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Chapter Text

Hanayo screams, a shriek shrill enough to send birds flying from the canopy as she falls to the forest floor. She can see snippets of blue through the green of the leaves, tiny glimpses of a clear sky wheeling far, far overhead. Then a shadow falls over her, vision blocked by a body that's lean and muscular and much heavier than her own. The paws to either side of her head are as wide across as her face, wider.

Hanayo shrieks again, as the giant cat leans in, as large, luminous eyes loom before her face. The cat licks at her, with broad strokes across her cheeks, up over her chin, swiping across her nose. The cat licks her face and she screams and shrieks and squirms on the ground, laughs as she pushes at its head, at its face.

"Rin," she chokes out between giggles, gasping and short of breath. "Rin, stop, stop."

The cat ignores her protests, long, furry body pressed against her side and agile tongue licking up the length of her neck, tickling at her ear. Hanayo wriggles down into the underbrush, pushing at Rin's side, but as a cat Rin is far, far too great a weight for Hanayo to get anywhere with shoving. Finally Hanayo grows too tired to laugh or carry on, sucking in great breaths as she struggles to compose herself.

Beside her, Rin shifts all at once, to the tune of the cracking of her spine as it realigns itself to a more human shape, the shifting of her bones as they reform themselves into a different structure. Her fur recedes, melting into soft human skin, roughened and sun-tanned by her time in the forest. Even as a human girl she's all brown limbs and red hair and wild-eyed roughness, willing to run and tumble and stir up a mess.

"I caught you," Rin says, as she cuddles up beside Hanayo in the leaves. "I chased you down and I caught you."

Hanayo takes a breath in, one that sticks in her throat as one last giggle escapes past her lips, her hand reaching out to tangle her fingers with her girlfriend's. She can see the sky again, stretching far above them, something more distant than the trees they both call home. Rin is warm where their sides press together; shifting between girl and beast keeps her blood pumping hotter than would ever be safe for a human.

"I know," Hanayo says. "I wish I could run faster! It isn't fair, you have much longer legs."

Rin laughs herself, leaning in to kiss Hanayo's cheek. There's a flick of her tongue at the end of it, up against Hanayo's earlobe so that she shivers and squirms. "I know, but besides, you like it when I catch you. Don't you, Kayo-chin?"

Hanayo glances away, choking down nervous giggles even as her fingers clench tight around Rin's hand. Rin squeezes her back, supportive in this and all things.

"I guess maybe I do," Hanayo admits, as her cheeks turn pink and her eyes slide the other way.

Rin rolls over top of her, knees around Hanayo's waist and elbows braced to either side of her head. She blocks out the sky, blocks out the trees, dims the light until it's just her and Hanayo beneath her. Hanayo smiles up at her, shy but pleased. "I guess I understand that sometimes a cat just wants something to chase."

Rin grins, nodding her agreement. "Uh huh, uh huh, and you're the best one to chase, Kayo-chin! Becaaause..." And she trails off, drawing out the word with an excited flourish, leaning in and kissing Hanayo on the nose. "Because nobody loves me like Kayo-chin does, and I love having Kayo-chin all to myself!"

Chapter Text

"Tell me the secret to being so pretty," Nico says, sitting on a rock beside Maki's pool. "I know there has to be one. Magical creatures always have secrets."

She nods her head, like she's complimenting her own smart thinking, like things couldn't possibly be any other way. But her hand comes up the moment after, twirling a lock of hair that's come loose from one of her pigtails, pushing the stray strand to rest behind her ear. It's a nervous gesture; Maki knows about those well enough. Nico isn't fooling anyone.

Maki leans back in the water, flicking her tail slowly back and forth. There's something like a smile beginning to tug at her lips as she asks, "Oh? And how do you know we have secrets?"

"Well, it's obvious," Nico says. "Magical creatures are ethereally beautiful, beyond the dreams of mortal men, lovely enough to lure sailors to their deaths. That's how the stories go, everyone knows that. But no one stays beautiful like that without doing something about it. So there must be a secret."

