*knocks* Heya guys, I'm back again :))))
Since all of you wanted a longer chapter, a longer chapter it is 'insert evil laugh' Hope you like it ;) ;)
Anyway, I have taken a few liberties with canon (for example, Master Yi being able to heal others, not only himself), but for each of them I have a reason (read: excuse :D), so if something is bothering you, do free to tell me and I'll give my reasons for doing that and that (*really just wants to talk to peoplez* XD)
So, onto the (much longer) chapter! :P
…...
Soraka was eternal.
Her immortality would be meaningless without doing her best to ease the suffering of many. She had lost count of all the wars whose victims she had had to heal. She had lost count of all the times of peace, whose occasional illnesses she had had to cure. She didn't bother counting all her remaining days in the future, but she really hoped they were filled with her helping those in need. She didn't bother remembering the faces of each one that she had helped: instead, everything merged into one enormous memory of gratefulness in her mind. And it contented her.
So she barely remembered the moment she had saved a little boy's life, until the same boy managed to find her.
She was playing her flute again, this time a gentler tune that spoke of the sun's rays embracing the earth and a mother's gentle hand. The music had her so engrossed that she startled when a sudden sound rustled from the trees around the entrance to the real world. Not really annoyed that her activity had been interrupted, she rose from her favourite spot on the left side of a fallen tree trunk, left her instrument behind and all but glided towards the source of the noise.
She lowered her head to pass through the trees without hitting herself, while keeping her enormous hair with both of her hands so as not to get it tangled. In her mind both the stars and she were chanting a universal healing spell, just in case the patient was in a way too severe state. But what she saw astonished her.
It was a boy, no more than 10 years old, with a giant smile that could easily chop his face in half and whose only injury was a scrape of his knee. Soraka stopped in her tracks, flabbergasted, and wondered.
The child was busy untangling himself from a bush. He'd had the misfortune of sidestepping from the main path, which was strange because it was quite clearly marked. A giggle almost erupted from her mouth, but she didn't laugh for fear of offending him. So she moved in to help him.
As he noticed her, however, the reaction was weird. His eyes widened and started twinkling, and the impossible happened: that grin grew even bigger. She was momentarily struck with that picture of childish innocence.
"You are the flute player, right?"
The Starchild was once again surprised at his question. He wasn't here for wounds; then what was he here for? Never before had she been sought out for anything but healing…
Ever so slowly, like stars dancing and mountains moving, she nodded. There was a vague feeling of fatefulness, of curiosity, of shock and horror settling in her stomach and bile in her mouth, which she swallowed with some difficulty. Her hands shook a little at that, but her mind was clear, rather than confused and overcrowded as per usual. Even her celestial friends were silent at this interesting turn of the events, opting to leave her to her thoughts.
His face contorted into an even bigger smile, which she couldn't understand how it hadn't sliced his face in two already, while a certain kind of sparkles overtook his big childish eyes.
"Aww, I already like him!" a younger star chirped in her mind before being shushed by the others, but she had said what everyone thought; they were suckers for innocence.
"Awesome! You know, I've been looking for you for ages! Haha, the other boys will finally believe me!" the child all but giggled, beat into the air with a small stick in his right hand, catching a few branches in the process, making it rain leaves for a moment, and started dancing. Although tall for his age, he was lanky and very, very thin.
"Alright, alright, careful now," she was still uncertain as to what to do, so she simply ushered him into her grove. Might as well give him shelter before asking what it was that he wanted.
The thin blades of grass tickled her bare feet as she moved about in the grove, and the ends of her skirt were dotted with specks of the dew which never really got away.
The boy refused settle down for quite some time (Soraka tended to forget that mortal children had so much energy that it was sometimes terrifyingly exhausting, especially for her, to try to get a kid to do something. Anything.
Once he calmed down, however, Soraka kneeled in front of him, so as to be on his eye level, and bore her gaze right into his. He answered her with an equally powerful stare, though there was the tinge of a joke in those greenish depths. His mouth was a little too large for that way too long face, but it was relaxed, hinting at a carefree character.
Well, duh, he was still a child.
Her eyes travelled down and settled on his knee. The cut was quite deep so it must be very annoying.
"Do you want me to heal that cut for you?" she murmured, words falling softly like droplets in a brook, her hands already glowing with healing energy.
