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The stories spoke of days many, many years ago, when the earth was young, the forests new, and there was an abundance of spirits of all kinds. Of these spirits, those of heat and cold where the Ancient Ones,, the ones that every other spirit derived from in one way or another, the spirits which would later develop individualities that forced them away from home and to the four corners of the world.
This is what was understood: each and every spirit in and on the earth came from one clan or the other through centuries of change and growth, that only a select few came from both clans, and that those few were family.
Their domain were the frozen mountain peaks within the Eldest Forest, the forest in which the Ancient Clans collided during the Beginning, the forest with an abundance of every kind of spirit to come from the clans. An ever-changing forest known for the constant seasonal change the trees went through within the time-frame of four hours.
The leaves shone a bright green during the first hour of the day, softly transition to different hues of red, orange, yellow, and brown. The process repeating itself throughout the day until sunset when the trees discarded their foliage completely to start anew the coming morning with the sunrise.
For the longest of time, Shouto believed himself to be the only cause of outside change to come into the forest, bringing with him the frost of the mountains when he strolled amongst the trees, covering the blooming spring flowers beneath a sheet of thick snow, changing the warm breeze to a cold gale, and crystallizing the water of a small pond hidden within an isolated corner of the forest.
He was supposed to be alone, all other living things sensitive to the cold running for cover as the trees began to lose their leaves prematurely, the rabbits changing from brown to pure white in a blink of an eye, the forest spirits cowering away before he could see them, but there was a strange pull of a foreign creature present within the pond.
Shouto could not make out whether the presence was of a forest animal or a spirit, it held a mixed feeling of being both old and new to the earth. Something seen before, perhaps centuries ago, but never within the Eldest Forest and never by Shouto.
A thin veil of death clung to its aura, and beneath it, the fresh scent of spring after the winter snow had melted, feeding the growth of its greenery fluttered with the cold gale of the mountains that surrounded Shouto. The aura mingled with his own, not allowing for the water to freeze completely as he ventured on out of curiosity.
For the first time, Shouto stepped in water. His foot rested on a thin layer of ice beneath the surface of the pond, submerged under an inch of water as he took another step forward with caution. What would happen if he fell in? Did he know how to swim like the mocking koi beneath him?
He never had to swim before and therefore had no answer.
Slowly, he made his way to the center of the pond, noticing how the layer of ice beneath his feet melted away into the water when he was no longer in contact with it. It was something new and amusing. Nothing had ever been able to overcome his temperature before, but it was not like he was trying to freeze the water either. It occurred on its own, always had.
The warmth came when he was at the center of the pond, his legs moving amongst the young vines that had yet grown their thorns, and strangely enough, refused to burn under the frost. The flakes of snow that fell over them, just like the sheet of ice in the water, melted away once Shouto crossed passed them.
He caressed the vines with his fingers, watching a coat of ice form for a split second before droplets of water ran down the stem and into the pond. In the next second, the vines had turned a deeper green, leaves sprouted to cover the thorns beneath a beautiful thick canopy that was soft to the touch and unable to hold the frost of Shouto’s touch.
With each frosted touch, cold water pooled in the heart of the leaves, overflowing like warm tears down the stem and into the pond.
“They grow on their own.” Shouto jumped at the voice, tangling himself within the thickening vines, the thorns digging into his skin as he gazed at what had called out to him from within the pond. “Wherever I go, they appear and spread and engulf whoever tries to lay their hands on me, whether with ill intent or by mere accident.”
His first thought was that this creature, for lack of a better word, was no spirit of the forest, not animal he had ever seen roaming these woods, did not belong to either of the Ancient Clans, and that they were as bright and soft and green as the vines that wrapped tightly around his body.
Shouto stood unmoving within the vines, letting the thorns scrap against his ice coated body that prevented any to dig into his skin like they had done only moments before. The frost would not stay on the vines, but neither would the vines grow any larger when the cold gale and water wrapped around them.
The person swimming amongst the judgmental koi watched him with large curious eyes, a deeper green than his constricting vines, his hair sharing the same greenery shade. He had been blessed with sun kissed skin, the marks decorating his face, the size of his neck, his shoulders and upper arms, and the lean chest that poked out of the water where the koi swam silently around him.
He was…was…
“Beautiful,” he spoke, and Shouto choked on a gasp, burying himself further into the vines as he stepped away from the person. “They said that those that made the Eldest Forest their home held beauty beyond anything we had ever seen, but I didn’t believe it. Not until I saw now.”
