#short books can ramble too but at least they ramble for fewer pages

[amphiptere]

OK as much as I will forever adore really long books, I have yet to read one over 600 pages that couldn’t benefit from some significant editing down.

[ivushk]

HELLO. MAY I PLEASE HEAR MORE OF YOUR VAMPIRE AU…. 👉👈

OH MY GOD I'M SO GLAD YOU ASKED THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

Okay, SO. BUCKLE THE FUCKLE UP 'CUZ here's what I've got so far:

Nishiki and Kiryu are still orphans at Sunflower. They come from a tiny village just a few kilometres west from the orphanage. It's a very close and closed-off community. The boys' parents died in a fire when they were very little (which is a common theme for the kids at Sunflower and isn't that a crazy coincidence? *smiles mysteriously*), however the Nishikiyama family house wasn't as badly damaged as Kiryu's so it's just sitting there, waiting for its former residents to reclaim ownership as soon as they're able to (I imagine Kazama would help them with that).

In the next years it becomes a home for Nishiki, Yuko and Kiryu (and Yumi, too, though she feels like a visitor for the most part) in everything but name. It's their hangout spot, their "base of operations", their not-so-secret meeting place. When Yuko's health deteriorates so much that she can't stay at Sunflower anymore, the siblings actually properly move in to make arranging the doctor's visits easier.

It's Nishiki's 17th birthday and all three of them are celebrating and playing games and eating cake and having a good time at the edge of the woods not far from the Nishikiyama residence. They're young and loud and stupid (and ignoring the fact that several people went missing over the course of the last few months) and if Nishiki's heart beats a little too hard in his chest when Kiryu gives him his gift - a beautiful, heavy silver pendant on a slightly-worn leather cord - he doesn't think about it too much (and if he notices that Kiryu stares at him just a bit longer than usual without saying a single word but his gaze is so, so, SO fond-- he doesn't think about it either). (he leaves these kinds of thoughts for restless nights because thinking about his best friend in that way during the day... it hurts. the hurt is good sometimes but it's overwhelming).

They're drunk on the cheap beer they've smuggled from Gen-san's fridge and high on happiness. Unaware that the very same night it would all go crashing down.

At some point they all quiet down and go a little further into the woods than they normally would but no one pays any mind to that. And when suddenly their trio turns into a duo with the sudden absence of the birthday boy himself no one immediately starts panicking. He's been gone for ten minutes, twenty, half an hour. Kiryu tells Yuko to go back to the village, to gather everyone, make them start a search party or something while he keeps looking for her brother (the only things he'll find are the pendant he's gifted to Nishiki with the leather cord torn and the broken shards of his own hope). They never find him.

A year goes by and they hold a funeral for Nishikiyama Akira. Even though there's no body for them to bury. Yuko doesn't cry (she doesn't believe he's really dead). Neither does Kiryu (he used all of his tears up that night, the guilt choking him, and the night after that, and the night after that, and the night-). Yumi does, however. And the nice old lady who gave both Nishiki and Kiryu money for helping her do chores around the house. And the man who gave Nishikiyama a part-time job at his shop (to put at least something towards the cost of his sister's treatment, he felt so indebted to Kazama, and that debt weighed down on him). And a few of the girls and boys from Sunflower too.

Another two years pass. Kiryu moves away to the big city at the behest of Kazama. "It's important for you to continue your education," he says. ("It's important for you to move on," he keeps these words to himself). Kiryu really tries his best. Even makes a few friends (although he's still on the fence about whether he can actually call Oda his friend). It goes as well as it could have considering his circumstances. They say that time heals but Kazuma Kiryu never finds out if there's any truth to those words because he recieves a very short letter - an invitation, actually. To another funeral. But this time it's Yuko they're burying. This time they actually have a body to bury.

Tachibana offers his condolences. Oda offers him a ride to the village and back. Kiryu accepts both.

