A/N
Hi guys.
I'm really tired - of myself, mostly. The chapter hasn't been proofread yet (sorry for jumping the gun, Anzri), I just felt that I had to show myself I'm making progress with at least something. I apologise if it isn't as well wrapped as it could have been.
/Dimwit
No claims on ownership of Ao no Exorcist, no no~
there are stories that should never have been told
and yet
no story wants to end
Light. Blinding. Dancing. Floating. The world is a mirror glass of light and she is misty breath upon its surface. Light drips, dizzily swimming: chasing, merging, morphing around and within. There's the sparrows in the garden, eating seeds of sunflower from her hand – no, no it's not. Those are Baa-chan's hands, pine root hands showing how to gently, gently cut the plums in half and out plops the kernel – not a kernel: a leaf, fresh green, from Nii-chan when he's summoned…
In and out, Shiemi drifts. In and out of molten memories, daydrop water pearls in rusty rain barrels. Warm. They're soft and warm, summer breath wrapping her in promises of sleep and satisfaction. It's autumn harvest and the smell of fragrant grapes hangs low – the red ones sweet, the green ones plump and fat. (like plant lice)
no one harms Shiemi's friends
The grape becomes a ping pong eye, and Nori-chan is fastening it on her yamauba costume. And Kamiki-san is there… and she whips her head around and stalks away, and… hasn't this already…?
how do you tell when a story begins?
All of it. All of it has already–
Heavy. A tug, not floating, not dancing – plummeting, she's heavy and she's plummeting…
The mirror breaks.
Shiemi breaks. Her heart thunders in her ears (does it?), shoots lightning through her legs (does it, really?); her eyes are frightened sparrows darting 'round the airy forest glade and she is… she is…
Amaimon.
The King of Earth is there, and Shiemi freezes. He caught up. He captured her. She has to get away, before he– Shiemi can't move, and the mirror breaks again, clattering shards all cold and biting: the forest, the screaming silence, head getting lighter and limbs heavier. Is it…? Is she still…? No. No, this is not that forest. This place is a mother, a bright and kindly creature cradling all her little children in her foliage arms.
"What happened?" She didn't speak. Shiemi knows she didn't speak. And yet Amaimon turns, and she can see what he's been doing: a mud golem, half-formed, on legs that disappear in clouds of bright blue flowers.
"You died."
No.
Yes.
No – no, she wants to say, but the word is stuck within, an ugly, wormy dandelion root that won't leave the soil.
"I'm… dead?"
"No. I said you died, not that you're dead."
All things die. All things die and then they are dead. Shiemi wants to clench her fists and scream, crack that frost-glass face that never moves, never feels, never mirrors any care that she's afraid or hurt. But she's dead (she is… dead) and dead things have no voice. No mouth. No hands. Fine threads (prison bars) surround her on all sides, veins belonging to the Chinese lantern plant that clasps her spirit gently in its paper fingers, one cobweb wall away from death.
More memories stir. Glassy dewdrop pictures from another time, another place, another lantern flower.
"I did this with the souls on the ghost train…" To help. To save. The memory snaps snakebite guilt into Shiemi's heart and she can't believe she doubted him. "Thank you."
Amaimon doesn't seem to understand her words. (how does she even speak?) His head tilts, and the lollipop between his lips is still.
"For saving me", Shiemi clarifies. If dead things could smile, she would have smiled.
"I didn't save you." His eyes are dull (they are bark and cliffside rock) and yet they cut (like broken nails and rust). His gaze is not on her: it is a narrow miss, a dagger thrown that grazes past and buries in the ground beneath her. "He did."
Amaimon has not summoned any Chinese lantern plant; Nii-chan has. Without command, without his Tamer's wish, and Shiemi wants to wrap him in a brackish hug with all her heart. But she's dead, and dead things have no arms. No face. No body. And Shiemi breaks a second time.
"But… Wh-when I… Amaimon, I-I need a body. When I run out of energy to keep Nii-chan here, I will…!"
"Your body is almost done." Amaimon adds the second pebble eye to the golem's mud clot face.
"That…?" Shiemi stares.
It is not so much a body as a mismatched snowman substitute by kindergartener hands.
"Ah, uhm, that's… That's very kind of you, Amaimon, but…" There must be some way to tell him she doesn't want to look like that.
"I'm not doing it for you." The snarl coils all the way out to his lips, coils around his fangs and lathes his tongue with scorn. "I have to keep you alive. Older Brother kills me if I kill any of his students."
