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nibelvng · 7 years ago

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a gift of a secret

Happy holidays to @darkness-my-sunshine! I was your Lamento SS for this year! I hope you enjoy your Mama Konoe appreciation fic~

to be completely honest i admit to struggling to imagine Leaks in a conventional relationship with anyone, but the goal was still to tell the story of how important Shui’s wife was for both of them, and how she, too, gave nothing but love, so hopefully this is still in line with what you were after!

a gift of a secret | 6k | sfw | shui, leaks, mama konoe + raikono

read under cut or on ao3 for superior formatting

At some point he realises the forests are alive.

It doesn't happen instantly - just like runes inscribed in time never become language immediately, and the brightest of stars still linger at dawn. Not alive as every creature and insect and blade of grass breathes and thinks for itself - alive as someone you share your thoughts with, someone that replies if you talk and listen, someone that is one but many at the same time.

When he talks about it with Shui, Shui listens, like he always does.

'They just are,' he shrugs when the other cat looks up in surprise, and shrugs again when met with the question of when and how he's come to know exactly. The statement is not like Leaks, not like him to accept something at face value, but this magic has been with him far too long to chase its origin. Still, a part of him cannot help but expect ridicule, or disbelief, or misunderstanding at the very least. Even from Shui.

'I've always suspected just as much.' The Poet hums instead, head thrown back as he stares into the endless blue Sisa sky, smiling into the sun.

Was he ever to be faced with the question of when and where he'd come to realise that he could never really regret anything to do with this impossible cat, Leaks wouldn't hesitate to think right there and then.

The question doesn't come, of course, so there's no need to vocalise the sentiment, the sudden wave of something strangely affectionate. It - it is there, like the ancient structures beneath his fingers as he carries on working, brushing them clean of clay and moss and oblivion. It is enough.

'Sometimes I feel as if I've been a bad influence,' Shui laughs somewhere behind his shoulder. He's been quiet, watching him work and mulling something over, but now Leaks can almost envision the way his tail would dance around some invisible source of merriment, the little wrinkles that form around his eyes when he laughs like this.

'For you to cease the endless quest for logic in everything in the world,' The Sanga continues, 'And to go along with something so unreasonably poetic?'

'The only thing unreasonable would be assuming our way of wielding knowledge and logic to be powerful enough to explain everything in the world.'

That, too, came to him overtime, but it was difficult to believe otherwise. The Moons took turns in the skies above them and brought light, and light gave life to forests, and this happened in a state of blissful indifference to many of the theories the Two-Cane had once crafted on the matter, or to anything the scientist may add to that.

'There's no poetry in it' Leaks adds as an afterthought. 'Just the practicality of being.'

'But it's beautiful nonetheless, is it not?' And something in his voice wills Leaks to tear his gaze away from the mysterious markings on the strange coarse material the Ancient Ones have called 'concrete'; to meet the Poet's eyes directly for the first time throughout this exchange.

'Many a phenomenon,' and there's almost an urge to reach out, somehow, to become closer - 'have the most unusual side effects. Consider this one of them.'

And later on, when Shui sings for him before it's time for them to part, Leaks knows that within this - the warmth that washes over him in waves, the wordless spells that ebb and flow like life itself - somewhere in all this, whatever fact or theorem brought them together could never have been anything but right.

The Moon of Day skirts closer and closer to the horizon by the time the sea of village rooftops springs up to greet him, and the familiar murmur of ever-present voices and footsteps and everything else that made the Ribika so unlike the forests fill the air. It is evening - dinner is being prepared in countless kitchens, and countless errands are finally winding down for the day. Shui finds his wife amidst hers - just in time to help her set the table and light up the torches so that the cooking-fire could be put out.

They don't talk much - not because they don't have anything to tell one another, but just because he wants to stay enveloped in the memory of today a little bit longer, wants to hold that song within him. Though no longer the same shade of blue, the skies are still as clear as ever, so tonight they'll talk whist looking at the stars as dusk descends on them. The night before, Leaks had another go at teaching him the names given to stars thousands of years before them - perhaps this time he'd have remembered enough to teach her, too.