He can't help but compare this funeral to the last one he's been to. There are fewer people. Fewer tears, too. More flowers. It's quieter and feels something like closure (in truth, it's anything but). Yuko also left behind a will (more like a bunch of wishes since it wasn't an official document but the community decided to honour them anyway). Almost all of her possessions went to the kids from Sunflower, except for the Nishikiyama family house (which on paper actually belonged to Shintaro Kazama) which she left to Kiryu. He can't quite believe it when he hears it and feels his heart break under the onslaught of childhood memories. Still, he goes there later that evening. He finds that little has changed in the time he spent away from the house, from the village, from... all of this, really. There are the same pictures on the walls collecting only slightly less dust. The same books on the shelves and under the broken legs of the old pieces of furniture. The same medicine bottles and equipment in the bedroom, though doubled in quantity. Kiryu's not as devastated as he thought he'd be when he walks around what he used to call his home.

He goes through all the rooms, taking notes of every single thing he finds and every single thing he doesn't. He probably misses a bunch of things (he's not as good at that sort of thing, Nishiki's always had a much better eye for details). Once back outside, he looks for the secret stash they made back when they were teenagers. It's like going through a time capsule. There's a pack of cigarettes he and Nishiki once stole from the teacher's bag, copybooks filled with ugly doodles, dreams for the future and dried flowers and leaves, caps from soda bottles, rocks they thought looked cool, photos and birthday cards damaged by time and weather... the pendant Kiryu gave to Nishiki the last time they saw each other. And a small notebook Kiryu's never seen before. A diary of sorts, a recounting of their days together and their days apart. The handwriting is unmistakingly Yuko's.

It fills him with nostalgia, tears welling up in his eyes, unshed. His heart sinks when he finally reaches the pages where Yuko recounts the last few weeks before she-

She writes about her brother, which is understandable. What's less understandable is the fact that she speaks of him as though he was there, with her. Physically present. Kiryu could chalk it up to the girl being delusional in her dying moments but it doesn't feel right to do so. It's stupid, it's absolutely impossible, he's confused, he's hopeful, why would Yuko hide her notebook there?

The last page. A message. For Kiryu. "Please, Kazuma-kun, help my brother".

Against his better judgement, Kiryu decides to spend the night in the house. Sleep doesn't come to him but that's fine. He sits in the living room, trying to make sense of everything. He sits there until it's way past midnight, until the distant barking of the dogs quiets down, until the rustling of leaves stops, until the very air around him grows still and silent and somehow charged with strange energy. And then he hears it. Three uncertain taps against the window. Kiryu turns his head. It's him.

"Kiryu... Let me in. Please."

He does, without thinking. (He could never very well say no to Nishiki. Even if it got them both in trouble. Even if he's not real.)

The quiet is deafening. It really is him. His best friend (whom he thought dead). His kyoudai. Before Nishiki could say anything, Kiryu wraps him in a tight hug. The only heartbeat between them is Kiryu's own, thundering against his ribs. Nishikiyama doesn't let the hug last, putting some distance between them. He looks guilty, tired; looks at Kiryu with sadness, with longing and something else that he can't quite decipher yet (and it makes him scared but why?). Nishiki also looks older than Kiryu remembers. Not a 17-year-old boy anymore, no. About the same age that Kiryu is now.

Has his gaze always been so sharp? Have his fangs always been this pronounced?

They talk until their throats are hoarse. Until Nishiki pulls out a bottle with some liquid that smells strongly of iron and drinks from it and in that moment Kiryu believes everything his friend has told him. It's crazy, but he does.

Nishiki was abducted that night. Taken from them. By vampires. They hurt him. Forced him to fight other humans (just like him then) for his survival. They fed on him.

It went on and on and on... Days turned into weeks, turned into months, turned into years. Only thoughts of Yuko, and Kiryu, and Yumi kept him going. He wanted to see them again. He hoped he would. That hope was crushed when Nishikiyama met his match in the arena. No, not his match. Someone far stronger. He lost and was tossed out to die. But another vampire saved him. It was a woman, whose face he saw often among the spectators of his fights. She stood out from the crowd, since she never cheered for any of the humans. Never put any bets. Only looked at all that madness with quiet horror. "Reina" she said her name was.

She gave Nishiki blood. Her own blood, and the blood of the vampires that were much stronger and more powerful than her (but not wiser), and human blood.

He turned and it was even worse than the years of anguish he had experienced. The pain and constant thirst almost drove him mad until he was taught to deal with them.

Nishiki was given a second chance. He escaped. And ever since that moment he's been trying his damndest to help other victims of those monsters. Both, the poor imprisoned souls and the villagers who might have shared his fate otherwise.

