Yuuya Sakazaki (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
espigeonage) wrote2013-04-11 11:56 pm
espigeonage) wrote2013-04-11 11:56 pm
Entry tags:
|Mental Echoes|
Memory Echo
The first couple panels of this page, with a little context from the latter half of this one. Note: this bit is drawn with gijinka, but the characters are still birds. However, being around Anghel makes everyone perceive and think of themselves as whatever he sees them as - usually gijinka, but when he's upset enough they're their fantasy AUs. Yuuya's fantasy AU self, the Apostle of the Violet Rose, Cain Reprobus, looks like this.
He was in the infirmary. He knew that's what it was, and that he had some time safe that he'd wanted to do something in, but he'd been interrupted. His head bore a fading ache like he'd hit it, and there was... kind of a smell, or a feeling in the throat... and a little vertigo... and someone very exotic sliding the door open.
First he was a teenaged boy even shorter than Julien, with the most extraordinary teal hair and outfit, and... bandaging, and blood. It seemed some blood wasn't unusual, but this was a little much.
And he kind of... flickered between a teenager and someone similar and taller, armored, with great folded wings, one feathered red, one almost batlike... It was all vague, but he wasn't surprised or even paying much attention to that, he was checking the blood and determining, hmm, three or four skin cuts, messy but probably not that bad, better stop the bleeding, clean it, find where the doctor left the skin adhesives...
The boy, or whatever, spoke desperately. His voice was low and urgent either way, but when he was a teenager it broke rawly. "Apostle of the Violet Rose, the Dark Sorceror has gone. Hurry now - while we have the chance, gift to me the divine healing..."
His visible eye closed and he fainted, as he fell flickering from winged being to teenager to... indistinct. The teal was really more gray, and he couldn't really remember anything else about that.
Knowledge Echo
A summation of the following; the memory has condensed and faded into more of a recounting or a complex thought than a recording.
I joined the Party to spite that man, but I soon came to believe in the cause as well. How could I not? And they had use for me. When I was eight Heaven-Soaring Wings, the most mysterious branch of the Party, began to court me. It wasn't personal. I was young enough to be flexible, to learn quickly, and to be underestimated; I was old enough to be useful, and nothing they knew about or could get from interviews suggested I would do poorly. Of course, I jumped at the chance.
There would be training, and initially I was to be paired with other field agents, provided with experienced handlers, protected when possible, and not assigned anything they knew would be particularly risky. All the same, they wanted me to be sure.
"Join us and you could get shot, knifed, dismembered, drowned, buried alive... You will have no glory or fame. Even if you quit, the Party can only do so much to protect you. You'll only be able to have a normal life if you change your identity. Are you sure you want to risk yourself so for humans and human-lovers?"
Of course I did. How kind and condescending of them to make sure! There is so much I could have said and so much I wanted to say, but on the record there is only this.
"It was their world before it was ours. I want to protect the ones who're left."
Memory Echo
It's a dark place, unearthly, with stars in every direction. I'm standing on a glowing path with the look of stained glass to it. There were three ghostly citizens here, but they've changed. Now they are three figures, taller than me, richly robed and crowned and multiheaded in surreal melting colors, all vaguely unreal and upsetting-looking. They speak as one, voices childish and yet threatening at once. I'm repulsed but I stand firm.
"What a mean thing to do. You break [], and you think nothing of it. So many. So many. So many []... I wonder what the [] inside were like? Don't you feel sorry for them? The King knows. The King knows that long ago, you broke [] out of your own selfishness." He says words and I know the meaning of them, but not all of this is passed on.
Coldness has locked around my heart. No one should know what I did. Still, I'm calm.
So, this is how the king fights back? I don't know how he figured out my secret, but in any case it's a very precise attack. The king himself is elsewhere, on his throne. The citizens should just be small parts of the whole, but maybe they share his consciousness and abilities?
I don't really know what he is or what he can do. He rules the spirits he's trapped here in this zone of surreality, which certainly suggests he's something above my paygrade. I can't fight him physically. All I have is my words and conviction.