The way Nico says doing, with that extra stress from her tongue and a subtle clenching of her fingers, speaks volumes. She's the sort who values hard work, who might pretend otherwise harder than anything but who will break her back in pursuit of a goal. Maki has seen that type, before. Those stubborn ones are always the most interested in sea creatures, the most susceptible to the seductive voices of the sirens.

Sailors aren't the only ones on whom Maki's people work their magic.

"It isn't anything like a secret," Maki says. "Anyone could do it."

"Anyone could do what you do?" Nico repeats, skeptical. There's an edge to her voice, her sharp little eyes immediately looking for the catch.

"I could show you," Maki says. Now she is smiling, a subtle little twist of her lips. "Would you like that?"

"It's not that I need you to," Nico says, drawing herself up on the slick stones lining the tidal pool, puffing out her chest with an importance it must be necessary for her to feel down to her bones, in every layer of her being. There's a ferocity to humanity that even Maki's people cannot match. "But if you're offering, of course I wouldn't say no."

"Come into the water," Maki says. "It's the only way for me to demonstrate."

Nico's skepticism resurfaces at that, her gaze dropping to the dress she's wearing, staring down at the delicately lovely print stamped across the fabric and the ruffles that have been gathered in bunches about her knees. She isn't at all dressed for swimming. But Maki smiles at her, slow and secretive and with the sort of seductive beauty she knows Nico envies at a level too deep to be fought, and Nico pushes her reluctance aside.

"You have to help me," she insists. "Since this is your idea and really, I'm doing this to humor you."

"Of course," Maki says, lifting her arms up to take Nico's hands, guiding her steps as she slips into the pool. The rocks form a natural stair, allowing Nico to slide into the water a step at a time, by shallow inches rather than swiftly enough to be a shock. When she does slide on the damp stones, Maki catches her.

Nico sprawls in her arms and she smiles, smiles smugly behind Nico's back where she knows she won't be seen. Her tail waves slowly in the water, stroking at a speed that won't give the game away. Her arms curl around Nico's waist and her nose presses in beneath Nico's ear, nuzzling gently at the soft curve of her neck.

"H-Hey," Nico protests. "I thought you were showing me something. This isn't... You didn't say anything about this, Maki, just..." She trails off with a huff, breathing out and rolling her eyes. "Just do whatever it is you were going to show me, alright? There will be time for—" she waves one hand vaguely out of the water "—other things later."

Later, Maki thinks, is a long ways away.

"There's really only one secret to eternal youth and beauty," Maki says, whispering the words softly into Nico's ear, winding her arms tighter about Nico's waist. "The secret is not to get any older than you are."

"Well how do you do tha—?" Nico starts to say.

But then her mouth floods with water, her head submerging beneath the surface as Maki drops like a stone. They've drifted just far enough from the tidal pool where Nico and Maki always sit together, meeting in a middle point between their two worlds to share stories, secrets, tiny little tidbits from their very different lives. Maki pushes out into open water and plunges into the deep, dragging Nico with her as she descends.

Nico thrashes a lot, as she fights Maki's hold. She's feisty as a fish jerking against the line, desperately grasping for a glimpse of the surface that's gone far out of reach. Maki cradles her, gently as she would a doll, tight as the closing of a steel trap. It takes a while, for all the fight to go out of Nico, for her to go limp and loose in Maki's arms.

There's little light, at the depths they've sunk to. What there is tints blue and purple, dapples across Nico's face in foreign, unearthly patterns. She's lovely in the sea light. Maki adores the look of her even as the last breath of life leaves her.

Chapter Text

"Is it too tight?" Hanayo asks, a whisper in Maki's ear like the wind through branches, breathed out gentle as a sigh. Hanayo's breath is cooler than Maki's overheated skin; the sap that runs sluggishly through Hanayo's veins only warms in the sunlight, and they're in the shade now.

"It's fine," Maki says.

It is, and it isn't. Hanayo's vines curl around Maki, curve around her thighs and twist around her arms, pulling her snugly against the smooth trunk of Hanayo's body. There are ridges along the vines, raised patterns that press into Maki's skin. Hanayo holds her cradled like a child against its mother's warm chest, restrained yet protected. It's only afterward that Maki sees the designs pressed into her flesh as a result.