The boy startled at her, eyes going even wider and becoming even more innocent, and violently shook his head. Even more baffling.
"But why? It'd be better for you."
The boy huffed, indignant.
"No! Such is the Wuju philosophy: when there's pain, there's gain. Everything has to be balanced and we need to be too, with both ourselves and the world around us."
"Ah," she gasped lightly and shook her head. So the boy was from the villages which practiced that philosophy. That would explain the power of his eyes and that happy-go-lucky and reckless attitude. However, he didn't seem to understand the words he had just said, as they sounded orchestrated and weird in his mouth, "So, why did you find me if not for healing, Wuju boy?"
He straightened his back, trying to look more decent but all he managed to do was accentuate his lankiness and thin frame. That elicited a giggle from the Starchild; his antics were cute.
"I wanted to thank my saviour," he said it, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Apparently it wasn't, as Soraka gaped.
"Your saviour?"
For the life of her, she couldn't remember him.
The boy glanced at her, disappointed, and crumpled to the ground in a cross-legged position. It was an ode to popping joints and way too long limbs.
"Remember the time when you saved me with your song?"
Although there was a hint of a memory, she shook her head no.
"Well, it was four years ago. I'd got lost after the sun'd set. I couldn't find my way back to my village. The forests are very dangerous at night and I knew that; so I got more and more panicked. That way I wouldn't have ever got back. Unless I hadn't heard your song – the one you were playing just before. That night it sounded heavenly; it meant that someone was close and could help me. I ran in the direction from which it was coming and didn't stop until I could see the lights of my village in the distance. I knew it was mine straight away. Everyone was really happy to see me back, but I still wondered who had helped me with their song. Only today I could hear your song, which led me to here."
Little by little, fragments resurfaced from the gutter of Soraka's mind. She joined them together and realized that the boy was right. But from what she remembered, he was younger.
"I think I remember that moment, yes," she murmured, as to which the boy immediately sprung on his feet and started bowing to her in thanks, "There is no need to do that, really. That is my duty."
To tell the truth, someone finding her just to say "thank you" was a first.
"Though you did seem much younger back then."
It was the boy's turn to laugh heartily.
"Well, I do grow up, you know. That was long ago – I'm almost a grown man now!"
She couldn't help but snort a bit at that last part. It sounded so silly, with his figure and that shrill voice which hadn't mutated yet. But still, she remained composed so as not to offend him.
"And may I ask you your name?" she asked.
"Yi," he jumped again, way too enthusiastic for her tastes but still managing to be quite delectable, "Mater Yi, future best Wuju Bladesman! You?"
She giggled for the tenth time today. Man, did that boy dream big. Well, two could play at that game. She smiled and bowed to him, at perfect ninety degrees. He gaped at that, obviously used to the fact that no one took him seriously. But now it was different and he couldn't react in an adequate way.
"I am Soraka, the Starchild, healer of Ionia! Pleased to meet you!"
At that instant that face-chopping grin was back on his face and he was jumping around and swashing at invisible enemies. As she watched him, she couldn't help but revel at that determination and childlike enthusiasm, locked in a duet on his face and soul, which was quite unlike any other.
There were still some leaves in her hair. She plucked them out with a soft smile.
"I wonder if he'll stick around."
She wasn't sure whose the thought was – hers or the stars'.
…..
After that he started frequenting her grove.
One day, when the trees had already changed their colour to bleeding red and the stars had turned the other way of their endless journey, he came back once again. She had just sent off a few peasants, who had contracted the flu (it seemed that a village showed signs of a weird illness she could only explain as "flu") and was planning to have the nice good rest she deserved for a long time now, when there was a sudden rustle around the entrance of her grove. A smile found its way on her face: poor boy never managed to enter her grove properly.
It was to only person that Soraka would gladly forsake her free time (rare as it was), and that was that little boy, Master Yi, as he called himself, and simply Yi, as she called him.
"What are you here for this time?" she asked him, already beaming at him (really, that attitude was infectious), but this time the usual smile was absent.
He'd always come with some half-assed reason and stay for quite some time, never for the reason he'd previously mentioned. She had grown used to it and it seemed natural and kind of endearing now.