"This is my job. I'm here to rescue everyone from the school. You've trapped someone inside this wall. So I'm breaking this wall. Any questions?"
A few heads shake sadly. "...that poor [], that could never live."
"...please, try not to get distracted. My past has nothing to do with the fact that you're in my way."
I'm being threatened in the most sugary-sympathetic tone I've ever heard. "You poor, poor []. The King thought, you should not have to suffer any more."
The three King-figures are suddenly each holding... something rounded, and dropping them at my feet one by one, creating a mess. A mess of liquid and gore and sharp shards spreading across the path - I'm standing on it, standing in it, it's spattered my legs and folded wings.
"The King said, The King can lift the burden from your shoulders. The King can take away your pain. So come. Become one with The King."
The cold feeling spreads and hardens. How much does he know? He's aware of the guilt I've carried with me ever since I broke [], anyway... But he seems to have misunderstood. I have no hesitation.
"Thanks, but no thanks. ...you're asking me to hand my guilt over to some complete stranger? Please, tell me you're joking."
Multihued heads, vaguely birdlike, rear away from me. "...? The King said, do you like pain? The King does not understand."
"Yeah, I didn't think you would. I don't think you ever will. Like you said, I dirtied my hands with a crime, and I can never take it back. A life lost will never return. The past does not change. The least I can do is remember. I will always carry this with me. This pain is mine. And you can't have it."
This is right. This is me. Acceptance, and atonement, are my strength, the source of my conviction.
The triple-King is shrinking back away as if each word diminished him, fading into the dark with a final bit of bluster. "You know well what it means to suffer. But if you break the King's [], you will only suffer more..."
I have to smile. "Suffering... indeed. I don't think you'll understand. This pain is part of me. ...Your [] is already rotten." I raise my voice to call after the vanishing triple shadow. "Isn't it a little much for you to ask me to accept your sympathy?"
I'm alone on the path. Just one person left I have to save. I know what I have to do.
Knowledge Echo
This is a complex and painful thought. The only background knowledge is that the one who's had these thoughts and come to this conclusion is young, even if he's thinking clearly.
I knew this would happen. I knew they would start to get to my brother eventually. I hoped - well. It feels like a surprise, but it shouldn't be. He doesn't understand, of course, he's a child. Barely younger than me but I haven't been a child since I did that thing. Still, he will come to understand, and he will hate me as they do.
Nothing's really changed. I didn't do it so he'd love me. I don't do anything just to be loved. Maybe I'm as low as they think, but I know better than to think I'm owed or deserve that, especially now.
I wanted to tell him. But I can't now. I can't say... anything at all. My wings and mine alone are stained. If one day he changes somehow, then maybe... But that's just speculation anyway. It will get worse before it can get better. I can't let him or anyone see that I care about this.
Whatever. I can feel however I like, and time will not reverse. What's done is done. I need to remember that he is alive! And that has to be enough. He can hate me forever and it will be fine, if he's alive.
It hurts so much. Maybe I deserve it. Doesn't matter, this is just one more thing, smaller than the rest. And not like the rest of it - after all, my brother is alive. There is hope. Hope is painful too, of course, but that's never stopped me before.
It was still so good to see him again.
Memory Echo
Just voice, just part of a mid-grade-school lesson.
Today we'll start with a brief overview of Sumatera Influenza and its effects on the world.
This form of the H5N1 virus, dubbed Sumatera Flu, is rarely fatal to us. You might have been sick with it already and became well again, or you may be a carrier with no ill effects. However it was extremely harmful to humanity.
There was a pandemic, a global spread of the disease, starting with the first cases in 2068. Two years later, seventy percent of the human population had died of it and many of the rest were not immune. Human governments decided to target us to prevent further spread.
We'll start on Project Carneades and the war in the next module, but for now, only ten percent of humans died in battle. When the humans surrendered and signed the truce agreements they were only four point six percent of the number alive in 2068.
Today's humans are mostly descended from those who were resistant to the disease, but it can still claim their children or weakened individuals. As most of you know we have charitable programs to vaccinate and care for them, which meet with some resistance on both sides. If you have human friends or work on the reservation, please do be careful for their sake.
