trans_9 | The Long Sleep [Open]

[ This takes place after the exorcism of Haku thread. ]

Haku woke slowly, with an ache in his head that was like a deep bruise, tender and throbbing. For a long while, he simply stared at the ceiling, and remembered what it was like to breathe. In....out, the texture of the air in his mouth was strangely liberating. He affected a sigh, just to prove he could do so on command, a soft twitch that broke the spell of paralysis that sleep had cast on him. Real sleep, good sleep, not the forced, painful sleep he'd kept since the Nightmare King's corruption had taken hold.

It took a little effort to pull himself onto his elbows. Someone had covered him with a thick blanket and it was heavy enough to give him pause in pushing it back. His feet were bare when he swung them over the edge of the bed— his feet had always been bare, and thankfully he was dressed in his own Hakama and not the clinging plantsuit. Haku had had enough of close-clinging and constriction for a long while. The floor felt strange under his feet, and for a moment he staggered in trying to stand, as if the intervening days of sleeping had made him forget.

...and then he remembered what had happened, and between the revulsion and his own unsteadiness he had to sit. What had he done? What the must think of him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"If you would like to tell it, I'll listen - but I already know more than you probably want me to, so if you would like to still keep a couple of secrets I'm not going to push." Rhiow's soft purr faded away as she began to groom herself in earnest - and then decided that now was as good a time as ever to tell him.

"The spell was only part of the solution. Ha-t'hara and I talked to Stacy and... she's built you a river."

He'd smiled as she spoke, and opened his mouth intending to tell Rhiow that it wasn't his story, but she'd spoken before he could reply, and her words brought him up short, just as surely as a leash at his neck. He exhaled, blinking eyes that suddenly stung and burned, and gaped at the cat in naked befuddlement.

What?

"W...what?" he whispered, utterly confused. To save his life was one thing, but...a River? How could there ever be room for— and on Stacy?

There were times when Rhiow took a lot of satisfaction in her work - seeing the blindsided look on Haku's face made her put her whiskers forward and make a small noise of amusement.

"In the city," she said by way of confirmation. "We haven't started running water through it yet, but it starts in Escherville and runs all the way back behind the Garou temple, where the water gets recycled into Stacy's pipes and comes back out of the wellspring."

Her voice got soft and quiet for a moment as she studied her paws. "I saw it in your name," she said. "That you were without... I thought, if we could help with that, it would make something like the corruption less likely to happen in the future?"

Haku shuddered again, and opened his mouth to speak. No words came and so he simply breathed for a moment, and sat back, staring at nothing and trying to slow his heartbeat. A river, a true river and that river, as yet unfilled, would be named the Kohaku River.

The idea of a dry riverbed out there, waiting for him, was enough to make his hands shake.

"I..." He began, then finally turned to actually look at Rhiow, but only found himself able to lamely croak, "I see."

Rhiow purred in the back of her throat - to say that she hadn't expected this reaction would have meant she was lying through her teeth. She'd seen his Name, after all, and she'd seen how the physical river was literally half of his being.

"I couldn't do anything less, kami-sama," she said. "I don't leave things half-finished."

He stared at her for a long while, and put out his hand again to run along her fur. It was white, and she black. How had it come to this? There was an urgency to it. He'd been prepared to wait eighty years or more for Chihiro to die before choosing a river, before ever expecting to find one. Rivers that had no kami were few and far-between.

The urgency that rose in him, to get out, to see it wasn't unexpected, but it still caught him flat-footed nonetheless. His voice was embarrassingly soft when he asked,"Where is it?"

"In the City," she said simply, the purr coloring her voice with an odd hum. "We can go, if you'd like. We'll have to go the long way, though, I don't have the energy for even a long-jump transit like that in me."

"I do," he murmured, and slid from the fleshy bed to the floor. Promptly, Haku's knees wobbled and he staggered a few steps before fetching up against a wall with a look on his face full of curses unspoken.

"I'm fine," he insisted dully, much annoyed.

"Haku," Rhiow said, her tone bordering on scolding. "The riverbed is not going to go anywhere. You can wait until you're recovered, or at least until I'm recovered enough to jump us." Hopefully a long-jump transit wouldn't drain her just because it had Haku's name in it.

She switched her tail, feeling a little strange scolding a Power - a Power that had just granted her the gift of another life.

He wanted to protest, the snarl and snap— but it was that very urge that chilled him and sent him back to the bed. He didn't want to snap at Rhiow, didn't want to take his claws and—

...claws. Haku sat on the bed, stared at his hands and willed the talons that had begun forming at the ends back to the soft shape humans wore. It would do no good.

Rhiow snorted. She couldn't tell what he was thinking but she was sure he was frustrated - to be told something like that only to be unable to act upon it. "As soon as you're well, we'll go. Or as soon as I'm well, I'll jump you there. Either way, you will get to see it. Trust me."

Haku left off looking at his hands, and cupped them together, forcing himself to keep from clutching them like some nervous wizard. He smiled grimly at Rhiow and reached to scratch behind her ears with only the slightest hesitation.

"I trust you, Rhiow."

The Long Sleep [Open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject