"By contemplating the past, while being engaged in the present, we can now make informed choices about how to move and interact at the Fire, and out in the world in the future." 1)

"A distilled person would know that the Soul, rather than the ego, was now guiding her/his life." 2)

xxx

I'm feeling nothing more than an empty vessel. I opened all the doors of my heart to old friends, while thinking of him. And everything got out… all the ghosts, all the painful memories. They are now making their dance around me and I can see them clearly for the first time in my life. I'm in that dark place I always been and I feel guilt, sorrow, shame, cold and despair as always. But for once I allow Senbonzakura to be here with me. I let him remind me of the feelings of hope and happiness I experienced in the tree days after I drunk Second Love. I secretly wish for them to be the only feelings that will re-enter the open doors when the dance stops.

"Renji!"

Kisuke shouts grabbing his head. I look at him speechless as I feel my heart pound in my chest. Senbonzakura screams in my head telling me Zabimaru is in danger.

"What's happening?" I hear Yourichi ask her husband.

Kisuke looks at me with great concern in his eyes.

"Byakuya, Renji just established a mental touch with me. He is in danger! I couldn't see mush but I felt his pain. This isn't good; Aizen hands must be behind this. We have to help him!"

I froze for a few seconds as I try to register what he's saying between the babbling of Senbonzakura.

"Let's help them, please!" My soul asks of me.

"Why?" I reply coldly. He snarls inside my head like he never done before. He is usually so polite when addressing me, as if I'm his master. This change of behaviour startles me from my frozenness and I feel my body tremble with his harsh words.

"Why? Why? You are joking right?"

"I did not give you permission to address me in that tone. Besides, do you suppose they want to see us after what you have done?" I ask him.

"Maybe they can forgive us if we help them." He replies in a softer voice.

"To be forgiven you have to be sorry for what you did and you are not."

"No… but you are feeling guilty…" He dares using a sympathetic tone with me!

"That's not the reason I want to save him…I don't need forgiveness…"

"Maybe not, but we both need them…"

"I…I don't need anybody…" I reply already knowing I'm lying to myself. As if to punish me, Senbonzakura forces me to see what happened that day.

I try to shake the images off my head. I keep telling him I don't want to see it until I realise I'm begging for him to stop. The images get to the point where he assumes command after I passed out and shifts into the dragon body. I know he will not listen to me and that he will show me everything until the end. The images blur but this time I'm not unconscious. I'm Senbonzakura and I can feel what he felt. I'm inside my dragon body…

I can't see strait. All I feel is this carnal, ferocious desire to predation. I want to dig my nails in tanned skin and rip thru tattoos until I reach Zabimaru. I feel the weight of my heart pounding and telling me that this is wrong; that I will kill myself after kill him. I try to stop but I'm already flying in the shop direction. I remember that he is separated from his soul, so maybe I will be able to spare him. Either way our destiny is doomed. I'm take aback when I realize he united with his soul. So this is the way is going to be. Maybe if Byakuya was awake I could gather forces to kill myself before too late, but the poison is stronger and doesn't let me take any other action than to possess the redhead body. To my dismay and thrill Zabimaru materialises in true form, a huge bipolar beast that I long to devour. I fiercely take them in my arms and start rising towards the sun. I feel them struggle and hear them call me names I never knew existed. My heart is pounding so loud that at some point I stop listening to them. My blood is boiling and my skin is creaking with heat. I look into the baboon eyes and I experience a joy I've never felt before. They are going to be mine; we will be united as one. I let them know everything I'm feeling as I fight for control, as I scream and ask for forgiveness for what I am about to do. Suddenly their struggle stops and I realise they are smiling at me. I know they desire this union as much as I do and that is a relief. But I can't slow down. And, although I find no resistance, I still take them by force. I can hear far happy cries of pleasure as my mind reaches ecstasy. The pleasure almost makes me miscalculate the distance of landing and I fear for brief seconds that we will collide with the ground. However, after the climax, my vision returns and I can guarantee a safe landing for me and my lover. I'm starting to let guilt wash over me when Zabimaru smiles with sparkles in their eyes. I lose my breath.

I feel myself shake as I regain again consciousness of the surroundings of my human body. So that's what truly happened… I've felt the afterwards, the soft tremble of muscles after extenuation…after release. But I didn't know that…that Zabimaru had enjoyed it. I wonder if he knows that his soul liked it… Nevertheless the act is still despicable, so my feelings of guilt are the same as before.

"Do you know where Renji is right now?" I ask Kisuke.

"No, images were all blurry. But I'm sure Senbonzakura can find them. If he reached conjunctio with Zabimaru then they share a link only they can fully comprehend. He should be able to get the notion of where they are, if they are conscious…" Kisuke replies giving me a dark look. I fail to tell him I had a glimpse of what that tie is made of.

"Is Zabimaru conscious?" Time presses on and I need to know if they are still alive.