Memory Echo
Dropped in the middle of a conversation with one of my kouhai, who is weeping and paralyzed with indecision. Somehow sight isn't very important - there are glowing trees? and my kouhai is dark colored to my light, but sight and appearances aren't so important or passed on so clearly.
I'm here to save everyone from the school. Here, that means persuading him to come back to the real world without breaking his heart.
He's saying, "I'm scared that I just won't be with her as much any-"
"Of course not. You can’t stay children forever." This shocks him. I smile, just slightly, (not with lips) and stand.
"Feel like writing me off as a heartless bastard yet? But ignoring me won’t change anything." I'm not unkind. I'm not! But he isn't thinking, and he should be. There's more riding on this than youthful heartbreak. Now I pace back and forth, turning my head all the while to keep him in view.
"Time will pass, and places will change. The first flowers in Spring, a shooting star, the rainbow right after a storm—all beautiful, and none can be captured and held forever. No matter how fair the flower, it will rot and fall to pieces if you never let it go. But memories will never hurt you. The flower withers, the star falls, and the rainbow fades away, but you will always remember their beauty."
He gapes at me for a moment, pupils wide and hurt. How young he is! "Are you telling me to... go on alone, with nothing but my memories...?"
I stop pacing. "That's a little pessimistic! What I'm saying is... don’t let your fears for tomorrow cloud the memories you’re making today." Seems like a good statement.
But he tightens his pupils, closes his inner eyelids. "...that's too abstract for me. I don't think I understand."
How long is he going to keep floundering around? I have to be clearer or I'll lose him. "Maybe you’ll be an unrequited lover, or maybe you’ll live and have a family with Hiyoko, or maybe you’ll go your own separate ways. But whatever happens, all the time you’ve spent with her, all the joy you’ve had, will still be yours."
"That just makes it even worse...!" Rising to his feet, staring at me out of one wide-pupiled molten orange eye, he cries out. "How could I live without the sun, now that I'm so used to its warmth and light? I'm scared,[]! I don't want to see everything I know collapse around me!" He said a name that is not passed on.
And... skip. Something happened here, something was thought or felt, but it is not passed on. Only that after a moment, I continue.
"Everything changes, Ryouta. Time is like that—inconvenient and rude to everyone." I sigh and settle or sit. This is getting into personal territory. So be it. "Even if you stand still, everything else will leave you behind. No matter how hard you try to prevent change, it will still come. The world, and your friends, will still change."
I level a look at him. "If what you really want is undisturbed peace for the rest of your days you’ll have to cut all your ties, leave everyone behind, and become a hermit in the mountains."
He recoils, eyes pinning. It's kind of gratifying. "No... I don't want that!"
Skip. Longer now. More important. He's not in the same spot now, his eyes half veiled, and plaintive. "...right. Aren't you afraid, []? Everything around us is changing, and so are we. We don't know what's ahead. Doesn't that scare you?"
Normally I wouldn't answer this. I would deflect. I hate to tell people things about myself, my motives. But this is more important, and after a moment, I have an answer.
"There are things that scare even me, yes. Even a hero of justice has his weaknesses." Of course I couch it a little, make it seem like it's not a big deal to share this, although my voice is softer. "What’s waiting for me at the other end of this night? The best day of my life? Or the very worst? No one knows. And that’s why—"
Some of the usual strength and surety comes back into my voice as I stand. "That’s why all we, who cannot see tomorrow, can do is put on our bravest smiles and march boldly into the new day."
He sits or settles back. (It's not much like how humans sit.) "Isn't that called bluffing?"
"Hahaha, I suppose it is. All this time I've just been trying to look cool so no one will realize what's going on inside." I know what people say about me. It's nothing I don't want them to believe. "But what's wrong with putting on a little show?"
Well. By now I've said everything I can to convince him, and I sober. "...I have a question for you. There are only two choices. We're running a little low on time, you see. Kawara Ryouta. What do you want to do?"
