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Your eyes keep closing, opening and closing, flushing saltwater from your sockets. The storm is beautiful and dangerous, water whipping across the glassy surface of the ocean, and it’s raining. You peek underwater again, and you can’t see the bottom, out here, and the familiar chill runs through you again as you go down. Down, into the recesses of a twisted coral sea, the wreck of a thousand ships beneath your feet, a hundred fathoms below.
Breathing in water. Breathing out. Salt seeps into every crack in your skin. You shout, testing the depth. Pulled back and forth by the current, the rocking motion that brings you comfort, after all this time.
Your hand finds something warmer. Not warm, in particular, but something less frozen from the core. She is soft, her skin still a few degrees hotter than yours, and she coughs up water and then--
--she starts screaming, she’s in pain, she’s still alive, but you’re too far out to bring her back, the shore has already receded from your vision. The transformation didn’t work quite right, her heart came back beating, she’s unconsciously struggling for life. Her lavender hair floats tangled in the sea, and she’s kicking, trying to keep herself above the surface, even though breathing air isn’t the best idea right now--
“Ichirin,” you scream, “Ichirin,” and swim over to hold her. She’s shaking. She’s clinging to you, her robe ragged, hood gone, sobbing into your shoulder. “I told you, I told you, I didn’t want this--"
She lifts her head back and wails, voice breaking and choked with seawater. She can’t even speak. Her nails dig into your shoulder blades-- you keep her close, as her legs lock around your waist, wrapped around you, the only tree still standing in the storm.
She said she would go with you.
“I didn’t want this for you,” you whisper hoarsely, pressing your lips to the part of her hair. She screams, repeatedly, as if in mourning. They follow a pattern-- breathe in, scream, breathe in-- you listen closely over the crashing of the sea-- she’s saying your name--
“Minamitsu, Minamitsu, Mina--"
Byakuren wakes to the sound of crashing waves.
Her body feels as heavy as it felt in Makai, chained and wrapped in seals, rousing every so often from a continuing nightmare. It’s quiet in the temple, eerily so. Kyouko’s ringing sutras, Nue’s loud complaining, the voices that wake her are absent. Shou is gone, too, her warmth vanished from the other side of the futon. Blinking, Byakuren stands up, sways, and straightens out her yukata. She picks up the empty teacup from last night before tentatively opening the screen door and slipping into the hallway.
The kitchen is empty, save for a tall figure sitting cross-legged-- Shou, motionless, staring at the wall. Every other door is closed. She turns around when she hears Byakuren’s footsteps.
“Shou? What’s going on?”
Shou gives her a split-second look of fear, then casts her eyes to the side.
“Lady Hijiri. Have you seen Murasa and Ichirin at all today?”
Something pierces, sharp and painful as ice, through Byakuren’s chest. No, she hasn’t seen them, no, they weren’t here this morning, Ichirin should have been looking after Murasa, she should have been in the room looking after Murasa--
Byakuren drops the teacup she had been holding, and runs into Murasa’s room.
They’re gone.
The bed is empty. So is the chair. Byakuren looks over the room, stunned, speechless. The bed is still a mess, unmade, the duvet pulled to one side. Ichirin’s sketchbook is lying on the floor under the chair, open to the last page she had been working on-- a drawing of the futon, Murasa’s form curled up within it, there’s pencil smudges on the back of it, she flips the page--
It’s a sketch of Murasa, sleeping.
Their face looks peaceful, if not dead. A corner of their mouth is tilted, but Byakuren can’t tell what kind of expression they’re making, like they’re caught between a sad smile and a moment of worry. Their hair is spread across the pillow, split ends everywhere, a stray lock of black hair half-covering their eye. Hatless, and at their most vulnerable, Murasa looks unguarded and almost unreal.
It’s half finished-- the rest of Murasa’s shoulders have barely been outlined, and Byakuren wonders why she would have stopped. At the bottom, in Ichirin’s tiny, neat handwriting:
I think this might be the last picture I ever get to draw of you.
Byakuren leaves the sketchbook on the chair, dashes out the front entrance to the temple steps.
She barely uses her physical powers anymore, and she doesn’t even think of using them now. Her dress is billowing clumsily out behind her, her hair ragged and gait desperate, as she runs barefoot down the dirt path towards the ocean. She stumbles, reaching out, and when the soil beneath her feet turns to sand, she feels the sting of saltwater, and blinks back tears from her eyes. The morning feels frozen in time, all the edges blurred and the pounding in her chest a dull pain.
