Disclaimer: Nope. Still no rights to anything but my original characters. Sigh.
Chapter 8: Out of this dimension ~or~ One-hundred-and-one (or just one) ways to use a Pocket Space.
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Hiei is seriously bored. Or rather, lonely. The little fire apparition reflects on the strangeness of that while he sits in a tree on the edge of Nerima district, watching people go past him. A couple of years ago, it wouldn't have mattered. But ever since he met that dratted kitsune, he'd been slowly immersed in a world that involved more than your sword and your next meal. A world where friendship was not a foreign concept, as it still is to his own mind.
He sighs, and goes to another tree to watch more people, and try to block out the thoughts that thunder against his mental shields while still being around them. The fact that they are human no longer really matters to him. He's just tired of living in silence.
To alleviate this new problem, he normally goes and visits with Kurama, but the ningen-bodied fox is still in school, and Hiei does not like the stress-levels of that place. Whoever only knows he's had enough stress in his own life; he does not need it shouted into his skull at full volume by other people.
Damned fox. Why'd he have to go work of some new project at that brick prison, anyway? It's not even a school day. Damn. Damn, damn, damn. And he can't even go train, because that idiotic toddler-ruler has penned him here for the time being while he goes over whatever it is Rei'd had them deliver last week.
Rei. Now there's a thought. Hiei actually smiles in--were it anyone else--what could be considered relief. Not that he'd admit it to anyone, but he actually enjoys the human girl's company almost as much as the fox's for two very good reasons: one, she never bothers to chatter around him as so many seem to need to. And two: she keeps her thoughts firmly to herself, behind shields that he has never been able to crack, even when a curious probe led to a professionally-interested assault. She'd even grinned at him while he did it, daring him to try. Three hours and not even a crack in the defenses later, he'd given up with a shrug and his trademark, 'Hn.'
As invisibly as he had landed in the tree, Hiei slips off, this time towards the safe haven of the Kenobishi Dojo.
He lands on the dojo roof a few minutes later, fully expecting some class or another, as there always seems to be, but to his surprise finds the yard and building empty of people. A ghost of movement and he's at a first story window, and only finds Rei's adoptive parents seated at the kitchen table, enjoying lunch.
Mildly frustrated now, Hiei leaps gracefully and lands without a sound on Rei's bedroom windowsill, fully prepared for a shriek of startlement if his timing is off and she's changing. But what he sees through the window is much more shocking--and much, much more interesting--than a half-dressed girl.
The interior of the room is completely different. And that doesn't mean she's rearranged the furniture, got new stuff or even painted the walls. It's like an entire room from another place simply got picked up and moved here.
An enormous wooden machine Hiei vaguely remembers from a textile shop he'd stolen from (that wool plush had kept him warm as a cloak for months) as being called a 'loom' stands against one wall, with a wooden door made of what looks like cedar where the original one was. A 'spinning wheel' is near the loom. The walls that he can see are logs--probably pine or redwood, Hiei reflects--stacked one on top of the other. A breeze blowing from behind him carries the heady scent of a forest and flowers, something he half-misses from his wandering days.
Now intensely curious, he slides the window open and slips inside. And blinks. The room is suddenly normal again, the new room gone. Confused, he returns to the windowsill and the new room is back, accompanied by the sound of birdsong, where there should be no birds. Positively burning with curiosity, Hiei spends a moment or two sliding in and out the window, trying to enter the strange room without anyone noticing.
And just when a rhythmic humming reaches his ears, he tumbles--his mentor from the thief camp would be furious to see him lose his balance like this!--into the strange room onto the thickly-carpeted floor. Hastily he darts back out the window, suddenly filled with a feeling that this is one place he should not intrude on, only to have his feet encounter soft grasses instead of the walkway he'd expected.
