A/N: Oh boy, it's so nice to see this so soon! I have a whole lot of inspiration, and I'm aiming to provide you guys with another few chapters! How'd ya'll like the last chapter?
Oh wait, you're all supposed to tell me by way of review! So go answer my question! And while you're at it review on this chapter once you're done reading it as well!
I do not own any of the original characters.
I do own in this story:
The characters based on names from the original story:
Nuriko, Tatara, Boushin, Tamahome, Tokaki, Do Chun(You'll find out later who he is. =D), and many more to come.
The characters and names:
Shawana, Seraphina(Or rather, I own a few little things I've added to her life and personality), Phiran(Except for a few things that Cyan originally came up with for him), The evil lady, Liuan- and many more to come.
On to Chapter 9!
"Oh my, that's just so creepy!" Miaka set the book down on the coffee table in the middle of Serap and Shawana's living room. She had just finished reading out a small chapter that had suddenly appeared, about a lady of ice and her thoughts about the cold and ice. "I can't read stuff like that in front of our daughter! I think we should get some dinner, Taka." Miaka grabbed Taka's hand and pulled him off the couch.
"Hey! Why are you throwing me onto the floor?" Taka, now on his hands and knees on the ground, with his wife grasping his shirt sleeve to drag him back up to his feet, scowled up at his wife, before sighing and standing and slipping his arm around her shoulders. "I agree on both accounts, however. No reading scary stories to our children, and indeed, we all need food. Especially you." He grinned at her, once again acting like the boy he had been when he had first met her, and quickly ran to the kitchen to get some food out of Serap's fridge.
They would replace anything that they ate, Taka said to himself in his head, and then he started cooking up a feast for his wife, knowing that if anything important happened in the book, it would still be there when they got back. This of course, coming from the voice of experience.
In the living room the book sat untouched for a while, laying on the coffee table, minding its own business.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Heavy breathing came from the figure lying in the bed with lots of blankets piled atop her. Nuriko sat next to the bed, wiping her forehead with a wet cloth as he watched her fight her way through the sickness that wracked her body.
"I don't know how I'm so-" Shawana stopped talking for a moment to cough and breath once more, trying to stop her insides from hurting as much by concentrating on breathing. "-so sick. I never get sick. I spent years building up immunities." She had spent a lot of time out on farmlands back home in America, where she never had any fancy shots to give her the immunity to a sickness; instead she just fought off every sickness she caught. Ever since she had come to Japan, she had spent a great deal of time in public places, like schools, and gyms, and hadn't gotten sick once, unless you count the occasional chest cold! This seemed to be an illness unknown to her, but she didn't know how she could have gotten it just by being out in the cold.
"Shh. No need to speak." Nuriko said this in a quiet, very handsome sounding(or so Shawana thought) tone. She watched him dab her forehead and neck and the top of her chest, which was bared by her night clothes, with the cold, wet cloth, his hand occasionally meeting her skin. His skin was very warm to the touch, not so very much different from her own currently, but he wasn't sick, so his must have been like that naturally.
In reality, the calm and silent Nuriko who dabbed away her sweat was actually worried about his Priestess. From what she had said, it seemed like she almost never became sick from illnesses in her own land, so what could be causing her to be so sick.
There was a clatter outside the room and then a knock on the door, which then opened slowly. Do Chun peeked his head in and muttered that he was sorry for knocking over Shawana's walking sticks that had been against the wall outside the door. Shawana smiled, closed her eyes and attempted to go to sleep. It was still dark outside, but the sky was beginning to lighten into the grey that came before dawn. She listened as Do Chun came to switch with Nuriko so that he could have a turn caring for his Priestess while Nuriko slept.
Shawana fell asleep, but was only out for about half an hour, as when she opened her eyes the sun was just rising from the horizon, the sky through her window a palette of pink, yellows, and oranges. As she awoke, a sharp erupted from her insides once more, and she let out a sharp sounding gasp. It suddenly felt like her insides were ripping apart, or burning, or being cut into pieces by a sharp knife, or something gory and painful like that.
