Winter's Rose, Chapter Nine
=================================================================She floats in nothingness, no stars, no lights, not even her signature platinum powder dusting around her to relieve the stark blackness. Nor does she feel pain, or joy, or anything else beyond a familiar, infinite patience that reminds her of a sword she once stole. This feels like that kind of patience, the kind that would hold throughout eternity without fading. It's nice.
But something comes to disturb her, as it always does. She wants to be a mere Dream, she no longer wants to be a Dreamer. But the dragon slithering angrily into her space is not going to let her off so easily. "What do you think you are doing??" he snarls at her, a twinge of annoyance marring that peaceful waiting that had been numbing her pain.
"I am waiting," she says finally, her Truth no longer what it used to be. The dragon stares at her, exasperation making every scale stand on end like an enraged cat's fur.
"For what
"For a fairy-tale ending."
"There's no such thing!"
Her reply to that is serene, laconic. "Than I guess I'll be waiting a very long time then, won't I?" Hiei growls in frustration, one foreclaw tugging at one of his headspikes like he would do with his hair in his real body.
"How do we melt the ice?"
"Find my fairy-tale."
"Damn it, Aislin, stop being so damned cryptic! Just tell me, for Kami's sake!"
"I did. Find my fairy-tale. It will tell you how to melt the ice."
With one last snarl, the dragon turns to go, growling tersely over his muscular shoulder, "You've always been too stubborn, the both of you!"
"Who is we?" she asks curiously, able to feel that much in the emptiness she's created.
"You and Kurama!"
"You mean me and Yoko," she corrects with mild irritation. The dragon turns and puts his enormous head directly in front of her, maroon eyes almost as big as her kitsune body.
"No, I mean you and the red-haired idiot beating his fists bloody on your ice-wall, you stupid snowflake!" The fox uncurls from her pose and pricks her ears forward and to the side in an expression of puzzlement.
"But why would Minamino-san do that?"
"Because he is Yoko, stupid!!" The fox gasps, and Hiei has two seconds to register her shock before the Void-scape shatters.
===
Groaning, Hiei feels himself topple out of the Lotus, every muscle screaming at him to stretch before they break when familiar hands catch him and nudge him upright before letting go. He opens bloodshot wine-colored eyes to find Kurama leaning worriedly over him, bloodied hands already neatly healed by--presumably--a very shy little mouse apparition off to their left who is putting away a few brightly-colored vials in her bandoleer.
"You all right?" the red-head asks in concern, and Hiei has to swallow twice before his throat is lubricated enough to let words slide out.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I just gave her the shock of her life, though." Alarm flashes through green eyes, turning to wariness and suspicion.
"And what did you do to do that?"
"Told her who you were."
"Hiei, I am going to wring your scrawny--"
"Hey, it was the only way for me to get her out of the Void, okay? She's part Oracle demon, Kurama-baka. That means the Void is like anywhere else to her; she can come and go freely as long as she has some kind of lodestone as a locator device."
"My earring," the fox murmurs absently, fingering an earlobe that has never felt a needle in memory of one that has. The anger drains away, leaving resignation. "She's going to have my ass for this."
"So long as she's alive to do it, I'll help her," Hiei rumbles back.
"Fine. What do we have to do?"
"That's what I don't get. We have to find her 'fairy-tale'."
"What, you mean her journal?" Both boys whirl to face Ikazuchi, eyes glittering dangerously.
"What did you say?" Kurama purrs, steel beneath the silk.
The lightning-wolf shrugs. "You should know, Yoko-san. She was always talkin' about how if she ever got around to writing a journal or her memoirs, she'd call it 'A Koorime's Fractured Fairy-tale'. Remember?"
Kurama blinks as his old self resignedly hands over the memory, and his lips curl in wistful reminiscence as it replays behind his eyelids. "Oh, yeah. It was because we'd always poke at her about all those hunches that ended up turning out right. Called her our little seer."
"And she'd laugh and poke us right back about being the thick-headed wanna-be heroes the seer is supposed to help all the time," Ikazuchi agrees readily. "So. Does that give you a good starting clue, oh great once-leader?" A cream-blonde eyebrow raises in sardonic query and Kurama has the grace to look somewhat ashamed.
