Our Garden of Snow and Roses

"Between the conception,

And the creation,

Between the emotion,

And the response,

Falls the Shadow."

-- T. S. Eliot

(The Hollow Men)

The First Taste of Temptation in a Garden of Roses

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden.

-- T. S. Eliot

(Burnt Norton)

Kaoru wondered by the river, following the loquacious waters. In the morning, she sleepily and stubbornly trudged onwards, even though her feet felt like lead, and her socks and shoes were soaked. However, Kaoru brightened when she saw a small raft caught up against rocks, seemingly abandoned in the woods as it wavered against the lapping waves. She hurried her tired legs and thought to herself, "Just a little nap in the raft won't hurt," and tried to make the best of it, using her knapsack as a pillow for her little, wooden bed. She soon drifted into a deep sleep, soothed by the rocking of the small boat.

However, because Kaoru was so tired, she did not check how secure against the rocks her little boat was. So while she slept, a playful water sprite from the south spotted the small raft and with a few playful pushes here and there it began to drift from the shore and flew up the river on its own accord, with the help of the local river nymphs that giggled at their mischief. Kaoru hardly stirred at the commotion, lulled by the motion of the waters and her own weariness.

Kaoru slept like the dead. That is until the bright afternoon sun forced her to acknowledge its existence in the sky overhead, once Kaoru's boat exited from the shades provided by the branches of the trees lining the river. The light forced her weary eyes to open just it slowed to a stop. To Kaoru's great surprise, she found that her boat had knocked up against a small pier, ending its swift journey down the river. Rising from her place at the floor of the raft, she looked bewilderedly about. The landscape certainly changed from the one she went to sleep in and Kaoru had a feeling that she had drifted quite far off from where she had been before. How far though, Kaoru couldn't say, but far enough for the landscape to be very different and foreign to her eyes. And because Kaoru didn't bring a watch with her, she couldn't even tell the time of day it was at that moment, or how long she had been dreaming.

The sun suggested the afternoon, but Kaoru would not be able to tell how long a time she had spent on the waters. Yawning, she stretched this way and that, and clamored out of the raft. Wherever she was, there wasn't much she could do about it now. Stepping up the pier, she immediately saw a house, the only house, surrounded by the trees of the forest. It was large and white, very picturesque and secluded. The picket fence jutted from the ground in a pristine and even row, the tiled roof was a pretty navy-blue. The front door was a rich, deep brown with frosted glass and gold trim. The only surprising thing about the house was the bright orange windowsills that seemed out of place on such an elegant and large building like structure. It looked quite new and when Kaoru opened the picket door, it did not squeak so she knew whoever lived in the place certainly took care of every detail in and around the house.

Timidly, for she had never seen so rich a place except in the picture books in Hiko's library, Kaoru walked to the front door. Her hand barely placed two knocks upon it when the door opened and Kaoru came eye to eye with the greenest eyes she'd ever seen. The man didn't look very friendly as he glared down at her expectantly, "What do you want?" His voice was cool and his question was rude, but his tone was so indifferent that Kaoru had a hard time being offended. Well, Kaoru wasn't too offended except for the fact that the stranger was already ordering her around. Kaoru's gaze took in the sight of strange man's face, noting the shock of white hair on his head and the grim line of his firm lips. By the strangers hair color, she would have had a hard time saying he was young, but his face and features were smooth and handsome, lacking the worn wrinkles that comes with age.

He was the most handsome man Kaoru had ever seen, next to Kenshin that is. "My name is Kaoru," Kaoru pointed to herself. "I don't mean to intrude, but can you tell me where I've drifted to? I also don't have a watch to tell the time of day and I'm a bit lost as well."

The stranger looked her up and down, his gaze cool and indifferent. "Aren't you a bit young to be wondering by yourself?" He asked her instead.

Annoyed, Kaoru crossed her arms over her chest, not at all intimidated by the stranger's height or build or cold exterior. "I'm old enough to know you're being very rude." Kaoru answered hotly.