(She traces them with her fingers sometimes, after she and Hanayo have separated. They only stick around for an hour or two, disappearing past that point much as fallen leaves are scattered by the winds. Maybe that's why Maki takes the time to examine them; she wants to remember the gifts Hanayo has given her, while the marks that are her reminder are fresh against her skin.)

"Are you sure?" Hanayo asks. She can never be content with "yes," can never be too careful. Hanayo is a gentle thing, a forest spirit who loves every living creature with the entirety of her being. There's something warm inside of her, glowing like the sun.

Maki thinks, that's much of what she loves Hanayo for.

"I'm sure," Maki says. That much, she means.

Hanayo's vines twist tighter around her, extending fresh, fragile fronds of new growth to wrap around her forearms, to twine around her ankles. Leaves blossom between her fingertips and Maki can only just see them out of the corners of her eyes. She has only enough range of movement left to turn her head, and that, barely. She can't touch the soft new leaves that fit between her fingers, she can only allow them to touch her.

She allows Hanayo to grow over her, through her, covering her with the vegetation Hanayo brings about like breathing. There's something freeing to it — a joy that comes with giving up all control, with relinquishing her will to the whims of her girlfriend and the company of nature, much as she knows it. The brush of plants against her skin is calming, familiar. Hanayo grows flowers into her hair; Maki cannot see them, but she knows that this is Hanayo's last and most favorite thing to do.

"What are they this time?" Maki asks, whispering the words between barely-parted lips.

"Lily of the valley," Hanayo whispers back. "It's springtime, s-so I thought that would be nice."

Lily of the valley, Maki thinks. She's learned a thing or two about flower meanings, since meeting Hanayo — has started to look them up in her free time, voraciously consuming the hidden messages mankind has ascribed to plants. Lily of the valley means happiness, the return of happy feelings when something previously has been missing. It can also mean love's good fortune, or the feeling of someone else making one's life complete.

Hanayo doesn't say, I love you, not in that moment, not in words.

But she weaves the meaning of it into Maki's hair and spreads it bare before her heart, giving Maki the sweetest of gifts in a form where she can take it and hold it in her hands.

Chapter Text

"W-What do you see?" Kotori asks, eyelashes fluttering as she stares up at the ceiling.

Her ribs are spread open, blossoming outward in a fan of bone: two wings on either side of her chest. There are wings on her back, too, pinned underneath her, fluttering limply as her own body presses them to the bed. Honoka's hands are hot around the shell of her, fingers gripping bone as she gently pries Kotori's chest apart.

"Hold on," Honoka says, wiggling closer, her weight pressing down on Kotori's hips where she kneels. "I need to... Get in a little bit deeper...."

Honoka is hard to look at, with her pretty human face, with the passion that kindles behind her eyes. Kotori tries, sneaking glances from beneath her lowered lids, watching her in her work-out room as she throws herself into the motions of some unfamiliar dance. Honoka's body bends and twirls, twists itself about in graceful arcs before she slides to a stop. Her limbs are brought to rest only for that drawn-out moment before the music begins the next measure.

Honoka is more magical than Kotori, with the way she transforms herself from a girl into a message, into a story being told through the contortions of her body. Honoka demands attention from the universe with her very being alone.

"H-Hurry up," Kotori says, voice shaking. "I can feel them closing up again."

She knows what Honoka will see, when she gets in close, when she slips her hot hands inside Kotori's chest. She knows what she is: empty and fragile, pretty only on the outside. Under the veneer of feathers and frills she's nothing but cold clay and ground-up bone, the inside of her caulked together carelessly, its structure straining to hold. There's a void in her gut, an emptiness in her bones. A lacking that she herself cannot fill, no matter what she does.

"It's..." Honoka says, wriggling in place, reaching inside. "It's... Huh."

Kotori can feel it, Honoka's hand pressing flat to the line of her spine. It's a trembly, crawling feeling, as Honoka's fingers walk their way up the vertebrae, tracing the shape of each bone with a delicate touch. She finds Kotori's scapulae, fondles their edges, feels her way around to the cracks where the emptiness starts, the edges of her external vessel where it's been open to Honoka's touch.