"Don't look at me like that, Iku-kun. It wasn't my idea to have a hunter nearly kill me the night before we were supposed to come back."
"Don't do something like that again and we'll call it even, Boss." The lightning-wolf shrugs and raps his knuckles against the ice, creating a pinging sound that is rather musical in nature. "So, what are we gonna do about your white rose, eh, Yoko?"
"Koenma wants to know if you thought about trying her filing system," a somewhat ragged voice suggests cheerfully from near the end of the corridor. The other thieves part to reveal a tired Yusuke bracing himself against a wall, other hand propping him up by balancing above the knee. "Hey, Hiei."
"Hn. What are you doing here, Detective?" Hiei asks coldly, and receives a cheery grin from the human boy in return.
"Just a message from Koenma. He said 'criminal or not, she's my friend too' or something like that. He's worried about her too, I think. Me, I just wanna have a real match against her, and I can't do that when she's gone and sealed herself in a couple tons of ice. So I thought I'd help."
"How did you find this place, human?" several of the thieves want to know, and Yusuke shrugs.
"Not too hard. Kurama, shake out your shirt." The wary fox-human does so, and a small grey chip falls to the floor. "Tracking beacon. I got the only control. Didn't want Koenma to get the idea he could send in a buncha folk and clear ya'll out or nothin'." The grin on the boy's face can be described as nothing else but mischievous when he tosses the control box into the air and punches it into powder. "So, like I asked: didja try her filing system back at her 'lair'?"
===
"Nothing," Hiei says in disgust several hours later. A monstrous pile of paperwork lies stacked everywhere but on the desk, and three frazzled boys regard it with high distaste. "All that, and there isn't even a clue as to where she hid it."
"Thought fer sure it'd be here," grumbles Yusuke, plopping ungracefully down on the earth-tone rug and contemplating the waste of the last few hours. "She keeps just about everything else in here, why not the stupid journal?"
"Because it'd be too easy," Kurama groans, rubbing at his face with hands that faintly tremble. "Aislin always did like making things difficult."
"She got bored of the Games too easy," Hiei grumbles to himself, tucked safely away from the papers up on the windowsill, eyeing the nearest stack so balefully it is a wonder that it does not burst into flames. "That's why, the stubborn snowflake."
"Think!" Yusuke commands without realizing it. "Where would be the last place we'd look for a nine-hundred plus years old koorime diary?" They think for a few minutes, Yusuke still sitting, Hiei still perching, and Kurama wearing a hole in the rug as he paces. Three heads lift with sudden breaths. "The Vault!" all three shout in excitement.
Wrong! As they discover another several hours later after having searched King Enma's vault from top to bottom. Exhausted, they drag themselves into the special quarters reserved for them and go into their respective rooms to sleep like the dead.
Hiei, like Aislin before him, has the pleasant experience of having his dreams turn into Dreams as his soul subconsciously soars into the Void.
"Aislin!" the dragon roars in worry, having searched for what feels like hours without finding even a speck of that annoying dust always following her around, his limited strength beginning to wane. "Aislin!"
A ball of cold fire blooms into existence beside him, burning away to form a thin body clad in a loose, filmy slip that resembles an oversized night-shirt. "What??" she demands irritably, rubbing at one glazed green eye and glaring daggers at him. "For Ice God's sake, porcupine head, it's three in the fucking morning. Go back to your body and go to sleep, for cryin' out loud."
Hiei can feel all his metaphysical scales--which had been standing almost on end in fright--smooth back down to their normal contours with a faint hissing. "Thank Kami; I thought you'd gone and killed yourself."
She rolls her eyes as though her interrupted activity have been obvious. "Oh for the love of--Hiei, I wasn't suiciding, I was Sleeping! You should know that perfectly well since you've read the same lorebooks as I have!"
"Eh?" Again, as he so often finds himself around this puzzling wisp of a demoness, Hiei is thrown off balance by the statement and must put himself to rights again, matching up this fact with that one and so on. And as he does so, memory supplies the correct lore entries. "But...we thought you..."
