Chapter Text
It is late morning, and Sara is sitting in a tree.
The tree is many-branched, tall and sturdy. Sara likes this particular tree for all of the above—it makes for a good vantage point. Its lush canopy of leaves, caught between summer green and autumn orange, makes for good cover as well.
She picks at the hilt of her sword, legs swinging over her chosen branch. The sound of birdsong is incessant, and so is the humming of cicadas. Despite all this, the forest feels empty.
Sara thinks of her little bake-danuki friends, and aches.
Even after all these years—eons—she still remembers them. In her youth, she’d been too shy to do anything but leave them fruits and skitter away the moment they emerged. But after the great war against Celestia, well.
She’d fled into the mountains, and there they still were, decimated but still standing. She’d cried herself to sleep in the branches, feeling the loss of her Archon, her few friends, her soldiers, her youkai brethren.
And several bake-danuki had clambered up after her, wordlessly snuggling into her lap, her arms. The crook of her neck.
At that, she’d cried even harder.
From that day on, the bake-danuki had been her dearest companions, the both of them continuing to safeguard the forests of Mt. Yougou as Inazuma grew and changed, unburdened by the constraints of eternity, or that of the Heavenly Principles.
But of course Sara was not infallible. And her newfound peace had not been meant to be. Seven centuries ago, the Abyss resumed attacking the overworld after its long dormancy, and Sara had been on the other side of the Mt. Yougou when the rifthounds had come for the bake-danuki.
All her tengu speed had not been enough.
Sara turns her head, wipes away the tears rolling down her cheek. It’s stupid. It’s been seven centuries since—since.
It’s stupid.
She knocks her head back against the tree, stares up at the sunlight filtering green-orange through the leaves. Her hands have gone back to the sword laid across her lap, running over its worn sheath, made of some Abyssal beast’s hide.
She’d slain it side by side with her soldiers, loyal warriors of the Kujou clan. Half of them had not made it out alive. The other half had helped her drag the colossal beast’s still-warm corpse back to the Shogun’s military encampment, to offer their god the spoils of war, as was her due.
But the Shogun had only shaken her head, and smiled, sad. It is yours, she had said. Yours, and your soldiers’. It is true that nothing can pay back the loss of life, but I am loath to part you from your rightful reward.
So—they’d dragged it back to the Kujou encampment. Skinned it. Decided they did not want to risk eating its meat, but just in case—butchered it, and tucked the cuts into the corner of a storehouse. Taken the bones as they wished.
Sara herself had had no desire in any part of it. After the initial work had been done, she’d left the beast to her men, to do with as they wished. But—
A tiny smile comes reluctant to her face.
But a few days later, her soldiers had knocked on the flimsy door of her makeshift quarters, and presented her with this sheath.
How could she have refused?
She traces the patterning etched painstakingly into the leather, worn smooth over time. It’s the symbol of the Kujou Clan, in the loving cradle of a crow feather flurry.
She wonders if her brothers’ descendants still live on. To her knowledge, her eldest brother Masahito had never married, nor had he had any such relations. And her other brother Kamaji—well, he and Chisato had had children. But after the war that has taken Kamaji’s life, she’d remained in her forest, and now she’s long lost track of them and their scions.
Sara exhales, the shadow of a sigh. It isn’t as if she can visit anyways. What will she even tell them? The truth? From the humans who filter through the forest every now and then, she’s gleaned that barely anyone truly believes in the Archons anymore, much less the youkai. The supernatural is a thing of the past. And Sara is glad that Celestia is forever silent, but it’s—a pity.
She fingers the long-dormant Vision still attached to her hip. She’s spent too many sleepless nights wondering, thinking, if only I’d been faster, if only I’d been stronger, if only, if only.
Yes. She leans back against the tree and closes her eyes.
It’s a pity.
When Sara wakes, it’s afternoon, and the sun is bearing down on her, unbearably hot. She groans, feeling her joints ache at the awkwardness of her prolonged position. She knows better than to fall asleep in a tree, but... well, old habits die hard.
She rolls her shoulders back, sighing at the satisfying crack it makes. Her body is one of the only things she is thankful to her youkai heritage for—despite how long she’s been on this earth, her physicality has never deteriorated. And as long as that’s the case, she’ll cherish this gift the best way she can: using it for the continual protection of Mt. Yougou.
