Disclaimer: We don't own DCMK

A.N: I would have posted this sooner, but I've been experiencing some technical difficulties with my documents. Fortunately, I haven't lost anything, and hopefully the problem stays solved. In the meantime, I've started cross-posting Midnight White onto my AO3 account.


Moon on the Snow

4: The Paths Between

The sky to the east was trimmed with gold, heralding the coming dawn. Its pale radiance flowed smoothly into the deep, satin blue of the passing night where a few last stars were winking farewell to the snow-capped mountains below. It was a breathtaking sight, but for all that the enormous window in their room provided them with a spectacular view of it, niether Kaito nor Shinichi had even noticed that the sun was rising. They only observed in the distracted corners of their minds that the room was growing brighter.

Shinichi was sitting at the small table where they had shared hot chocolate a scant few hours ago, this time with a mug of coffee steaming between his cupped hands as he watched Kaito pace around and around the room. Though Kaito's exptression spoke of nothing but a mind focused on some very intense thinking, the fact that he had been at his pacing for nearly ten minutes now without saying a word was beginning to make Shinichi nervous.

"I still don't understand," he said finally when he could stand the silence no longer. "Do you really think I somehow got into your dream?"

"I don't just think, I know," Kaito corrected him. "You should too. You were there. I spoke. You answered. And we both remember what we said, not to mention the scenery."

Shinichi opened his mouth then closed it again. They had indeed compared notes upon waking up, and Kaito was right. They both remembered that starlit rose garden and the little, stone gazebo. It was strange, to say the least, but Shinichi had seen so much strange since he'd gotten to know Kaito that he no longer felt particularly perturbed by any of it.

"I don't see why you seem so worried about it," he said. "They're just dreams. Or is it like a breech of privacy to accidentally slip into someone else's dream?"

Kaito snorted then laughed. "It figures a detective would start with the legalities of things." He made one more quick circuit of the room then threw himself into the chair across from Shinichi.

He pulled a fluted glass of something blue and frothy out of the air and took a long sip before setting the cup aside and leveling Shinichi with a serious gaze.

"There are two branches of magic that correlate with what happened last night: dream walking and dream shaping. Dream walking is pretty much what it sounds like. It's about moving through and observing others' dreams. Dream shaping is about creating and altering dreams. The experience you described sounds more like the former. Both are very rare magical talents. They are also both very dangerous, albeit in different ways. For the untrained, however, dream walking in particular is extremely dangerous for the user."

"What do you mean?"

"It's all about minds. The world of dreams is one shaped entirely by our minds and hearts. And because of that, each dream is in essence its own world, and the dreamer is the god of that world. Do you understand?"

Shinichi shrugged, looking at the blue liquid in Kaito's glass which appeared to be turning green then yellow before darkening to orange and a velvety rose red. "How does that make walking in someone else's dream dangerous though?"

Kaito caught his eyes with a steely gaze and held it. "Because there are no rules in a dream world. Anything is possible, and most of that power lies in the hands of the dreamer. Dream shapers can create and manipulate dream worlds, making someone else's dream their own to shape, so, as long as they remain calm and have a strong will, they can protect themselves. But a dream walker is a mere visitor—an observer. A skilled dream walker can view other's dreams unnoticed, and yes, gather intelligence on their private thoughts, but if noticed, they are basically at the mercy of their host's mind. On top of that, most people don't exactly have great control over their own inner thoughts. So say a dream walker is startled by something they see and react in a way that scares the dreamer, then that fright is reflected by the dreamer's dream world and it becomes a vicious cycle where the dreamer and walker feed each other's fears so that the nightmare grows worse and worse."

Shinichi considered this information as he sipped at his coffee. "I can see how that could be unpleasant," he said eventually. "But even the worst nightmares are just that. They can't actually hurt you."

"Not physically, maybe," Kaito replied. "But getting accidentally embroiled in a nightmare is only one risk. The biggest danger is that you might get trapped."

The detective stared at him. "Trapped?"

"If the owner of a dream has the mental discipline, he or she could use those dreams to trap an intruder's mind. The good news is that normally the dream walker would wake up when the dreamer does. But there are some demons with natural talents in certain mental magics that can be combined with dream shaping to create pseudo dream spaces in which they could trap a dream walker forever."

Shinichi could feel his blood running cold at that idea even as some corner of his mind wondered whether it should laugh at the odd duality of this world of magic where, for every new wonder, there was an accompanying danger.

