Chapter 19: Folds in Time

That was odd…

He was seeing two different things at the same time. Closing his eyes he took a deep breath, feeling two sets of lungs fill, one was larger than the other. Focusing on his smallest body, he let the breath go. Koenma opened his eyes while Enma breathed out. Slowly Yama split into the two perspectives of Koenma and Enma, some personality traits here, others there, until they were two separate beings, but also one whole one. It was always so strange, clarifying the different aspects of the same god.

Sitting up in his bed and stretching, taking in the size of his form compared to the rest of his room, he pouts a little bit. Somehow he had forgotten how annoying it was to be so small in relation to everything else. Finally remembering his promise to explain everything to Kiyoshi he gets out of bed and starts looking around the room, trying to remember where all of his clothes were.

After quite a bit of memory searching he managed to get dressed and he remembered where the laundry basket was! That was an improvement over last time; he remembered leaving the clothes he was done with all over the floor, for his primary attendant George to clean up. The poor ogre…hmm that reminded him of something need to do... Koenma leaves his room on The Spirit World, still stumbling slightly as he gets used to the difference in size, and seeks out Botan.

He eventually catches sight of her in the hallway, talking with George who is shouting in alarm, "You don't understand! Something terrible must have happened, Lord Koenma never gets dressed himself! Someone must have kidnapped him!" Koenma shakes his head, that was nearly three cycles ago, all well, they would adapt to the new changes in his behavior. They did well enough last time.

He calls out to her, slightly lost in his thoughts, "Botan-chan"; the Botan who had kissed him must have been the one who saw him die. He wondered how she had managed to remember… He would have to remember to ask when he saw her again; she should be at the shrine with Kiyoshi-san now. Botan catches sight of him as she turns; she smiles brilliantly before bouncing over to him. With a cheeky salute she chirps, "How can I help you Koenma sir!"

He blinks, stunned… In retrospect, her crush had been painfully obvious, and he wondered how he missed it the first time, or the second… or the third…. Shaking it off, he issues his demands, "Get me a portal to the Higurashi shrine ASAP! I need to speak with Kiyoshi-san."

Turning to go to his office, dreading the paperwork he knows is already stacked up taller than he was he pauses, "And George, before I forget…" George gulps, It was so hard to tell what mood Koenma-daiō was in today! "Yes Koenma sir?"

Koenma's smile is slightly evil and very disturbing on his childlike face, and gives George the chills. Not happy today! Definitely not happy! Suddenly in a voice much louder than the size of his body would indicate him capable of, Koenma shouts "It's all your fault!" He turns and stomps away, pleased with himself, leaving George stunned and semi-conscious on the floor. There! That felt better!

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-O-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Kiyoshi was impatient. Koenma-san had promised to meet him after the time fold. But… perhaps it wasn't so bad to wait. Seated next to him on the picnic blanket spread in the shade of his tree was his wife, Kānēshon. In another timeline, this picnic would not have happened. She would have been rushed to the hospital earlier this morning only to come back red eyed and sobbing inconsolably, the child that had given her such a beautiful glow just days before, stillborn.

He sighs; it had taken quite a lot of talking last time to explain that it wasn't her fault, that it was his and he was rather glad to spare her that sorrow this time. He had never been mortal and did not have a soul. No matter how close he dreamt of getting to her, he would never be able to give her a sliver of his soul to match the sliver of hers in their unborn child. One sliver of soul was not enough to see a child born, even if it was enough to leave a woman pregnant. It took two to create a new soul to be their child… The only way she would give birth to a child would be if the kami in charge of reincarnation saw fit to bless their union with an old soul.

His beloved mortal wife touches his arm gently in worry; he was so distracted this morning! "Kiyoshi-kun? Are you alright, do you need me to pray some more?" He holds her hand gently, "I'm well enough for now dear, let's just enjoy this picnic you made and the shade of my tree for a while longer. Have you tried the ōden? You did an amazing job as always." She shakes her head in exasperation, ōden was a winter dish, but every time she asked him what he wanted to eat, he either said he didn't eat human food, or asked for ōden.

She hid it well, but Kiyoshi could tell that she was worried, she was all time now that she knew how close he was to his end. Kiyoshi was a land god; over time, as more and more people in Edo had found other gods to pray to, he had lost territory.

Over and over it had happened as Edo became Tokyo, until he could claim no more territory than the grounds of this shrine. His massive ship had collapsed and shrunk until all that was left was a tiny little row boat barely enough to hold him aloft. There were times he wasn't sure if he was grateful or not that his samurai armor had survived the affair, even if it had lost much of its luster. Eventually, as he started getting too weak to answer the prayers of those who came to him for aid, they had stopped coming, and then, he had begun to flicker.