The stranger smirked at her spirit and hitched a thumb over his shoulder. "I'm tending to something right now, come in if you want. It's a bit past two in the afternoon and you're pretty deep in the forest. The nearest place from here is by boat but mine's already stored away for the coming winter. My name is Enishi by the way, and I'm the only one here." Kaoru walked passed a wall of photographs with a single woman as its focal point, though there was a boy and perhaps her family all around her as well. "That's my older sister," Enishi told her when he saw her pause in the hallway. His expression was very withdrawn again, "She doesn't live here anymore, so I'm by myself. Like I said before, I'm the only one living in this house now, and probably the only one you'll meet for a long ways from here."

Kaoru nodded and turned to follow him into the kitchen. Enishi turned out to be surprisingly talkative, but Kaoru guessed it was because he really didn't see anyone much. There was a similar lonely air about him that the Kenshin in her dreams exuded, though Enishi was not half as cold as Kenshin had seemed in those visions Kaoru had of him. Enishi himself did not seem to be the type to dish out personal history on the first meeting, but by the way he talked, Kaoru had the feeling he'd not seen anyone for a very, very long time.

"Do you like orange juice?" Enishi asked from the kitchen. Kaoru hurried into the place and smiled with a grateful nod. "It's strange seeing a girl as young as you wondering about this part of the woods by yourself." Enishi commented as he poured her a glass. "What brought you here, anyway? Where are your parents? Do you know the way back home?"

Kaoru didn't hesitate to tell her story, because she hoped Enishi, secluded as he was, might know something or heard of something that might help her find Kenshin. "My greatest friend in the entire world disappeared last winter on the way to his university. They didn't find anything but his car on the side of the road. Kenshin is very important to me, and I know the police wouldn't look for him because it took so long to even realize he was gone. Even his own father changed his old room into a study already, as if there was no chance of Kenshin returning -- alive or dead." Kaoru looked down sadly at her cup but refused to cry in front of this man at this moment. She glanced up at the white ceiling, also tastefully done, trying to stop her tears from falling from her eyes. "Kenshin and I grew up together. I don't think anyone out there in the world will look for him now except me. So I prepared myself all summer for this trip. I don't know where I'm going, or where he is, but if he's alive, I'll find him. And then—and then we can be together again."

"Fathers are like that," Enishi finally said after a long pause when she finished her story. "Mine would do the same your friend's father had done. After my sister... left, he turned her room into a study too. We had a great fight about it, but to him, his children were just people that came and went in his life." Enishi straightened and looked out the glass windows at the setting sun. "In the end, everyone gets left behind by that very dear person in their hearts if they're not the ones doing the leaving. No one can replace the hole that special person left behind, but the adults insist that it could be done. They all say the same things too: 'Move on, there are others in the world other to replace the one that left. Don't you want to live your life? You should think of yourself now, instead of the past.' Such things I really hate to hear, as if being selfish would make me feel better about being left behind. As if I could easily forget the most important person in my heart and that it is so easy to move on. But what they don't understand is that you can't move on, that you are stuck in this hole with all the memories most precious and most painful to your heart."

Kaoru gripped her glass, feeling a bond with Enishi for that was the way she felt about Kenshin. Hearing the words spoken so clearly as a reflection of her emotions that, up to that moment, no one understood, Kaoru felt the tears she'd been trying to hide slide down her face. "Thank you," she said, "for understanding." She explained when Enishi's pained look turned to worry when he saw her face marred by tears. Kaoru's blue eyes sparkled darkly, like the reflection of a night's sky in moonlit waters before she quickly tried to wipe away her tears. Enishi blinked at her gaze, he had never seen such emotion in someone as young as her before. But through it all, she was smiling happily, as if what he said brought her joy, a painful type of joy. Her embarrassed sniffles broke the mood as he teased and laughed with her.

