AN: Bent my own rules a little bit in writing this one, but I figured 1k was close enough to what I usually update with anyway. Please let me know what you think if you liked it!
Wasteland, Baby!
The lake was beautiful and lush but rancid. Weeping willows dripped onto the lake's edges. Lilies dotted the surface, milky white blossoms drooping along the water's surface. There was no movement to the water, barely any ripples along the surface, and the air of that afternoon hung heavy with humidity and heat that swallowed around a person. The sky was a swirling mess of heavy, paunchy gray clouds.
And the water looked like black, glossy tar.
Sweat dripped between Sena's shoulder blades, slicked his white shirt against his back and tight around his throat, as he rowed with into the center of the lake in the wooden rowboat. Sena felt like his lungs were swimming, like every breath was the struggle of a nymphalid with wet wings trying to fly. His breath came in burdened gasps, his brow knotted. His trousers were a second skin as they coiled tightly around his tensing legs. The oars were too big in his unpracticed hands, scraped against the delicate skin of his palms.
This was Sena's third time visiting the lake by himself. He was introduced there once before by a friend of the family – a handsome merchant that knew his father and that his mother insisted Sena show around despite the merchant knowing the area better than he himself. So the merchant had shown Sena the lake and had taken him around its perimeter in a slow walk that grew slower and slower as they approached the cover of weeping willows.
The merchant stood out against the green and gray of the lake and the forest. His hair was vibrant red, his eyes a peculiar brown that seemed to flash crimson in the right light behind purple-tinted spectacles, his skin tanned.
Sena was a timid thing – he'd been called boring on more than one occasion – but the merchant was dramatic enough for the both of them, spoke freely, touched freely.
"Wait," Sena said, his eyes rabbit-wide.
The merchant smiled good-naturedly, a gentle sigh escaping his lips, "Of course," and took him back home, but he was gone the next morning.
Before he left, however, he asked for Sena's hand upon his return in a week's time. His parents were displeased, nevertheless, with Sena's actions but accepted on Sena's behalf.
The next day, Sena went to the lake again, wondering. And he found an old wooden rowboat with two oars leaning against it. It was partially obscured by thick shrubbery and a curtain of weeping willow branches. Something had driven him to row into the lake, onto that black, cryptic water, right into the middle.
His arms felt leaden when he reached the center. It was dusk already. Around him, the greenery had been leached of its color, leaving the world in shades of gray and dusky purples. The birds had gone to sleep, the mosquitos were silent. He felt suddenly very exposed and very alone and very cold.
There was a burble of air bubbles breaking the surface next to the rowboat, like the shattering of glass. Sena peered over the edge, dread coaxing at his throat.
It was a man in the water. His linen shirt marbled against his body. His hair was the like the lake – black and shining and thick looking. Even in the quickly darkening night, Sena could make out his strong features and his eyes… dark, piercing, as deep as the lake itself.
Two strong hands appeared as the man hoisted himself onto the rowboat's edge. He leaned against his crossed arms.
The man spoke, and Sena half expected for his breath to smell like rotted fish or rancid water, but it smelled like freshly rained earth, and the breath was cool against Sena's cheek as the man said, "What business do you have here?"
So serious, so stoic, so blunt. The man was nothing like the merchant or his parents or the rest of society. It was just as refreshing as the night breeze easing through the thick summer evening.
"I… I don't know…" Sena shook his head lightly. His mind felt swollen by a heady scent he couldn't place. "What's your name?"
"Seijuro," the man answered. His eyes were intense, burning, black wells that seemed to drink all of Sena up at once. Sena shivered.
"W-what are you doing here?"
"You've already asked a question," Seijuro said. He sounded disappointed.
"Do I only get one question? Wait, where are you going?"
The man fell back into the water without a splash.
It was so dark out now, Sena could hardly see.
"You should leave," Seijuro warned, and started dragging the boat back to the shore.
"But…" Sena had nothing to say as he reached the shore and watched Seijuro dip soundlessly back into the black water.
So Sena returned the next day, earlier, such that the sun was barely dipping. He brought bread and spreads and cheeses and fruits, and a bottle of apple wine, and a towel. The rowboat was in the same place where it was the first time, but cobwebs had been spindled across the frame and the oars as if they had been sitting there for ages untouched. Still, Sena pushed it into the water after brushing off the silver threads, his little food basket safely between his feet as he rowed out.
He ate while he waited to hear from Seijuro. This time, Seijuro appeared at twilight with the melodic breaching.