They sit by the window, side by side, mugs full of a herbal brew held out before them. It is of habit for his wife to wear her hair up during the day - was he truly the only one without patience to spend on tails and braids of sorts? - but tonight she leaves it down, cascading down her shoulders like she, too, is clad in a traveler's cloak. One lock almost rests atop his elbow, ghosting but not touching. It doesn't have to.

'Is he faring well?' She finally says, without looking at him.

'How did you...' She'd always tease him for routinely forgetting to tell her of his destination (or plans of return) when he leaves, and he doesn't recall telling this time....But perhaps this time he had remembered, for once - a personal best if this was the case, and a first, at tha--

'I have my ways of knowing.' her smile grows mysterious, eyes widening - for dramatic effect, no doubt, aided by the solemn drop in her voice - but he's shared enough of his life with her to know she was laughing. The twitch of her ears, the playful swirl of her tail - clearly way too soon to celebrate a victory to his own newfound competence re: organisation.

'Well, let's see. You leave in the afternoon, so you're not travelling too far. You leave on the day it's your turn for kitchen chores, so you're hoping you won't be back by nightfall -'

'In my defense,' Ok, now she's straight up laughing, and he cannot help but laugh along with her. 'In my defence, have I not cooked two nights in a row just some moons ago?' And anyway, the timing was mere coincidence!

'...And finally, you return like you've stepped out of a legend, with this strange air around you,' For a second she stills, hand outstretched in the air mid-vague gesture, just contemplating him. 'You're only ever like this after you see him. It's fascinating, really...'

'You're just as bad as he is!' he swats at her, a playful maneuver, laughter still bubbling up in his chest. 'All logic and reason and...'

His little attack is intercepted before he can reach her - she's quick to react as ever, of course, and his hand is hopelessly trapped in hers, leaving him no choice but to let their fingers lace together.

It's narrower than his, her hand - but stronger, all callouses and warmth and some herbal ointment that she brews every autumn from some rare seasonal herb. That, too, had come from Leaks, a recipe he strangely hadn't been reluctant to hand over, scribbled on a scroll of soft bark.

He lets them stay like that, hands entwined before them, as the room dips into comfortable silence once more. And once more, Shui is not one to break it.

'Do you think I would be able to meet him, one time?' She asks, light and uninvasive, like the breath of endless green in spring, like the sway of river-water. It occurs to Shui then that she didn't ask as request, as a hope - she merely asks his consult.

'He's. Uh'

He lowers his cup back onto the rectangle of orange by the window, and for a moment his ring catches light, a spark reflected in the glass. How should he explain this? That others have labelled him unsociable and cursed yet every word he speaks is laced with more magic than any song he's ever heard, magic born of love, magic that he somehow stumbled into at a time of need and that has enveloped him ever since?

'He's a little bit eccentric.' Is what he finally settles on. 'I don't imagine he'd be too comfortable with visitors, let alone filling in the role himself.'

She's not too quick to reply herself - just watching him through half-lowered lashes, slow and measured, like the evening sun itself. It creeps through the window until she, too, is showered her in gold. Shrouded by all this light she somehow reminds him of Leaks, slightly, but different.

'Why do you speak as if you offer an apology?' She says, finally, corner of her mouth a lazy half-smile, as if whatever conclusion she's arrived to had left her content.

'There's been times where others...misunderstood.' He raises his shoulder in response. Others, the only thing Leaks rarely spoke about, and the rare instances where he had, the words were scarce and laced with bitterness that doesn't just come based on assumption or precaution.

'Others were fools, then.' She tosses her head back, letting her hair flow, shaking it as if she were drying herself off after the rain. Shui can almost imagine little droplets of golden light scattering all over the place, hiding in the corners of their home where he'll be able to find them later, gathering them into his song.

'I'm not one to speculate' - and he isn't, especially when it comes to Leaks, but this is something he can says with an almost-certainty, 'But I think he'd be quite fond of you, whether you meet or not.'

She only asks once more, in all the moons to come - not long before her son - their son is to be born.

It had been a strange affair - sat strange with him still, the entire framework of physicality that he could never really relate to, of having to conceive a physical manifestation of his love in such manner. There was, nonetheless, a great joy in knowing his song will be shared with one more soul precious to him, that one day his son - no, a name - Konoe - would roam the forests by his side, will look up at his mother with pure joy like he does, will, too, come to meet -

The second time she asks, he catches himself wanting to say yes.