"Well, so now that you have me thoroughly convinced that this dream walking business is dangerous," he said wryly. "What am I supposed to do about it? Hell, how did it even happen? I thought for a moment that maybe thoughts and dreams just have more power in this world because of the natural magic you told me about, but you made it sound like dream walking isn't an everyday occurrence."

"It's not. Like I said. It's a rare magical talent."

"But I'm human," Shinichi reminded him. "I don't have any magic."

Kaito hesitated, indigo eyes growing distant as he thought. His long fingers drummed a quick rhythm on the tabletop. If Shinichi didn't know better, he'd have thought Kaito was uncomfortable. That thought didn't make the detective feel any better.

Eventually, the demon sighed and met his gaze, expression grimmer than Shinichi had ever seen it. "That may not be entirely true."

Shinichi blinked. "What?"

"You said you have no magic," Kaito clarified. "I'm saying that that may not be true. You remember my doves, don't you?"

Those doves were hard to forget, Shinichi thought. He had first been introduced to the flock back when he'd only been a child. At the time, Kaito had been masquerading as the human son of a stage magician who had transferred into Shinichi's school. And so Shinichi had met those delightfully bright birds when Kaito invited him to watch the magicians train their feathery assistants. At the time, the doves had been ordinary enough if rather smart for birds.

A few months ago though, Shinichi had had the chance to see those same doves again, and boy had they changed. Even the smallest dove towered over him while standing on the ground. They would certainly never fly out of another top hat. Nowadays, the flock apparently served as a means of aerial travel for the Kurobas and their servants as well as messengers and scouts. But it wasn't just their size that had left an impression on Shinichi. It was the way they clearly understood every word of human speech. The cause for this drastic change, according to Kaito, was their extended exposure to the natural magic in the Makai. But the doves had been a special case, Kaito had claimed. Their natural affinity for magic was what spurred on such rapid and unusual development.

Kaito had also told Shinichi himself that he had always had an unusually high level of awareness. He called it an affinity for divination, and, according to him, it was why Shinichi ran into so many crimes on a regular basis. While Shinichi wasn't entirely sold on that reasoning, he had not forgotten those hours in the underground tunnels formed by the roots of the Millennial Tree. That feeling of the tree's immense life force flowing all around him was one he would never forget.

"But Kazuha has the same kind of, well, sense, I suppose, that I do," he said, thinking out loud. "Does that mean we'll both start developing magical abilities just by spending more time in this world and eating your food?"

"Maybe," said Kaito. "Though the chances of that happening are, I think, quite slim."

"Why though? She actually spent more time in the Makai than I did during our last visit since she was kidnapped. And she consumed a lot more of the local foods during those days when I was sick."

"With magic poisoning," Kaito jumped in. "You were sick because your body was having trouble handling the enormous amount of magic you were exposed to when you fell into the Source. As I told you back then, when someone gets magic poisoning, his or her body has to expel or assimilate the excess magic in order to recover. When demons survive a serious case of magic poisoning, they will often find that their magical abilities have evolved. In the bad old days when everyone was always fighting, some demons would consume mass amounts of magic-rich substances like the snow from Mizuna Peak to try and make themselves stronger. But so many demons perished in the attempt that the practice eventually died out. Nowadays, most of us know better."

"Hold on." Shinichi raised both his hands. "Are you about to say that, because I survived the magic poisoning, I might be developing magical abilities?"

"More like had the channels of potential you already had opened up, but yes. Like I said, my people were human too before the magic made its way into our makeup."

"But I thought you told me real changes don't tend to happen unless an organism that is already prone to change is exposed to magic over an extended period of time. I was only sick once. And I've been back in my world since then where there wouldn't have been any exposure to magic."

Kaito hesitated. "Well… That's not technically entirely true."

"What do you mean?"

"This." The magician reached over and lightly touched a spot at the junction between Shinichi's neck and shoulder. Shinichi felt a spark of unexpected warmth at the point of contact, and he shivered. "We have a bond now. For my people, this connection would include a certain sharing of magic. It is possible that that is also true for us. If that is the case then you could say that you are, in fact, being exposed to magic even when we are in your world."

Withdrawing his hand, Kaito caught Shinichi's gaze and held it. For once, his indigo eyes were utterly and completely serious.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Shinichi felt suddenly cold. "Kai," he began slowly, hesitated, then sighed. "Kai, does this… I mean, are you trying to tell me that… That I'm starting to not be a human anymore?"

The guilty look that flashed through Kaito's eyes before the magician's Poker Face slammed down was all the answer Shinichi needed.


TBC

A.N: Happy New Year!