THAT CONCLUDES MY MAD RAMBLINGS BECAUSE I HAVEN'T THOUGHT OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT THAT WELL

also i don't remember the last time i wrote this much in one sitting and i'm tireeeeeed. i'm not cut out to be a writer and it shows nghghghhhhhh

but! but! but! i have a couple thoughts on where the story goes:

kiryu decides to stay in the village and help nishiki

they uncover the vampires evil plans and recruit a few other characters to fight on the side of JUSTICE (i.e. kazama, who up to that point has been kind of in cahoots with the vamps - hence trying to atone by means of creating the Sunflower orphanage; kashiwagi; yumi; reina; tachibana and oda; majima, and yeah he was actually the one that defeatead nishiki and unknowingly caused him to become a vampire, also majima himself turns into a vampire later in the story thanks to a certain mad simp nishitani)

yuko comes back as a vampire

at some point the scene from my fanart happens; something along the lines of kiryu and nishiki being found by the evil vamps and being attacked. then of course nishiki saves kiryu (who's still baffled that this shit is happening to them and vampires are REAL) and tells him to run which he doesn't but it works out fine in the end

the scene of nishiki drinking kiryu's blood is a MUST because i. love. that. shit. (it's also extremely horny dfjvhsdkfhiasdfhisd)

nishiki's personality is somewhere in between his ykz0 and ykz k*wami self (like, he's much colder now but he still cares about others and does things not just for the sake of his own ambition)

idk about the end but immortal boyfriends? sounds nice?

[dunmerofskyrim]

16

Words turned in Simra’s mind. Words turned and worked themselves over.

The gait of his shaggy-maned mud-brown pony almost made a poem of them. The gentle jolt through the hips, the floor of his body, and out into travel-vexed thighs. An abdomen sick of bending to keep sitting a saddle. The muffled knocking that beat through his spine and set his neck to aching. That was its metre. It was also three-fifths of what he hated about riding.

No denying though, it had halved the second half of their journey. This leg of it, at the least. They had ridden along the nameless stream til it paid out into the Dathan. A wide pale-watered river, but it sat shallow and flowed slow between its deeper sloping banks. That was one thing for which they could thank the coming Winter. Mountain headwaters, back to the west — they’d be lying cold and lazy now, in mountains already gone bleak with frost, bleached with snow.

Simra was wary of river-crossings. Had any number of reasons to be, and most of them good ones too. But crossing the Dathan at the ford they found was scarce enough to wet Simra’s boots, or wash against the ribs of his pony. No great trial, he told himself, as his heart clenched and the eyes behind his eyes remembered. And then they were over.

They dismounted to let the guar bask a moment in the cool bright sun, and the pony roll dry in the grass and the dust. They ate mouthfuls of wood-dark bark-stiff jerky from the saddlebags of the dead Vereansu.

Simra’s stomach still took uneasy to treating meat as a staple not a luxury. It growled and fidgetted, unquiet as they rode on.

In the nights, the mornings, and what stops they took to water and rest their mounts, Simra found time to write. He’d folded the parchment he bought in Bodram til he could see pages in each crumpled gather. Not a book nor quite a scroll, but he numbered each page as he wrote, planning for the day when he’d refold and cut and stitch the whole mess together — make it what it was meant to be.

Sixteenth months with no way to write, then thirteen more with scarce any time to do so — not like this, not for himself. The habit came back hard – harder on some days than others – but the one thing more bitter than writing badly was not writing at all. And all the rest was a chaos of peaks and pits, and misbegot conclusions. One day it would seem that, in silence, he’d somehow gotten better. The next, it seemed neglect had lost him whatever scraps of skill or talent he’d once had.

But the habit was there now, at root and at work. Even without paper or ink, in empty times, some part of his mind would start writing. Words turned. Words turned and worked themselves over.

Simra rode with Tammunei to his left.

His was a hunched shape, low and sloped in the saddle, contrasting the long straight spear slung across his back.

He’d taken the spear from among the fallen Vereansu, who had used it for both a lance and bannerpole. A shaft of reddish-dark wood with a strange and twisting grain, a little longer than Simra was tall, wrapped in leather at the middle and bored with holes at either end to take a carrying strap. Its point was a narrow taper of iron with a second straight spike hooking backwards off from it.

