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Tokoyami isn’t one for wishes. He prefers a life lived close to the Earth. Dirt beneath his desperate hands as he wipes the sweat from his brow, adversity like a shadow on his back, fleeing only in the face of brilliant sunshine and curling, cat-like, over his shoulders when the sun takes its nightly leave.
So no, Tokoyami isn’t one for wishes. He’s been haunted far too long for that. Had every spell under the sun thrown his direction in hopes of ridding the ghost from his body, leaving him nothing but unimpressed and bitter.
Tokoyami lingers near the kitchen sink with his hands braced over the basin, a half-carved wooden horse abandoned on the countertop, and he shuts his eyes against his reflection in the window. Sprigs of rosemary and lavender are strung by their toes near the sill and they swing beneath the gentle brush of Tokoyami’s trembling breath. Mina had hung them up to dry. Had placed them in an even little row for luck.
Tokoyami breathes in their scent like it will walk him back from the edge but he can still feel the shape of his mouth, hard and unforgiving where there should be a soft, pink palette, and he feels helpless in a way he hasn’t for years. The feathers near his neck twitch with Tokoyami’s disgust. They chafe the thin skin of his throat.
Tokoyami isn’t one for wishes, he knows better than that, but if Tokoyami could wish for anything in this moment, it would be to have his human face back.
He feels weak for even thinking it.
The worn chair by the fireplace creaks and Mina’s warm hand finds Tokoyami’s shoulder.
“It really bothered you, huh?” she murmurs, slowly smoothing her thumb over tense muscles.
Tokoyami releases a harsh breath and thinks of the little boy in the woods who’d danced closer to watch him whittle and fled in fear when Tokoyami lowered his hood.
“He called me a monster,” Tokoyami whispers.
Mina presses herself against Tokoyami’s back, perching her chin on his shoulder. Her fingers dance softly over his spine until he’s coaxed into opening his eyes, Mina’s black ones peering back at him, her irises a familiar, burning gold. Skin a pale, peony pink.
“They always call us things,” she says, eyes searching. “I thought you’d made peace with that.”
Behind her, the empty fireplace grows inky black, a lone log tossed to the floor by Tokoyami’s ghost. By now, he knows it as a sign of affection and his heart can’t help but soften, slightly, at their joint concern.
“Peace is not always so easy to come by,” he tells her honestly. He closes his eyes against the gentle concern still rattling among their unlit logs and sighs. “I was born in the darkness and am glad for it, but this face…”
It must have been the fiftieth mage to be called to his family’s humble cottage, more in disrepair than it ever had been prior to Tokoyami’s blackened birth, but his father had been desperate to end the haunting and Tokoyami had been feeding a flock of blackbirds gathered over his second shadow.
That mage had sold Tokoyami’s father on wishes and spells. On things that can’t be reversed.
“It’s hard,” Mina agrees, “knowing that things could have been different.”
Tokoyami lifts his hands from the edges of the sink to twine them with Mina’s.
“Do not mistake me,” he says. “Never for a moment have I regretted living this life with you.”
Mina squeezes their fingers, smile bright.
“I know that, silly. You love me too much.” Then Mina looses a single hand to raise to Tokoyami’s cheek, tracing through the delicate down. “I love you too, you know?”
Tokoyami closes his eyes. He steps forward and presses their foreheads together. Focuses on the sharp note of peppermint oil he can still smell on her skin.
“I know.”
Mina hums and Tokoyami knows she’s smiling again. Sometimes, it seems like she’s always smiling.
Sometimes, Tokoyami wonders if he could have built a life at all without her smile.
“I can call you names, too,” Mina says, nudging them into a slow, easy waltz. “My love,” she says. “Dark prince of my heart.”
Tokoyami’s feathers ruffle.
“You’ve been reading my journal again.”
“Well, you keep leaving it out,” Mina says. “A girl gets curious.”
Tokoyami hums a gently disbelieving noise.
“Okay so maybe I went looking for it,” she admits, “but you write such sweet poetry about me.”
“Maybe I only write it because I know you go looking.”
Mina laughs, hands sliding up to find a home on the back of Tokoyami’s neck.
“Oh yeah? Is that why you hid it up the chimney the other day?”
Tokoyami smiles.
“You looked enchanting,” he says. “All that ash and soot in contrast with your sunny countenance.”
“You’re so full of it.”
Tokoyami slowly opens his eyes, hands trailing down Mina’s sides until they meet the careful swell of her stomach, barely yet a bump.
“Do you think…?” Tokoyami starts, drawing their dance to a gentle pause. “Do you think our child will find us monstrous?”
“Oh,” Mina sighs, resting a hand over his own. “My love, you know as well as I what makes a monster.”
Mina raises her palm and whispers a quick incantation, calling a white lily to appear there. Carefully, she tucks the flower between Tokoyami’s feathers.
“I think you’ll be a wonderful father,” she tells him earnestly. “Not monstrous in the slightest.”
And Tokoyami isn’t one for wishes, so he pulls her closer and presses a kiss to her grinning cheek and swears it on his grave.