Shiemi breaks for the last time. There is no more to break, no light left to blind her into thinking Amaimon is anything but this. Such a stupid girl, thinking they had a connection, thinking a demon king could care about a weak human with weak roots and weak, useless feelings, just a dumb little girl who thought she could make him happy, who thought…
Shiemi wants to curl up and disappear, tightly curl the lantern petal shroud until no laughing trickster light can find her. But she's dead, and dead things have no tears to cry. No breaths to hiccup. No place to hide.
Regrets, regrets – the only token dead things keep, the only thing still binding them unto the living. What will her friends think when she returns? (if she returns) What will her mother think? She's been so stupid, she should have understood, should have told them, should have should have should have–
The world tilts and sways on its slender stalk as Amaimon takes Nii-chan in his hands. The golem body draws nearer, that hideous prison she'll be living in until she dies. Shiemi whimpers, braces herself, regrets all things she still hasn't–
"Fuse."
"Wh… what?"
"It's like possession", Amaimon clarifies. "You have to make the body yours."
Days fall like water drops in rusty rain barrels. All alike.
Until, one day, when the barrel is too full and the rust has eaten much too greedily, the drop comes that changes everything.
"I won't."
when one story ends, another begins
Sometimes decisions are made and sometimes decisions make themselves. Sometimes, decisions change everything. The glade knows it, silent and aghast; Nii-chan knows it, like high voltage through the bond shared with his Tamer. Even Amaimon seems to know, as he stops short before the golem, that something, just now, changed.
"Why not?"
Because this isn't right. Because the barrel burst, flowing over not with water but with oil, and that oil is burning. Shiemi is burning, and there's tinder to be found in every thing the barrel vomits forth: little things, years and years of them, and little things can't be set in words so easily.
She barely even notices how Nii-chan grows behind her: and grows, and grows.
"My body didn't look like that." That is easier. That is now, here, and urgent: the little things will have to wait for now.
Amaimon looks first at the golem, then at her.
"What does that matter? It has the same parts."
Memories resurface, sunny days at forest bogs and (they burn) playing tag and (they snap) little roots meandering the ground and (they CRACK) Shiemi's mind is wild with thoughts that have no names, and all she knows is you don't treat people like this. You don't treat anyone like this.
"Of course it matters! I didn't look like that! I want my body!"
The change ripples, deepens, drop by drop to widen cracks carved out by patient rain. Nii-chan towers high above the Earth King's golem now, twice as tall and thrice as broad; his hide has gone from leafy green to red, to gold, to autumn fire and saffron blaze, and from within the thicket rises oaken panzer plates to guard his arms, his legs, his back and chest.
"This one's better than your old body", Amaimon persists. "It's stronger, and its legs aren't so squishy."
It's fortunate that dead things can't blush. Or pale.
"What do you know about my legs?!"
"I carried you. Your legs were squishy, like the mochi Older Brother eats. It made me want to chew on them."
Shiemi breaks. Differently. Not broken but breaking, not crushed by any outside force but fighting back against it with that unfamiliar battering ram called Anger.
"You're awful! You're a terrible person and you're mean – even when people are nice to you!" Oil drops, teardrops – that feeling burns a thousand screaming colours. "So what if my legs are chubby and squishy?! It's better than looking like a mud golem!"
"Why are you so noisy? Just fuse with your body."
"That's not my body and I will not fuse with it!"
Even weak plants want to grow. They fight for that, in spite of everything – in spite of fragile leaves and roots that won't sustain their weight, they fight, with everything they've got and more, and no one has the right to step on those struggling roots.
No one has the right to step on her.
Behind her Nii-chan is a titan, an armoured foliage samurai with helmet horns and a naginata bladed with the lacework skeleton of mouldered leaves, sharper than piano wire and haunted with a dusk-sun glow.
Amaimon burns, too. When finally that frost-glass cracks there's scorching lava underneath, she sees it in his eyes – the blue gives way to yellow, gives way to pupils thin enough to cut her head clean off her neck. The ground beneath them shudders, a trembled, whispered plea for her to bow her will to his before he buries both of them alive. (good thing she's dead)
"Fuse", he rasps, voice snagging – tearing – on the bared tips of his fangs.
"No." Shiemi is scared. But she is angry, too, and anger feels much better. "You can't hurt me."
"I can hurt your friends."
"They're cram school students. Sir Pheles will protect them." If what he said was true, if the older brother is indeed the chairman of the school…
The King of Earth is breaking.
"Then I'll hurt your mother."
All at once, the Earth stops turning and splits the sky from sun to moon.
He wouldn't do that, would he?
He would. The flimsy fairy tale has ended and reality has never worn a crueller face than that broken frost-glass mask of his.
"…I will fuse."
It is the voice of tired stalks that bend, of leaves that wilt and flowers bowing heads for lack of strength to face the sun.
She will fuse, for her mother's sake. For everyone's sake: everyone's but hers. (for that, at least, she's reliable) Nii-chan doesn't move when Amaimon pulls the Chinese lantern to the golem's chest; his leaf-hide rustles menace, but he doesn't move a limb. He has seen Shiemi's heart, has felt the sun's warmth in her hands: he loves her enough to act without her orders, and respects her enough to not defy them.
when one story ends
It's a mistake. She knows at first rasping grasp out of the flower. (something is cut; something bleeds) Sensations slip and waft away, slip like breath and tears and leaden gasps she left among the hungry roots.
when one story ends
She throws her being at the golem, knowing nothing of how fusion and possession work. She wants to live: that, she knows. Every particle of whatever she is wants to live.
when one story ends
There is nothing there. There's nothing in the golem to hold on to, nothing save the dark that pulls her under, grave-maw waiting to devour her at the bottom of the drowning void.
That same rush, fall, plummet – Shiemi's world is screaming vertigo when soothing sapling warmth reconnects her with the living. The King of Earth has pulled her out, has grafted soul and lantern plant together once again and Shiemi is no longer dying. (dead, not dying) Nii-chan chirps and purls with worry, fussing like a mother hen and sprouting pretty little leaves around the lantern bulb for her to feel protected and at ease. He is no longer any towering redwood giant: the burst of energy is past, his Tamer must conserve all power she can spare. She will last longer with no body to sustain, but whether longer will be long enough is a decision not for them to make.
Amaimon is not pleased. He sits cross legged on the ground, sullen and withdrawn like spikemoss shutting itself to an outside world that won't comply with its demands. It's on Shiemi's tongue to word out "thank you" but she doesn't. Those cinders haven't ceased to smoulder yet.
"What happened?" she asks instead. Again. No matter what or where she always seems to be that clueless little girl who's tossed around by forces outside of her own.
"The body wasn't compatible. It seems you won't be able to inhabit it."
There is more to it than that. Amaimon shows no worry outwardly but bites his thumb nail like a man who tries to gnaw his way out of a cage.
That is his problem, not hers: Shiemi has her own cage to escape and she may just have found a hole.
"Then the best match is my own body. If it's still in the forest, we could– Stop! You're hurting yourself!"
Amaimon has no thumb nail left, and only half a thumb. The sound of teeth that grate on bone is sickening, yet he merely glances at the bleeding stump before he puts his other thumb nail to his mouth.
"What is dead remains dead", he dismisses. "You need a living body: a human body."
The world is ice and powdered screams.
No.
Never.
"I won't do that. It doesn't matter who you threaten. I won't do that."
"Then you'll die", he says, with the simplicity of a universe collapsing.
"I suppose I will."
There is a crow in Baa-chan's garden: an old and clever thing that likes strawberries and problem solving. Most of all she likes solving problems that give her access to the strawberries Shiemi has tried desperately to save. There came one spring when she had had enough: she replanted all the strawberries in garden crates and carried them inside the conservatory. The look that old crow gave her then was long and steady, full of bile and barbed curses, and not unlike the look the Earth King shoots her now. It is a glare that wishes to pull every bone out of her flesh until she gives up her defiance on a plate of pain and raw defeat.
Perhaps she would have, once. Not now. She is not surrendering an inch of anything to him now. If she dies, then so be it.
If she dies, then so will he.
It is a thought that uproots every other in her mind and throws them to the sky in one big spray of jumbled comprehension. She who grew up powerless and frail holds this most terrible control over him: and he, who was born with power humans only dream of, is helpless for the first time in his life.
The golem shatters. It is a violent, explosive crash that all but snaps Shiemi's nerves. (if she'd still had them) The Earth King's blood-stained face is cracking once again, is fear and fire in an ashen frame and the ground is trembling in anticipation of the burst that will be the end of all.
Then he's gone.
Shiemi holds in breaths she doesn't have. He'll come back. (any moment now) He'll come back… But heart-stop minutes trickle past and no Earth King is in sight. He has gone somewhere else. To exhaust his anger and frustration on an enemy that can be fought with fists and claws.
Silence fills the glade with dandelion down, with weightless, soft assurance that whoever dwells in there is safe and cherished. The flowers know it, too: they are water lilies floating on a verdant pool, cascade colours singing at the top of every petal's lungs and trickling vibrant greens into the sea of stems that bear them up. It is beautiful, and not a common thing at all, to find a place that knows how to love.
