The Queen and Her Lionheart

by musiclover3

AU: Foolish gods are we.

2. master of the house

A/N: It took seven months for this story to be updated.

The majority of this chapter was actually written in August close to the time I first published this fic. The rest of it has been written here and there over the seven months of absence.

(Some part of the wait is my fault: I procrastinated hardcore on finishing writing this. But most of the reason I hadn't updated, at least in the beginning, was because of school. I'm only updating now because it's spring break and because my friend - the one who I wrote this story for in the first place - asked for it.)

If it makes up for the wait, this chapter is obviously pretty long because I'm making it so one arc is all fit into one chapter, if that explains the length. I wish I could have shortened it down, but well. I tried. Chapter lengths will usually be pretty long for this reason. I'm scrapping the idea of a monthly updating schedule, so from here on out it'll be pretty sketchy. Apologies for that in advance.

Having said that, this chapter is all over the place and probably full of word vomit. I'd like to rewrite it, but I want to get this update over and done with, so I'm not going to. Also, I wrote a ton. I'm not going through this again.

(Note: Explanations regarding specific details in each chapter [such as aspects pertaining to Japanese mythology] will be listed out at the end of the chapter before the final author's note.)

---

the queen and her lionheart

chapter two: master of the house

---

[She dreamt of the sky.]

The scene playing out before her eyes was blurry, like a flashback of a memory having taken place in the distant past, one that had been shoved to the back of her mind and was now resurfacing again, bit by bit. Michelle didn't often think about her childhood these days - to be truthful, nothing particularly horrible had happened to her between the day she had learned how to walk up until when she had hit her thirteenth birthday, all bony legs and awkwardly crooked smiles. In reality, her childhood had been the pinnacle of her life: the world had seemed considerably brighter back then, the sky more vast and colorful. In those days, child-like innocence and promising curiosity had led her life, steering her towards a path of optimism and planting the possibility that she could perhaps become someone one day - that was the impression that she had tended to leave others with. "Impossible girl," strangers would call her when they didn't think she was listening, "She's so intelligent for her age, but she's such a troublemaker."

Considering the way her parents were (reckless and irresponsible and something synonymous to uncaring), it was no wonder that as she grew, she became more and more daring, more and more willing to act out in any way possible. As cliché as it sounded, half of her did this in the crippling hope that her parents would finally take notice of her. Perhaps if she somehow ended up injuring herself (due to stunts like falling off of a tree or climbing up to the roof of their apartment building), it would miraculously spark the small flame of her parents' dwindling concern or love for her.

It never did - a spare glance or two would end up being thrown her way, but no words of worry or reprimand would ever be said. It was as if her parents knew of her existence, but would rarely ever acknowledge it. She had learned early on how to bandage the scrapes on her knees and hands and how to pull through the fevers and colds by herself. Her parents weren't going to take care of her - she had come to that conclusion eventually.

And so, she had decided to grow up early. Once she'd hit thirteen, through her phase of awkwardness and general discomfort, the world had suddenly seemed to turn darker. It was as if during her childhood years she had been looking at her surroundings through a kaleidoscope. The transition to seeing the reality around her had not been pleasant, but it had come easily enough, the world turning gray and the truth of her none-too-pleasant life slipping through the cracks of her vision like rain beating on her small bedroom window. Her smiles had turned a little more forced, the smooth skin of her hands turning rough and cracked.

"It is what it is," she had deemed to be her motto. No matter how many beautiful things made up the world, she knew that they wouldn't give a damn about her. The sky would still cast pastel hues over the ground, the stars would still twinkle and wink down at the tiny people watching them, no matter what happened to her.

Then, he had come in, like the sun.

And that was the memory that was now replaying in front of her, something seeming to have triggered it out from the dark recesses of her mind where she had shoved her childhood and angst-filled teenage years to leave behind her. Her vision was hazy, like she was looking through an old prescription that had expired years before; but the colors were still bright, his smile still illuminated, and his warm voice remained the same.

It had occurred in her fourteenth year.

The meeting had been ridiculous, and she still felt embarrassed thinking about it even now. She had been attempting to climb up the large tree planted near the outskirts of the small local park located a few blocks away from her apartment building, lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed in quiet determination. For weeks she had been trying to successfully climb all the way to the top, as if that in and of itself would prove the worth of her existence and prove to the world that she didn't need her parents' approval of her to live on without guilt. Some part of her knew that it was useless. It didn't matter if she succeeded or not - no one would notice, and no one besides herself would care.

Still, she pushed that to the back of her mind, and she went on - up and up the tree, the only thought floating through her mind being that if she could just get to the top, plow through the branches and the assortment of leaves, her reward would be the sight of the sky.

Again, however, like always - she fell.

By this point, Michelle had been used to the weight of failure, having attempted this feat for weeks now. For some reason, though, this time - when she had been so determined and so set on engraving the view of the sky in her brain - it hurt more. As ridiculous as she knew it was, she started crying.

Because why couldn't something for once work out right for her?

The, admittedly skinny, dark-haired girl pressed her scraped palms against the closed lids of her eyes, trying to push back the barrage of tears flooding out. She could see stars start to appear behind her eye lids as she pressed harder and harder against them, as if trying to blind herself by that useless act. It was painful, and she felt pathetic.

Then, cool fingers gently wrapped themselves around her thin wrists - smooth and strong in contrast to herself - and carefully pulled her hands away from her eyes. "Ma colombe... My dear girl, what are you doing sitting out here by yourself?"

Michelle looked up in alarm, instinctively jerking her wrists away from the stranger's tender grip and pressing herself further against the rough bark of the tree trunk behind her, suspicion immediately welling up inside her chest. She could feel her heart start to beat frantically.

Through the blur of her tears, she could barely make out the sight of a tall figure kneeled down in front of her, and she was almost ninety-nine percent sure that he had his hands raised up in an expression of surrender - admittedly, though, it was hard to tell or make out any specific details. The tears that she had been stalling now flowed freely down her cheeks, as if the gates that had been blocking them had now been removed.

She blinked rapidly in a futile attempt to rid them away, her hands trembling violently when she tried to raise them up to wipe her face. It was as if all of the emotions that she had been hiding for the past year were now finally being released, and she found that it was difficult to regain any sort of control that she had had over them previously.

By the pitch of his voice, she knew that whoever had just joined her was male, most likely much older than her. Much to her frustration, she still couldn't quite see his face clearly due to the wetness of her eyes.

As if he realized this, she felt the man kindly rub his thumb under her eyes, helping to wipe away the tears spilling down her face. After a few moments, Michelle managed to raise her shaking hands to wipe the rest of her tears away, somehow sensing the stranger before her waiting patiently for her to finish.

When she had managed to regain her vision, she lifted her head to get a proper look at him.

She was sure, in that moment, that time stopped.

He looked to be about in his mid-twenties, with blond hair like sunshine tied in a ponytail over his shoulder. And he was beautiful, she thought curiously, in a saintly way. The young man seemed to light up the world.

But it was his eyes that drew her in: cerulean blue, like the sky. It was as if instead of being rewarded with the sight of the real thing breaking through the leaves of the tree behind her, she was being given him instead. He emitted a warmth that she had never been handed before.

She suddenly felt pitiful.

"Are you alright now, chéri?" he asked kindly; and, for the first time in her life, she could see actual concern gracing his handsome features - for her.

Never in her life had she been successful in her numerous attempts to receive her parents' concern, but now, fourteen years into her life, she was finally being given the one emotion that she had always wanted - and from a complete stranger no less.

She wanted to cry all over again.

Pathetically, she felt herself nod in answer to his soft question, almost wanting to hear him speak again. His voice was warm, and she found it nice to listen to. She couldn't help but think that he would make a wonderful storyteller.

"Who are you?" she asked quietly, her voice shaking. She burrowed herself further against the tree, as if wanting to hide.

Noticing this, the blond subtly leaned back a little and placed his hands in his lap, as if trying to assure her silently that he wouldn't get any closer to her than he already was if that was what made her most comfortable.

He gave the younger girl a sincere smile, bright and soft like the dawn. "My name? It's Francis, although I'm quite sure my name pales considerably next to yours, my dear."

It wasn't intended to be a flirt, she realized just by seeing the smile on his face; rather, it seemed to be meant to placate her - something said to someone younger in a fond sort of manner.

She looked at him as if he had just fallen out of the sky. To her, he must have been some kind of angel, with the way he was speaking to her and treating her at present.

"...It's Michelle," she said shyly once she had realized the subtle way he had been inquiring for her name.

Francis smiled warmly at her, appearing glad that she was now apparently growing used to his sudden presence. "A beautiful name for a beautiful girl."

She almost flinched.

On one hand, she was wary. His words seemed to have triggered something in her, and the current situation was now catching up to her mind. She was sure that, in this world, there were genuinely kind people in it. At the same time, however, those kind people had never found their way to her, and it was hard to believe that after fourteen years, they were appearing out of the blue like this. People like this man - seemingly perfect, almost - didn't just coincidentally materialize in front of crying lonely girls like her in real life.

On the other hand, though, she wanted to believe it. She wanted to believe that things were finally turning up, that she had found someone who could actually care about her, even if it was for only a few minutes - a one time deal. Perhaps the world, for just today, had decided to show a little kindness to the dark-haired girl trying to climb a tree as the sun set.

Seeming to have noticed the way her face slightly crumpled at his words, Francis leaned forward slightly and lightly brushed his fingers along her cheek, making her grow still at the action.

"You don't see it, do you?" he breathed out softly, his eyes roaming across her tear-stained face. There was an indecipherable emotion hidden in his irises, so strong that she had to push back the tears threatening to spill over once again. There was something about him that made her wonder if he were really all human. Gods were common in her world, but to appear in front of a human was a rare event that she could never even begin to imagine would happen to her.

She quickly rid her mind of that possibility, almost amused at her own train of thought. Nothing like that could ever happen to her - that was much too ridiculous of a thing to even think about.

Breaking her out of her thoughts, Francis tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear, like a loving parent would do for their own child. "You have such a brave heart, Michelle. Impossible girl, you will do so many wonderful things when the time comes."

"Impossible girl..." - the phrase sounded familiar, although she wasn't quite sure where she had heard it from. But the way Francis was looking at her, the expression he held on his face, made her think that to him, the title meant much more underneath the surface. She felt like she was missing out on some important meaning or inside joke, and it was frustrating. How could this man, whom she had just met minutes before, say such things about her, like he already knew her entire future by just one look?

Before she could perhaps utter out her fervent rejection of his words, she felt his hand drift to the top of her head and ruffle her messy hair - fondly, like a big brother would do to his little sister.

"Besides, everyone should be told that they are beautiful, no matter the circumstances." And then, he gave her the most stunning smile that she had ever seen in her life, rendering her speechless once again.

In that moment, in that memory, the Michelle from the past and the Michelle from the present both knew that without a doubt, they would never be able to hate the blond man with the sky in his eyes, and they would never be able to rid themselves of a presence that would be part of their memories until the day of their fifteenth birthday.

[A brilliant flash of white, then - darkness.]

But she could hear voices - words from her past, echoing and rattling through her skull as if she were the ball in a pinball machine, going down and down and down...

She felt like she was falling, but, somehow, she knew that her body was lying still. It was as if she were trapped inside her very head - a miniature version of herself - stuck in a dream.

No...

...Memories -

"Ma colombe, I am always here for you."

A sudden blur shot past her face - what looked to be a black sparrow - and the world around her suddenly shifted in a whirlwind, the sky seeming to have been painted or colored over messily with a blue crayon. She could see herself, fully clothed (looking as she had before the prior events of the day had ever happened), as if she were watching herself on a movie screen. It was like she had stepped into a child's drawing.

"Auf Wiedersehen, Birdy. We'll meet again."

It was a voice that she hadn't heard in what felt like centuries, as if it had been buried between the pages of a dust-filled history book, placed on a shelf in the far back corner of a library. For a while now, she had tried desperately to shove her memories to the back of her brain, sealing them away in a drawer and allowing the key to sail away down the currents of her mind, moving further and further away from her.

Michelle felt her heart constrict in her chest. Why were they coming back?

A pure white dove flew to rest on her bare shoulder. The wind around her picked up (she could see the penciled gray swirls of a drawn wind swirl around her), and the dove soared away.

"No unhappiness will come to you when I am here!"

The thief. The man who had kissed her. She could feel his jacket materialize around her upper body and cover her cold arms.

Momentarily, the world around her turned completely white, before her vision blurred like static, and she could see the sky again.

It was now as dark as the night, and she caught sight of the earth curving. The only star visible above her was Polaris - the North Star. Before her eyes, the world turned on its axis.

"Tell me, Miss Courtois: Do you believe in magic?"

Around her, in a mirage of color, fireflies lit up her surroundings. When she attempted to reach out her hand to touch them, they disappeared once her skin made contact, showers of twinkling balls of dust floating to the ground at her feet. The atmosphere seemed to have changed; instead of a crayon-drawing, she felt as if she were in a painting, seeing a sight that she had never seen before.

The ground under her feet opened up, and she saw herself falling.

"Long time no see..."

She felt herself break through the surface awaiting under her - a blue sea of watercolor. Michelle reached her arm up, as if trying to hold onto the sky above her. Her soul felt distant from her physical body, but she could still sense herself sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss. Everything seemed to slow down.

"Miss..."

"...Can you hear me?"

"Miss!"

[A flash of light, and her eyes opened.]

---

Michelle bolted upright with a gasp, shooting up like a rocket from her apparent spot on the - what felt like - wooden floor. Her legs were tangled in warm sheets and, in a blind panic, she attempted to kick them off of her, only succeeding in further entangling herself within its reach. Her heart pounded erratically in her ears, and her dark eyes were wide in their sockets as she saw a blur rush backwards and away from her, so swiftly and gracefully she almost didn't catch the movement. A whirlwind of confusion briefly overtook her mind, causing her vision to turn blurry, until after a few long moments, her eyes cleared, and she was almost able to think with clarity.

The sight before her made her blink.

Because, in front of her, was a cat.

Well, not really.

In reality, the figure kneeling before her was a young male, cloaked in a white and purple kimono, his face unfamiliar to her. He was slim even with his kimono on, although not unattractively so. His eyes were a dark brown color, warm and not particularly unkind. Concern was written all over his face as he remained a suitable distance away, raising his hands up in a placating gesture as he took in the younger girl's startled and alarmed face. It was obvious that he was being cautious, perhaps afraid of what her reaction would be to his sudden presence and his physical appearance (after all, he had a pair of white cat ears sticking out of the top of his short black head of hair, and she had no doubt that they were real). Although he was trying to hide it, Michelle could barely make out the curiosity shining in his brown orbs. It was clear that he was wondering just what she had been dreaming about while she was asleep.

...Wait.

No. That wasn't the right word for it.

She had been unconscious, hadn't she? Suddenly, all of the events that had happened previously that day came rushing back to her like a train, and she felt her breath hitch slightly at the barreling remembrance.

The thief who'd stolen her first kiss and her belongings. The strange vampiric man who'd listen to her woes and subsequently given her his "house." The terrifying human-snake hybrid who had appeared at the rundown shrine attempting to kill her.

Yes. She remembered every single detail - everything but her dream that is. The dark-haired girl felt her hands ball into fists in her lap under the sheets. What had she been dreaming about again? She couldn't recall.

As the silence between her and the, seemingly, human-cat hybrid dragged on, the latter seemed to grow more agitated as the teenage girl remained quiet, her expression gradually turning blank. Her mind was slowly catching up and starting to connect all of the dots: she seemed to be inside of the rundown shrine now, with its almost gloomy atmosphere and its decaying state of appearance; a human-cat hybrid was kneeling in front of her, perhaps having been sent to watch over her (or maybe he was just waiting to eat her - it wouldn't be the strangest thing that happened today); and the human-snake hybrid that she had seen before was nowhere to be seen.

Michelle pinched her arm hard and let out a small squeak when the pain vibrated across her skin, causing the figure before her to jump in surprise.

It certainly didn't seem to be a dream, as much as she wished it was.

"Sumimasen..." the figure spoke up hesitantly, his voice soft.

Michelle snapped out of her daze when he spoke, although her expression remained as blank as before. The black-haired male tilted his head slightly and set upon his face a worried countenance. She almost thought of him as adorable, if not for the fact that he seemed to be half cat.

...A cat?!

"Are you alright?" he asked quietly, furrowing his brows as he noticed the slightly glazed over look in her eyes.

"...You're a cat," she deadpanned after a few moments, causing him to jerk back slightly in surprise at her comment. That most certainly was not what he had been expecting her first words to be.

The young man (cat? cat?!) before her sweatdropped, a somewhat nervous smile working its way onto his face.

"A fox, actually," he corrected meekly, looking almost embarrassed.

Michelle blinked at him. Gosh he was cute.

And also half fox.

She blanched.

Oh, yes, she saw the tail now.

Slapping her cheeks together, the dark-haired girl shook her head frantically, strands of her tangled brown hair brushing against the sides of her face as she did so. She closed her eyes tightly and kept her palms pressed firmly against her cheeks, praying to any god who would listen to her that she was just merely dreaming, and that there really was not a "whatever this guy was" in front of her.

"Miss?" She returned her attention towards the only other figure in the room, only to see the same worried expression he had had on his face since the moment she had awakened. He tilted his head as his dark eyes stealthily roamed across her face, as if he were trying to diagnose what exactly was wrong with her or discern what she was thinking of without having to inquire of it aloud.

"...This isn't a dream," she spoke audibly, understanding dawning on her face. She felt her shoulders automatically drop out of their own accord in a gesture of surrender.

"I can't pretend anymore," she thought to herself, finally relenting and laying down her stubbornness and disbelief. "I couldn't have imagined any of this, even in a dream."

Everything around her was much too real for her to think any different.

"You're damn right it's not a dream."

Michelle could hear her heart beat against her ear drums.

Leaning to the side to see behind the kimono-clad figure kneeling before her, her wide dark eyes slowly and unblinkingly took in the familiar stranger standing several feet away, his scale covered arms crossed over imposingly over his bare chest. He appeared exactly as he had the first time she had ever laid eyes on him, although the green snake that had been coiled around his neck before was now nowhere to be seen. Although he didn't look nearly as frightening as he had back then, what with the absence of the green wall of fire and all, he was still the very picture of intimidating, and the irritation etched into his features only added to it.

The blond tapped his foot impatiently against the rough floorboards of the shrine, one of his large eyebrows twitching in annoyance at her complete silence.

"Well?" he demanded. "Have you suddenly gone mute? What the bloody hell do you think you're doing here?"

At that moment, something inside her seemed to snap.

A sudden dizziness overtook her, and fatigue started to rapidly overwhelm her entire body, starting from her head down to her toes. She felt her head tilt backwards out of its own accord, her body following automatically as her eyes unconsciously began to slip closed.

"Oi! Don't you dare faint again!" she heard the rough accented voice order; and, after a seconds of hearing bare feet scrape quickly across the floor, she felt cool hands grasp firmly onto her jacket clad arms, the coldness of them leaking through the leather, like water seeping through one's swimsuit. She was dimly aware of someone shaking her vigorously back and forth, as if trying to bring her back to awareness.

"Ah! A-Arthur-san, please be more gentle! She has just woken up!"

After a few moments of grumbling and soft murmurings, she could blindly register this 'Arthur' character stepping aside and someone else taking his spot before her. She could sense a certain calmness rush over her, as if being taken from the aura surrounding the mysterious person in front of her.

Gentle hands cupped themselves tenderly around the sides of her face, and her eyes unconsciously found themselves open, peering into the concerned eyes of another.

"Are you alright now, Miss...?" the human-cat hybrid trailed off, as if silently asking for a name. He seemed a bit flustered being in such close range to her, although she herself was much too confused and groggy to fully be aware of the close proximity herself.

"Michelle," she answered dazily, blinking at him as if she had just awoken from a dream.

"Michelle-sama," he confirmed politely, and her befuddled mind had a difficult time attempting to remember what exactly the honorific he had used for her meant.

"I apologize for Arthur-san's behavior," he said, almost mournfully, a disappointed glint lighting up his eyes. She heard an indignant squawk emit from the other stranger's mouth, although she found herself too tired to attempt to see his expression.

A worried frown appeared on the dark-haired man's face as he took in her bewildered expression, his hands still cupping her cheeks. "How are you feeling now?"

Michelle blinked at him blankly. "I don't..."

She trailed off as her eyes slowly rolled down to his hands.

More specifically his nails - long and sharply pointed at the tips, like needles.

Claws.

And they were touching her face.

She practically turned to stone, blue lines of shock appearing down her forehead, her jaw agape.

Registering why she was having the reaction she was, his face turned pale, his expression morphing into shocked blankness.

Arthur snorted derisively. "You've done it now, Honda."

Michelle's scream almost shattered the shrine.

---

"Please allow us to explain."

Michelle was kneeled down on the light green mat spread across the creaking floorboards, her hands placed nervously in her lap as she stared, almost pitifully, at the two figures across the small wooden table - one kneeled down just like her, the other standing.

"That would be most appreciated," she answered glumly, half ashamed of her previous over-the-top reaction and half depressed over her situation in general.

"I believe introductions are long overdue." The human-cat hybrid gave her a polite bow of his head. "Hajimemashite. Watashi wa Honda Kiku desu."

The younger girl smiled hesitantly in return, her fingers tapping with anxious energy against her lap. "I'm Michelle Courtois."

Kiku raised his head, his expression blank as he inclined his head towards the blond beside him, saying in a polite tone, "This is Arthur Kirkland. At times he can be very rude, but please treat him kindly."

Arthur's eyebrow twitched in annoyance. "Don't you think that's a little too much? Who do you think you're calling rude?" He sighed with a little shake of his head, exasperated. He turned his attention back to Michelle, who immediately started to fidget under his intense gaze.

"Now back to you," he started, his shining eyes narrowed - almost suspiciously - at her. "Who are you? And what are you doing here?"

Michelle balked at the sudden interrogation, but, seeing that she had no choice, began her story for the second time that day, ending with when she woke up in the shrine just minutes before.

"...And that's what happened," she finished, bowing her head as the events of the day once again clouded her mind. She seemed to have a sort of aura of doom around her, and the atmosphere of the shrine coincidingly became much more depressing than before.

"I see..." Kiku murmured to himself, thoughtful as he turned over the drawn map Michelle had given him at some point during her story.

"It's true that this stupid handwriting belongs to him..." Arthur muttered as he peered over Kiku's shoulder and examined the map, his lips curled in disdain.

"And you say that an Italian man stole your belongings?" Kiku asked, looking back up from the piece of paper. His expression was carefully detached, allowing no room for emotion to seep through.

To be frank, it made Michelle uncomfortable.

"Don't make me admit it again," she mumbled, the jacket around her seeming heavier than before.

"That idiot," Arthur muttered, glancing irritably towards the leather jacket she was wearing. "Conning the poor girl out of her wits - and giving her his jacket of all things..."

"Feliciano has always been very flirtatious," Kiku admitted weakly, sweatdropping. "I'm surprised he hadn't done more to her..."

Michelle stiffened and decided not to mention how he had kissed her in the middle of the street.

In any case, by the way their conversation was going, she could deem that this "Feliciano" character was most likely someone that they both knew, which meant...

Her suspicions had been correct: He really wasn't a normal person.

'Then again,' she thought dryly, 'no one here seems to be - human, anyway.'

"Those two men you met today," Arthur started, placing a hand on his hip in a no-nonsense manner, "are not normal."

"You're kidding," Michelle deadpanned.

"Don't get smart with me," he replied, a vein popping out of his temple.

"Michelle-sama," Kiku took over hastily, as if worried an argument would break out, "those two you met-"

"-are gods," Arthur finished bluntly, ignoring the startled exclamation that emitted from the dark-haired girl's mouth. "And that man you met who sent you here is the land god of this shrine."

She froze.

"EHHHHHH?!"

"Stop screaming!" he snapped, baring his teeth at her as she ignored him completely, her eyes practically bugging out of their sockets as she exclaimed in disbelief, "That guy is a land god?! And the other guy, too? A god screwed me over?!"

"Those two seem to do that often, yes," Arthur replied blandly, placing a hand against his forehead, now appearing completely done with the younger girl in front of him.

"Because he gave you this shrine..." Kiku reached an arm forward and brushed her hair away from her forehead, a glowing dot seeming to emerge from the middle as her hair was swept away, "and appointed you the "master" here, he thus gave you the status of being the new land god."

She choked on air, her mind flashing back to when the apparent former "land god" had kissed her on the forehead back in the park hours before.

"You're much more suited to be the master of that "house" than me."