Slowly unfolding my right wing, I hold it out. A minor gesture, not sweeping and dramatic. "You could accept the king's invitation and stay here. Nageki would be removed. You would spend eternity celebrating the endless holiday with Hiyoko, and tomorrow would never come. Nothing would change, and nothing would hurt you ever again."
Now my left. "Or, you could refuse the king's invitation and return to the real world. Your relationship with Hiyoko will change, sooner or later, for better or worse. And a new day will come." I close my wings again and settle them across my back.
"Now, choose. I won't try to force you either way. You alone can decide what your salvation will be."
Memory Echo
The glowing forest again, and my kouhai Ryouta, again.
He's sitting or settled and speaking softly, agonized. "Hiyoko has been with me ever since we were children. We've been together so long, I just... Somewhere along the line, I started thinking it would stay like that forever. But it won't. It never would. It was all... just my imagination. All of it."
His eyes, dilated to their fullest, glisten with tears. Ah, how brightly his innocence shines to one as worldly and jaded as myself. He probably hasn't even realized that what he's feeling is love. I listen.
"I took it all for granted. I thought it would last forever. But that's not possible. I know Hiyoko better than anyone. I know what she loves, and what she hates. What she's good at, and what she isn't. I know everything about her. But... I don't anymore. Nageki... Nageki knows a Hiyoko that I don't. And not just in this dream. She spends more time in the library every day. If someday I stop being special to her..." His voice splits with emotion. "For that matter, maybe I just thought I was special to her... all this time, to her, I've been nothing but...!"
Something happened here and was not passed on, beyond the thought I have to pick my words carefully.
"What exactly do you mean by 'special'?"
In the pause as I considered, he's had enough time to master his voice again. "Something... irreplaceable? I don't really understand myself. But, at the very least... to me, Hiyoko is Hiyoko. And no one can ever take her place."
"So that's it?" It's a careful balance I have to strike. Can't be too warm, can't be dismissive either. "What were you ever afraid of, then? No one can ever be replaced, Ryouta. You will never stop being 'special' to Hiyoko, in that respect. It's as simple as that." He wavers and I add, "You don't think I'm trying to fool you or anything, are you?"
"That's... true, I guess, but that's not it," he mumbles. "I'm scared that I just won't be with her as much any-"
"Of course not. You can’t stay children forever." This shocks him. I smile, just slightly (not with lips).
Memory Echo
I can't dawdle, but I can enjoy the search. It's a lovely fall day, crisp and cool with a kind sun and a mostly steady crosswind, baffled a little by the old skyscrapers. Stars peek through the clouds, through the pulsing changing colors of the sky. The magnetic pull and rippling is thus, the smell of the place is so, I can hear the ocean against the shores and the wind against the mountains etching the shape of this island and the chain it's part of, the softer hum of that crosswind against the crumbling buildings.
And I'm in flight, wings wide and white, alternating powerful strokes and moments of gliding, delicately tacking against the wind at points. The cracked concrete and burnt out cars and renewing greenery below me seems to flow by faster as I descend. I take in what I can see through mostly-shattered windows as I pass.
It has been a very long time since the city was abandoned, long enough that bodies are gone or unrecognizable, wild animals are about and fearless, and plants have seized on everything. Still there are old furnishings, decayed heaps of cloth, abandoned technology, swaths of graffiti about the End Times.
The skies aren't mine alone, of course, and there are not only innocent feral birds out flying. But I'm confident that I won't be spotted. I am very, very good at not being seen. The point is to find these people quickly, before anyone less kindly inclined does, and they should be-
Ah, there! I adjust my tail and wings and swing around, back towards a point I've just passed. Here the skyscraper's walls themselves are eroding and leaving their floors and rusting steel frames visible. Here, deeper inside, partially obscured by the darkness, there is a band of four furtive humans, wearing as humans do stitched mammal skins and donated clothing, head bedraggled, stained and matted with their own sweat and oils.
When they finally see me headed towards them, flaring my wings and slowing, they tense and ready their weapons. I see curved swords, a mace, and the last one is raising a bow. It doesn't upset me, I know humans can have trouble telling us apart. At any rate, they'll know my phrase.