"It's okay," Kotori says. "I wanted you to see."

"That's... Weird," Honoka says. She's more subdued than her normal, brow furrowed with little lines of concentration. Then her gaze pulls up, latching onto Kotori's face. "Does it hurt? Not having a heart?"

"I don't know," Kotori says. "It's always been that way, Honoka-chan. I don't know what it would feel like to hurt."

Honoka's hands yank back, and she sits up all of a sudden, spine straightening with resolve. "I'll fill it up, Kotori, don't you worry. If... If it's like this for you, I'll fill it up, and you can tell me how it feels."

Kotori's lip twitches, trembles. Tries to curve up, though he smile is watery. "I'll take whatever you have to give me, Honoka-chan."

"I'll give you everything I've got," Honoka insists. "And you'll never feel empty again."

Chapter Text

Sometimes, when Honoka kisses her, Eli's lips pull away chapped to the point of blistering.

"Sorry, sorry!" Honoka mutters every time, reaching out for her girlfriend, pulling her fingers back at the last moment with visible fear of causing further pain.

Eli can only smile when she does it, charmed by Honoka's earnestness, by her passion. She reaches out to take Honoka's withdrawing hand, folding it between both of her own, a heat pressed between her palms that's near hot enough to burn. Honoka warms Eli up inside, lit from within her own heart with a fire that's blinding.

Looking at her is like staring into the sun, spangling Eli's vision with sunspots and afterimages.

"I hurt you," Honoka protests, squeezing her hand around Eli's so tight that it bruises, so ferociously that the fire again begins to flame up. Eli can feel the heat of it searing her skin; she hides her cringing with a care that comes of much practice, unwilling to let on that she lacks the strength to endure passion's burn.

Loving Honoka takes all of her, and Eli is determined to give all that she has.

"Love hurts," Eli says, mouth curving cleverly around her blunt words. "All throughout history humankind has suffered for love, why should I do anything less than the best have done before me?"

She sees Honoka's face screwing up, mouth dropping open in preparation to protest. She pulls one hand free of Honoka's, laying her finger across Honoka's lips in want of silence. "Don't fight me on this. If I don't mind that it hurts, are you really going to force me to step back from something I want?"

Honoka is silent. Eli takes a moment to enjoy the effect, sliding into the silence much like she would relax into a hot bath. From Honoka, all quiet moments are precious.

"I like being with you," Eli says. "We don't need to make things any more complicated than that."

"But I burn you," Honoka says, very seriously, as if perhaps Eli has not seen the obvious elephant presenting his backside to the room. "When I kiss you, or touch you, or get too excited about being with you, I—"

She waves one hand, a vague motion beside her head that conjures up a coil of fire to wrap around her hand. It licks at her fingers, toying with them playfully, almost lovingly, kissing at the ends of her fingertips. Such is the life of a fire elemental: the thing that she commands adores her for her power, presses upon her with pleas that she might subdue it with her will. Will is something Honoka has a lot of; control, on the other hand, she has yet to master.

Eli waves her hand around Honoka's, around and around until the flames her girlfriend has summoned accept that their oxygen is being taken from them and consent to die. When Honoka's hand is cool, Eli clasps it again.

"Like I said. It needn't be complicated. This is just you, and me, and magic."

Honoka smiles at that, a crooked thing she tries to hold back but which bursts wider and wider across her face the harder she tries to restrain it. Eli finds herself smiling in answer, happiness kindled by happiness.

"When you put it that way," Honoka says. "It sounds kind of romantic."

Eli leans in, kisses her gently on the lips. There's no heat to it; Eli pulls away smiling.

"If it sounds romantic," she says. "Maybe that's because it is."

Chapter Text

There's a girl who comes to the beach sometimes, late at night when no one else is swimming. The moon rises high overhead, reflected shimmering in the water, and this strange girl walks down to the shore by its ethereal light alone. She sings as she walks: her voice is high and lilting, rising toward the heavens as it cries out with happiness, or diving lower into more secretive emotions, the subtle sort Umi hasn't learned how to place.