There, in his lonely kitchen, this girl radiated a love for someone only she remembered with her whole heart. Somehow, Enishi felt himself moved by her quest and was slowly beginning to really envy this person he didn't even know existed till she had knocked on his door. This Kenshin was very lucky to have someone like her, Enishi thought.

"You can stay the night, if you want." Enishi told her, resolving that if he could keep Kaoru there with him forever, he would. In the woods, Enishi had been by himself for so long he could only vaguely recall what it meant to not feel lonely. No one came to visit, and none of his family members had returned from the places they had gone. Until now, Enishi had forgotten entirely about human companionship, and how warm such a feeling could be.

"Enishi," Kaoru suddenly looked to him as if she remembered something. "Have you seen a boy with hair the color of a cardinal's feather, one eye the color of spring irises and the other that of a tiger's eye?" Surprised by this question, Enishi thought on it a bit. If he did, at this moment, he wouldn't have told her that he did. Still, he didn't remember seeing such a striking man, except...

"No," Enishi shook his head instead. He didn't really want to lie to Kaoru's hopeful face, so he turned his gaze outside again. "I don't remember seeing such a person." From the corner of his eyes he saw her slump in disappointment at the news. "Hey," he tried to cheer her up. "We have a garden here, you know? My sister and I planted it together when we were young," Enishi smiled boyishly at Kaoru then. "Want to see it?"

Kaoru wanted to say no, but at the hopeful look on Enishi's face, she nodded reluctantly. "It couldn't hurt to spend a little time with such a lonely man," Kaoru reasoned to herself. So he took her around the kitchen to a beautiful door with windows clearly displaying a part of the garden. Kaoru walked out into the garden and gasped as she looked around, everywhere there were flowers in abundance. Some were the types she had planted with Kenshin in their own small garden on her small roof, and others she'd never even knew existed until that very moment. It was a beautiful garden, and her feet carried her all over. Enishi smiled at the awe on her face as he pointed out this flower and that. Kaoru looked and looked, her eyes lingering at the fountain with nymph's bathing under cool waters, but she stopped completely at the section of the garden where every rose of every color bloomed.

"Roses are very resilient, aren't they?" Kaoru asked softly.

Enishi happily agreed and told her how roses were his sister's favorite flowers. "She wanted one of every kind and so she planted them here. This is her special garden. When I was very young, I would help her plant the flowers and take care of them everyday. We would play here too, and she would laugh and smile for me like she would never do for another person." Enishi was saddened by the memories.

Kaoru gazed at the red roses, because they reminded her of Kenshin's hair. She looked all around and the flowers just reminded her of Kenshin telling her how she was to grow up as resilient as roses were. "Kenshin," Kaoru whispered. This time the tears that ran down her face were very sad and filled with her emotions for Kenshin, each drop was one of times she could never call back to relive as she wished to.

"So remember this, Kaoru, your strength makes you more beautiful..."

And Kaoru sobbed before the flowers until she was sleepy and tired. Her head pounded and her face was puffy from the salty tears. Enishi held her through it all, and carried her to the guest room in his big house. "Stay," he compelled her. "Stay and rest." So Kaoru stayed and rested, closing her eyes to the world and her painful memories. It was easy to do so in such a house, secluded from the world as it was. It was easy to do it with a person like Enishi who was also trying to run away from painful memories by living in a place filled only with happy ones. "You only have to remember what you want to," Enishi assured her as her eyes begin to drop. "Stay with me here, forever," he told her softly as he kissed her forehead tenderly. But Kaoru did not hear the last part of Enishi's words, nor did she feel the soft press of his lips on her forehead for she had already fallen into a deep, deep sleep. And this time, instead of Kenshin, she dreamt of a large, beautiful garden to play in and a large white house to call home.

For once, there was no Kenshin in her dreams.

