Usual not owning of things. I'm getting tired of pointing out the things I don't own. I find I don't own more things than I do. Kind of depressing.

******

The walk had gotten long, and Kenshin slowed his pace to match Hikari's, who was dragging along trying not to look as miserable as she must have felt. She didn't even have the energy to hold her wings up, they drug behind her as despondent as she was.

"I told you to go get some rest," Kenshin said.

"I told you I'm too tired to try and make it home," she answered. Kenshin heard her voice, and knew it to be a half-truth.

"And you don't want to face Firrin," Kenshin said. Death had brought a strange new perception to him, and he was beginning to understand the simplistics Hikari had used on him so many times in his life. He could hear her thoughts, and while the pain had left her, the exhaustion remained, eating away at her reserves and draining her with each passing step.

"That too," she replied. Firrin was Truth, she was Justice. Firrin had created her in the rise of the laws of man, had pulled her from legend and built her into the spirit she was. She had loved Firrin all of her days, and more than once the love between creator and created had reshaped itself into tumultuous affairs of heated passion bordering on warfare.

She had always loved him and stood by him in adversity. He had always been patient with her fickle nature and violent sense of right and wrong. He had tolerated her dalliances with mortality in the past, even though the list was long and spanned most of the globe. But Kenshin had been different. He had appealed to her in a way that Firrin wasn't prepared for. When a choice had to be made, she had literally stabbed her father in the back to kill her brother and save Kenshin's mortality. Kenshin had seen one other person do that, Shishio. But Firrin hadn't died from the wound, it had healed, though the wound to his pride hadn't; and Hikari had explained that Firrin could be merciless because of it.

Kenshin felt her heart drop at the thought of returning to her home. It roiled inside him, stirring up his anger at the idea that she could be afraid to go to her own home. Hikari was never afraid, well, that wasn't exactly true. She was afraid of a great many things. But she had never cowed before them as she did now.

Hikari frowned at Kenshin's line of thinking. His mortal memories and life were ebbing away from him, and he was beginning to take on the aspect of the kami he was to become. She wished she could rest before the time came, but she would never find rest at home.

She was glad he was forgetting. His life had started out so painful and hard, he had lashed out in his youth, and paid for it with his adulthood. Hikari had met him when she had been sent to kill him in revenge for a past act. A mortal had called her down using an old Druidic right that was supposed to wreak divine justice on evildoers. Hikari had been forced from the realm of spirit and fell to earth, breaking her wing in the fall. With her wing broken, she couldn't fly, receive divine guidance, or even understand people when they spoke to her, since her native born language had been a Nordic one that didn't even exist anymore. Rather than do as she was told, she listened to the accuser's side of the story and judged the mortal, in that case, Kenshin. Rather than submit to an act that was not only not in her nature to commit, but it was unjust and would have defied the Divine Will, she had turned a moment in the fight in her favor and had forced Kenshin to cut off her wings to make her mortal. She suffered with the grief of losing her connection and divinity for several weeks, until Firrin came to take her back, explaining that her act of loyalty had given her the right to return home.

What had actually happened was that Hikari had fallen in love with Kenshin, or the life of him. He called up her passions and her maternal instincts without fighting her.

"Hikari?" Kenshin asked, "Why can't I remember my life?"

It had apparently struck him. Hikari straightened a little, "Because you're not supposed to."

Kenshin sighed, "I had thought this time would be for reflecting back over my life to decide my worthiness in one direction or the other."

Hikari nodded, "I know. Actually it is the time for sloughing away the events of your life and stripping yourself free of mortality completely. If you were progressing as most people do, you would be preparing to join the Consciousness, Divine or Infernal, whichever one fits."

"I am afraid that I would be infernal," Kenshin said.

"Hardly," Hikari said, "You are not one or the other. Those who pass on, pass into both There's a duality to it all. Not really a good or an evil, since man was both created by and the creator of all of this. I guess more of a like and don't like? People like certain things about themselves, Generousity, Faith, Love, Happiness, Honesty, Fairness. People don't like other things about themselves, Falsehoods, Greed, Envy, Laziness, you know?"

Kenshin kept quiet, listening.

"You're familiar with the Kami that serve each of the consciousnesses. Myself, Firrin, Agape, There's many others, like Hope and Faith, who are twins joined at the heart. Not physically like chest to chest or anything, but one can not exist without the other. Joy, Freedom, any of the ideals of life and man you can think of. Most of them have a Kami that sponsors that ideal.

"Then there are the infernals, I guess your best word for them is Oni. Farral, who was the spirit of corruption, the Mother of Lies, whose name has never been known because she can't tell even that without lying; misery, grief, hatred, revenge, envy, lust, though I don't know why lust was such a problem. Not my place to put things in order though.

"Most of us call each other by our job. It's sort of a name for us," she shrugged, "Like Firrin calls me Cairys; which is Justice in a form of Gaelic. Firrin is Truth in that same language. Agape is Greek for Love, but not just brotherly love, that's Philos, or whatever the Greek word is for sexual love. Agape is an all encompassing love, divine in nature, mortal in component.

"You know my oldest name, even if you can't pronounce it. So you gave me the same name in your language, and I love it dearly. The best I can remember, I was one of the legendaries, which is a sort of opposite not enemy of the anscestors. Legendaries never actually existed, but belief in them was so strong as to create them in the Great Consciousness, which is what the Divine and Infernal are collectively known as. Legendaries are creatures and peoples of myth. Like dragons. Unicorns, fairies, elves, mermaids, all the great mythical stuff that had that kind of force becomes a legendary. They're ruled by Quetzlcoatal," she stumbled over the word, "the feathered serpent god of the Aztecs."

"So what were you?" Kenshin asked, "A dragon?"

She shook her head, "An elf. Nordic style, not British. Pre-British. Beowulf, Odin the All Father, Loki, Thor kind of stuff. I don't know if I was mortal before that or not. I can't remember, it's been so long ago."

"That would explain your house," Kenshin said, "Alfheim?"

Hikari blinked at him, "What kind of backwards education did you get that teaches you the legends of Western countries?"

Kenshin half smiled at her and veiled his thoughts in mystery.

Hikari rolled her eyes at him, "You do that on purpose. You play the unknowing fool until the right question comes up, then you say something you have no business knowing."

"I thought you could appreciate that," Kenshin said.

"Annoying as hell," she answered, thought he could feel the appreciation in her voice and her mind.

"I'll stop then," he lied.

"Sure," she answered, his lie was as naked to her as a newborn. One of the other gifts she had as Justice was the ability to sort lies from the truth. Not even the best falsehood could escape her scrutiny, and half truths were seen for what they were. It made her difficult company at times, but it had served her well sitting in the courts of men, prickling the hairs of a judge's neck at the telling of a lie.

"How much longer?" Kenshin asked, out of curiousity.

"I don't know," Hikari answered, "Did you bring a watch?"

Kenshin shook his head.

"Have you seen a sun that rises or sets around here?"

Again he shook his head.

"Have you seen stars move in the sky?"

He shook his head even again.

"Then how, pray tell, am I supposed to know what time it is?"

"I thought you just knew," he answered.

"Regrettably," she stated, "Time sense is not a gift we are given. All things happen when they happen, with no nevermind to you or me as to the when, and usually not to the how either. We will get there when we get there. Not a moment before, and not a moment after."

He nodded, "Then I guess we'll get there."

She shook her head and smiled at him, "Smartass."