Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Out.”

Kurogane glared at the creature, undeterred by the rigid stance or looming frame. He rifled inside his coat for the money-bag and slammed it onto the counter. “One room. That’s all we’re asking.”

“Not without a ward,” said the creature with a click of his beak. Tar black feathers stood on end in a ring around his face. The arch of his neck was long and brutal, glistening with a volatile, dark oiliness. His claws trembled on the wooden window pane as though he struggled to keep them under his command. “I don’t care about your filthy copper. Get out.”

Kurogane tried to hold the innkeeper’s eyes, which was difficult when the creature was rapidly gathering up his books and tugging the curtain of the reception window shut. Kurogane grabbed the money bag and drove it back into his pocket as the keeper finally disappeared behind a veil of thick velvet. Fai’s hand pressed briefly to his back, but it did little to wipe the snarl from his face.

“You should really leave the diplomacy to one of us, Kuro-sama.” Kurogane bristled at the snicker in his voice.

“You can deal with the next one, then. This is bullshit.”

“What do we do?” Mokona said from inside Fai’s coat collar. “He said the same thing as the last five places.”

Fai clicked his tongue and began a slow circle of the lobby room. It was small enough that when a sizeable crow-woman emerged from the hallway, all three travellers had to step out of the way to let her pass. She looked over them quickly and scuffled out the front door, claws scraping on a doorknob obviously made for human hands as she went.

When she was gone, Syaoran slipped in front of the reception window next to Kurogane. “Let me try asking,” he said. “I think this place is going to be our best bet.”

“Why?” Kurogane grumbled, but stepped out of the way to give Syaoran full access to the counter anyway.

“People have been coming in and out while we’ve been waiting here – I doubt they’re all guests at this place, judging by the amount of them,” said Syaoran. “Fai, you said you recognised the runes on the sign outside?”

Fai looked up from the tangle of biohazard he’d been examining – apparently a standard variety of pot plant in this world – and nodded. “Only a few of them.” he said. “I’ve seen them in some archaic apothecary books. The rest was another language entirely.”

Syaoran looked at the mage hopefully, then back to Kurogane. “It’s worth a shot,” he said, and leaned toward the velvet curtain draped across the reception. “Excuse me,” he called. “I’m very sorry to bother you and I know you must be busy. Please pardon the intrusion.” He paused, but heard no response. “We only arrived this morning,” he said, “but we were drawn here by stories of the wards. They’re very famous in other worlds. You’ll have to excuse my mentor – you see, as a distributor of otherworldly magical products through the largest talisman and protective spell company in our home world, he is under a lot of stress.”

The curtain jerked open. The innkeeper observed Syaoran with opaque black eyes, saying nothing. “Is this true?” he asked Kurogane.

Kurogane gaped, stammered and uttered an uncertain “Yes.” The look he gave Syaoran out of the corner of his eye said something much different.

“What’s it called?” asked the innkeeper.

Kurogane felt his face go blank just as Fai slipped between his companions and said, “Piffle Princess Corporation.” He slapped an electronic business card onto the counter and stood back proudly as it read:

“Piffle Princess; combining ingenuity and integrity to bring you a magical experience every day.”

“We distribute a variety of products – enchanted talking items like this one, long-range telepathic devices, boxes that wash your dishes for you, and, most importantly–” here he gave the innkeeper a charming smile, “–objects of a protective quality.”

The innkeeper looked long and hard at Fai. Kurogane swore that the creature’s will made a real sound as it caved in – a sound like money hitting the counter. He disappeared beyond the window and opened a door in the wall beside it, beckoning the travellers through. “I don’t make my business from letting outsiders in here,” he muttered. “This had better be a substantial offer.”

“We’ll have to test the wards first, of course,” Fai said, flashing another smile. “We don’t make our business from substandard products. But I’m sure you’ll allow us the formality.”

It took every ounce of strength in Kurogane, innate or learned, forged through trial and blood and fire, not to puke.

The travellers were silent as the innkeeper drew the curtain shut and opened another door, leading them down into a cellar. He murmured an incantation and the space immediately around the travellers became dimly illuminated by a small, shaky orb in his palm. “You’ll forgive me, the darkness” he said. “I am ill-practiced in the arts. I wasn't responsible for making the wards stocked here.”

The wooden stairs creaked beneath the travellers’ feet as they descended. The creature filled the space in front of them so it was difficult to see beyond him into the room below, but judging by the echo of their footsteps ahead of them, it had to be near.

As they descended, Kurogane felt himself bristle. A low shiver ran up his neck and the air around him seemed to quiver. It was an unfamiliar magic, but magic all the same. He didn’t presume that it was benign. Fai, however, seemed comfortable enough. The mage took languorous strides down the stairs and looked about them casually, glancing up at Kurogane with a hushed smile. “Nothing to worry about,” he murmured into Kurogane’s ear, before turning his attention to the innkeeper.

“Who makes the wards?” Fai asked.

The innkeeper hesitated. “A better mage than I,” he said. He moved aside suddenly and the travellers emptied from the stairway into a room no larger than the lobby. Kurogane rubbed the slick shivering feeling of magic from his arms as he tried to see through the dark, but he couldn’t make out the contents of the room. The innkeeper murmured another incantation and placed the glowing orb into a recess in the wall. It grew brighter, and several identical recesses around the room flared with the same light.

The light revealed long shelves around the perimeter of the cellar, covered in assorted everyday items – first aid supplies, in the form of tinctures and herbal powders, clockwork mechanisms, boxes of cutlery, and spare staff uniforms.

“Here,” said the innkeeper. He ghosted over to a chest against the far wall, the spiny shadows of his quills falling over its face as he approached. “These are the last of my stock until more are made,” he said. “I expect full payment for the testers.”

“Of course,” Fai said, leaning in to try to see what the innkeeper was pulling from the chest. His malformed wings, protruding from tailored holes in the back of his suit, had a habit of obscuring the things around them.

When he turned, he held four lengths of cord, their tightly coiled strands shimmering silver in the globe-light. Strung on each cord was a translucent glass bauble as big as a grape. Kurogane saw Fai clutch instinctively at Mokona. Up until this point they had kept her hidden. Despite the magic rampant in this world, it seemed already that its inhabitants didn’t take well to disorderly things.

“One for Mokona, too!” she sang, carefree.

“Especially for the likes of you,” the innkeeper said. “A thing as bound up in magic as you are is just asking for an anomaly to be born.” He unfurled a hand to the travellers, holding the wards out of reach and ignoring Mokona’s protests at being called a ‘thing’.

Kurogane drew out the money bag with a slowness that was part reluctance and part hideous mood. Just this morning, when they realised their choice was between finding money quickly or sleeping in an icy backstreet with an abundance of suspicious stragglers, human and aviary alike, they decided to sell some accumulated souvenirs. Apparently, the profit was enough.

The innkeeper lowered the wards into Kurogane’s waiting hand. Dull light played on the creature’s beak and streaked his claws in a soft mimicry of fire. Despite himself, Kurogane flinched.

“Do we get to stay here, now?” he said, chasing away a lingering chill with his tone. The skeletal hand recoiled like a spider being tugged away on a silk thread.

“It’s twenty coppers per night. Per person,” he said, shuffling past the travellers and back up the stairs. They followed, and as they exited the room the glowing orbs disappeared. A whisper from the front of the group, and a small light returned to fill the air around them.

“So these wards,” Kurogane said, “if we don’t like them – if they break, or whatever – we can retract our offer whenever we like.”

Fai smirked at Kurogane through the dark. He shot the mage an annoyed look in response.

“They won’t break.” The innkeeper said as they emerged from the stairwell. “I’ve never met magic that could break one of these wards.”

 ---

The world outside the inn was like the inside of a crystal ball. It was all distempered mist and magic that clung like condensation, a fragile taste to the air and an obedient hush to its inhabitants. The inn-keeper was one of many strange such residents of the town. About half of the people they passed were unmistakably people. The other half were half-birds, dressed like people in bright panelled clothes, walking on almost human legs and gesturing with almost-hands, staring with half-human eyes.

“That guy has a pole up his ass,” Kurogane said, arms wrapped around his chest and a huff in his voice.

Syaoran looked back at Kurogane with just enough reprimand to make him frown even harder. “He did seem anxious when we arrived,” the boy said slowly, his voice contemplative. “But maybe that kind of response isn’t so unusual here.”

The travellers wandered through the paved courtyards and winding streets near the inn, hoping to learn about the world they had come to or at least eat a meal before retiring for the day. They blended neatly into the crowd of herb peddlers and afternoon shoppers. The humans were diverse in dress and appearance, and the birds were as unremarkable to them as the presence of street lamps or brick walls.

Kurogane looked around. He hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention (the birds’ novelty had worn off a good three hours ago), but he had noticed the permanent sense of tension in the air anyway. To their left a tall blue bird with a crest raised their fingers to a street lamp. Their hands were long and delicate, and they held a flaring white orb like the one the innkeeper had conjured. They placed the orb into the lamp, shut the little glass door, and traced a quick and well-practiced movement on the surface. A gaggle of uniformed children passed in a curve around the creature, ignoring the sight completely.

None of the travellers failed to notice when a girl accidentally touched the creature as she sped past. They watched on silently as she and the creature both stopped. The creature muttered a series of short sounds under their breath, and moved silently on to the next streetlamp. The girl lifted something rapidly to her forehead and chased away after her friends. Neither looked at the other.

“They don’t talk to each other much, do they?” Fai observed.

Kurogane broke his stare and shrugged. “If they dislike each other so much, why is everyone so casual? There wasn’t even any security around these things.” He flicked his chest where the ward was tucked under his clothes.

“Yes, there was,” Fai said. “You felt it. The cellar was covered in curses waiting to drop.”

