#and that this just eludes to the plot behind kiri's story :VVVVV

[windup-dragoon]

Star shower

|| FFXIV write - 2020

|| Prompt #25 - Wish

|| Modern AU - Heart Eater AU

|| wol x Hien

|| 1,713 words

|| References -  Devour 

|| In which a kitsune day dreams and wishes on falling stars

It’s the smell of the trees that bring her back. Longing for the innocence of days since passed. Laughter that fills her ears like music, children at the park playing beneath a glittering afternoon sun. 

She remembers their faces, the tiny little humans who shyly left treats at her shrine, wishing and praying for a game of tag with her. Clean mountain air would fill her lungs as she chased them into the woods, the symphony of giggles as she caught them one by one. Together they ran beneath skies of cerulean blue, so much movement, dancing, sprinting, jumping. Her paws would ache the day after, but she adored every moment of it. With only one human child left to find she hurried through the darkening woods, her nose to the fresh indentations of footprints in the dirt. It was growing late and their mothers had a tendency to worry. 

The trail laid before her had grown worrisome as she ventured further. Erratic, staggered; each footfall heavier than the last. The shadows of the forest leave her feeling unsettled, fur and tails bristling. Even the air grew stagnant and putrid, it makes her nose burn and red eyes water. What was once a thriving, lush forestscape is now skeletal trees, barren of life. Each stride grows heavier, a painful slog to move forward against the aura of slime. But her heart quickens at the sight of him. 

A little human boy, plump cheeks stained scarlet in tears as he cried out for his mother. She hurried to his side, her wet nose touching at his hand until he takes notice of her. At once he slumps beside her and buried his face against her silken fur. Words fail him, lost between choked sobs and plea to head back home, to the world that is familiar to him. Although small herself in her aspect form, she insists on carrying the boy home upon her shoulders. 

But he is reluctant to move. Or rather, incapable of doing so. 

It takes a moment, the darkness of the night and the haze of rotted aura making it difficult for even her eyes, but she spies it now as the boy gestures to his legs. Webbing as thick as sludge held fast. Upon another look around she begins to realize why there’s a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

A cut of rock protruding from the forest floor, covered in a carpet of thick, soggy moss. She and the boy were huddled before a shadowy entrance to what she could only imagine to be a shallow cave or hole in the rock. There are creatures in this world who love such dwellings. Those who relish the dark of night and lure prey close with honey sweet words. 

She doesn’t wait to see who’s doorstep it is that they tread upon. Instead she turns to the webbing that ensnares the child and with a single huff, the threads are alight in violet and cobalt flames. The rock face comes to life as thousands upon thousands of spiders scatter to escape the encroaching fire. The moment he is free from his tethers they make their escape back to the world of sunshine and warmth. 

But she never forgets the scream that echoes behind.

- - - 

“Kiri? Is something amiss?” 

“My eye...” 

Sunlight sparkles through the breaks in the tree branches overhead, curtains of light dancing across her face as the afternoon breeze drifts lazily along. Together they sit at her shrine, delighting in snacks left by thankful parents and even more children than before. The elderly man beside her, a traveling spiritual who often came to visit her, regarded her with bright blue eyes. 

Slowly she turned, letting him see her affliction. She had been irritated by her left eye ever since returning the lost boy home from the woods. Even now she struggled to open that particular eye. It felt as if something was holding it shut yet she felt nothing every time she swiped the back of her hand across her face. 

But the man, leaning in to investigate, uttered a gasp and reeled back. “Oh no...” 

Her ears lowered flat against moon touched hair. “What?” She could hear the raised pitch in her own voice, feel the sudden drumming of her heart as worry painted the mans face. 

With a shaking, wrinkled hand, he swept across her cheek as if brushing aside stray hair. Murmured words fell from his lips, unfamiliar to her as they were cited.

To her relief he had seemingly cured her; her eye opening as if nothing had ever bothered her in the first place. 

To her dismay, however, her stomach sank at the sight of a cobweb tangled at his fingertips.

“You’ve been cursed...”

- - - 

Flames tower her, engulf and swallow her figure entirely. In the dark of night the cerulean fires burn dangerously bright. They burn and eat away at her shrine, at the little saplings planted along the path, devouring the trees that separate her from the main house. Distantly she can hear them shouting at her, angry and frightened cries that echo behind her own howls of agony. Blood runs in rivulets down her freckled cheek, a pain torments her left side. 