I open my mouth and call it out to them as I come in for the landing, loud enough that they hear, not so loudly that it will bring anyone else. "Sexy and Suave!"
The first couple panels of this page, with a little context from the latter half of this one. Note: this bit is drawn with gijinka, but the characters are still birds. However, being around Anghel makes everyone perceive and think of themselves as whatever he sees them as - usually gijinka, but when he's upset enough they're their fantasy AUs. Yuuya's fantasy AU self, the Apostle of the Violet Rose, Cain Reprobus, looks like this.
He was in the infirmary. He knew that's what it was, and that he had some time safe that he'd wanted to do something in, but he'd been interrupted. His head bore a fading ache like he'd hit it, and there was... kind of a smell, or a feeling in the throat... and a little vertigo... and someone very exotic sliding the door open.
First he was a teenaged boy even shorter than Julien, with the most extraordinary teal hair and outfit, and... bandaging, and blood. It seemed some blood wasn't unusual, but this was a little much.
And he kind of... flickered between a teenager and someone similar and taller, armored, with great folded wings, one feathered red, one almost batlike... It was all vague, but he wasn't surprised or even paying much attention to that, he was checking the blood and determining, hmm, three or four skin cuts, messy but probably not that bad, better stop the bleeding, clean it, find where the doctor left the skin adhesives...
The boy, or whatever, spoke desperately. His voice was low and urgent either way, but when he was a teenager it broke rawly. "Apostle of the Violet Rose, the Dark Sorceror has gone. Hurry now - while we have the chance, gift to me the divine healing..."
His visible eye closed and he fainted, as he fell flickering from winged being to teenager to... indistinct. The teal was really more gray, and he couldn't really remember anything else about that.
Knowledge Echo
A summation of the following; the memory has condensed and faded into more of a recounting or a complex thought than a recording.
I joined the Party to spite that man, but I soon came to believe in the cause as well. How could I not? And they had use for me. When I was eight Heaven-Soaring Wings, the most mysterious branch of the Party, began to court me. It wasn't personal. I was young enough to be flexible, to learn quickly, and to be underestimated; I was old enough to be useful, and nothing they knew about or could get from interviews suggested I would do poorly. Of course, I jumped at the chance.
There would be training, and initially I was to be paired with other field agents, provided with experienced handlers, protected when possible, and not assigned anything they knew would be particularly risky. All the same, they wanted me to be sure.
"Join us and you could get shot, knifed, dismembered, drowned, buried alive... You will have no glory or fame. Even if you quit, the Party can only do so much to protect you. You'll only be able to have a normal life if you change your identity. Are you sure you want to risk yourself so for humans and human-lovers?"
Of course I did. How kind and condescending of them to make sure! There is so much I could have said and so much I wanted to say, but on the record there is only this.
"It was their world before it was ours. I want to protect the ones who're left."
Memory Echo
It's a dark place, unearthly, with stars in every direction. I'm standing on a glowing path with the look of stained glass to it. There were three ghostly citizens here, but they've changed. Now they are three figures, taller than me, richly robed and crowned and multiheaded in surreal melting colors, all vaguely unreal and upsetting-looking. They speak as one, voices childish and yet threatening at once. I'm repulsed but I stand firm.
"What a mean thing to do. You break [], and you think nothing of it. So many. So many. So many []... I wonder what the [] inside were like? Don't you feel sorry for them? The King knows. The King knows that long ago, you broke [] out of your own selfishness." He says words and I know the meaning of them, but not all of this is passed on.
Coldness has locked around my heart. No one should know what I did. Still, I'm calm.
So, this is how the king fights back? I don't know how he figured out my secret, but in any case it's a very precise attack. The king himself is elsewhere, on his throne. The citizens should just be small parts of the whole, but maybe they share his consciousness and abilities?
I don't really know what he is or what he can do. He rules the spirits he's trapped here in this zone of surreality, which certainly suggests he's something above my paygrade. I can't fight him physically. All I have is my words and conviction.
"This is my job. I'm here to rescue everyone from the school. You've trapped someone inside this wall. So I'm breaking this wall. Any questions?"
