3
The Milk of Paradise

Akiyama gave Kiyoshi a minute to process the tales, then stood back up, looking pleased about something. "Let's go play!"

Kin was after him in a matter of seconds, and Tora got up to follow after a moment's deliberation. Kiyoshi, still not entirely clear on the "play" concept, didn't move. Inadvertantly, he glanced across at Amida, who was still sitting cross-legged on the grass. Eventually, he (Kiyoshi had decided to think of him as a he until further information was available) returned Kiyoshi's perplexed stare.

"Do I scare you?"

"Uh."

"I wouldn't blame you if I did. I scare me." He stood slowly, and Kiyoshi got a real look at him. At first glance, he hardly seemed anything but a normal, if rather sickly, child. He was tall and scrawny, with a sinuous but wan look and a rather gray complexion. Gradually, one noticed he seemed to be floating a few inches off the ground (or maybe not.) and around the edges he looked like a pen drawing that had run a little. His hair (a rather nondescript shade of blondish-brownish-reddish-grayish-whitish) was a little long and untidy, but seemed to blow against the light breeze. His face was blank, his eyes large, black, and dead (they didn't seem to reflect light). Only half visible, maybe not even there, a tiny pair of horns poked from the top of his head. [A/N: For those who don't know, that's a characteristic of an oni, a Japanese ogre/spirit/.thingy; also worn by Princess Lum]

For all that, Kiyoshi found he wasn't at all afraid. "You don't."

Amida looked surprised, and his face looked like it wasn't used to having an expression. "Really?"

"I'm bad at lying."

A smile crept across Amida's quiet features. "Let's go join the others." This time, Kiyoshi followed without hesitation.

Kin, Akiyama, and Tora were chasing each other in circles around the swings. Kiyoshi stopped to figure out what was going on, remembered watching a few of his neighbors play tag, and sighed. He'd tried to join once, and had passed out in a matter of minutes. He contented himself observing. Kin was the fastest by far, not just because of his legs but due to an extraordinary speed. Tora stumbled often and limped, but kept at it doggedly. Akiyama occasionally dropped to all fours and seemed to make better, if awkward, progress this way. Amida muttered something to himself and joined in. He glided more than he ran.