Amaimon's anger mars the tranquil glade, clumps of heavy, lifeless brown like booted footsteps crushing all the greenery beneath. Anger…
Anger is nothing like Shiemi's usual self. It is like stinging nettle, except she knows plenty of things to do with stinging nettle. What does one do with anger?
"You felt it, didn't you?"
He did. Not in words or images but Shiemi feels the greenman's affirmation through the lantern flower's walls.
"It was so different", she muses, a botanist's attempt to classify an unknown species. "It felt alive, as if it was its own being. But it came from me. Not like a sprout or anything like that – it was sharp. It burnt. It was…"
Like fire. Plants grow the world, grow the life that births all other life. Fire only knows how to devour and destroy. (it's like a demon, she thinks)
Shiemi never liked it. Fire was a pretty thing to look at, after spring cleaning the garden, when piles of leaves and branches sent their ashes to the sky. The black scar in the grass was never pretty.
Not pretty, but necessary.
"Sometimes you need fire", she murmurs. When you need change. When you need to burn away the old so something new can grow. "But you need to know what to burn and what to leave."
Does the phoenix know, she wonders. Each time it's devoured in fire, does it know what will come next? What it will turn into? If Shiemi were to burn and be reborn, what flower would she be? A chestnut, like Kamiki? A Linnaea, like Nori…?
A searing stitch of flame burns through the girl within the lantern flower prison. It is not anger. And there will come no rebirth.
"I wonder how the festival went…" she whispers, as beloved faces drift into her mind and curl her burning edges in against themselves. So many faces she will never see again, so many faces that will grieve when she is– "It was my first Academy festival…"
Nii-chan soothes her as best he can, sending waves of comfort and compassion to her flower cell. Gentle curtain leaves embrace the bulb and hush the prying light, shielding seedling roots that will never touch the soil.
Dead things have no tears. (but sadness is immortal)
Sadness is the cruel twin of joy. It is a rotten fruit that won't release the branch that birthed it, a baby bird afraid of falling that would rather claw and bite the tree to death – sometimes. And sometimes it's the branch itself that won't let go, afraid to lose those last vestiges of what once was happiness despite the rot that feeds upon its warmth.
Afraid.
She is. Afraid to fall, afraid of letting go; afraid to die, to lose her family, to lose her friends. To leave them nothing but this sadness steeping heart and mind in lead.
nothing wants to be forgotten
that is why
the dead are never truly gone
That is what they celebrate, this November spectacle called True Cross Academy festival, when memories of loved ones breathe within the hearts of those still living. Shiemi will be with them, as Baa-chan was with her. As the dead plants with the new ones. As everything that ever lived and died is part of what came after, and never truly gone.
Grief takes her full cycle, from phoenix fire to rot to lighting fear aflame.
And then she knows.
A/N
The original plan was to use the dreamy writing only for the dream/life flashback part, and revert to regular prose and past tense when Shiemi woke up. Eh, but things rarely go according to plan for me. When I started typing this chapter it continued naturally in the present tense dreamy style - I could have changed it during editing, but I found that some things just didn't translate well to regular prose and so I decided that, if it doesn't bother you too much, I'd continue writing it dreamy.
Chinese lantern plant you'll recognise if you've read or viewed the omake about the demon train that steals the souls of its passengers and takes them to Gehenna. Their mission was only to exorcise the train but Rin and Shiemi wanted to save the souls/ghosts trapped in it, so what Shiemi did was ask Nii-chan to summon a Chinese lantern plant and gather the souls/ghosts up in its flowers. It was wicked cool!
Naginata is a weapon traditionally weilded by females in Japan: it looks like a spear with a sword blade instead of a spear tip, basically. I'm a big fan of the Dark Souls games, and if you think you see a similarity between Giant!Nii-chan's weapon and Aldrich's then it's not just your imagination. ^v^
Spikemoss is a peculiar plant that deals with draught by curling up into a grey, withered tangle until it comes in contact with water again: then it unfolds and becomes green.
I'm glad that Shiemi got angry at Amaimon in the latest chapters of the manga. What still feels off to me was that she was angry because "she" was getting her friends hurt by being taken hostage by Amaimon. Reality check: if somebody takes you hostage, everything that happens is that person's fault. You are angry at that person for being a violent jerk to your friends but most of all for being a violent jerk to you. We already know Shiemi would do anything for her friends: what I want to see in terms of development is her getting a sense of her own value and being angry for her own sake.