Part 5 - "Dyed Colors"
By Jannah P.
Rain pounded against the battered upper decks of the dilapidated ship in which Nodoka and her former captor had taken refuge. Evidently, their pursuers had also taken refuge from the rain, although probably in a far drier place. The palace, no doubt. Nodoka brought her knees closer to her chest in an attempt to conserve as much warmth as possible. Her school uniform seemed far from practical right about now, but there was nothing that could be done about that. The already-soggy wood above her head leaked water, dripping on her hair and clothes every so often. It was only a matter of time before the upper deck gave way completely and the pair found themselves drenched in rainwater. Pale green eyes watched the shadowy form huddled in the corner - perhaps for warmth, perhaps reliving memories best forgotten.
Would the rain ever let up? Nodoka sighed. There was nothing that could be done. The couldn't even build a fire, partially due to their shelter being wooden, partially due to the fact that it was raining heavily. Her nose twitched, and she sneezed rather loudly. Her eyes watered of their own accord.
"Here." She glanced up suddenly to see a hand shoving a partially torn garment in her direction.
"I couldn't. You'd probably catch pneumonia."
"Heh. Now you're worried about my health? Wasn't it only a few hours ago when you thought I was a murderer out to kill you?" Nodoka looked away, mumbling something inaudible. Guihun shook his head, shrugged, then tossed the garment in Nodoka's direction. It landed over her head, draped around her shoulders. She looked over at the still silhouette in the corner. She couldn't accept it. She opened her mouth to say so, but a loud crack of thunder overhead caused her to duck, huddling inside the jacket-like garment draped across her shoulders. She pulled her knees closer to her chest, her injured arm throbbing. Pale green eyes remained tightly shut against the vision of the lightning flashing overhead. Another crack of thunder sounded, and Nodoka cringed, attempting to curl herself into a tighter ball. How long would the storm last?
"The rain's not so bad." The voice was Guihun's. He seemed far more at ease than she was, leaning against the side of the cabin with one leg stretched out in front of him, the other half-bent. Her visions of him were limited to the light provided by the flashes of lightning, which frightened her to no end. He opened one dark green eye, water dripping from the roof of the cabin to splatter on the fabric of his shirt. A flash of lightning revealed his companion as a huddled mass beneath the overgarment he had thrown to her. She was one unusual girl, alright. A Nyosei woman against killing... The idea was absurd.
"It's... it's not the rain that frightens me," she admitted after a while, when the peals of thunder seemed to have died down. She stared at the rain-soaked floorboards, her words occaisonally blotted out by fat droplets of water splattering against the pair, the walls, the floor. "I don't like thunder much - I don't really know why, to tell the truth."
"This sort of storm is nothing, compared to the ones we get in Sairou. Those involve sand blowing in every direction, as well as speeding winds. The thunder there sounds like a tiger's roar, probably with good reason. The one thing I can't stand about them is the fact that no rain falls, or very little." He sighed. "Rain's pretty uncommon. In my home village, water was always hoarded." He grinned. "My family always had a decent amount, because of this." He pointed to the spot beneath his left shoulder where Nodoka had seen a glowing white symbol several times prior.
"Thunder like a tiger's roar..." Nodoka pulled the overgarment tighter around her, blood-red bangs falling into her eyes.
"Yea - Sairou's the country of Byakko, the tiger god. Makes sense then, ne?" Nodoka nodded, slowly. "Yea.. I wonder how the village is holding up. We were going through a pretty bad drought when I left. When the bunch of us left." His eyes seemed to glaze over. "We never thought something like this would happen." Dark green eyes remained staring straight ahead, lost in memories he would undoubtedly never forget, no matter how hard he tried. Gray-green bangs obscured what little vision Nodoka had of his face; after a while she gave up trying. The rain beat a steady rhythm over their heads, broken either by a faint crack of thunder in the distance or the soft splatters of raindrops on the floorboards around them.
*************
"Nodoka-chan.... Nodoka-chan....The blood-haired figure stirred slowly, pale green eyes opening slowly. They were greeted with a pair of dark eyes framed by thick-framed glasses. The eyes blinked, and a smile spread across their owner's face. "You must have been working hard."
