This takes place a few months after the previous chapter.
The Snow Queen
Crunch crunch crunch crunch.
She could feel a pair of ankle length braids flapping against her back as she ran.
She could smell the pines as they flew by.
She could feel the cold air making her nose numb.
She could feel the ermine fur lining of her coat brushing against her chin.
Crunch crunch.
She stopped for a moment.
…. crunch crunch crunch crunch.
The sound of someone running through the snow continued, albeit fainter.
She was being chased.
She began to run again, this time so fast that her feet barely had enough time to sink into the feathery white powder.
Suddenly, the crunching noise seemed to change.
It sounded more like knocking.
"Saya! Yuki! Get up!"
Yuki rolled over and glanced at the clock before sitting up and glaring at the fourteen-year-old boy standing in the doorway.
"Go away George, it's barely six."
"Yeah, but the bus schedule changed, remember? If we take the 7:45, we'll be late to class so we have to take the 6:45."
Saya and Yuki both groaned from their respective beds.
Kai joined his son in the doorway. "You guys could sleep for another fifteen minutes, but you'll miss breakfast."
"We're up."
As soon as the door closed, the two girls hoped out of bed and began to dress.
The two girls shared a room, even though they didn't need to. Early on, when Yuki hadn't yet shed her infantile mannerisms, she had refused to sleep in her own room. Her childish behavior seemed to have tapered off during the past few months, but her dependence on Saya's guidance and support had only decreased a bit. This might have been stifling to most people, but Saya was used to having clingy friends.
"Saya, does it snow in Okinawa?" Yuki asked as she pulled her blouse over her head.
"I don't think it gets cold enough to snow here."
Yuki gave a thoughtful hum.
Saya knew why she was asking. "Did you have that dream again?"
"Yeah," Yuki paused. "It feels so familiar, being in the snow. Hey, maybe we lived somewhere snowy before the accident."
Technically, Saya's answer wasn't a lie, but it still felt like one.
"I don't know."
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The sky seemed to be threatening rain, and misting lightly every once and a while, but Saya was familiar enough with the climate to know it wouldn't truly rain on them.
The athletic field lay in between the bus stop and the school, so they cut across it, as was their routine.
Yuki suddenly stopped dead in her tracks and turned toward a rarely used corner of the field.
"Again?" Saya grumbled.
Yuki approached the chainlink fence and pressed her face against it like a child out side of a toyshop.
He had been there every morning for the last few weeks. Yuki always watched him as they passed, but since the bus schedule now forced them to kill a half an hour before school, Yuki insisted on spending it watching him.
She referred to him as Kyudo Boy.
He was a young man, though he seemed just slightly too old to be one of their classmates. He was dressed in a gray hakama and black kimono with one arm out of its sleeve, holding an enormous traditional Yumi in his hand.
To be out there alone, first thing in the morning, in full traditional regalia – he must have been at least a bit of an eccentric.
He had neatly combed ear-length black hair with a few subtle dark brown highlights. From what they could see from that distance, a relatively handsome face, somewhat tan and slightly and obscured slightly by a pair of sunglasses and a slight hint of a beard. Yuki had decided that he must have a nice body, judging by his exposed shoulder.
Because of her past conversation with Nathan, Saya knew that Yuki's interest in the young archer was probably more than just a girlish crush on a stranger. Saya was familiar with the powerful sway of déjà vu.
Yuki regarded him with wide eyed fascination as he extended his left arm and bow out in front of him and raised the bow up, drawing the string back over his head and then rolling his shoulders and lowering it into a shooting position.
The young man fired into a foam target about sixty feet away, hitting just beside a small cluster of other arrows that had already lodged in it.
"Yuki, you know, you're probably making him uncomfortable by standing here and watching him all the time."
Saya often had to explain this sort of thing to Yuki.
It seemed as if he would be out of earshot, but apparently he had heard them. "It's alright, I don't mind," he said as he turned to Yuki. "You seem very interested in this, would you like to try?"
Yuki flashed Saya an excited grin and scampered off to the Kyudo Boy.
"We wouldn't want to impose…" Saya's voice trailed off as she resigned herself to just stand by and let Yuki do as she pleased.