"I was," she admits in a long sigh, folding her legs so that it appears she sits on a high stool with an equally high top rung and resting her elbows on her knees, chin cupped in hands. "But then you said that Kurama was also Yoko, and that changed the rules. I only got tired of the small-scale Games everyone else plays, Hiei. Doesn't mean I never set a few in motion of my own."
"And what are the rules of this Game?" Hiei questions warily, answered by a shrug.
"They're still changing, so I haven't worked it out all the way out again yet." She raises a warning finger. "But, I do know this. You have one mortal year to find my journal before I begin the process of fading again, Hiei. One mortal year of Sleep for me, a year of searching for you. Not," she adds thoughtfully, "that I expect you to take a whole year. If that boy really is my Yoko, then he'll find it long before that."
"Then why a year?" he demands.
She breathes another long sigh, stirring up dust all around her and blurring her outline for a brief moment or two. "Are those ears on top of your head merely for decoration, or do they actually work?" she grumps before softening. "Because I truly am tired, Hiei. Tired near unto death. Let me Sleep, let me Dream and be Dreamed, and if in one mortal year you have located my journal and have puzzled out my riddle, then you will have me back safe and whole. My word of honor for it."
"What about Koenma?"
That old, familiar wicked smile blooms. "That all depends. If the crimson-maned boy really is Yoko--and I'm not saying he is or isn't, mind you--then let Koenma try to catch me!" She winks at him before yawning and stretching, her body once more unfolding into the familiar shape of a many-tailed arctic fox and curling into a fluffy ball of white. "Now let me Sleep, Hiei. I have every expectation of seeing you when I wake up."
And as he had done to her once
very long ago, Hiei finds blue-white bands snapping around his wrists
and ankles, hauling him will he, nil he back into the solidarity of his
physical body and the waiting arms of death's gentle sister.
===
Next morning...
Groan. Flinch away from the very bright light creeping around his heavily draped window. Lift hand to feel face, make sure that he's once again solid instead of misty as his thoughts. "Ow. Sonnuva..." he goes on in that vein for several minutes until he runs out of pithy phrases, and only then does he bother to squint open one gritty mulberry eye to gauge what time it is.
The other eye opens and both are blinked to double-check their proper functioning at the sight that stands at the end of his bed. "Yo...ko?"
"Welcome back to the world of the waking," the tall silver fox says sardonically as he steps forward and offers his friend a helping hand to sit up. "Judging by your creative language, I'd have to say Aisuhana dragged you into the Void for a brief chat."
Every part of him complaining that it would like to keep lying down for a couple weeks longer, he accepts the hand and is pulled into a sitting position, the world deciding at that point to go for a swim without him. Moaning, the small kajihenge flops back and pulls his multiple black-covered pillows over his head in an effort to stop the spinning. "A little too long of a chat, it would seem. Are you going to be all right?"
"Third bottle to left, second shelf," Hiei replies thickly, hearing the feather-light footsteps of the kitsune heading in the direction Hiei had pointed at from beneath his sanctuary. Returning, the vibrant presence presses a small round object into Hiei's waiting hand and without looking the black-haired boy sits up, downs the pill and reburies himself without opening his aching eyes.
"Well?" comes the patient query, and Hiei waves a hand for a little more time as the headache medicine goes to work silencing the drums and soothing away the nausea.
"She didn't drag me, I went by myself," he finally says, sitting up slowly to let the world adjust around him. "I don't know how long it took me, but I found her again."
"Why did it take so long?" Yoko asks in curiosity, tilting his head to one side. Hiei swallows experimentally, decides that the fruit he'd grabbed on the run last night won't be making a reappearance, and chooses his next words carefully.
"Those of us who...visit...the Void generally make a sort of...territory...where we spend our time doing whatever we go there to do. The last time I...talked to Aislin...she shattered the Void-scape she had made. So I had to go looking for her," he finishes with a shrug.