Mt. Yougou is all that’s left of the inhuman like her, still quietly humming with a power she can feel in her bones. And all this retained energy also makes Mt. Yougou the only gateway into Inazuma for the supernatural—which means it’s the Abyss’s only gateway into Inazuma.
Which makes Kujou Sara, Mt. Yougou’s sole protector, all that stands between Inazuma and the Abyss.
She hops down from the tree, wings slowing her descent, bent on stretching out the rest of her body. After that, she’ll go around the mountain again. Maybe check on some of the animals. There’s this one herd of deer that was injured in a previous clash with the Abyss; they’ve been overdue for a check-up.
Sara doesn’t really need to, to be honest, but it helps calm her worries. So—stretching, patrolling, and then the deer. A solid plan of action for the day.
She’s just touched down on the ground when she’s immediately knocked over into the muddy grass.
“Shit, sorry!”
Sara groans.
The stranger hauls himself up, wincing. Before she can protest, he’s pulling her up too, hands wet with mud, and—
Sara yelps, and they’re slipping, his weight dragging them back into the mud again.
The impact isn’t any softer the second time around, and her wings are no help, trapped beneath her body as they are. She squeezes her eyes shut, hating the feel of mud under her arms, hands. She doesn’t like falling. She likes falling into muddy ground even less.
When she finally hauls herself upright, she looks over and he’s... laughing?
“What’s there to laugh about?” she says, irritation seeping into her voice, the same way mud is seeping into the white! White! fabric of her robes.
He laughs even harder. Then finally, through little giggles, he manages to say: “Nothing! Nothing. I’m sorry.”
Sara frowns.
Is he laughing at her? It feels like he is. She shuts her eyes for a moment; counts to ten in two sets of five. By the time she opens her eyes, the human has quietened, and is now concerned with trying to wipe the mud off his curiously white hair. He’s only making it worse, but she doesn't say anything.
Let him ruin his own stupid hair, she thinks, with more than a little annoyance.
She wasn’t able to really look at him before he barrelled her over, but now she takes the time to study him more closely. The human’s well-built; bulky for his kind. She would guess he’s in his early twenties.
He’s in a violently purple tracksuit with little onikabuto all over it. And on closer inspection, the white hair she noticed is streaked with red. Faint, but present still.
It reminds her of the crimson oni.
She ignores the pang her heart gives. She can’t always be brooding over the dead.
By now, he’s moved on from his hair, and is currently trying to wipe mud off his purple tracksuit. Once again, he is making things worse.
Sara opens her mouth to make a cutting remark, and that is when she hears the sound of an Abyssal portal opening.
She leaps up with all her tengu speed, all notion of rebuttal discarded. In one lightning-quick motion, she unsheathes her sword, just in time to slam it against a slavering rifthound.
Behind her the human yelps, but Sara pays him no mind.
Two more rifthounds dive into the fray, and soon she's caught up in the familiar rush of battle, the hacking and slashing second nature to her.
It only takes a minute—maybe less—to subdue all three rifthounds, and soon she’s watching them disintegrate, their remains swirling away into the same Abyssal portal that had brought them to the overworld. She wipes her black-slicked sword on the grass, and turns.
“You were not meant to see that,” she says, her voice as even as she can make it.
He’s staring at her, his mouth open. “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispers, literal stars in his eyes, and—
That isn’t the reaction Sara expected.
Her face scrunches up in confusion. “What?” Usually they run away in terror.
“The way you moved,” he’s babbling, “and that sword, oh, that sword, that’s poetry right there, my dude, I can’t even begin to—”
Sara’s face is entirely red by now.
“We have to spar someday,” Itto says, so excited he looks fit to burst. “I’ll bring over my kanabou and then we can have a proper match, oh, it’s going to be so great, I’m getting so hyped just thinking about it!”
“I... I...” Sara stammers. She’s at a loss for words. It’s been a very long time since she’s had to interact with an actual person, and he is just so energetic it almost scares her.
So of course, she turns and flees.
“Wait!” He’s sprinting after her. “I’m sorry, wait—”
And then she can’t hear him anymore, her wings carrying her back into the forest depths. Her heart is racing. She hasn’t—she’s never—
She presses her hands to her cheeks, and they’re unbearably warm.
It’s been a long time since someone has spoken to her with such sincere admiration.