Natural Selection

by murinae and aishuu


Haku arrived home after his wife that evening, walking through another light rain shower. The water felt strange upon his skin for a couple of moments, like jolts of static electricity, but then he thought of his former river and the conflict was resolve. It worried him a bit, since he might have to deal with new preferences and new aversions.

Change came with sacrifice, after all.

"I'm home!" he called, entering and removing his shoes in the genkan.

Chihiro stepped out of the living room to greet him, but froze as soon as she saw him. "Oh!" she exclaimed. Chihiro lifted hand to cover her mouth as her eyes went insanely wide.

She stood a couple meters away from him, just staring for a long moment. Haku waited for her to speak, but she was immobile. All he could hear was the sound of her breathing, quickened by shock.

"Kohaku?" she said finally, her voice breaking on the last syllable of his name.

The sound of his real name instilled a similar hesitation in himself. She rarely called him that, preferring the more familiar "Haku." Her uncertainty sparked uncertainty in himself, and for a second he felt as far apart from her as they had been when she'd first left the Aburaya.

"It's me, Chihiro," he replied.

She nodded, and her hand dropped limply from her mouth down to her side. "What happened?" she whispered, and her eyes flashed with an emotion he could only identify as fear.

He didn't know how to explain. If someone had asked him this morning, he would have said he could tell Chihiro anything, but at this moment, he found himself lacking words. He had never thought it would be possible to find something that might separate them, but now he had to admit a hint of doubt to his former certainty.

Haku had changed. Would she still be able to love him?

The quiet started to grow uncomfortably long, and he heard the kettle on the stove start to shriek. He'd thought the day had dragged, but that was nothing compared to the moments now ticking by.

Her eyes started to get glassy, and he thought she might cry. It had been a long time since he'd seen her tears, and he reacted the only way he knew how. Stepping forward, he pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. "It's okay," he murmured, knowing he would do whatever was necessary to ensure that it would be.

He would have faith in Chihiro, and the life they had built together.

She clung to him tightly, her hands lifting to encircle his neck. He felt the warmth of something wet against his chest, and pulled back a moment later to kiss her tears away.

He didn't know how long he held onto her afterward; he only knew time finally started again when she stopped shaking in his arms and her breaths grew deep and long again.

It was she that pulled away, and took a step back to truly looked at him. Chihiro reached a hesitant hand out, fingers slowly trailing through his hair until she reached the band he used to keep the strands together. Her breath caught again, and Haku wondered what she saw.

In truth, he hadn't had a glimpse of himself since the change overtook him. He didn't think it would have affected his human body that much; Shinako had implied his hair had changed somewhat, but his human body didn't always reflect his inner self accurately. None of his other coworkers had noticed a change, or if they had, they hadn't said anything.

Chihiro, though, knew how to look beyond everything that he was on the outside. And Haku knew that if he were to transform to his full length, he would find himself much, much different.

"How do I look?" he asked her. Her fingers trembled against his hairband.

"You don't know?" she said.

"I can feel it changed," he replied, "but I didn't look. I just didn't have the right mirror, you know. I didn't have you."

This time, when her breath caught again, her fingers did not tremble and her hands were steady as she pulled his hairband free and wrapped it around her wrist. His hair cascaded around his face, and Haku caught a glimpse of it.

Silver highlights had replaced the slightest green sheen that he used to carry. "I guess I look old now," he said.

"No," Chihiro shook her head, leaning against him again. "You've changed, yeah, but ... you're still beautiful."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You are. You'll always be, to me. But still... we gotta talk."

Haku nodded, and they went outside to sit on the porch, which overlooked a koi pond. They sat on the edge, their bodies turned toward each other so their knees were against each other.

"How?" she asked. "And why?"

"As for the how, well, I am not certain. All I know is there was a need, and sometimes, that's enough," he said as he watched the fish trail through the cold water. The sight brought a strange sort of melancholy with it, which curled up through him like the last thin wisp of smoke from a dying fire. He moved closer to Chihiro. "It made a space, I guess. Gods can't be born into electric things, but perhaps we can move into them. As for the why..."

He tilted his head to look at the night sky. It was clearing now, and he could see the hint of stars.

"I don't know that for certain, either," he finally said as he watched the fish gulp at the surface of the pond, seemingly desperate for air that they could not survive in.

"It's not just your looks that have changed," Chihiro said, rather than asked. "What are you the god of now?"

He blinked, realizing that he hadn't even told her what he'd become. She could see the difference, and likely felt it as well, but she didn't know, not the way another spirit would. Despite how wonderful she was, Chihiro was limited by her humanity.

"Give me your cellphone," he said.

She frowned in confusion, knowing her husband's dislike of them. Haku didn't even have one of his own, making him an oddity in high tech Japan. But she frowned and dug into her pocket, pulling out her cute pink phone. "Please don't break it," she said.