“Is that what it was?” Syaoran said, a sigh lining his voice.

Kurogane felt the buzzing feeling in his stomach intensify. He’d been feeling it all day, a little tick inside him that flinched at every mention of curses or fears. He fell into step beside Fai, almost without noticing. “I don’t trust this place,” he confessed to the mage.

“Mm,” Fai agreed, gravitating to the warrior’s side. “You’ve been pretty clear about that since we arrived, Kuro-rin. Maybe next time,” he hooked Kurogane’s gaze with a sharp grin, “don’t go storming into every inn declaring your distaste? I’d say the locals aren’t the type to be screwed around.”

“Neither are we,” Kurogane said darkly.

Fai clipped a laugh and hummed thoughtfully. He slung a sly arm into Kurogane’s, hand resting on his wrist with an air of possession. “Neither are we,” he repeated softly. Kurogane looked at his mage and tried not to let the mixture of pride and adoration he felt show too plainly on his face. He stared stubbornly forwards, a little less grumpy than before.

A cold haze was already visible against the sunset. The smell of wood smoke from a nearby tavern mingled with the scent of impending rain. Vapour clung to the surface of the water in the wide canal that ran alongside the path. A bridge, wide enough for horse and cart, connected the two banks of the waterway. It was monitored by several uniformed guards with large metal contraptions in their arms. They were old and unusual, but Kurogane still recognised them as guns. His eyes slid past the guards patrolling back and forth, to the other side of the canal where a twist of unnatural-looking trees deepened into a forest. A gaggle of birds and humans huddled on the far bank with bits of broken bottles and ragged wicker bags at their feet. There seemed to be no buildings on the far side. Just the forest, abysmal and folding in and in on itself, as far as he could see. Kurogane was quietly glad they’d managed to find a place to stay. Had they been in a warmer world, one with less fog and fewer shadows, the trouble wouldn’t have been worth it.

“Excuse me,” Syaoran said to the nearest vendor.

The creature turned, feathers bristling slightly. They eyed Syaoran, then the others, but did not answer. Instead, after a moment of strained silence, they pushed their wares forward and waved their hand for Syaoran to continue.

“Uh. Do you where we might be able to buy some food?”

The creature paused. They looked with narrow eyes at Syaoran, then gave an annoyed sigh and turned away. “We do not talk to humans,” they said, as though simply reminding themselves, and lifted a hand to their forehead. In its clutch Kurogane thought he saw a bauble of glass, faintly luminescent, which the creature hid away again as quickly as they had brought it out.

There was a long pause. After enough silence had passed to make everyone uncomfortable, Syaoran opened his mouth to speak. “This seems like quite a superstitious place, doesn’t it?”

As soon as he finished his sentence, the air cracked apart.

It only lasted a second, but it was the unmistakeable pull of magic. A feeling like a shockwave filled Kurogane’s head and made his limbs feel light, and then it was over. He thought he’d heard a sound, like a gun firing or a tree falling, but he quickly realised there had been no noise. The people in the square stopped and looked around, startled. A few jumped as though caught by surprise, and then levelled themselves to a point of impractical calm, or ignorance.

“What was that?” Fai said. He whirled around to look back where they had walked from. Kurogane followed his gaze, and saw a tree beside the path where there hadn’t been a tree before. It was one of those gnarled, strange-coloured trees that were all over the opposite bank of the canal. It dripped with branches and sparse leaves in all manner of shades and shapes, as though it had never quite figured out which direction to grow in, or even what kind of tree to become. Kurogane realised suddenly that the tree stood exactly where the streetlamp had been.

No – where it was still. He made out a glimmer of silver in the tree where there should have been none. The iron streetlamp was twisted between the boughs like malleable wire, its glowing orb still intact.

“Where did that Lightsmage go?” said a passer-by as he turned his back to the tree and raised his ward to his forehead.

Some of the people on the path did the same. Then they peeled off in different directions, some hurrying back to their business and others congregating on the path, mutters about the Lightsmage low on their breaths.

Fai continued to stare at the mangled tree and its misshapen host. His arm slackened against Kuorgane’s, hand lying limp against his palm. The mage’s eyes were wide and uncertain, skirting a shimmer of something that made Kurogane’s gut clench. Fai looked afraid.

Kurogane jerked his coat tighter around him and hitched Fai’s arm back into movement. Fai slowly returned his grip on Kurogane’s wrist, swallowing heavily. He watched the people disperse to look for the culprit of the strange occurrence and bit his lip.

“Maybe we can eat at the inn,” Syaoran offered, still taken aback.

Fai nodded. “I think we should do that.”

---

Fai looked at the glass sphere between his fingers. He held it at length, positioning it so that the light from the orb in the wall shone directly behind it. Inside the glass was a substance that looked like still mist. But lit from behind, the ward seemed to unravel. Colour bloomed from its centre like ink, changing and changing as Fai moved the glass from side to side. From some angles, he thought he could see tiny clusters of stars, pinpoints of dazzling light that must have been a result of the orb shining behind it. Beneath the splendour, the ward pulsed with a quiet magic – calm, but ever-present.

“They’re quite lovely, despite everything,” Fai said. He looped and unlooped the silver thread attached to the ward, passing the sphere between his hands. His eyes narrowed as they looked into the glass, his lips making uncertain shapes and his hands stilling the longer he looked at it.

Kurogane went to Fai and sat on the bed beside him. He leaned back, found that the only place to put his head was the brass bars of the headboard and muttered something under his breath. Fai’s smile returned for a moment, curling one side of his mouth quicker than the other in a lopsided grin. “Want some pillow?” he said, squirming to one side to make room before Kurogane could answer. Kurogane complied with a grumble and settled in next to the mage, who immediately put a long, lazy arm around him. His shoulder hurt faintly from the contact, but the air was cold and Fai was warm, and Kurogane happily stayed where he was.

A contented silence filled the room as they lay together. Fai held the ward to his chest and pressed himself close to Kurogane, eyes shut against the fabric of his clothes. For a while they did not speak, heads tipped together on the pillow and Fai’s ward thrumming with magic like a dull heartbeat between them.

After a time, Fai shifted and opened his eyes. “I’m not sure about any of this,” he hummed, letting go of the ward to drag slow fingers through Kurogane’s hair.

Kurogane let a moment of silence pass. When Fai did not continue, he nudged him on. “What do you mean?”

Fai shuffled up so that he was facing Kurogane, wisps of his hair falling on Kurogane’s cheek and an inaudible sigh fluttering over his lips. The mage hesitated, and said, “I don’t know. Magic and superstition don’t make a pleasant mix.”

This place was just the right amount of icy air and implacably wrong things to make him nervy, but Fai didn’t say that. The single small window on the other wall was clouded like an old mirror, warping the image of the street below. Through it, he could see the rippled shapes of people traipsing the banks of the canal, shadows moving across the lamplight. The sight reminded him of the frosted windows inside great halls and daunting libraries full of runes, the shadows a little too like their inhabitants in his mind’s eye.

He was distracted from his trance by the sound of footfalls approaching the door. He sat up, taking the ward in his fist and putting a hand on Kurogane’s arm as the door opened. “The innkeeper called Mokona a ‘thing!’” cried the little creature to Syaoran. Fai let out a breath. “And he said I was just asking for an anomaly to happen. Mokona doesn’t make anomalies happen!”

Syaoran let the door swing shut and stepped out of his shoes. He’d left earlier to talk to some customers in the lobby downstairs. At first everyone had planned to go and talk to the other guests. But Kurogane was still in a sour mood and standing awfully close to Fai, and Fai’s eyes were beginning to darken with fatigue, and since neither of them was prepared to assert their need to relax or to be alone together Mokona had helpfully suggested the grumpy adults get some rest and let the diplomatic masterminds handle the lobby. At first Fai had protested, admitting to having an uncomfortable feeling about the place, and Kurogane had grumbled unintelligibly, and then Syaoran reminded them that he was strong and smart and also like three rooms away if he needed them. Then they let him go.

“Syaoran,” Fai began, looping the ward around his neck and letting Kurogane wriggle some distance between them. “How did it go?”

Syaoran made a respectable effort of not noticing the way Kurogane slid off the bed and began pacing aimlessly next to it. “Well,” he said, dropping onto the middle bed to face his companions, “We talked to a lady who said the wards protect people against the creation of things called anomalies.”

Kurogane blinked. Fai looked at Syaoran expectantly. The boy cleared his throat and said, “Anomalies are rifts in reality. The lady said that this world had an… ‘unstable magical fabric’. Or something like that.” He ruffled the back of his head, a look of consternation on his face. “And the use of magic, or the presence of people from different dimensions–”

“That’s us,” said Mokona, helpfully.

“–sometimes cause the fabric to tear. But the wards prevent that from happening.”

“Are anomalies common in this world?” Fai ventured, leaning back on his hands. Mokona chose the moment to bounce over to him and tuck herself into the crook of his neck.

“Somewhat. They have small ones now and then, apparently,” Syaoran said. “See, not everyone has magical abilities, but most have some small power. And not everyone can access the wards.”

“So the tree we saw…” Fai began.

Syaoran nodded. “They happen like that.”

 “So,” Kurogane said, “Why did that jackass ignore us today?” Mokona finished cuddling Fai and bounded over to him, assaulting his head with snuggles.

“From what I gathered, it’s a pretty old-fashioned belief. But it’s supposed to be bad luck for humans and birds to interact too much. Since they both have heritage in the same place, though, I guess they all stay here together.”

“Get off of my face.”

Fai gave a tight smile. “A strange place.”

Syaoran nodded. “We’ve visited stranger,” he said, and the mage smiled properly.