We?
Who was we?
“Here, let me help you out of there,” he said, reaching within the vines that wrapped tightly around Shouto’s legs. He was careful not to touch him, his hands grazing the vines before he slowly pulled them away from pale skin. But until like the ice that protect Shouto’s skin, this person skin was bare, the red blood of the earth’s animals emanating from the sun’s kisses and falling on the vines that grew with its live force even beneath the pond water.
What was he?
“Izuku.” Shouto blinked, wondering if he had voiced his question without meaning to. “My name is Izuku,” he repeated, ignoring the blood feeding the growth of the vines, thankfully into the water and not around Shouto. “I didn’t mean to cause you any harm, or any fear…I’m not entirely sure if you understand me.”
Shouto moved within his prison, softy pulling his arms from the coiled vines around them, his hands pushing away the ones that wrapped across his torso before…I-zu-ku could come any closer. His feet dropped down another inch into the water, the layer of ice beneath them feeling alarmingly thin that he had to all but run towards the edge of the pond.
Izuku followed close behind, Shouto could hear the sloshing of water as he moved.
“I’m sorry,” Izuku called after him, sincerity spilling into his strange aura that once again begun to pull at Shouto. “I was told I should show respect to the spirits of the Eldest Forest, and to drop dead if I dare disrespect them—”
“I am not one of its spirits,” Shouto hastily responded, relief flooding into him as he stepped into three inches of snow that had built up around the pond. When he heard Izuku stop behind him, the water no longer sloshing against the snow, he softens his tone. “This is not my home. Whichever spirit you seek, I am not them.”
“How can you not be them,” Izuku was saying, the water rippling around him as he lifted himself out, the koi disappearing deeper into the pond. “They will come to you, that’s what he said to me. Even if you do something moronic, they will come to you. And you’re here.”
Shouto was surprise to see clothed legs rise from the water, he had been expecting this Izuku to share some aquatic qualities with the koi. A scaled tail with as bright a color as his eyes, that is what Shouto had been waiting to see, maybe gills on his ribs that he had mistaken for shadows, but Izuku was no koi.
“If you’re not a spirit from the forest,” he continued, moving to stand in front of Shouto who had turned to face him. “Then you’re the spirit that roams the mountain tops, the one he was warning me about.”
He?
“Leave,” Shout commanded, turning away from the now trembling Izuku. The water had begun to crystallize on his eyelashes, his hair, the frost lining his exposed body and his pants that now weighed him down. Izuku should not be anywhere near Shouto while water dripped from his body.
“If whoever you are looking for will come to you regardless of where you are, then wait for them at the entrance of the forest. Stay away from this path and those waters.” He looked over his shoulder, Izuku’s eyes still on him. “Forget what you saw.”
“How can I possibly forget,” but Shouto was much too far away to hear the lovestruck sigh of the human boy.
~*~
Shouto could not stop himself from returning the forest, wondering silently to the pond, one more time. Just one more time. Once more.
His visits had become a common occurrence in the forest, more so than before. So much so that the spirits no longer ran at the sight of him. They lingered closer now, watching as the forest floor was covered in snow with each step he took, marveled as the frosted trees sparkled with the sunlight.
He saw none of them.
Shouto’s attention was always on the pull of Izuku’s perplexing aura, his mind always wondering why it was so easy to find him no matter where he was in the forest.
Izuku seemed to notice him too, calling out with a cheerful greeting, repeating what he had said during their first meeting, and still thoroughly convinced that Shouto would always find him and that he was the spirit his friend warned him about.
As he would later explain, this friend had warned him about visiting the Eldest Forest, assuring Izuku that he would come across a spirit he should have never of met. He’ll have you for a meal, that is what he had told Izuku, and that the spirit would always know where he was.
Shouto had indeed found him several times after their first meeting, perhaps on accident, perhaps not on accident, and told Izuku to leave the forest every time before he would disappear back to his mountain tops.
But that is what Izuku believed would happen after each warning. In truth, Shouto had always lingered behind the frozen trees or within the stream that came from the warm wind meeting his cold gale, and which took longer to freeze.
Against everything he was taught, to be wary of those true strangers that came from outside the forest, of these creatures called humans, he could not let Izuku stray from his watchful eyes.