Lightning seemed to strike her as she put the pieces together, and anger immediately welled up inside her chest.

That dirty cheater!

"Although you are now the land god, you are still human," Kiku explain further, oblivous to her inner turmoil and distress. "Lupei-sama himself was very much a god, however..."

Arthur briskly walked around the table and leaned down to grab her chin forcibly towards his face, his eyes scrutinizing and his cold fingers chilling her down to the bone.

"Appointing a weak girl like her to be the god..." Arthur muttered, his eyebrows arched downwards and his lips curled disdainfully. "What was he thinking? What can a dirty teenage girl do for this shrine? And a human of all things..."

He mercilessly released her chin and stood back up to his full height, his dark green skirt seeming to coil around his legs like the snake he was. He looked down at her in superiority, his nose raised disdainfully.

"Having her here is an insult to me," he deemed briskly, his emerald eyes cackling viciously down at her. He scoffed lightly, turning his head to the side. "That idiot must be joking, sending a human girl here."

'Pitiful.'

"A-Arthur-san..." Kiku protested, alarm lighting up his face. "If she is the one Lupei-sama recommended..."

"You know..." Michelle raised her head, her expression having dramatically darkened, much to Kiku's horror and Arthur's surprise, "hearing those haughty words from a rude old man is a little ironic, don't you think?"

Because, heck.

What did she have to lose at this point?

Arthur twitched violently, his hands curling into fists at his sides. "What did you call me?"

"Oh my..." Kiku uttered nervously, his fox ears twitching anxiously.

"You're going deaf, old man," Michelle stated viciously, her eyes narrowed and brows furrowed. She had gone through hell all day, and this stupid snake had finally managed to cause her breaking point.

"Who are you calling old?!" he barked, striding towards her with a dark intent.

Michelle immediately bolted to her feet and clenched her hands into fists at her sides, going up on tip toes to shove her face towards his. "And you know what else? Your eyebrows are huge." She shot out her finger and poked at one of them, ignoring his furious exclamation. "Are they even real? You could fit a country in there."

He spluttered at her words, his face turning red in both embarrassment and fury.

"I don't want to be told that from a half naked girl," he snapped in response. "You're not even decent enough to look at."

She let out a short laugh, gesturing wildly at him. "Look who's talking! You're wearing a skirt! I bet this is the closest you'll ever get to seeing a half naked girl!"

He gaped at her, a blush spreading across his pale cheeks. "You take that back!" he demanded, scandalized.

Before the argument could go any further, Kiku materialized between the two and spread his arms out hastily, claws extended, pushing them away from each other. "Please stop," he ordered firmly, although his eyes showed panic. "Arthur-san, you are acting dishonorable. She is the new land god of this shrine-!"

"She is no god to me," he spat back ruthlessly, glaring murderously at her. "I am Vladimir's familiar, and I refuse to serve this human girl who can barely dress properly, much less handle this shrine."

"Like I want you to be my familiar in the first place," she snapped, too angry to even think about comprehending what exactly a "familiar" was in the first place.

'I didn't ask for this!' she wanted to scream at him. 'Do you think I want to be here?!'

Michelle felt her fingernails pierce the dried scratches on the palms of her hands, her hands clenched so tightly that her knuckles were white. Furiously, she spun around and clumsily headed towards the exit - wherever that was.

"Where do you think you're going?" Arthur yelled from behind her as she managed to maneuver herself towards the open sliding doors of the shrine.

"I'm sleeping outside!" she shouted angrily, her shoulders stiff in stubbornness as she slid the doors open and stomped out, her pride getting the best of her.

"Michelle-sama!" she heard Kiku call out frantically - but she ignored him, and headed off into the night.

---

Crap.

Was she screwed or what?

Michelle shivered and tightly wrapped her jacket clad arms around herself, pushing her weight against the rough bark of the titantic tree behind her as if attempting to find warmth from it. She had only walked a few feet away from the shrine to sit underneath the large tree off to the side, the branches and leaves slightly shielding her away from the bright moonlight. If she looked hard enough, she could see some stars twinkling in the sky.

She dropped her head down to rest her chin against her chest, eyes closing as she took a deep breath and slowly let it out. She couldn't help but be reminded of that time a few years before when she had first met Francis, the situation appearing quite similar to the one she was in now.

Gosh.

What a train wreck she was in.

Her eyes still closed, she unwound one of her arms and clutched the front of her jacket with her hand, over her heart. All she had been looking for was a new start, a normal life, and now look where she was. Stuck as a human land god of a rundown shrine, unwanted by the occupants and outcasted to sleep outside of all places. This whole day she had been tricked, taken advantage of, and treated like she was worthless - she was tired of it. She hadn't asked to be the new "master" of this "house" or the new land god of this shrine, and she most certainly hadn't asked to be stuck with a terrible snake or a weird fox as companions.

'Look at yourself, Michelle,' she thought to herself, closing her eyes tighter. 'Could things get any worse?'

Though her eyes were closed, a part of her could sense someone kneeling down before her and resting a gentle hand on her head, causing her eyes to open in alarm and her body to automatically scoot back against the tree trunk, a wave of pain shooting up her spine at the abrupt motion.

"Gomennasai," a soft voice apologized hastily, and her blurry eyes slowly took in the form of Kiku, his hands raised up placatingly, a worried crease in his forehead. "I did not mean to startle you, Michelle-sama."

A wave of déjà vu hit her as her mind unconsciously shot back in time, Kiku momentarily being replaced with a blond man with skies for eyes, his hands raised exactly as Kiku's were now.

"Are you alright now, chéri?"

She burst into tears.

It was an automatic reaction, noisy and out of the blue, but she supposed that it was going to have happened sooner or later, considering the day she was currently having. Still, it didn't stop the bout of shame that was starting to spill over her, so she clumsily raised her hands up to her eyes, as if to attempt to stop the overflowing of tears.

"E-EH?!" Kiku exclaimed in extreme alarm, his face having turned completely white and his expression making it seem as if he had just been struck by lightning. "Mi-Michelle-sama?!" His hands were still raised, although now they were shaking visibly, as if he could not decide just what to do with them.

It was clearly apparent, even through her tears, that he had absolutely no idea what to do in this situation. He looked bewildered, horrified even, and she imagined that the two of them were quite the sight to see.

Crap. She was pathetic.

After a few long moments, she felt a hand being placed on her head, and she automatically raised her eyes slightly from her hands to see Kiku, a flustered pink dusting his cheeks as he struggled to maintain eye contact with her. Although in the beginning, she had been frightened of his claws...

...they seemed gentle now, framing her head like a crown of flowers.

"I..." He hesitated, as if he were trying to choose his next words carefully, the blush fading away from his cheeks as if it had never been there in the first place.

Finally, his face softened ever so slightly, and he removed his hand away from her head, his shoulders slumping down as if with some kind of resignation. Giving her a sympathetic, almost sad smile, he said simply, "The stars... are very beautiful tonight, aren't they?"

Surprise flitted across Michelle's face as his words resonated in her ears, and the onslaught of tears abruptly stilled to a halt as she raised her eyes towards the heavens. She could see stars criss-crossing across the sky.

"Yeah." She sniffled and allowed a watery grin to appear on her face, her hand unconsciously moving up to clutch her jacket over where her heart should be. "They're really pretty."

Letting out a soft relieved sigh, Kiku placed his hands properly in his lap, tilting his head and leveling her with an unreadable smile. She could see the stars blanket his irises. "I'm glad."

"Your smiling face looks better."

---

"I apologize for Arthur-san's recent behavior."

Michelle wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes, tilting her head back to rest against the tree trunk behind her. She almost felt calm, and her face had slowly regained its usual complexion after she had let herself have a good cry.

'But no more of that, Michelle,' she told herself scoldingly. 'From now on, you're strong. You've got no time for crying.'

"I know it may not seem like it, but Arthur-san is a good person," Kiku told her hesitantly, his voice resonating from his spot on the other side of the tree.

"Oh, yeah, I can tell," Michelle said with a snort, her lips curling into a scowl as Arthur's face popped up in her mind.

She heard Kiku let out a sigh, although he remained patient. "Please try to understand him," he insisted, and she had to bite her tongue to refrain from making a sarcastic comment. None of this was Kiku's fault, after all. "He has his reasons for acting the way he does - although I know that does not excuse his behavior."

Michelle blew a strand of her brown hair away from her face, resigned. "So what are they? What's his deal?"

"You must know - he has been waiting in this shrine for twenty years," Kiku began, and the words she had heard Vlad admit back in the park once again echoed in her mind: "You know, I also ran away from home... Arthur'll probably rip my head off if I ever showed my face up there again."

"It's been a while... Leaving me alone to take care of this shrine for twenty years...!"

Oh.

"As we told you, Lupei-sama was the former land god of this shrine," Kiku explained, the breeze around them starting to pick up slightly as the story began. "However, one night, he disappeared."

"I'll be back soon! Don't wait up, okay? Take care of yourself till I get back!"

"And he has not come back since then. As such, Arthur-san has been waiting twenty years in this shrine for him to return."

Michelle's eyes rolled up to stare at the night sky.

'Taking care of this shrine alone... Waiting twenty years for a master that will never come back... How lonely has he been, really?' she wondered, thoughtful.

"But you're here, aren't you, Kiku?" Michelle reminded, starting to feel some sympathy for the ill-mannered snake familiar. "You've been with him, too, all this time..."

She could almost see the embarrassed expression appear on the human-fox's face as he answered, "Ah... that may be true, but I have only been here for ten years. I am not a familiar of this shrine."

Speaking of that...

"What's a familiar, anyway?" Michelle asked curiously, tilting her head as she remembered the mention of the word during the argument inside.

"Ah, I suppose you can say... they are servants of the master of their shrine," Kiku answered. "They are bound to them as long as their god exists and the familiar contract between them remains intact. You can say they're lion dogs of sorts - guardians of the "master" and the "shrine," although not all of them are dogs..."

"And that Arthur guy was the former land god's familiar?" Michelle reiterated, having a hard time picturing the human-snake to be anywhere near devoted to that carefree guy she met in the park...

Then again, she had a hard time believing he was a god in the first place.

"Yes. For hundreds of years those two have been together," Kiku informed, oblivious to the way Michelle, from the other side of the tree, stiffened with shock at his words.

She was starting to feel sorry for Arthur, having to be stuck with that guy for so long...

"Arthur is a divine snake," he went on, "and, ah, I am a kitsune - a fox yokai. Although I am not a familiar of this shrine, when I had been informed of Arthur's situation..." He stopped.

"Kiku?" Michelle shifted, hesitant. "If you're a familiar, too... What about your shrine? Where's your master?"

Silence.

She wanted to slap herself. She'd hit a nerve, clearly.

Just when she had been about to take her words back, Kiku answered, quietly, "My shrine... no longer has any need of guardianship."

A chill went down her spine.

His tone softened. "Because of this, I came to remain with Arthur-san at this shrine. However, because I am not Lupei-sama's familiar, and neither of us are aware of his location, attendance to this shrine has gradually decreased over the years. Without Lupei-sama, the residents in this area have come to believe that this is an abandoned shrine. The money and prayers coming here have come to an almost complete standstill."

"At times, however, we will get the occasional visitor, if only because Arthur-san has been listening to their prayers. From the day Lupei-sama left, he has been the one to take care of this shrine on his own."

'On his own...? All these years...'

She tugged at the ends of her hair, frustration gripping at her soul. Great, now she was starting to feel guilty.

'And just when he thinks his master's come back, he gets me instead...' she realized, his antagonistic behavior towards her beginning to make some sense. 'A completely new land god, and a teenage girl no less...'

'A human.'

"Do you understand now, Michelle-sama?" Kiku asked gently, no ill will apparent in his tone of voice. "Perhaps I shouldn't say this, but for a long time, Arthur-san has been lonely. Because of this..."

He materialized before her, down on one knee, his head bowed. Michelle let out an exclamation of surprise, the breeze momentarily blowing her hair away from her face.

"Please... take care of him for now." He looked up at her, his lips set in determination. Everything in her screamed to run away. "Until Lupei-sama chooses to return... Please become the land god of this shrine."

Michelle tightened her grip on her jacket, her hands shaking. "I-I can't possibly...!"

"I'm begging you!" Her eyes widened at his sudden outburst, and she knew that this was undoubtedly an uncharacteristic display of emotion from him. Most likely, she would never see this again, nor did she ever want to. Kiku appeared almost distraught, like a child.

He looked vulnerable.