-----

In the morning, Enishi rose and woke Kaoru with sweet smelling breakfast. When she woke, Kaoru couldn't remember a day without Enishi in her life. So she smiled happily and helped him wash the dishes in the kitchen when they were done with eating. Kaoru ran into the garden after breakfast, excited to see the flowers in bloom. She ran and ran until she got to a place where it was empty of any flowers. Kaoru looked at the freshly turned dirt, her head tilted this way and that. "Wasn't there supposed to be something there?" Kaoru thought, feeling slightly bewildered.

Enishi came and rested his hands on Kaoru's thin shoulders. "What are you looking at?" He inquired.

"It feels empty there, somehow," Kaoru said puzzled as she pointed to the dark place where the earth was bare to the eyes. "Was there something here before?" She inquired as she pointed to the empty space.

But Enishi shook his head and smiled at her, gently rapping his knuckles on her forehead. "Silly," he teased her, "Have you not been sleeping enough?"

Kaoru rubbed her forehead stubbornly, "I was sure," she muttered to herself. But then shrugged when she couldn't recall what she had been sure about. She left the empty part of the garden then and raced around, grinning ear to ear as she flicked water onto Enishi's neck when he wasn't looking. They ended up playing all day in the sun, and when it set, Enishi made them dinner and Kaoru helped -- though she nearly got kicked out of the kitchen when she burned the pot she was using to boil water. In the evening, she found books in their library, and for a reason she could not explain totally to herself, she asked Enishi to read to her. Wrapped up on the couch beside him, Enishi held her and read to her whatever she wanted him to.

Blissful, happy days passed quickly by Kaoru as she resided in the house by the river. And while the outside trees began to show the deepness of autumn setting in with each golden leaf that fell and the splashes of color all over, the time in the house did not seemed to move either forwards or backwards. One day, Kaoru walked by the hall and passed by the photographs, noting that she was somehow in quite a few of them by now, and not remembering a time when she wasn't a part of the photos. "I don't remember Sister very well," Kaoru scratched her head as she looked at the photograph of Enishi's sister on the wall. "What was she like?" Kaoru asked Enishi that evening as he kissed her forehead tenderly goodnight after he had tucked her in. Surprised by the question, Enishi studied Kaoru's curious expression for a few moments, contemplating how to answer her question. Kaoru had been wondering for some time, but only now did she remember to ask it. Somehow, in this house, she couldn't remember things very well.

"Tomoe was a very shy woman," Enishi said smiling fondly down at Kaoru when he decided that the truth couldn't hurt. There was a great sadness in his eyes when he spoke of Tomoe though, but it was a happy type of sad remembrance, filled with nostalgia. "She wasn't very open to anyone else but me, because I was her little brother. This was before you came, Kaoru," he explained to Kaoru tenderly. "She loved the garden, but one day, she met a man. He charmed her into believing everything he said, but he was a liar, that he was. But Tomoe wouldn't hear one bad word about him, so she kept on meeting him and kept on falling more and more in love with the man. Still, the seasons passed and she brought him into her garden, and he told her there that he was leaving." Enishi wore an angry expression on his face and he gathered Kaoru smaller form into a tight embrace, as if he was afraid she would disappear like his sister. "He promised her that he would bring back to her a branch of red plum, a flower missing in her garden. And she was reluctant-- no, she was totally against him going. But she loved him and so, she let him leave. But the Liar didn't return. He broke his promise and there was no red plum branch or the wedding she was so sure they were having later in the summer that year. The Liar made her cry and stay in her room till days and days went by.

Father tried to talk her out of it but he gave up quickly. I tried to wake her up to the lies that Liar told her, but she would just stare and stare out into the garden, at the garden without the red-plum tree to blossom as he had promised to give her when he returned. And then, one day, she just disappeared from this house. Father went looking up and down the woods for her, calling her name, but Tomoe didn't return his calls. Father went into the nearby villages to look for her, trying to find anyone who had seen her, but no one had. And then, one day, Father didn't return either. I wanted to go look, more than anything, but the days passed one by one and I feared that if I went they might return to this empty house and leave again. I began to convince myself that they would return on their own when they were ready. But no one returned, and nobody came to visit me at this house by the river."