What if this friend had not been warning him about Shouto and a dangerous spirit found him? Kept him?
Shouto appeared to him one last time, urging him to leave the forest, but he didn’t leave. Instead, Izuku had ventured to every part of the Eldest Forest; to each corner pond, every river that crossed the center, and to the prairies behind the mountains.
He would always make sure Izuku never arrived at the mountain side, pilling tons of snow and ice that only his family could pass. If they ever decided to leave their home for once in their immortal life.
“I don’t need to see the top of the mountains. I just want to see you.”
Izuku’s voice was like leaves rustling in the wind, something natural within the Eldest Forest created by two very different beings. One whose home was within the forest itself and was a constant force of growth, the other a nomad with no home of their own that breezed by now and again.
Like the dancing newly born leaves of spring, he was beautiful, soft and wonderful and everywhere, but there was something else. That strange pull that called Shouto to him, the feelings that charred his soul whenever he was present.
He was lethal.
As lethal as the bright and burning summer sun of midday August.
And…
“You’re in love with him.”
“In love with him,” asked Shouto, his eyes aglow with an emotion not common in ancient spirits such as he, but so very common amongst the spirits of the forest. One of which had seen him repeatedly sneaking through the forest, hiding behind the trees as a young human boy searched the koi pond.
“A burning emotion,” Ochaco explained, her hand pushing aside his kimono and placing a hand against Shouto’s frozen chest. “You feel it here—then it spreads to completely take over your every thought and action. It’s like fire, all consuming.”
“I feel it,” he said, his hand clutching at the heart Ochaco had placed a hand over. “An intense warmth in my chest.”
Like a shard of glass, the warmth had stabbed into him the moment Izuku had appeared for a second time. Ochaco would argue that it was Shouto who had appeared unannounced to Izuku, she had seen everything from above as she clashed with his cold winds, and that Shouto had gone further into the forest than he usually did.
All the forest spirits knew that his domains where the mountain tops and that one small pond at the corner of the forest, the farthest away from the center and the entrance. He never ventured to the center, never appeared before the river spirits that kept the forest alive, and he never ever clashed with the wind spirit that was Ochaco.
She had forgiven him for placing her lover in early hibernation only because he was a stupid and clueless Ancient one with absolutely no social skills. And because she had seen the way his eyes gazed at the human boy who helped Tsu out of the freezing river, the exact expression of a slow loris.
Pathetic.
“Take him for yourself,” she said from atop the tree canopy that hung right above the koi pond. Shouto stood on the frozen water, his eyes looking down at the projection of this human boy Izuku who visited Tsu’s river. “We don’t see many halflings, and it’s not like his human companions, if any, that come looking for him will be allowed entrance into the Eldest Forest.”
“Halfling or not, he does not belong here,” Shouto responded, stepping out of the pond and into the snow. He had already started walking towards the river by the time Ochaco noticed him missing from the pond.
“I’ll bring him,” she said, strong and hot winds stopping Shouto from advancing. “I can’t handle damage control when you decide to permafrost the entire forest center!”
“I,” he stopped, looking down at his bare feet that did not sink into the snow. “I don’t want to speak with him. I just need to see him. See him one last time.”
“One last time?” Ochaco scoffed, giving him a look between pity and annoyance. “What can you possibly see that you haven’t already seen before?”
“Do you not visit Tsu daily simply because you want to see her, because she makes you feel,” he asked. “Does she not warm you to the point you question how tangible your existence is? Do you not wonder about the possibilities of melting when you are around her?”
She puffed out her cheeks, hands on her hips as she studied Shouto. “Melting is physically impossible for spirits, Shouto.”
“There are many things we’ve yet to find out about ourselves,” he said, walking passed Ochaco as he continued to the river. “One look. One look will do no harm.”
“One of his parents probably thought the same thing, and he is some sort of harm.”
~*~
Shouto had been lying to himself about seeing Izuku one last time. Every last visit became the second to last, ending with a promise to himself that he wouldn’t seek out Izuku the coming day, the day after, and the day after that.
He broke that promise daily, while at the same time ignoring Ochaco’s constant barrage of comments on just taking the boy as his own, to lock him up in a cave up in the mountains where he wouldn’t come near a river. To either grow a pair or unfreeze his own and speak to this Izuku.
