#the lost boy in the field of reeds can walk forever and never return

[peachyhoolagan]

I see him Hera. When the moons in the sky are at their fullest, the wolves howl and the grass dances in the midnight breeze. He’s there. I see him staring back at me in the fields. I see him Hera… and he looks so tired.

-

It would be a hundred times easier

If we were young again

But as it is

And it is

We're just two slow dancers, last ones out

We're two slow dancers, last ones out

And the ground has been slowly pulling us back down

You see it on both our skin

We get a few years and then it wants us back

-

P2

[5160763]

The were’s curse

@hopiecat

Here it is again for keeps.

Kit belongs to Hopie, and this is me CHECKING YOUR ANGST BABY but thank for letting me play with him ヾ(:3ﾉｼヾ)

(tbh I’ve wanted to do this AU since forever and I want to keep writing this)

He opens his eyes.

That, in itself, is surprising. He hadn’t expected to wake up at all, much less waking up warm and safe in someone else’s bed, entirely himself again. There’s a little trinket hanging up by the window, spinning in the breeze, and Kit rubs at his eyes as he sits up when it throws shards of coloured light into his eyes.

Judging from the haze of the light in the room, it’s probably late morning or early afternoon. Kit slips from the bed, marveling at the fact that he has hands and feet again. A quick check reveals nothing out of the ordinary: everything is where they should be, and he hasn’t gained new appendages or lost any. How long has it been since he was asleep? The last thing he remembers is the brittle rustling of grass as he runs through a field, and the silvery, blinding moon as blood floods in through his teeth.

Careful not to jostle any of the strange items or unidentifiable instruments scattered around the room, Kit pulls the thin sheet off the bed and crosses the room to peer out through the gauzy curtains, stooping because of how the ceiling is. There’s no doubt that this is a magician’s room, if the chalky sigils on the wall and the spell spanning the ceiling hadn’t given it away already. Outside the window, what looks to be a feathery version of cat’s tail reeds bob joyfully along with the wind. Absently, Kit reaches out to touch one, and withdraws his hand immediately when the fluff scatters from the plant at his touch. Something mews, and Kit finds himself staring at a black cat with split tails and luminous green eyes.

It feels, he thinks, as though he is still asleep and ensnared inside a sorcerer’s dream.

There’s nothing of the purpose or the urgency that used to grip him as he wraps the sheet around himself and makes his way barefoot out into the rest of the house. Before, he would have been anxious about waking up in a foreign environment, defenceless in a magician’s territory, but there is none of the sense of danger. Perhaps there is a piece of himself missing after all, Kit thinks, and ducks a bundle of what looks like dried mushrooms hanging from the ceiling. It’s a small house—cottage, really—haphazardly decorated with mismatching pieces of knick knacks and an ugly carpet thrown down to cover the burn marks left all over the wooden floor in front of the fireplace. It’s owner seems to be missing. The cat from before stalks his progress from window to window, watching and mewing as he peers and pries into various nooks and crannies, eventually settling for washing its paw as he pokes cautiously at a wedge of cheese sitting out on a low table. It’s still difficult for him to trust magicians, much less their food, so he leaves it alone and doesn’t eat it although he is hungry.

“Are you the magician?” Kit crosses the room to crack the window open when the house turns up nothing. The cat flicks a ear at him curiously, and doesn’t shy away when he reaches out for it. “Did you save me?”

He’s heard of the stories, of magicians shapeshifting and running alongside the children of the Wild. It would have been easy for them to identify him as Other, if that were the case. On the ledge, the cat stares at him before it mews and leaps away before Kit can touch it. Just a cat, then, with a bad case of a tail injury? Leaning against the window, Kit watches it amble further off into the garden, tails swishing.

For someone who has seldom experienced peace, it’s frighteningly easy to be lulled into the relative comfort of it.

Regardless, as warm and peaceful as he feels, Kit understands that this place isn’t for him. While he is extremely lucky to have been saved, he has to leave. Better to go, then, before the magician returns, he reasons. They might be an unpleasant character, or someone who wants to extort something from him. In a world where he had to claw his way through the multitude of dead bodies for his own grisly survival, peace and freedom can only be a fairytale, a wisp of a pipe’s smoke dream. No one, he knows very well from the painful lessons etched into bone from young, does nothing for free.

For all he knows, it might have been a trial, a test.

For all he knows, she might be still waiting - if only for another chance to strip his flesh from his bones one last time.

(It isn’t as though he has a choice. If it weren’t for her, he would never have made it this far.)

He’s three steps from the house when the gate rattles, and the magician—boy, actually—crashes into the garden from above in a plume of fire, yelping. The flames extinguish in a whoosh, heat expanding outwards and dissipating, leaving the boy to pick himself off the ground, coughing.

“You’re up!” He smiles immediately when he spots Kit staring at him, dusting off his cloak with one hand while he rubs at where he had unfortunately landed on his hip. “I had been worried. How are you feeling?” A glance at Kit’s general state of undress and his lack of shoes, and then the boy is frowning. “You’re leaving.”

“I don’t feel unwell,” Kit says, still a little taken aback by his sudden, nearly violent appearance. “I’m… I have to.”

“Oh. But the spell is still unstable right now. I’ve managed to unravel the curse that’s on you—a right piece of work, the were’s curse—but there is still a chance of a relapse. You were pretty far gone when I found you, and I had to pull what little there is left of your humanity.” The boy walks close, closer, and Kit blinks at how short the magician actually is, the top of his head barely brushing his chin. Not to be rude, but the magician is unexpectedly tiny. Unexpectedly ordinary. “You don’t have all of your memories, do you?”

“...no.”

“That’s because the spell isn’t complete. If you leave now, you’ll never get the missing pieces back.” The boy grimaces, then blinks back up at him. His gaze, Kit is surprised to say, is unexpectedly blunt and piercing. “It will be permanent.”

“That’s alright,” Kit says, unable to look away the boy with the honest gaze. “It’s not important.”

“The hell it isn’t,” the boy says. “Is it something urgent?”

“...no.” For all that everyone else is concerned, he is dead. Should have been dead, had the curse run its course and if he weren’t so resilient against magic.

“Then stay. You can leave when you’re better. I’m about to cook lunch anyway, so you can eat if you are hungry.” Leading the way back into the house, Kaito holds the front door for him. Unclasping his cloak and tossing it over the nearest chair, the boy runs a hand through his hair and grunts when he finds bits of grass in it. “I’m Kaito, by the way. Apprentice Kuroba Kaito, but you can just call me Kaito. You can’t really be a proper apprentice when your teacher is dead, anyway? At least, that’s what I think. What’s your name?”

Kaito. Kuroba Kaito.

The name sounds familiar, and Kit finds himself wondering if the boy is related to Kuroba Toichi in any way. In a flash of memory, Kit remembers lightning and a torn apart body. He can’t remember why, or how he knows this. Instinctively, he knows it wouldn’t be wise to mention it, and simply settles on playing the part of an unfortunate victim.

“Kit,” he says, settling for a nickname that he hasn’t used in years. “Thank you for saving me, Kaito.”