Haku might have felt hurt at her distrust, but he had accidentally broken her previous phone so there was a reason for her words. Smiling, he flipped it open and turned it so it was facing her, and she could watched the screen.

Holding the phone felt different. He didn't see it as something to resent or fear, merely a conduit for accessing his new domain. He could feel it out there, and all he had to do was think of what he wanted to reach it. Without touching a button, he had the phone hooked into the Internet and brought up a web page on Shintoism.

Chihiro flinched away from him, just for a second. He knew the reaction had been involuntary; humans often reacted that way when faced with something just out of their ken. Chihiro was human, after all.

But she was also Chihiro to him, and it made his very being ache, even if it was just for a second.

Then she leaning towards him again, hands reaching unquestioningly for the phone. Her eyes were wide, her mouth half open.

Even after all the years they had spent together, Chihiro had never lost her wonder of him. It had been tempered, of course, changing from the young, innocent joy of a child to that of a mature woman who was sure of her place in the world, as well as his place in her life. It was that sort of wonder he saw in her eyes on the rare occasion she woke earlier than he and he found her just gazing at him, smiling a soft, secret smile.

The wonder she had on her face now was not that of a child nor that of a wife. It was just of a human discovering that yes, there were gods, and they were much different than she ever could be. She had never worn quite that expression when facing him.

And Haku found he didn't like that at all.

He let her reclaim the phone, watching for what she would do next. He didn't want to speak, because he might inadvertently damage their relationship. Never before had their love felt so fragile.

"How did you do that?" she asked. "If I'd given you my phone yesterday, you'd probably have caused it to implode."

"I needed to connect the library back to the internet. Mu isn't the right type of spirit to keep that kind of connection going, and I didn't have a specific purpose anymore, not since..." he hesitated, before finishing his thought, "Not since the Kohaku river was dammed."

The words still hurt, but the pain was more distant than it'd ever been in the past. He didn't think he would ever stop mourning, but he was starting to move on.

"And connecting it was like..." he found himself running out of words again. How could one explain the ineffable to someone else? Even to another god, he doubted he could explain how it felt. In losing his - no, the - river, he had lost a part of his godhood, but he had never lost the feeling of being a god.

And now, with the new - no, his new - domain, it wasn't as much of a transition; it was as if he had always been the god of the electric river and would always be. He didn't even have the correct human words or even the tenses to even start describing it all.

He stared at Chihiro silently. After a quiet moment of both of them staring at anything but each other, she finally chuckled and reached for his hand.

"So I gather it's kinda a hard thing to just put in words, huh," she said.

"The only moments I know that was greater," he finally said, because he could and because it was the truth, "was when you called out my name, my whole name, for the first time in the Spirit world. And when I got to take your name, much later."

"Oh," she said, and her fingers tightened, just a bit. And with that, he felt the pain from her earlier flinch ease. "Oh. You idiot. Why didn't you just say that in the first place?"

"Hmm," was all he said in reply.

She laughed then, a light, girlish sound that rung in the air between them. "So if your hair has changed, has your dragonshape changed as well?" she asked.

"It's not out of the question," he replied, smiling at her. He knew he was different, and that would reflect on his other form, the form that was in touch with the spiritual realm and his inner being.

"I want to see," she said.

Changing was something that had always come easily to him; water could change shape at will, and his nature was like that, flowing to fit whatever form was needed. It was never the container that was important.

But for the first time, he did feel just the slightest bit of trepidation.

If his very essence had shifted, then what of the container?

Chihiro's hand against his shoulder was steady. "Hey," she said, "the sky's clear now. Perhaps we can go flying."

Her words and her soft confidence were enough. He rose to his feet and took three steps away, and let the human shape fall from him. And it wasn't like stretching out or stretching thin, or expanding outward, or being pulled apart. It was like being absorbed into a current - an electric one this time. He shivered, just once, and then he had four legs instead of two.

And as always, he turned to look at Chihiro, to gaze at her eyes to find out how he truly looked.

She had pursed her lips, and her hands were on her waist. But the crinkle in her eyes told him that she was trying not to smile, "Your hair's gone all silver and gold. But your scales are still the same." She reached out a hand, stroking him just so underneath where his horns... he still had horns... met his scalp. He crooned.

"Itchy spot's still the same, huh? So, the outside's just gone through a repaint," she chuckled. "C'mon, let's take a test run."

And he found, when he scooped her up and put her on his back ... just like always, that his neck was still shaped just right for her to settle and cling to his horns. And just like always, her laughter was still the same.

And as for the wonder he felt - for the child she used to be, the wife she was now, and the mortal she would always be - it was all rolled up and entwined in how she laid her head against his as he rose to circle the stars.