'Is it not only fair that I come offer my thanks in person?' She jokes from where she's curled up in that same old chair by the window. There is a flask in her hand, a tiny glass vial in which a concoction bubbles purple.

The very first time Shui had encountered one of these was the time Leaks handed over a slender glass tube full of something when Shui mentioned the fits of nausea that plagued the mother-to-be as of late. Along with it came a parchment, a timetable of sorts, on when the potion is best to be taken. The scientist himself remained wordless, but something about how it was just lying on the shelf ready to go made Shui suspect he's had it prepared and stored for the occasion.

'It is.' He agrees.

Would it not be only fair that the two most important people in his life should come to meet?

And yet he cannot, and if she's disappointed when he tells her just as much, she doesn't show it.

Truth be told, he's been a lot more persistent than she has - not a single visit as of late had gone without mention that he, Leaks, would be always welcome with them, and that Shui's family was always his as well. And every time without fail the invitation would be declined, and something in Leaks's eyes would be so very gentle, yet so very firm.

'Perhaps one day,' he would say, just before changing the subject, or pretending the potions and mechanisms lining his table required his immediate attention. 'We will see.'

See?

Now here's a thought.

'But I could take you somewhere.' he adds, an echo of her gentle 'No, no, I understand'.

'Not as close as you'd like to,' he adds, even as her ears already perk up with interest, and she sits up straight in her seat. 'But it's something.'

'Something he wouldn't mind?' She asks, as if it's of foremost importance, and something about that makes Shui's chest swell with fondness, making it difficult to decide whether if was for her, or for him, or for both of them at once.

'You'd have to be careful!' he yells out a belated warning as she rushes to get into attire better suited for travel. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. He understood little of carrying young - something even Leaks had pointed out to him with little ceremony - but the process came at a cost, that much he knew. Ok, this definitely isn't the wisest plan - what if something was to happen? What if she'd lose her footing, hurt herself in the woods? It was a long way out, after all, hidden from all - what if -

'You worry too much.' She laughs, as though reading his very mind. 'A little exercise would do me good, as would a breath of fresh air.' Brightly-woven shawl around her shoulders, navy travel-hood - her hair looks almost white against its fabric, dancing in the wind.

'Besides,' And he knows that tone, knows the mischief in it, boding anything but peace and quiet - 'I don't think I've much to fear. If someone with your sense of direction, self-preservation, organisation, and all things survival...'

'Look,' he tries, but there's not much to deny, is there? He's never been especially graceful or resourceful out in the wild, and as for his success as an explorer, well, there has been some...precedents. From what he knew of his wife's youth, the only person he should be concerned for here is himself.

Besides, hasn't Leaks always said the same?

He thinks, as they make their way through the undergrowth, side by side, voices quiet - that the two he's come to love most really aren't as different as he once thought.

Strange – when the place where two worlds meet springs up before them, far away from busy village life as it was – it feels like time has scarcely passed at all.

'This is as far as I can take you.' He says, and though this isn't even truly the start of the magician's domain, his words ring honest. Where she may gaze at the clearing before them, questioning what harm there was in stepping through the lush grasses, and shrubs most ordinary in their growth, he can almost sense the vibrations of an ancient spell, can almost sense the phantom path beneath his feet, the very same he's walked so any times.

Leaks's magic, he could breach, for it always welcomed him; could bring her with him with no harm to be met. Leaks's trust? That alone was sacred.

Again, he wants to apologise, for some reason or another – and again, she looks before herself as if met with great wonder.

Shui looks for words to explain, an introduction of sorts - the place where the forests guided him, the place he was first called 'friend'? The place where magic dwelt, and something beyond words, where his song resonated stronger than ever? The silence hangs heavy, too long, suspended without motion, but - do some things really need explanation to be known?

When her hand moves before her, reaching out to feel the air ahead, it trembles ever so slightly, and with a belated sense of awe, Shui knows that she, too, is feeling.

Strange.

Strange that the girl looked so much – so much like himself, save for the accursed colouring. Well, what was thought of as accursed, anyway. Before Shui had stumbled into his life and somehow stuck around for long enough to convince him otherwise.

