#𝐠𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐧 ☆ yuuki.

[oathofmoonlight]

Maintaining the barrier is much more taxing than Yuuki had expected. No wonder his sister was always telling him he wasn't ready to take on a real yokai yet. A thin sheen of sweat covers his forehead as he attempts to maintain it, desperately keeping the people in the crowd from being swarmed by any spirits that arose from their lanterns.

"G-Get out of here!" He shouts, though his voice his hoarse with strain. "Everyone who can't calm the spirits, get away from the lake!"

[oathofmoonlight]

@ammakou // starter call

There's something especially frustrating about finding a world with a culture so close to their own. Walking up to a place looking and talking like a local, but lacking any sort of real information - locations, goings-on, the names and rules a local had ought to know - tended to create some confusion. At worst, it made people suspicious.

Yuuki was old enough (and smart enough) to know that it was really better off to let his sister handle whatever business needed to be done in the village nearby. He wasn't nearly as skilled as she was when it came to that, and there was plenty for him to do in the meantime anyway. Find a good spot to make camp, for one. Then refill their water, and look for something to start a fire, maybe. And... well, that was about it for now, actually. So, mainly, all he really had to do was wait.

Which was - critically - extremely boring. He'd taken to entertaining himself by going through some sword exercises that his sister had drilled into him. Well, more like improvising some attacks based on those exercises. Loosely.

The tree he was taking his boredom out on wouldn't mind, would it? (It's not like he was using a real sword, after all.)

[oathofmoonlight]

@rathalascendant // starter call

Ugh, why was it such a pain to keep track of all these different worlds? Most places would be just fine with someone slinging fireballs at a big scary monster! In fact, most places, everyone else would have run scared from it by now! But nooo, he wandered into the one world where he'd get yelled at for slaying a dragon!

"Well, how was I supposed to know that I'm not supposed to fight that?" Yuuki crosses his arms indignantly. "It's a big scary... thing!" (What even was it?) "What's so wrong about kicking its butt a little?"

[oathofmoonlight]

Exhausted, Yuuki falls to his knees. Finally, Yuri was back, and he could—oough, his vision was woozy. He may have pushed himself a little too hard there. But the spirits were calmed again... and he did such a good job, too...! When they returned to the festival, he would have to... ... ... ... to celebrate ...

The young teen collapses there on the lakeside.

[oathofmoonlight]

I think, more than anything, Yuuki is desperate to be acknowledged. It's fair to say that Kaguya very literally was not present for her brother when she needed to be. That's not entirely her fault—with the options presented to her, she made what she felt was the best choice. Staying in relative safety was only ever going to be a stopgap, and one that wasn't even fully guaranteed to work. Attempting to find a way to remove the curse on their family was the only option that, in any long-term, was going to solve anything.

And to her credit, she did try. She kept in constant communication with her brother via letters. She tried very hard to make sure he never felt like she'd forgotten about him. But, like, Yuuki is still a kid. He went through a lot of trauma in a very short time, losing his family and community and being uprooted from his whole life. He didn't really have anyone to lean on in the way that he needed. He ended up being pretty isolated from the other kids his age because - well, it's kind of hard to go on with his life as though nothing had happened and that his circumstances were normal. He tried his best, but ultimately, he was very lonely for a long time.

I don't think Kaguya is unaware of this, but I also don't know if she knows the full extent of it. The circumstances they're currently in don't necessarily make it any easier, either.

What Yuuki wants most is having people in his life who see and understand how fucking hard he's trying. Especially his sister. He wants to be the first priority without feeling like a burden. He's torn between wanting to be independent and taken seriously for all the shit he's been through, but needing to just... get to be a kid, and be free from the stress of it all every once in a while.

[oathofmoonlight]

character intro: yuuki tsukino

Yuuki, age 14, Kaguya's younger brother and apprentice, of sorts. When the curse hit their order, Yuuki was too young to have had much training and was sent by his sister to attend school in one of the great capitals of their world where, presumably, he would be (relatively) safe from the curse's effects.

Though his sole guardian, his sister, was abroad in search of a way to lift their curse, she was far from absent, writing him frequently with tales of her adventures. As a final granted to her by her diety, Kaguya was able to reach through space and pull her younger brother into her demiplane before the destruction of their home world.

Yuuki is a budding sorcerer, though not especially powerful as of yet. He still relies on his sister's magic to come and go from their pocket dimension home. Usually, he's accompanied by a friendly familiar - Starfluff, Kaguya's loyal mount and magic made manifest, in the form of a cat - which allows him to move between the worlds alongside his elder sister.