"If Lupei-sama has made the decision not to return, and has instead chosen you to take his place, then he must have a good reason for doing so. This shrine cannot be left unattended without a god for much longer before it turns into ruins."

'Ruins?'

Kiku appeared almost haunted at the possibility he was presenting.

She didn't like that expression on his face.

"Well..." She smiled tiredly, sensing that she was surely going to regret the next words to come out of her mouth. "I suppose it can't be too bad, right? If he's already made me the land god, it'll be troublesome to find a new one to replace me, right?" She tilted her head, her smile becoming a little brighter. "I'll try my best from now on, so please... take care of me!"

Kiku looked taken aback for a few moments, before a relieved smile appeared on his face. He appeared almost warm. "Hai!"

"But, uh, being a land god... What exactly does that mean?" she asked sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly.

He sweatdropped, not entirely surprised with her cluelessness.

"Lupei-sama was a marriage god," Kiku explained, flinching when he heard her outburst of, "A marriage god?! No way! That guy?!"

The dark-haired kitsune smiled weakly, starting to question his insistence on getting this girl to be the new land god. "Hai. As such, he assists in bond-tying, and is sensitive to the matters of the heart, particularly. He has the ability to see others' strings."

"Strings?" Michelle asked, desperately trying to keep up and wrap her head around this surprising information.

"Strings of fate." Kiku tilted his head, lowering himself down to both knees and placing his hands regally in his lap. While Michelle could definitely see him as making a good familiar, she also had a hard time believing that he wasn't a god himself. "The land god of this shrine has the power to see others' Red Strings of Fate, or who one is bound to - their soulmate. Because you are now the land god of this shrine, this ability has undoubtedly been passed down to you."

"..." She stared at him blankly.

...Holy crap.

She was in some chick flick rom-com.

"However, because you are still fully human and are still considerably weak as a newly appointed god, most likely you will not be able to see others' fate threads unless the love between a set of individuals is particularly strong, or the situation is of utmost importance - an emergency that needs your attention."

Michelle felt like her head was spinning. "Is... Is that so?"

Was she Cupid now or something? How ironic...

So long ago, she had made a promise to never get married, to never fall in love.

("Are you fascinated by the wedding dresses, chéri?"

A fourteen-year-old Michelle turned her blank stare away from the large shop window display and averted her attention towards the blond young man standing beside her, his usual beaming smile gracing his handsome features.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sent a quick glance back at the shop window, easily able to make out her and her companion's reflections around the two elaborately designed wedding dresses put out for display.

"Not particularly," she answered plainly, oblivious to the large red arrow that then dramatically shot through Francis's heart at her words.

He wilted visibly, his shoulders slumping as he fixed his gaze down at the shorter girl. "You're quite gloomy, aren't you, dear?" He leaned down to mercilessly pinch her cheeks, stretching them out as if as punishment for her depressing words.

Michelle flailed her arms in protest, a tick mark appearing on her temple as she yelled, "Stupid! Don't touch me!"

Once he had released her, she pouted, crossing her arms over her chest childishly. "You're a pervert."

Francis balked, flinching violently as if he had just been struck with a nasty blow. "Who are you calling a pervert?! Since when did you become so uncute?!"

She stuck her tongue out at him, unaware of the strange looks they were getting from various passerby out on the street.

"Surely, though, you must find them at least flattering to look at, oui?" Francis insisted, placing a hand on his hip as he fixed his gaze on the wedding dresses.

Michelle pursed her lips, unimpressed as she followed his line of sight. Unlike other girls her age (well, females in general, perhaps), she had never had that sort of 'fixation' on romance or love as most others did. Weddings, happy ever afters, love... It all seemed much too like a fairytale, a dream that only caused pain to imagine or think about.

Sometimes, she would try to envision her parents' own wedding: Her stoic mother in a wedding dress like the one set out before her, her reckless father smiling and lovestruck as he watched his fiancée walk down the aisle...

She couldn't believe it to have been reality. Her parents acted more like a duo of irresponsible friends than lovers, and she had spent enough time with the two of them to realize that love was not something everyone was able to get.

What was the point of dreaming?

"It seems a little too fake for me," she replied softly, her lips set and her face hard. "It's kind of like a dream."

She could see Francis's face soften in a mixture of remorse and sympathy in the window display as he let out a sigh, raising his arm up to ruffle her dark head of hair like she imagined an ideal older brother would.

"One day, Michelle," he started, uncharacteristically serious, "you'll meet someone who you will eventually yearn to spend your whole life with. Everyone has a soulmate, after all." He lifted his hand off of her head and gave her a warm smile, the sunlight casting a glow around the crown of his blond hair. "Those who say they don't believe in love have only just to open their eyes and look at the world around them. It's like sleepwalking, non?"

Michelle gazed up at him in an almost stupor of wonder, thoughtful regarding his words as she gave no audible reaction to them. Her parents had never shown her much of this "love" Francis claimed existed, and having been surrounded by that almost all her life so far, she found it quite difficult to allow his words to her sink in deep inside her heart.

Still, she found them interesting.

"That's nice and all," she began, blinking up at him blankly, "but I'm never going to get married."

Francis almost fainted on the sidewalk.

"Love is stupid," she went on, almost passionately, although the expression on her face remained matter-of-fact. "I'm never going to rely on a man. That's just bad luck. I'd rather grow old alone-"

Francis slapped his hand over her mouth.

"Idiot, don't blame bad luck on men," he scolded, his eye twitching slightly in annoyance. "Rather, blame it on the wrong way of seeing things." Using his other hand, he poked her forehead, leaning down to face her directly. "Saying things like "I won't rely on anyone" and "I'd rather be alone" is what I think stupid is. No one was put in this world to be alone."

Michelle stared at him with wide eyes, causing a smirk to appear on his face. "And, if you can't rely on anyone else right now, rely on me." He straightened himself up and removed his hand away from her mouth and placed it on his hip, flipping his hair back. "Surely if it's me, it's possible to make you happy."

"Also..."

He curled his hand into a fist and bonked her on the head, causing her to yell out in pain and irritation as she raised her arms to swat him away. "Don't ever say words like that ever again!" He clutched the part of his shirt that was over his heart dramatically, staggering as if he were in actual physical pain. "Saying stuff like "Love is stupid" and "I won't ever get married" - are you trying to kill me?!"

"You're the one that's trying to kill me!" she barked back, clutching her head and curving herself away from him.

Still.

His words resonated in her heart.)

"...Michelle-sama?"

The brunette found herself jerked out of the memory she had been reliving, her surprised and slightly glazed-over gaze refocusing on the former familiar kneeled before her. He sent her a concerned look, one that she felt she was seeing too much of tonight.

He gave her a small kind smile, and she suddenly noticed just how tired he appeared - his eyes seemed to have a hard time focusing on her, his fingers were twitching ever so slightly in his lap. "Perhaps we should continue this discussion in the morning."

Returning the gesture, she nodded, replying, "That sounds good."

Kiku made his way back up to his feet and furrowed his brows down at her in disconcertment. "Are you sure you want to stay out here? You could get sick, Michelle-sama."

She smiled tightly, giving him a jerky nod as the image of Arthur's furious face popped up in her mind. Her heart beat with renewed irritation. "I'll be fine, thank you."

'Not like I haven't slept outside before,' she thought, remembering all of the times she had chosen to get her much needed amount of sleep in her backyard, whether that be because she desperately wanted to get away from her parents, or because they had accidentally locked her out of the house and forgotten about her.

As Kiku started to make his way back to the shrine, a thought materialized in her mind, and she let out an "oh!" of remembrance, causing the fox yokai to turn around in curiosity.

"By the way, I forgot to ask, but..." Michelle tilted her head, innocent interest shining in her dark eyes as she continued, "how exactly does this "familiar contract" work?"

As much as she absolutely did not want to have to be anywhere near Arthur (much less have him as her familiar), if she was going to be the land god, she knew that, admittedly, she couldn't be an effective one if she did not have him by her side, much to her irritation.

"Ah..." Kiku uttered out softly, now seeming a little more hesitant, almost nervous. "If you manage to bind him with the contract for familiars..."

"He will absolutely obey you."

Michelle froze.

'Absolutely... obey me?' she thought, her face slowly starting to light up as Kiku's words echoed over and over in her mind. 'If I can bind that jerk with the contract, he'll have to obey my every command no matter what?'

She grinned wildly, almost sparkling.

Kiku sweatdropped at her reaction, starting to feel a bit sympathetic for his long-time friend in the shrine.

"Really?" she squealed, clasping her hands together in excitement, her face brightening in childish delight.

"That's one of the powers as the land god, yes," he admitted, smiling anxiously as he saw her almost ominous sparkling aura increase.

"So how can I make him my familiar?" Michelle asked eagerly, jumping up from her spot on the ground and practically skipping over to him to hear his answer.

"It's simple," Kiku replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

"All you have to do is kiss him."

Michelle nearly fainted.

"If you do that, he will become your faithful servant," Kiku went on, oblivious to the pale younger girl staggering dramatically away from him and clutching the place over her heart as if she were having heart burn. "After that, there's nothing you can't make him do... Eh?"

He sweatdropped as he saw Michelle sprawled pathetically across the ground at his feet, her body curled into a ball and her eyes open in terror.

"Michelle-sama?" he called, leaning down to get a better look at the shuddering girl.

"That's crazy!" she suddenly screeched, causing Kiku to let out an exclamation of surprise and take a step back. "Kiss that scary guy?! No way am I kissing an old man! You want me to die, don't you?!"

She wailed to the open sky, fat tears running down her cheeks at the frightening thought.

"Eh?! Eh?!" Kiku spazzed out, panic clear in his expression as he flailed his arms and looked around frantically, as if trying to find someone or something to calm her down (although he himself needed to be calmed down as well).

After a few long moments, Michelle's expression softened back to normal, but her back remained facing towards the black-haired former familiar behind her.

"I'm sleepy," she murmured in announcement, causing Kiku to almost collapse onto the ground.

"Please get some rest, then," he replied tiredly, already sensing the trouble that this girl would cause for them.

"G'night, Kiku," she said cheerfully, sending him a tiny wave as he reluctantly started to make his way back to the shrine, seeing that she was adamant in staying outside.

"Goodnight," he returned politely, smiling weakly. "I'll send a blanket out to you."

She blinked in mild surprise at the courteous gesture, but gave him a bright smile in return, feeling a sort of fondness start to well in her heart towards the fox yokai.

"Really? That'd be great!" she exclaimed in excitement, grinning wildly.

As she crawled back to her spot against the tree trunk and closed her eyes, almost content for a change, Kiku sent her a last strange look, before turning and heading inside.

---

Michelle awoke to a suffocating bundle being tossed at her face.

She let out a muffled exclamation and kicked blindly at the air, painfully hitting her back against the tree trunk behind her as she flailed her arms wildly, the last tendrils of sleep slowly disappearing.

"For heavens' sakes, woman, you're not dying."

She froze her arms and legs mid action, her wide eyes just now taking in the messily bundled blanket that had slid down into her lap, and her ears abruptly recognizing the condescending and irritated voice.

Oh.

"Eh? It's the old man," she said innocently as she calmed herself down, her hands now fisted into the blanket in her lap.

"Is that how I'm known to you?!" he barked, a vein popping out of his forehead.

Arthur placed a hand on his hip as he stared down at her with one eyebrow raised, his lips curled in distaste. "Are you making it a case to stay out here all night? Not that I care what happens to you, but Kiku is quite worried."

Oh, right. She remembered how Kiku had promised to send a blanket out to her before she had accidentally fallen asleep waiting for it.

She mentally cursed at him. As nice as the gesture was, sending out this guy to give it to her...

He did that on purpose. She could just see the plan that he had had in mind. If he was attempting to create an opportunity for the two of them to literally kiss and make up, then he had another thing coming to him.

"I'm searching for the meaning of life," Michelle deadpanned, all prior innocence having jumped out the metaphorical window. She raised an arm and pointed at his face. "Maybe it's hiding in your eyebrows."

"WILL YOU STOP IT WITH THE EYEBROWS?!" he screamed, and she could just imagine the snakes writhing from his hair and the green fire he had controlled previously surrounding his aura.

"Why don't you just leave already?" he demanded, almost shaking as he attempted to exhibit some sort of calmness and self-control. "You're young. You have a life ahead of you, as pitiful as it might be. To be frank, you'll be useless as the land god."