With a huff, he emerged from the bushes with a pace that could have easily worn out anyone else, kicking up dust into the air, walked up to her favourite tree trunk and slumped down against it. The wooden sword, which he always carried around and which, according to him, would soon be replaced by a real one, lay to next to him, almost rueful in its aura and appearance.
"Wonder what's into him?"
"I believe he is going to tell us in a second."
The boy hadn't grown only on Soraka, but also on the stars. And they always worried about him. But the worst were the times when they would gather in her mind and hush and gush about how cute he was. In such moments, she had some massive migraine (listening to a bunch of shrill-sounding girls wasn't one of the things one would want to experience).
Seeing that there was no response from the kid, she kneeled in front of him, enough to look right into his eyes. They were dimmed, the usual spark gone, though the usual vibrancy of that remarkable colour was still there. He evaded her eyes.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"That pout is telling me otherwise."
"What?! I'm not pouting!"
She chuckled at his indignation.
"Well, your face is telling me otherwise."
„Heyy! That's not funny!" at that she stopped her antics and glanced at him with a twinkle in her eyes, grin melting down into the soft smile she usually gave to her patients; she realized that jokes on him were the last thing he wanted at that moment.
"You are right. It's not," she murmured and, only hesitating for a second, she stood up, dusted her skirt and turned to the other part of her grove, where batches of herbs grew, some which long extinct down there, in the real world.
She needed to think of a cure that could counter the new illness of those village men. Although her power lay in the stars, it was irrevocably connected to the soil of the mortal world, and it was from the earth's creation that she most often sought inspiration from.
She dawdled a bit, between the flowerbeds, enjoying the thick, soothing aroma of so many mixed herbs. When fixing this spot, she'd had the habit of getting obsessive-compulsive, as everything had its strict place: tall plants in the back, smaller in the front. However, it wasn't going all according to plan: for example, a bush which was now widely considered as simply a weed had overtaken the bed of violets and was now freely blooming with its minuscule white flowers, eating away the sunshine for the poor purple blossoms of the violets.
Annoyed, Soraka pulled at them, making sure they went all the way out, including even the tiniest extension of the root, held in her left fist and carried on, occasionally picking up herbs.
Working had her so engrossed that she didn't even notice the small silhouette tailing her before he spoke.
"It was them again."
She startled, stopped her search and turned to him. His cheeks were burning in shame, eyes lost somewhere between the ground and her skirt, hands balled into fists. With a sigh, she bent forward a little, barely noticing that he'd grown, until her eyes were right in front of his. But he still wouldn't look at her.
Another exasperated sigh fell from her lips. Apparently, it was going to be the hard way. Ever so gently, she took hold of his chin and moved his head so that it faced her. Her eyes held his captive, and a slow blush crept up his pale cheeks. He looked like a frightened hare, feeling the imminent approach of the predator.
After a long pause of silence, he spoke.
"… They were making fun of me again."
She knew it!
Instead of jumping around in smugness that she'd managed to learn something from him, even at the price of much effort and eye duels, she all but stood up and dusted herself. Yi soon followed.
"They came out of nowhere while I was training and started laughing at my sword and my stance. They even said I'd be a better baker or a cleaner with the skills I have," he had started rambling, eager to have his compliment, but Soraka wouldn't give him any of that.
She whirled around so as to face him, sending silks and silken hair in a halo around her, and gave the boy the same look as before. As a response, the boy visibly cowered, his head shooting down to look at his feet.
She softened.
"Look now, boy, remind me of the Wuju philosophy."
"Everything has to be balanced and we need to be too, with both ourselves and the world around us," his eyes lightened up and he all but sang, making her smile: still the same words down to the very articles. It was so endearing.
"Well, and it seems to me that you aren't really in balance with yourself," he didn't deny anything so she continued, "You aren't in balance with yourself, you don't believe in your power and don't accept your weaknesses which has lead to you taking very seriously what those boys have said."
A barely visible nod. She took a deep breath and poked his nose.
"And you know what to do should you be out of balance, do you not?"
Another nod, more visible now.
"Meditation," he murmured, but in such a low voice that she decided to humour him.
"What? I couldn't hear you?"
"Meditation!" this time it was louder and more determined, as his head shot up and stared her dead in the eye. For yet another time she was struck by the boy's mesmerizing eyes. She could only imagine how many girls he would have thanks to them.
