohio.
"My parents have a saying," she murmured against the crook of his neck. A laugh bubbled past her lips as she felt his body tense as though preparing to flee; she could only imagine the roll of his eyes. "Don't dismiss me already, Yohi, you haven't even heard it! It's not one of their boring royal ones, I promise."
Her light mirth was echoed, except in Yohio's rapidly deepening tenor. "You know me too well, Mii-chan. Alright, then, what do the lord and lady of the land say?"
Pinching his arm playfully for his cheeky impertinence, she repeated the words that had granted her immeasurable feelings of comfort growing up. They were words crooned to her as she was rocked in her mother's arms as a child; they were words whispered tenderly against her mother's cheek as her papa kissed her an enviable gentleness.
"I will always find you."
Her embrace tightened briefly around Yohio's suddenly still form, before she drew back slightly to look up shyly into his thoughtful face. "It means that no matter how far apart people go, they're always led back to where they keep their heart."
Miki smiled, pressing one hand lightly where she could feel the tickling pitter-patter of just that. "And my heart is in two places, Yohio. Part is here, with my parents and my friends. And the other part is with you. So I think. . . I think that no matter how far I follow the part you have, I'll always manage to find my way back home. You needn't worry about that."
Yohio's mouth worked silently for a moment, before he closed it abruptly and his eyes softened. Miki waited anxiously for one of his pithy comebacks, or another round of trying to convince her against accompanying him when he left.
It never came.
Instead, his arms drew her back against him, and he clung to her like a child long denied affection. Besides their fleeting hugs and playful hand-holding, Miki wondered when had been the last time he had shared such an intimacy with another.
"I didn't really want you to stay." His words were muffled against her soft red hair. "Is it okay to be selfish. . . just this once?"
Miki's response was merely to smile and snuggle closer.
~ . . . ~
Yohio wasn't there when she arrived in the forest clearing, at the precise meeting time they had agreed upon.
It was a tad bit worrying, but Yohio did have a penchant for lateness, given that he claimed only grown-ups were fussy about being punctual all the time. Still, Miki griped to herself, one would think that on the night they had decided to catch a ship in the town's harbor to embark upon their planned roaming of the seas and hunt for thrilling adventures, the least Yohio could do was be there to meet her.
A small bit of movement on the periphery caught her attention. Her gaze flicked momentarily to an oddly shaped tree positioned at the edge of hers and Yohio's special place, before dismissing it as the mere swish of the wind upon the leaves.
Well, she amended in her head, she supposed after this night, it would cease to be their "special place", and revert back to being a simple clearing with an ancient oak and the hum of the river that coursed nearby. For Miki and Yohio were what granted it specialness, and once they were gone, fled into the darkness as the clock struck twelve, everything they had touched in this kingdom would become a boring old pumpkin again.
Looking about, gaze skimming over the place where she had spent many a happy day laughing about nonsensical things and relearning the precious magic that was childhood, she realized that it was incredibly sad, leaving.
She looked down at the thin bag, bulging with clothes and provisions, that she held in her hands — hands that not half an hour previously had been shakily penning a heartfelt goodbye to her parents in a letter that would be found by them when they returned from their diplomatic trip. The feel of her mother's warm lips and sweet scent when she had kissed Miki goodbye just a few mornings ago, of her father hugging her tight and tickling her until she was breathless with giggles. . . those images had been tortuously fresh inside her head as she had gathered her possessions, had caused a tear or two to slip down her cheeks and stain the parchment she wrote her temporary farewell upon.
The knowledge that her parents were as much an integral and necessary part of her as her lungs were for breathing and brain was for thinking was horribly overshadowing of the excitement she felt about accompanying Yohio to strange new lands. Even the defensive thoughts that the separation was only short-term, and that she would be coming back to them soon enough, did little in alleviating the stranglehold that emotion's icy hand held on her throat.