Kaoru clutched her fingers over the fabric of Enishi's shirt. "That was a very sad story," she closed her eyes and snuggled into the warmth of his embrace, not minding how closely he held her to him. "But you have me now, Enishi. And I'll never leave you," she promised with the child-like naivety that she had possessed before Kenshin's departure.

"Mm," Enishi sighed happily. "I have you now, Kaoru, and you'll never leave me." He echoed her words like a promise he held closest to his heart.

So autumn passed outside the house that knew no seasons. Soon, winter did as well, and then spring. When summer came again, Kaoru pricked herself with a needle as she knitted. "It'll be my second birthday with Enishi," she told him excitedly even as he kissed her injured digit worriedly, a half-smile on his lips at her clumsiness. "And Enishi's birthday is also coming soon, sooner actually!" And he smiled at her as she sewed and knitted away, but refused to show him what it was that she was making. "It's a surprise," Kaoru told him as she was shooing him away. After dinner and before bed-time, Enishi would sit by the fireplace and brush Kaoru's long hair. She would tell him stories that she knew not where she had heard from, but always the vague memory of a soothing voice telling it to her echoed in her mind as she spoke each word. The phantom voice comforted her as did the stories. And Kaoru read all the books in the great house that she could lay her hands on, hands that were growing as Kaoru was growing.

Then one day, while she was walking amongst the gardens, a sense of emptiness that always overwhelmed her during these walks, returned as she was looking at the purple irises. But unlike before, when Enishi would come out and guide her back, she wondered more and more deeply into the garden. The sun was shinning and she listened to the trees whisper and the flowers rattle against the breeze. Suddenly, there were songs all over the place, each flower singing a song of its own. Surprised, Kaoru ran into the kitchen, looking for Enishi to ask him how to stop the clamor of strange tunes going against each other in such a chaos that it was hard to make ends meet. Yet, Kaoru paused in the hallway as she always did. She slowed to a stop by the photographs as one particular picture caught her eye this day. Tomoe was smiling and hugging Enishi, and on the woman's head was a wide-brimmed hat and on the hat was a flower Kaoru had not seen in all the time she had stayed at the house.

Kaoru's lips moved to form the shape of the flower's name from her scattered memories. She turned back and ran into the garden once more, searching up and down for the flower and not quite sure why she needed to find it. Until at last Kaoru came to an empty place in the garden where the dirt had always seemed to be freshly turned. And there, she began to cry because a deep, dark pain had silently settled into her chest and then had burst forth upon her unexpectedly. Kaoru's tears fell and soaked the ground and the dirt seemed to melt away as roses shot out from where they had been buried all this time. And Kaoru's eyes caught a hold of the reddest rose and remembered Kenshin's hair, she turned and saw the purple irises and remembered his eyes, and she looked here and there and the garden reminded her of the one she had created with Kenshin together on her roof top for what seemed like a lifetime ago.

Kenshin telling Kaoru that her strength was made her beautiful, Kenshin's warm eyes regarding her in the darkness saying how she was his moonflower in the blackest of nights, Kenshin's voice reading her bedtime stories, it was all coming back in a flood of cherished memories too painful to bare all at once. And the loud clashing of music from each flower in the garden dimmed and Kaoru heard only the sad pounding of her heart, longing for Kenshin.

How long had she stayed at such a place, Kaoru wondered to herself. How much time had she wasted in the warmth of this garden and lingered to ease the sorrow of a man she thought she could heal a little by her fleeting presence. A man Kaoru knew she would have been exactly alike if she had given up on Kenshin forever.

Yet, her regrets stood not a chance against the flood of memories that rushed back to Kaoru. Her eyes filled with tears at each happy memory, cherishing them again in that garden that knew not fall or winter or spring, but only summer, that last moment before wilting, that treasured moment after blossoming...