"And what did she say?" is the anxious question from the nerve-taut male standing beside the bed. Hiei decides that maybe he feels like living after all and looks up, eyes filled with knowledge he doesn't really want.
"She said we have one mortal year to find her journal and to solve the riddle in it before she starts to fade again. Between now and then, she's going to be Sleeping."
"But how? Even for her, it's impossible to go a year without food."
"You aren't listening, Yoko. Not sleeping, like what we're supposed to do every night. Sleeping, like the Un-named Ones down below. Like...what was that term that idiot used when he was babbling about homework? Cryogenic hibernation. It's how the Sleeping Ones do it. They wrap themselves in their own power and drift into Dreams." Hiei feels frustration boiling at the lack of proper words. It's been so long since he read the lore on the most powerful demons existing that Sleep at the bottom of Demon World, that he's forgotten the archaic words they used that nevertheless explain everything.
But Yoko's brilliant amber eyes clear with understanding, and the confusion is replaced with respect and no little awe. "She must be a Kyubi by now with that kind of strength."
"If it were possible for a fox to have more, she'd have them, baka-kitsune. You forget: the more a bloodline is mixed, the stronger it grows. Were it not for my Jagan, I would be on par with her abilities. And even with it, I am not far behind."
"I have strength, too," Yoko says, sounding mildly offended. Hiei smiles wryly, reaching for the shirt lying rumpled at the end of his bed.
"Not our kind of strength, fox. I was A-class by the time I was five years old."
Wearily the kitsune concedes the point and slumps down onto the edge of the bed, looking drained and tired. "So, then, great one. Where do we look first?"
===
"Of all the sneaky places to put it," mutters Yusuke, idly flipping through the thick journal and letting his eyes pick out interesting bits. "Trust her to really put it in the last place we'd look." It is two months after the search for Aislin's journal had begun, and the sought item is safely in Team Urameshi's hands--currently in its captain's hands, to be specific.
"How was I s'posed to know she left it at my place?" Kuwabara asks aloud for the hundredth time, glancing up from the sprawl of paperwork scattered in front of him on the floor. "'S not like anyone ever tells me anything, anyway."
"A book protected with a rei-keyed lock is something worth mentioning, idiot," Hiei says harshly from his usual perch of their main room's windowsill. "But what do you do? Carry it around in your bookbag for five weeks."
"Hey," the orange-haired boy says defensively, "for all I knew it could have belonged to Shizuru. It'd be like her to come up with something like that."
"He's got a point there," Yusuke mumbles distractedly, before his lips pull back into a wide grin and he starts laughing. "So that's what happens when she eats a pixie! I gotta try that the next chance I get!"
"Don't," groan Hiei and Kurama in unison. "She's completely unpredictable in that state," Kurama adds warningly. "It's like having a catnipped tiger by the tail."
The journal had been noticed by Yusuke one afternoon near the end of a study session, while Kuwabara had been packing up his books. It had tumbled out when the clumsy teen had lost his grip on one strap, tipping everything onto the floor and earning him a disgusted look from the drowsing Hiei on the windowsill. Laughing, Yusuke had helped his friend scoop up the textbooks and papers, but his hand had fallen on the leather-bound volume instead and he'd picked it up in curiosity.
"Hey, Kuwabara, where'd this come from?" the black-haired boy had asked, flipping it over and back again, examining the embossed rose and jewels on the cover and the complicated seal on the back. His friend had looked up from the scattered items and shrugged.
"Dunno. Just popped up in my stuff a couple weeks ago. Figured it was probably Kurama's or somethin' and it'd just gotten mixed up with my junk. If it ain't his and ya want it you can have it." That was when Yusuke had noticed a strange bit of knotwork on the left side, where the book opened, and poked it with an injudicious fingertip. Zap!
"Ouch! What kinda knot is this??" That had woken Hiei up and made him look over in mild inquisitiveness. His eyes had widened at the sight of the book and he'd snatched it out of Yusuke's hands before the teen had time to realize his hands were now empty. Then both teens got smacked upside the head by an upset fire apparition.
"You idiots! This is Aislin's journal!" And both had received a long lecture on knowing what an item looks like before searching for it.