Do Chun who had been refilling the bowl of water that the cloth was soaked in turned and sat next to her once more. "Are you okay, Priestess?" Shawana couldn't help but find something odd about the way he looked so much more mature than a fifteen year old boy, and his voice sounded odd, but the pain suddenly stopped her from thinking about anything other than breathing. She laid her head to the side, and then realized there was something pricking her neck. She flinched and turned her head straight forward again.
Do Chun had seen her flinch, and he quickly leaned over and helped her take her earrings out. She had two sets of golden studs in both ears that she had completely forgotten about on her trip. She was so used to wearing them that she had forgotten to take them out both times she had slept in this world. As the earrings were removed from her ears and set on the table beside her, in another area of that world another person stopped feeling nauseous and ill.
Do Chun looked at the earrings carefully, and almost unnoticeably reached up to feel his own ear, which Shawana could barely see underneath his wispy brown hair. He quickly used his fingers to brush his hair back from his face as if to cover what he had been doing. Shawana didn't say anything though, because she felt like it was hard enough to breath currently, and she quickly started concentrating on doing so. Suddenly blackness appeared before her eyes and she ceased to sense anything.
"Oh yes, soon, Byakko no Miko, you will be mine."
The voice Shawana heard was very beautiful, and sounded almost like melodic music being played with the most pleasant sounding instrument. It came from a very pale, nude woman with long white hair who stood next to a window. Snow was blowing past the window in what seemed to be bucket loads every second.
'Byakko? But I'm not of Byakko. I'm the Suzaku no Miko..' Shawana thought to herself as she watched the woman stand there and watch the snow. Except, suddenly the woman wasn't standing in the great room of a building, but in a meadow filled with snow.
"Hello Priestess of Byakko. Welcome to my pleasant home." The woman said once again in her melodic voice. As Shawana turned to see whom she spoke, she gasped. A familiar figure with long pinkish red hair stood with a group of people behind her, all wielding weapons and all on horses. Fourteen people were behind her on horses. A few of them she knew to be her own seishi, and others seemed familiar to her, though she had never seen them before. "So many friends? I have no the room in my home for so many." The woman snapped her fingers and several men in outfits of black and gold lept forward from the trees surrounding the snowy meadow.
"Shawana, wake up.." The pleasant voice that came from someone she knew all too well called her back into the real world, away from a terrible dream. She opened her eyes and saw Nuriko watching her with a worried expression while he held her shoulders. "I'm sorry to wake you, but you were about to fling yourself straight off the bed!" Shawana stared without blinking for a moment, then a new round of pain through her body caused her to flinch and she shook his hands away.
"This man is here to help with your healing. He's the local doctor." Shawana looked past Nuriko's body in front of her and saw a very tall, good looking man with short, black hair pulled back by two colored ties wrapped around his forehead.
She gasped and pointed, letting the blankets fall from her arms. "It's you! You were in my dreams. All of us were! Tamahome, Boushin, Do Chun, you, Nuriko, and two others were also there! There was also another Miko, as well as her seven seishi." Shawana said all of this so fast the others in the room could barely catch it.
The man smiled and shooed Nuriko(who still stared at her in surprise) from the bed, where he then sat. "What you saw was a vision, not a dream. I recognize your actions quite well. Dreams do not cause you to act so violently in sleep unless very bad things are happening in them. Visions appear before your eyes only when they include the future or past of someone you love, or are very close to." The man had a very nice sounding voice, which she supposed was good for a doctor to have. "You saw your seishi, Priestess. And something that will happen in the future. I am Myo Juan. Or rather that was the name of my former being. I go by Mitsukake, just as the previous Mitsukake did before me."
Without waiting for her to say anything(because it probably would have taken a bit, what with her shock and her trying to concentrate only on breathing) her placed one hand on her forehead, and his other hand on her chest.
"Hey!" Nuriko exclaimed his dislike of Mitsukake's actions. Shawana turned her scowling gaze to him as if telling him to shut up. He closed his mouth and crossed his arms, walking over to hover just behind Mitsukake.