His tone wasn't overly cruel, but matter-of-fact. It left no room for argument, but Michelle felt fury, all the same.

"I know that," she said with forced calm, setting the blanket aside and going on her knees to crawl a little closer towards him, as if that would display some sort of bravery in her. "To be honest, I don't want anything to do with you either."

Ignoring his indignant squawk, she forged on, "But I have nowhere else to go. My parents are useless, and I have no other family here."

"It's lonely being by yourself, isn't it?"

Arthur's expression softened.

Just a little.

And then he kneed her in the head, and order was restored to the universe.

"How could I possibly know that?" he snapped, ignoring her furious yell as she clutched her head in her hands.

"Who do you think you are?!" she yelled, raising her head to bark at him - but he was already making his way back into the shrine.

"Hey!" she called out, eyebrow twitching in annoyance. "I'm still talking to you!"

He paused just before the entrance, but kept his back to her.

"Don't wander off," was all he said, before he disappeared into the shrine.

'Huh?' Michelle blinked in surprise, not having expected those words to exit his mouth. He hadn't sounded particularly concerned, per say, but his words could have been interpreted as almost kind, like advice.

'What a strange guy,' she thought, her gaze focused straight ahead, as if chasing after when Arthur had been standing there previously.

So focused on that was she, that she almost didn't feel the change in temperature around her as the breeze picked up, and the leaves from the tree behind her started to fall and swirl around in the air. Her brown hair flapped and framed her face as she could literally feel something in the world around her change. An almost empty feeling clawed in her chest, and she felt as if her heart was trapped in a cage, beating against the bars.

She experienced the sensation of arms snaking around the upper part of her chest, coming around from behind her - but, otherwise, she felt no bodily presence there.

Then, a charming voice, soft and tempting, lips pressed against her ear:

"Trouble in paradise?"

She didn't dare turn around.

A chuckle emitted from its lips as it took in her silence, sensed her beating heart. "A lovers' spat, then?"

Its statement jump started her senses, and she realized that whoever this was that was trapping her, it had just called her and Arthur "lovers."

...Lovers?!

Her emotions on haywire, Michelle managed to get out of whatever trance she had been put in and break out of the mysterious entity's grip, twirling around angrily to give it a piece of her mind. "What the heck are you-?!"

Her voice choked off as her eyes took in the sight laid out in front of her eyes.

'It' was most definitely male.

And half of his body was literally jutting out from the tree trunk.

...

Holy crap.

In the back of her mind, Michelle quickly started to take in all of the details of his appearance: Brown hair with a wiry bent curl - resembling greatly the hairstyle of the Italian man she had met earlier that day, green eyes, a womanizing smile. He looked to be about her age.

And he had no legs.

Something resembling a strangled choke emitted from somewhere in her throat.

His naked upper body, from the waist up, jutted out from the tree trunk she had been sleeping against just minutes before, his legs nowhere to be seen. He didn't seem too bothered by this fact, however, and seemed to find some amusement from the distinctly horrified look printed across her face.

She'd seen her fair share of crazy today, but this took the cake. This guy was practically half tree.

And still staring at her.

"..."

"Did you lose your legs?" Michelle asked cluelessly, blinking with wide eyes at the... thing before her.

The human-like creature blinked back at her, surprise replacing the amusement glowing in his shining irises, before responding with a wicked grin. "Is that really the question you should be asking?"

She tilted her head. "I think it's a good question."

"Well, I won't deny that." Humor clouded his tone of voice, as he seemed distinctly entertained with their ongoing conversation.

An awkward silence.

Michelle fumbled her hand around for the tangled blanket she had discarded in her attempt to get away from the tree-human... thing. Managing to grab it, she pulled it towards her and wrapped it around her shoulders, surprisingly somewhat calm in the face of this new situation. Admittedly, she had seen a lot of weird things that day, and although this was most certainly the weirdest, by this point, she had gotten used to it enough that she wasn't feeling the urge to faint on the spot.

Improvement.

"So..." Michelle stared up at him, a part of her wondering how he could manage to hang out of the tree so easily without feeling some sort of back pain. "Are you going to tell me what you are?"

"What I am?" he repeated, smirking as he saw her expression morph into annoyance. "Shouldn't you know what I am, little land god?"

Michelle's eyes turned suspicious as she warily scooted a few inches backwards. "How'd you know about that?"

He clicked his tongue, looking down at her as if he were an adult having to explain something to a small child. "If you hadn't noticed, you've been sitting by this tree for the past forty-five minutes - thus, you've been sitting by me. At this point I'm pretty sure I've just heard your whole life story."

Oh.

Michelle blinked. "But if you're the tree, then..." She balked, recoiling in horror. "I was sleeping against you. Does that mean I was sleeping with you?!"

His eye twitched. "As much as I wouldn't mind that, is that really a thought that should be running through your head right now? Aren't you, like, twelve?"

"I'm sixteen!" she snapped, now thoroughly insulted. "Sixteen!"

He looked unimpressed. "Really? Because you're pretty-"

"Don't say anything else!"

"Alright, alright." He raised his hands in surrender, eyebrow quirking as his lips twitched upwards in amusement. "You're a fiesty thing, aren't you? Surprising..."

"You're the thing around here," Michelle grumbled, allowing the blanket to pool around her as she crossed her arms stubbornly, almost pouting.

He sighed. "Are you sure you aren't twelve? Because you certainly act like it..."

"Says you," she mumbled, giving him the side-eye. "Your face looks twelve."

He snorted. "Nice comeback, land god."

His face morphed into something condescending and almost judging as he took a closer look at her, eyes narrowing with something sinister.

"Nevertheless, as much as I'm enjoying this stimulating conversation," he started breezily, "I didn't come to play with you."

"Could you sound any more shady?" Michelle muttered under her breath.

"Do you mind if I introduce myself?" he asked airily, but moved on before she could answer, much to her annoyance. "Seeing as you seem to be quite the inexperienced land god, I doubt you know what I am."

"That's why I've been asking you."

"The humans call me a tree spirit," he went on, totally ignoring her, "or, as your fox yokai would call me, a kodama. I can take on the appearance of ghost lights, beasts, or, as I am now, humans. In essence, however, I am a tree."

"Impressive," Michelle remarked dully, yawning into her hand.

"Oi, pay attention!" he barked, a vein pulsing from his temple.

"As I was saying," he continued, eyeing her to make sure she was paying attention properly, "I am a tree spirit, but the human name I took on is Alessio."

"Italian?" Michelle couldn't help but remark, eyebrow raised.

He flapped his hand dismissively. "You human girls love Italians. Anyway. You can call me Alessio, but I wouldn't mind the term King, either."

"Could your head get any bigger?" she replied dryly, thinking that his ego must have been bigger than Arthur's eyebrows.

"But Alessio is fine," he said, sending her the stink eye. "In any case..."

A sudden thoughtful look crossed over his handsome face, and something akin to uneasiness swirled in Michelle's gut at that look. He might have spoken and acted relatively like a human teenage boy in the past few minutes they had been speaking to each other, but, all the same, she couldn't help but think that there was something off about the tree spirit (besides the fact that he was a tree spirit, anyway).

"I've been standing on this property for centuries," he explained, and Michelle was startled to notice the mournful way he now looked ahead. He almost appeared to be ignoring her presence, only unconsciously aware of her, like he was now seeing something from before that only he could see.

Michelle was human, and as hard as her life had been so far, Alessio had been standing in the same spot for centuries. Being here on this world for so long, what could he have seen in all his years of living?

She recognized the emotion she was feeling: sympathy.

"In all those centuries that I have been standing here, there has only been one land god," Alessio went on, now staring straight at her, frown overtaking his features. "Nothing like you - a human girl. You don't know anything, while he, in comparison, knew everything."

His frown morphed into a bitter curve of his lips. "A powerful god - that is what he was. More powerful than I and many others were. Very few could match him in terms of that. He was a mysterious guy - had a lot of enemies, but enough friends, too." He smirked down at her, sending shivers down her spine. "And what about you, Miss Land God? Where are your friends? Do you really think that you could fill in the empty place he left? Your expected familiar doesn't seem to be very fond of you, and Kiku, strong as he is, isn't capable to fulfill the duties that need to be done around here after what happened at his former shrine."

He tilted his head at her, seeming to take some pleasure in both the disguised fear and stubborness she held in her gaze as she maintained eye contact with him. "Still, you are the land god now, aren't you? Chosen by Lupei himself. What did he see in you, I wonder?"

'I wonder that myself,' Michelle thought, lips pursing, some doubt coursing through her veins.

Still. She wouldn't back down. Not like this.

Seeing that she wouldn't answer and wasn't going to fall back, Alessio's smirk deepened, and if she was seeing correctly, he looked as if he had just slithered out of the tree trunk a little more.

"Nevertheless, no matter whether you are human or not, you are the land god of this shrine, thus the newly appointed marriage god," he said, speaking pensively to himself. He was staring at her as if he was considering something.

Michelle, of course, did not have a good feeling about this.

"I wonder..."

And, before Michelle could leap back, he had flown out of the tree and reached out an arm towards her, grabbing a fistful of the front of her dress.

Michelle let out a yelp, palms scratching the ground as she attempted to lean away from the tree spirit unsuccessfully.

She made sure to keep her eyes averted from his lower body - just in case.

"Ah, I see now." Alessio had an unreadable expression on his face as he used his other hand to point at the spot where her heart was, the location glowing through her dress when he did so, much to Michelle's alarm.

"Isn't that funny? You've got a heart, like all humans do, I suppose. And it's warm." Alessio inched closer, causing Michelle's breathing to turn ragged, eyes widening as she tried to, once again, scoot backwards, only for him to tighten his grip on her dress and forcibly pull her again towards him.

His eyes met her own, green clashing with brown, before giving her a rough smirk, something stormy hidden in the way he stared at her.

Releasing his grip on her dress, he grabbed one of her arms before she could escape, pulling it towards him and placing her hand on the location of where his heart should have been. Surprisingly, she could feel something there, dull as it was.

He came so close to her face that they bumped noses, and Michelle felt her breath hitch, sensing her heart beat faster while his remained fluttering in a dull pattern.

His breath ghosted over her face as he purred, "Won't you look into my heart, land god?"

The creases of her surroundings faded, until they morphed and melted like watercolor and formed into wisps of darkness.

---

Lupei Shrine, Late 1460s

"The first time I met her was right here, right in the spot where we are standing now."

Alessio's voice echoed in her ears as her eyes fluttered open to a blinding brightness.

It took some time for her sight to adjust and her mind to catch up to her newfound surroundings, but, even so, her senses continued to work properly, and while her mind was whirring with confusion, her body was not.

Something felt distinctly off about her, but she wasn't quite sure what exactly was wrong. All she knew was that she suddenly felt lighter, as if she were going through an out-of-body experience, like she was just a soul and not a physical embodiment. And when her vision finally blurred into clarity, she could tell why.

She was not where she had been before (well, not in the same time period, anyway).

Michelle felt her breath hitch. She wasn't sure how she knew, but the heavy feeling that settled in the pit of her gut told her that time had just turned back, and that, although the pristine shrine before her was flourishing and bathed in warm light, it was most definitely the very same Lupei Shrine that she had been at just a little while ago.

The very air and atmosphere had changed, as well. The colors around her seemed to have lightened and grown gentler. The heavenly scent of flowers blooming swirled around her like a butterfly taking off for the first time. The shrine before her was no longer crumbling, no longer empty and desolate and falling apart. It was the very picture of health, the perfect example of what a distinguished shrine dedicated to a powerful god should look like.

And it was so, so different than how it would appear in the future.

"It really takes me back."

Michelle jumped in surprise, just now noticing Alessio standing by her side in full human form. He was only just a little taller than her, she noticed. Never mind that, she was relieved that he seemed to be wearing clothes this time around: a crisp white linen shirt, jeans that hugged his long legs perfectly, brown loafers. He was dressed exactly like how any normal person might have been in the timeline they had come from.

He angled his head down to look at her at his side, a smirk etched into his features, the bitterness of it causing her to almost shrink back. "A drastic change, isn't it? The shrine, I mean."

"Not just the shrine," Michelle began, finding her voice as her eyes took in the expanse of the property, "but everything. Everything is - was, different." She pursed her lips, eyebrows furrowing. "If I didn't know better, I wouldn't have guessed that this is the same shrine as the one we just came from."

"Things change over time, little land god - people, too." Alessio shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, that same bitter twist to his smile.