"Kaoru?" Enishi stood behind her, his gaze coming upon the roses that need not act or speak to have power over both of them. It was a flower dealing with the past, something they shared with this flower. "What happened?"

"Why did you bury the roses, Enishi?" Kaoru asked softly.

"Because," Enishi paused in his hesitation, looking away as he tried to formulate an answer to placate her. She quietly repeated her question again, but he felt the steel in her tone of voice. "They made you cry, Kaoru."

She tensed, obviously angry. "I cried because those memories were the most precious and painful and important things in the world to me! They are my most important treasures." Kaoru turned to him accusingly. "You tried to take them away!"

Enishi was angry now too. "You would have left me by myself. I was lonely before you came! Can you really blame me for wanting to keep you? Can you blame me for wanting you to stay?" He demanded as he glared at her, though his last words was soft, almost an entreaty. He wanted to hurt her as she had hurt him by implying how easily she could leave him, how much more she loved someone who had left her behind just as easily. "He left you, Kaoru! I will never leave you."

Something flashed in her dark eyes as his last promise settled in the silence between them. "Enishi," she said in a firm but gentle tone. Her breath whooshed out of her half a sigh and half a gasp. Slowly she turned back to the flowers. "Don't make such promises that you cannot keep."

"I mean it." He answered, angry that she doubted him.

"I didn't say you didn't mean it," Kaoru answered evenly. Her young and upturned face remained distant and undisturbed. "Many important people made promises like that to me because they wanted me to be happy, because they doubted me and thought I would be hurt by the utterance of truth. All I selfishly wanted from them was that they would keep such promises to me, more and more, no matter what it took.

"But, Enishi, no one I know has ever been able to keep that promise to me or even to himself. No matter who made it or how much they meant it when it was made, someone always ends up being left behind. Someone always ends up being disappointed and hurt and lied to. Not even Kenshin was able to..." Kaoru added softly.

"I am not Kenshin," Enishi cut in.

"Which are the very reasons why you shouldn't waste such a promise on me," Kaoru answered. Kaoru smiled weakly at the flowers, so that Enishi was unable to study her grief. He could not see her watery smile, but the tremble in her voice gave her away. "I think, I remember a story like this. A boy had found a treasure one day and buried it in the sand, thinking he could keep it forever. He did not want the wind to touch it or the sea to carry it away," she spoke quietly as she wiped away her falling tears. "Yet, he forgot that against the wind and the waves, sand is nothing. Sand is easy to blow away. Sand is easy to wash away, too. The treasure will remember the sky and the world once more, given time.

"So when the boy wasn't looking, the wind and the water eroded away the sand that covered that treasure and revealed it to the open skies for all to see. Did you know what the treasure turned out to be, the thing that the boy cherished above all others?" Enishi did not speak and she waited in the silence for his reply. Finally, he told her that he did not know.

Kaoru was silent for a bit longer, before she spoke again. "I can't take her place, Enishi. I am not Older Sister Tomoe, and I do not wish to be a host for memories. I just want the boy who buried my most important treasurer to know that memories are not meant to be laid to rest beneath anything. Memories are my most important treasure in the sand, and I won't let you take it away from me. I won't forgive you if you do, not even you, Enishi." Kaoru told him as she turned to him at last.

"Are you going to leave me as well now, Kaoru?" he asked her quietly. Kaoru heard him, heard the soft tremble in his tone and saw the fear in his eyes.

Kaoru thought she should have been angry with him. But, all she could feel was relief. She had gotten her memories back, the spell was broken. It was all she had ever really wanted. Her cherished memories, she didn't want to give them to anyone or bury them anywhere. Even if it was painful, she wanted to carry these photographs inside of her, keeping it with her always. "Enishi," Kaoru turned to him with a bright smile on her face. "Aren't you going to go look for your sister? I think, somewhere out there, in the world outside, she's waiting for you. Maybe she can't find her way back to this house." Her grin widened at the surprised look on Enishi's face. "I know I would want to see Enishi again, no matter what, if I was Enishi's sister. No matter how long it took, I would look for Enishi." Kaoru looked past the fence that enclosed them in their garden sanctuary. "Isn't it time for Enishi to look for Older Sister Tomoe, as well?"

