Outside, not a single soul lurked, not a small, miniscule of human existence wandered about, stepped on the sun-brisk grass. Trees watered the land with shade, the swirling patience of the ceasing night now gone, now dispersed into nothing more but a tiny speck of a memory, a memory that left with a good riddance. The moon was now replaced by the sunlit halo of sky; the clouds now swirled hesitantly around the sun in circles, not sure what would happen if they were to approach it, not sure whether they would be drenched in glory, or be fried to a crisp. The sky was bright; it was no longer yearning for the arrival of dawn, for it had already tasted it, it had already satisfied its thirsty crave for it, its thriving lust for it.
Birds began to chirrup their melodic twitters of song, their chorus of dawn. They were free amongst their homes, nothing abnormal, unnatural to bother them. The world seemed a picture-perfect fantasy of paint and brush, stroke and value in every sweat put into the art. There were no disturbances, no emotions, and yet they triggered emotions. The solutions of the world held themselves dearly, digging barely into their own existence, strung over the elongated limbs of trees, the crooked fingers of random pointer branches. A light darkness existed, a small humor of shadow.
The paradise of heaven poured from the etching holes in the sky, falling in invisible, untouchable, unnoticeable downward geysers reversed in flow, pouring like enormous rain, a gigantic storm. Birds continued to twit; leaves rustled ever so slightly in the morning wind. The moon still hovered above somewhere amongst the high horizon, still seeable in strips, still blatant with color. Today was the beginning of a new day, a new era in the life of a Minor, for the third had come to a close. These eras seemed so short, so uncelebrated, as if they were never important, never worth of praise and acknowledgment. Few even recognized it to be the end of an arc. Others seemed clouded in their own indifference. But one thing remained a constant; all would be sucked into the fourth soon.
"All right!" a sixteen year-old's hand flew up in the air with a pair of red chopsticks, clicking the two twigs together. They found themselves chirping inside instead of out, surrounded by the darkness that was pushed far in the room. The hands flew down and began to dig into the savory, hot steam. Kokori Dylan sucked the noodles from the enlarged bowl of food swiftly, as if he were a vacuum cleaner put out of work. He terrorized the bowl with chopsticks and sucking noises, the constant clicking of the tools drumming on the fine noodle bowl. He held the bottom of the large, shaking food as if it were to fall if he didn't.
He sat by a Minor, eating, not minding her at all as he instantly inhaled half of the bowl in a matter of ten seconds. A band-aid patch remained at the side of his face, sticking to him like a healing parasite. The warm rushed of soup to his stomach made him tingle ever so slightly, ever so microscopically that he enjoyed it to the fullest extent. It was a rather strange feeling, really. Then, digging the chopsticks right back into the bowl, he began to breathe the rest of the bowl in. Seconds later, he returned from the mask of an enormous bowl; the food now gone, the soup all slurped. He had done it so noisily, so mind-piercingly that it had barely even made a sound to Teresa, who sat indifferently beside him, not sure whether or not she should feel uncomfortable, or just completely shocked and not the least bit self-conscious of herself. She found herself in the compliant middle.
Wow… Teresa watched, wide-eyed, her violet eyes peering to the side of her; she gulped, rather uncomfortably. I've never seen someone so… thin… eat so… much, she told herself in awestruck. Her brow twitched uneasily. The bowl went down to the table with a clink; Dylan gave a long exhale of exasperation, exhilaration. "I could go for more!" he smiled a bit too widely, a bit too comfortably, half-mindedly.
Teresa laughed herself, nervously. "Figures," she replied.
Dylan cleared his throat; he folded the chopsticks and brought them back to the mouth of the bowl, too long for it too eat. "So, uh," Dylan said uncomfortably without looking at Teresa. The Minor sensed his tension, his coyness at the moment. "How did the whole White Cloak thing go?" he asked indirectly. His eyes crinkled sadly in a way, darkly so that they seemed sympathetic, sad, depressed. On the upside, though, he seemed to have received a slight tan. Teresa wondered where he had been.
"Oh," Teresa figured. She didn't know how to put it. What could she say? A crazy man in a white costume almost killed her, Walter, and Eric, and the only reason she was sitting here alive with him today was because of Rick's early victory and their lucky chance of being the route closest to Rick's? She didn't think that would make very good breakfast talk. Then again, watching Dylan eat wasn't so much of a morning comfort, either. "Um…" she stalled. Her eyes peered to the side. She looked for a single corner of the room. Impossible. It had been eaten by the darkness. "It went all right," was all she could think of. "It wasn't too… bad," she strained.