But Yohio was going, tonight, and if Miki didn't come with him. . . he would be going alone.
And despite the fact that being separated from him would surely be a terrible, splintering blow to her heart as well, she just couldn't condemn him to that sort of crushing solitude. Her Papa and Mama had each other, and they had her. . . but whom did Yohio have?
The answer had always been clear, in the relieved little glances he gave her when she ran to meet him nearly every day, in the reverent way in which he held her hand and tentatively embraced her.
Yohio, for all his projected liveliness and confidence, had been perpetually afraid that should he hold onto her too tightly, she would shatter in his very grasp and be lost to him for good.
As much as Yohio had been unable to resist rescuing a naive little girl in the marketplace so many years ago, Miki was just as incapable of leaving him to such a cruel fate now.
The reason for this was simple, the driving force an invisible entity that characterized all of the most renowned stories of the ages.
To speak of her love for Yohio was unnecessary, and was probably a subject that would never cross her lips in his presence. Love, as Miki understood it, was something that was implicitly known by two people when it happened — as obvious as the fact that the moon rose in the night and the sun swept it away with the morning light.
Her mother had always impressed upon her that love was something far more than an exchange of pretty words and elaborate promises. . . it was actions, it was proving the lengths to which you would push yourself for the sake of another.
It was a young boy taking her hand and running through the town with her.
It was a princess becoming daring and bold in ways she had never dreamed, just to stay by his side.
It was listening to confessions of dreams and wishes, offering only encouragement for their fulfillment.
It was. . . the tale of a princess and her would-be pirate.
A low rustle sounded, emitted from the bushes behind her. Miki blinked as she was rudely pulled from her dreamy reverie.
She spun, her expression brightening enough to battle even the enveloping darkness of the forest.
"Yohio!" Miki yelped in relief, preparing to teasingly scold him for his tardiness. The lightness in her heart grew and grew until the previous somberness had been all but vanquished. "It certainly took you —"
The words abruptly died in her mouth, snatched away along with her breath and all coherent thought.
For what had emerged from the tangled blackness was not her beloved friend.
There was an oddly distant, far-off thud as her knapsack slipped from her numb fingers and spilled open upon the forest floor.
A menacing clicking noise filled the air, a beak snapping together.
Slowly, Miki swallowed, feeling acutely every ridge and bump of her suddenly parched throat.
Slowly, she looked upon the intruder of her little piece of forest, eyes strangely bleak.
Yellow eyes that shone brilliantly through the surrounding blackness were locked with her cerise ones, madness meeting horror.
Its eagle head swiveled at an odd angle, bending and twisting grotesquely as it gazed at her. The feathers were matted with dirt, and caked with the brown coloring of dried blood. A pointed beak opened and closed, clicking and tapping as a line of saliva hung from its tip.
A lion's paws moved on the ground, the protruding claws scraping against the dirt and rock. There was a body covered in tangled yellow fur, muscles and tendons moving in tandem beneath the covering of the skin. It was large, so large and powerful that it towered in height above her — taller than even the grandest horses of the castle.
Wings were folded behind the heaving body, scaled and netted with veins. She was sure that spread out to their full breadth, they would span dozens of feet in a frightening display of power.
A young Miki turned the pages of her leather-bound storybook, staring interestingly at one particular picture. An illustration. An imagined drawing of a nonexistent monster of folklore and mythology. Sleepy eyes grew large at the creature.
The fearsome king of the air and covetous guardians of riches.
The creature with the sleek head of an eagle, massive body of a lion, and wings as scaled and large as a dragon's.
Claimed to no longer exist, having been eradicated by many wizards that had deemed such a beast too dangerous to dwell in a peaceful land, children grew up teasing younger siblings about it and adults utilized it as a fearful bedtime monster to keep their exploratory little ones in line.
It had many names, passed down through generations of whispers and stories.
She knew them all. But only one rose to her lips in a disbelieving gasp.
"Gryphon."
