Illume: story: Darkness, Darkness
Sep. 30th, 2004 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
[geekery]
A bit of story, in which we learn something very interesting about the relationship between two races that look very different on the outside.
(Also, today's Order of the Stick is amusing. "Now if you don't mind, I'm somewhat preoccupied telling the laws of physics to sit down and shut up.")
Gryphon was lying in the shadow of Shrike's sails, clawed forefeet crossed in front of him, head down. Reiko, barefoot, came up to him and crouched beside him. "Kittycat? Are you all right?"
He turned his head to gaze at her with one eye. "Are you mad at me?"
She seemed startled by the question. "No--why would I be?"
"I killed Lin. You told me not to. But I had to! She made you sad."
"Oh, sweetling." She wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in his feathers and breathing in the dusty smell of him. "No, Kittycat. I'm not mad. I'm sad, but I'm not angry at you. It was the only thing that could have been done, it was the right thing to do, and I'm glad you waited until I wasn't there to do it." She sat down, settling herself between his forefeet, against the place where fur changed to feathers on his chest. "You're right, Lin did make me sad. But I also couldn't kill her, because she was my granddaughter. Now that she's dead, I may have difficulty finding someone who knows how to bring Setto back to life, but...I'll manage."
"Setto, to life? Why?"
"So the Demonbane will stop killing my people, Kittycat. Unless you want to kill him because he makes me sad, too."
The gryphon made a chuckling noise in the back of his throat, which Reiko knew by now was his noise for when he was irritated by something. "Can't. Yet. But maybe soon. Stop him making you sad. Then you'll be happy."
Unaccountably, Reiko found herself on the verge of tears. "Oh, if it worked that way, Kittycat, wouldn't the world be wonderful?" She scratched his ruff. "That's my sweet brave Kittycat, who is getting bigger and more beautiful every day. Thank you."
Gryphon swished his tail in pleasure.
Panda came striding by, and pulled up short when she saw Reiko curled up with Gryphon. The black-eyed samurai looked down at the kitsune. "Are you all right, Reiko? You looked a bit shaken back there."
"I'm fine, thanks. I'm thinking of sending my father a present."
She raised one cloud-white eyebrow. "A present?"
"Lin's head. That would get my point across, right enough. He took my granddaughter and enslaved her. And when she got free, where did she go? Right to Arenro."
The samurai weighed her next words, carefully. "Reiko, I think you shouldn't believe what Lin said to you. The dead are under no compulsion to tell the truth. I think she lied to you."
"Why do you think that, Panda?" Her tone was deceptively mild.
"The Demonbane had no reason to order her to steal your memories. He wanted you to remember. He wanted you to know what you'd done. And, besides, didn't you kill a lot more people than you otherwise would have?"
The kitsune nodded slowly.
"I just think you should take what Lin said with a grain of salt. Don't be so quick to blame the Demonbane for everything that's gone wrong in your life. She was involved with Arenro before she died, don't forget. And so she lied to you as her last act. One last kick at you, before she went on to her next life."
Reiko shifted, Gryphon putting one hand around her protectively, without thought. "Maybe, Panda. And maybe she was telling the truth." She drew in a breath and let it out again. "I'll ask the Demonbane the next time I see him. As far as I know, he's never lied to me. He's omitted important parts of the truth, but he's never outright lied as far as I know. Speaking of..." She nuzzled Gryphon's fur briefly. "Kittycat, let me up."
Panda asked, "Where are you going?"
She shrugged. "It occurs to me that there are possibly a pair of people on this ship I owe an apology to."
"Who might that be?"
"Jeron, for one." The kitsune grimaced as if she were tasting something bitter. "And Funitsu. But Jeron first. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to say to the Scorpion."
Reiko found Jeron speaking with a pair of the other Thrykreen, at the stern of Shrike. She settled herself out of earshot, and waited until he was done and the others had walked off.
She rose, and approached him. He was seated and looked up at her, surprised. "Reiko."
She nodded. "Jeron. I have...come to apologize."
"For what, my lady?"
She wore a rueful smile. "For my anger. It was perhaps undeserved. But before I know whether or not it was, I have to ask you a question. You knew about the Scorpion connection to the kitsune. Why did you just hint at it, instead of telling me?"
"Truly, would you actually believe a Thrykreen sent by Demonbane? How do you know I am telling the truth or Demonbane's truth?"
"I'm not sure, really. But I'd prefer that I make the decision whether or not to believe you." She shrugged. "Besides, as far as I can tell, you're not truly much under the Demonbane's control. Or if you are, it's far subtler than the usual."
"Demonbane holds no real control over me, just my people."