So now they sit around in their quarters at Koenma's, looking for the riddle she'd hidden in the pages of her memories and coming up blank. Again. "Dude, Kurama, does this girl always do this?" Kuwabara asks the red-haired fox.
"Yes!" Hiei snaps in frustration, about ready to go bang his head on a wall--not that he'd admit it. "Every single time! This is her favorite Game, I swear!"
"We must allow her her small pleasures, Hiei," Kurama chides gently, busy writing a report for school. "With all the grief she's experienced, she doesn't have many of those left."
"So we allow her to torture our brains instead?" his friend demands, quivering in indignation. Kurama simply gives him that enigmatic, utterly Yoko smile, never looking up from his writing.
"It makes our minds all the sharper for it, and we have approximately nine months in which to find and solve the riddle. I'd say we have time." Hiei merely growls and goes back to sulking while staring out at the landscape beyond the window.
"Hey, Kurama?" Yusuke is frowning at the book as though it had just insulted him. "What's this she's talking about?" Kurama looks up from him work with a puzzled expression.
"What do you mean?" Yusuke points at a particular passage and reads aloud.
"'It seems that sometimes my life can be represented solely by a ballad and a blade. The ballad as the depressing parts and the blade as a tool of my chosen profession.'"
Kurama and Hiei blink at him. "Repeat that, please?" Yusuke does so, and Kurama holds his hand out for the journal, which Yusuke willingly hands over. Reading carefully, Kurama is unable to find the sentence on either page. "Aisuhana, you sly little vixen," Kurama murmurs, grinning in reluctant admiration. "You planned this a long time ago, didn't you?"
"What are you babbling about now, fox?" Hiei demands, with Kurama turning to look at him with gleaming green eyes.
"She put a species-specific rei lock on the riddle, Hiei. I can't find the sentence Yusuke just read aloud." Hiei face-faults, falling off the sill and onto the floor in disbelief and frustration.
"I hate that girl sometimes," he grits, getting to his feet and rubbing the back of his head, wincing at the knot forming underneath his spiky hair. "Even for a Game, she makes things needlessly complicated."
"So what song and what pointy thing are we looking for?" Kuwabara asks, balancing a pencil on his upper lip from boredom.
"I'm not certain about the song, but I'm certain we already have the blade," Kurama chuckles, pointing to the katana strapped to Hiei's hip. "If I'm not mistaken, Hiei, that is the one she gave you for a birthday present, is it not?"
"Hn," the apparition replies with an affirmative tone.
"Then despite it being yours, it will undoubtedly have a trace of her on it. That would be the physical requirement of the breaking spell she uses for the preservation spell on the ice. I remember that much of her style," Kurama tells them, confidence fluffing up his long ruby-colored hair and making his eyes glow. "She always works with a verbal and physical component for her spells. Now the question is: which song would she be referring to?"
"I can think of one." Everyone looks over at the black form still staring out the window, as if uncertain that he'd actually spoken. Hiei glances out of the corners of his eyes at them for a split second before firmly staring out into the distance, unease stiffening every line in his body. "There was a grief-song, written by a particularly good musician a few years ago. He found out about what happened the night you left for the Ningenkai and wrote a song about it."
"Did anything happen to the musician?" Kurama asks knowingly, and Hiei shrugs.
"He was good enough that she just left him a reminder to watch who he wrote about in the future." One crimson eyebrow goes up.
"He must be excellent if she let him live."
A ghost of a smile curves Hiei's lips the faintest bit. "His name's Talayasen."
"Dude, that Irish bard-guy?" Kuwabara asks in shock. "I thought he died hundreds of years ago!" Startled looks are aimed his way and he starts growing defensive. "Hey, I actually listen in class, which's more'n I can say about this slacker!" Yusuke looks affronted.
"Hey! Koenma, the old hag, and my mom keep me hoppin'! I gotta get my sleep somewhere!"
"And you wonder why your grades are so dismal," Kurama sighs, shaking his head slowly in disapproval. "To answer your question, Talayasen is a fairly powerful bird apparition, of the finch variety, I believe. He spent a few decades in the Ningenkai to learn the Celtic style of music."
