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We had pronounced our last words, Ryuu had emitted this light and – the universe had faded black.
I had emerged from nothingness with a long, shuddering breath, and a headache piercing through my skull like thousands of needles.
“Oh, you're awake !”
Ryuu was hovering over me, shielding my eyes from the sun.
“I hurt.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“What... What are we doing here ? I thought you had sent every Endless but Ershin back home.”
“I did.”
“We are here, you did not.”
“I... I did.”
A new pang of pain shot through me, this time reaching my legs, throbbing, pulsing like... Like the beating of a heart. A human heart. Ryuu was right, there were no Endless here anymore.
***
Ryuu is a ball of energy and sunlight, always moving, always talking while he takes care of me. When I ask him why he is not leaving me here, with my useless broken legs I cannot even feel when they do not hurt, he just carelessly shrugs his shoulders off.
“You've been calling me ever since I opened my eyes, for as long as I can remember. I can hear you in my dreams and now that I've finally found you, I'm not going to let you go.”
He looks so determined I can only watch silently as he changes my bandages and feeds me with roots and small, grilled animals that all taste like dust – he says I will get used to it, but it is not something I want to get used to. One day, I refuse to eat, and a few hours later, my whole body manifests its displeasure by shaking profusely until it is fed. The loss of control is terrifying, it has never happened before and Ryuu watches me with tears in his eyes as I vomit repeatedly. I promise never to try missing meals again.
***
It takes a month for my flesh to heal completely, for the bones to mend. Time passes so slowly each day feels like an endless torture, sitting and doing nothing but watching Ryuu, listening while he tells me about his long journey, and telling him about my much shorter one. While we talk, I can feel my jaw tighten and clench, my skin adapt to the way my muscles move. It did not do this before. Ryuu tells me it did, but that he never noticed it either. Flesh, it is the word to describe the feeling of suddenly being trapped in a moving cage whose breath keeps you alive. To be made of mud and no longer of air and energy. Sensitive, vulnerable. I try to shut it off, I never disobey when asked to move or act or eat. Ryuu does not leave my side even once and sings me to sleep when the nights are cold.
***
“Where do you want to go ?”
It is the first question he asks when I am able to walk on my own again, jump, run, but I am not able to answer. He nods in understanding.
“I promised you we'd go see the world together, that I'd show you how humans were.”
So we travel, we walk side by side in the forest and in the plains when there are no trees anymore, no more of this muffled noise of leaves rattling high above and under our feet. Instead I feel the grass crush under the soles of my shoes and the earth exhale slowly, a deep scent filling my nose until I vomit again and learn to ignore how I can sense every insect I step on dying.
***
I want to avoid villages. I do not want to see humans – not yet, not when I can barely get used to the fact that my legs tire so fast and that my hands are just what they seem to be, hands, with no more than hints of my usual strength. I do not want to think about what else has changed, my whole body is foreign and it is no wish of mine to know it better. The only thing that I cannot ignore is pain and how to make it go away.
Ryuu does not insist that we get closer to them, he just tells me to enjoy what I can see. Though the plain is deserted, there are still lots of traces of their existence, little stones, a long road, small, empty houses. This world is full of humans, they go and build and leave and the world spins around with the motions of their desire.
“I think I like mountains better,” I tell Ryuu one day, when I grow sick of the green wasteland.
They give a feeling of protection this plain does not have, large void space where anything can come and go unbound. I miss flying through the air too much to be so close to the whirlwind without wings to make me spin. I feel the emptiness in my chest and I wish for it to go away. Physical sensations come along with odder ones, discreet shivers and aches that seem to appear for little to no reason and go away just as easily.
Ryuu smiles, smooth-soft tugging of his lips I cannot seem to replicate, and he takes my hand.
“I can walk on my own.”
“I don't want you to get lost.”
I would answer that there is no chance I could get lost here, when there is nothing blocking my path to him, but his palm is hot against mine and his cheeks are pinker.
“Your cheeks have colour.”
“No, they don't ! Just keep walking.”
“They are even redder. Are you losing blood ?”
He says nothing, but he grips my hand tighter, knuckles white in his almost painful clasping, and I do not understand why he looks sad now.
We walk until the sun sets and we have to stop for the night. He hunts while I set up the camp, he cooks while I prepare the beds, we eat in silence. Comforting routine, to keep the vast world away.
“Sing me to sleep.”
I ask because I sleep better this way. My body naturally answers the sound of his voice, relaxing even when I do not wish for it to do so. He seems so pleased I think of doing this every night, even when I know my aching muscles will make me fall deeply asleep as soon as I go to bed.