It rattled against his saddle, shoulders, and side as he went. A blighted inconvenience and a sly cruel reminder. Useful, no doubting that, but he’d told himself that he’d never rely on another blighted spear again as long as he lived. Not after all he’d done for the chance to make it so. So don’t rely on it, he told himself now. Use it when it suits you, and don’t when it doesn’t. Sell it when you get the chance for all you give a shit. Still, it felt like an indignity. Another piss poor joke the world was playing at his expense.

Noor went ahead of Simra and Tammunei on her grey and tan guar, the ambling point to their formation. She’d taken a bow from the Vereansu dead and it nestled unstrung, like a little horned moon, at rest in a sheathe by her saddle. Arrows rattled in a nearby quiver. Short and light and softish-spoken, fletched to bring down prey. Longer and heavy, fewer in number, three war-arrows grumbled in their separate compartment. Her long hair streamed idle behind, more wind than speed in its motion.

She sat her saddle upright. Flowed somehow with the jerking two-foot gait of her guar. Flowed somehow with the way its walk veered side to side with every step, as much as it rambled forward.

All motion on two legs is falling, Simra decided. Falling and catching, falling and catching. The kind of thing that if you ever thought about, instead of doing it thoughtless, you’d fail or falter in it — fail the fall, miss the catch.

A steppe-pony was a smoother ride – a more familiar one for Simra – but that didn’t make it a far cry better. Noor was maddening-perfect in the way she rode. Tammunei, natural and smooth, clicking and cooing to their guar all the while. Simra found it easier to slouch. He’d never be mistaken for a good rider. The next best thing was to be a poor but comfortable one, he reckoned. Not that there was any blighted danger of that. He could urge a fair smooth Riftfolk tolt from a horse like this, but any pace slower or faster would jar him. Most of their journey went on at a grating walk, while Simra fought to keep a mouthful of complaints behind his teeth.

The shadow of something winged hung black in the sky.

“One of yours?” Simra pointed it out to Tammunei. “Hired on to catch us dinner?” He’d seen Tammunei sing a hawk from off its glide and down to catch them a hare. Hoped this might be the same.

Tammunei gave a vague smile and shook their head. “I’m listening to the ground, not asking favours of the sky.”

“Alright…”

For all the haze and mystery when Tammunei talked of their magic, the aim was often practical, the goal a fish or scrib or marmot for the pot, or some sense of nearby water. Simra waited for Tammunei to explain.

“I can hear mushrooms,” they said. “Not far. Hiding in the tall grass. We might have missed them otherwise…”

“What does a mushroom sound like?”

“One mushroom? Don’t know. Too quiet. But lots? It’s… Hm… One thing, lots of voices, lots of senses, all talking to each other, but — No. Talking to itself. Like — Like if a spider’s web could talk, strand to strand, corner to join, then…it might talk like this.”

Simra raised his brows, slackened his jaw. He was never sure whether to be amazed or appalled.

“But…you don’t know? Because you’ve never heard a cobweb before?”

Tammunei smiled again. Remembered to nod.

“Fucking Princes…” Simra breathed. A soft curse that turned into a laugh. “Swear, if I could write like you talk…” Even after the laugh had ended, Simra felt a lingering smile twist his scarred lips.

The mushrooms weren’t far, only hidden.

Tammunei made a cooing noise and turned off their course, leaving Simra unsure if the sound had been for their guar or meant for Noor and him. Any case, they followed.

Slinging one leg over the guar’s big sad-smiling face, over the horn of their saddle, Tammunei slipped down onto the plain. Nothing to see. Only the grasses, almost an ordinary green here and hushing high against Tammunei’s shoulders.

Noor curled her legs under her, coming to sit her saddle cross-legged. Frustrating ease, unlimited patience.

Simra kissed his teeth and followed Tammunei. A clumsy mimic of how they’d dismounted, and Simra’s boots hit the ground. Landing, falling, at least, he could do. “Stay,” he told his horse, turning his head back to fix it with a stern frown. “Stay.” Again, sterner, in the closest thing his tongue would come to Deshaan Velothis.

There was no comprehension in the way it stared back. A single sidelong preybeast’s eye. Eerie how it put him in mind of talking to Tammunei sometimes. Same opaque angled look. Same hard time telling if they’d really understood.