Hiei nods slightly. "Aislin has been something of a fan of his music for most of his career, if I remember right."
Kurama sighs. "So likely as not, the song you're thinking of is probably the correct one. If not, I know many, many ballads that would describe her nicely."
Yusuke gives a long, drawn out sigh full of frustration and mild concern. "So. Now we just hafta wait nine more months before we c'n find out if we're right."
===
Nine months later:
"Dude, you know she tried trainin' me last night in my sleep?" Kuwabara asks, the four boys standing in front of the ice-wall blocking the way to Aislin's quarter's. "Weirdest thing. She kept tellin' me; 'only reason you're weaker is because they haven't trained you enough' or somethin' like that."
"I pity you if you ever have to go through one of her training sessions in real life," Ikazuchi tells him seriously, standing off to one side. "She's really scary when she wants to be."
"Chhh, no kiddin'," the orange-haired teen grumbles back. "Thought she was gonna bite my head off a couple of times."
Ignoring them, Yusuke turns to an edgy Kurama and tense Hiei, lopsidedly grinning. "Time to find out if we're right, right?"
Nodding, Hiei steps forward, unsheathing the Manzanaki katana given to him so long ago and driving it deep into the ice. Complicated scrollwork shimmers into view around it, forming something that resembles a filigreed keyhole. Stepping back, Hiei lets the golden-voiced Kurama step up, taking a deep breath before beginning. Several of the watching thieves close their eyes to better listen to their ex-leader and his new singing voice as he sings the ballad known throughout the Makai as 'Winter Rose and Silver Thief'.
When the fires of dawning
Are ages away;
And the starlight and moonlight
Have come out to play;
When the forests and meadows
Are all deep asleep;
A lone Winter's Maiden
Shall lone vigil keep.
The scrollwork glows golden with the first word, twisting and growing brighter as the song continues, Kurama oblivious to it all as he sings with his eyes shut to concentrate better. So he doesn't see the wall of ice beginning to disappear, though the others do. Several of the other thieves sing along with the first chorus, voices rising in harmony with the molten voice of their ex-leader
(White Maiden keeps watching
And waiting for him;
Bright fox will keep fighting
And do naught but win.)
For the love of a Thief-King
Who's long from his home,
And the promise he made her
When he left to roam:
Tears streak unnoticed down the ningen-kitsune's face as he remembers that promise he'd made and broken, just like he'd broken another promise to bring Kuronue home safe.
'Not Death nor her ruler
Can keep me from you--
I'll be back by the dawnlight,
With prizes no few.'
(A jewel Thief-king's downfall
And necklace of gold;
Hunter ended his charmed life
And death took a hold.)
But his promise was broken--
He did not return.
He was slain in the midnight
She later did learn.
Now she waits for his coming
No matter how long;
Winter Rose and Silver Thief--
This is their song.
(For thieves stealing is living
But comes at a price;
Their lives can be forfeit
And gone in a trice.)
The singer opens pain-filled emerald eyes to find the ice vanished as though it never existed, not even a wet spot on the floor of the passageway. With hesitant steps Kurama walks forward, having forgotten the presence of everyone else with the thought that in a few moments he will have his ice-flower back in his arms. A few long strides and he disappears into his old rooms, Hiei firmly blocking the way to everyone else with his retrieved sword.
"Hiei, what're you doing?" Yusuke questions sharply, met by the calm gaze of the shorter apparition.
"I know what waits beyond that door, Detective. To Sleep, a demon or apparition must take on their true form, free of all illusions and disguise, and with beings like us our true forms are to be seen only by those we trust most. You have not earned that privilege. Not yet." Subsiding, the Spirit Detective and the others watch as Hiei draws a barrier in the air with a wave of his hand and vanishes from sight beyond the pristine hanging furs covering the doorway.