A few heads shake sadly. "...that poor [], that could never live."
"...please, try not to get distracted. My past has nothing to do with the fact that you're in my way."
I'm being threatened in the most sugary-sympathetic tone I've ever heard. "You poor, poor []. The King thought, you should not have to suffer any more."
The three King-figures are suddenly each holding... something rounded, and dropping them at my feet one by one, creating a mess. A mess of liquid and gore and sharp shards spreading across the path - I'm standing on it, standing in it, it's spattered my legs and folded wings.
"The King said, The King can lift the burden from your shoulders. The King can take away your pain. So come. Become one with The King."
The cold feeling spreads and hardens. How much does he know? He's aware of the guilt I've carried with me ever since I broke [], anyway... But he seems to have misunderstood. I have no hesitation.
"Thanks, but no thanks. ...you're asking me to hand my guilt over to some complete stranger? Please, tell me you're joking."
Multihued heads, vaguely birdlike, rear away from me. "...? The King said, do you like pain? The King does not understand."
"Yeah, I didn't think you would. I don't think you ever will. Like you said, I dirtied my hands with a crime, and I can never take it back. A life lost will never return. The past does not change. The least I can do is remember. I will always carry this with me. This pain is mine. And you can't have it."
This is right. This is me. Acceptance, and atonement, are my strength, the source of my conviction.
The triple-King is shrinking back away as if each word diminished him, fading into the dark with a final bit of bluster. "You know well what it means to suffer. But if you break the King's [], you will only suffer more..."
I have to smile. "Suffering... indeed. I don't think you'll understand. This pain is part of me. ...Your [] is already rotten." I raise my voice to call after the vanishing triple shadow. "Isn't it a little much for you to ask me to accept your sympathy?"
I'm alone on the path. Just one person left I have to save. I know what I have to do.
Knowledge Echo
This is a complex and painful thought. The only background knowledge is that the one who's had these thoughts and come to this conclusion is young, even if he's thinking clearly.
I knew this would happen. I knew they would start to get to my brother eventually. I hoped - well. It feels like a surprise, but it shouldn't be. He doesn't understand, of course, he's a child. Barely younger than me but I haven't been a child since I did that thing. Still, he will come to understand, and he will hate me as they do.
Nothing's really changed. I didn't do it so he'd love me. I don't do anything just to be loved. Maybe I'm as low as they think, but I know better than to think I'm owed or deserve that, especially now.
I wanted to tell him. But I can't now. I can't say... anything at all. My wings and mine alone are stained. If one day he changes somehow, then maybe... But that's just speculation anyway. It will get worse before it can get better. I can't let him or anyone see that I care about this.
Whatever. I can feel however I like, and time will not reverse. What's done is done. I need to remember that he is alive! And that has to be enough. He can hate me forever and it will be fine, if he's alive.
It hurts so much. Maybe I deserve it. Doesn't matter, this is just one more thing, smaller than the rest. And not like the rest of it - after all, my brother is alive. There is hope. Hope is painful too, of course, but that's never stopped me before.
It was still so good to see him again.
Memory Echo
Just voice, just part of a mid-grade-school lesson.
Today we'll start with a brief overview of Sumatera Influenza and its effects on the world.
This form of the H5N1 virus, dubbed Sumatera Flu, is rarely fatal to us. You might have been sick with it already and became well again, or you may be a carrier with no ill effects. However it was extremely harmful to humanity.
There was a pandemic, a global spread of the disease, starting with the first cases in 2068. Two years later, seventy percent of the human population had died of it and many of the rest were not immune. Human governments decided to target us to prevent further spread.
We'll start on Project Carneades and the war in the next module, but for now, only ten percent of humans died in battle. When the humans surrendered and signed the truce agreements they were only four point six percent of the number alive in 2068.
Today's humans are mostly descended from those who were resistant to the disease, but it can still claim their children or weakened individuals. As most of you know we have charitable programs to vaccinate and care for them, which meet with some resistance on both sides. If you have human friends or work on the reservation, please do be careful for their sake.
