Disclaimer: Only Bleach I own is NaOCl
Chapter Four: Grains of Golden Sand
"I stand amid the roar of a surf-tormented shore..."
Zangetsu stared. He blinked; the scene before him did not change. It can't be... he thought, but I can't be hallucinating. He knew he was tired and weak, but not so much so that he shouldn't be able to trust his own eyes. Knowing that made it no easier to believe the thing was real.
He turned his face up to the sky, eyes closed, taking long, measured breaths before he opened them again. The sky was still a vast tableau of ominous grey. The rain, a mere drizzle now, still held its acid sting. Zangetsu slowly moved his gaze downward. He followed the line of a toppled skyscraper, parts of it eaten away by the rain, where it rested along an incline in the terrain. A sluice of water rushed down along it, hastening its decomposition and flooding the ravine below. He stood at the edge of the brackish water, his feet sunk deep into muck from rotted buildings.
The tiny object that had initially captivated him was still there. Indifferent to the mire it rested upon, indifferent to how dangerously close it was to the rushing water, it glittered. She was here before, he thought. Perhaps...
Zangetsu knelt in the mud and bent low over the object, sheltering it from the rain with his body. With a gentle touch he pushed it onto the palm of his hand. It looked like a snowflake, fragile and fleeting, but it caught the light and flashed rainbows like broken crystal. He could feel heat radiating from it. Part of him wanted to close his fist around it as tightly as possible, to trap that warmth and hold it near for all time. Fear stopped him, fear that the fragment would shatter or melt or simply disappear.
I need a way to carry it, he thought. I cannot trust my own hands. He looked around in vain. There was a time, before Ichigo's mind and imagination were closed to him, Zangetsu could have conjured anything he desired. Now he was free only to wander these dead lands; no more could he shape things. He resigned himself to making do with what he had, and pulled up a corner of his robe to form a pouch.
"Like a child picking flowers," he muttered ruefully.
He set the the object carefully into the make-shift basket. Contrasted with the dark cloth its luster was even more brilliant. Zangetsu turned away from the river and resumed his original path. He held his head high and refused to let the rain distress him. He was still a wanderer, a prisoner, an exile in his own home, but now he had purpose. The dreary landscape hadn't changed but the road back to Ichigo seemed clear as day. If that tiny, delicate fragment had survived here in this unlikely and inhospitable place, survived here despite fallen buildings and floodwaters, there had to be more. There had to be more, and Zangetsu would find each one.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-- Edgar Allan Poe; "A Dream Within a Dream"