Umi keeps her own secrets, and often her own company.

The other mermaids in her pod are vain and pretty, preferring to stay far beneath the surface of the ocean and while the days away with gossip and glamours. Umi's magic was never much for that sort of artistry; she could never charm her hair into the sort of lovely curls that flow on the waves, or enchant her features into something other than they are. Her sisters swim to the surface only when ships pass by, singing to the sailors to see who can best charm the men to their deaths.

(Singing, Umi enjoys. Her voice resonates through the water when she raises it in song, deep and sonorous and echoing against her blood, the cadence of her melodies flowing along with the steady beating of her heart. Perhaps that's why she follows the girl on the beach — she hears her singing, and cannot resist the well-crafted tune.)

Umi comes back to watch the girl that she's glimpsed, over and over, fascinated by her habits.

She descends to the shore in a long, flowing shift, the sort of thin material she can easily pull over her head. Once she reaches the waterline she does so, shucking her clothes to stow upon the rocks before splashing into the shallows, pale and naked and laughing as the cold waves lap at her bare skin. Her giggles echo across the water, louder and louder until she gets used to the chill, until she's comfortable and her laughter dies away.

She's a strong swimmer, once she stops playing and puts force into a proper stroke. She swims until her body strains to move even one stretch further, swims back and forth along the shore, cutting lines across the waves. Once she's tired, she floats on her back, long, dark hair spreading about her like a tangle of seaweed.

Umi watches her behind rocks submerged in the water, ducks out of sight lest she reveal her existence.

She thinks she conceals herself, until the girl proves her wrong. One night when she's floating on her back, staring up at the starry night sky, she calls out to Umi: "You know, it isn't very nice to watch a girl in secret. Someone might start to think you're a creep!"

Umi sputters, softly in the darkness. The girl flips over, turning onto her front and spreading her arms in slow, steady strokes, just often enough to keep herself afloat. Her progress toward Umi is slow enough that Umi almost doesn't think to swim away.

"So who are you?" the girl asks. "When humans meet, we introduce ourselves."

"U-Umi," she manages to say, manners asserting themselves and demanding her response.

"Well, Umi," the girl says. "My name is Toujou Nozomi. It's a pleasure to meet you!" Then she smiles, a flash of white teeth like pearls shining out of the nighttime dark. "If we're out here together, the least you can do is swim with me."

"B-But I'm a monster," Umi splutters. "We drown humans. Or didn't you know that?"

Nozomi only looks at her, expression softening even as the look in her eyes sharpens with her appraisal. "Do you, now. So are you going to drown me, Umi? Are you going to push me beneath the water and drag me down where I can't breathe?"

Umi gasps, and huffs, crossing her arms before her chest. "Of course I won't. I barely know you."

"Is that how it works?" Nozomi asks. "Do you only drown the swimmers you care about? Pulling them beneath the ocean's waves, cradling them with your love until they stop breathing, and go cold?"

When she says it, shivers run down Umi's arms, shivers that have nothing to do with her cold-blooded biology. Her sisters hardly love the men they lure into the water, laughing carelessly over their blue faces and lovestruck looks. A mermaid's seduction has nothing to do with love.

"I've never drowned anyone in my life," Umi says.

"You must not have lived very long," Nozomi concludes. "But... Have you ever loved someone?"

Umi looks away, flushing violet beneath the scales on her face. Nozomi laughs. Umi expects it to sting, but there's no sharpness to it — just a warmth that bubbles up from her, harmless as seafoam. Slowly, Umi's gaze pulls back toward her, drawn in by the natural warmth that's present in every move Nozomi makes.

"I haven't," Umi whispers, barely above her breath.

"There's no time like the present to start," Nozomi suggests, and laughs, the sound soft like moonlight.

When she says it, with so much gentleness it almost hurts to hear, Umi supposes she might believe it.

Chapter Text

"It wouldn't be so hard," Nico says to herself, pressing her fingers to her chest as she poses. Her voice changes, shifting to the timbre of the girl she's been stalking for weeks. Or — not stalking, that would be desperate and sad. Watching. Examining. Nico is nothing if not thorough in the pursuit of things that interest her.