***
One day, we nap. The weather is hotter now and walking under the sun makes me so tired I agree to the idea of sleeping in the middle of the day. Sweat is dripping from me in places I did not think possible, and I understand why humans stink. I must stink too, I am exhausted, too much to really care about anything other than doing something, anything, to refill this body with energy. It sounds ridiculous, lying down with the sun blinding us, but it feels comfortable, with my head so close to Ryuu I see the light splashing shades of blue on his skin. Eventually I close my eyes, lulled to sleep by the steady rhythm of his hand going through my hair.
I wake up when I hear him shout – I shout too, I cry for him to escape, not to be in danger, I do not want to lose him so soon – but when my eyes get used to the sudden sunlight I can see that he is playing with children. They are all looking at me with round, frightened eyes, and Ryuu comes closer, followed by a flock of these little people.
“What was it ? A nightmare ?”
I did have a nightmare, I have nightmares every night, so I nod, even if this is not the reason why I shouted. I am not sure I want to tell him yet. Physical reactions I can analyse, but the clenching in my heart is yet to be explained, Ryuu being adamant that it is not an illness I need to cure – I still disagree. When he is reassured I will not crumble, he goes back to the game, still clothed in children, but one little girl decides to stay behind.
“I have nightmares too” she whispers, small and frightened, sweat clear on her head while she did not run, “they come at night to eat me but then I go to my sister's bed and she sings me a lullaby.”
The little girl tells me all about the monster under her bed and before I know how, she has her hands busy braiding my hair. Ryuu almost falls on the ground when he sees it, and then bursts out in laughter. I like the sounds, they come from deep in his throat and shake his body in a much more pleasant way than what he calls my “fear moments”.
“You look so cute like this !”
“This is unfair, Ryuu. She has a monster under her bed and she cannot make it go away.”
“Your cheeks are pink,” he replies carelessly, as if nothing were happening, as if life was not buzzing so loud in my ears, “and we can go chase that monster if you want to.”
There is nothing under her bed; I do not understand until Ryuu explains that she is simply afraid of what she cannot see. Shadows swallow you whole and may never allow you out, I know this. So I pretend to roar and wave my hands around, disturbing the shadows until she is pleased. Her parents let us stay for the night, and she falls asleep quickly – a miracle, they say, I must be really good with children. There are words stuck in my throat, thick and heavy air that should not be this way, since I can speak normally otherwise, so I do not tell them that I still despise humans and their worthless little lives, that I cannot sleep without Ryuu next to me making sure I am not overloading with the world, and that I am scared more than anything that he will not be there when I open my eyes.
“Be there when I wake,” I tell him, managing to get the words out this time, and he smiles his soft smile.
“Of course.”
***
While we do not seek them, we do not avoid villages anymore. Each time, children greet us with laughter and little presents. They are of no worth, pebbles from the roadside, flowers that wither in my hands, but they seem to mean a lot to them. I always honour their gifts, as a god should do, and it seems to marvel them. They go away quickly, only to bring me more.
“You'll be covered in pebbles and flower crowns if this goes on,” Ryuu keeps joking, as if he were not receiving an even larger part of the donations. I tell him we are gods but since they do not remember, it is strange they honour us nonetheless. He laughs softly, as he sometimes do when I ask questions, and answers that this is no honour they are doing us, simply a small favour, gracing us with a remnant of their own happiness, a thing that children do.
These children laugh and then they go away, but my chest feels less empty. I remember I laughed too, on the rooftop. I laughed in scorn and contempt at these humans I did not understand. I still do not, but I no longer want them to be annihilated. I dread the nights and the dreams – me, ending all of this life in a single motion of our hand, ending laughter with my own.
“Thank you for saving them,” I tell Ryuu one night, when he stops singing.
His eyes grow wide with surprise and he draws me closer, his arms fitting around my waist while he holds me to his chest.
“Thank you for understanding. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
He does not let go of me while he falls asleep, his chest rising and falling slowly against mine. I still do not understand, I still have a nightmare but waking up to his hands petting my hair makes it almost easy, for the first time since we are both back on this Earth.
***
“I am so sorry...”
I do no understand why he feels sorry, I tell him so.
“You are having so many bad dreams, and I never do. I only have...” he looks down and when he continues, his voice is low. “I only have you in my dreams. Your voice calls my name and...”
He does not continue, but settles closer to my chest, and breathes on my neck, and it makes my head lighter.
“Do that again.”
“What ?”