Within seconds, Yuki was holding the bow.
"Now stand with your feet apart –"
Yuki cut him off. "It's alright. I've already been watching you," she said as she copied his technique and fired into the foam target.
"Very good!" The young man said as she handed the bow back to him. "You use a pinch draw, not exactly traditional, but you definitely must have shot before."
Yuki was silent for a moment. "I don't know."
"You don't?"
"Well, I don't remember anything before a few months ago. Last year, we and our mom were in a car crash. Our mom was killed, we both ended up with some mild brain damage that caused us to have amnesia, and I ended up in a coma up until three months ago."
Saya's face wrinkled in embarrassment. Yuki had learned how to function well in society on a basic level, but there were still a lot of social situations that she didn't know how to handle properly. In this case, she didn't seem to realize that it isn't normal to bring up such a personal story with a total stranger.
Yuki did seem to notice the slightly puzzled look on his face and suddenly seemed to grasp her error.
"I guess you think that's pretty weird, huh."
"Not in a bad way," he stated casually. "I mean, I thought that type of amnesia only happened in movies, its interesting to meet someone whose experienced it." He flashed a friendly smile.
Saya raised an eyebrow.
Yuki smiled delightedly at him for several seconds before speaking.
"Can I try again, I want to see if I can hit the same place twice."
He handed the bow back to her.
Thhhhhhpk.
Sure enough, her second shot hit within a half inch of the first one.
Thhhhhhpk. And so did the third.
Thhhhhhpk. And so did the fourth.
And so on.
The Kyudo Boy was speechless.
This was in no way shocking to Saya. Yuki didn't seem to have regained any of her memories, but Saya knew from experience that some skills seemed to be independent of memory. Only a few months earlier, before Saya had regained her own past, she had been stunned to discover that she was pretty good at the cello, even though she could not remember ever having played it before. Yuki's having rediscovered her archery skills was not at all surprising.
The body often remembers things that the mind does not.
The Kyudo Boy finally found his voice. "You're grouping is even better than mine, and I have been doing this for years. I think you should definitely sign up for class."
"Really?"
"Absolutely, I'm the teacher's assistant for the Tuesday Thursday class, I would be happy to introduce you."
Yuki's face lit up. "That would be so cool!" She beamed as she softly clapped her hands.
The young man smiled right back. "I don't think I caught your name."
"Otonashi Shirayuki, but everyone calls me Yuki."
"Pleased to meet you, my name is Freddie Gardener."
"Freddie Gardener? But you look Asian," Yuki said, sounding a little confused.
Saya winced. Political correctness also seemed to be out of Yuki's grasp at present.
The young man scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Um, well my dad was American, but I guess I look more like my mom."
"Yuki, don't you think we should let him get back to practicing."
"I guess so," said Yuki as she began to hand the bow back to the young man, but then suddenly thrust it toward Saya. "Hey Saya, you should try it."
"Yuki, I really don't think -"
"C'mon, it's super easy! Try it! I bet you can do it too!"
The young man shrugged and smiled politely.
Saya reluctantly took the bow and did her best to copy her sister. She raised the bow up over her shoulders as Yuki had done, but accidentally let the arrow fly before bringing the bow back down.
The arrow landed somewhere in the canopy of a shower tree at the other end of the field.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Saya said, her face red with embarrassment. "Let me get that -"
"No, I got it, it was my idea," Yuki said as she took off running toward the tree.
Saya and the young man watched as Yuki reached the tree and began to climb.
Yuki spotted the arrow resting in a clump of dangling pink flowers on one of the branches. She crawled out onto the bough beneath and reached up for her quarry, only to loose her balance. Her hands flew instinctively out in front of her just before she hit the ground.
Her sister and new acquaintance sprinted to her aid.
"Yuki! Are you alright?" Saya called.
"Ouuuwww…" Yuki groaned as she pushed her self up.
It was then that she noticed her left arm was clearly broken, the tip of her ulna was visible as it had punctured through her skin.
Yuki let out a shriek as she caught sight of her injury.
"Oh shit!" The young man gasped.
Saya knew she had to act fast before their new acquaintance saw Yuki's blood do its work. She turned to the young man with a forced smile.
