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The sound of strings is simultaneously sweet... and heavy. Each note cuts through the air and trembles, deep, sorrowful, beautiful... pained.
Yone runs the bow over the tightly wound fibers, firm and gentle, ripping from the morin khuur the sound of serenity and torment all at once. Hollow and overflowing.
Maybe that’s just how she feels.
She closes her eyes, lets the music wash over her. Says, “I loved you. I love you,” but he doesn’t stop playing. Maybe the melody turns even more arresting or... sad.
She’s not looking at him, sitting on a mossy rock, hidden by the darkness of the woods. Instead, she sits in front of him but distant, eyes lost somewhere far into the forest. Her profile is lit by the moonbeams that dance between the leaves to the tune of his strings.
He doesn’t stop playing.
“I knew you,” she says anyway, “and you knew me... and it was enough.”
His fingers falter, the bow trembles for just a moment too long, and so does her breath, tears streaming down her cheeks with a shaky gasp. She sees the darkness of the forest now like a yawning abyss, threatening to swallow her whole.
“You remember...” the heel of her hand went up to wipe away the saltwater. “I’m so glad... it means at least it won’t be the Fear Of Being Forgotten that will get me.”
Yone’s music pours out of him like a waterfall or a bleeding wound. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her since he first saw her.
Not even the aura of the Azakana, clinging to her like a thick cloak, guiding him to her like an endless spiral, could make him look away.
It will come, sooner or later, too drunk on the depths of her pain to flee. She’s a feast all laid out, overflowing, delicious bait.
Unrelenting Sorrow. No demon could resist.
The mask on his face feels searing hot, although it has not changed in the slightest. His lips, which once brushed her cheek so fleetingly, tighten into a rigid line.
“Mine is a lonely path,” he said once, in a dream, and “You may always call upon me, and I will come to your aid.”
And both times it was the truth.
He wonders, as the billowing cloud of the Azakana’s hunger surrounds them both like smoke or perfume, where does the mask end, and Yone begins.
Wonders about his own demon’s name.
What fans its lust.
What satiates its hunger.
If it is Unyielding Grief.
… Unrelenting Sorrow …
His music never stops filling the silence of the peaceful night.