She moved by his side, wound an arm around his shoulders and led him to a part of her grove where he hadn't been: the place where she meditated. As she was leading him, however, she became aware of the stars speaking in her mind. Or shouting was more like it. It was a wonder how she hadn't paid attention to them at all.
"Quite the smooth talker you are, Soraka. I didn't know you had it in you."
"Me neither," she admitted. She'd rarely said things on her own accord, relying on the stars to whisper comforting words in her mind that she'd repeat and soothe the souls of the mortal. But now she had done so alone. And she really didn't know how to feel about that.
Anyway, what was important was that the boy was once again eager to learn, calm at heart and happy.
…..
"… And now you lean forward, keeping your back straight," Soraka was showing yet another of her stretching exercises to a seemingly interested Yi, who was watching her with utmost attention. Her body bent forward right according to her own instructions, hands resting on her waist. The weight of her breasts pressed her down and her dress threatened to fall apart.
Really, she should think of new attire.
Her back was always killing her with all that bending over patients so she tried to do at least some stretching exercises so as not to have eternal backache.
And Yi had once run into her doing them and of course had demanded that she showed them to him so that he could do them as well. And that was how they got in this situation. Soraka had nothing against showing him what she did but she couldn't understand his enthusiasm. Something was off. She felt nervous.
Her eyes were trained on the ground, just like in the exercise but she couldn't help but steal a glance at him. He seemed fascinated enough, but his eyes were dark and dazed, as though trying to focus on a few things at once. He never looked like that. Interesting.
"Do you understand, boy?"
The question surprised him and he jolted as though waking up from a shock. He looked left and right for a fraction of the second and then looked at her, while trying to keep his eyes away. She noticed the faintest blush dusting his cheeks.
"Y-yes."
She nodded as an acknowledgment, following through with her exercises, not really giving thought to what'd just happened. Until it happened again.
She was in yet another pose which had her bending forward. Her breathing was already labored enough, and she was dying for a rest, but she this time she managed to catch a glimpse of what exactly he was staring at. Her chest.
Her face turned instantly beet red.
"Whooopsiee, I think we caught a pervert in the making!" a way too chirpy voice giggled in her head.
"Hey! I don't think he was staring… there! It's probably just a coincidence," she thought back viciously, refusing to admit it, a deep sense of dread settling in the pit of her stomach.
There was a chorus of laughter at that.
"Well, it didn't seem like coincidence to me."
"Come on, he's just a child!"
"Who's apparently growing up, Starchild. Open your eyes!"
She finished her lesson with a heavy heart.
…..
"Soraka!"
Usually that voice both excited her and calmed her down (the tradition was preserved), but right now he was the last person she wanted here.
Her face was scrunched up in concentration, her hands enveloped in healing magic, which gently glowed with warm light. The bags under her eyes were the colour of midnight. Her whole body was shaking. Underneath her hands lay a young unconscious girl, who was sweating and trembling way too much for a healthy person.
She had been brought last night, sweating and panting and dying, with the highest temperature the Starchild had ever felt. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, but she was burning, as though her body was trying to purge something from her.
Following the orders of her stars, Soraka let the girl burn whatever was plaguing her, making sure she never overstepped the boundary of death, silently aiding her and bestowing the coolness of the Ionian night to her. However, by dawn she was the same as the night before and even the stars were starting to doubt and murmur in indiscernible speech (despite being the last anchor of hope to everybody).
Soraka, on the other hand, pressed on, refusing to relent to hopelessness. She had thought she'd be ready by the time Yi came, but apparently she had been wrong.
The sound of soft footfalls from somewhere behind her didn't even distract her from the objective. Her eyes remained closed, eyebrows furrowed, forehead wrinkled. She registered vaguely a presence right next to her.
"Soraka? "
"Oh, I see, you're working."
He stood by her in silence for a few moments, before speaking up. Boy, did he lack patience.
"I see you are tired. Is there any way to help you?"
This time she gathered the strength to shake her head, not once breaking her stance and concentration (though in reality her concentration was long gone by now). Though it was really nice of him to ask that; a wave of gratitude washed over her and left a tingling sensation in her stomach. Suddenly she felt the exhaustion and for a second abandoned the selflessness she'd imposed on herself for countless years and wished to simply fall back and fall asleep, using Yi as a pillow (he'd make a good pillow).