A glowing red light surrounded Mitsukake's hands and Shawana suddenly felt as if the pain were leaving her body. Soon there was no pain left, and she felt very drowsy. When the healer removed his hands from her, Shawana saw a red tattoo glowing on his left palm. "You really are my seishi.." She murmured. She wouldn't have said that if she had been less tired, but drowsiness bought out the worst in her and caused her to talk without thinking most of the time.
"That wasn't an ordinary sickness, Priestess. Something was poisoning you. I would look through your belongings, it's probably something small that would fit into a man's palm or smaller." Mitsukake said this in a low tone before standing and walking towards the door.
Nuriko quickly replaced Mitsukake in the spot beside her on the bed, and he grasped her hands, gently tucking them underneath the blankets. Shawana couldn't help but notice him more than ever now that he was fully in her vision, and the fact that she had developed feelings for him over the two days before didn't help her sanity. "You're so beautiful, Ryuuen. Your eyes are like the pink coral in a necklace I have back homeā¦" Her eyes were becoming heavier, but she still saw him stare at her with wide eyes, a blush appearing on his cheeks. "I'm glad you're here." And then she closed her eyes as everyone but Nuriko left the room.
"I'm glad to be here.." She heard in a soft voice as the door closed behind Tamahome, who had left last of all. She let her breathing fall into a steady rhythm as she fought off the urge to let sleep come to her. She wanted to hear what he had to say. Just as she was falling into the hands of her pursuer, however, she heard him speak up again. "You are more beautiful than me, Priestess. Your appearance itself makes me believe spring will come again, or that it's already here."
-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Miaka dropped the book once more, grinning at Taka through a mouth full of food. She had been attempting to tell what was happening to her husband while they ate, but was more successful in spitting food half way across the table.
"Okay, what's with the grin, Miaka?" Taka raised his eyebrow as he placed some carrot slices on their daughter's plate, the little girl sitting next to them and listening to an mp3 player that was playing bubbly Japanese pop music just loud enough that she couldn't hear what her parents were saying. This was a cautionary technique that Taka had come up with a while back. Generally he was saying things to his wife that his daughter shouldn't hear though, like comments about certain things she had said the night before during one of those special times parents spent with each other, or other such things. Miaka didn't exactly like the fact her husband did this quite often because of his own wants. Sometimes she enjoyed speaking with her daughter during dinner.
"I said," She gave him that 'annoyed wife' look before taking a drink of water and continuing. "-that Mitsukake just showed up, and Shawana isn't sick anymore! Sounds just like our old friend too." She gave him a heartwarming(to him anyhow) smile as she thought about their past, and their friends from inside the book. "Can I continue now?" Taka nodded and motioned for his wife to continue reading out the words that were still only sprouting into being on the pages ahead.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-
"Mmn." Shawana stretched her arms out above her head, opening her eyes to see full light outside the window, through the snow that was falling very lightly. It was probably about noon, or an hour later. For some reason she just felt that it was great to be alive. This was probably due to the fact that she had been very sick only hours before, but she didn't exactly feel like thinking about such bad topics at that time.
She was about to throw her blankets off and sit up, but then she realized there was someone sleeping part way across her. Nuriko was breathing in and out at a slow, calming pace, his hair wisping across his half hidden face as he slept with his head part way on her lap, and arms lying on either side, bent near his head. She grinned and reached up, tucking her own hair behind her ear, as it had gotten out of the ponytail that she had put in the night before when she had struggled to get ready for bed. Very slowly, she moved his head farther down her lap, and carefully sat up, making sure she didn't jostle him as she did so. His face was very peaceful and beautiful as he slept, and she couldn't help the flush of red that crept up to her cheeks as she watched him sleep.
He clenched his hands and moaned in his sleep, his forehead developed small wrinkles as he frowned. She quickly brought her hand up to his head(almost not even realizing what she was doing), and stroked his hair, pushing back the strands that fell ever so gently onto his cheek and nose. He moaned again, but his hands unclenched from the fabric and he seemed to have a calm over him again. She ran her index finger across his hairline ever so softly, feeling his soft and smooth skin on her own, and then down his cheek, noticing the curving of his cheekbone against his skin.