The horse stayed, but more from its own will than Simra’s command, he reckoned. It dropped its head to champ at something on the ground, disappearing into the grass save the peak of its saddle and height of its withers.

Simra kissed his teeth again, planted his spear in the dirt with its blunt iron buttspike, and followed Tammunei a short ways into the overgrowth.

With a careful hand, Tammunei parted a wall of grass. Beyond it, the growth was shorter. Between the blades, a ragged circle of fungus grew, in yellow-white and spotted scab-red and the occasional tall spire of blue. Like soapbubbles, heaping over each other. Like a Telvanni town, sprawled in miniature.

“How many of those are any good to eat?” Simra peered through the parted curtain of grass, hesitant to step inside. He’d read stories about forest spirits, marking their sanctums with spirals or circles of small smooth stones, or else with rings of toadstools. Cradletales, but they still put an apprehension in him.

“The white parasols,” Tammunei said.

“The pale frilly ones? Good. That’s most of them!”

“The red spotted ones too. Only the stems though, and only if you plan to sleep soon.” Tammunei crouched, brought out a small sicklebladed knife, and set to harvesting the white mushrooms from off their stubby jaundiced stalks.

From behind them, Simra heard Noor begin to sing. A low quiet drone of noise, familiar by now as the moaning wind or whispering grass.

“What about the blue ones?” Simra asked.

“Bad to eat. Slack muscles, swollen ankles and wrists. A stronger extract locks the joints if you mix it with hackle-lo tea, boil it down…”

“And the reds if you eat the caps?”

“Bleeding gums. Bad dreams. There’s no virtue in them.”

“Less you’re cooking for someone you don’t like, or you need to play ill…”

“The second — why would you..?” Tammunei looked up, some small dismay on their face.

Simra shrugged. “Don’t know. Never know what you’ll need to do. Not til it’ll help to do it.”

Tammunei didn’t respond, but must have understood. Red spots and blue spires, they picked a little of both.

Simra brought out his notebook. Purple, clothbound, pretty, seldom used except to cram full of sidelined thoughts and things to remember. Not since he’d bought the parchment and started thinking bigger. He took out a twisted charcoal pencil and started to scribble down what Tammunei had told him.

“What are you writing?”

“Notes. What you’ve just said, mostly. About them.” Simra pointed with his pencil down at the mushrooms.

“Why?”

“So I don’t forget. So next time I’m hungry and have my choice of mushrooms, I’ll know which way to choose.”

“But why write? Might you forget if you do? Your mind won’t have as much need to remember.”

“Might do. Then I’ll have my notes to look back at, right?” Might do, Simra thought again to himself. Might do, but probably not. For one thing, the notes let him pretend it was otherwise. “Best to have them. Just in case.”

“What about the other writing?”

“What?”

“On the other paper, with the pen. That’s different? Different tools for different tasks.”

“That’s different.” Simra nodded though his gut sank, like being a child again, caught out in some secret mischief. “Kind of. That’s for remembering too, but for other people. Just in case.”

“Other people? To help others remember what?”

“Me, I reckon… Y’know, for if they need to.”

“Oh.” A sad thoughtful pause. “Can I read it?”

Simra had known that was coming. It brought a further sinking  with it. Colour burnt up hot across his cheekbones. “Maybe.” He forced calm into his voice. Attempted an easy smile. “Maybe when it’s done. Or if I don’t finish it. Maybe then.” The smile faltered. “Didn’t know you could read. Just assumed… After what Noor said…”

“Only slowly. Loudly. If I try to read your secret just-in-case memory-papers, you’ll hear of it.”

Simra’s lips parted. His throat choked up a laugh, catching the fact that Tammunei had made a joke a moment before his mind. Laughter was good. It hid the fear he felt for what he’d already written. How it was for everyone and no-one at all; strangers but perhaps never friends; for Tammunei, yes, but not for them to read themself. It was a book braver than he was. In that moment, braver than he felt by far, and off to the point of foolishness.

A thought came. He could burn it, every page, leave no trace. No thought had ever been so tempting or so unbearable both at once. He couldn’t.

When they sat later at their cookfire, cloaked to the night by magic and eating a fry of soft tart-tasting white mushrooms, Simra didn’t. Though the thought came back and the fire beckoned all the same.