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Strangled Time

Chapter 29

Saburo stretched out the full length of his burly arms before leaning back against the smooth rocks of the lantern-lit hot spring. It was late, so late that he had the entire pool to himself, the other guests fast to their beds. It was quite the benefit for sleeping through the day like a lazy loaf.

He'd eaten his dinner with the famished appetite of a stray animal and had fallen into a food induced slumber shortly afterwards, which seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. Upon waking he felt rejuvenated, strong, and back to his usual self; all sense of food sickness a distant memory that he was looking forward to washing away. It would serve as a good reminder in the future to not eat things he found in the forest without first being given the okay.

Miss Kagome still needed more time to rest, he figured. Even though she seemed to be feeling pretty well, her cold had been a stronger demon than his laughable bout of poisoning. She'd be right as rain soon enough, but that didn't keep the blacksmith from fretting himself in circles when he'd woken to find himself unable to go back to sleep in the dead of night. It wouldn't have been appropriate to check in on her so late. So, instead of worrying a hole in the wall he'd been staring at that separated their two rooms and trying to ignore the demon at his back, Saburo took to the baths for a relaxing midnight soak.

The heat of the water seeped into every muscle and loosened the tension that had pulled firmly between his shoulder blades.

That bath too seemed to be just what the doctor ordered.

The sliding sound of the changing room's inner door rose him back to the real world from his thoughtless relaxation. The barely audible padding of feet on wooden floorboards stepped through the room and onto the deck. The green cloth of the archway's privacy curtain was pushed away with a deathly pale hand donning a single broad stripe.

The large human gulped and sank further into the water.

Glaring gold eyes practically glowed predatory in the moonlight when they found him against the wall at the back of the pool, then slid away from him with disinterest. Togashimaru ignored the blacksmith as he set down his towel upon the deck and stripped free from the dark robe that the inn had provided them. When he turned back, Saburo's breath hitched hard in his throat.

Shocked eyebrows arched high to meet his hairline at the sight of the grisly wound and its horrid, spreading bruise, nearly black in the dark of the night. The light from the lamps hit the demon lord in the most unflattering way, sending streaks of flickering orange light like smears of blood and shadowing the ridges of the demon's ribs.

Only it wasn't simply a trick of the lights. Saburo followed the trickling trail of fresh black blood that hadn't quite made it yet to the dog's knee since being freed from its binding. Purple then orange then red from the candle.

A droplet slid down to splatter on the stone walkway.

"Oh." Saburo said, the breath stolen from him against his will.

"Oh?" Togashimaru replied, as snide as it was tired.

The demon stepped down to the water then. He hissed when the hot liquid of the pool singed the first of his stitches. Once fully submerged most of the lines that creased his face smoothed, but Saburo could still make out a furrow that pulled his eyebrows low. A strand of the beast's impossibly long silver hair fell free of the high knot he'd tied in to keep it out of the way and spread out on the surface of the water around him like a hydrophobic stain of silk-threaded oil.

Saburo was tempted to tighten his own bun, but he held his hands still at his sides.

The two men sat across from one another in the healing warmth of the hot spring. Neither one of them had any intention to talk. Not even the shrill cries of late fall cicadas or the violins of evening crickets disturbed the silence—the weather had already grown too cold for them. Besides that, the men had already said all that'd needed to be spoken out loud. They'd said more than enough; their body language and the reveal of that wound had spoken more in the dead air than their words could ever hope to communicate.

Quiet like that, especially with a demon, wasn't a companionable one. Not in the slightest. But for the moment Saburo and Togashimaru both refrained from biting at the other's throat, which was a shift from their usual state of interaction. It was something.

Saburo stayed like that for some time, eyes fixated on one of the low burning lamps perched along the deck and trying his hardest to enjoy the heat in the brisk night air. But eventually he had to give in to both the awkwardness of the standoff and the pruning of his skin.

Leaving the blanket of the hot spring without a single word, Saburo slipped past to where his own towel waited. The dog demon paid the human blacksmith no mind.

In fact he was so still that Saburo wondered if Togashimaru had fallen asleep within the diluted puddle of his own blood.

If he had, it wasn't Saburo's problem.

…

Once the human had vanished back under the awning, through the archway, and into the shelter of the building's sanctuary to join its other sleeping inhabitants, Togashimaru opened his eyes to look up at the bright night sky. The moon was cut near perfectly in half above him; the rabbit that humans saw in its craters was missing its head from the shoulders. In spite of the delicate sheet of snow that clung to the ground trying not to melt before dawn, the threatening shadow of clouds had all but cleared away, revealing in their absence the glittering eyes of ten million silver fireflies. Pinpricks of light from those stars danced in the calm waters of the pool and turned the white snow into a glowing and ethereal living thing with the reflected movement of candle flame.

Appreciative of his newfound solace, Togashimaru allowed himself to bask in the shimmering light of night. Lifting a heavy arm out of the water, he watched as liquid silver droplets streamed from the tips of his claws in rivulets of moonlit pearls. Was Izayoi awake at that time of night, he wondered, was she seeing the same beauty? Or perhaps the skies were still heavy with clouds where she was, still a few day's journey to the northwest.

Either way he doubted she'd be seeing a similar sight.

He wished that he could share that moment with her. The steam, the lights, the snow. The human princess always disliked the chill of winter, preferring instead to keep tucked away in silks and never straying too far from the fires of her hearth. Togashimaru took advantage of that from time to time, bringing the warmth of his pelt and body heat to stow away in her bedchambers. Unlike those stolen moments of hot winter passion, wrapped away behind the safety of closed doors, the hot spring tied all that he enjoyed about the coldest months and the freedom of the open air with the same heat and security that an embrace could provide.

In that water could she enjoy the splendor of the astral-lit frozen world as he saw it? Surely with her in his arms she would not shy away for fear of the cold.

Unfortunately he would never know how she would react to such an invitation. It was not a thought to ever cross his mind before then and he doubted that they would have very much time for gallivanting before he succumbed to the poison coursing through his body.

Beneath the water in the spot most clouded by his blood, Togashimaru's hands reached for his stitches. They were still secure in their place and holding his flesh together like a finely sewn cloth, but that mattered little for a wound that would not heal. Kagome's hard work was not a complete waste, though, since he would have likely bled to death three times over each day without it.

In the silence of the night, too late for any mortal not in a drunken stupor to be wandering the streets, Togashimaru heard the trill of an animal on the wind. It seemed closer than it was, against the baffle of snow in the bathing garden, then again the quiet fell heavy and thick. Leaning back from the rising steam of the spring, he took in a deep breath of the colder air behind him to see if his senses were strong enough to identify his midnight visitor.

A smile crossed his lips when he caught the scent.

Bidding an evening greeting to the fox in the form of a shrill whistle, the demon allowed himself to relax deeper in the warm waters. It replied with a single yip.

That brought him relief.

Togashimaru closed his eyes. In and out his breathing became slow and smooth. Steam filled his lungs with warmth, soothing the dull throb of his broken rib. He thought of the two women closest to him who would have also enjoyed hearing that energetic sound—closer to him than even his mate of eight hundred years.

In his mind's eye he could picture them perfectly, both his darling Izayoi and the young Kagome, sitting at the edge of the wooden deck and listening for the sounds of the wild. Izayoi's smile would have been serene while Kagome let her excitement show much more clearly. The imaginary princess placed her finger to her lips before pointing to her ear. Listen carefully, she mouthed in his direction, listen and you will hear. The mirage of the priestess perked up when the trill sounded again, followed by another.

Then the entire village was alight with the chattering chirps of foxes.

Without making a sound, the Kagome laughed and laughed, her cheeks dimpling as she leaned back to face the sky, free spirited and open to the world. Togashimaru was almost impressed with how well his hallucination was able to capture her glee. Asleep in her bed, the real Kagome was missing out. She would have quite enjoyed such a chorus.

Izayoi, far more reserved than the teenager beside her, though not much older, stood from the deck in that way she did that made it look as if she were floating. She knelt beside him at the water's edge, carefully laying about her heavy kimonos as meticulously as she always did in real life. When her hands lifted, they were cupped with snow. Only it wasn't snow that flew from them when she pursed her dainty lips and blew—it was the feathers that had torn from her pillow on that one night when he'd forgotten to be gentle with his claws. He swore he could feel the imaginary feathers tickle at his cheeks as they'd done once before. It had been the first thing she could think of doing to get him to stop apologizing and be quiet long enough to kiss her. Hiding her blush behind a long crepe paper silk sleeve painted in chrysanthemums, Izayoi's eyes creased, endearing and amused, before the image of her faded away.

Kagome too disappeared as her specter threw an imaginary kettle in his direction—an scene that had oddly become one of his most endeared memories of the strange futuristic priestess in the short time they'd had together—before she huffed in an exaggerated frustration and spun away into nothing.

Truly relaxing for the first time since he'd entered that small village, Togashimaru finally allowed his guard to drop to a level of comfort as he whistled again into the night and spoke to the foxes that listened.

End Chapter