[oathofmoonlight]

I'm adding Kaguya's little brother as a muse to this blog bc I love him and he deserves it.

[oathofmoonlight]

Yuuki has seen far stranger things than a mystical, talking wolf. The nature of the world he and Kaguya originated from was such that a thing like that was almost mundane. He had been raised on tales of monsters far more bizarre.

But there is something about this being that makes him double take. He doesn't quite know what, though. Something about her presence, maybe? It feels... not magical, necessarily. But something close, and something familiar, in some odd way. Not bad, though. (What makes him conclude that, he couldn't say either. But it feels right.)

He pauses in his training to ponder the question. It's not so much a question of whether he is, but whether he has earned the right to call himself as much. It implied a level of expertise, he figured, that... well, really, he didn't have. His skills paled in comparison to most of the swordsmen he'd met—even disregarding his sister, who's skills were at a level even beyond that, and the heroic swordmasters of their home world who surpassed even her.

"I'm learning," he finally decides. No reason to lie about it, right? Not in this instance. Though he does wonder if he could have passed himself off as more skilled than he actually was. How much could a wolf know about swordplay? Even a magical one? Perhaps he could have bragged and gotten away with it. "Do you know many swordsmen?"

With the passage of the wind came whisperings from the vigilant earth. Due to the harmony within nature from evil being purged by her light, Amaterasu felt more in tune with what occurred in Nippon's boundaries than most realized. Instead of being horribly unaware and unable to detect what her eyes did not see like the early days of her revival, her reach has now extended far out like roots - expanding her senses.

Knowing that there was a particularly interesting visitor upon them was more than enough reason for the kami to investigate. White paws fell upon the ground at a calm pace as she walked, translucent vegetation trailing behind before disappearing, as the wolf approached the young boy. The sight of what appeared to be swordplay practiced on a tree's trunk brought on an air of familiarity, and had the stranger not exactly feel like one after all.

She would silently come to a stop and stand nearby, in the boy's peripheral vision. Words would soon be heard, with the weight and softness of flower petals brushing across skin.

❝ Hello. Are you a swordsman? ❞

[oathofmoonlight]

Oh.

So that's what was wrong with it.

He stands stiff as a board as he waits for Mari to finish the prayer, suddenly feeling very embarrassed by his indignation. Sure, there was no way he could have known of its importance, but that didn't change much. He still felt awfully stupid about it. The best he can blurt out, though, is:

"Shouldn't you guys, like—put up signs or something?"

As far as solutions went, it definitely had its problems. But - really, was it too much to ask to... he didn't know. Inform people? Before they did something and got in trouble? Well, alright, most people weren't going to go picking a fight with a dragon like that to begin with. (Right?) Fewer yet were probably even capable of felling it. But still! If he'd known, he would have at least tried to—well, alright, calming it down might not have been an option. Incapacitate it, maybe. Though in some respects, that was harder to achieve than slaying it.

"And I wouldn't be wandering around alone if I couldn't handle stuff like that," he adds, sheepishly. It seems beside the point now, but his pride isn't going to let it go unaddressed. "I'm stronger than I look, you know."

"OKAY, IF IT'S SELF-DEFENSE, THAT'S NECESSARY, but you're lucky that it was me who caught you on these grounds." To other places in the world, slaying a rathalos is a triumph. As Kyle put it, they were pests at the best of times, at least to hunters. Here, things were a little different . . . or maybe a lot different, seeing as Mahana considered the King of the Skies to be a sacred animal.

Mari lightly shoves the child behind her. "Sit still for a moment." And then she clasps her hands together, beginning to say the rites so often practiced by her people in honor of the wings of rathalos.

'May the sacred winds carry your soul up to the heavens as it has done your body. In honor of your death we celebrate your life. We give thanks to your flesh and bone, that which has delivered us in life, will sustain us in death.'

It was sixty seconds-worth of well-recited prayer before she finally finishes. With a deep breath, Mari slowly lowers her hands, satisfied. At last, she turns and addresses the child. "You still there? Good. Rathalos are sacred to this island. We can understand you fighting out of self-defense but you'd very well be cursed if you didn't give it thanks."

She's disappointed, but not mad. Many outsiders did not quite understand rathalos' importance to her people, and she especially didn't expect it of a child. "I'm surprised you even managed to take it down."