"Um, it was nice meeting you Freddie-san, but I think you really should leave now," she said, trying to sound polite, but really just sounding panicked.
He furrowed his brows. "She's hurt, I wont just leave!"
"Please, you really have to go now!" Saya franticly implored.
"But I -" The young man stopped mid sentence when he noticed a tall, longhaired man in a suit had appeared behind him.
"Saya, is this man bothering you?" Haji asked sternly.
Yuki looked over to him and laughed half-heartedly. "Wow, Haji-san, what are you doing here? You really picked a hell of a time to run in to us."
Yuki was still under the impression that Haji was Saya's cello teacher.
Saya realized that the kyudo boy wouldn't leave without helping her injured sister. "Um, you should go get help. Please Freddie-san, go to the gym and get some help!"
"I've got a cell phone right here, I could call an ambulance!"
"No!"
"But she's hurt really bad, you can see the bone and look at all the blood!"
"She doesn't need an ambulance!"
Yuki was getting quite confused. "What do you mean I don't need an ambulance! Look at me!"
Saya let out a deep, exasperated groan as she slapped her own forehead.
"Look at yourself," Saya sighed.
Yuki looked down at the wound and screamed.
Strange, white hair-like fibers had grown out of the tip of the bone and had stretched across the gap between the two halves of her ulna, and were knitting the bone back together while she watched in horror.
"Cooooool," whispered the kyudo boy.
The color drained out of Yuki's face.
"W-w-what's wrong with me," she stuttered quietly.
Saya knelt beside her and placed her hand comfortingly on Yuki's head.
"Nothing's wrong with you." Saya pulled out the dagger that Haji had asked her to keep as a side arm. She made a small cut in her hand, and held it up to her distraught sister.
Yuki watched as the scratch faded.
Saya placed her other hand on Yuki's head, and stroked her hair comfortingly. "See, we're the same."
Yuki looked up at Saya with owl-like eyes. "B-but th-this isn't – this isn't n- normal."
"It is totally normal." Saya let out a sigh. "It's just not -" she paused, "-human."
"N-not human." Yuki echoed.
"Coooool," The young man whispered again.
Yuki watched as the last trace of her injury disappeared. "W-what are we then?"
"We are chiropterans. You and I are a special kind of chiropteran called 'Queens.' We have hearts and souls and minds just like humans, it's just that our blood is special. One of the things it does is it makes us heal really quickly."
Yuki back toward Saya. "I think I'd rather be human"
Saya sighed. "I know." She stood and extended her hand down to Yuki. "C'mon, we'll talk more at home. I think cutting our morning classes is okay considering the circumstances."
Saya helped her sister to her feet.
"Saya, what about him?" Haji said, gesturing to the awestruck young man.
"Hey, don't worry, your secret's safe with me," said the young man, his tone strikingly sincere.
Haji turned to him. "Listen to me," he said with no small amount of menace in his voice. "Telling anyone about this would be very dangerous, not just for them, but for you as well."
"Is it like some government conspiracy or something? Hell, I'm on your side then," he said quickly before turning his attention back to Yuki. "So, you'll come to class right?"
Yuki stared at him in shock. "You still want me to come?"
"Hell yeah."
"You mean, you don't think I'm a freak?"
"Not in a bad way."
Yuki smiled at him, deeply moved by the stranger's acceptance.
Saya and Haji exchanged glances, unsure of what to make of this odd young man.
"C'mon, lets get you home," Saya said softly as she began to lead her sister away.
"See ya tomorrow night," the kyudo boy called after them.
Yuki turned around and nodded with a broad smile as the two girls began walking back toward home. Yuki looked down at her now healed arm.
"Saya, is this why Kai won't let me get my ears pierced?"
"Yeah."
Author's note:
Ever since I first started working on Yuki's character, I have been aware that I am totally Cruzin' for a Suezin. However, after much consideration, I have decided not to worry about that, for two reasons…
1. Saya scores high on the litmus test herself
2. It's my story, nanny nanny boo boo! He he he!
Yes, I am weird.
If you have no idea what I am talking about, then disregard that message.
Of course, I would love to know what you all think!