Strange that he would have someone else stand before him, just a few tails and a number of spells away - but no distaste would threaten to suffocate, no need to pull up another barrier or to retreat to the heart of the forest would arise.

The strangest of all? The way she smiles as she reaches out to touch the foliage before her, the very tips of her fingers dipping into the woven fabric of his spellcraft. Almost as if she understands. Almost as if she sees him, standing on the outskirts of his life, and doesn't hesitate to reach out to him, welcoming, accepting.

'Will you take Konoe here too, when he's born?' Leaks hears her ask, and he has no trouble imagining a kitten, a child that comes up no higher than those dreadfully-orange boots the Poet insists on wearing – reaching out towards the barrier in the same manner as she does, all curiosity and wonder and something else that he cannot find a name for.

A memory surfaces up without prompting. He isn't sure why, but it's of the one time Shui asked him if he's had a family.

'If he would want to.' comes the reply, without hesitation.

'Which 'he'?' The girl says, and when Shui laughs, he doesn't realise he's smiling along.

Doesn't realise the smile remains on his face all the way until their departure.

'Thank you.' the canopies carry the girl's voice through to him as the two slowly make their way back towards the village. He can no longer see them from his place among the treetops, but he knows the path would see for their journey to be swift and safe.

'What for?' He hears Shui ask, the slightest twinge of disappointment in his voice.

'For letting me meet him.'

'Huh?' and Leaks can just picture the expression he's making, the way his eyebrows crease at the bridge of his nose, not understanding. Maybe the Poet was right when he once told him he was a bad influence when it came to Leaks and imagination.

'W-w are you talking about, we...We didn't...'

'I didn't have to.' The girl laughs, and hm. The reaction is indeed curious, even for Leaks.

'Some things just are – you said he's taught you as much, had he not?'

Silence – this is where Shui would probably nod, ears drooping ever so slightly.

'His world – the one he only shares with you – there's no need for me to be part of it to know. No need to witness for myself to know it's there, and to love it all the same.'

There it is – the very science of existing that he's always believed it, albeit in much more abstract a manner than the allowance he accepts for himself. There's naivete in the statement, and an almost childish hopefulness – but then again, weren't those the very qualities he's analysed in the air around Shui himself? Has he not dissected and categorised them - along with everything else to do with the Poet - as fondness?

You've chosen well, my friend.

You've chosen well, too, the leaves seem to echo, though Shui wasn't exactly a choice – more of a unique anomaly in the algorithm of his life, one that swept everything upside down and settled somewhere in his chest. The girl, too – why had the ghost of a touch against the barrier of spells felt the way it had?

There's another memory that surfaces as he, too, turns on his heels to make way towards his dwelling – a Two-Cane manuscript, or was it more a book of leisure? Something about a gift of a secret – about how the things of greatest importance always went unseen to the eye. Before, he's always theorised it to be incorrect - how could something that wasn't truly there hold so high a value? But that was before Shui, before his laughter and the flutter of flame-red hair, before the band around his finger. Before the feeling of Shui's hand in his, the same hand that was tugging at the strings of his instrument just moments before, the music weaving something into his very soul like a spell. Before the feeling nestling in his chest, the strange satisfaction at finally seeing the girl - Shui's wife - the almost-anticipation at the thought of doing the same for his son. Before -

Before.

And after? What happens once the essential is no more?

***

'What do you mean, it doesn't exist?'

There's three of them perched around a table barely big enough for one, huddled so close that Rai's hair threatens to fall into his, Konoe's eyes, making it all the more difficult to see. There isn't even room for a lamp or a Pathfinder to set down anywhere, so they must make do with the strange device suspended off the ceiling all throughout Tokino's workshop. Bulb-like flowers of steel and something else, they hang from strange metallic threads, shifting with the evening breeze and casting a never-ending dance of shadows across the yellowed paper before them.

It is a map – one deceptively recent, worn and faded the paper it's drawn on may be. The landscape has changed with the Void, and changed again as whole forests and valleys bloomed back into existence. Some old routes were, judging by Tokino's recounts of his endeavours, near impossible, some were a convenient addition to a merchant's path, and altogether the whole process was not without anomaly.

