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Syaoran turned over again and kicked the sheets off. The nights in Nirai Kanai were hot, which he wouldn’t have minded except that they were also choked with humidity. Darkness fell slowly, saturated with the din of insects and a lethargic, temperate breeze. The scent of tropical brush drifted inside with it, and Syaoran could smell it clearly even from the little room he shared with his companions. He’d left the wooden shutter open, but left down the blinds, the bamboo clattering hollowly against the stone walls. He closed his eyes to the sound of the fan-like plants rustling outside, to the faint clink and murmur and chuckles of his friends drinking on the front porch, and imagined what it would be like to go to sleep.
He had to sit up to knead his pillow into a more supportive shape a few minutes later, a sigh escaping his lips as he burrowed back into it. He almost remembered a time when he had slept comfortably, with the strung light-orbs on the ruins of Clow reflected in his mirror, and the cool clay walls of his house close around him. Longingly he pictured the blue-black desert at night with its quaint yellow windows. The thought crossed his mind, as he wriggled onto his belly, that he might never be comfortable again.
“Syaoran,” said Mokona. He turned his head just enough to see her where she nestled against his neck; he made a vaguely inquisitive sound. “Do you need something to go to sleep?”
“No,” Syaoran said with a tired smile. “I should be fine.” He raised a hand to pet her and sighed again. His arm felt stiff and awkward in his belly-down position. “It’s just been a while since I couldn’t get to sleep, so I’m a little annoyed.”
“That sounds frustrating,” Mokona said. Syaoran gave her another smile, and she tucked herself under his chin when he didn’t say any more.
A short burst of laughter sounded from the front of the house, muffled by the stone wall but clear in its joy. It was Fai’s laugh, breathy and sharp, cutting through the clamour of night sounds like crystal through water. The man quickly silenced himself, probably concerned for their sleeping friend, and continued his foray in hushed tones. Syaoran felt quietly sorry for that. It wasn’t as if he was getting sleep anyway, and he found the sound of his companions outside comforting.
Kurogane responded to Fai’s banter with a low snicker that forced the mage to suppress another laugh. Syaoran smiled at that. He thought he heard them scuffling on the wooden floorboards, and noticed the way Kurogane lowered his voice suddenly. Everything seemed to grow still with the abating breeze, a breath catching just audibly on the air. He kept his eyes stubbornly shut when the only sounds he heard from them became those which suggested their closeness, before he judged that the pair was slipping away, into the night. He heard them stepping into the grass, the gentle murmurs, and felt the glimmer of their auras become faint in the dark.
The air was silent and still for a long time as Syaoran readjusted to the sense that he was alone in the house. Not that his friends had gone immeasurably far; just far enough for privacy, he assumed. And he still had Mokona for company, he thought, and drew a hand over her velveteen fur.
But.
It was muggy. Syaoran was alone. Not immersed in books is a quiet library or sitting in his doorway at home, waiting for a familiar chestnut shimmer of hair to bob over the hill. Just alone.
“Are you thinking of Sakura?” Mokona said, her voice a tiny trill on the air. Syaoran hesitated, but remembered who he was talking to, and the masses of sad secrets this creature had collected like precious stones, and nodded.
“I am.”
“Syaoran is lonely,” said Mokona. “Aren’t you?”
He nodded weakly. “Yeah. I’m just feeling that way. A little.” He stroked one of Mokona’s silky ears and added, somewhat guiltily, “I have you three, though.”
Mokona tilted her head disapprovingly. At least, the furry scrunch of her eyes gave Syaoran the impression of disapproval. “It’s still okay to be lonely.”
“Maybe,” Syaoran conceded. He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, determining again to rest until morning if he couldn’t manage sleep.
“Hey Mokona,” he said a few minutes later. “Do you still have any books with you?”
“Yep! What language?”
“Any… Clow, Chinese, English… would you pick the book for me?”
“Coming right up!” Mokona declared. She hopped backwards across the bed and opened her mouth wide. After all this time, it was still comical to watch. The gape of her mouth grew and grew until her head tipped backwards and Syaoran could see something emerging from the void. Finally, she burped a leather-bound book into existence on the sheets and stood on it triumphantly, smacking her lips as she did so.
Syaoran thanked her and inspected the cover. Through his exhaustion, a smile spread over his face. “‘Fifty Ancient Ritual Sites from Around the Known Cross-Dimensional Anthroposphere?’” he said. “I loved reading this at night a few worlds back. I never did finish it, did I?”
“Nope!” Mokona said, bouncing off the book as Syaoran reached to take it. “We got too busy.”
Syaoran opened the cover and flipped through the first several chapters. He recognised many of the sketches and descriptions up until about a third of the way through. A burial site full of armoured guardians, a twinned excavation from some distant dimension that wasn’t the China he knew. A towering monolith that was part meticulously cultivated biome and part open-air temple, ornamented with coils of greenery and sun bleached stone. A flat expanse of rock stretching to every horizon, its thin dust covering etched with a million intricate scriptures in the form of a mural.
“Thank you, Mokona,” he said again. “This is exactly what I needed to read.”
“Matchmaking people with good books is one of Mokona’s 108 Super Secret Techniques!” she sang.
Syaoran submerged himself in the chapters he’d already read, marvelling again at the curiosities they held. Then he started with eagerness on the next sections. He wondered, not for the first time, at the array of human invention. Some of the sites had a clear function, with worship adjoining labour or trade. Other sites seemed an outpouring, sculptures crafted and gold procured not for any logical value, but to embody a more inexplicable urgency. Love, he knew, could sometimes not be contained. It shaped itself.
Syaoran read the book and thought of the way Sakura and Lady Nadeshiko and High Priest Yukito nurtured the reservoir tirelessly. He took comfort in the image of them down there together, in the cool underground, the quiet cavern filling with the peace and awe it was meant for. Underlying all distances was a synchronicity that kept different dimensions in orbit with one another, time shifting unexplainably but in patterns all the same.
It took Syaoran another hour of reading to fall asleep, and it was a fitful sleep at that. He woke when Kurogane and Fai returned to their beds, though they were swift and quiet, and he dreamed afterwards in gusts of tropical wind and half-formed thoughts filled with ruins and reservoirs. But he awoke the next morning to the sounds of Kurogane and Fai setting up breakfast, and to the mellow early sunlight shifting on the far wall. So, he thought, he must have slept after all.