---

It was dark, and warmth covered Fai’s sides. The sensation was rough, satisfying like the texture of canvas, something that filled him with images of mahogany and parchment-yellow mornings. There was a scent like musk and skin and desert breeze, and the feeling of a sure, familiar body under his fingers. He traced the form with closed eyes, pressing his lips urgently to the skin when he felt a hand touch his chest.

The hand was warm, too. Almost hot. Calloused. It was a comfortable half-weight on his heart. He could hear life in the dark – the sound of breathing, and the shuffling of movement. He felt a low thrumming in his chest that quickened the more he curled into the other form, the warmth of Kurogane’s body enveloping him, knotting in his breath, making him gasp.

He breathed deeply and there was a thud. The thrumming halted. At first he was confused. He reached out to touch Kurogane, but pain made him stop. His side almost hurt where Kurogane’s other hand had touched him. His sleeping self vaguely identified it as that prickling false-pain he felt when he dreamed of being attacked, or of hitting the ground from a great height. And there was pain in the centre of his chest.

He touched Kurogane’s hand, the hand held out through the cold Celesian air for him, hardly daring to breathe his name. The man’s grip was unrelenting. His fingers banded around Fai’s wrist like they had snapped into place there, hot and strong. Where they touched him, there was no cold. But all around him, the air felt brittle and frozen. The space below him rang with a dull, immortal tone that he recognised as emptiness. There was death and cold on every side, slick over him, engulfing him, but for the hand on his wrist.

Fai didn’t clutch Kurogane’s hand. He would not mire him here. His heart fired like a broken machine for the second when it would release him on its own. The fingers unfurling, the hand pulling away, his eyes closing on the dark form of his lover against the light. The air suddenly felt like wet ash clogging his chest.

He managed to stifle the cry in his throat before it escaped completely. He was halfway to sitting up in bed when he awoke, looking out on the shadows of the room in the inn. It was quiet, but the aftermath of the terror in his head filled in the silence well enough. His breaths came heavy for a moment as he settled himself back into reality. The dark early morning crept in through the windows. The cold latched itself onto the building, seeping in through the thin walls and from underneath the floorboards. Syaoran and Kurogane were in their beds. Nothing was amiss.

“Mage,” Kurogane said softly from the other side of the room.

“I’m okay.” As soon as he’d said it, he felt a sharp pain on the skin of his chest. He patted the spot and winced. “Shit.” He threw off the blanket and felt underneath his shirt, fingers brushing against damp skin and a cold glass bauble. He had to hold his hand close to his face to see in the dark, but there was definitely blood on it. He pulled the ward off over his head and felt a shard of something tumble down his front.

“What’s wrong?” Kurogane said. Fai didn’t respond. He looked closely at the ward; held it up to the faint light of the window. “Oi.”

He looked at it for a thin, hesitant moment and hid it in his palm. He licked his lips – they were chapped from the cold air and tasted of metal. “I think my ward broke.”

“What?” Kurogane said. “What do you mean it broke?”

“Well,” Fai chuckled darkly, “There’s a hole in it.”

Fai heard the sound of fabric being displaced as Kurogane stood and crossed the room. He was an uncertain black form emerging from the shadows, slowly coming into resolution as he approached, and it was only when he could see his face that Fai felt sure he was no longer asleep. The lingering paralysis of his bizarre dream wilted in Kurogane’s wake. He sank quietly onto the bed next to the mage and looked closely at the ward, which Fai held out to him.

It was still its original shape for the most part, but a large chip had cracked cleanly out of its side. It was colourless and faded, more stone than glass. “I’m already fucking sick of this place,” Kurogane said with a sigh.

“Don’t be like that, Kuro-pu,” Fai said with a low smirk, but he felt his words withering on the air.

Kurogane squinted at Fai’s hands. “Did it cut you?”

Fai examined the blood on his fingers. Sticky red streaks coloured his skin, stubbornly remaining when he rubbed his thumb over them. It wasn’t much. He’d certainly seen more of his own blood. But it was more than he had imagined a little glass cut capable of. His chest throbbed impatiently with the hot pain of the wound. Complying, he pulled down his top to see what had been done and angled himself towards the grey light of the window.

Kurogane cursed under his breath. The wound on the left side of Fai’s chest was less a cut and more a shredding. It was about the size of the ward itself, bleeding most profusely in the centre and fanning in a shallow pattern of torn skin around it. It was not made by glass. The shape reminded Fai of a bullet wound.

“Why does it look like that?”

“The magic, probably,” Fai said, leaning back on his hands and staring blankly across the room. Syaoran was a motionless lump in the next bed over, a vague outline against a vague backdrop. His immaculate stillness made Fai doubt whether the boy was really sleeping. “It’s nothing to worry about,” he said, touching his shirt gingerly.

Kurogane was silent for a moment. A curse crouched in his throat ready to spring, Fai could see, but he held it down. Their eyes met through the dark, and Fai knew Kurogane could see the fear in him. He stared back and bit his lip, saying nothing as Kurogane’s eyes slipped to the point on his chest where the wound was.

“We could be here for a long time,” Kurogane said. Fai did not reply. “You’re a magic-user,” he pointed out. “You need a ward more than I do, right?”

“I don’t know,” Fai admitted. “I haven’t used any magic while we’ve been here. But we don’t even know that these anomalies are so dangerous, anyway.” Kurogane considered the mage with an eye that made Fai want to look away. Slowly, he reached to the knot of the cord behind his neck. “Don’t,” Fai hissed. He covered Kurogane’s hand with his own and pulled it away. The whirring of Kurogane’s fingers under his false skin protested in Fai’s grip. “Wait until morning. We’ll figure out what to do.”

Kurogane was quiet and stiff, but eventually he gave a relenting sigh. “I’ll go back to that bird and make him fix it as soon as he opens up front,” he muttered, looking at Fai’s ward cold on the blanket between them. “Until then… until then, no magic.”

“I won’t.” Fai flicked the empty ward across the bed, following it with his eyes as it rolled to a stop. It was dark, now. It could have been a toy marble discoloured by mould, with a jagged crater marking the place where someone had struck it at the ground.

---

The innkeeper curled over the ward as he turned in his claws. He snapped his beak in frustration and shook his head. “I don’t know what you’ve done. I’ve never met any magic that could break these wards before.”

“Well, it’s broken,” said Kurogane.

The bird continued to shake his head and tut over the ward. “You can’t stay here, in that case. I’m not letting my business be turned into a heap of scrap for your sake.”

Kurogane’s stuck lips were very quickly un-sticking to throw obscenities at the innkeeper when Syaoran interrupted. “Do you know where we can buy new ones?”

“Not here. That was the last of it, I told you.”

“Yes,” Syaoran said, “But is there anywhere else?”

The innkeeper scoffed. “With so few decent mages around to craft them and so many people in need of protection? Unlikely.” He placed the ward onto the countertop, next to the shard that had cracked apart from it when it had broken. Several hours previous, Fai had stripped his bed to look for it, having forgotten it after it separated from the rest of the ward. Kurogane had found it on the floor, dim and forlorn, and had given it to Fai with the mood of someone apologising.

Now Kurogane stood with arms crossed and back tense before the front counter of the inn again, letting Syaoran fix their problems and trying not to notice Fai’s silence. The mage stared resolutely at the ground when he wasn’t looking at the space in front of the innkeeper, and the look of false composure in his eyes made Kurogane want to break something.

“There aren’t enough good mages, these days,” said the innkeeper. “You see, their innate power tended to break the wards. I assume this is what happened to you, though I can hardly believe it.” He sighed, twisting his hands together and scrunching his feathers. “And after that, it was only a matter of time before anomalies took them.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that happening to our customers,” said Syaoran, clearing his throat. “Is there perhaps someone we could see about finding a solution? A repairman?”

If it was possible for the innkeeper to roll his eyes, he did exactly that. Then he left the window. Kurogane could hear him rifling through books somewhere out of sight, and when he returned, it was with a blank page and a quill pen. He scrawled something on the paper and then slipped it directly into Syaoran’s hands. “This is the way to mage that crafts the wards,” he said. “If she can’t fix it, you’re probably doomed anyway.”

“Uh. Thank you very much, sir,” he said, “But do you think you could explain what it says to us? None of us are literate in the script of this world.”

The bird adjusted his waistcoat and frowned, or gave a good approximation of a human frown in any case. “That’s bad form for an interdimensional magical business like yours, isn’t it?” He pulled the velvet curtain shut and spoke no more.

---

The morning was in golden half-light by the time the travellers left the inn. The sun was low and warm over the sharp rooftops of the town. It lit the thin curtains of mist so they looked like silk wavering on the breeze. People’s breaths uncurled in foggy streams, shafts of steam-like coils rising from the nostrils of the birds they passed. It was an obliviously beautiful morning.

“If I give you my ward,” said Kurogane, “you could use magic to read it.”

“No,” said Fai. He softened his voice and continued, “That’s not how it works.” He held the cryptic scrawl out for all of them to see, tilting his head and drawing his brows. “If it were that simple, Mokona would be able to read it for us. But,” he said, tucking the paper away inside his coat, “we can always ask for help. I’m sure we can find this mysterious repairman without the innkeeper.” He gave Kurogane a pointed look. Kurogane had been stooped over and on edge, his hand a quiver away from snatching the ward off of his own neck and bestowing it on Fai with a huff.

“All he had to do was read it to us.”

“And all we have to do is find someone else,” said Fai. He brushed his fingers through the hair above Kurogane’s neck. “We need to ask Miss Daidouji for a fancy reading-machine, hm?” Kurogane gave a half-hearted grumble. He’d kick the innkeeper’s ass when they got back. He was determined about that. But Fai’s face made his throat clench. He let his smile fade as Kurogane watched, admitting with plaintive eyes that he still felt uncertain. But he squeezed Kurogane’s shoulder and carried on, and Kurogane had no choice but to keep walking beside him, their footfalls synchronising as they went.

