Chapter Text
"You know, you shouldn't be here, right?"
Kohane, alongside An, trekked through the flat gray plains. With every step An took, her wings —which Kohane had originally thought were just extra additions to An's jacket—rustled, fluttering to the step of their owner’s walk.
After the two exchanged pleasantries and names (where Kohane reflexively commented on the weather, making An glance up at the drab sky so perplexedly that it made her giggle), they started travelling across the land, side by side—as if by impulse. It must’ve been at least a few days now since I've been with her , Kohane ruminated—though nothing in the sky expressed any passage of time.
An was—kind. She was funny, comical, and light-hearted. An had come to call her and Kohane “travelling partners”, An searching for the place with the girl’s special door and Kohane tagging along.
“Door—?”
“Yup, door!”
No explanation required, I guess.
The two were surprisingly compatible—a sort of opposites attract where An would talk and Kohane would listen, Kohane sometimes pushing the conversation along with her own thoughts or laughing at a joke the other made. Either way, they wiled their days away through walking, talking, and learning more about each other.
But in all honesty, Kohane was a little uneasy, being next to this—person. An was kind, but Kohane had never before met someone who had wings, or those crackling eyes, or the odd way she spoke with a strange dialect curling her tone. She wondered vaguely if An had some ulterior motive—but had the ominous feeling that if she antagonized the avian too much, she would lose her only ticket out of this place.
Kohane zoned back into focus as An's words bled through her brain.
"Like, reeeally shouldn't be here—I don't know if there's ever been a soul that's made it to the end of the Spirit Lands. How did you get there, anyways?" An inclined her head toward Kohane, her hair scattering haphazardly over her shoulders. Kohane's heart skipped a beat.
"I—walked? I-I, um, don't really remember all the details, I just know that I was journeying—"
Why was she traveling so far? Where a guide once laid in her both her heart and mind, now was only an empty space.
Her soul burned.
"—because I wanted to see the border."
An's eyebrows flickered down.
"Huh. The border... I'm surprised you even know what that is..." She trailed off for a moment, lost in thought. "Usually, spirits such as you don't know of anything outside their land, let alone the border, of all things."
"Well, I remember seeing it once I reached the edge of the—world?"
"Spirit Lands, we call it."
"Well, once I reached the edge of the land—the, uh, part with the five pillars of stardust? I saw a line, faintly pulsing, down below where I was."
An's eyes turned contemplative, walking slightly slower as she processed the words.
"You could see the waiting room..."
Kohane fidgeted slightly, interlocking her fingers together.
"Is that a problem?"
An's expression cleared slightly, and she shook her head. "I mean, I guess not? It wasn't the border you saw, necessarily—it was the parallel for the waiting room here, but it's honestly kind of interesting how you can see through..." Her voice broke off as she mumbled, "...parallels, hm..."
What's a waiting room?
Kohane walked on autopilot, feet moving like machinery.
How long have I been here?
The taller girl suddenly stopped in her tracks, smiling. She still seemed skeptical, obviously—but less. "Well, if you're looking for the border, how about I take you to see it?"
Kohane whipped her head around, staring at An's sunny eyes. "You'd... do that for me?"
An smiled. "I mean, you've traveled all the way here and flew so fast you tore between parallels, you deserve to see it at least once. Don't worry, while you're under my protection, no one will dare mess with you!" She made a few silly punches that had Kohane laughing, watching An standing in the middle of nowhere fighting ghosts.
An looked at her, grinning wildly, and Kohane’s heart jumped.
Suddenly, the avian thrust her head into the air, fixing the sky in a death stare. "Wait." She grabbed Kohane's starry hand and pushed the girl behind her—a quick change from her previous goofy countenance.
Kohane glanced at her with a slight frown. "What's happening?"
An stared up at the sky, glaring into oblivion. Her wings started moving, beating faster and faster, slicing at the air with vigor. "I think this place is good enough for an opening..." An closed her eyes and scrunched up her face, reciting indistinct words that Kohane probably shouldn’t have been able to understand—but the meaning played through her head, clear as any.
“Hey, Dad—gateway?”
Then with a blast of An's wings, the sky seemed to simply swing away.
A door the size of an average person materialized, hovering in the air like an art piece against the wall—then swung open with a resounding boom. An grabbed Kohane’s hand.
"Alright, up!"
"Wait—"
An scooped up Kohane into her arms. "You comfortable?"
"Y-yeah, I mean-"
"Great! No time to waste!" With a flap of An's wings, she took off, beating strong strokes into the air. Kohane glanced behind her, staring with wide eyes as the ground they were on began crumbling away and falling from the naked eye's view oh so quickly. A sudden jolt of pain smashed through her arm and Kohane cried out in pain.
An looked at her, then past her—her eyes widened as solid ground began to disappear.
"Oh, crap, how-"
With all foreseeable ground gone, the sky started cracking, like glass that had taken a baseball bat to the face. The door? It started closing rapidly, the once wide-open entrance swinging freely as the air all around it shattered.
Kohane’s arm was burning steadily, growing stronger as the place disappeared.
"Crap, crap, crap—"
An swore in some ancient language, swinging her wings and diving into the exit's slim gap as the door itself started to gain long cracks. Kohane squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the worst as An plummeted through the door and away—
The world they were in dematerializing the second they left.
A sudden tear in her skin, and Kohane screamed.
*
"Damn…"
With a crash, An collapsed on the ground. Her wings landed in a heavy heap around her and Kohane, feathers fluttering into the air and arcing gently to the ground. Kohane squirmed in An's crushing embrace, flopping around for a few beats—but eventually gave up, laying pressed against her. Kohane’s arm throbbed suddenly, and as she tried with new vigor to unlodge herself from An's left wing, the top girl woke up. With a higher-pitched and panicky voice, An got up and began pacing.
“I can’t believe I just—I am so sorry about that. I didn't think this would happen, I've done it a million times but I guess this time it didn't work right, oh goodness they’re gonna yell at me, I'm so sorry Koha—”
An broke off, staring with wide eyes at Kohane's arm. Kohane tipped her head forward to glance at it; a neat gash was slit open in her forearm, as if done by a surgeon, spanning a few inches —leaking…something that could be likened to the night sky.
Wasn't there the outline of a planet in that forearm? Where… did it go?
“What?”
“...I don't know.”
Kohane could feel her mind slipping.