Dylan flashed a suspicious look, raising one brow as he stared her hard in the eye. She laughed the gaze off, hoping to pry it off with that. She smiled forcefully; it wasn't something she was used to. "It's nothing, don't worry about it," she laughed. He hoped he wasn't too suspicious. Even if he was, she hoped he would find the decency or slight panic to comply with her and stop asking questions; it was obvious she found them rather uncomfortable at the time. She didn't know why herself. "So, how'd your thing go?" she asked back, with more ease in her voice.
"Huh?" Dylan pretended as if he didn't know what she was talking about. He blinked, once, twice; three times. His innocent emerald stare seemed to boyish, too child-like to turn down. It was like he hadn't commited a sin at all in his whole entire life; his eyes said it all because they looked like they belonged on a five year old's face, and not a simple sixteen year old, who was more than double the age. His white hair made him even look more unnatural, but by doing so, somewhat more adorable, like a plush doll held in a tiny little girl's arms that was coveted, loved by constant, mindless tight hugs.
"Well," Teresa began to ask, looking rather confused herself. She was afraid she had chosen another strange topic to speak of. Was there any decision she would make right? "The Council kept you for something here, right? Excluding you from the search?" Dylan remained silent. "It was with another Minor. I think it was Lance. Don't you remember?" she piqued. "It wasn't that too long ago," she said comfortably, not too emotionally. It was never her style to show too much expression. She barely moved her body when she talked. Anyone like that would be Marissa. "You look pretty beat up; what happened here while we were gone?" she asked one more time. She knew he had to remember now.
Dylan avoided eye contact now. "Dylan…?" Teresa let her voice trail off. She moved towards the boy to find his eyes. They were slouched towards the ground; his appetite of a face was now full, worn off. She wondered if she had said anything wrong. "Dylan-san…? Is there something… wrong?" she let herself stammer.
"Huh?" Dylan lifted his head and flashed a blink to her. Teresa seemed suspicious now, narrowing her eyes just slightly to let him know she was aware. "Oh," he realized quickly. His expression quickly changed. "It's nothing. Just training is all," he told a not-so-blatant lie.
"I see," Teresa accepted unsurely. At that, Dylan seemed to get up from the table rather quickly; the chair screeched and rapped at the ground as it was pushed back. She looked up as Dylan brought himself on his feet, and began to leave the room without any further eye contact, any further talking. He hadn't even realized it himself before he was at the threshold of the door.
"I… have to go," he said rather uncomfortably. A sad look washed over his face. Teresa said nothing; she nodded. He left a second later. Then, she looked to the bowl, the bowl which was now empty, surrounded by darkness, untouched by those happy, cheery hands. She sighed, feeling down herself. She had her own problems. No matter how much she'd deny them. There was no escaping it. She had to accept it. It seemed that Dylan had already done the same.
PoVS
The hallways were dark, tinted with nothing but shadow and orange must. A certain disturbance lingered about the corners, seeping into the dimension darkly, secretly. If one was to follow this path of bare vision, and turn many corners to the right, and a few to the left, they would find nothing but darkness; nothing but a dead-end wall with two possible routes to go: a large room and an enormous door split through the middle. Everything seemed so shady, so unnoticed. One could wonder why the Council had chosen to make everything this way – so eerie, so ominous with the absence of light; the only things that helped being dwindling fingers of candles and rectangle bodies of electrical hum slowly failing away into nonexistence at the murky ceilings.
The doors stood quietly, solemnly, as if waiting dearly for someone to come open them up from the outside. They seemed to keep something out with great resistance, like something on the other end was too frightening even for an inanimate object to be put through. However, they made no signs of physical protest. They did not shudder. They did not shout, or cry, or go on strike. They just stood, for their silence, their patience, their blank, eyeless stares; they said them all. The two large stone doors were encrypted with specialty, swirls of ancient past and lines of archaeological history etched onto it decoratively, dominantly as if a free spirit had become so wild – too wild with their imagination so that they painted everything they ever knew, everything they ever experienced, mixed into one collage of paint and picture, swirled and intertwined with fates and destinies, experience and experience after thought and thought. It was the passage of time this picture represented; it never changed, not even in the slightest tick of a hand's lone finger.
Then, the middle of this portrait of life split in half, perfectly with a softly touch of angelic light, ripped into a direct, clean two by hands of god. They opened a crack, moaning creakily as they split open a direct line of extreme, intense yellow and white light, holily into the dark room. The hallway was beginning to lighten up with it. Then, just all at once as if they had no more patience stored into them by the hands of fate, the doors burst wildly open, slamming into their respective walls at their sides that had remained their comrades for years, now being plummeted heavily. The intense white-gold light poured into like vomiting rain; it lit up the entire way for miles.
The stone doors became a passage of permit. Then, from the mouth of this portal came mist. Lots of it, pouring out, spilling from the entrance and out into the floor of the hallway, weakly, uselessly, mindlessly as if icing over the floor and calling the entrance of an important being. The man stepped out; a dark figured wearing heavy clothes. A low, exasperated sigh escaped his lips, his innocent, godly lips. The man sheathed his sword as he came from the glowing-white fantasy world of paradise and mixed reality. The sword glowed gigantically and respectfully with a metal luster as it reeled itself back into its case with a screech. The figure still darkened despite the abundance of light, the doors began to close behind him, coldly; the mist died away into the far corners of the returning darkness.
He took a step forward this man, and looked up to find familiar faces. "What a time-consuming task," he muttered. His voice was carried by the echoes of the walls. He was granted a folding vibration of his own voice just seconds after his last word. He took another step forward, daringly, almost.
"Took you long enough," a figure answered from the opposite room. The man stood at the threshold of it, as if not allowed to enter, not having the ability to even walk through an entrance. "What took you so long?" the voice groaned.
"You know I'm not going to answer to a voice like that," the man answered meanly. A joking smile flashed beneath heavy clothes. A smile answered back. "No, I kid," the voice spoke. A sleeved hand brought itself to the man's head and brought down a large circular hat of bamboo. "But, yes, I did take a long time, didn't I?" he asked, the booming voice asked.
"What were you doing?" a different voice answered back. "We all got here before you. It's unlikely for you to be late for a rendezvous. Did you run into a problem on the way here? Don't tell me Judgment put up more than a second's fight for you," the voice piqued, leaning in.
"No, of course not," the council voice answered back. "I was just…" he let his voice trail off. "Just listening… to the rain."
Voices chuckled back, some mockingly, some amusedly. "You were always one for nature, Tsukansu," Hyoumaru's familiar voice came from a different corner.
"Well," Tsukansu replied in defense. "Society hasn't been too good to me in the past. My only option was to turn to nature. You'd be amazed at the level of good-listening the rain is at. It's like each small rain drop is listening to you; each crack of lightning is its tearful reply to you, and the cold, fresh, healthy air are hands that actually care about you. You understand, don't you?"
It was silence. Nothing but silence filled the room for a brief moment of tension. "Well, you haven't been that nice to society itself in the past," Raikettei answered from a dark, shadowy side. It was mind-blowing how they could sense each other in this humid shadow world of ebony and blindness.
"I suppose you're right," Tsukansu answered to the sudden change of subject, as if it were nothing. "Do you have any idea when we should tell them?" he changed the subject himself. "Sometime soon, I hope?"
"No," a voice answered. "Sometime in the afternoon; they deserve some rest, I suppose."
"They better deserve it," Tsukansu replied somewhat threateningly. "I'll go check up on the past day or so with Hanabikai," he suggested, turning towards the opposite way and turning his back on the five other Councils. He began to head towards the hallway; it was a single step taken before the voices called back to him.
"Yeah," Dirondo agreed.
"You guys find Minoa about Jeremy," Tsukansu suggested before starting again.
"Sure thing," came his answer from Hyoumaru. Tsukansu resumed his walking; his steps clicked on the floor so easily, so glidingly as if the floor was ice. In this darkness, you could never be too sure.
"I'll ask Hanabikai myself about Jeremy," he suggested.
"Okay," came a blatant answer. They didn't seem too hyped about him so suddenly… Tsukansu wondered why. Why don't I have a good feeling… about anything, in general? Tsukansu thought to himself as he listened to the steady beat of his own Geta slippers clicking on the plaster ground, singing their wooden hearts out. The man clutched the sheathes of his swords as he continued walking.