Memory Echo
Dropped in the middle of a conversation with one of my kouhai, who is weeping and paralyzed with indecision. Somehow sight isn't very important - there are glowing trees? and my kouhai is dark colored to my light, but sight and appearances aren't so important or passed on so clearly.
I'm here to save everyone from the school. Here, that means persuading him to come back to the real world without breaking his heart.
He's saying, "I'm scared that I just won't be with her as much any-"
"Of course not. You can’t stay children forever." This shocks him. I smile, just slightly, (not with lips) and stand.
"Feel like writing me off as a heartless bastard yet? But ignoring me won’t change anything." I'm not unkind. I'm not! But he isn't thinking, and he should be. There's more riding on this than youthful heartbreak. Now I pace back and forth, turning my head all the while to keep him in view.
"Time will pass, and places will change. The first flowers in Spring, a shooting star, the rainbow right after a storm—all beautiful, and none can be captured and held forever. No matter how fair the flower, it will rot and fall to pieces if you never let it go. But memories will never hurt you. The flower withers, the star falls, and the rainbow fades away, but you will always remember their beauty."
He gapes at me for a moment, pupils wide and hurt. How young he is! "Are you telling me to... go on alone, with nothing but my memories...?"
I stop pacing. "That's a little pessimistic! What I'm saying is... don’t let your fears for tomorrow cloud the memories you’re making today." Seems like a good statement.
But he tightens his pupils, closes his inner eyelids. "...that's too abstract for me. I don't think I understand."
How long is he going to keep floundering around? I have to be clearer or I'll lose him. "Maybe you’ll be an unrequited lover, or maybe you’ll live and have a family with Hiyoko, or maybe you’ll go your own separate ways. But whatever happens, all the time you’ve spent with her, all the joy you’ve had, will still be yours."
"That just makes it even worse...!" Rising to his feet, staring at me out of one wide-pupiled molten orange eye, he cries out. "How could I live without the sun, now that I'm so used to its warmth and light? I'm scared,[]! I don't want to see everything I know collapse around me!" He said a name that is not passed on.
And... skip. Something happened here, something was thought or felt, but it is not passed on. Only that after a moment, I continue.
"Everything changes, Ryouta. Time is like that—inconvenient and rude to everyone." I sigh and settle or sit. This is getting into personal territory. So be it. "Even if you stand still, everything else will leave you behind. No matter how hard you try to prevent change, it will still come. The world, and your friends, will still change."
I level a look at him. "If what you really want is undisturbed peace for the rest of your days you’ll have to cut all your ties, leave everyone behind, and become a hermit in the mountains."
He recoils, eyes pinning. It's kind of gratifying. "No... I don't want that!"
Skip. Longer now. More important. He's not in the same spot now, his eyes half veiled, and plaintive. "...right. Aren't you afraid, []? Everything around us is changing, and so are we. We don't know what's ahead. Doesn't that scare you?"
Normally I wouldn't answer this. I would deflect. I hate to tell people things about myself, my motives. But this is more important, and after a moment, I have an answer.
"There are things that scare even me, yes. Even a hero of justice has his weaknesses." Of course I couch it a little, make it seem like it's not a big deal to share this, although my voice is softer. "What’s waiting for me at the other end of this night? The best day of my life? Or the very worst? No one knows. And that’s why—"
Some of the usual strength and surety comes back into my voice as I stand. "That’s why all we, who cannot see tomorrow, can do is put on our bravest smiles and march boldly into the new day."
He sits or settles back. (It's not much like how humans sit.) "Isn't that called bluffing?"
"Hahaha, I suppose it is. All this time I've just been trying to look cool so no one will realize what's going on inside." I know what people say about me. It's nothing I don't want them to believe. "But what's wrong with putting on a little show?"
Well. By now I've said everything I can to convince him, and I sober. "...I have a question for you. There are only two choices. We're running a little low on time, you see. Kawara Ryouta. What do you want to do?"
Slowly unfolding my right wing, I hold it out. A minor gesture, not sweeping and dramatic. "You could accept the king's invitation and stay here. Nageki would be removed. You would spend eternity celebrating the endless holiday with Hiyoko, and tomorrow would never come. Nothing would change, and nothing would hurt you ever again."