"I didn't think so, from what you said before. I have to say that I wasn't sure about him sending you away from him. It seems like a gamble. You probably know many of his secrets." Reiko seated herself next to him, not touching him, though even from her she could feel the energy running under his skin, and longed to drink.
"I know probably far too many of his secrets, but it was time for me to go."
Casually, she said as if she had not been thinking about this for the last few days, "You're not quite what you seem, Jeron. Different from your people, definitely. You seem--older."
"I am a bit older than my brothers and sisters, yes."
Obviously, that line of conversation wasn't going to get her anywhere. He's waiting for me to ask the right questions. I can feel it. She switched subjects again. "He probably could have sent you anywhere. Why to us, I wonder? It probably doesn't matter. Just out of curiosity, how did you know about the Scorpion/kitsune connection? It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that even the Demonbane would talk about much."
Slowly, Jeron replied, "I was there, Reiko."
She blinked, shocked. "A bit older than your brothers, Jeron? That was, ah, two thousand years or so ago. That would make you older than me."
"You are some four hundred years old, correct?"
"A bit older. Seven hundred or so. I'm not sure, exactly."
"Ah, seven centuries. You don't look a day over two." There was a teasing note in his voice.
She rolled her eyes at him. "I get that a lot." Her voice was warm, and she was pleased. He did indeed have a sense of humor under there somewhere.
"Then I am about twenty times your age, to be accurate."
She looked up at him in astonishment, biting her lip, doing the math. "Fourteen thousand years? You were alive for the Warresh wars, weren't you?"
He nodded. "I was."
"And you're an immortal. Like me. Were all of your people immortal, then?"
"Once, long ago. I think I am the last."
She tilted her head at him, inquiringly. "Was it the Demonbane who changed you? I can see him making that a condition of rescuing your people."
"We were hunted to near oblivion, holding on to the last vestiges of what we'd been in remote corners of Japan. I made a deal with the devil to save my race, but it's led both of us here, to the situation we face."
Reiko shuddered. "Dear kami. That's terrible. Even worse than my own people having anything good in us removed by Funitsu's people."
"His clan may have wounded you, Reiko. He did not."
She laughed, a bit self-depreciatingly. "Oh, I know. I'm occasionally a bit unreasonable, Jeron. A few days usually sees me able to think things through, and put my anger in its place. Just like my anger at you, it fades relatively quickly." She thought about the Scorpion, muttering, "It doesn't help that I find him highly irritating much of the time. Ah, well. I'll apologize later."
"I had wondered what you were angry about, kitsune."
She shrugged again. "I was angry. You and Funitsu happened to be connected to what made me angry. I'm not very good at grudges, most of the time, though. My father being the exception to that."
"Your father has a great deal to answer for, Reiko, and I'm sure he will. And the Scorpion may be able to help you, if you let him."
"We'll all pay for our sins, some day." Her fingers toyed idly with the topaz that was hanging around her neck. "And if he feels like helping, yes, he might at that. I might just ask. After all, the worse he can do is say no, and if he does I'm no worse off than I am now."
"You might just need to ask." She felt rather than saw him shrug, and then he sat back, making himself more comfortable. "You'll be no worse off even if he says no, and you might find that he can help in ways you don't understand yet."
"If nothing else, he might feel the need to redress some of the wrongs his ancestors have done. At least, I'm pretty sure he thinks it's a wrong. The boy's really far too nice to be a good Scorpion much of the time."
"He might lead them to a new age of peace instead. One never knows. Time has taught me that at least. "
She looked at him, tilting her head, admiring his sun-colored hair and the way it fell against his cheek. "If he manages to survive the next three months, that is. Though, really, I'm the one who seems to have the shortest life expectancy around here. Sort of ironic, considering that I'm an immortal."
Jeron glanced over at her, seeing her amber eyes full of fretting. "You can be very fragile sometimes for an immortal."
"Tell me about it. of course, it doesn't help that kitsune aren't meant to go into battle. And until the last few months, I think I successfully managed to avoid getting into any physical battles. At least, I don't remember any. Silly things we do for love, anyway." She sighed gustily.
He nodded, and added, "Of course, you have to relearn all the things you knew before after each memory reset. That can make one more fragile."
"True. I'm at once seven centuries old--and only twenty-two. Speaking of. Would the Demonbane have had any reason for ordering Lin to do a reset of my memory every thirty years or so? Panda mentioned that that didn't make any sense, and she's right. I'm suspecting that Lin may have lied."
The Thrykreen shook his head. "No. The Demonbane hated that fact more than any other. He wanted you to suffer with your memories, not have them wiped clean every few years."
"That was probably all Lin, then. Maybe with some suggestions from Arenro. Which means that I can't believe anything else she told me, including who was behind the attempt she made to capture me that ended up getting her killed." Reiko grimaced, twisting her pendant until the cord that held it was tight against her throat."
