Title: When The Ink Runs Dry
Summary: At times, she feels homesick. Noriko reflects on herself and her new life.
Prompt: Scars
Fandom: From Far Away Pairing: Izark/Noriko
Oneshot (500 words) Rated K
A/N: Originally posted to Deviantart August 2014
Quietly, so as not to wake her sleeping companion, Noriko closed her notebook and tucked it into her bag, sadly. She shook her pen before pressing it gently into the back of her hand and rubbing the tip across her skin. Nothing. It was completely dead.
She tucked it away anyway. It was silly to be upset over the loss of such a small thing, but she had grown up in a writer's home. Her father left them strewn about the house. Back home she could find them anywhere- under the cabinet, on top of the book case, in the toothbrush container in the bathroom, on the kitchen table... he had even left them in the refrigerator a few times.
They had once been an ordinary part of her life, as constant as homework or sunshine or the very people that she shared breakfast with. The ink running out was symbolic in a way. It was the things she had left behind,an example of how her memory was beginning to slip away. She could no longer recall the exact taste of her favourite fruit, or the set of her brother's eyes. Like sand in an hour glass, she mused. Or the ink in a pen. It was a frightening realization.
Noriko was not a woman who was prone to melancholy, but in the dark little room by the light of a dim candle, reality began to set in.
Just go to sleep, she told herself. Tomorrow you will be too busy to think about it.
She leaned over the bedside table and blew out the candle, then slipped beneath the sheet and pressed against Izark.
I'm not alone, she reminded herself, listening to his breathing. She let her hand run along his rib cage, tracing the scars that decorated his left hip. His hand grasped hers in the darkness.
"Sorry, did I wake you?" she asked in a whisper.
He pulled her into an embrace, and murmured sweetly. "It is not an unpleasant way to wake up... Is everything all right?"
A comfortable silence settled between them while she weighed her words carefully. She didn't want Izark to think that she wanted to leave him, and how could she say that she was sad about a pen without sounding childish?
"Do you ever get homesick?" She eventually asked.
He pulled back. She could feel his eyes on her, scrutinizing her in the dark.
"You are my home."
Her heart skipped a beat before a blush of mortification settled in. His goal had been to distract her, and it had worked. When his lips met hers, they were shaped like a grin, and she forgave his teasing.
She came to another conclusion. Unlike her pen, Noriko was not empty. Even in a strange bed in the darkness of a foreign world, she had a home inside of Izark.
The young woman settled over his scars and pressed a kiss to his lips. "Home, huh?" She really liked the sound of it.