She felt that he would know that best, somehow.

"What are we doing here?" she asked evenly, although her hands were clenched at her sides. Uneasiness filled up her stomach. "Why did you bring me here? To the past?"

Alessio turned his head to stare forwards, the breeze caressing its fingers into his dark head of hair. "So you could see. See how you gods can destroy others, see how you gods destroyed me."

Her heart lurched against her chest.

"I don't understand," Michelle breathed out, the knuckles of her hands turning white as she tightened her fingers against each other. "Whatever happened - it's not my fault." She almost felt angry. After everything she'd been through that day, she didn't need this tree spirit pushing her over the edge and pretending he understood anything about her and judging her for things out of her control. "Look, I don't know what happened to you, but don't lump me in with the rest of those gods. I just got the title; I don't know anything about this." She waved her arms around to accent her point. "I'm just human-"

Alessio let out a harsh laugh, the sound of it breaking through the calm atmosphere around the two of them. "Just human, are you?" His lips were tinged in frustration, and something almost resembling regret. His voice lowered down an octave. "What I've learned in my centuries of living is this: You humans can be cowards, and you destroy more than you save, but, all the same..."

He turned to look at her, and something about his deep gaze made her really, really believe that he was as old as he claimed to be.

Softly: "There are the few of you who can be extraordinary, if you want to be."

Michelle's eyes widened.

As she opened her mouth to reply, Alessio smacked a hand over her lips, almost making her lose her balance and fall backwards.

"Shh," he murmured, raising a finger to his lips as he pointed to the side. "Look."

Michelle did.

And what she saw made her gasp.

"Is that...?" she began, her voice barely over a whisper as her brown eyes trailed to where he had indicted.

"Yes." And something about Alessio's expression made her guts twist. "That's Lupei, and that's me."

Holy crap.

Because, just a few feet to their left, standing by the tree that Alessio had come from and Michelle had been sleeping against just a little while before, was Alessio.

Past him, anyhow.

Shamelessly staring at him, Michelle couldn't see any difference, really, between the Alessio from before and the Alessio beside her. They looked identical - no, completely the same, taking away the differences in their clothing styles. Past Alessio wore a brown doublet and breeches, and although his hairstyle hadn't changed at all, his face somehow looked younger, glowed more brightly, and seemed more innocent - oblivious to the unfairness that the world could and would give.

Past Alessio stood in his full human form behind the tree trunk, peeking out to observe the spectacle several feet in front of him. He wasn't exactly being subtle, but he was hidden and far away enough that most would not notice him if they weren't paying too close attention.

Michelle's eyes followed to where his view was pointed towards, and what she saw made her freeze in her spot.

Because, kneeling on the ground outside of the shrine, was Vladimir Lupei.

A choked sound emitted from Michelle's throat. "That's-!"

"The god of the shrine you just took over," Alessio confirmed curtly, arms crossed over his chest. His attention was not focused on the marriage god, however, but on the young woman he was speaking to.

Michelle took her time in examining the unfamiliar individual.

She appeared to be several years older than Alessio was physically, but still extremely young by average standards. And she was very pretty, Michelle decided, even unsmiling. Because although the woman was stern-faced and had a curt twist to her lips, her face remained radiant, anyhow.

Michelle locked in her mind the superficial details: the blonde side braid that reflected the glare of the sunshine, the sharp cheekbones that shone with pinkish light, the attentive and alert way in which she kept her back rod-straight and erect, the darting eyes that somehow still managed to capture the gaze of any person she could have been talking to.

(And, in the back of her mind, Michelle noticed the way in which Alessio stared at her. He held longing in the way his shoulders tensed, restrained emotion in the twitching of his wiry fingers, regret in the cracks of his lips, grief in the green of his eyes.)

Michelle could sense the misery he was feeling gazing at the girl, and she could sense the anger and frustration of having to hold himself back and watch from the sidelines. She doubted that anyone around them could see them physically.

In this timeline, they were the ghosts.

Michelle pressed her lips together in thought, half of her wanting to demand an explanation from the kodama by her side, the other half realizing that this would most likely not be the best time. Although she didn't exactly hold any feelings of affection for the tree spirit, there was enough sympathy wallowing in her heart that held her back from pushing his buttons. She knew pain when she saw it, and he was experiencing pain in the flesh.

She wasn't stupid, anyway. It was pretty obvious that whatever reason Alessio had brought her here, it had everything to do with the blonde woman kneeling before the past marriage god.

"Lucille." Vladimir gave the girl a warm smile, but there was something tense about the way his hands sat in his lap. "I didn't expect you to come visit today."

From where Michelle was standing, she could just barely make out the way Lucille's hands fluttered gracefully over and over in distinguishable patterns, before eventually cupping together and opening up to reveal a paper flower resting on her palms.

There was no suitable reaction from her, however, as her face remained unreadably harsh, no twitching of any of her facial features to give away any sort of emotions she could have been feeling towards her small creation.

"I wasn't going to," she started clinically, "but then I heard that they are getting closer to this shrine, and I wanted to warn you about it before the war could reach you."

"Us, you mean," Vladimir corrected kindly, smile unchanging. Although her words were heavy, his shoulders actually relaxed when he heard them. "You come here often enough that you can call this shrine your home now, Lucille. You help out around here almost as much as Arthur and I do."

Arthur.

An almost inaudible gasp escaped from Michelle's mouth at the name, because although she knew that Arthur had been his familiar, it was still surreal to fully realize that he was, indeed, here in this timeline, and that he had spent centuries alive way before he had ever even met her.

Lucille's lips pursed, and she almost appeared embarrassed as she averted her attention back down to the flower now in her lap. "You men aren't capable enough to handle this shrine on your own, if I may remind you. I'm only doing what's right for this community. Many of us humans come here to pray and seek sanctuary, you know."

"Does that include you, dragă?" he asked teasingly, smile turning playful.

She gave him the stink eye. "Human I may be, Vladimir, but you know I am not like most."

His smile softened. "I know that, Lucille. You're one of the strongest humans I've ever come to known. I've never met someone as young as you with such a strong sense of justice, you know."

"The difference between right and wrong is black and white," she said, as if reciting those words for the hundredth time. "There is no gray area, no matter what anyone else says. A gray area is just an excuse for human and god alike to form their own sense of twisted justice."

"It's selfish," she finished, almost spitting the words out.

Vladimir let out an exasperated sigh, dramatic as usual. "Firmly set in your opinions as always, aren't you? When will you start looking away from the mirror, Lucille? There are more things a young woman like you could focus on at your age. Rather than worrying about the war or this shrine, wouldn't it be better to worry about the fact that you've never fallen in love? Isn't that every girl's dream?"

"Every foolish girl's dream," Lucille corrected, with a tone that made it apparent that this was not the first time Vladimir was bringing up this subject. Her lips formed into a scowl. "Men are unreliable. Why rely soley on one when I could rely on myself instead?"

"Independent as usual, I see," Vladimir mumbled with a pout, as if silently indicating that he thought that she was no fun at all.

"In my opinion, love is like this flower." Lucille held it out in the space between them, the creases and edges of the white paper fluttering ever so much as the breeze caressed them. "Beautiful in its outer appearance..." Then, indifferently, she crushed it in her hand, the sharp tips of her nails biting holes into the petals, "Fleeting in its life."

Vladimir sweatdropped at her display. "That wasn't cute at all."

"It wasn't meant to be," she replied in that indifferent tone of hers, opening her hand and allowing the wrinkled and crumpled flower to fall in the open space between them.

As they went on with their conversation, Michelle dared to sneak a glance up at Alessio, dread pounding against her ribcage when she noticed the hard look clouding his irises (and, at that point, she knew that what Lucille had said was foreshadowing to a bigger event ahead, and it had everything to do with Alessio and some to do with Vladimir - as always).

"Vladimir."

Lucille's cutting voice brought Michelle back to the situation at hand, causing the brunette to whip her head towards her and the former land god again.

"Have the cherry blossoms come into bloom yet?" she asked quietly, her gaze trained on her lap once again.

"Huh?" Michelle uttered out in surprise. She thought that the question was a strange one coming out of Lucille's mouth. So far she had seemed most indifferent about most things and brutally honest to boot. Asking a question about cherry blossoms of all things - it seemed most uncharacteristic from the girl Michelle had observed for the last few minutes.

Vladimir did not seem surprised, however, and just tilted his head, smiling a closed-eye smile. "Not yet, but soon. They're starting to now. Haven't you noticed?"

In unison, the two of them abruptly turned their heads to look at Alessio's tree, causing the past him to quickly duck behind it and slide down to a sitting position, knees tucked against his chest and under his chin to make himself smaller.

"That tree... grows cherry blossoms?" Michelle asked to herself.

She jumped when she heard the future Alessio's reply, having forgotten that he was there in the first place.

"Yes." Something sad carved into his face. "I grew sakura flowers. From the very beginning." Alessio's smile grew nostalgic as he stared up at the branches towering over the tree trunk like an umbrella, and Michelle thought that he was imagining the cherry blossoms in full bloom. "She always loved these. I liked to think she loved me with them."

Oh.

"Alessio..." Michelle whispered, pity leaking into her tone of voice.

"May I go look up close, Vladimir?" Lucille asked, turning her gaze to the marriage god.

Michelle noticed the way in which both Alessio's stiffened.

Vladimir gave a hum of amusement, something akin to familial affection lighting up his eyes. "I don't see why not. Do you even need to ask?"

"It's only polite," she replied blandly, dusting herself off as she raised herself from the ground.

The next thing Michelle knew, Lucille was standing before the tree, the bottom half of her dress billowing like an umbrella around her legs, the wind causing the loose strands of curls to frame her face. Seeing her like that, with the sunlight and pastel sky highlighting her figure, Michelle could understand why Alessio seemed to be so enamored with her.

And so bitter, at the same time.

All was silent for several minutes as Lucille continued to just stare upwards at the branches of the tree, as if trying to imagine the sakura flowers blooming in full, before she finally broke the silence, like glass cutting through skin.

"I know you're there." She pursed her lips, eyes still fixed above, voice turning sharp and authoritive. "Come out."

Past Alessio's breath hitched, while the Alessio by Michelle's side stiffened.

The younger version closed his eyes, seemingly in quiet prayer, before rising from his slumped position behind the tree and peeking around the huge expanse of the trunk, for the first time directly locking eyes with the serious woman he had been observing for longer than she could have ever imagined.

(For Alessio, the world around them froze the moment their eyes clashed together, while for Lucille, the world began to spin out of her control.)

Lucille quirked an eyebrow at his expression, something written there that she couldn't understand and didn't want to. "Who are you? Not a familiar of this shrine, I imagine."

He shrunk back a little, before opening his mouth and attempting to flounder for words. As flirtatious as he could be, this was the first time he had directly spoken to a human in years, and there was something about this one that made the organ in his chest lurch uncomfortably. The heart was an organ that he had never spent much thought on, and sometimes he would forget it existed in his body. But.

He was starting to sense it. Just a little.

"My name..." His voice sounded foreign in his ears. He cleared his throat, managing now to speak evenly. "My name is... Alessio."

Alessio: Defender of Mankind.

The corner Lucille's mouth twitched into a small half smile, because she knew what his name meant and she understood.

(He wasn't human, but a tree spirit - he told her that himself. He was the physical and spiritual embodiment of the cherry blossoms - the flowers she loved dearly, the ones she pressed against her heart. She cared for them, and, in pieces, she learned to care for Alessio.

- and, in touches of their hands, in indifferent comments, in secret half smiles, Alessio learned to love a human, through the seasons changing and the growing of his - no, their cherry blossoms.)

Michelle saw this in flashes.

Time moved at a swift pace, the world spun on its axis at a faster rate, and images of the couple formed and merged before Michelle's eyes like a slideshow of photographs. Memories.

[She saw them blurred and connected together like a drawing: the two of them running off into the shrine below a dome of rain and protected under a shared cloak (and Alessio looked the happiest anyone could appear to be, while Lucille glowed under the fabric, a restrained upward quirk of her lips hidden behind the cover of her hand); the two of them sitting shoulder to shoulder against the sakura tree, Lucille's fingers running over the creases and edges of another paper flower, Alessio peeking subtly to run his eyes over every inch of her when he believed that she wasn't looking (but she was, because she was always watching him, always aware of him); the two of them standing side by side below the finally in bloom sakura flowers:

"Listen," he tried, angling in a way so that he could curl his fingers around her dainty wrist to grab her attention - because, at first, that was all that he had wanted from her: attention, but now it was turning into something else.