"Y....yes..." Nodoka found herself seated in one of the library's cushioned reading chairs. Her arms were folded across the arm of the chair, forming a somewhat crude pillow. Her mouth opened in a yawn, and she sat up. How long had she been asleep? Images flooded her mind. Shifting sands, warrior women, a young man with gray-green hair, rain. She shook her head, touching one hand to her forehead. Was it all a dream, then?
"Are you alright? Headache?" The young man who watched her anxiously was a co-worker and childhood friend. They had started working in the library within a week of each other. Nodoka shook her head once again.
"Just a strange dream, I suppose."
"You ok to get up, or should I stick around a bit longer?"
"I'm fine, really." He patted her on the shoulder, gave her a quick hug, then moved away to retrieve a stack of books he had left on a nearby table. Nodoka watched him vanish into the stacks of non-fiction, pale green eyes cloudy. She didn't remember leaving the dusty room upstairs. Then again, she didn't remember falling asleep either. Stretching, she stood on shaky legs. Perhaps it would be best if she headed home for the night. She yawned again, her hand touching a half-opened book at her elbow. The binding was beyond worn, and the image inside resembled an old-fashioned asian painting. Her hand touched the book's open pages, and she lifted it into her arms. A loud peal of thunder sounded from outside, and she cringed. Only... no. It wasn't thunder. More like...
A tiger's roar.
Her eyes snapped up, certain of what she would see. Before her stood the phantom tiger she had seen once before, golden eyes gleaming, seeming to see past her own eyes and into her soul. The same thunder sounded a second time. The tiger vanished with a blinking of pale green eyes, replaced by a figure illuminated by faint streams of sunlight.A faint peal of thunder echoed in the distance, and Nodoka smiled.
"This is the reality, and that was the dream... just now."
"You..." Nodoka looked up sharply to see Guihun's wide eyes staring at her from his faintly-lit corner. Streams of sunlight caught the pair in their early-morning glow. Nodoka stretched, Guihun's overgarment falling from her shoulders. She was immediately reminded of her injured arm by a sharp pain as she shifted to stretch. A beam of sunlight caught her hair, and dark green eyes widened further in horror. "You're.. you're her."
"W-who?"
"The priestess of Sairou... Byakko no Miko." His face paled. "I'm going to be slaughtered for threatening you."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied, genuinely confused. Guihun shook his head several times, mumbling something she couldn't quite hear. Guihun-kun, please, tell me. What do you mean?"
Her companion was silent for some time, listening to early morning sounds of the island outside their shelter. When he finally brought himself to answer, his voice was quiet, barely audible. "The legends tell of a girl who once came to Sairou. She became the Byakko no Miko and gathered to her the shichiseishi of the tiger-god Byakko. She saved the kingdom from desolation with a single wish, but her most desired wish could not be granted, and she left our world in heartache, never to see the one she cared for most within her or his lifetime. I hadn't known... your hair..." His voice dropped away to nothing, his eyes wide, panicked, staring. Nodoka reached behind her, pulling her hair to the front. Holding her hand before her face, she could see reddish-brown dye covering the fingertips and palm.
"The dye.. it's wearing out." Her voice was quiet as well. Her hair had once been a shade of light brown, but she had decided to dye it dark red only recently. Evidently the hair dye had been something less than permanent. Her bangs fell across her forehead in limp, soggy clumps. Her hair? What did that have to do with anything? But Guihun seemed shaken by her sudden change in hair color. She retrieved his overgarment, offering it to him as she stood.
"You may as well keep it. With what you're wearing, you'll probably need it. Everywhere other than Sairou it gets pretty cold after the rains." He stood as well, looking to the sky. "When we get away from here, I probably won't need it. We'll have to visit her. She's the only one who was around when the Byakko no Miko first came here. She'll know if you are who I think you are. And then..."
"And then?"
"Who knows? They'll probably kill me. Just like the others..." His eyes hazed over once again, growing dark. Ghostly tendrils formed around his ankles. "Ne, we should get moving before they get a chance to start searching again." He located a few boxes in the cabin and piled them up beneath the largest hole in the roof of the cabin. He stepped up, grabbing ahold of the half-rotted wood to pull himself onto the deck. Nodoka followed suit, and Guihun helped her up onto the main deck.
"Guihun-kun, who are you taking me to see?"
Guihun listened carefully for sounds of search parties already out and about. It seemed to be too early for them to be active yet. He motioned for Nodoka to follow him as he began pulling up the softer floorboards of the deck. "To see Lady Hahm."