'There's talk going around.' In the sway of shadows, Tokino's face looks narrower, more solemn, drawing them in. 'That this place was where the Void first started. That it used to be dead land, an aftermath of a terrible fire some years ago where no tree would grow, no beast would wander – and then the Void came. Its very nothingness personified, come to life. The cradle of Evil, some have said, and others have deemed it a place that hides the gateways to death.'

Look, they've faced things much worse and much more imminent in their threat, but can one blame Konoe for the little claws of unease making their way up his spine at the anxious rise and fall of his friend's voice, the way he can feel his Touga tense up ever so slightly beside him? The shadows in the corners of the shop suddenly seem to move with a pace of their own, living and impending, and it's so easy to imagine things much greater and darker lurking in the night, in the land where nothingness once used to dwell. Even his longtime friend's face loses familiarity in these murky patterns, something mysterious flickering in his gaze.

But then Tokino laughs, a soft sound of disbelief, and just like that the illusion shatters, sending the shadows creeping back to their corners. Dimly, Konoe remembers watching the merchant herd the kittens of a village next door, back when they were barely more than kittens themselves. He'd have the young ones curl up by the fire beside him as he'd recite legend after legend, getting progressively more and more morbid, even holding up a flaming branch to his face for extra effect. Their shocked gasps, the glisten in Tokino's eyes, the scolding his father gave him afterwards and his willingness to stay with the little ones until they've calmed down again – all nothing but distant memory, now; another time entirely.

'I can't believe you almost looked worried for a second.' Tokino's still laughing, and Konoe can't help but chuckle as well. Falling for something like that, after everything?

Rai, on the other hand, doesn't quite share the amusement.

'Get on with it, will you?' His tail flicks back in irritation, and Konoe almost believes that it's not born out of falling for Tokino's trick as a storyteller, or out of the fact that they could be curling up to go to sleep, was it not for this impromptu meeting.

'Yes, yes.' the ginger cat gives one last chuckle before his tone draws much more composed once more. 'I was passing by this famed spot not too long ago, you see. Making sure the Void is truly no more, mapping out a new trail for the trades to follow.'

'And?'

'It's not there.'

'Alright, so we've heard.' Rai frowns, impatience rising. 'So what is there, where it used to be? Places don't just...cease to exist. Do not tell me the accursed Void has returned?'

'Void, yes, but luckily not in the way we've known the word before. Now, there's a gap where the land used to be, like a chunk of land has been torn out.'

'What, so just...' Konoe struggles to visualise how it must look, where a piece of forest has become no more. 'Just a pit, a hole in the ground?'

'Something like that.' Tokino shrugs. 'A great chasm, where you cannot see the bottom. There's no trace of the Void, but also no trace of life on what's left behind.'

'If there's no traces of anything -' and yes, that did looks suspiciously like Rai stifling a yawn - 'Then why need we concern ourselves with it? I would assume no one foolish enough a cat to stumble close enough to fall in...'

Again, Tokino laughs, but his face remains thoughtful, as though weighting something, and when he turns to Konoe again, he speaks with a sigh.

'I've heard other talk, too. The local cats have legends of the place from before the void came.'

...a long way out, hidden from everyone...

'Talk that made me think the place would have been of interest.'

And the forests would only guide to you the one you call 'friend'

'You're telling me this is it? This is the place where he...'

'Well,' Konoe exhales, and the hand around his tightens just for a moment – the pressure of gloved fingers brings the same coarse comfort Rai's very presence offers. 'It all adds up, doesn't it? A place where no one could go, a place of enchantment? A great fire, a lifeless plain – and the place where the aftermath of his cursed song first evolved?'

'And now, no place at all.' Rai says, face grim, and it's strange to think that this detached hollowness in his voice is born of the same feeling that sources Konoe's song, that had woven together the lives of two cats decades before – theirs, and his mother's, too.

Tokino hasn't been exaggerating - the chasm lies before them like a wound in the ground, jagged edges that wouldn't scar over. No tree would ever grow there again, no rain with glisten in the grass. It isn't all that wide, for its other edge is clearly visible across the vacuum inbetween - lush green of the forest beyond shredded open with a strip of ruthless black. Within the chasm itself there is no bottom - only darkness.

'Just how deep does this thing go?'