"I am," she replied, not even turning her pointed gaze at him, her indifferent face directed towards the petals falling around them. "I always am."

And that was the truth, because Lucille always knew, she always just got him. From the beginning, even though he hadn't meant to allow her to cut him this deep, to allow her in, she had always seen through him with those quiet, quiet eyes of hers, and he had never been able to understand anything, much less her.

Alessio swallowed, spoke again, breathed out a confession: "I love you."

But he thought that she aready knew that, like she knew everything. And she did, expectedly.

Her face did not change, her breathing did not speed up - his did, because for all the time that he had spent with her, he knew that he had always been the one affected and she the one always in control, affecting him like a disease, infecting him with a sickness in his heart that had found a way to beat properly through the time spent with her, side by side.

He had never been able to keep up with her, her steps always measured and just a little quicker than his were. But when they stopped, she had always been by his side, quietly.

Lucille let out a sigh, something vulnerable in the way she allowed the breath to fall out of her mouth. But she did not smile, did not twitch her lips upwards, because if there was one thing that she had never allowed him to see, it was the soft expression she would always direct at the marriage god - always when the red-eyed deity would be gazing at her, because Lucille was not a coward and she never looked away, but forwards.

Gaze pointed upwards, eyes trailing to match the centimeters the sakura petals fell to the ground, she spoke with uncaring eyes but soft truth:

"Thank you."

Alessio let go.]

---

Lupei Shrine, Late 1470s

"The civil war and power-struggle over this territory and region would end after a period of ten years in uncertainty and devastation. Near the end of it, Time for me, and Lucille, stopped."

Without a doubt, Michelle knew this: The voice that was echoing around her head and that only she could hear belonged to Alessio himself - both of them, combined, retelling a story that not many were allowed to see.

("So you could see. See how you gods can destroy others, see how you gods destroyed me.")

When Michelle opened her eyes, the world was on fire.

The air was burning, and so was the shrine.

(The only thing that wasn't was her - and the tree, as always.)

But.

"The cherry blossoms are dying," Michelle breathed out, the searing heat of the flames rising out of the shrine like a monster not even touching her skin, the burning ash licking at her dress as if it were transparent and she were a ghost.

And she knew what emotion was filling up her body: Horror.

Fear.

When she got no response, she whipped her head to directly address the tree spirit who had brought her here, but he was nowhere to be found.

'Alessio?'

Michelle's breathing turned ragged as she wrapped her arms around herself and tightened the heavy jacket around the upper half of her body. It should have felt suffocating in the sweltering heat and roaring of the fire, but nothing of the sort touched her. She wasn't really here, after all. She'd never been.

She was just an observer, someone who wasn't supposed to be where she was in the first place.

"Water! Where's the water?!"

Vladimir's roaring voice brought Michelle's attention to the crumbling shrine in front of her eyes. A wooden bucket was held tightly in his hands, water sloshing out over the sides as Vladimir swung it upwards to throw at the flames.

"This isn't enough, Vladimir." Lucille's rough voice drew Michelle's attention to her, and she was startled to see the ash painted in patches over her face, the random tears and holes in her dress, the absence of her shoes. Her golden hair had turned rigid and dusted over in black, and it hung over her shoulders and out of her usual braid, framing her face like a veil.

"Where's Arthur?" Vladimir demanded.

As worse for wear as he looked, he was still in control, cool-headed and rational - the powerful god that Alessio had described him to be, and nothing like the mishievous and playful stranger Michelle had met in the park earlier that day (which seemed like worlds away, years past).

"He's in the back, trying to control the flames from over there," Lucille replied, frustration in her voice. But her shoulders stayed firm, defeat nowhere apparent in the determined and harsh glint of her eyes.

She hadn't changed.

("There are the few of you who can be extraordinary, if you want to be.")

"You need to leave, Lucille," Vladimir commanded with gritted teeth, knuckles white like a corpse around his grip of the now empty bucket. "It isn't safe for you here, anymore, much less for any of you."

"But-!"

"Arthur and I will be fine on our own. We can't die like this, and the shrine can always be rebuilt." Vladimir's eyes sharpened, the red glow of them matching the firelight raging around them. "Lucille, they'll be coming at any minute, and you know that, god or not, I cannot stop them from killing you. You need to leave. Go - now!"

"I'm not leaving!" she all but screamed, with such force in her voice that even Vladimir took a step back in disbelief. She had lost her cool, her composure, and Michelle could understand why she would in a situation like this.

'Where's Alessio?!'

"They can't destroy this place," Lucille spat, the bucket she had held in her hands now dropped to the ground. A crazy light filled her cerulean eyes, and Michelle was suddenly struck dumb by how they resembled Francis's so well - same color, same shape, different light.

And she understood now.

Lucille was to Alessio as Francis was to her.

"This is my home. This is the home of everyone who's suffering, who needs a safe haven, a place to belong." Lucille's shoulders fell, something like pain etched into the crinkles at the corners of her eyes. "I can't let them destroy it! They have no right to do this!"

She spread her arms out like wings - a fiery phoenix rising from the flames, from the world turning to ashes around her.

"This isn't justice!" she shrieked, body like a cross. "This is a sin!"

Through the crackling of the flames, Vladimir's body turned rigid, and an emotion twisted his features, looking so foreign on him, because it wasn't the sort of thing that Michelle had ever expected to reach his face:

Fear.

"Lucille!" he screamed.

(-because, in that moment, a sword ran through the middle of her chest, just barely missing her heart, beating its wings like a hummingbird.)

"Lucille!"

...'Alessio?'

Barely noticing the violent trembling her body was undergoing or the way that she had wrapped her arms so tight around her that it felt like she was strangling herself, Michelle whipped her head to the side to see Alessio's tree, with its cherry blossoms falling and dying and his spirit morphed and merged into the tree trunk.

Trapped in his true form.

With a sick feeling, Michelle watched as the emotions turbulently flashed across his face: Panic, fear, horror, rage, pain. Love.

For a girl who was dying in front of him.

A tear dropped onto the ground in front of her feet, and Michelle realized that she was crying.

"Lucille!" he screamed hysterically, voice choked in his throat as his human form flickered transparently. With his flowers dying and the world burning around him, there was no way his strength would allow for him to be able to solidify into his human form completely.

All he could do was watch.

And it was killing him.

A heavy, choking feeling settled in Michelle's chest, resting on top of her like a gigantic stone. She felt as if she were sinking in a sea of fire, drowning as the flames bit into her flesh and seared through her heart. The burning she felt behind her eyes grew hotter as the tears fell freely down her cheeks. A strange mixture of coldness and hotness was felt in her bones, shooting up and down her spine in vibrations.

She was watching someone die. She was standing on the sidelines, unable to help, as Alessio screamed and struggled for a way out of his tree, as the cherry blossom petals sunk to the burning earth.

She let out a choking sob, taking a step back from it all, feeling the beginnings of vomit appear in her throat.

"Lucille."

Through her tears, Michelle's eyes focused on the sight before her.

Whoever had thrust that sword through Lucille's chest was dead - that much was apparent by the burning corpse tossed on its back to the side. Michelle knew nothing about whatever civil war was going on, about who they were - the enemies, the ones Lucille had been warning about since the beginning, but she knew one thing for sure: She hated them. She hated them with a burning passion.

Vladimir was on his knees, Lucille's head cradled in his lap as he brushed his soot-covered hands gently over her face, her eyes as bright as ice casting a blue light over the gray of her features and the blood pooling around the hole in her chest, covering her dirty dress in dark red.

"Lucille." Vladimir looked stricken, like he was staring at Death in the face.

She raised a shaky arm up towards him. The marriage god grabbed it without hesitation, bringing it tenderly up to rest against his cheek.

"I died for the right reason, didn't I?" she murmured, her voice sounding as if it was coming from the light at the end of the tunnel.

Vladimir let out a wet laugh, tears shining in his irises but unable to spill out. "Yes. For justice. For this shrine."

"For Alessio." Lucille's eyes were starting to close, and she looked only as if she were sleepy and ready to slip into a dream. That small half smile of hers lit up her face like a crown of flowers would highlight a little girl's head; there was a warmth there that she had only ever shown Vladimir. The way she had always smiled at him was discreet, not very often, but often enough. Breathing was easier when she smiled, but the smile that she now gave him was one that made her breathing slow and lessen, because she was dying and Vladimir had no doubt in his mind that Alessio would go mental without her.

(But Vladimir was wise - a god who knew more than he let on, and he also had no doubt that Alessio was watching from his tree right at this moment, and that if he could, he would have been the one holding Lucille in his arms instead of him, and Vladimir would have let him.)

He could never love Lucille the way the tree spirit loved her, anyhow.

"Will you tell him something for me, Vladimir?" she asked, voice soft in the dancing of the flames above her. "I don't like to leave things behind, you know."

He swallowed down pain. "I know. Of course, dragă. What do you want me to tell him?"

Michelle didn't dare spare a glance at the tree spirit in the corner of her eye.

Even dying, Michelle sensed the unfaltering strength in Lucille, the quiet eyes that looked through Alessio and saw everything in the heart he had buried (and now her own heart would be buried - six feet under, the love he carried for the loveliest dead girl in the world falling in pieces and centimeters with the dying petals dropping around her grave).

Lucille's breath hitched, and her fingers curled against Vladimir's cheek.

"Love is fleeting," she said evenly, recalling the conversation the two of them had had that day years ago. "Life is, too. Flowers die and are born again. I like to think humans are that way, too." Her eyes fluttered, before she murmured, "I am too intelligent not to think about this: Do you think humans can be reincarnated?"

Eyes closing: "I like to think so. I like to think that one day we will meet again, in a different life, in a different time. I want to be smiling there."

Vladimir allowed Lucille's hand to slowly sink down from his face.

"Vladimir, tell that idiot this," she murmured, chest slowing from its rise up and down, "'I was just a little bit in love with you, in a way that almost made me want to marry you. Thank you.'"

[A paper flower bloomed in the gaping hole in her chest as Lucille peacefully drifted into a dream.

The world burned -

- Vladimir shakily pressed a kiss to her forehead, "I will take care of everyone. Please rest peacefully from now on." -

- and Alessio screamed.]

The world shattered in a roar as Alessio's voice filled every corner of Michelle's head:

"Please, let my feelings reach to her."

(And, this time, Michelle could see them: the red strings connecting Alessio and Lucille in their memories, wrapped around their fingers and entwined.)

"Please! Land god!"

Fingers fisted themselves into Michelle's tangled head of hair as her eyes blinked through the darkness she was swallowed in, glittering brown orbs clashing with feverish green.

"Alessio-" she started, breath hitching.

"I wonder..." Alessio had a faraway look in his eyes, the same one that he had had on when he had seen Lucille back in the past. It was quiet and strange and a touch painful, but there was something dark there now - she sensed it, and she knew that if she didn't get away from him as soon as possible, she would be sucked in and drowned.

"I wonder," he began again, holding his free hand over the location of Michelle's heart, the spot where it was beating glowing once again under his palm. "If I steal your heart, will she finally hear me, this time?"

Michelle's throat tore open in a silent scream as he thrust his hand in her chest and started to close his fingers around her heart.

"Michelle!"

"Michelle!"

"You idiot girl - wake up!"

Hands reached towards her and dug their fingers around her shoulders in a steely cold grip, and she was quite literally jerked into reality.

---

Lupei Shrine, Present Day

Michelle fell back into someone's chest and outstretched arms.

She blinked rapidly, the dried tears on her face cooled by the night breeze caressing her features. She was back home. She was back to the present.

...Alessio.

Michelle's breath hitched violently as she attempted to lurch forwards, wide eyes taking in the sight of Alessio's slumped body in front of her, one of Kiku's arms wrapped around his shoulders, long claws curled and gently resting against his throat to warn him to stay back.

"Calm down!" Someone's harsh and authoritative voice caused her heart to jump. Warm, green-scaled arms were wrapped around her waist, firmly caging her against a bare, bony chest.

Arthur.

Something about this calmed her down just enough for her to stop struggling and her breathing to calm somewhat.

From behind her, she could feel Arthur's heart beat steadily against her back. He was real. He was tangible.

And so was she.

"We leave you alone for five minutes and you get kidnapped by a tree spirit," Arthur's voice grumbled from by her ear, arms tightening slightly around her.