"I can't really tell in this form, I lost connection as soon as I heard her scream."

"I see, very well then. Just don't knock me unconscious this time."

I never transformed in the presence of anyone before, but I'm not going to care about that right now. I open the nearest window and step out to the balcony while my friends look at me wondering what I am about to do. I close my eyes and I spread my arms feeling the rough wind on my face. It's not a nice wind for flying. The frost bits my skin and in a split second Senbonzakura skin. With the change our chest wound reopens. I never expected it to be so big, but it will heal eventually. If we can survive the blood loss and stay in just one form, that is. But I can't think about our personal safety right now. I didn't think about it when I retrieved the scale and I'm not going to think about it now.

"Can you feel them?"

"Yes… Zabimaru is weak and Renji is unconscious, but they are still alive. They are at the Mountains, but I'm not sure where." I sense relief in Senbonzakura voice and in my heart.

We turn to Kisuke and Yourichi who are looking at Senbonzakura in awe. It's not the first time they see him. It just has been a long time.

"I have an idea of where they are. They are held somewhere in the Mountains. I'm going to find them." He tells them.

"Please be careful. This can be Aizen plan to lure you in. The localization seems appropriate for a dragon to land. He is trying to capture a scale and make sure he destroys all the others. We will be following you on the ground if possible." There's concern in my old friend voice that warms our heart, but the words spoken chill it at the same time.

"Byakuya and I know that. We will be careful…Thank you…" he nods as he jumps out of the balcony. I can feel his despair that matches my own. I just hope is not too late…

xxx

Man, it's been a week since…well since I last saw that royal bastard. And a whole week that I had to listen to Zabimaru complaining on my head. A week that I had to wonder about a lost son and the pain in The Moon voice. Again, I saw the mask crack and I had to deal with the notion that I was probably unfair and misjudged him. I still blame myself for giving him the potion. It was some sick joke of fate that I was the victim of my own research. Well, I guess it was better to be me paying the price, then another. Besides, the events of the last days have been playing in my head like a bad movie.

Fragments and still frames

Even when I'm at the store listening to costumers and to Matsumoto giggles. But especially at night, preventing me from sleep and then disturbing my dreams.

"Tell me sorcerer, why do you kneel before me when your soul over there does not?"

"I would be the happiest man alive if I could somehow connect with her again."

"Are you already the happiest man alive?"

No, I'm not. I'm far from it. I wonder how he knows so much about souls and the way I felt when I was separated from Zabimaru. How he seemed to understand the hurt. How Senbonzakura knew my exact words…

"So you felt him? How? But you claimed you didn't see him"

"Well, we are a soul not a human"

An image and a sound repeat over and over in my dreams.

Long black eyelashes and human footsteps

"So you did fall in love with me and you did feel an animal desire to have conjunctio with me…"

"It was as if he was under some spell… It was not all that bad…"

"It isn't like he is going to bleed to death just because of a scale right?"

"Byakuya-sama you're bleeding!"

Voices keep playing on and on. As a sorcerer, I've trained my mind to focus. But these voices are unable to silence, because they also play in my heart and in my soul.

"As if he was under some spell"

For days Zabimaru insisted on show me what truly happened. I failed to see the relevance in the first few days, but as the week progressed a strange idea started to form.

"Let me see what happened" I asked yesterday, out of myself.

"You sure?"

"Yes, damn it! You been asking me to see it all damn week and now you are putting questions? Hurry up already!"

I see it all and as I emerge from the vision I feel that my heart has found a lost piece. I still feel guilt, I still feel shame, but now I'm almost certain of why Senbonzakura did what he did. And Kisuke is approaching, what a relief! But as the voices fade away, I feel that there's still something that must return to fill the void.

A pair of grey eyes and long black eyelashes

I wonder if he knows what truly happened, if he thinks I'm crazy for acting the way I did. If he can ever forgive me and let himself be forgiven. He was truly in love with me, but can that love last now that the effects of the potion are gone? Is this love for real? I'm just a stray dog, just nobody. I always been nobody…but if I happen to be the one he loves then I guess that's all I want to be…His nobody. I let the thought play in my mind for a while as well as the thought that Senbonzakura was noting but rough…and at the same time…I wonder for the first time if…no, I'm no sure…I can't think of that right now! But I wonder if Byakuya Kuchiki will tell me his story someday and if I will be able to take it in. If my love is also that strong and real.

I'm considering all this when I feel a strange presence outside. Something burns my skins and I'm immediately sure I'm being victim of a binding spell. I see the soft glowing colours of the spell filtering thru the windows and coming down at me like tentacles of light. I try to focus and counteract with one reject spell, but it doesn't work. This magic is far beyond my own. Only two men can do this: Aizen or Kisuke. I send a mental SOS message to Kisuke before I faint.

2)Alchemy Journal 3-1