Kurogane caught Syaoran’s expression as he turned to the road. The boy smiled softly, and quickly averted his gaze from the pair as if he’d not been looking at all. Mokona, on the other hand, stared at Kurogane through her slit-eyes from just inside Syaoran’s collar, fluffy white ears protruding comically over the boy’s clothes. Kurogane stared back.

“What are you looking at?” he snarled.

“What?” Syaoran said. He whirled around, a blush already rising on his face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“Not you, the meat-bun!”

Mokona’s mouth turned even further up at the corners. “Ten points to Mokona! That’s two red faces out of three!” She turned her gaze expectantly up at Fai. Kurogane made a garbled noise of protest as he tried to reassure Syaoran and berate Mokona at the same time, waving his arms in a wild dance between gestures.

His eyes widened when Fai let out a snort. The mage slowed his pace and bent over, beaming in a way Kurogane had not seen him do for days. He felt as though he had just shrugged off a heavy pack. His shoulders un-bunched and his grimace melted into something preceding a smile as his mage stifled another laugh, and then let it spill over when it could not be contained. Fai straightened with some difficulty, clutching for a moment at the left side of his chest. He shook his head and hurried onward with quirked lips. “I love you all,” he said.

Syaoran smiled and gave a barely perceptible nod, hiding his face away again and helping a happily flailing Mokona back into his coat. Kurogane looked for a long time at Fai. He felt like there was something he needed to do with his hands, or something he should say.

“Don’t think too hard, Kuro-sama,” Fai murmured, and Kurogane didn’t.

The travellers went the way they had yesterday, hoping to find someone in the sprawling market courtyard who could help them. They were still a minute down the path from the bustle of people when Syaoran pointed ahead of them. “What’s going on over there?” he said. Between the hub of the market and the stream of passers-by, a crowd had gathered around the bridge.

Kurogane narrowed his eyes. The mossy arch of stone connecting the two banks was occupied. He hadn’t seen anybody on it yesterday, though he had assumed that it might be used for the transport of wares, and that the guards were just facilitators who stopped the vagrants on the other bank from approaching. Now a creature stood silhouetted on top of it, staggering and lurching at the guards on the courtyard side. It was an eerie sight to behold under the morning sunlight that crowned the sky, with the bubble and rush of the canal gracing the air like the sound of spring. Kurogane felt his left hand tense, ready to unleash Ginryuu from dormancy.

“Oh no,” Syaoran breathed. Kurogane craned to look closer, the three of them speeding up as they walked. He could hear the creature now, rasping and crying as it stumbled back into the centre of the bridge. Matted feathers clung to its half-human, half-bird body. It had a bright blue crest on its head, and its long, delicate hands were gone.

“I will stay,” they said. “You cannot make me go!”

“You’re a liability to the security of our township,” said one of the guards. She cocked a gun at the Lightsmage, no less threatening for its clunky size. “Ten seconds.”

“I will die!” the Lightsmage cried, their arms shaking and their thin, birdlike wrists stumped and bloodied. “Give me something to treat them, please, or just – just let me take some things from home–”

“Five.”

The Lightsmage hesitated. Then they turned and fled as well as they could. They tripped on their own feet, righted themselves, and made it across the bridge, well after five seconds had passed. Halted and panting, they turned back to see the guard still poised on the other side of the canal. She gave the gun a jerk, and the Lightsmage stumbled into the forest.

The travellers did not move. Fai clutched again at the wound on his chest and breathed slowly, his eyes fastened to the scene. Kurogane imagined he felt his left hand itch – perhaps did, sensing some distant tremble in the mechanics caused by Fai’s magic pooling in the joints, ready to spill over and give him his sword. None of them spoke.

The guards returned tentatively to their routine patrol. The onlookers that had swarmed at the mouth of the bridge, human and bird alike, slowly dispersed into the flow of people around the courtyard, some touching their wards to their foreheads. Others had their backs turned, and didn’t look at all. The market continued as though nothing had happened. If someone had rounded the corner at that moment and taken in the sight, it might have struck them as peaceful, provided nobody noticed the blood that undoubtedly flecked the bridge.

Mokona gave a short whimper from inside Syaoran’s coat, and he lifted a hand to pet her. The group stared at the spot where the creature had been, now innocuously bare. Fai drifted an inch closer to Kurogane, his hand lifting for a moment to touch the other man’s arm and then sliding away again. “How awful,” he said. His voice barely broke the silence. Kurogane wanted so much to take his hand in his and kiss his knuckles, his wrists, tell him this stupid place would be behind them soon

“We can still try the market,” Syaoran said, sounding far less confident than he looked. Fai cleared his throat and gave a nod, walking on before Kurogane had decided whether or not he agreed with that plan. He glared in the direction of the market and followed his friends with a huff.

---

They approached the nearest stall as soon as the crowd had allowed them through. It was a canvas-covered square, and a thin woman sat on a rug in the middle. She smiled up at the travellers and gestured to her wares. Pottery in strange metallic colours sat in tidy rows before her. Most of them were undecorated and practical, swimming with faint whorls of blue and silver and lilac. A few pieces were more finely crafted, with the swirls of colour condensing in small patterns around the rim, or even forming little scenes on the side of the piece. Kurogane was impressed by a precise geometric pattern on a teapot, made up of colours that darkened or lightened or separated into lines to make different shapes.

“Alchemised clay,” the woman boasted. “I assure you it’s as long-lasting as actual silver, and less delicate to handle. Been my specialty since I was your age,” she said with a nod to Syaoran.

“They’re lovely,” he agreed, admiring the pearly sheen on a water jug close by. The boy’s eyes softened as he looked over the decorated pieces, and Kurogane imagined he might be thinking of Princess Sakura as he inspected them. Fai looked over them with a pleasant smile, too. It disappeared when he caught Kurogane’s eyes, as if in apology. Kurogane felt the hard line of his mouth soften, but he averted his gaze all the same. “Actually,” Syaoran said, “I was wondering if you could read something for us while we’re here? We were given some written directions this morning, but we don’t understand them.”

The woman’s face soured slightly. Then, obligingly, she held out a hand for him. “I’m not the best reader, you know. But I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Syaoran said. “It would really help us out. We’re looking for a particular mage.” The quaver in his voice faded as he spoke. He looked around to Fai for the directions and raised his hand to Mokona, thinking twice and running a hand through his hair instead.

“What kind of mage?” the woman asked with a tilt of her head while Fai fished inside his pocket for the slip of paper. Kurogane considered the woman and her items on the rug. They were nice, he supposed. He wasn’t sure what constituted good alchemised pottery, but they’d do.

“A craftsman with relations to the keeper of the inn where we’re staying,” he said. “She seems to be in high demand, though we don’t know her name. Do you,” he said, “uh, know anyone like that?”

Fai held out the paper and the woman hefted herself from her position with some difficulty to take it from him. “Sounds a tad suspicious. I’d mind myself if I were you.”

Kurogane watched Fai’s hand for a moment. Then the moment seemed to stretch. Something in the air was about to snap. A heavy, lulling sensation crept over him, like the vacuum of silence that seems to come right before a loud noise.

It happened more suddenly than any of them had been prepared for. This time it was a rattle that filled his head. One of the jars began to shake. Its lid bounced in its mouth and it unfolded like a flower blooming, metal shine and dusty earth-colours spilling into the rug. The woman jumped back with a shriek. Fai flinched and pulled back his hand. It had been hovering above the now-unravelling jar. His eyes were wide, mouth frozen in a disbelieving gape. Kurogane looked at Fai’s bony wrists and remembered the way the Lightsmage had looked, their arms held tenderly away from their exhausted body. Horror filled his heart like quicksand.

“You must be from other worlds,” she spat. “They don’t have wards!” she called to the people around her, waving a frantic hand and lilting back with a scream as one of the pots at her feet splintered apart. One after the other, the pieces exploded or melted away, each seeming to set off another. Kurogane watched as the pieces sank into the pattern on the rug, tiny fragments swimming away like tadpoles. The woman flung herself on the grass just in time for the rug to swallow her wares like a pool of water.

A commotion quickly rose around them. There seemed to be a moment of collective hesitation, as though the market-goers were confused by the occurrence of a second incident in the same morning. Over the water, Kurogane could see some of the bank dwellers looking up with interest.

“The bridge,” Kurogane said. “If that’s where they want to drag us to, we’ll just go there ourselves.”

People were beginning to filter out of their stalls and form unhappy clusters to advance on them when they came to the stone pillars at the mouth of the bridge. The guards had seen them coming, and were already moving to aim their weapons.

“Just go through,” Kurogane said. Fai nodded, sheltering Syaoran as they turned and ran. Kurogane put himself between the gunmen and his companions, materialising Ginryuu in his left hand and unsheathing it. The first guard was already halfway to raising his weapon. Kurogane wasted no time in leaping forward, the guard’s face dissolving from composure into panic as he brought his sword down. The feeling of the blade running through flesh still sent a shudder of satisfaction through his sword-arm. Kurogane had just enough time to think that the reaction should have sickened him.

The guard’s gun fell to the ground, his hand dropping with it. The second guard stood frozen in her place, eyes darting between the maimed man and the sword that had burst from Kurogane’s palm. Kurogane rode forward on his momentum and threw her down, her body slamming into the stone parapet of the bridge with a sound like an axe cutting into wood. The whole thing happened in a matter of moments as the marketplace watched on, horrified. Kurogane fled towards his companions to the far side of the bridge, heedless of the yells of the crowd who dared not follow. He didn’t know what was on this side. They’d never had the chance to ask.