Byakuren lurches, tripping over the weight of sand, and the expanse of the ocean grows closer-- but it feels like she’s not moving at all. Two shoes are set perfectly aligned halfway down the shore, but she comes to a halt when she sees a shape washed up at the high tide line.
Something crumpled and encrusted in glittering sand, silt piled in its crevices. A very familiar piece of cloth. Deep blue and white, a robe frozen in salt like ice. Within it, as if presenting it to her, an indigo hood.
Byakuren collapses over herself where the sand meets the shore, holds them both to her chest and screams.
Inside the temple Byakuren lays the robe down over the chair where Ichirin sat. Delicately, she brushes the sand from its wrinkles, sets the hood on the seat cushion. Picking up the sketchbook, she runs her thumb over the binding before placing it on top of the hood, like arranging some sort of display.
A strand of black hair clings to the pillow. The indent is still there, light but present, a reminder of the one who slept here. She leaves the bed unmade, looking over the room with a sort of finality, and closes the door behind her.
The storm has faded, the wind has died down. The surface of the ocean ripples with the aftershocks of it, letting you sway peacefully within the waves. Ichirin is in your arms, asleep. Her breathing comes unnaturally slow, something less of a need than just the vestiges of being alive. Sprays of rain pass every so often, but they’re quick to come and go, leaving nothing but patterns on the glassy waves.
You float effortlessly at the surface, letting Ichirin breathe above the water. You don’t know how long you’ve been here. There’s a sky cast in quicksilver stars above you, reflecting pinpoints of light onto the ever-rolling waves. The sea is open here.
She breathes, slowly, drops of water or tears-- you can’t tell which-- glittering on her eyelashes.
In the center of the ocean you are tied to, the shackles are loose on your ankles. You look up at her, holding her far above the surface, letting the moon beat down on her hair.
“Ichirin,” you say, without meaning to, but she doesn’t stir. Her breaths are once per minute, now, her heartbeat fading. You tread water as you watch, tears pushing at your eyes, as she goes still.
Shaking, numb with grief, you let go of her, look on as her body floats peacefully above the waves.
The temple is quiet now. Shou makes breakfast silently, leaving it on the table for when Byakuren finally wakes up. Kyouko still sweeps, but without a sound. Nue sits perched on the roof, eyes fixed onto the ocean’s horizon, looking for something that will never return.
The Taoist prince comes by once. She knocks benignly on the back door, waiting for Byakuren to open up so they can fire a couple of barbs back and forth. But Shou opens it instead, her eyes sunken, and shakes her head before closing the door. Miko sits on the steps, looking up into the swaying trees and thinking.
“Don’t bother, Toyosatomimi,” comes Nue’s slightly nasal voice from the roof. “She won’t come back.”
“What happened?” Miko questions, but Nue just looks back, towards where the sea and the sky meet.
“We lost two very important friends. Just leave us alone, okay?”
Startled by Nue’s lack of aggression, she blinks, and then paces towards the entrance to the Hall of Dreams.
“Fine,” Miko says, as she seals the gap in the stone behind her.
“I’m sorry, Lady Hijiri. I couldn’t save Murasa.”
You stand on the bow of a sinking ship. It goes under gradually, like it’s melting. The wood gives an awful creak, the cracking of planks and the hissing of metal its death throes. The sea lifts up its last words, and the surface breaks to give way.
You are the captain of this craft, this shuddering, breaking, pitiful thing. For now. Now, until it vanishes into the darkness, the ocean floor you can’t see. You’re holding on to the shattered wood wheel, letting it pull you down as far as you can go, watching as the straight beams of light that illuminate the surface start to peter out. Until the moment you let go, this ship is yours to sail.
It makes you feel better. Claiming something old and creaky like this, something that you broke, is better than wandering without a ship. Better than floating through a flat and noiseless ocean. Better than being without a home, without a place to go back to, without anything you can call your own.
Dimly, something echoes in the back of your head, like the click of a dolphin, or a pebble hitting the water. Didn’t you have something like this, before?
It’s been years now. Time doesn’t pass quite the same anymore. You count the days by etching tally marks into your arm, with the thin, sharpened edge of a seashell. Water seals the wounds in your skin, helping you forget. Somehow, you remember the image of a smile; a smile like the end of the world.