“This thing, when you breathe, on my neck. Do it again.”
Ryuu has never had redder cheeks but he complies, exhaling slowly on my skin.
“It feels too hot. I like it, though.”
Ryuu gets up and pretends he needs to go away because he heard a suspicious sound, but I know for sure that there have been none. My senses are still above his own, yet he refuses to believe me – and gets lost for more than ten minutes in the woods, returning with his face slightly less red.
The night after he comes back, sleeping with his face flushed on my neck and breathing softly – my own breathing hitches until I drift asleep. He keeps coming, night after night, but I cannot seem to get used to it.
***
War left traces.
It left deep notches in the earth and on the trees, gaping wide at the world.
It left wounds in the flesh, mutilated fragile humans that keep on living, limping, half themselves but still standing.
It left stains in the hearts, harder to see and harder to wash away, children crying themselves to sleep and adults mourning their loved ones everywhere.
Ryuu and I try to help, with my strength and his smile, but there is little we can do, just the two of us. Pain is everywhere and one can only despair in the face of such a relentless illness.
There are people that still live and wish not to help. One day we see thieves, walking into a house and walking out, leaving only sobs and broken drawers behind. We hunt them. Ryuu has to hold me back when they start bleeding – I want to keep hitting them, and ask why, why, why.
Ryuu cannot answer, but when we give her back what we could save the lady with dark shadows under her eyes, her children with darker ones, says that humans just want to live. They want to be free, alive, happy. They desire so much for such fleeting blinks of existence I feel a little impressed.
“They have the minds of gods,” I tell Ryuu, “and yet they act like crows fighting for the last piece of food in a wasteland.”
“Maybe it's because they have the minds and not the powers that go with it.”
He shivers, and I remember the fox-like one, the one he told me created monsters. My own flesh feels sore – are we monsters of our own ? I remember I used to hold the world in my hands with the mind to destroy it. Humans are better off doing evil with what little power they have.
Ryuu asks what I want to do and I still cannot answer. “Following you” is not what he wants to hear. He seems upset, but only sighs, and we walk away.
***
I cannot sleep, and while it became the usual beginning of our nights, Ryuu having troubles to sleep as well is new. With a small voice, nestled in my arms like a stone on a crown, he tells me about what he saw today while I helped men build a bridge, further down the riverside. Corpses, two, under a ruined house. Children saw it too, he says, and he drapes himself over me as if he could be soaked in warmth, to forget. I rub circles down his back, mimicking the gestures he uses to calm me down after nightmares. They seem so useless, skin brushing skin or the thick fabric, sharing body heat in a mindless motion, but he sighs contentedly and sinks deeper into my embrace. The warmth does feel good, like a sunbath on cold scales, or soup in an empty stomach. It feeds the sleeping fire in my chest, the one that tells me to keep rubbing my fingers on his skin until something happens or one of us falls asleep. This was the usual – nothing is, though, tonight.
Ryuu turns around so he can face me, cupping my face with his hands, seemingly content with this. I am not.
“Fou-lu.”
He almost never says my name, while I call his all the time – when he wakes, when we are apart, even in his dreams – and hearing it makes the hair stand up on my skin.
His lips hit mine and shivers run down my spine.
The fire in my chest is suddenly awake and every single move of Ryuu makes it swell and purr like a cat clawing at my stomach.
***
I almost feel bad but I do not know enough yet to willingly feed this heat that grows in me. Ryuu looks as surprised as me, however, for once at loss with what humans do when they just live, when they do not battle and rebuild and survive.
My headaches last for hours, drilling in my brain until I feel feverish and forget how to breathe. It is the first time since I first healed that one of us cannot walk, too ill to dare to move. It takes me a few days to be well again – I curse the world and my flesh. I only stop when I look at Ryuu and see the look on his face.
He is wondering whether it was that good of an idea to bring us back – to bring me back. There is nothing in me that is interested in remaining here; were it not for Ryuu, I would have left a long time ago.
“I am glad you are here with me,” I say when I can walk again, “I would not make it without you.”
I cannot say if he feels more sad or relieved.
***
The next town has nothing more to offer than a few glances and a “run off” sign. Cities are isolating themselves. I tell Ryuu this is bad, that humans did it in the past, when we still roamed the skies above, worshiped, feared. The nation had cracked open and every piece of its skin became a nation of its own. It had taken us centuries to unite them, to fuse them back into the one being they used to be, to stop the useless wars lords had started everywhere – an epidemic of steel. When Ryuu asks why, the answer is one he knows. Humans wage war, they simply do. Without a lead forcing peace on humanity, there is war, he has seen it himself. He agrees, silently, by putting a tiny hand on my back. Reassuring me, telling me I – we, at that time – did well. I smile, I try to, and as always my lips twisting upwards make him laugh. He says I do it bad, that my lips are too stiff, as if I could not move my muscles properly. He still sounds fond of it and never misses a chance to make me do it again.