He remembers the only other time he had ever seen her real form, and smiles in reminiscence. They'd been about ninety, drunk, and showing off. They'd dared each other, and each had taken the dare, and had never shown each other since. They hadn't needed to. The fire apparition goes far enough for one good look at the scene and leaves again, letting his fox have privacy for this quest. He returns to standing guard in front of the door, arms crossed over his chest and feet spread for balance, his barrier flickering behind him. Yusuke tilts his head to one side in front of the slender youkai, remembering.
"So that green-skinned body with all the eyes isn't your true form, huh?"
"Certainly not."
"Ever gonna show us your real form, shorty?" Kuwabara asks, and receives a very amused, deadly glance in return.
"If you ever see my true form it will mean two things, fool. One; you are about to die. Two; because I am about to kill you." Looking nervous, the two teens subside and take several healthy steps backwards. Hiei smiles behind his expressionless mask--he still has the touch. He spares only one glance for the furs behind him, remembering the sight of a tall silver fox standing before a mirror of ice with the wrong reflection.
===
Kurama stands in front of the small alcove that had once held a marble statue of the foxes' patron goddess Inari, but which now holds something very different. He has changed into his Yoko self--despite what he'd led Koenma and the others (except Hiei) to believe, he has always been able to change back and forth; a fox is a shape-shifter after all--because the wards on the rooms' entrance wouldn't have allowed him in otherwise. And with trembling fingers he traces the outline of his beloved's new face.
Suspended behind a thick layer of water-clear ice is Aislin, stripped of any disguise as Hiei had told Yusuke and the others. On either side of the alcove and leaning in relaxed poses are two sculptures; his fingers follow the smooth jawline of the statue on the left delicately.
"Hello, Kuronue," the fox murmurs to the smiling face. The other statue is himself, wearing a cocky grin as though daring the flesh-and-blood version of himself to fail this. Nodding back, Kurama turns once more back to the sight of the real Aislin.
Her thin body, never very muscular to begin with, has slimmed down even further, adding inches to her height instead and lengthening her limbs to match. Her face is slightly more pointed, framed by pure white locks that tumble in a frozen fall down her back to just below her shoulders, the streaks having changed into shimmery wines, peacock blue and green threaded with gold. Around her neck rests Kuronue's pendant, on the same old chain.
Wings sprout from her shoulderblades, shrunk and folded against her shoulders in rest, thickly scaled as dragons' wings should be but with soft body-feathers uncurling against their roots and alternating with the vane-scales colored pale, pale blue. About half of those feathers are barred in a pattern of soft grey, mixed in with pure white ones. Soft, rounded fox ears colored pale cream sit on top of her head, above her human-like pair that still come to short sharp points like arrowheads--in her left lobe the Tear of the Rose gleams like fresh blood. Nine tails curl around her bare legs and the space behind her, colored the same cream as her ears and tipped in inky black, shaded with the faintest pattern of wolf-brindle in more grays.
Long white lashes rest on milk-pale skin, veiling the ocean-hued orbs beneath, but it is what is above her eyes that draws his attention and makes the dog-fox gasp in shock. Framed in the glittery peacock blue of her demon marking--which has forged new marks in the shape of rounded lightning bolts on her cheeks below her eyes--a sapphire blue Jagan gazes steadfastly at him from her forehead. The instant his gaze is caught by it, darkness swallows him with relentless jaws.
===
"Okay, that was new," Kurama groans, sitting up and putting a hand to his head before looking around, jaw dropping as he takes in his new surroundings. If he didn't know any better, he'd swear he was in space. But no, if he's in space, he wouldn't be able to breathe. If he's actually breathing.
"Ah, and so he catches on," a sardonic voice says from a few feet away. Kurama turns, and finds a very large Arctic fox watching him with knowing turquoise eyes, seated Sphinx-like in a low circle of platinum dust. "Welcome to the Void, Yoko Kurama." On top of the nuances she and Hiei had agreed upon centuries ago there are new additions: leather and the musty scent of old books, the spice-soap the human boy prefers using, clean hair and the indefinable taste of mortality.
"Aislin," Kurama breathes, and the fox blinks at him as the nuances of her name sweep around her as they did once before. Snowcones and plain ice, hearthfire, wool, fox musk and fur, winter's clean crispness, the sharp taste of mint and rosemary. Layered on top of them is the sweet taste of sugar, exotic fruits, the musky scent of raptor feathers and the spiciness of hot peppers--one of her favorite foods--and something indescribably wild.
