"Rice Paper"

I didn't know how long Tasuki had been sitting alone in the snow, a dazed and infinitely lost expression upon his face; but from the way he shivered so, he must have been there for quite some time -- likely since Mitsukake slid him, sobbing, from his arm and propped him against the sheltering rocks.

With effort, the grave had been dug, and Nuriko's once-beautiful body very gently laid to rest. Tears shed, voices in prayer lifted to the heavens. He was gone to a better place, his sacrifice a beautiful ornament of our own fragile mortality.

And yet, not everyone had said goodbye, even as the hours dragged long, and the sun began to spill red and gold across the darkening mountainside. We would be leaving soon; and if we weren't careful, the aching soul of one of the living would be as lost as that of the dead.

Even now, hours since Nuriko's burial, tears continued to roll slowly down Tasuki's cheeks, hovering near freezing as they streaked to his chin. He was the last of the seishi that I would attend to, the most difficult one to calm. This first loss stung straight to his heart, threatened to split it in two.

Sliding down to settle myself into the snow beside him, I said quietly, "There's talk of moving on soon, na no da."

"Go on ahead. I'll catch up." His voice sounded rough, hoarse, as if it had been silent for many years.

"We won't leave you behind, no da. Besides, you'd get lost in the snow if we went on without you."

"I'd follow your tracks. Like we did when we were coming up here." Tasuki paused, lowering his head as his breath suddenly hitched in his throat. At the memory, fresh tears pattered softly into the snow.

I placed a hand upon his shoulder, and he turned away from me with a sharp jerk.

"No! Just -- no. I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't know what's wrong with me." Raising his head slightly, he brushed both hands across his cheeks, pushing away damp strands of hair. "I must be some fucking baby, really."

"Why do you say that?"

Tasuki clenched his teeth, scrubbing his arm across his eyes again, the fabric of his cloak coming away stained dark with tears. "I -- can't seem to stop. Every time I think I'm fine, on come the goddamn waterworks again."

"That's just it, though. You're not fine. None of us are fine, nor will we be fine for a long, long while."

"But you ain't crying like a kid!" he exclaimed, turning frantic, bloodshot-red eyes to me. "I mean, shit, there's got to be something wrong with me if I'm the only one who's still --"

Once again, I touched my fingertips to his shoulder, stilling his torrent of words. Tasuki jumped slightly, shoulders quivering uncontrollably, but he accepted my hand. "There's nothing wrong with you. It's a natural reaction to grief. Your first true loss, I'd imagine."

"It's -- it's just -- I feel so empty!" Tasuki managed past the jumble of his thoughts and despair-tangled tongue. "And it ain't just because Nuriko's gone, either. Don't you feel it? Something else is dead along with him."

I glanced around, turning my seeing eye to the rest of the seishi as they huddled around the pile of stones and earth and snow that was Nuriko's bed. There was something faded in their hearts and in their motions, like origami swans folded on sun-ragged rice paper. They were pale, diminished, and --much like Tasuki -- bewildered as to the reasons why.

"Tell me, Tasuki, what do you feel?"

"How the hell do you think I feel? Pretty fucking bad, that's how I feel." Tasuki's voice dropped to a low growl, his brimming eyes hardening in disbelief.

I forced a light smile, breaking the tension within me, if not in my companion. "No, not how. What do you feel? I don't mean your emotions. I mean physically, na no da."

Red-tinged eyebrows knitted together in hard thought. "I feel... cold. Cold on the inside. And empty, as if part of me has died..." he whispered.

Nodding slightly, I listened until his voice faded into the wind, replaced only by ragged breathing. "Part of you is dead," I said quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"You felt it, didn't you? That exact moment that Nuriko left this realm, you felt his spirit passing from his body, and from our bodies."

"That... weakness? Cold, painful? Like knives... or flames dragging across my skin?" Tasuki struggled to find an appropriate description of the agony for which there were no words.

"That was Nuriko, saying goodbye, Tasuki."

"I -- I can understand how you'd feel it," said Tasuki slowly, eyes widening in a struggle to comprehend. "You're good at that chi-sensing crap. But -- why could I feel it too?"

Once again, I forced a very weak smile. "I thought you'd know the answer to that by now, no da. Just by being what we are, we're connected. All of us. You, me, Tamahome... And Nuriko, when his spirit was with us. From our very birth, all warriors born under Suzaku's wing have been pre-ordained to have our life forces connected. And when one force is severed --"

"Oh, God, you're kidding me," Tasuki choked, fingertips raising to his lips and a fresh spill of tears leaking from his eyes. "Then that means -- it'll keep going on, like some vicious fucking cycle. If any of us bite it... we're not only losing them, but we're also losing ourselves!"

"It's both our greatest strength and our curse all at once. We can draw so much power from each other. Yet, when one link is severed..." I trailed off, allowing the silence to speak tomes.

Tasuki's shoulders quivered, and he hung his head, flame-tinged hair dangling in front of his eyes. His voice shook in such supreme effort to hold it steady. "Shit, Chichiri. I can't do it anymore. I just don't know if I can do it... How can I keep on fighting if this is how it's going to end?"

"You'd give it up just like that, then? You'd run willingly from your destiny?"

"No! I don't mean that!" Horrified at the very thought, Tasuki snapped his head around, fixing me with a livid glare. "I ain't going to run! I just -- I know it sounds selfish, but --I never thought any of us would ever die. Could ever die."

"We might be warriors of Suzaku, my friend, but we still bleed. We still hurt and feel. We are, at our very core, still human, given to human failings."

"I just... never thought... Even after that battle when Tamahome was under Nakago's spell, I thought, hell, if I could survive that, then we could survive anything!"

Grinning faintly, I turned away, glancing down to the snow, so white at our feet, so stained red not several feet away. "Are you afraid of dying?"

"I ain't scared!" Tasuki cried, voice cracking as it rose sharply upon the wind, echoed across the mountaintops. Calming his voice some, he added in a dull murmur, "I just want to know... What do we do from here?"

"We keep our hearts and our heads. We keep strong. We keep together, no da." With a thin smile, I patted him on the shoulder and started to climb from the bitter snow to my feet. "Come on. It's time."

But Tasuki grabbed the sleeve of my cloak, and I looked down into desperate, dry eyes. "Just... a little while longer. Sit with me a bit longer, would you?"

I spread my cloak out once more and sat down again. The snow was cold, but Tasuki's chi was, as always, warm as a thousand suns. The grief would diminish, given time, but the scars upon his heart would bleed fresh for many years to come. But he would pull through.

The space between us stretched painfully, and our souls ached in unspoken sympathy for our fallen friend.

"Ne, Tasuki," I whispered after a time. "Pray with me."

"What? I can't do that." He frowned, lines aged beyond his seventeen years on this earth creasing deeply into his forehead.

"Why not?"

Tasuki bit his lip, shoulders twitching impatiently. "I don't know the words," he muttered.

I shook my head and unlooped the prayer beads around my neck, passing them into rough, quivering hands. "Your heart knows them well enough."

"Chichiri..."

"Pray," I said, and he dropped his chin to his chest in silent concurrence, lips pressed lightly against the wooden beads.

Bowing my head, I raised the first two fingers of my left hand to my chin, the ancient language taught to me at the monastery flowing like water from my lips. Words that brought phoenixes to life, crafted cities from dust, and lulled infinite peace into aching hearts. A prayer for the dead, a prayer for the living. May we keep our feet in the twisting cycle of eternity.

Shantih. Shantih.

Tasuki's lips moved silently, but his heart lifted his voice above us all in a prayer to ease the grief left behind by the passing of a kindred soul.

Shantih.