Bracing himself, he plunged into the forest.

---

The canopy grasped and groaned above their heads as the trio stopped beyond the view of the canal. They could hear the townspeople clattering to pick up the guards’ weapons, and the sound of gunfire tearing through the air for a while, before the racket fell to nothing. Birdsong and rustling trickled out of the silence in its wake.

Fai’s heart began to slow, his fist unclenching around the slip of paper. He leaned against a black coil of tree and shrugged off his coat. His hair was slicked to his neck from fear as much as from the cold dewy air. Kurogane flicked his sword, spattering the grass with blood. It could have been mud, clinging to the vegetation underfoot and wetting the rich green ground like the morning fog. The warrior sheathed his sword and let it dissolve back into his spelled hand. He was unharmed. They all were. Fai bundled his coat against his throbbing chest and shook out a breath of relief.

“Okay,” he said, aiming for composure and hitting a low, quiet note instead. “That didn’t work.”

Syaoran pulled his coat close around his shoulders, stroking Mokona silently. He peered into the forest wound tightly around them, and said, “What exactly is this place?”

This side of the canal seemed like a different world than the first. Development had not made it past the bridge. There was no edge of humanity around; no lathe of voices or building or bustling anywhere to be sensed. It was almost calm, Fai thought, his eyes drawn to the blood staining the grass. Eerie was perhaps the better word. As if on cue, a wave of silence entered Fai’s head. The noiseless noise that appeared alongside an anomaly filled the air, though it felt muffled, as though it originated from a distance. Then it was gone.

“Wherever they shuck off their outcasts to,” Kurogane muttered, as though that was the beginning and end of it.

Fai’s hair was mussed and uncomfortable in its binding. He clicked his tongue and untied his ponytail, trying to force the tremor in his breath to stop. He inhaled to his stomach, stiff fingers slipping on the ribbon and missing the knot twice before finally tugging his hair free. He exhaled shakily and combed his fingers through his hair, carding it with slight frustration until he was satisfied that it was comfortable, and carefully re-tied his ponytail. He was just pulling it into place when they heard something shifting in the overgrowth. Kurogane’s hand flexed, ready to draw Ginryuu again, and Fai freed one hand automatically before remembering the effects of his ward-less state even without magic, and lowered his arm.

The sounds were close but difficult to locate in the mess of trees. Fai squinted. He could see sprigs of coarse plants moving with the disturbance of whatever was there, but it was hidden by a nearby trunk. Whatever it was, it was not cautious about making noise.

Slowly the thing came into view. Fai almost relaxed, until his eyes landed on the Lightsmage’s wrists and he felt a sympathetic shock in his stomach. Kurogane loosened his stance, but only slightly. Syaoran edged forward to stand beside his companions with wide eyes.

The Lightsmage was a crumpled imitation of the brilliant creature they had been yesterday. Their bulk had deflated with the matting of their bright blue plumage by grit and blood. Their pointed face looked haggard and sleepless, and their round, dark eyes were hazy. They looked like swaths of dirty colour on a frame of bone, all the more inhuman for the shape of their strange long legs and stunted wings. They looked at the travellers one by one and seemed to hesitate. Then, slightly, painfully, they lifted their arms to indicate their wounds. “Would you…” they started, voice quivering. “Are any of you healer-mages?”

Fai looked at his companions, at their hesitant faces, and turned back to the Lightsmage with a frown. “I’m the only mage,” he said. “But I can’t heal anyone.”

The Lightsmage’s face dropped. They seemed reluctant to say or do anything, wavering on their legs and looking at the ground. Finally, they mumbled a string of blessings and turned to leave.

“Wait,” said Syaoran. “We might still be able to help.” He gestured for the uncertain Lightsmage to sit, kneeling on the ground and shimmying out of his coat. Mokona had helpfully coughed up a salve and some bandages in pre-emption, which Syaoran pulled from the folds of his jacket where she stayed hidden. “Here,” he said, holding the items up for the Lightsmage to see. “We can stop it from getting worse.”

The Lightsmage considered him with a tired eye. “I don’t…” they began, sighing and allowing themselves to collapse to their knees. “I wouldn’t normally talk. To you.” They shuffled closer to Syaoran as he began to open the jar of salve. “But today has been an… an unfortunate day.” They mumbled another short blessing, as though making up for the continued contact. Guilt sharpened their voice, and Fai had to swallow the lump in his throat.

 The Lightsmage trembled as Syaoran wiped the blood from their tender wounds. The skin of their arms was thin and grey, scaled in the way that birds’ legs are. They hadn’t bled enough to kill, the arms being so frail and thin and not at all like human arms, but the thought of how the wounds had appeared made Fai’s jaw clench. “I’m sorry,” was all that the boy said.

The Lightsmage looked anxiously up at Syaoran’s companions. Their eyes darted from Kurogane to Fai and back again, and they didn’t seem to calm when Fai sat down in the damp grass between the roots of the black tree. Kurogane stood nearby, still looking behind them and keenly observing the forest that meandered off in every other direction. His sword hand curled readily at his side.

The smell of camphor and medicinal herbs wafted up as Syaoran applied the salve to the Lightsmage’s wounds and wrapped them firmly with the bandages. “This ointment is from my home kingdom. It’s a common antiseptic,” he said by way of meagre consolation. “The priestess blessed it for us before we left.” It wasn’t a very thorough treatment. They had no fresh water to clean the wounds and no healers to aid in their fixing. But it would have to do.

“Thank you,” the Lightsmage said. They fell back on their haunches to rest in the grass, and were quiet.

The sound of the forest hushing and stretching was interrupted by Kurogane grunting. Fai looked up at him questioningly. The warrior cocked his head in the Lightsmage’s direction and gestured to Fai’s hand. “The note.”

Fai stared at Kurogane for a moment, the suggestion dawning slowly on him. He hadn’t thought at all about deciphering the innkeeper’s message since they’d fled. All too recently he’d watched a carpet swallow an entire market stall and been reminded of things he’d rather not remember on a bright cold morning out with his companions. He’d felt fear at the sudden outburst of violence on the bridge, and it wasn’t that he’d forgotten the sensation of adrenalin flooding him, or that he was sensitive to the sight of horror. But he hadn’t believed that the consequences of his ward breaking would erupt so soon, and so unceremoniously. He hadn’t believed these things could hurt him anymore.

Still he thought of Kurogane on the bridge, and frowned for a thought of how nice their morning could have been. Bitterly, he flattened the paper against his leg and ran his eyes over it again. It had none of the runes he’d recognised outside the inn. It was a more functional script, he guessed, and one which he’d never seen before in his world or any he was familiar with. “It’s probably back on the other side. Then what do we do?”

Kurogane glared at him and looked back into the trees, arms crossing over his chest. Inching towards the Lightsmage with a rustle of the paper in his hands, Fai said, “I know this is incredibly poor timing. It might not be important anymore–” at this, he heard Kurogane turn in the grass with a thump of his boot, “–but if you’re able to, would you read this message for us?”

The Lightsmage blinked at Fai’s extended hand. They passed their slow gaze over him and looked back at the paper, staring at it for a long moment. “Yes,” they began. “It says, ‘On the far side of the canal, past the old temple, greenhouse at the end of the road.’”

“On this side?” Kurogane said.

Syaoran leaned in towards the Lightsmage. “What do you know about this side of the canal?” he asked.

The Lightsmage shook their head. “This is where one comes to disappear.” They trembled again and tried awkwardly to curl in on themselves, bandaged wrists held aloft. “This side is governed by anomalies. They say the anomalies grow so frequent sometimes that they swallow people whole. You stay on this side forever if you’re sent here.”

“Then why did they have to do this?” Syaoran asked sadly. The Lightsmage looked down as their hands with a small shrug.

“I can’t go back if I'm broken, can I?” they said. Their shaking intensified, and a sound like a sniff rushed through their nostrils. They hid their face in their shoulder for a while, and stayed like that until they seemed to remember something. “That note.” They lifted their face to look at the travellers again. “What is it?”

“Some directions,” Syaoran said. “We’re looking for a repairman to fix a ward. Apparently there’s a mage who can do that.” He gestured vaguely to the Lightsmage. “Did yours break? Maybe we can all look together, or you could give us your ward and we’ll try to have it fixed for you.”

The Lightsmage looked long and hard at the boy and exhaled loudly. “I don’t have one,” they said. “I never did. My magic hardly ever caused disruptions, but it did last night.” They eyed the travellers and seemed to frown. “They’re expensive. And difficult to find, if your job is… I mean, if it was… I just light the lamps.” Fai’s brows drew together and he looked to Kurogane. The warrior’s lips were taut.

“We’ve got to get going,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the forest. “Do you know anything about this temple?”

The Lightsmage quivered under Kurogane’s gaze. “It’s on the pathway out, I’ve heard. The path that leaves from the bridge. It was made hundreds of years ago, before we split apart.” They gestured weakly to themselves, and then to the travellers. “When we were like you, or like those ones in the trees, and not like both of you at once. But factions split and this side was left to decay. The temple was famous until then.” Syaoran listened keenly to what history the Lightsmage was willing to give. On any other day, Fai knew, they boy would have pressed for more. The Lightsmage looked at Fai and added, “You might stop the anomalies around you, but you won’t get back to the other side. That canal is five parts water and five parts fear.”

The Lightsmage’s eyes were round and unfocused. They were still in shock. Fai shuddered to think of the moment when isolation and terror would set in their stomach. Fear was molten and hot until it settled, and then it was cold, heavy and hard to erode. He looked away, his eyes catching the blood on the grass as he did so.