She changes her voice, saying, "It wouldn't be hard, being this girl with her pretty face and her lovely hair and that shy little girlfriend of hers."

It sounds wrong. She has Maki's tone down, mimicked by the magic that sparks beneath her skin, melting it into moldable putty at the least of her whims. But as imitations go, her impersonation leaves much to be desired. Nico would never settle for being anything other than the best.

"I'm Nishikino Maki," she tries again. "Young concert pianist and perfect specimen of the dutiful daughter. I would never do anything to jeopardize the perfect image of me that you see before you."

Nico's skin squirms, shifting over her bones and writhing above the meat of her muscle. That is also moving, reforming itself at different densities and layering onto different places, building her body out and transforming it. A ripple passes across the squirming surface of Nico, smoothing her skin into a perfect imitation of the girl she's been watching, down to the tiniest flecks of freckles dusted invisibly across Maki's nose.

She looks into the mirror before her, and smiles. Her impersonation might need some work, but the transformation is complete.

"M-Maki-chan!" Hanayo says, starting hard enough that she jumps where she stands.

Nico smiles at her, with a slice of a smirk that must be too smug for Maki's face. Hanayo settles, but her frown stays, sinking in with the wrinkles that have written themselves across her forehead. She's studying Nico, scrutinizing whatever it is that feels off.

But Nico is used to that. Her skin shifts as easily as breathing; she's learned the ways of growing into a new body, of settling into a role with ever-increasing surety.

"Sorry," Nico says, in Maki's voice, with Maki's almost-stutter of embarrassment. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"Oh, it's nothing," Hanayo says, small smile starting to blossom across her face. "I thought I wouldn't see you today! I thought you were too busy with rehearsals to leave the conservatory... I'm glad that you could come, even just for a little while."

Just for a little while, Nico hears, and tries not to think about it too much. She loves transforming herself, taking on the personas of other people and living in their lives for a time. She's a chameleon, fitting herself to foreign circumstances and proving that she thrives.

It's not that she isn't capable of living a life of her own, it's just — this is stardom, this is the stage she's made for.

"I still don't have very long," Nico says, because it feels like something Maki would say. She can't clarify how she knows this; it's a gut feeling, something she feels in her bones, something that vibrates beneath her skin on the same frequency as the shapeshifting magic. "But I did want to see you."

"Don't worry," Hanayo says. She ducks her head a little, looking up at Maki from beneath the spread of long lashes. "I'm happy to see you whenever I can, even if it's only a little while."

"Can we..." Nico glances away, and this time it isn't a performance of shyness. Her face heats up, flushed warm and pink with the uncertainty of what she's about to say. Her voice drops. "Can we kiss, just for a little while?"

Hanayo squeaks, and her arms jerk in against her body, so that she seems to shrink even as Nico watches. But her eyes pass across Nico's face (Maki's face, she reminds herself, always someone else's face, never the face that she knows in her heart) and something she sees there soothes her into unwinding.

She smiles, one of those secretive little curls of lips, like a look that isn't meant for anyone else. "I-If you want to," she says, voice trembling. "I wouldn't mind."

"I want to," Nico says. She leans in, tingling beneath her skin, shivers sliding down her spine. Hanayo feels warm, from only a breath away, human and real when Nico reaches out to clasp her hands.

"Then I want to," Hanayo replies.

So Nico kisses her, with Maki's pretty face, with Maki's trembling eyelashes fluttering closed. Hanayo's lips are soft, the breath that she sighs against Nico's mouth brief and warm. Nico kisses her, focusing on the moment. In the moment, there's nothing that she and her magic cannot have.

Chapter Text

Maki suspects she's the only one who notices the scales that shift beneath Nozomi's skirts, the only one who realizes that she never wears pants because she hasn't the ability to pour herself down both of the legs. When Nozomi moves, she's graceful and agile, but Maki can never unhear the slide of her heavy body slipping over paving tiles, even when she looks down and her mind insists she's staring at two ordinary feet.