The heel of Rai's boot presses into the edge before Konoe can protest or voice a concern for their stability. The bank itself remains monolith, but a buildup of clay and mud and debris crumbles inwards, and Rai's hand descends onto his shoulder to still him, listening for a sound of impact.

No sound comes – even the singing of birds and rustle of leaves seems to grow distant.

'Deep.' Konoe feels the need to reinstate. Something about the scene feels surreal – was this really the remnant of where everything began? The same land his father had once discovered for the first time? The place a soul was torn in two by its own self? If so...

'Why disappear now?' Rai echoes his thoughts. He steps along the edge of the chasm, as if contemplating making his way around, but seems to decide otherwise. 'I'd understand Leaks not wanting the place around straight after- 'A flickers of an eye doesn't miss the way his Sanga stills beside him, and Rai pauses, searching for a better choice of words. 'When the Void first came. But why now, when everything is in the past? When everything birthes itself anew?'

'I don't think this is his doing.' Even now, saying Leaks's name felt odd, a combination of peaceful nostalgia and unease. 'Tokino said this is a recent occurrence, and if he is no more...' His voice trails off into the air.

'I hope myself to be correct when I assume you haven't been running around ripping chunks from the ground?' Rai reaches out to run a hand through his hair. It's natural, Konoe thinks, that he'd look for something uplifting to say, but the words resonate within him with a shadow-grey melancholy.

He doesn't know what prompts him to bend down so that his knees left imprints on the barren ground; what urges him to stretch his arm outwards until he was left touching what was there no more, until his fingers connect with the ghost of a past that was someone else's, yet his own all the same.

He is only glad that Rai is beside him when suddenly his vision goes and his body is too heavy to remain upright; when the music that fills his ears and leaves room for nothing else steals him away from this realm. That strong arms pull him back from a sure fall through emptiness, enveloping, anchoring him to safety.

Rai's voice echoes somewhere on the periphery of consciousness, concern and desperation and things that Konoe has come to call home, but even that fades out of reach. Instead, there -

There is a memory.

This has happened before – thoughts and feelings that didn't belong to him, drawing him in, burning into his mind, but never since then, never like this.

Still...Could it be?

Leaks?

Father?

No, something else. A voice – a woman's voice, and a warm dry hand brushing his hair off his suddenly much-too-small face.

One day, you'll meet him. One day, you'll undo what has been done.

One day, you'll know how to forgive.

Who -

One day, you'll learn to love the world like he had. Like your father had.

A press of lips to the dip between his ears, as if every ounce of care and tenderness and protection in the world is woven into the one gesture.

Like I would have.

Hold onto it. Whatever trace, whatever vestige is left – hold onto it. Store it deep within your heart, weave it into your song. It lives on with you, like it did with him, before.

It lives on with you.

When he opens his eyes again, his vision remains a curtain of white, and for a second he thinks the illusion still has hold of him. He isn't sure how he hasn't remembered this before, but it's there now, confined to his memory – her eyes, always brimming with kindness, the sound of her voice, the songs she would sing to lull him to sleep - much unlike a Sanga's, but carrying power of their own. And hair - long and straight, and almost-white.

But no - it's just Rai, cradling his head in his lap - Rai, who has never left his side, whose face is even now a still frame of concern.

'Are you alright?' He asks, voice full of many more things than his Touga doesn't say out loud. It's only in the brush of the same gloved hand against his cheek that it shows, in the way he scolds him for coming too close to the edge the moment his wellbeing is established - in the phantom ghost of a touch to the base of his ears.

'Just like in the vision,' The words come as response to the touch before he can stop them - though he supposes he should mention something to Rai regardless.

'Vision?' A singular blue eye blinks down at him, and the almost-concealed apprehension isn't completely unfounded, given their track record with those.

This time though, this time it's different.

'I saw...just then, when I touched where it- used to be,' He motions towards the chasm.

'It was...A memory, I think, but...' he furrows his brows in thought, 'I'm sure it couldn't have had anything to do with Leaks...'

Could it?