Kurogane began to shift in his place. He was ready to leave. Fai stood and wiped the leaf litter and dew from his clothes, Syaoran reluctantly gathering up his coat with Mokona inside it. “How will you find somewhere to stay?” asked Syaoran.

The Lightsmage shrugged. “I suppose I’ll talk to the ones on the bank.” Syaoran pressed his lips together.

“Please come with us. We could try to help you.”

The Lightsmage didn’t respond. They looked blankly towards the canal, and then seemed to notice the jar of antiseptic still sitting beside them. “Your ointment,” they said, gesturing to the ground.

“That’s okay,” said Syaoran, placing the jar inside a large pocket in the Lightsmage’s cloak. “Keep it.”

The Lightsmage looked on silently as the travellers waded back toward the bridge through glistening undergrowth. Fai took a last look at the creature before they were obscured by the dense forest, and shivered.

---

The travellers found the pathway after ten or twenty minutes of searching. It was ill-used and broken, hidden beneath a carpet of moss and curling ferns. But it was hard stone underneath, like the bridge. It was wide enough for carts to move on and bore smooth-worn tracks underneath its green-tinted surface.

The travellers took up on the path as the sun was rising to mid-morning height. The foliage split the light into shuddering patterns on the ground and in the grass, which was stiff and green and grew on and between and around everything. The path cracked open here and there, with tall, pointed trees growing through it and breaking the pattern of stones so harshly that once or twice, the travellers lost the path and had to search to find it again. Other parts of the path swelled with unnatural lumps, or had stones that had grown too big or too small, the whole path creaking into place around an old anomaly. The travellers heard far-off cracks and booms, silent but alive, to remind them that they were not alone in this forest and they were ever at risk of creating anomalies themselves.

Or rather, Fai thought, of him creating an anomaly.

---

They reached the temple in the late afternoon.

It was shocking to see; a monolith rising from a clearing in the forest, where no trees grew for a wide diameter around. Fai had almost expected it to be farther away. Certainly, it seemed to belong to another, unreachable plane. The temple was a huge hemispherical building, with layers of pale red paint peeling from its outer walls so that it reminded Fai of a halved grapefruit. Tendrils of green growth spilled down its sides and pooled around it, the final whispers of sunlight weaving through its leafy adornments. It had aged into something wild and haunted, settling into the landscape like a hill.

The little group advanced with caution. Kurogane had pointed out that there were likely others who had made the spot their home and that if they met anyone it was best to keep going. But as they approached an archway in the wall of the temple and peered inside, it became clear that the building was uninhabited.

“Oh, wow,” Syaoran said. Mokona bounced on his shoulder as he craned his neck to see inside, a grin spreading on his face despite their situation. No windows lined the walls, but a round skylight let warm light wash over the ferns that poked between the stones. It was made of glass, with segments arranged into a geometric picture of celestial bodies, but several panels had fallen through long ago. Broken pieces lay on the ground, smoothed by time and covered in greenery.

Syaoran looked back at his companions. A sheepish air came over him and he asked, “Do you think it’s safe to go in?”

Fai sensed no aura of magic around the place. A little smile settled on his lips and he looked to Kurogane, who shrugged. “Seems so. Just stay alert.”

Syaoran nodded and hurried inside, stepping carefully over plants and dislodged stones to examine a fresco on the wall. He absorbed himself immediately in theories about the history of the place, commenting on the repetition of birds in the pictures and how some parts were too worn to see, but how exciting it was anyway, to see something like this, and if only he could show it to Sakura. Fai and Kurogane went to the circle of light on the ground, Kurogane prodding at one of the shattered pieces of skylight with his feet. It had rooted itself in rich fluffy moss, tiny beetles sparkling in the sprouts.

“That’s one thing we’re lucky for,” Fai said, looking over his shoulder at Syaoran. Kurogane followed his gaze to the boy; to the hands running across the stones and the lonely smile on his face. “At least we’re here together.” The sun faded from their backs minute by minute, but even as the temple grew darker, Fai had only to touch his knuckles to the back of Kurogane’s hand to dispel some of the fear. They stayed in the circle of light until it disappeared, and Mokona supplied them with three Piffle Princess Super Insulation Sleeping Bags that they kept for just these sorts of nights, and they set up around the glow of a little solar lamp to bring an end to the long day.

---

It was well before midnight when Fai crept out of his sleeping bag and went to the door. Kurogane sat up and watched him leave. The lamp was on low enough to sleep but bright enough that they might see through the dark if they needed to. In its light, Fai was a long, pale form ghosting through the archway. Kurogane looked at Syaoran. The boy was asleep, or at least had his eyes closed, and Mokona cuddled soundlessly against his chest.

Kurogane slipped out of his bag as quietly as he could and went out the door. He kept his senses sharp, monitoring constantly for the presence of other people, but he sensed nothing in or around the temple for now. The only other person in the clearing was Fai, his aura a familiar presence on the back of Kurogane’s consciousness that flickered and hummed with warmth.

The mage did not turn as Kurogane stepped up beside him, but his eyes were calm. Kurogane went to put a hand on his back and drew it away again, grappling with the words on his tongue. “You okay?” he managed.

Fai smiled and put his head on Kurogane’s arm with a sigh. “Yeah,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all.” A full moon illuminated the fog on the ground and the wet glistening of the grass. The billowing shapes of the forest were frightening, and the endless spread of unknown territory disconcerting, but Fai was warm at his side, so Kurogane tried to relax. “You didn’t have to rush out here right away, you know. I’m right by the door.”

“Yes I did,” Kurogane said. Fai tilted his head to meet Kurogane’s gaze. The mage lulled against him with an almost exasperated look on his face, lips curving softly upwards. He lifted a hand to Kurogane’s cheek and traced the high cheekbones, running strong fingers along his jaw.

“Getting possessive, Kuro-rin?” he teased.

“Don’t,” Kurogane growled. “I’m worried about you,” His voice was harsh, but it frayed at the edges. Fai looked taken aback. “This world hasn’t come at a good time.”

Fai shook his head and gave a sad smile. “Do they ever?” He let his hand drop. The trees sighed and settled around the clearing, a breeze fluttering through Fai’s hair and sweeping a gentle chill over Kurogane’s skin. “We just have to deal with it,” Fai whispered, and his voice left the same shadow over Kurogane’s heart as the image of the night around them, full of the fear of a child stepping out of home into the dark.

Kurogane wrapped his false arm around Fai and pulled him in securely. He almost smiled when Fai’s eyes opened a little wider. He opened his mouth to speak, shut it, grumbled, and tried again. “Are you?” he managed. “Okay. I mean.”

Fai didn’t answer. Kurogane’s lips hardened again, hand tightening on Fai’s arm. “I’m freaked out,” Fai admitted. “But I’ll be okay.” Kurogane compulsively ran a thumb over Fai’s upper arm and tried to suppress another sigh. Fai shook his head at him with a smirk. “Have some faith in us, hm?” His eyes were steady on Kurogane’s, his fingers tangling in his clothing, lips a shade off of content. But he was there, unpretending. Reticence took Kurogane’s breath away as often as Fai did, so he did not tell him he loved him. But he put a hand to Fai’s waist, heavy and still, let the mage sling a loose arm around his neck, and the meaning was clear.

He kissed Fai’s cheek and his jaw, the space under his ear, feeding on the tension in his fingers and the slow release of his breath. A hand rested unthinkingly over the mage’s heart to shield the wound beneath. Fai laughed breathily into his hair, and the sensation made him flinch. “What?”

He ran a hand over Kurogane’s back and pressed his lips to his ear. “Looks like you’re the one in need of comforting.”

“Shut up.” He put his chin stiffly on top of Fai’s head. “Asshole magician,” he muttered.

“Grumpy puppy.”

Fai’s lips formed a smile against Kurogane’s neck, and they nestled wordlessly into each other for a long, unbroken moment. Kurogane’s consciousness still buzzed with attention for every whisper in the grass, his awareness trained on the temple behind them where Syaoran slept. But he was with Fai, and they were okay. It was peaceful.

So when he felt a hot sting like poison and glass on his chest, and he heard a clipped noise like stones colliding, he jerked out of Fai’s arms. Fai gasped audibly and clutched at him, but he held the mage at arm’s length, afraid that it wasn’t over. Fai stared at Kurogane’s chest. “No way,” he breathed.

Kurogane wormed a hand underneath his clothes and touched the blood on his skin, and felt the hard edge of the broken ward. “Shit.” He could feel a piece of it divorced from the rest, lodged into his skin. It wasn’t very deep, but it hurt. He slid two fingers on either side of it and drew it out, letting the chunk lie cold in his palm.

They watched as it dulled before their eyes, the curling colours inside it growing thick like mud and stilling all at once. What was left was small and dirty-looking, like chipped rock.

“They’re useless,” he spat.

Fai shook his head. His fingers fluttered around the broken piece of the ward and touched Kurogane’s arms aimlessly. Kurogane flinched at his expression, parts frustration and sadness and rage. “We can get them both fixed. We’ll get this mage to put them back together.”

Kurogane sighed at the ward and Fai’s trembling fingers. The disbelief in Fai’s eyes was slipping quickly into a look of resignation that belied his hopeful words. Kurogane hated that look. He wanted to shock that resignation away, and took all of a second to decide what he was going to do. “Fuck it,” he said. He hurled the shard across the clearing. It was a black dot twirling against the sky for a second before he lost sight of it. Fai’s eyes widened as his companion tore the remaining part of the ward off its cord and struck it into the night. He wiped his hands once on his jacket and let his arms hang awkwardly at his sides. Fai’s stare didn’t break. “We’ll have the mage make us some new ones.” Kurogane said with a satisfied huff. “She can make the kid and the meat bun new ones, too. I bet they fall to pieces tomorrow.”

