Disclaimer: I own none of the characters contained within; they belong to their respective owners.
Notes: Originally written for the livejournal community tempsmort.
lollipop rainbow
It is raining here on the edge of the world where Chiaki is drawing lines in the mud with an old brittle stick that will break in her hands soon, from age and weather and the small undue stress of sketching a sopping curlicue. She doesn't stop to see or admire the shapes and sprawling, misshapen characters she cuts from the mud, but continues, endlessly, absorbed, sloshing through the mud in old tennis shoes. The laces drag white, now thickly stained, behind her, and as she pulls the stick along water slowly seeps back into her illegible rainy day scribblings. The water fills in the lines and the shapes; but Chiaki doesn't look back to see, just moves on, watching the cloudy sky as if waiting for a trumpet or a dove, or a rainbow.
-
Ororon waits in the rain with the emptiness of a whispering emotional disease. He feels the wet and the pollution of the world dripping down to his fine suit, fine as all the rest and hardly any different except now it is cloying with the small smells and dirts of the human world. Ororon keeps hid head down and lets the rain fill his suit as if to replace him; as if trying to become him, and he laughs at the thought, unnoticed by the men and women who hurry past him with their umbrellas lifted high to keep dry their fine suits and skirts, so much finer than anything else they own.-
Chiaki sees him first from the corner of her eye, and pauses, her umbrella tilted over her back to keep the rain from soaking her but letting it mist faintly against her legs. She thinks she can see maybe blood trickling from the man bent over, but that isn't what really draws her toward him, her feet shuffling hesitantly and then confidently through the rain slicking down the sidewalk. The way he bends his blonde head forward reminds her of looking in a dusty mirror, at an image of herself bent and refracted into an entirely different person, one who still holds something in common with her. She wonders if he is lonely and holds her hand out to him.-
Chiaki wears an old shirt of her mother's and a pair of too-baggy jeans that sag around her skinny hips and swallow her toes. She leans outside where she can feel the gathering humidity of a storm building somewhere near and driving close. She says, "Rain tonight, Ororon!" as she beams and slides out into the small backyard. Her jeans drag in the grass and she stretches her arms out to the electric feel of a coming rain.Chiaki hums happily under her breath, not hearing Ororon coming to the opened glass door. He rests his head against the doorjamb and watches her hold her hands up to the morning clouds, and he recognizes the hymn she sings softly, like so, not knowing she is singing it. He can see the ghosts of heaven in the way she sings oh God our God, and he thinks he hasn't ever felt this before, watching her smile eagerly in a too-large shirt and jeans nearly falling from her hips.
-
She sleeps through the shaking snarls of thunder tearing through the darkness of three a.m., undisturbed and sleeping in an even, smiling peace. Ororon watches her as the thunder rolls, and waits to see if she is ever afraid. He will rub her shoulder then, and croon some sweet nonsensical thing until she isn't trembling anymore.Chiaki is never afraid. He stays beside her through the night, and leaves only when the sky clears at five in the morning with the sun at the horizon.
-
"Look, look," Chiaki says, turning the lollipop in her mouth and pulling at his sleeve until he follows her outside. She points to the sky. "A rainbow," she says, and smiles brighter than anything Ororon has ever seen.