#i am on my period and crying abt soft mizu ok? ok

[mizusnose]

Lay me gently in the cold dark earth

no grave can hold my body down, i’ll crawl home to her

cannot express how absolutely insane i’ve been feeling about soft, sweet, tender, vulnerable mizu lately. like, it’s been consuming me. so here’s a little thing :)

summary: takes place in ep.5 where instead of finding her “mother”, mizu loses her way and finds you and the shrine you take care of instead. aka that flop m*k** doesn’t exist and no chance for angst!!

———

Mizu doesn’t remember passing out in the middle of the woods. Only that she’d felt like a blur of colors and heat and blood before she dropped off into a vivid dream of finding her mother again. Her dreams dwindled and led her to a semi-awake state of being nursed back to health.

You notice Mizu’s fluttering eyelashes and quickly set your hands beneath her neck, the tender curve of it. you can feel the bumps of bone there, warm skin and the dried-over blood.

Mizu gasps and coughs, you push the bowl of water against her dried lips. The fire crackles and spits out sparks.

“Thought you’d died.”

You remark, titling the bowl further when you see the muscles of Mizu’s neck work. more, more, more.

“Who. are. you.”

“The one who saved you from frostbite. Don’t get up, your stitches are still fresh.”

Mizu glances down at herself after you’ve left to tend to the fire. The plane of her stomach stretches and she hisses despite the warning.

“Told ya.”

You’re back in an instant. The same hand placement as before, steady against mizu’s neck. You ignore the glare she throws your way and instead poke gently at the stitches. Mizu tenses and curses. You marvel at the muscles pulled taut in her throat.

“D’you have a death wish?”

“Mph..! fuck, can you stop—touching it.”

You sigh, pushing away and standing. The half-dead stranger you found in a snowdrift some kilometers away from the main road wasn’t on your to-do list this week. Dealing with her was also gonna be troublesome.

“You’ve gotta stay, got it? It’d look bad if I turned you away.”

“Is this…?”

“Yama jinja. Small, I know. We get some worshippers here and there. Family-run.”

Mizu cocks a dark eyebrow.

“Plus you’d bleed out on the way back with your injuries. A bloodied path is not very auspicious, you know.”

Of course, Mizu initially tries to leave regardless of your opinions and later, demands. She’s a dam. Closed off and waiting to burst the longer she stays. It’s only with poking and prodding that the pressure starts to break.

It starts with a fever.

You tend to her as best you can, medicinal herbs and tea and salves. You’ve learned that Mizu’s annoyingly stubborn, but the fever persists.

She’s delirious half the time. In and out of dreams and nightmares, rarely awake to notice the crease forming between your eyebrows. It’s violent, the way her body fights to survive.

It’s only after she recovers that you realize she’s an animal: a fawn entrapped in the yawning mouth of a wolf. a raw, bloody thing that’s barely escaped death. That something’s been chasing her.

Mizu doesn’t leave after that. You don’t ask her to.

Mizu remembers little of her fever, but when she lays down on the tuft of hay near your bed every night, she dreams. It’s smeared, the version of you she’s conjured. Barely distinguishable, but Mizu swallows around it. The wide open of her belly, full and warm and vulnerable. She allows it.

Days turn into weeks and then months. The cold fist of winter opens up around spring and then summer floods in.

“You’re going to the river later right?”

“Mn. Need anything?”

“Just some…well, I’ll do it myself.” You say, the same time Mizu says, “Okay, I can do it.”

You look at one another, smiling softly. The cicadas scream outside and the sun is melting into the earth like the yolk of an egg. You nod and she quirks a grin.

“Be careful” You tell her. Her kasa shields her face, but the sharp of her chin moves and you know. Know what she’s doing with her mouth: the lick of her tongue, the bite of her lip. You know.

Mizu doesn’t take long. She’s returned by the time you’ve started dinner, and Mizu thinks of herself months ago. Bleeding out, covered in a pack of snow, barely noticeable, barely alive. She should have died. Didn’t know how she didn’t.

She casts a glance to you, unashamed, staring. The skin of your neck covering the bumps of spine. Right where you’d held her not so long ago.

The thaw of the earth has given way to soft dirt. When you realize this, you get your farming equipment out.

Mizu joins, delighted to be under the skim of sunlight and carrying the bags of rice grains. You don’t comment on the smatter of freckles that have bloomed on the bridge of her nose. You only stare and hope she doesn’t sense it, the way you feel about it all: Her and her voice and her hands and her body and, you both.

It’s with both your arms dug into the dark of the earth that Mizu quiets and stills. The wind settles and the cicadas shudder and stop their song. You hesitate to speak and when you do, she starts:

“You’ve never asked me. Not once.”

You think you know what she’ll say, and you start and she starts and you stop, and she continues.

“The wrong I did. It’s..it’s bad. Worst than you can imagine—than you should imagine. It’s, it’s dishonorable and disgusting and—and.” She’s looking at you then, eyes unfocused and red-rimmed. There’s a freckle on the curve of her forehead. You want to touch it, kiss it, soothe her. You wait. “The gods wouldn’t forgive it. You wouldn’t..wouldn’t forgive me.”

Your palms are damp and you breathe once, twice, stand and settle them back into the wetness of the earth. Right atop Mizu’s shaking hands.

“If the gods don’t forgive you, you’d still have me, and I, you.” You hope it’s enough, the touch, and the words and the way your body wraps itself around her. The plane of Mizu’s back shudders, stops, starts again and you lay your fingers into her. The same place you’d had them the first time. The bone, and the skin, and the person she is.

You think: the chase is over. The blood has been shed. The mouth has fed, belly full.

Mizu kisses you later that night.

Deeply and softly in the low light of the dying fire. It simmers into you, pooling low between your legs. Mizu pulls away, nose crushed up against yours, happy and proud and so beautiful.

“Couldn’t help myself. Was hoping you’d—“ a laugh. “Hoping I’d what” You say, hands rubbing up and down Mizu’s arm. Her shoulder, the elbow, back up again. “You’d kill me. Get mad. Throw me off you.” Another kiss, heady and slow. “Not strong enough for that.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah.”

The monsoons start the night she kisses you. It beats down onto the pebbles surrounding the garden and the wood of the roof and the cicadas are white noise. The thunder and lightning fight to be louder than your moans.

Mizu doesn’t stop laughing, doesn’t stop smiling and kissing you, doesn’t stop. Not until she’s pushed up against you body. Both your legs, chest, and forehead touching. Curled into the soft of her.

“I tried, you know” You say.

“Hm?”

“Tried stopping it. This. Couldn’t.” You felt puffy and raw. Couldn’t say it clearly.

Mizu observed you, amused. Her hair down and her freckles dark, and her mouth red.

“Me too. Don’t worry, me too.”

And the summer felt like years. And mizu thought, as she held you: The ground had thawed. It’s thawed.

It’s thawed.

———

title and work inspired by work song by hozier bc cmonnnn