***
Autumn is ending and while I thought that taking your shirt off and napping on each other was as close as we could get to intimate nakedness, winter hits us with wind and snow, too early to be expected, so we take refuge in a cave and wait there for the storm to die.
“Elements are doing a very fine job on their own,” I comment as snowflakes shower on my head from a hole further above me.
“Yeah, th-they work p-pretty well without d-dragons.”
The rest of the night is spent under all of our equipment, huddled as close to each other as possible, not to freeze. Ryuu's head is safely tucked under mine and he sometimes mumbles distractedly in his sleep. I cannot close my eyes – I am aware in a way I have rarely been, every nerve of this body lit with life. I think I understand it better now. My dragon senses felt, they did not experience, invisible tendrils shooting from me and sensing the outside world, bringing in the information to be deciphered. Now I feel from my body and the sensations ripple through me in waves I cannot cancel.
Cold brown light warmth wind snow blue f iresa nd ash esrainrootsblue.
When I think too much about them the sensations overlap and overwhelm me. I decide it is better to ignore them and sleep.
Ryuu find me awake, several hours later, shaking, his hands trying to soothe me, but adding to my trembling.
“You did not have this before,” he sounds worried but if I try to speak now my teeth will shatter.
Snow, it is only snow outside, and roots here, why am I not feeling how normal this situation is. Instead I ask Ryuu if he is still here, because dead brown leaves are crowding in front of my eyes.
He touches my cheeks each time I cry out his name, saying that he is here and will not let go of me, and eventually I fall asleep.
***
This is the fourth time I am unable to move because my body is unresponsive to me, while he is to the outside world. I have no control, little to no power, no understanding at all – Ryuu has the half of us that can live through this world.
He cries himself to sleep in his own blanket. I feel cold, harshly abandoned, if this is what loneliness feels like, I do not want to stand it.
“Leave me alone, Fou-lu,” he asks the next morning, when I get up to go to him. “Please, not this time.”
“I do not understand.” I crouch next to him and turn him around. “Explain. I want to understand. Explain this world to me.”
“You're... you're almost crying.” He seems to marvel at the water pooling in my eyes.
“I want to stop this.”
“You can't, unless you're not feeling anything. Emotions. Damn, Fou-lu, you know what they are. I don't want to drag you around if you're just going to be ill and angry and sad and-”
He stops when I put my hands on his face.
“I am going to replace them with my mouth and lay next to you. Do you agree to this ?”
I take my hands away as he breathlessly says “yes”.
I put my mouth on his, trying to remember what he did and repeating it. This time, our lips move, and he makes a sound of the back of his throat – my body responds eagerly. We do this for quite a long time, lips moving against each other, hands touching faces.
“I don't think it changes the situation,” Ryuu mumbles afterward. “You still do not want to be here.”
“I think I told you before. I'll be here, with you.”
“This is not what I'm talking about. What do you want to do ? Do you have a goal ? Is there anything you like ?”
“I have you.”
“Are you trying to make fun of me ?!”
“I mean it. I only knew one other person and she died. You are what I have in this world, and I will stand by your side.”
Ryuu sounds embarrassed and angry, eventually silencing, clutching my shirt. I might understand why.
***
Ryuu has stopped wandering aimlessly, I notice. We are heading towards the West, trying to walk in a straight line, not quite avoiding villages but not going out of our way to meet humans either.
“Am I a burden to you ?” I ask Ryuu when, after we cross a bright stream, we have to halt because the sun reflecting brightly on the water left me with a spinning head.
“You're not a burden.” There is a 'but', unspoken, loitering above our heads. “You... you are something I can't be sure about.”
He means our kisses, I know that much. The action is pleasant and we both agreed upon it; the intention behind it is much more obscure. The reason I am here is obscure.
“It is not because I do not understand this world that I do not wish to journey with you through it.”
“You can't make me your goal !”
“You are here, if you were a goal, it was reached long ago. We did unite, after all, we met and you saved the world. What is your goal now ?”
“I told my friends we would meet again. We... we are going to their country.”
This might explain his uneasiness around me.
“They do not know about me still being here.”
They do not know that an Endless, the very one that almost destroyed them all, through their friend, is coming to them. Ryuu fears their contempt.