His nose was straight and slightly tipped on end, giving him a slightly feminine look, and the beauty mark next to his left eye made her smile, though she didn't know why. As her finger crossed his face from feature to feature, gently landing on his full lips(She noticed quite well how soft they were too!) his wrinkled forehead slowly smoothed over once more and his breathing became slow and steady. She leaned forward slowly and used her thumb instead of her index finger to run across his bottom lip, and then his top lip as she did so. She stopped moving as she hovered right over the top of him, almost bent double, and then she ever so carefully moved his head to a more friendly position. He muttered something in his sleep, but didn't awaken.
I've always wanted to do this. She thought to herself as she leaned down the rest of the way and her lips neared his. The feeling of his soft lips against hers made her blush even more than she had moments before. She could feel his breath, warm and steady, against her lips as she kissed him, and then she closed her eyes, letting the moment fill her up a personal kind of happiness. She had feelings for him, but she had known him for only a few days. Though, that was not uncommon in novels, especially romance novels, which she almost wished she were in.
Suddenly she was brought back into the real world from her thoughts as the steady breathing ceased and she could feel the other set of lips involved in the kiss move against her own. They kissed her back and brought another sense of passion into the kiss. Never once opening her eyes she brought her hands up to his neck and sat up, bringing his lips with her, not wanting to let go or open her eyes and find it all to be a dream or some hallucination brought on by sickness.
This time when she leaned, she leaned backward and she could feel the other person involved climb fully on top of her and grasp the back of her head, kissing her more fiercely than before, with more passion, brought on by more emotion than just lust. This was a personal kiss, not a lustful kiss. She encountered lustful kisses before, having had two or three boyfriends before.
Shawana opened her eyes as she drew back from the kiss for breath(who would have thought; You actually need air to live!), and saw the large, orange-ish pink eyes she knew too well staring at her full of emotion, with messy purple hair hanging near her face. She sucked in air ever so slowly before his lips were on hers again, and those beautiful eyes were closed. She longed to see them looking at her again, but instead she closed her own eyes and kissed him back. Then his lips were gone and she felt them reappear against her skin just below her ear, and then at her temple, his hands on either side of her head, brushing gently through her hair, which was spread across the bed around her.
Once again, she opened her eyes to watch him as he kissed along her face and chin and neck, everywhere but her lips until once again that's where he was focused. He deepened the kiss, tugging gently on her lips with his own, breathing deeply each time their lips parted from each other. Getting fed up, Shawana pushed against him and caused him to flip over, so she could have free movement. She took her chance to look into his eyes(Those big pretty ones!), and lowered herself down against his chest, her body pressed entirely against his, and she reached up to push back his hair from his flushed face. There was no need to say anything between the two of them, because it was a time to be silent, or so she thought, and apparently he did too.
Just as she was leaning down to kiss him once more, their lips barely touching, the door opened and Tamahome stepped in before he fully realized the situation in the room at the moment. Fast as lightning, Nuriko was out from under Shawana and sitting in the chair beside the bed and Shawana had jumped off the bed, which she was now pulling the blankets(the ones that had fallen off the bed; funny isn't it, how that happened?) across, and hiding her face by letting her long red hair hang around like a curtain.
When she was sure that her face was mostly pale again, she looked up and saw Tamahome with a raised eyebrow, watching the two of them suspiciously. He set down the tray of breakfast foods on her bed, now back to looking like a normal one, rather than a completely messed up one, and turned. "I think we should stay in town today. There is an army moving through town and out in the same direction we're going, so it's best of we let them get a head start before we try to go around them."
Without another word he exited the room, snapping the door shut very loudly behind him. Shawana sat down near the head of the bed and looked over at Nuriko. He was looking at her as well, which caused her to blush. She felt all warm and fluffy inside, but at the same time, she felt like she was going to pass out because of the embarrassment of kissing someone who hadn't known what she was doing at first.
What happened to my courage! Did it just float away with the interrupter of our mood? She looked down from Nuriko to the food then back up shyly, reaching up to brush her fingers through her hair. She looked at the bedside and was about to get up and grab her brush, but Nuriko beat her to it.