Her left eye. Plucked from the socket by that wretched creature. 

‘As retribution,’ The spider had sang out, admiring her new found treasure like a crystal held between spindly fingers. 

And now that same woman watched on as her victim suffered, a smile on her pretty, delicate features. Her poisonous words had been effective in denouncing the fox. Every one of them, pulled along by a thread only the Jorōgumo could so lovingly create. 

Thrash and flail, howl and cry. It was all she could do, so blinded and enraged with pain and disbelief. It hurt. Everything hurt. Watching the people she had been so desperate to protect turn on her. They screamed now of sealing her, fearful of her wrath. 

But despite it all, even as her flames spread like wildfire and took the forest she called home, swallowing houses and people like tinder; despite the heat of the flames that burned his skin, one man stepped forward. 

With a smile, the elderly man came forward. 

“I don’t want to go away! I don’t want to leave!” Cried the fox, shuddering with both fear and pain alike. One eye producing tears while the other dripped with scarlet. 

“I cannot stop them...” The man raised his hands to his face. Already she could smell the burning of his flesh and gagged. “But I promise to you, it will not be for all eternity. You’ll see the sun and stars again.” 

“But they’ll... They will always hate me...” 

“Surely there will come a Rijin with a heart that will forgive you. You’ll grow stronger and overcome this curse...” As he spoke, the flames threatening to consume his very voice, the man clawed at his own left eye. His fingernails dirty with blood and soot, his face smeared in ash. 

Yet he continued to smile as he held out his final offering to the guardian fox.

- - - 

“Kiri?” 

His voice, subtle and gentle at her side, wakens her. Mismatched eyes slide open, met with a midnight sky and a moon hanging overhead where an afternoon sun had settled the last time she had remembered. 

“You’ve been out for a while now...” 

“Mmm... Tired...” 

Kiri sat up at long last and stifled a yawn. 

Days in which Hien wasn’t pouring over homework or giving her lectures about modern society, they frequented a nearby park. Only a short jog from his towering apartment building that, if one were to squint hard enough could still spy in the distance, but an escape regardless. All these advances over the years had left her brain muddled and confused. How strange to consider a world that continues to thrive, with or without you in it. 

“We can head back, if you want.” Hien offered, a smile painted on his lips. He couldn’t hide the concern that shaded his eyes however. 

The fox, with all her tails twitching and fluttering behind her, snorted at the suggestion. “Hells no! You said you’d never seen a star shower before. We’re gunna wait right here until that changes, got it?” 

Hien chuckled, airy and soft. “We’ve been out here for hours...Aren’t you hungry?” 

“We. Are. Waitin’.” She commanded with an upturned nose. 

The young man leaned close, his shoulder bumping hers as he made an obvious attempt to look at her. “You’re always hungry though.” 

She turned toward him at this statement, his face so very near to her own. His warm breath settled at her neck, the scent of him filling her senses; a mixture of forest and soap. But it wasn’t the closeness that immobilized her so abruptly, though it did encourage a blossom of color just along the crest of her cheekbones. 

Rather, it was his smile. The way he simply regarded her, his earthy golden eyes holding hers. How did he do it? How could he look at her so thoughtfully? As if galaxies existed in her miscolored eyes that only he could see. Even on those evenings that she demanded his attention, craved it and childishly bothered him for; he still looked at her with bright eyes and that smile. The one so full of warmth and tenderness. 

“Hey, is that the meteor shower?” 

Shaken back to reality, Kiri lifted her eyes. Streaking across the velvet blue night sky, glittering like jewels as they fell, was in fact the star shower she had been determined to show Hien. 

Hien’s jaw fell open with awe, his eyes practically glowing with wonder and amazement. “This is amazing...” He murmured. 

But where he found only joy and excitement for the moment, Kiri’s ears lowered as did her eyes. She drew her legs against her chest, resting her chin on the tops of her knees as she watched him. With every amused chuckle of his, every curious thought muttered aloud, and every little hushed gasp as the shower continued, she felt knives in her heart, her stomach sinking fast. 

She wished, oh how she wished... 

That she had never met Hien.