“Cray can be quite quick with his words. I fear they will be... unkind with you.”
“They would have every reason to.”
Again, Ryuu looks like he is about to cry, and he turns around to kiss me, harder than ever before. There is a desperate need in his every move, in the way his hands shoot to my hair and smooth the skin of my back under my shirt. This is a need I can echo, moves I can mirror well, and as we sink to the ground I fear something else is happening, something I cannot stop.
Then Ryuu licks a stripe down my neck and I surrender everything to the need for more, more of these sensations that make me feel alive – a pleasant overdose.
He has taken his shirt off and I bury my head in his chest, a low sound in the back of my throat, while he rocks his hips against mine – it feels good, I whisper it in his ear, he moans when my lips brush the skin. The heat in my chest purrs and growls and begs.
“Let me touch you.”
I do not know who is begging but I say yes.
His fingers travel down my chest, in my trousers, when they reach me, they send a lighting up my spine. I mirror his feather-like touches, and we are spiraling down – as long as we stay together, so close we almost are like one again, I do not care.
***
“We will not move until you have decided something you want to do from now on. Something that does not involve following me around mindlessly.”
Ryuu may tire and go away alone if I never answer this – however there is nothing I wish. I have nothing here, no one, I belong in a world of Endless creatures, on another plane, but he will have none of this life he cannot remember and made us stay on Earth. I could create a wish for him – lie – but it would force me to repeat the action, and eventually it still is choosing something – only, something I hate and would very much mind doing.
“Ryuu, I do not know,” I tell him after a few days. “I know about the handwork and the laws humans use, I know some of their ways. They are not what I want to do.”
“You can't just be here ! You have to... You have to participate in this world !”
“I do not want to stop in a village, settle here on my own to work in a place I do not like, and watch you go away without me, because you think I can be here without you or you without me !”
I almost yell. The idea alone is making me sick, Ryuu lowering his head, facing the ground, fills my mouth with bitterness.
“You think I want you to go ? You think I'd be happy with you away ? You are who I am, and yet you are hating everything we have seen so far !”
I have not. I have not and it is so unfair that Ryuu is using this against me at a time like this, when I have not had a headache in days, when I have learned to cook, when I have played with children and so much more meaningless things that seem to be the heart of this world.
“Fou-lu, I'm sorry, I didn't mean...”
“Why are you apologising ? You are only saying what you think.”
“You should not always say what you think. No, don't look at me like this, I'm not saying it's good to lie either, it's just that... There are several ways to tell the truth, and I just keep choosing the worst.”
This time also, he kisses me to sleep, and while I like his singing better, it seems to make him feel more at ease, some sort of reassurance he is still needed, wanted body and soul, so I let him, and untie his hair to run my hand through it better.
***
We have left the camp five days ago, and are in known territory again – this town, Ryuu tells me, was nearly destroyed the last time he went through it, covered in smoke and ashes. It still looks quite ruined but at least people manage to enjoy living surrounded by blackened stones. We buy cloaks, with large hoods that hide our faces, and walk for most of the day until we finally reach the ocean.
“I think that if I explain the situation to them, they'll let you in,” Ryuu tells me, because he has given up on the idea of leaving me behind to see his human friends alone and smiles to me with the sun in his grin – all this for me, all the light in his heart. “You know, if I learned to love you, they can at least try to know you better.”
He has never said this before and I feel heat purring contentedly in my chest.
“Wait. Fou-lu, what is this place.”
“We are near the sea cave you noticed earlier.”
“Why didn't you say so ?! We're lost ! Again !”
“You were tired, I did not want you to keep walking all night to reach the port. We can settle here, get some rest before we are on the road again. These hoods are uncomfortable.”
“Oh, come on, we can walk a bit longer. We're in better shape than before.”
He inhales deeply and chats nonsense about meeting people, Spring, flowers blooming – probably to distract me from the red splayed on his cheeks and the waver in his voice.
“Of course, they're going to be surprised.”
Then he stops, to look at me in the eye when he says it.
“We were one being, originally. It would make no sense that, after banishing our powers, only one of us would disappear. We both had to stay.”
This is the answer to my presence by his side. This is the reason I am alive.
Even if mortals make mistakes again, and they sure will, with or without Endless to reign and wreak havoc, Ryuu loves them with all his heart – he believes.
Maybe this is what I lack.
Maybe this is what Ryuu can give me.
I hold his hand while the sun sets, and when I whisper that I love him back, his face makes it feel like the sun has not set at all.