He sat down next her, with his leg pulled up on the bed in front of him, and moved the breakfast food to the chair he had just been sitting on. "Here, let me." He smiled and motioned for her to turn away from him, which she then did. She was going to tell him that he didn't have to brush her hair for her, but ten she figured he wouldn't have offered in the first place if he hadn't wanted to.
There was silence for a few moments as she listened to him breathe and flinched when he brushed a particularly painful knot in her hair(No doubt from their actions previous rather than from her hours of sickness last night). When he finished, he set the brush down but set his hand on her shoulder, holding her still so she didn't move from her current position.
"Why did you kiss me?" He asked simply in a soft tone, while he ran his fingers back and forth along her shoulder blades, causing her to shiver. He leaned forwards and leaned his cheek against the back of her head, smelling the sweet scent of the soap she had used the morning previous in her hair. He brushed her hair to one side, throwing it over her left shoulder so it was out of the way. He didn't want to admit it to her in words, but her kissing him had caused his emotions to untangle themselves(for he had been trying to keep them to himself in a tangled knot inside his body with the emotions that came from being her guard) and burst forth from his body.
"I don't know.." Shawana muttered, turning her head towards him, so his cheek was again hers instead of against her hair. "I just had a sudden urge. I felt like it would help you sleep better, because you were having a bad dream.." He could tell she was only partially lying, as he turned his head so his nose brushed her cheek. He could faintly remember the bad dream she had been talking about, but it had flown away from his consciousness the moment her kiss had awoken him. She turned her body towards him and reached up without even looking to see if it was okay, and traced her finger across his hairline like she had done only a little while before. For some reason, Nuriko seemed to feel calmer than he had a moment before, as if her touch brought a sense of rightness about everything to him.
As she brought her finger down from his hairline to rest on the tip of his nose he grinned and pushed her down on to the bed, kissing her full on the lips not unlike before, about to take it even further, until Shawana shoved him off of her. "Sorry, but I'm hungry for food too. Not that your lips aren't wonderfully delicious, but I was sick all night so I never had any supper." Nuriko laughed at her choice, but allowed her to get up, before he rolled over, with his arms crossed beneath his head.
"Are you going to eat?" Shawana asked him as she picked up the tray from the chair and set it between them on the bed. She already had a bite of strawberry filled pastry in her mouth, so her words were slightly muffled, but he nodded and sat up, grabbing a pastry from the plate of such things on the tray. He watched her as she shoveled food into her mouth, eating as much as a man generally would. He didn't actually have an appetite at the moment. Or rather, he didn't have an appetite for food, but he figured he should probably eat or else he may end up becoming too weak to continue through the day, as he had gotten only four hours of sleep. He had stayed up for a couple of hours after Shawana had fallen asleep.
When they were done with breakfast, Shawana left him to clean up their mess and she grabbed some clothes before exiting the room and going to ask the owner of the inn for a pass into the private bathing room. It was only for rich patrons, but since she had lots of money to spend(due to Boushin being worried about her welfare), she was able to acquire the wanted pass. She felt dirty after being sick all day yesterday and during the night, so she scrubbed her body thoroughly with soap with a fruity scent. After she was done washing her body and hair in the heated bath, she dried and clothed herself before heading back to her room with the dirty clothes under her arm. She stared after Do Chun who passed her with a slight bow, heading to where she had just been, for a moment, then jogged up the stairs to the top floor.
She enjoyed jogging now that her body was entirely healed, and her ankle no longer protested. She threw the door open to her room and grinned at Nuriko before she went over and started taking her things out of her pack and setting them on the bead. "Time to find that mysterious object, since I have nothing else to do." She motioned him over from the fire, and he joined her quickly, inspecting each of the things she had brought with her from the palace, except for her clothing, which she inspected by herself since it was not the best idea for him to be handling her clothing at the current time. Else they may end up in a precarious kind of situation, seeing as all of the other people in the building were very able to come walking in at any moment.