Nozomi has caught her staring, more than once, and she only stares back at Maki with the most secretive of little smiles curling at her lips. Maki doesn't know whether it means Nozomi is aware of what she sees, or whether Nozomi simply likes the attention, likes letting Maki know that she's been caught in the act.

Either way, she always yanks her gaze away, flushing so darkly that her face fades into the red of her hair.

"Maki-chan," Nozomi says, her voice sweet, gentle, as it pulls Maki around. "Did you want something?"

She's smiling again, a subtle curve of her lips. It mirrors the curve of her eyes, crinkling into happy half-moons that light up her whole face. There's something sinister about her, that much Maki tells herself with stubborn certainty. But there's something beautiful, too, a charm she exudes as comfortably as breathing.

Maki isn't envious of that ease, she couldn't be. She's simply curious about the trick to it, the way Nozomi glides through life as if she hasn't a care, coyly commenting on other's troubles and keeping none for herself. It doesn't seem possible, to live so freely. Maki is certain there's more to it, a mystery yet to unfold.

"I didn't want anything," Maki says, glancing away.

"Is that so?" Nozomi presses.

Maki tries to keep her gaze averted, holding herself aloof in the face of Nozomi's charms. But her resolve is fragile, cracking down the center at the merest of Nozomi's knowing, thoughtful hums.

"What?" Maki protests, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Oh, nothing," Nozomi says. But Maki's eyes are back on her, meeting her gaze, staring at the creases pressed into the corners of her eyes. There are laugh lines around them, sketched into her skin and drawn around her mouth, memories of happiness the likes of which Maki can only imagine.

She finds herself unable to look away.

Nozomi's eyes are too green, startlingly emerald as they shine with her smile, holding Maki's gaze easily in sway. There comes the sound of scales shifting over stone, the slick slide that Maki remembers to hear even when she can't see the jewel-bright, muscled length of Nozomi's tail. She's in Maki's face, leaning in close so that her eyes become all Maki sees, great green fields drowning her vision, like the waves of the ocean crashing over her head. Like a field of stars, flecked through with bright glimmers that catch reflections of light.

"Are you sure?" Nozomi asks. Her fingers are on Maki's face, cool as they trace their way up the line of Maki's jaw, gentle as they tilt Maki's cheek to fit against the press of Nozomi's palm. "You spend a lot of time watching me, for someone who doesn't want anything."

Maki licks her lips, looks on like someone in a trance, submerged and drowning. The waters close over her and she sinks beneath the waves, descending into the depths of Nozomi's gently staring eyes.

The kiss she presses to Maki's lips is chaste, sweet. It's but a brief brush of her mouth before she's pulling away, her fingertips brushing against Maki's cheek as they retreat. The spaces where they touched burn hot, spark with smoldering warm sensation. Maki lifts her own hand, covering the places where her face burns in reaction.

"If you figure out what you want," Nozomi says, letting the spell break. "Just be sure to tell me."

Chapter Text

"Please," Umi says, as she drops to her knees on the stone path outside the shrine. Her sleeves flutter as she folds her arms before her, as she bends over them and bows her head in a gesture even spirits must know as a motion of respect. "Please, if you do not let me stay at the temple, I will freeze."

There's only silence from above her, thoughtful and waiting. Umi does not dare lift her head, will not chance the disrespect of peeking up at the maiden whose judgment she's hinging her life on. Pillars outside cut the wind and decrease the chill of one of the harshest winters Umi has ever seen, but the stones beneath her folded legs are no less frosted with ice, and outside the temple's protection, snow heaps up high across the hills.

The blizzard came upon Umi faster than she could have expected; her request is out of sincere desperation.

"You will freeze if you stay here," the maiden finally says. "I have no need for a stove, or for firewood."

"Please," Umi repeats, at last venturing to raise her head from its bow. "Anything is better than the hills at night. On the mountain I will be buried under the snow, and I cannot hope to see even the next dawn with my blood still flowing alive in my veins. Please, I ask this only out of necessity."

There's another pause, as the woman considers her plight. Umi spends that minute in contemplation of her own, watching the maiden's lovely, angular face, the sharp slope of her nose, the lines of her cheekbones, the sweep of her brows above cool, ice-blue eyes. She's perfect as a statue, more beautiful than any living girl Umi can remember setting eyes on.