Fai stared at Kurogane, then stared at the field, and turned to Kurogane again. “You just threw it away.”

“Yeah.”

For a moment, the rustling of the trees and the meandering wind was all Kurogane could hear. He didn’t look at the man beside him until he heard a desperate shuffling sound. Fai scrabbled for the ward underneath his clothing and tore the thing from his neck. He looked at it for a moment, jaw clenching. Then he pegged it across the field. It flew straight and true and landed somewhere on the edge of the trees on the far side. He dusted his hands and looked at the spot for a time, turning his gaze at last on Kurogane with high brows and pursed lips. Slowly, he laughed, and Kurogane didn’t try to stop the grin from spreading across his face.

“Where’s the wine?” Fai said. “I want to make my regret worth it in the morning.”

“I don’t regret shit.”

“Good.”

They stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the grass ripple blue in the moonlight, courting the crisp forest air. Kurogane tugged on Fai’s sleeve after a while, jerking his head towards the temple. His breath tightened for a second when Fai hesitated – but the mage took one last look into the dark, and then turned on his heel. He slipped his hand into Kurogane’s, and the two of them walked across the damp ground, past the shadows in the trees, and into the temple.

---

The skylight was still splayed with stars when Fai awoke. He rolled onto his back and squinted at the glass, wondering at the contrast of the ceiling lit bright by the solar lamp and the abysmal, glittering sky beyond it. Then he wondered why it was still so dark outside, and heard Kurogane packing their things and hoisting them into Mokona’s open mouth. He glanced at the temple door. Morning light filtered through the leaves. A breeze ushered the ferns into flitting gestures. The clearing was bathed in a soft, early glow.

Fai sat up immediately and looked around for Syaoran. The boy was rising as well, apparently awoken by Kurogane’s ruckus. He frowned at Fai’s expression, and turned his gaze to follow the mage’s. He looked at the skylight, and then looked at the door. He eyed the ceiling again and said, calmly, “We should probably leave.”

“We are,” Kurogane said. He gestured for the sleeping bags to stuff into Mokona’s mouth. Fai shimmied out of his and Mokona swallowed it as soon as he was free.

 “When did that happen?” he said, stepping out of the skylight’s vicinity.

“About five minutes ago,” said Kurogane. “I’d just woken up. Then the sound happened and the skylight turned into a space window.”

Fai looked up. The night sky was cluttered with constellations he did not recognise. He hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention to the sky last night, but he was not inclined to believe that it was the same. “At least it doesn’t seem dangerous,” he said.

“Yet.”

Fai worried at his lip and hugged his arms close to his body. He eyed the window, wondering whether this anomaly was his or Kurogane’s. He hadn’t heard anything while he’d been sleeping. It could have been something far worse than a window into a foreign night sky, he decided. “Well,” he said, as Syaoran yawned and forced his eyes wide. “At least we’re starting out early.”

They turned to leave, Kurogane at the rear. But he did not move straight away. He was still fixated on the sight when Fai looked back. He was watching it lucidly, lips fixed, memory in his gaze. It was a knowing look. “Kuro-sama?”

Kurogane turned away from it slowly. He sidled up to Fai and took one last look at the strange constellations and billowing galactic arms. “Nihon’s sky,” he said.

Fai stared. Kurogane shook his head and stomped onward. “’S mine, I guess.”

“Yours?” Syaoran said softly. The boy had stopped to wait for his companions, and now listened with knit brows.

Fai’s lip snagged between his teeth, neither of them moving. Finally, he let out a long, sharp sigh and gestured limply to Kurogane. “His ward broke last night.” Syaoran’s face fell instantly under the weight of worry. He lifted a hand to his own ward as if on instinct, and looked frantically between the two men. “It’s okay,” Fai said. “I think I just got too close to it.”

“Mage,” Kurogane warned.

“Well, are you going to get new ones?” Syaoran asked. Then he covered his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sorry. Not that – I’m scared for you, is all.”

“No – it’s fine,” Fai said. “We need them.”

“Mage.”

“What?”

“Someone’s here.”

The trio froze. Kurogane’s left hand rose slowly, ready to raise Ginryuu. Fai strained to listen. He watched Syaoran’s eyes as they scanned the interior of the temple, finding nothing. Fai inspected the fresco and the door. He heard only the flutter of the grass and the chatter of birds waking.

Kurogane twitched beside him. The morning sounds became punctuated by the crumple of boots on damp ground and the shuck of heavy clothing. His own hand stiffened, ready to cast a barrier or a minor offensive spell if the need arose – ward or no. He watched the door.

A figure emerged to silhouette the light. They came from the side, tall and unafraid.

“There you are,” they said. It was a woman’s voice.

“Who are you?” Kurogane said.

The woman scoffed. She tugged at a long, dark curl and climbed unabashedly over the fallen stones to approach the group. Her pants were stained with dirt, her hair pulled into a dishevelled ponytail that fanned over her shoulders. She looked as though she had run the length of the forest track in an hour. “Pulling a stunt like that,” she said as she landed on the other side, “and then welcoming your saviour with such suspicion. You wound me.”

Her grin was cattish and proud, despite the weariness of her gait. She stopped when she was several feet away, wholly unintimidated by the nervous stances of the travellers. They watched in silence as she unbuttoned a pocket in the front of her woollen coat and drew out two small rocks.

“Our wards,” Fai said. The woman gave a tired grin.

“That they are.”

“Why does she have them?” Syaoran said, alarmed.

“These two silly boys,” said the woman with a toss of her head, “threw them away because they were broken.” She held out her palm. The two wards and their shards lay within their owners’ reach, spattered with dirt and looking more useless than ever. “Is that what you normally do?”

“Is what what we normally do?” Kurogane said.

“Throw things away when they break.” Her smile didn’t waver. Kurogane sounded as though he might scoff, but he didn’t.

The woman watched them with eyes the colour of deer pelt, rich and reflective. The squint of her gaze was kind, but Fai observed the worldliness of someone who had seen sorrow. He eyed the hair, and the elegant disposition, but it was her voice that made him remember.

“Do you sing, by any chance?” he asked.

She looked at him with wide, curious eyes. “I sing all the time,” she replied. Fai nodded at the tone of her voice, the dark silk timbre clicking into place in the haze of an unfamiliar bar, long ago.

“And could you take us to this fixer-mage?” he asked. Kurogane looked at him out of the corner of his eye, saying nothing. Fai gave a reassuring smile. He wanted to convey that he knew this sequence somehow, and that Kurogane should trust the revelation that had dawned on him. And Kurogane seemed to accept, his eyes softening for Fai’s before he turned away.

The woman tipped her head back and laughed. “She’s an hour from here,” she said. “I could introduce you, I suppose. Although,” she reached for Fai’s wrist, pressing his ward into his palm, then turned to Kurogane and put the other ward into his more stubborn hand, “she might be upset by your treatment of her creations.”

Fai looked over his ward again, at the bruised colour and the cracks, and brushed his thumb over the broken surface. “We’ll tell her we’re sorry.”

---

The forest grew thinner the more they walked. Beyond the temple, evidence of past life lingered everywhere. The path was interspersed with lanterns, similar to those on the other bank, only more ornate, and rusted. Some were broken or missing pieces of their wrought metal decoration, but they flanked the path like harbingers, no less proud for their old age. Among the firs and ash trees were hanging structures. Metal and wood interwove to form little floating boxes, attached to the boughs by chains.

Fai noticed something else. There were more birds in this area than he’d seen anywhere else. They were normal-sized birds, flitting in and out of the boxes and perching atop the lanterns as they passed, but in such quantity that it made him stare. Perhaps it was the birds, or maybe the light that filtered more freely into the forest here, but it didn’t seem as forlorn as yesterday.

“Do people live here?” Fai asked.

The woman – Oruha, they had learnt, as she towed them tirelessly away from the temple at dawn – didn’t turn around. “Not here,” she said. “But further on. This side isn’t like the one you landed on.”

Kurogane eyed Oruha’s back as she led them along the path. “Why are you helping us?” he asked flatly.

She looked over her shoulder at that, giving a tight grin. “I was out late fixing one of the boxes last night,” she said. “I could feel Suu’s magic near the temple, as far away as it was. I felt one of them break, and I came looking.” She shrugged. “That’s it. Ah.” Fai noticed a small, unmarked path scuffed into the ground. It branched away from the main path and wound into the forest. Oruha started on it immediately, and the travellers could do nothing but follow.

“This used to be a greenhouse,” Oruha said as they came upon a large moss-covered structure several minutes later. “The whole area used to back on to a commune. It hasn’t been used since before the merge happened.” Syaoran was halfway to opening his mouth and pouncing on the term when she turned to him suddenly. “I might take your wards while we go in. Active ones can behave strangely when they cross the threshold.”

“Oh,” Syaoran said, fumbling with the cord as he drew it over his head and handed it to Oruha. Kurogane frowned at the boy’s obedience Fai stifled his grumbles with a look. “Here,” Syaoran said to Mokona, slipping her cord off over her round body and long ears.

“Mokona got found out again,” she said.

Oruha took the wards with a laugh and patted Mokona on the head. “You don’t need to hide here,” she said. She pulled open the greenhouse door as easily as if it had been a door on a doll’s house, though it was made of glass and appeared heavy with greenery, and beckoned the travellers in. Behind her, Fai could see only more curling ferns and wrought iron.

The travellers stepped carefully inside. The greenhouse seemed unremarkable, aside from its apparent desolation, but it was an enclosed space nonetheless. And there was magic in it, though it felt steady and subdued. They did not relax yet. Fai gave Oruha a practiced smile when he passed her, but it quickly fell to shock when he crossed the ‘threshold’.