"Aha!" Nuriko let out an exclamation as he picked up a small ring that Shawana didn't recognize at all from the things she had laid out on the bed. "I don't recognize this as something you packed." He would know. She had packed under his watchful eye, just so he could be sure she didn't bring anything unneeded. "Where you get this?" He held it very carefully, and then set it on a cloth napkin left from their breakfast. It was a silver band inset with a single blue sapphire, and it felt cold to the touch. Not just a normal type of cold, but the kind of cold that chilled you deep down, all the way through you body and bones. Shawana brushed her body against Nuriko's carelessly, and touched the ring for just a short moment with her index finger on her right hand, and then backed up, blackness taking over her vision as it had at dawn that morning.
She lost the sense from all of her body for what seemed like minutes; maybe longer, and then she saw a scene ahead of her. Once again it was a snowy scene. Two figures lay in the snow, and a blizzard blew more on to them. She couldn't see who the figures were, because both of them were almost covered in snow. She saw one, lying next to the other, and bigger(probably a man), push themselves up, though it seemed very difficult because his arm gave out half way through moving. The figure moved over the top of the other, and hugged it, speaking in what was probably the loudest voice he could through the cold. She could barely hear the voice, but she caught the word 'protect' and the word 'love' before she saw the figure collapse entirely onto the other.
There was a flash of red light around the two figures and she was once again senseless, black the only thing she saw. "Two spirits will become one in a time of mortal danger. Remember to love, remember to live."
She was thoroughly confused by the words from the source-less voice as she felt her face being breathed on. "Wake up!" She opened her eyes to see those lovely features on Nuriko's face and she smiled, and then quickly snapped back into awareness. She glanced around her surroundings. It had been maybe a minute or two at the most since she blacked out, and she was being held against Nuriko's chest. He had an arm underneath her shoulders and another underneath her thighs, and he was hugging her very close. A lot closer than he would have been yesterday, or even that morning, she was sure. "What's the matter? Why'd you faint?" He looked very caring and worried. Shawana frowned and closed her eyes for a moment.
"I don't know. I just had some sort of vision again." She told him about it, but he didn't put her down, he just kept staring into her eyes, as she was basically face to face with him, holding her close to himself. He seemed to find the vision a very mysterious thing at first but then he just shook the feelings off and shook his head.
"No matter what happened in your vision, you need to make sure that you stop having these visions unless they are related to your own future, because every time you black out it seems to me like your going to die or something." In fact it felt like his heart had stopped beating when he had watched her suddenly fall to the floor next to him without any explanation. At first he had thought the ring had killed her, which made him also feel terribly embarrassed when he had felt for her pulse and felt a thumping heartbeat in her neck. He didn't want to admit it but he had almost been scared to death.
After many minutes and much consoling, Shawana convinced him to put her down, and they repacked her things, keeping the ring in a pouch made of the cloth napkin, inside of Nuriko's waist band, so he wouldn't forget to show it to the others. She was still trying to figure out how the ring had gotten into her things, before she remembered finally. "Ah! On the way out of Eiyou, there was an old lady.. She wandered up to my horse while we were waiting for that wagon train to pass by us, and she and I spoke a few words with her patting my horse! She was patting the horse right near where my pack was!" She snapped her fingers and placed one on her chin as she spoke, whisking her robe's skirt back and forth as she walked across the room to grab her things. They weren't going to stay very long in that inn. Instead they would move to an inn closer to the edge of town, where they were much less noticed than in the center of town.
Do Chun came to help pack Shawana's things down to the horses while Tamahome paid the inn keeper for the stay with her money. They rode away from that inn within minutes; she was sitting behind Nuriko on his horse, as she had lent her to Tamahome for the journey. The teenager preferred to be alone rather than with a random woman whom he had only met the day before. She looked back at the inn as they made their way away from it. She would forever have one wonderful memory from that place, and many bad ones, but no matter what, the inn would always be imprinted upon her memory.
They spent the day gathering a few more things that they would need, like blankets and extra food for when they left town, and then they all stayed in a slightly smaller inn than the one before, joking and having a small feast with the inn owner and his wife.
A/N: Now I ask, how awesome is this!? You guys get two chapters in the course of 24 hours. And I enjoyed writing them a ton. Especially that one particular scene towards the middle of this chapter. =D But what girl doesn't enjoy writing a scene about making out, I ask you?
Anyways, if you guys enjoyed this chapter, even a little, then I say, review!