"You really are Yoko, aren't you?" she asks in a tiny voice, sounding wistful and hopeful and determined not to be all at the same time. "Even though I never brought my beloved here, that was the way he always spoke my name." Looking down, Kurama finds himself once more in his human body but dressed in his favorite outfit from his old life--a beat-up sweater bleached into gray and loose blue pants without hems, the trailing threads tickling across bare feet.
"Aisuhana, I am Yoko," the young man says firmly, the atmosphere ringing in their ears as the reality of this Truth. "I just happen to be something more, now. Part of me is mortal, just like you." She rises from her pose and takes a hesitant step towards him, entire body trembling. "I'm sorry, beloved. I broke another promise to you, but it was one I never, ever meant to break. I'm really home." The world blurs for a moment and he stands once more in his original body, arms open with his familiar gentle smile baring very white teeth.
With a joyful cry she flings herself at
him, a cloud of her dust rising and engulfing her before she leaps from
it in human form and landing in his embrace. He closes his eyes as
everything spins around him, and he lands on something solid.
===
Opening his eyes again, he finds himself once more back in his solid body, with something different. Clinging to him for dear life is his beloved, weeping tears of joy that fall as pure crystal drops that chime--not just ping--as they hit the stone floor. Yoko looks back up to the place where she had Slept to find it empty, only the statues still in place but this time kneeling with heads raised and brilliant smiles on the frozen faces. So this is real. Smiling a smile made of equal parts relief, protectiveness and possession, he wraps his arms around her and simply breathes.
A while later--a space of time that feels at once only an instant long and a millennium--Aislin breaks the hug and steps back, wiping away her tears with a little laugh. "I guess I needed that," she says weakly, and smiles more strongly when Yoko possessively runs his hands through her longer tresses in wonder. Her dress--which he hadn't noticed before but he definitely likes--is a light creation made of something silky and gossamer, swirling around her knees and leaving her shoulders and arms bare but for two thin strips of bunched sheer that keep the dress in place. To him, she looks utterly breath-taking.
"I didn't know you had one of these," Yoko tells her gently, one fingertip tracing delicately around the Jagan's glittering blue outline. Startled, Aislin shuts her normal eyes and looks even more surprised when she can still see Yoko and the hand he holds up.
"Neither did I!" As if that acknowledgment is what it had been waiting for, the Jagan closes and seals, the peacock blue mark thinning and returning to a teardrop shape. Aislin blinks once or twice, reaching up to touch her mark with uncertain fingers. "It's gone?"
"Resealed. I think you'll need to talk to Hiei about opening and closing your Jagan, koishii." Pure delight suddenly blooms across her face, literally lighting the room up a few shades as she regards him with new wonder.
"You're real. I'm not dreaming, right? You're really here."
Laughing, Yoko leans down enough to plant a kiss on her lips before picking her up and spinning in a circle. "I'm real, all right! I'm really real!" He slows and stops, but doesn't put her down, leaning over and nibbling the closest ear--the one with the earring--with affection.
"I missed you so much, my heart-thief."
"And I you. Come on!" he laughs, bouncing her a little and making that new smile grow wider. "Change into your human form so I can go show off my prize to everyone!"
"Since when have I been a prize?" she asks indignantly, lightly punching him on the shoulder to emphasize her displeasure. He steals another kiss before grinning at her.
"Since I had to steal you away from Death herself. You're all mine, aisuhana. Nobody gets to keep you but me until you say otherwise!" Laughing, Aislin vanishes into her platinum dust and reappears as her regular self, but with the longer hair and colored streaks remaining the same. At his happy but questioning look, she shrugs and grins.
"I know you liked it best when my hair was longer. Think of it as a present." Yoko laughs as he strides out, carrying her bridal-style to keep her as close as possible.
"What? You mean having you back isn't enough?"
=================================================================
No, this isn't the end--quite. We still have an epilogue.