There has been no time to talk about his mother – no time to talk about their past. He hadn't known what sort of a relationship she'd shared with Leaks, and – well, though he couldn't imagine anything unhappy, he even knew not how close she'd been with Shui himself before he was born. All he had were vague childhood memories where sounds and scents and feelings seemed more tangible than faces and words - and now, the vision from today. The vision that came from a past belonging to someone whose world he always, to this day, had assumed mutually exclusive from hers.

Perhaps he assumed wrong.

They don't stay for much longer – though Rai offers they set camp for the night, or at least linger till nightfall. There is a difference, Konoe thinks, between recognising memories, the means of paying their respect – and clinging to that which is there no longer, circling the past, unable to move on.

'Maybe this is why the place is no more.' He shares these thoughts with Rai as they wade in and out of the seas of green. 'Eventually, grass will grow again, and the roots will close over that vacuum, and the cliffs will be evened out. The forest always claims its victories.'

'And then those memories will be no more.' His companion mutters, more to himself. He walks a step or so ahead, so Konoe doesn't know what expression he wears as he says that, whether the words come with disappointment or relief.

'Why not? They don't have to live in an object or a place to exist.'

'Do you think,' Rai throws over his shoulder, voice softer than Konoe would perhaps be used to. 'In all of Sisa, do you think you there's more traces of them left behind? That you could see them again, even if they're only visions?' - and there's something else in these words – a feeling, a familiarity? Like he's been asked something similar before, somewhere important.

'Would you want that?' he asks to fill the silence. Hindsight tells him the question is a foolish one - after all, the visions were his alone, and quite unlikely to be encountered again, anyway. Rai - Rai carried his own losses, his own memories, and his burden was no lighter.

'Would you?' The silhouette before him resonates.

'Maybe.' when Konoe finally does answer, the silence has gone on for long enough for Rai to come to a halt before him. He looks at him with a mixture of confusion and curiosity, but Konoe doesn't meet his gaze.

'I think,' he says, and now it's his turn to choose his words with care. 'I think it doesn't matter too much, if something like that comes to me or not, if there's a trace of them left elsewhere.'

Slowly, his hand finds Rai's - and just as slowly he presses it against his chest, savouring the weight of it, the affirmation of being.

Shui, Leaks, and now - mother...

'I don't need to see, already...' Rai's hand is cool and calming between his heartbeat and his palm, and though he's not making much sense, he has faith in his Touga to understand. 'Somehow, knowing is enough.'

He feels Rai exhale somewhere into his hair as he's held closer, as an arm is drawn around his shoulders, radiating reassurance. It's nice - to be held like that, to be given the space to melt against another. To share this with someone else.

'Knowing is enough, you say.' the other finally says, drawing out the syllables, and Konoe can feel the smirk in his voice. 'You really are a peculiar cat, you know.'

'What happened to 'foolish'?' It's hard to protest with your face hidden in one's chest, and Rai is reluctant to pull back, so the complaint is muffled - but the other hears him anyway.

'Notwithstanding.'

When Konoe replies, it comes without awareness, without intent. There's just a thought at the back of his mind that never failed to bring him pain every time he would remember - until now.

'I'm afraid the trait might be familial.'

Rai has to pull back then, and he stares him down with a confused exasperation, as if trying to read some secret in the contours of his face. Konoe guesses he's not sure if he's serious.

'Don't...' the smaller cat starts, for he's not too sure of that himself. He shouldn't have said that - it made a poor joke when the past was troubling as it was, and there was nothing akin to humour in the cost paid for his father's missteps, and for Leaks's...

But then Rai is laughing - not a half-swallowed chuckle, not a smirk of sarcasm - no, the laughter is crystalline, and Konoe is almost taken aback by how genuine it sounds.

'What am I going to do with you,' Is all that Rai can manage, and then he, too is laughing, and somewhere it feels like a great burden being lifted, because it doesn't hurt. Knowing the past - being able to forgive and move on, being able to let go and treasure the memory all the same -

'I don't know,' he says, and there's no untruth in that, only gratitude.

Only laughter shared between a Sanga and his Touga, only trust. Only magic of an emotion that brought meaning to all. And standing there, Rai's hand on his heart, the Moon of Night rising before them and casting the sky silver - Konoe swears there's more that two voices echoing among the endlessness of the forests.

fin.

#lamentosecretsanta #darkness-my-sunshine #Lamento #nez writes stuff

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