Chapter Text
Mumei catches her staring at the ocean. She's standing there, almost dead to the world in her limpness, hands by her sides and hair whipping about her face. The salty brine burns its way through her nose and throat like liquor, numbing, a sort of relief that she hasn't forgotten this feeling, hasn't grown to hate it.
It's torture and it's a lovers embrace. In Gura's life, there's never been a difference between the two.
Not until Mumei gently wraps a wing around her with a delicate touch, as Gura's the fragile salt left behind when the ocean dries up, and takes her back inside.
- - -
In her defense, she's gotten better. Gura keeps her rituals, collects shells for certain dates, racks her brain until she's gotten all the recipe she'd learnt written down, then scalds her tongue trying to make them all, changing the misremembered recipe until they're perfect, just as they were before.
Her hands are forgetting her language, stuttering through the once smooth motions, slipping into ASL instead. Everything is sand slipping through her fingers, and she gorges herself on the dreams where she remembers everything right, as it was.
Mumei watches her collapse, a slow destruction, one that has happened many times where Gura lifted herself out of it before it became too much. She slides her fingers over Gura's shaking hands, corrects their shape, then holds them as tenderly as she can. She tastes the foods Gura cooks and answers with the honesty that Gura always expects from her, waits eagerly for.
Yes, this is right. You forgot the seasoning for this one. I think this had more crab and less bonito.
And Gura would disappear back into the kitchen, the smells no longer appetizing, more like a sad sort of gluttony as Gura feeds herself all the things she thinks would make her whole again.
The last time this happened was 1865, Mumei remembers. It had taken Gura going back to the wreckage of Atlantis to shake her out of that funk, coming back with saddened eyes but with hands that stopped curling over Mumei's wrists, like she might fall apart too.
Mumei didn't think that would work this time. She looked at her shark and saw emptiness. She looked at herself and saw the guardian of civilization, failing over and over and over, comforting herself with the last survivor of one of her many cultures she'd lost. The broken things she kept were never enough for them to really be back.
Then it struck her, a smile so big on her face that it made Gura's lips twitch at the edges too, the shark tucked into Mumei's side, purr weak and raspy.
"Can I show you something?" Mumei asked, taking Gura's hand in her own, already leading her to a doorway.
"Show me what?" Gura attempted a proper smile this time. It fell flat but Mumei appreciated the effort.
"I think you'd like it."
Gura caught on to Mumei's tone, the old familiar pride sinking back into her shoulders, pushing them back. Her tail gave a weak wag, and Mumei wanted to jump for joy.
- - -
Mumei wasn't exactly a god, but she wasn't exactly a human, if that made sense. She was a concept given breath, an ephemeral definition of a mortal concept made immortal. She wouldn't age but she could be killed if her domain died off. That made her unique among the rest of Council, her unsustainability, her capability of ending.
But in the end, she was Civilization, and when she lead Gura to one of the doorways of their home, instead of their bathroom with the light blue wall tiles and the shower curtain with whales and sharks, there was simply a long, dark hallway.
Gura followed Mumei silently, hand in hand, only complaining when Mumei was possessed with excitement and walked a bit too fast for Gura's tired body, energy sapped by mourning. The end of the hallway had a simple, elegant door. Mumei brushed her hand down it and it told her everything about it; cut in 1998, a warm summer. The carver had warm hands, and the wood retained the memory and the heat, shining out through its polished brass doorknob.
All of civilization's things spoke to Mumei, because she was civilization. The door opened for her to a warehouse many countries and miles away from their home. It felt like an endless building, the space within it warping a bit because Mumei asked it to hold everything dear to her in it, and what could a simple creature do but obey its god?
"Where are we?" Gura asked, almost breathless. The air here was dead, and no wind blew through. The scent of paint and wood and rusting metal was very strong here.
"My museum," Mumei said, as if that explained everything. To her, maybe, it did. To Gura, used to Mumei's idiosyncrasies, merely took it with a fond smile, the first true one in a while.
They walked through a maze of found objects; statues, record players, carpets, broken chandeliers. Gura's head was on a constant swivel, eyes drawn to every line, shape, and color she could see.
"Oh." She stopped dead. Mumei's hand squeezed hers, and Gura squeezed back.
"It's an Atlantian statue," Mumei recited, as if she were a tour guide. Gura let her words wash over her, eyes hungrily taking in the view, the clutter before her. "Sub oceanic basalt, gold filigree, sunken wood." Mumei brushed her hand over the broken wood of the statue's tail, the whorls of the wood making it seem as if the ocean were contained in it.
"It's meant for a house," Gura continued for her. She picked up a seashell necklace, roughly sized for a child's neck. She put it down. "It's out of remembrance for one's ancestors."
Mumei looked at her, appraisingly, searching Gura's face and body for anything that could give her away, that she'd done something wrong, broken something again. Instead, she saw radiant joy, Gura picking up every piece of her history that she could, the heavier ones she let a hand run down before continuing on.
There weren't a lot of artifacts, but it was enough to have Gura laughing aloud in joy as she found a soup bowl with specific carvings of gestures, words Gura had forgotten.
"Can I take these home?" Gura asked, with such a wide smile it looked like it hurt.
"Of course!" Mumei said, already carefully picking necklaces up to settle them upon broken busts, draping a particularly elegant one over Gura's head and looking her over. There were tears threatening to pour out of Gura's eyes, adding a shine to the blue of them like the sun over the ocean.
"Were these for me?" It was a soft question, practically breathed out into the graveyard of civilizations.
Mumei just shrugged, lifted Gura's hand to slide a bracelet onto her wrist, iron forged sharks teeth symbolic of a warrior. "Maybe. Who knows." She grinned, cupped Gura's cheek and let her sink into the touch. "I forget things sometimes." She gestured to the rest of the warehouse with a tilt of her head. "Maybe this was always meant for you," Mumei leaned in and brushed her lips over Gura's forehead. "All the little pieces of me, tucked away for me to show you."
Gura looked back at the statues, the scraps of clothes, the little bowls from shrines and the cupboards, her hands remembering the texture of the metal that showed the difference in function. Her tail wagged, with a slow sort of happiness, the kind that bubbled up and stayed.
"Oh," was all she managed to say with a dry mouth. "Thank you."
Mumei's smiles always held humor in them, like she had a joke and she was on the verge of telling you, just wait a little bit longer and see. This time, there was a solemnity to them, the last thing Gura saw before her eyes fluttered shut as she was kissed gently by the collector of the little things, of whom memory was a struggle and thus, clung to it as desperately as a mortal would to life.
"Thank you." Gura said again. She slipped a silver ear cuff onto Mumei's ear, the owl smiling at the way it caught the light, once again a little glimmer of mischief in it.
Of course Mumei knew what it meant. It was harder for Atlanteans to wear rings when most had webbed fingers. She tucked a lock of Gura's hair behind her ear. Her wink held the promise of returning the gesture with something equally as memorable.