He turns, crouching so that anyone entering the room will not see him, and stares. He is surrounded by wildness. Five hundred feet from this bizarre building an ancient forest of conifers and cool-clime trees springs from rich soil, the space between it and the building carpeted in calf-deep grasses and a myriad of wildflowers, all releasing their intoxicating scents into air that drones with the sounds of bees and insects.
Movement inside the room makes him drop lower, into a coiled crouch that will send him flying should he choose, and he listens. Then is shocked again, when it registers that it is Rei singing.
"Spin for a new day, that's what I do;
Take from the chaos by ones and twos
Threads that are new souls, each whole and true,
And add them to my weaving.
Spin, spin, the destinies,
Spin, spin, the destinies,
Spin, spin, the destinies,
Spin the destinies Fortuna!
Spin for a true day, oh soon you'll see,
Everyone finds their own destiny
But what that is, is defined by me,
Add your color to my weaving!
Spin, spin, the destinies,
Spin, spin, the destinies,
Spin, spin, the destinies,
Spin the destinies Fortuna!
Spin 'till the last day, then you'll be free,
And then you can choose what end you'll see,
This is the price to weave the Tapestry,
Add your own soul to the weaving…"
Hiei is nearly asleep from the soothing repetition of syllables before the meaning of the nonsensical words actually hits him, and he restrains from jolting in place. This ningen…his friend…this scrappy girl that gives him orders and puts him back together so neatly after a fight…is Fate?
He only becomes aware that he's said this last part aloud when the singing stops and he glances upwards to find Rei leaning out the window and looking at him with utter disbelief.
"How in the name of the Higher Ups did you manage to get in here?!"
"Window."
"The window? Impossible! No, no," she corrects herself, shaking her head, "improbable, but not impossible. Sometimes I wonder just how much cat-demon blood your father gave you, Hiei, the way you seem to get into places you really shouldn't be."
"Fire." He nearly grinds his teeth in frustration--no matter how badly surprised he is, he should still manage more than single-word sentences!
"Yes, I know, you're a fire apparition, but did you ever wonder why you lack stature? Your father, not that he'd be willing to give up a secret like that, was a quarter cat apparition. Ju-ust enough for all the benefits, and too little for things like the ears and eyes. He wasn't exactly a giant, either. Your mother didn't know, since all she could see was the fire in him."
She offers him a hand and he takes it, getting pulled to his feet and regaining his perch on the sill. The loom is covered in shining rainbow-colored threads that have their colors split by white every so often along their lengths. That's on the parts that haven't been woven yet. A beautiful but abstract design has been woven and sits on the support threads, waiting.
"Why'd you come today, anyway?"
"Kurama's working on a new project, and I dislike being at that thing he calls a school. Strongly. And your shields are the best I've seen. I figured I could at least be around someone without getting shouted at or ordered around or nattered at."
"And Koenma's probably confined you to this district so one of us can keep an eye on you, ne?" A reluctant nod and Rei smiles in sympathy. "You still want to stick around?"
"You're still allowing me to stay?" Hiei can't keep the disbelief from his voice, or that tiny bit of yearning that she would. The solitude is delicious.
"I can't let you remember anything besides an un-boring afternoon, but yes, you can stay," Rei says quietly. "Given a choice and the peace of this place, I'd never leave here again, either. But! We have an existence outside this pocket dimension, and it's linked quite firmly in the Tapestry. So I just come here to work, which I have quite a bit to catch up on."
Hiei notices the odd garb of green plush velvet dress and crystals strung in rich red hair, and blinks. Rei gives him a lopsided grin and shrugs.
"Call it a uniform. I'll call you when I'm done for the day, all right? But don't go beyond the trees--the dimension ends just out of eyeshot of the cabin." With a nod to show he understands, Hiei drops down onto the ground outside, picks a spot that has just the right amount of sun hitting it--and not too many bees and whatnot buzzing around--and flops down for a nap with Rei's quiet singing in his ears.
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That song kept getting stuck in my head, so I decided to fit a parody to it! Serves it right! Please read and review!