Michelle swallowed a shaky sob, pushing it down before it could explode. "Then you probably shouldn't have left me alone in the first place. Irresponsible familiars."

Instead of exploding or snapping at her like she expected, Arthur instead let out a sigh, both exasperated and relieved. "If you can talk like that, you're fine, then."

A bubbling laugh sounded from before them, and everyone turned their attentions towards the kodama trembling on the ground before his tree, bitterness and resentment filling his laughter like a bottle.

Hair covering his eyes, he directed his words towards Michelle: "It seems I couldn't steal your heart, Miss Land God. I failed again."

His shoulders shook as he let out a wet laugh, now in desperate hysterics. "She died again."

"You shouldn't have tried in the first place," Arthur scolded with brutal honesty. "No one could have done it. Not even that idiot Lupei. The dead cannot come back to life."

"I could have tried!" Alessio's head shot up, the redness rimming his eyes making Michelle's breath hitch. Kiku's claws remained extended, his eyes narrowed slightly in alertness, in rationality.

"You didn't even let me try!" he choked out, coughing out a sob. Michelle almost lost it right there. He kept his eyes locked on her, accusatory and so, so hateful. "It's your fault."

"Stop."

Kiku's calm, hard voice cut through Alessio's sobbing like a sword.

"You have no right to blame Michelle-sama for this," Kiku said, lips turned downwards into a small frown. "Her death was no one's fault but the one who had wielded the sword. To go back and experience it all over again is disrespectful to her memory."

Alessio looked ready to start screaming again, but Michelle cut through before he could.

"Lucille died smiling, Alessio." Jerking her arms, she managed to break out of Arthur's grasp, a sound of protest spilling through his lips at the action.

Carefully and warily, Michelle kneeled before the tree spirit, and Kiku brought his claws just a little closer to his throat in warning. Alessio gave her a vicious glare, relentless.

"I saw it, you know." She swallowed, one of her hands that rested on her knee curling into a fist. "The red strings. Yours and Lucille's. I saw them. They were wrapped around your fingers."

Alessio's eyes widened.

Vulnerability.

She plowed on, "You have to understand, Alessio. The past is the past. Maybe in another life, in another world, things could have been different. Maybe things could have ended differently for you two - in a happy ending." She pressed her lips together. "But that didn't happen."

She lowered her voice, made it softer. "But she died with a smile, Alessio. She was beautiful until the end. She loved you. She would have loved you even if your cherry blossoms all died and never came back. She said so herself, didn't she? Perhaps one day, she'll be reborn again. Until then, shouldn't you wait for her? Instead of chasing after a ghost?"

The ghost of a dead girl. The loveliest, brightest dead girl in the world.

"Whenever your cherry blossoms bloom, you can remember Lucille, like she would have wanted you to. All those paper flowers she'd make - they could never compare to the real thing."

The transience of the flowers symbolize the beauty of life, the quickness of death.

Mortality.

Michelle, with some hesitance, gained the courage to place her hand over his chest where she had felt the dull pounding of his heart.

She had no idea if this would work. She didn't exactly even know what she was doing.

But she needed him to see, needed him to understand.

Lucille would have wanted him to.

"Hey, what are-!" Alessio's voice died off as his vision took him into another universe.

Because he could see Lucille - alive, alive, alive.

[And, in this world he could see, his tree bloomed with a vitality he had never before seen, the cherry blossoms alight with a beauty one could only fully experience in person, the pink petals falling to the ground and through the air like the pretty wings of a bird.

And, there in front of him, was Lucille.

Lucille with her discreet half smile. Lucille with her hair in its golden braid. Lucille with that paper flower threaded into her strands of blonde.

Alessio took off running.

"Lucille!" he yelled out. "Lucille!"

Because she was alive, alive, alive, and he needed to know it was true. He needed to touch her and taste her and feel her beating, warm heart.

Dainty and graceful fingers threaded themselves into his hair, his own long fingers wrapping themselves around her petite waist, bringing her close so he could feel the heart that was surely there-

-but it wasn't.

Alessio's breath hitched.

And Lucille smiled.

"I'm sorry I died." Her apologetic words ghosted over his face like her phantom fingers used to do. "Thank you for remembering me."

Her smile was warm, resembling the smiles she would give Vladimir centuries ago, ones that Alessio had never been able to get from her. He felt like crying.

"But, please, stop being an idiot and holding on to me."

His eyes widened.

He could feel her body leave him and disentangle itself from his arms, and the reality that she was actually really, really leaving him sunk in.

"Don't go!" he pleaded, reaching his arms out to bring her back. "Lucille!"

She floated backwards towards the tree, the bottom half of her dress swirling and flying around her legs, the scattered flower petals braiding themselves into her hair.

"One day, I want to meet you again."

He had never been so aware of his heart until the moment those eight words dumped themselves into the gap between them.

("I was just a little bit in love with you, in a way that almost made me want to marry you. Thank you.")

Despair and grief felt like drowning, felt a little like hope.

Their hands reached to entwine their fingers, and this time, Alessio didn't need to see the red strings connecting them to know what they were, what they had.

And, for the first time in centuries, Alessio smiled as he watched Lucille dissipate and fade into sakura petals, exploding with warm, pastel light, into spring.

Into Hope.

("I like to think that one day we will meet again, in a different life, in a different time. I want to be smiling there.")

Alessio's heart opened up, and beat.]

---

The warmth inside of the shrine was almost too much for Michelle to handle. Bundled up in a blanket, Feliciano's jacket discarded onto the ground, standing by the large open window overlooking the moon, made Michelle almost cry, because she could see Alessio's tree, and she could imagine the sakura flowers blooming into spring.

"He owes you a great debt."

Arthur stood by her side, arms clasped behind his back, face unreadable as usual (but kinder, softer, now).

Michelle shook her head lightly.

"He doesn't owe me anything." A smile played on her lips. "For him and Lucille to be happy... that's enough for me. That's all I need from him."

Arthur glanced at her with a strange look, before letting out a sigh and gently knocking his fist on top of her head, somehow a little affectionate in the gesture.

"You're quite a simple girl, aren't you?" he said rhetorically, but even he had the makings of a smile playing across his lips.

Michelle looked up at him in surprise, before fully relaxing and sending him a bright smile of her own. "Making others happy makes me happy. Everyone deserves some kindness in this world. Forgiveness."

She turned her face away before she could see his expression change.

To her surprise, she heard him chuckling beside her.

"Yes," he murmured thoughtfully, as if he now understood something, gazing out towards the night sky. "I suppose so."

'So this is why you chose her, Vladimir.'

"Well! It's getting late, so I think I'm going to get some slee-"

A blur shot towards the space between Michelle and Arthur, and a leg swept under her own and tripped her forwards, causing her arms to wave frantically in shock.

Arthur let out an exclamation of alarm, holding out his arms to catch the human girl by her elbows, but by the time he'd grabbed her, it was already too late.

Because, in the process of her tumble and downward spiral, Michelle's lips had pressed against his own.

Their eyes widened at the same time.

"If you manage to bind him with the contract for familiars... He will absolutely obey you... All you have to do is kiss him."

From off to the side, Kiku smiled discreetly behind the covering of his fan.

And thus, Michelle's journey as the new land god begins!

---

end notes -

- Alessio means Defender of Mankind. For him, unlike most and unlike some of the things he's said, he doesn't really mind humans all that much. The meaning of the name is also somewhat ironic, as his dearest wish was to defend and protect Lucille till the end of time, but he was inevitably unable to do that because of his status as a tree spirit.

- Lucille means Light, which I guess was supposed to be pretty symbolic with her storyline. To Alessio, she was his light. She was also kind of supposed to be the light of the shrine, as she had spent her life dedicated to it and died trying to protect it, as she saw it as a haven and home for the humans like her who needed it. She also, in this story, had a strong sense of justice and will, a 'shining beacon of light and hope.' I also threw in a bunch of lines comparing her to light and spring, so I tried to make it obvious that she was the guiding force in this arc.

- Alessio, by the way, is Seborga. Lucille is Monaco.

- A kodama is exactly how Alessio described it: a tree spirit. There's a story where a kodama took on the appearance of a human to meet the human that he had fallen in love with, which is what inspired the plot of this arc, essentially.

- This chapter was supposed to introduce and explain some things about Michelle's new position, and also fit in some character development by throwing her into that situation with Alessio and Lucille. She needs to both grow as a person and as the new land god of the shrine.

- The fact that Alessio's past takes place between the late 1460-1470s is because I sort of, kind of, based the timeline off of the Ōnin War in Japanese history, which was a ten-year civil war taking place between 1467-1477 that started the Sengoku period, or the Warring States period. It was a massive power-struggle between various houses to dominate Japan. This was loosely based off of it, okay, loosely. I made it pretty vague in the chapter. I never specified who they were or what the war was exactly. Also, how Alessio dresses was based off of European fashion, because, you know, he's Italian. I never specified Vlad's clothing or Lucille's (besides the fact that she was wearing a dress). The world they live in is kind of weirdly structured in a mix of cultures. I've never distinguished any specific regions they're in, because the universe they live in is supposed to be a mixture of our own, but various cultures are obviously specified, like how Vlad's clearly Romanian and Kiku's Japanese. But they're all speaking English while throwing in some of their own language quirks. It's strange. Just go with it. Also, I know they probably didn't speak in the same manner as Alessio, Lucille, and Vlad did in the flashbacks, but. Well. Literary license. This story's already strange enough that this doesn't seem too weird, right?

- A kitsune is a fox, a type of yokai, or spiritual entity. It's usually translated as a 'fox spirit.' They're described as tricksters and are said to possess superior intelligence, long life, and magical powers. They also can take on human form. Usually in myths, kitsune are portrayed as lovers, but since in this fic the kitsune is Kiku, I'm scratching that idea out, haha.

- Arthur is just some random human-snake hybrid. He's nothing exactly pertaining to Japanese mythology. I just liked the idea of him being half snake.

- Vladimir is the marriage land god. He isn't supposed to represent a particular god from Japanese mythology. The character he's taken the place of in Kamisama Hajimemashita was the marriage land god of the shrine, so I made him that way, as well. The ability for him to see people's red strings of fate was something I came up with myself, however.

- And, yes, Feliciano's a god. He actually represents a specific one from Japanese mythology, but he'll come in later in the story. He's still got a lot more to do with Michelle than anyone realizes.

- This chapter was confusing as heck, probably, and I apologize for that. The writing for this was weird. The beginning was supposed to be Michelle dreaming and remembering how she met Francis, who is supposed to be sort of the guide figure in her storyline. He'll be mentioned in the story often because of this, and he's got a bigger role to play later on. Then, she sort of hears the voices of different people in her life, and what she sees and experiences in her dreams are supposed to be things that represent them. One of the voices she'd heard was of someone that hasn't been added into this fic yet, but that someone will come in and be revealed later. Everyone in her dream has a certain role they need to play in the plot and in her life. They make sense later, I promise.

- Alessio takes Michelle back in time to witness what he'd been through, and since she's the new marriage god, he thought that perhaps if he'd steal her heart (which glowed with warmth), he'd be able to somehow bring Lucille back to life, or at least change things in the past to where he could save her. Arthur jerks Michelle back to the present because he's just great like that, and then Michelle, using her will and heart and godly power, somehow manages to connect Alessio's spirit with Lucille's and gets him to move on. He's not dead. He's just reverted and morphed back into the tree for a little while.

- Sakura flowers fall at the rate of five centimeters per second, and represent mortality and the beauty and quickness of death. Also, I just find when characters in manga/anime turn and burst into cherry blossom petals a really beautiful way to die, so I added that in here. Lucille loved these flowers after all, so it was only fitting to have her rest peacefully that way and die in that matter in Alessio's memories.

---

A/N: I AM SO SORRY THIS WAS SO FREAKISHLY LONG.

I wanted to shorten it so badly, you don't even understand. But I needed the arc to fit into one chapter, so although the storyline of this seemed everywhere and going nowhere, I needed it to go this way for plot and character development purposes. It's difficult for me to write out how I imagine this all happening, because in my head, I envision this all occurring in shoujo manga style, so that's why everything's so weird.

I wrote everything starting from Alessio's appearance to the end of this chapter yesterday and today. Everything else was written forever ago.

Hopefully the next chapter won't be nearly as long. Apologies for any of the characters being OOC. It was for good reason and on purpose.

The next update will be, well, someday. (Also, there's probably a crap load of mistakes all over the place. Please forgive me for them. This chapter's a word monster.)