Enishi's shock slowly began to melt away. "Aa," he answered after a long period of silence. The corner of his lips began an upward climb, a small, secretive smile that Kaoru had never seen him express. He looked like a little boy finding himself after being lost in the woods. Kenshin had that look once when they had gotten lost in the forest, it had gotten dark and they couldn't see their way back. She remembered that exact expression on his face when they had seen the lights of the village, and she had felt that answering warmth of relief in her heart to reflect Kenshin's own feelings. "It's long past time."

"I believe you'll find her, Enishi," Kaoru answered confidently. "I believe she's been waiting for you for a long, long time."

-----

Kaoru ran. She leapt gracefully over the even picket fence and followed a path she had not noticed before in her weariness a year ago, hearing Enishi's worried shouts after her as she laughed in the wind. Kaoru saw that her little raft was gone and with a weary grin, she headed down the road.

After quite a bit of exertion and running, Kaoru slowed at last as she saw that it was late autumn again and her birthday was coming quickly upon her. She would be fourteen now and this would be the second birthday without Kenshin if she didn't find him soon. Kaoru's blue eyes took in her surroundings and noted that a storm had passed. The soreness of her bare and sandaled feet distracted her (since winter had not existed for neither Enishi nor herself).

Kaoru began to take note of the dead leaves that littered the forest floor, the golden color that was turning to brown on the trees overheard and the bare branches every which way she looked. Kaoru only then began to notice how ugly the world suddenly seemed and a part of her whispered for her to return to the summer house she left behind. It was so completely different from Enishi's garden where the sun was always warm and the flowers had always bloomed that Kaoru looked this way and that, but all she saw was dead or dying things while the bit of sky she could see overhead was grey and unkind.

The world was also getting colder and colder and Kaoru knew she was lost and hungry. She walked and walked, until at last, she sat down on a rock in the forest to rest her weary body. Kaoru felt like crying again at how helpless and lost she felt, she knew she wanted to find Kenshin desperately but Kaoru hadn't a clue in her head how she was going to go about it. And it's been a year, an entire year that she had been out of the loop as the world went on without her. Almost two years without Kenshin, and yet it still felt like he had left just yesterday. Kaoru wasn't sure if Kenshin would be so happy to see her now, wherever he was. He had been so cold when they had parted.

Thinking such depressed thoughts, Kaoru drifted off to an uneasy sleep as she leaned against the trunk of the wet tree next to the rock. After a year of forgetting why she left home, Kaoru dreamt of Kenshin once more. This time, Kenshin seemed even more distant than before with his lips as blue as a robin's egg and his once golden skin now as pale as snow. Ice chips decorated his darkened hair and his countenance spoke of a hopeless anguish. And though he didn't look much older, Kaoru felt in her heart he had aged more than she could have ever imagined. In her dream, both his eyes were now cold and glittering in the colors of amber. And while his eyes bore down on her like two rocks of a tiger's eyes, there was only the abysmal feeling conveyed of a man who had lost sight of sunlight. In those eyes, Kaoru saw silent suffering that was iced over with listlessness and despair.

Dread and urgency pulled at Kaoru in every which way. She shouted and cried after him, but Kenshin would not listen. She brushed her warm fingers over his freezing hands as she chased hopelessly after him, but he looked disgustedly at her face and her attempts as his figure grew out of reach and further away. "You're warm," Kenshin told Kaoru coolly as he had done but a year ago. "I don't like you, Caw-ru! Caw! Caw!"

"Kenshin!" she answered frantically. And then Kaoru woke with a sudden sense of intense hurt, dread and utter confusion as she left the world of dreams behind her.

To be continued…