Sena took a breath. He had prepared what he would say. Seijuro wouldn't eat, so Sena ate the soft, buttery bread spread sticky with preserves and gave the Seijuro the apple wine. Their fingertips brushed together when Seijuro took the wine, a cold wave of lightening so good in the midsummer heat. Sena introduced himself properly while Seijuro drank. And Sena talked about his family, and his aspirations, and what he liked and what he did not like. And Sena did not ask questions, wanting not to squander his one question. And Seijuro took it all in, his inkwell eyes half-starved for everything Sena said.
At dusk, Seijuro said, "It's almost time for me to go."
"Why… why do you have to go?"
"It's in my nature to do so," Seijuro's dark, impassive eyes flickered to something else briefly, "Would you like to join me this evening?"
"How?" Sena asked, taking the wine bottle Seijuro was passing back. Instead of letting go, Seijuro wrapped his hand around Sena's warm hand, treading water, looking up speculatively.
Seijuro shook his head. "Only one question," he reminded Sena, "But you may be here at midday tomorrow," he said simply, finally letting go of Sena's hand as he dipped below the surface.
Lazing insects buzzed around, the odd chirping of birds. Everything sounded muddled by the heat and humidity and rank smell of the sitting water. The atmosphere itself pressed down against the lake and the forest that surrounded it, a warm, suffocating blanket made of moisture.
Sena had never felt a heat like this – it was not like this when he first came here. It seemed the water had not been so dark and thick.
Finally, Sena reached the center of the lake. He sipped from a flask of water while he waited until he heard the sound of Seijuro rising from the water, like the breaking of glass.
"What would you like to know?" Seijuro asked. There was a slight smile pulling along his lips which Sena had never seen before. It softened his face graciously.
"I want to know how we can leave together," Sena said, anxiously bent over the rowboat's edge, leaning against his arms like Seijuro had done the first time they met.
"We can't do that," Seijuro said.
Sena stopped himself from using up his one question thoughtlessly. He was worried about his family and the merchant returning and being married off and never seeing Seijuro again.
"I want us to be together," Sena murmured.
Seijuro neared the rowboat, but he was still out of reach.
"That's possible," Seijuro teased. His dark eyes were looking for something, and Sena felt burned by them.
"Anything, please," Sena said fervently.
Seijuro seemed to have found what he was looking for, and he spoke calmly as he neared the rowboat, "You know what you have to ask."
"How can we be together?" Sena reached out, expecting Seijuro to tangle their hands, but instead Seijuro placed his cold, wet hands against Sena's feverish cheeks.
Sena was struck by something, for this was the first time he'd seen Seijuro in full daylight: he was struck by how pale Seijuro's skin was, the blueness of his lips, the sunken cheeks, the deep hollows beneath those black, roiling-sea eyes.
"Like this," Seijuro said, his breath against Sena's ear, and it smelled rancid. Sena gripped onto Seijuro's forearms, trying to pry them off, but Seijuro's strength was an iron anchor, and Seijuro pitched back into the water, dragging Sena out of the boat and into the water with him. It was far too late for Sena, had been far too late the first time Sena had locked sight with Seijuro's dark eyes.
Sena struggled, splashing his arms and legs as he was dragged just beneath the surface. His mouth was half-sunken, half-afloat. Teased with air at the same moment as being drowned, the boy could do nothing but gasp. His arms were already tired from rowing, and the oppressive heat seemed to push him down as well.
He was briefly let go, but soon enough two arms wrapped around him, encasing his torso, and pressing tight against his lungs, such that even if Sena could struggle to the top for air, he could hardly breath. The black lake water burned as it splashed into his eyes, his mouth, down his throat. He could not find purchase anywhere except for Seijuro who was lurking just too low to provide any support for Sena to breach the surface.
His vision was growing spotty. His movements were jerky yet sluggish like a water-soaked butterfly struggling to escape.
Seijuro's warbled voiced somehow caught Sena's ear, "Look up."
And Sena did look up, with rabbit-wide eyes despite the brackish water, at the sunset, leached of color, and the absence of green in the forest, and the end of everything Sena had done or would do.
"It's not an end," Seijuro's voice said through the black water, "but the start of all that is left to do."
Sena's lungs burned, a bonfire in his chest, and he knew he should not open his mouth to breath in more water, but his instincts insisted he try one last time for breath, and so he opened his mouth and breathed in water that both quenched the fire in his lungs as they stoked the flame.
And Seijuro's arms, strong and heavy, were still wrapped tight around him, but they felt warm now as Sena was pulled deeper, and deeper still, into the black lake.