He didn’t understand her and didn’t try to. There were more important things at hand than learning a nomad’s dialect that was a constant change like the wind. Shouto no longer hid himself when encountering this halfling, didn’t bother to demand Izuku leave the forest, or that he should stop getting attached to the spirits.
Shouto had instead focused his attention in trying to learn why it was that Izuku had come to the forest in the first place if his friend had warned him about a dangerous, impossible to outrun spirit, and which was the spirit he sought?
Izuku didn’t have a clear answer to his questions, he wasn’t looking for any specific spirit, and he challenged the notion of a malicious spirit, a dangerous spirit. Kacchan, Shouto thought the name weird but said nothing, had said that older spirits get attached to the young and moronic beings, those that willingly gave their lives to them.
They were the life that fed into the Ancient one’s immortality.
“How would I eat a human,” Shouto asked, his serious expression bringing a smile to Izuku’s face. “I’ve no need for any human life to sustain my own, and you are more than welcome to share that with this Kacchan.”
Izuku sighed, his breath visible in the air.
“You aren’t exactly an ancient Ancient one,” he said with a wide grin, moving closer to Shouto, his vines wrapping tightly around them. The sunlight could no longer touch their skin, the frost thickening the chill in the air.
“Your aura feels new. Clean. It doesn’t have the same heaviness that some other spirits do, the pain or exhaustion that comes with living for many years.” He shrugged his shoulders, his fingers brushing the side of Shoutou’s which had frozen the pond beneath them. “You’re pretty young, even in human years.”
“I am four times your age—”
“And still younger than some humans,” Izuku retorted, his foot kicking at the slushing snow beneath the vine he had made his seat. With him around, Shouto could never completely freeze the water, and now a portion of his kimono was soaked completely through.
It didn’t matter, he felt nothing but the scorch that came with Izuku, a radiating heat that he so badly wanted to touch. Like many times before, he wanted to feel the softness of his hair, feel the rising temperature of his skin when their eyes would meet, a deep red blooming from his neck, caressing his face, and stopping at his ears.
“You can come closer,” his voice, soft as a breeze, called to Shouto. He listened. His soaked kimono dripping both water and ice as he stood above Izuku who had been kneeling two feet above him on the vine.
He waited patiently for Shouto to move, for him to realize that standing placed him farther away from Izuku whose vine had receded into the depths of the pond and now knelt on the thin sheet of ice Shouto had always walked on when he had appeared in the forest, the sheet of ice he now placed one knee on.
Shouto touched the reddening cheek, felt the burn run from his fingertips to the palm of his hand, felt the frost covering on him turn to warm water and run down his arm, soaking his sleeve. Izuku hadn’t noticed, his eyes had closed the moment Shouto had gone down on one knee, his fingers brushing away a strand of hair and tucking it behind his ear.
Once used to the warmth of another person, Shouto wanted to feel just a bit more, place just one more hand on Izuku’s skin. And the human boy hand leaned into his touch, not only his face in Shouto’s hand, but had risen on his knees to be chest-to-chest with him, his hands coming up to rest on his shoulders, his fingers pulling him down.
Shouto felt that all-consuming flame Ochaco spoke about in the rapid beating of his heart, could see it in the steam that rose from the pond, in the way his hand wrapped behind Izuku’s neck and brought him up to meet his lips.
It was there, the flames engulfing his body as he held on to Izuku whose knees buckled at their contact, causing Shouto to lean forward, an arm wrapping around Izuku’s waist to keep him from plunging into the melting sheet of ice beneath him. He was soft and warm and willing, Shouto couldn’t bring himself to breakaway from the kiss.
He wouldn’t let go.
Not when they were breathless. Not when they could no longer stay on their feet. Not even when then the warmth between their bodies had faded to nothing.
Tears sparkled on Shouto’s trembling lashes as he pulled away from the human boy in his arms. The sound of shattering ice-covered vines crashing into the frozen water around them was impossible to ignored as it echoed throughout the forest.
“Is this how,” Shoutou choked out, placing his hands above Izuku’s which still rested on his shoulders. They were cold. Cold enough for Shouto to shiver as he closed his hands around them, but his body could not produce the warmth Izuku needed.
His body had completely crystallized, turned into a frozen statue of the human Shouto had been holding only moments before. Izuku was still on his knees, his arms reaching up towards someone, his eyes fully open and shining with the reflecting rays of the sun. A soft smile on his lips.
“I’m sorry.”