Kiyoshi felt something in him snap. Chizu's words came back to him. "Go out there, make some friends, get into mischief, be the little boy you are, and forget your heart for the time being." He'd be dying sooner or later, after all. With a full-fledged grin he joined the game. True, he couldn't run very fast and had to rest a lot, but the others didn't mind.

~~~

"Guys! Lunch, you rapscallions!" Every head in the place immediately whipped towards the door, where Chizu and a few older girls were carrying out covered platters. Kiyoshi, stumbling and gasping, supported between Kin and Akiyama, but absolutely happy, was the last to arrive at the tables.

Tora ended up next to him somehow. Her missing hand didn't seem to impede her eating, but it did make it harder to snatch food. Lunch among throngs of children can hardly be anything but a war zone. Kiyoshi was a little sorry for her, but not faring too well himself. Besides, she snarled at him when he tried to hand her a rice ball. Girls, he decided, were scary.

After the great food wars drew to a close, and Kiyoshi felt a little less tired, he wandered off again. Playing and friends were a little wearying. He found himself at the pond again. For amusement's sake, he trailed his fingers in the water. A few of the larger (and, he supposed, if fish were anything like people, nastier) koi swam up and nibbled his fingertips a little. A tiny sigh of contentment escaped him.

Suddenly, he sensed someone next to him. Kiyoshi looked up, and looked up, and looked up. He hadn't realized how tall Kin was, and seen from the ground by an undersized creature half his age, he was a giant. Kiyoshi stood and stepped back a few paces.

Kin didn't seem to notice him. His enormous, mournful, blindingly blue eyes were unfocused but intense, locked on something even Kin might not see. Still, they weren't vacant. Kiyoshi's first impression, that the older boy was mentally slow, couldn't be right. Behind the spacey glaze lay a vicious intelligence and cunning, born of what must have been terrible hardship. He had the same air as the shifty, streetwise thugs Kisho had been friends with, but tempered with a strange innocence.

Kiyoshi wondered if there was any significance in his ears being so long and pointed, his golden hair so floaty, his movements so perfectly synchronized and silent he could have been a. Being largely unfamiliar with sylvan fauna, Kiyoshi guessed deer.

Suddenly, Kin seemed to come out of his trance. "You're from the ocean, aren't you?" His voice sounded so down-to-earth and ordinary.

Utterly confused, Kiyoshi nodded. "How'd you know?"

"You smell like the sea." He smiled, halfway between ethereal and earthy. "You might like this, then." He reached into a ragged leather pouch and drew out a smaller packet wrapped in what looked like leaves. Kiyoshi accepted it, puzzled.

He gasped in surprise when he unrolled the crackling leaves. A seagull, about the size of his palm, lay on his hand. It was carved from some shiny, reddish hardwood, lovingly and with such exacting skill it looked like it would fly off any moment. Even more than its beauty, Kiyoshi was amazed at its resemblance to a toy his father had made for him shortly before he died, a glass gull of almost the same shape. That a master glassblower would trust his infant son with such a masterpiece amazed anyone who didn't know Kiyoshi. He had lost the treasured piece when he and Kisho had so abruptly left.

"Th-thank you." He stared up at the older boy (for, he had realized, Kin was more than a few years older; for all his innocence and cuteness he was probably about thirteen) in something like adoration.

"You lost your brother, someone told me," Kin half-whispered, gazing across the yard. "I think I had a brother once. I don't remember a lot, but I think I had a brother."

Cradling his bird, Kiyoshi timidly reached for Kin's big but delicate hand. The older boy squeezed reassuringly. "You remind me of that bird." He mussed the already unruly loose curls on Kiyoshi's head and wandered off, returning to that spacey state that now seemed more divine than vapid.

After Kin was gone, Kiyoshi tenderly slid the wooden gull into his pocket, dubbing it Sorano as he did so. He pulled off his worn shoes, hand-me-downs from Kisho, and dangled his feet in the water. The koi tickled a little, but he enjoyed it.

He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there when there was a subdued splash to his right. He glanced over to find an enormous tortoiseshell cat batting at the water, trying clumsily for the darting fish he'd grown rather fond of in the last few hours. It was doubtful the awkward feline would catch any of them, but he was annoyed with it anyway.

"Bad cat! Go away!" He twitched his hand in the cat's vague direction.

What felt like a brick struck him in the back of the head and he spilled forward, almost falling into the pond. "Leave my cat alone!"

He recognized the voice as Tora's, he turned ruefully, massaging the back of his head and glaring. "I just told it to go away. It was bothering the fish."

"The fish are stupid! Like you!" She glared back ferociously, and he quailed while she turned her attention on the cat. "Poor Yukio. Let's get some fish from Chizu, kay? That's a good kitty."

Kiyoshi, absurdly sensitive as he'd always been, spoke up. "I really didn't do anything. I like cats. I just thought he would-"

"Shut up!" Tora snapped, still stroking the contented feline cradled in her arms. "Stupid boys."

"Huh?" Kiyoshi didn't know a thing about girls, and wasn't aware of the childhood convention of generally despising the opposite sex until about twelve years of age.

"You leave me and Yukio alone!" She stormed off, leaving an absolutely confused Kiyoshi behind.

"She's weird," he observed to whoever might be listening.

~~~

Kiyoshi spent the next few hours staring into space at the pond's edge, occasionally taking out his little bird to admire it again. He only realized how much time had passed when Chizu's voice echoed across the lawn, calling everyone in for dinner.

Kiyoshi stood slowly, wincing as he realized he'd let himself get sunburned. His pale complexion didn't mix well with late summer sunsets. He wandered back to the house being annoyed with himself.

Supper turned out to be more structured an affair than lunch. Kiyoshi was the last to get in and found an empty seat next to Kin, who looked almost completely out of it but managed a small smile for him. Akiyama was on his other side, and Amida across the table.

The latter didn't eat anything, except drinking half a glass of tea, but Akiyama had an amazing appetite for his size and wasn't especially considerate. If it hadn't been for Kin, Kiyoshi wouldn't have been able to snatch anything.

By desert, the little cat boy had calmed down. "Hey, Kiyoshi, where'd you come from?"

"By the Ocean. Asturian frontier." Kiyoshi didn't even know what the latter phrase meant, but Kisho always said it when asked the same question.

"I'm from Zaibach."

"Oh." That didn't mean much of anything to him, though he sort of thought he'd heard "Zaibach" before.

"Just wonderin." He snatched a sugary concoction from a plate and threw it to Kiyoshi, who smiled even though he didn't have much of a sweet tooth. "How old're you?

"Four."

"I'm six. I think." He stopped to think for a moment. "Can you play chess?"

"Not very well." His mother had taught him in an attempt to keep her sickly son amused.

"But you can?" Akiyama's face lit up, and Amida smiled.

"He lives for chess. And he's good, too," explained the spirit-boy.

Akiyama nodded and blushed, for some reason. The conversation was halted by Chizu's sudden announcement: "Bedtime, you terrors!"

Kiyoshi joined the march out of the large dining room, but Chizu stopped him and Akiyama. "There anyone in the bunk above yours, pussycat?"

"Nope."

"Then that's yours, Kiyoshi. Show him, Aki."

"Yes'm."

As Akiyama led him away, Chizu smiled. "Well?"

"I had fun," Kiyoshi whispered. "Lots."