He put a hand to Kurogane’s wrist. Something swept over him – into him – like the atmosphere of a new world. It was the feeling opposite of abandonment. He felt as though he had just opened his eyes on Kurogane’s face two nights ago, and the shadows outside the window were distant and clouded behind a shroud of warmth. He felt an incessant pulse under his fingers. He was almost sure he could hear it, like the thrumming that fills silence when silence grows too large. He pulled his ward from his pocket. It was still dark and empty. But it was warm.

The others had felt the same thing. Syaoran stood bewildered for a moment, looking around at the inside of the structure with a gaping expression. Kurogane’s fingers wrapped around Fai’s wrist and tightened. The touch felt like pressure placed over a wound – good, and secure, if a little painful.

“Welcome in,” said Oruha. “Suu. I’ve found some wards of yours.”

For the first time, Fai looked properly at the greenhouse. It was larger on the inside than it had been outside. A spell he recognised, in its most basic elements. It was a bustling garden, with rooms tucked between the lanterns and shrubs. The buildings, and the chairs scattered among the flower beds, and the boxes of the lanterns themselves, were all made from salvaged materials. Discarded jars made the lamps, broken doors and concrete statues formed the seats, and the rooms were crafted of mismatching walls to create a scene that was as inviting as it was quaint. At the head of the garden, in a wooden chair surrounded by tiny birds, was a girl no older than Princess Sakura.

She smiled softly and looked to Oruha. The older woman went to her side and kissed her on the head, standing proudly by her chair.

“Hello,” Syaoran said, his voice as composed and polite as when he spoke to royalty. “We’re here to see you about some of our wards. We’re not sure why, but they’ve broken.”

Suu looked at her feet and at the birds darting between the legs of her chair. She took a moment to prepare herself before speaking. “I’m sorry about that.” She pointed a hand gingerly towards Fai and Kurogane. “Do you have them?”

“Yes,” Fai said. He took Kurogane’s ward and brought it with his own to the girl, placing them into her cupped hands. “It’s nothing to be sorry about, though,” he said. “I think my magic broke them.”

Suu shook her head. “Magic doesn’t break them. Even destructive magic can’t do it.”

Fai flinched slightly at the word. “You can tell straight away what kind of magic I use?”

The girl nodded sheepishly, fingers twisting together in her lap. “It’s okay,” she said, glancing between Fai and the wards. “You didn’t break them.” She lifted each ward slowly, looking at them with wistful eyes. “I think they will all break, soon. I can’t sustain that many of them so far away from me.”

“You’re putting so much energy into this enclosure,” said Oruha. “You’ve done a good job just to keep them alive this long.”

“Wait,” Kurogane said. Fai felt him approach to stand beside him, just close enough to touch. His face was brittle when Fai turned to look, suspended somewhere between sleeplessness and mistrust. “You didn’t make all the wards on the other side, did you?”

Suu shook her head, eyes wide. “We came from far away,” she said. “We’d heard of this place. Oruha wanted to see it.” The woman beside her pressed her lips together, averting her eyes to the swarm of birds on the ground. “I made the wards by copying the ones other mages had made. People were already using them, so they won’t all break.”

“Just the ones that dirty innkeeper sold,” said Oruha. “He was quite a powerful mage, but poor, with no ward of his own. They exiled him to this side about a year ago.”

“Really?” Syaoran said. Fai imagined the sharp, unforgiving innkeeper fleeing across the bridge, his glossy feathers and intelligent eyes perfectly incompatible with the image in his mind.

“We gave him a whole bunch of wards to take back to the bank dwellers,” said Oruha. “But he changed the colour of his feathers, went back to the far side and started selling them. So we turned this place into a refuge instead.”

Syaoran blinked disbelievingly. “The innkeeper seemed very well-established when we met him.”

“Well, wards are in high demand, although you wouldn’t need them in here.” said Oruha. “People are very suspicious about anomalies, even though they’re not all dangerous.” Kurogane looked questioningly at her. She returned his stare with ease. “Your little skylight debacle?” she said. “Just a dreamspawn, probably.”

Suu giggled and held out a finger to one of the birds. It fluttered to perch on her hand and she watched it with a smile. “Anomalies are just feelings coming out,” she said. “Sometimes we feel dangerous things, so sometimes the anomalies are dangerous. Mine are that way, too.”

Fai didn’t know what to say to that. The group was silent for a long time, listening to the chirruping of the birds and the fragile beating of their wings. Eventually, when the time was right to speak again, Syaoran asked his question. “Where did the bird people come from?”

Suu blinked at him. When she replied, she might have been reciting an alphabet. “They were born from an anomaly. A very strong one, from the days when people worshipped birds.”

Syaoran nodded. “I see,” he said, and was quiet.

---

Fai clicked open the box of medical supplies Suu and Oruha had provided them with. His own orb-light in the wall glimmered on the metal casing, reminding Kurogane of hearth-glow. He watched as Fai drew out a bottle of alcohol, two cloth pads and two tightly wound bandages, settling beside him on the ground. They hadn’t acquired much bedding, let alone beds, Oruha had explained when she showed them to their room, but they would need it soon.

“I hope those bank-dwellers are all able to make the trip,” Fai said. He dabbed some alcohol onto the gauze and lifted it gently to Kurogane’s skin. Kurogane appreciated the sear of the liquid meeting his wound, cleansing it for the first time since it had appeared. Fai brushed away some of the dried blood and placed the gauze down, their fingers brushing as Kurogane pressed on it.

“They can treat that Lightsmage here,” Kurogane said. Fai nodded slightly, unwinding a bandage and nudging Kurogane forward so he could wrap it over his shoulder and around his torso. Suu’s face flashed in Kurogane’s mind, eager to make amends for a phenomenon that wasn’t her fault, and he sighed. She’d explained the reason for the greenhouse’s creation – to provide a safe place for the unprotected dwellers on this side of the canal. At least, the girl had said, until their anomalies stopped hurting them.

Fai placed a hand over Kurogane’s heart, steady and comforting. He smiled at Kurogane, and seemed to forget what he was going to say when their eyes locked. “Um,” he started, “They wanted to show us around. We’d better hurry.”

Kurogane shook his head and picked up the bandages while Fai cleaned his own wound. He waited until the mage had finished with it and held the pad over his skin. Then he helped him wrap the bandages around himself. “We don’t need to hurry that much,” Kurogane said.

Something had been slowly occurring to him since they’d come here. When he looked at Fai, and at the subdued beauty of the wards, he felt himself drawn to thinking of old things. He remembered the anxiety of not knowing what was behind those eyes, and fearing that whatever had once been there might not be recoverable. He thought of the broken remains of his home after the night the demons came, one human and the others decidedly not, and he remembered the way the firelight streaked their alien bodies like blood. He thought of the clones, wherever they might or might not be, and of the boy that valiantly sought them, far from his princess.

And he thought of how, despite that his own pain had survived it all, something else had, too.

Fai waited. Kurogane rested a hand on his shoulder, his eyes focused somewhere on the ground.

“You haven’t been totally okay, lately,” Fai noted. He put a hand on Kurogane’s bent knee, eyes tracing his face. “What’s wrong?”

There was plenty wrong. But they both knew that. Instead, Kurogane tried to figure out how to unravel the thing that had bunched up in his chest, and how to give it to Fai as he wanted to. “If I ever go back to Suwa,” Kurogane said, “I’ll need a mage. For the wards – the actual wards.”

Fai said nothing.

“I just keep thinking about it,” he added, frustration beginning to simmer. “When we first got here, the – birds, you know, they reminded me of…” he swallowed. “They look kind of like the demons.”

Fai nodded slightly, his hand squeezing Kurogane’s knee.

“And that made me think of Suwa.” He shrugged. “’S prolly a wreck, but… I think of it.” He shrugged again, trying to find the words and settling for what he meant. “I need you.”

Fai nodded again, jaw tight. He looked at Kurogane for several long seconds, and Kurogane felt his ears heat up. “I didn’t know whether to ask you,” he said at last. “I thought you might have just expected it of me.” When he smiled, it was with relief. And joy. His smirk told Kurogane he saw him, right down to his flaws and grumbles, and was glad for what he saw.

“So,” Kurogane said, gesturing vaguely, “You will?”

Fai shut his eyes and gave a loud, exasperated sigh. “I could ask for nothing more,” he said.

---

Suu stroked the back of a small, brown bird, and Syaoran took another sip of the flower-infused water he’d been given.

“This place is wonderful,” he complimented. “We weren’t expecting to find all this when we started looking for someone to fix the wards.”

Suu smiled, her eyes drifting to Oruha where she lay napping on a blanket-covered seat. “Fixing things is something I’ve always wanted to do,” she said. “I can’t fix everything, though. I’m like your friend.” She took a slow sip of her own beverage, never quite meeting Syaoran’s eyes. “I’m not a healer-mage, either.”

Syaoran nodded understandingly. “This is still great,” he said, sweeping his hand at the greenhouse with awe. “I think we really needed to come here, you know. I think it’s fixed something.”

“Thank you,” Suu said. “But I didn’t fix any of you.” This time, she met Syaoran’s eyes. “I think you all have some fixing-powers of your own.” Syaoran looked back at her for a long moment. He gave her an appreciative smile, and nodded. His attention drew away when the bird hopped from her fingers and perched on the arm of her chair. It looked at Syaoran with tiny black eyes and tilted its head.

“Pretty!” Mokona said.

The bird considered them for a moment, and then darted away with a flutter of its wings. It joined a small flock of identical little birds and disappeared into the winding garden of the greenhouse. Syaoran followed it with his eyes for a moment, imagining how much Sakura would love this place. “In any case,” he said, settling back into a pool of warm sunlight, “I’m glad we’re here.”