Curling into yourself, you bring your knees to your chest, close your eyes and float soundlessly. There’s a deep sadness in your bones, distracting you from your hunger. An emotion besides fulfilling vengefulness, spreading quietly through your body. Something painful. Something you’ve left unfinished.
You let go of the wheel, and swim up to the surface.
The light is directly above you here; the sun burns at the top of your head. You feel something strange in your chest, like a throbbing. The sky is clear, wisps of light clouds dancing from one end of the heavens to the other. Clouds. Clouds--
(I told you I would never let you go alone)
--That’s what you’ve been missing. That’s the weight in your bones, the remnants of your heartbeat. The mosaic pieces of you that refuse to stay in the water.
That voice. You would never go alone.
You swim towards the shore.
Ichirin finds you in the shallows, aimlessly drifting about. You don’t recognize her until she puts her hands on your shoulders, and her head comes just above the water, hair glistening in the sunlight. It’s grown out long, but her eyes are as blue as they always have been. She’s as warm as she always was, and you wrap your arms around her and hold tight till you remember everything.
You feel small, unsure, helpless-- but alive. At least you feel alive.
“How did you-- how are you not--"
“I’m not sure,” she says, and you bury your face into her neck. “But I do have an idea about why I didn’t turn.”
You blink, as she plants a kiss between your eyebrows.
“It was because of you,” she continues. “I wanted to go with you, yes, but at the deepest level I really just wanted you to stay on land with us. So I couldn’t let myself go. I don’t know why, I wasn’t consciously doing it, but... when I realized it, I knew what I had to do.”
You remember how strong her will always was, and almost laugh at yourself for missing that point entirely.
“I knew that you would come back for me, though,” Ichirin says, eyes starting to tear up. She smiles, and something inside you comes back full force, a long-forgotten bud in your chest blooming out of nowhere. “As long as you remembered you had a place to come back to, I knew you would remember me.”
“How long were you waiting?” you ask, despite yourself.
“I came out here every day for five years.”
You break, then, letting yourself cry. Ichirin holds you as you weep, your half-materialized body shaking with sobs, taking long gulps of air. There’s so much emotion you’ve kept pent up inside you, mainly because you had no idea it was there, but now it’s all spilling out in a torrent of indistinguishable feelings. Her hand on the back of your neck, she lets you lean back, tears running off your face and gathering at your chin. You know you sound pathetic, desperate, hiccuping and choking on air and just letting it all out, but you don’t care, there’s no one else around to hear it but Ichirin, and she’s here, she’s here and holding you, right now.
You press your forehead into her collarbone as she stands up and walks through the water, getting shallower with every step, to the shore.
Nue sits on the roof facing the sea, aimlessly whittling a stick into a point. Things have returned to a regular pace around the temple, five years later, and when Ichirin came back, coughing up water, it began to get more lively again. It would never be the same as before, when Murasa was still with them, and everyone recognized that something very important was missing; but eventually people returned to the temple, Byakuren stopped sleeping and crying so much, there was singing in the kitchen as Ichirin helped Shou with breakfast, Nue’s eyes regained their light, Kyouko started singing again.
In the front hall now sits a sort of shrine, a table with a framed photo of Murasa at the center. Around it are offerings, bowls of rice and cups of tea, anchor ornaments and driftwood, seashells Mamizou had found on the beach, a basket of peaches. And flowers, a hand-tied bouquet of forget-me-nots, blue hyacinth and violets. “Constancy,” Ichirin had said, setting them down on the table, “memories, and everlasting love.”
Nue leans back, watching the sun start to sink, when she sees a shape emerging from the water. Ichirin, she thinks, coming back from the sea again today. But something looks off-- she looks taller, somehow, a different silhouette. Nue squints, leans further off the roof, and immediately drops the stick and the whittling knife (Byakuren can scold her for that later) to leap off the edge. Hovering in the air for a moment, she yells out loud, and Kyouko echoes it. Soon, Shou is in the doorway, and then Mamizou on the temple steps. Byakuren finally edges her way through the crowd, scolding Shou for blocking the way, when she sees them.
Ichirin, coming up the hill from the ocean, carrying what could only be Murasa on her back.
(“We’re home, everybody,” she calls, and Byakuren is the first to get there, folding both of you into her arms. Everyone else follows, piling on top of you and Ichirin, all smiles and tears and excited chattering. You lift your head from Ichirin’s shoulder, and smile.
“Welcome home,” Byakuren says, her hand on the side of your face, as gentle as you remember. “Welcome home.”)