But this is not the first time she's seen the ice mistress of the mountain, nor is it the first time she's wandered into the mountain shrine unannounced. The last time she was caught out in a blizzard she was only eight years old, cold and alone and too confused to watch where she was walking. She'd collapsed on the steps to the temple; she'd woken up inside, shivering and half-frozen, but alive, wrapped in a warm, thick blanket she'd never seen before in her life.

(Umi had taken the blanket with her, when she ventured back down the mountain in that long-past moment from her youth. She was too cold at the time to risk leaving it, despite knowing even at that age that to take something belonging to another was tragically unwise. Umi sleeps in the shrine blanket to this day.)

"Fine," the woman says. "Come inside."

Even with permission, Umi rises slowly. Her legs are stiff from their short time spent pressed against the stone, joints protesting any movement at all in such intense cold. The mistress of the mountain retreats, leaving Umi to follow in her wake through the entrance to the shrine. The building beyond is a single room, small and dark and lit only by a single candle placed at the railing where prayers are tied at holidays.

Umi doesn't know what to do with herself. There's nowhere to sit and no obvious place to stand; there is no fireplace just as the ice spirit warned, and the inside of the temple is barely warmer than the outdoors, though the wind that cuts through Umi's clothing has been silenced at last.

"I'm sorry," Umi says. "But... That is..."

She bites her tongue, uncertain how to clarify the things that she remembers, her vision of a beautiful woman tucking her into the softest blanket she's ever touched and sitting with her until she fell asleep. She's dreamed of the maiden of the mountain since she was eight years old, with such regularity that somewhere in her heart, she knew she had to see the woman again.

"I remember," the woman says, words breathed out as softly as the wind between bare branches. "The first time you asked for my protection. You were much smaller, then."

Umi sags at that, strings cut, the tension wound through her limbs unspooling all at once and leaving her weak and unsteady on her feet. She doesn't know what she would have done, discovering it was always just a dream. She feared, just a little bit, that this latest encounter was a delusion, same as the last.

"I won't keep you very warm," the maiden says. "If I wrap you in my arms the way you remember."

Umi flushes, fighting not to look away, to turn, to hide from the slow, secret smile that spreads across the shrine maiden's lips. It puts a warmth in her eyes that wasn't there before, a soft glow like sunlight off melting snow, glimmering faintly at first, but capable of blinding.

The maiden rolls her eyes, and in that moment she appears to be nothing more than a girl, making shelter in an abandoned shrine much as Umi has been forced to do. She spreads her arms, and gives a single, regal jerk of her head. The illusion of accessibility holds just long enough for Umi to enter the circle of the ice spirit's arms.

She's as cool as she promised, chilled to a temperature too low for any human to survive. But she's warmer than Umi expected — warmer than the winter air, warmer than freezing temperatures that would spell Umi's death through the night. She sniffles, and is abruptly aware that she's sobbing, shoulders shaking as her lungs suck in great nervous gasps of air.

"Oh, child," the ice maiden says, pulling Umi closer into her gentle embrace. "There's really nothing to cry over."

"I know," Umi whispers, against the fabric of the other girl's kimono. "I know, but I can't stop."

Slowly, the maiden lowers them both to the floor, rubs Umi's back until the shakes she's being plagued by smooth themselves out. She's exhausted, when she finishes crying. But the mistress of the mountain is still holding her protectively, and Umi dares to dream of falling asleep against the soft swell of her breast.

"Sleep," she's told. "Sleep, and in the morning all will be well."

"Will you still be there?" Umi asks. "Or will you disappear, melting away like last time?"

The smile she's shown then softens, pretty lips turned up at their corners. "I'll be here when you awake. And, perhaps, for longer still after."

There's something in the promise Umi doesn't know how to place, a hope that sets to fluttering in her chest like a nervous bird eager to be freed from its gilded cage. But she's exhausted; with soft hands stroking her hair and a cool arm curled around her back, she drifts into a sleep unplagued by dreams, deep as the winter night.