He had given up at that point and lay slumped against the trunk of his tree for an age, blurring more and more with each successive flicker in and out of existence. He would have remained like that until he disappeared had it not been for one tiny human girl. She had knelt before him, all of seven years old, carnations in her hair, and brown eyes so sincere. She clapped twice before whispering, "I do believe in fairies."

He had been slightly taken aback, after all he was a kami, not a fairy, but it was enough to end his flickering; this amazing, fascinating child had saved him. She had been called away by her mother shortly after, but she had left him the flowers from her hair.

There were hundreds of visits after that. Some were long, and others brief, but she always left him a carnation from her hair. Interestingly enough, it would only be when the girl had grown into a young woman that he would find out what had prompted that unusual statement at their meeting, and all of the flowers she left for him thereafter.

Her class had just finished the book Peter Pan as part of their world literature section. And sitting there flickering against a tree, he had looked like a very big, dying fairy to her young eyes. In her naiveté she had thought that the reason for his improved health was the flowers. Kiyoshi shakes his head in amused exasperation at the memory, remembering how he had sputtered incoherently after she said that.

Eventually he had gotten his thoughts in order and then, that was the day he had told her the only carnation that gave him strength was her. He had fallen in love with a mortal and received her love in return. It was a beautiful thing, but also very sad.

Unlike many of the kami who came to love their charges, he did not have the strength to bind her soul to his domain, so that he might keep her ever after. He could not make her his consort; he couldn't even make her his vassal. His boat would probably dissipate under the strain, and he would not risk her like that.

But…Kānēshon was a soul, without his claim, she would be reincarnated. He would have only a single mortal lifetime with her, before she passed on to the immortal plain. In the end, no matter how amazing this life was, the memories, the feelings and the lessons of this life would be just another buried layer, added to the thousands of others her soul had lived…

She would leave him behind, and he would never get her back.

Out of the corner of his eyes he spots his kannushi, sweeping the stairs to the shrine. The old man was a bachelor who had never had time for a wife, much less any children. He had been quite honored, when the kami he served had asked to be allowed to pose as his son. If Kiyoshi was to have only one lifetime with his beloved then he would make it count.

It took far more power than he really had to spare, but so long as he stayed on the shrine, he had the strength to materialize himself. The strength to be real enough to wed her, to hold her, to give her the children she dreamed of, but would never ask him for. Kiyoshi smiles gently at her, ignoring the naked feeling that modern human clothes left him with after a kami's lifetime in full samurai dress... If only time would bring me back to her each time it folded, I would endure every time.

Having gained a deep affection to it because of her name, Kānēshon was an avid observer of Hanakotoba, and now, so was he. Carnations meant fascination, distinction and love and he wondered if her naming had contained a touch of prophesy. He reaches out and caresses the carnation in her hair before trailing the tips of his fingers down the side of her face, careful of her makeup. He remembered that particular conversation very well, thank you very much. She blushes madly before tugging on his sleeve, "Kiyoshi-kun! I'm a heavily pregnant married woman; you should not be able to make me blush like a school girl with a simple touch!"

Kiyoshi grins mischievously, "But dearest there's nothing simple about me…" Kānēshon huffs in exasperation, shushing him. Suddenly she jerks in surprise and looks down at her lap, placing a hand on her abdomen, "Ah… I do believe my water just broke."

Jumping up from his position, and helping her up, he calls out, "Otousan! The child has come; please you must get her to the hospital!" His kannushi does as he is bidden, and he watches them leave from the bottom steps of the shrine, wishing desperately that he was human enough to follow.

He knew that she would be fine this time, but he would have liked to hold her hand as she brought his first born into the world... Koenma-san's ferry girl, Botan had passed through The Well of Time and dropped off a soul last night. He had fused it with the soul fragment in his beloved's womb quickly, nearly snatching it out of the poor ferry girl's hands.

There was only one seed which The Wheel of Reincarnation did not plant into a soul. The seeds of eternity were fractions of a kami's heart, and the surrender of an infinitesimal sliver of their domain. And last night he gave it gladly. His daughter would hold a single leaf of his power inside her until it was removed by the reincarnation kami. It would be released into the aether then; perhaps it would come back to him, perhaps not. No one had been able to understand just why some returned and others did not, they only knew that they could not force them.

And so, it was the deepest expression of love a kami could make, as they used it to bind an old soul to the fragment of their lovers' soul inside a fetus. There were some kami that did this carelessly, marring the beauty of the act with their carelessness.

There was a reason the leading cause of death among kami was their own children.