Now my left. "Or, you could refuse the king's invitation and return to the real world. Your relationship with Hiyoko will change, sooner or later, for better or worse. And a new day will come." I close my wings again and settle them across my back.
"Now, choose. I won't try to force you either way. You alone can decide what your salvation will be."
Memory Echo
The glowing forest again, and my kouhai Ryouta, again.
He's sitting or settled and speaking softly, agonized. "Hiyoko has been with me ever since we were children. We've been together so long, I just... Somewhere along the line, I started thinking it would stay like that forever. But it won't. It never would. It was all... just my imagination. All of it."
His eyes, dilated to their fullest, glisten with tears. Ah, how brightly his innocence shines to one as worldly and jaded as myself. He probably hasn't even realized that what he's feeling is love. I listen.
"I took it all for granted. I thought it would last forever. But that's not possible. I know Hiyoko better than anyone. I know what she loves, and what she hates. What she's good at, and what she isn't. I know everything about her. But... I don't anymore. Nageki... Nageki knows a Hiyoko that I don't. And not just in this dream. She spends more time in the library every day. If someday I stop being special to her..." His voice splits with emotion. "For that matter, maybe I just thought I was special to her... all this time, to her, I've been nothing but...!"
Something happened here and was not passed on, beyond the thought I have to pick my words carefully.
"What exactly do you mean by 'special'?"
In the pause as I considered, he's had enough time to master his voice again. "Something... irreplaceable? I don't really understand myself. But, at the very least... to me, Hiyoko is Hiyoko. And no one can ever take her place."
"So that's it?" It's a careful balance I have to strike. Can't be too warm, can't be dismissive either. "What were you ever afraid of, then? No one can ever be replaced, Ryouta. You will never stop being 'special' to Hiyoko, in that respect. It's as simple as that." He wavers and I add, "You don't think I'm trying to fool you or anything, are you?"
"That's... true, I guess, but that's not it," he mumbles. "I'm scared that I just won't be with her as much any-"
"Of course not. You can’t stay children forever." This shocks him. I smile, just slightly (not with lips).
Memory Echo
I can't dawdle, but I can enjoy the search. It's a lovely fall day, crisp and cool with a kind sun and a mostly steady crosswind, baffled a little by the old skyscrapers. Stars peek through the clouds, through the pulsing changing colors of the sky. The magnetic pull and rippling is thus, the smell of the place is so, I can hear the ocean against the shores and the wind against the mountains etching the shape of this island and the chain it's part of, the softer hum of that crosswind against the crumbling buildings.
And I'm in flight, wings wide and white, alternating powerful strokes and moments of gliding, delicately tacking against the wind at points. The cracked concrete and burnt out cars and renewing greenery below me seems to flow by faster as I descend. I take in what I can see through mostly-shattered windows as I pass.
It has been a very long time since the city was abandoned, long enough that bodies are gone or unrecognizable, wild animals are about and fearless, and plants have seized on everything. Still there are old furnishings, decayed heaps of cloth, abandoned technology, swaths of graffiti about the End Times.
The skies aren't mine alone, of course, and there are not only innocent feral birds out flying. But I'm confident that I won't be spotted. I am very, very good at not being seen. The point is to find these people quickly, before anyone less kindly inclined does, and they should be-
Ah, there! I adjust my tail and wings and swing around, back towards a point I've just passed. Here the skyscraper's walls themselves are eroding and leaving their floors and rusting steel frames visible. Here, deeper inside, partially obscured by the darkness, there is a band of four furtive humans, wearing as humans do stitched mammal skins and donated clothing, head bedraggled, stained and matted with their own sweat and oils.
When they finally see me headed towards them, flaring my wings and slowing, they tense and ready their weapons. I see curved swords, a mace, and the last one is raising a bow. It doesn't upset me, I know humans can have trouble telling us apart. At any rate, they'll know my phrase.
I open my mouth and call it out to them as I come in for the landing, loud enough that they hear, not so loudly that it will bring anyone else. "Sexy and Suave!"