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A shining golden sphere and a streak of unnatural scarlet dance through the fog. The orange harvest moon igniting the foggy ground is already breathtaking enough, but the whispering autumn grass rustles excitedly under their naked feet, adding to the mixed sense of apprehension and intrigue.
As the mist curls sleepily around their chilled legs, the two giggling girls wind their arms around each other. Sometimes, when Ryuko embraces her, Mako imagines that everything stops and stares enviously. At the thought of a jealous moon, Mako sticks her tongue out impishly at the sky.
“What’s all that about?” Ryuko gently pushes Mako away, but holds fast to those perfectly smooth fingers. Ryuko’s hair had grown out, so that it reached the middle of her back, and as she blew the intrusive bangs away from her face, a vibrant strand of red glints impressively in the moonlight.
“I was just thinking,” Mako sighs, looking dreamily at the soft reflection of Ryuko’s eyes.
“That’s quite terrifying,” Ryuko chuckles playfully. Mako pretends to scowl, but can’t contain the grin that overtakes her lips. Turning slowly, Mako begins to meander through the open field, keeping her fingers locked with Ryuko’s, making the taller girl shuffle close behind her. She notices the lack of trees for the first time and shivers from the mixture of eerie emptiness and sheer cold.
Harlinson is about the furthest thing from a travel destination, but no one argues with the force of Hurricane Mako. If she says she wants to explore the world starting with the exact center of the continental United States, you pack up her comically large knapsack filled with questionable foodstuffs and you go. Not that Ryuko minds. After all, their important processes had already taken place briefly in Alaska, which is a beautiful honeymoon destination for those unaware. In springtime, the sun stubbornly refuses to sleep and the weather is pleasant enough that resting is only a matter of opinion. And rest does not often visit Ryuko like it does her blonde counterpart.
Ryuko still dreams of Senketsu. In fact, thoughts of him intrude her subconscious every night. At first, the dreams were better than reality and Ryuko found it so very difficult to drag her lifelessly clothed body from bed. But the first time she woke to the sound of Mako’s muffled sobs, she realized with a start that she had to live for the living, not for her fallen friend.
In a way, Senketsu had been her first love. He was first to understand her thoughts and emotions and the first to learn the secrets of her body. However, had he not been her suit as well as her friend, they assuredly would not have been so close.They had become one creature, bound by life fibers and blood. She just could never find the words to tell Mako that part of her being felt warped and burned where Senketsu once resided. Not that Mako really needed an explanation, as she had always supported Ryuko wholeheartedly when matters involved Senketsu.
Ryuko's affection for her fibrous companion could not compete with her total and unfathomable love for Mako, though. That bitter memory still exists; the thought that, just like Senketsu, Ryuko herself lacks a human quality. Only with Mako by her side was she able to feel human again. She has come to see her doe-eyed wife as the best part of herself.
As they wade through the waist-high wheat, Ryuko notices that all around them is the golden hue of vegetation breathing its last breath before yielding to winter. As she comes to this solemn conclusion she feels another tremor race down Mako's arm.
"Mako? Are you cold?" Ryuko asks, trying to peer around Mako's ever-present bowl cut. Mako stops and turns around while violently shaking, slipping out of Ryuko's hands in the process. That pleasantly chubby face glistens red and shiny as if her entire head were complaining about the weather. Fighting the urge to reprimand Mako and herself for leaving those shivers unnoticed, Ryuko removes her favorite black jacket and places it around Mako's shoulders, wrapping the sleeves loosely around her neck for extra warmth. She cracks a smile when she realizes that Mako looks like her old self, back in her Fight Club days.
Mako sniffles cutely. "Promise me something?"
"Everything," Ryuko responds, bumping her forehead against Mako's endearingly. Mako lingers there for a moment, savoring the sensation, then jerks her head back a couple inches, just enough to look directly into those oddly warm blue eyes.
"Promise that we'll never be like this," Mako says quickly, waving one arm emphatically at their blurred surroundings. "Promise me that we will never fade or become distant, our view of each other obstructed by a gross barrier of fog and unspoken grudges. I can't stand the idea of us living mute and dead-like, unable to be vibrant women yet unwilling to be stripped from our routine like grain from its stalk." Mako breathes in sharply, then continues. "If one of us is mad, let's be mad. We've had terrible fights before, and we always come out okay. If I age like cheap milk, will I always be fine wine to you?"
Ryuko opens her mouth to interrupt, but Mako silences her with a raised hand and continues on with conviction. "Can you promise me that we will make it? That winter won't diminish our light too? I feel like I've already felt an eternity with you, so the rest of forever will go by like a blink for me, but will you always feel the same-," Mako's eyes widen suddenly.
Even after years of kisses, Ryuko could still catch her by surprise. One would never know based off of appearances, that Ryuko's lips are a blend of cherry bomb chap-stick and sharp peppermint. Mako's mind refuses to melt into Ryuko's intensity, but her body refuses to obey her mind and her limbs turn into well-cooked pasta, her insides to jelly. Meanwhile, Ryuko was in between deciding that the only way to stop those pink petal lips was to cover them with her own and realizing that she would never, ever get bored with doing so.
After a couple blissful seconds, Mako breaks away first, needing desperately to breathe. Between gasps, she manages, "No... Fair... Cheater..." To this, Ryuko only grins.
Once Mako regains a steady influx of oxygen, Ryuko lowers her face level with Mako's, their noses brushing against one another, "Without a doubt, I promise." After waiting for a moment, Ryuko softly nudges her partner. "Hey Mako, can you promise me something now?"
"Everything," Mako says confidently.
A slight pause and then, "Let's never come back to this place, eh?" With a whisper, she adds, "It majorly creeps me out."
Mako looks thoroughly at their surroundings. "You don't feel charmed by the simplicity, or awed by the isolation?" Then glancing back at Ryuko sweetly, she returns the whisper, "Me too. Let's go back to town."
A gleaming scarlet strip guides the bobbing blonde sphere past the hollow, charcoal black trees, through the rustling cries of dying wheat, and over an ocean of musty grass. Long after their glowing ghosts have faded from the landscape, the trees and the ground and the moon will remember seeing those girls as an omen that surviving winter was worth it, if only to nourish those two souls in spring.