Author's Notes: This one focuses on Byakuya of the illusions, who appears chapter 396 of the manga.
Title: Bloody Rains
Rating: PG
Genre: Dramatic Tragedy
Character: Byakuya-centric
Word Count: 298
Summary: "Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,
And make them keep their caves: since I was man,
Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
Remember to have heard: man's nature cannot carry
The affliction nor the fear."King Lear: Act III, scene II (Shakespeare)
He came floating in on the cusp of a wanning moon, raindrops dancing upon gravestones in his wake. Much like the rain, with its honey-warm embraces, he flitted amongst the winds with but a crane of paper-make, pirouetting and spiraling, all things culminating about him in his celebration of spontaneity.
Finding himself without companion, Byakuya conjured up a sky-born ballroom of dancers to accompany him, all their white-blank countenances holding in hidden smiles of honor at being allowed to join in. The lofty clouds cried crystalline tears of joy, blessed-be the hour, the day, the time, that they could partake in such a madness-born display of horrors.
As the dance drew to tumultuous climax, all the dancers sought an earth-bound partner to take with them away, the white-stained-red soldiers of illusion whisking a soul with them to hell as they faded purely-black into the nothingness they were begot from.
A sugar-sweet yet ill-tainted laugh emanated from the man who remained, a lone figure landing, standing, on the bloody-rain remains of the dance of death, where many a man lost his mind trying to keep pace with the mercurial madness.
"The night is o'er, my job done, and for this task, which I have fulfilled without but a word against it, I shall be duly rewarded by he who created me. Creations and creators, in unending battle to obey or die. But who, I do wonder, gives heed to wind and rain? Or is it their freedom- their playful eccentricities, that we merely long to capture for ourselves?"
And with but a red-spun smile upon his lips, the man of fair-face and deadly-dance took once more to the rain-filled skies, for the self-created illusion of freedom is all he seeks to grasp, catching it like a raindrop soon to disappear.