There was some shuffling from her side.
"Are you sure?"
She shook her head no again.
The next things that happened left her flabbergasted.
In an instant, her hands (her lonely, lonely hands, entwined only with the light of the stars' magic) were enveloped in his. The bright yellow of the magic she was using intermingled with his own, green as the forests she played to when she was alone, and boosted her up. The girl both of them were working on now visibly relaxed under their combined power. However, that wasn't what Soraka was paying attention at.
It was his hands. They baffled her. Although she continued channeling magic, all she could concentrate on were his hands. They were chapped, calloused, warm and bigger than hers (although he was shorter than her). There was something encouraging in them, something that made her push forward and help the girl. But also, they were the hands of a young adult now. Gone were the child fat and plumpness.
Those were the hands of a protector.
There was a surge of something unknown in her body. She really hoped the stars wouldn't notice it.
"It's okay now, Soraka. I can finish your work."
Once again she shook her head no. She wasn't going to act so selfish as to abandon one who needs help she could give. So she continued on. He didn't question her.
Only at sunset did they manage to fight back whatever was plaguing the girl. She was already sleeping soundly and serenely, when Soraka let the last bits of magic sift from her hands. However, she kept them in his grasp and smiled hesitantly.
"Thank you," she murmured, unsure how to react to both his actions and the feelings they had stirred in her. Feelings she had thought long gone.
"Hey, no problem. I'm glad I could help," he grinned back at her in that dangerous way. At that sight, the corners of her own lips curled up and she cursed her treacherous body which wouldn't listen to what she ordered it to do.
Her eyes remained lost in his; the color reminded him of the lonely sunrises over Ionia's forests. Still entwined, their hands lowered, but she wouldn't notice. She didn't know what to say.
Luckily she didn't have to, as a quiet cough took them away from their stupor.
Startled, Soraka glanced down, cursing herself again for letting her attention slip, and saw dark eyes gazing back into hers. A deep sigh of relief resounded from deep within her chest and the smile was back.
The girl was alive.
Her eyes fluttered heavily, as though fighting with sleep. Instinctively, Soraka reached out to smooth her hair and caress her cheeks, giving her the comfort and assurance that she was in a safe place, but her newfound helper beat her to it. His hands disappeared from hers, leaving them to fall to her sides like dead weight, and rested on the side of the girl's face.
"It's all right, now. You're safe here, you can sleep," Yi murmured gently to her, earning himself a tortured smile from the girl.
"T-thank―"
"Shh, sleep now," he shushed her again, and, in surprising display of tenderness he kissed her forehead. She fell asleep on the spot, as content as a baby.
Soraka, however, wasn't content. At all.
Her face was burning, a certain image engraved on the inside of her lids. Her lonely, oh so lonely hands lay limp on her sides and her stomach was churning, keen on making an intangible knot in her body.
"Whoaaah, do I sense jealousy?"
Clenching her teeth to the point of breaking, Soraka shook her head no hard, not really taking into account the fact that Yi could see her.
"Mom does it my little bro, when he can't fall asleep," he explained to her, thinking that the shake was meant for his actions.
For a moment she was struck by the image of him, his little brother and his parents, all huddled in the huts that he had described for her (and that she had seen over Ionia), all wearing that painfully familiar smile and exuding an aura of tranquility and love, and family. The pang of loneliness left a gaping hole in her. For centuries she had been alone, with the only family and love offered by giant balls up in the sky who didn't really understand human emotions.
"No, I think it was really nice of you to do that," she muttered, almost indistinguishably. But he heard her and of course, had to beam like there was no tomorrow. For a second, she wanted to not be the Starchild, to come home to hut filled with a smile like that and be able to look at it every moment of the day.
But as it wouldn't be any other way, he quickly shifted his attention to the girl, looking over at her with a care in his eyes that she'd not seen before.
"That boy is a born protector, you know."
She wouldn't agree with that. It wasn't protective feelings that he had. It was something else. The stars wouldn't understand though. It was far too complex for them. But it was the truth.
She glanced once more at his eyes. And lost herself.
That moment she realized that Yi had grown up, and that not only everyone except her saw that, but also she didn't like it at all when they did.
And that was definitely not okay.