"No, that was Demonbane. He did want you captured. Lin hated that she died for him and found her own torture of him by wiping your memories. Thereby denying him his torture."
She let go of her pendant. "And so, even after death, she wanted me to blame him for what she did. Devious girl. I'll have to tell Panda that, yet again, she was right."
"There is something to be said to the cold logic of that one." Reiko couldn't tell if he was making fun of her again, but on the balance she rather suspected he was. She found herself not minding, and replied in kind.
"I'm starting to get a better appreciation of it as we go along. Not enough to want to imitate her, even if I were able to. I'll take my kitsune nature, both the good and the bad." The urge to touch him was getting stronger, but she resisted, because she knew that once she gave in, she'd probably forget anything else she wanted to ask him. "I actually have one more curiosity, Jeron. I noticed that you never change your form. Would it be too personal for me to ask why?
He shook his head. "I am in my real form. The Thrykreen form for me is a more like a werewolf transformation, rather than an illusion. That is no longer true for the rest of us. Demonbane took what was left of our humanity."
Remembering something he'd said a few days ago, she asked, "You know, you said before that with every generation, you're getting closer to what you once were. Will you recover that humanity, do you think?"
"That is my hope, that a generation will be born where humanity isn't an illusion."
"And you might recover your immortality."
"Maybe. But I find that immortality isn't much of a gift without someone to share it with." He was looking directly at her as he said this, a raw honesty in his sea-blue eyes.
"I know." She closed her eyes briefly, feeling abruptly a little lonely as she remembered Setto, and how she had always known that her time with him was going to be a candlespan when compared with the rest of her life. Remembered a constant stream of lovers, each with her for so little time. How many more don't I remember? Hundreds, probably. "You're the only person I've found in seven hundred years that I can't accidentally kill." Her mouth was set in a wry twist, and she looked down at her hands. "That energy you have running along your skin. Did you have that before the Demonbane altered you?"
"Yes, and that is not all it does."
This was new and interesting information, and Reiko pounced on it as if it were a mouse. "Really? What else does it do?"
"It's got a range, and within that it's deadly to anyone--except a kitsune. But I'm the only one of my kind that can do it."
"That's...interesting. And you build up a charge of it, and have to release it every so often?"
"Periodically, unless it's drained."
She followed that thought down, completing it. "Drained by a kitsune. So. Are the Thrykreen and the kitsune two halves of the same whole, then? I've noticed a...I can't describe it. It feels almost like an addiction, to that energy of yours."
He was watching her carefully, as if unsure of her reaction. "You may be the female of the species, Reiko."
She blinked, opened her mouth, thought better of what she was about to say, and closed it again. She sat perfectly still as she considered this idea. Kitsune and Thrykreen? It makes...sense. Out loud, she said, "That's an interesting idea. All of your people are currently male, aren't they?"
Jeron nodded. "They are all male. Look at our forms, Reiko. We are both beautiful by human standards, as all our people are. Your other form is fox, ours is mantid. But even Tadaki has a bird form...we may be related somewhere deep in the past, even if not directly."
She fretted at the sleeve of her kimono with one hand. "It could be. And there's the fact that when a kitsune has children, the girls are all kitsune, and the boys are human. But...that could be because we mate with humans, couldn't it?"
"And how fertile are you with humans?"
"Not very. I've had one child in seven hundred years. And I probably don't have to tell you how many chances I've had to become pregnant." She made a wry face.
The Thrykreen was looking thoughtful. "What if it takes a human with mantid blood to be truly compatible? Is that the reason it takes kitsune so many tries to become pregnant?"
"It's an...interesting idea." Without thinking about it, she moved over from where she sat to tuck herself against Jeron, closing her eyes. After a moment, she felt him put his arm around her, and pull her close.
The energy flowed under his skin, and Reiko basked in it, not drinking but just feeling it move. It was a sensual pleasure, and she admitted to herself that it was one she'd been wanting, even as she'd been angry with the mantid. I like him. A lot. I wish I could find out if he's telling the truth. I think he is, but...how many men have lied to me?
And there was something else, as well. I can't kill him accidentally. But that also means I can't kill him on purpose. That's my one natural defense, and without it I'm completely vulnerable. The thought was not as frightening as it might have been, but it was still food for thought.
The question was, could she trust him? Being near him feels like coming home. But I don't know if I can trust my instincts about him. Perhaps it's wishful thinking. But on the other hand...wouldn't it be lovely to love someone who's also immortal, who isn't going to age and die in less than a hundred years?
If I'm reading him right, that's what he might be offering me. And to have children, if what he says is true... The thought was a bittersweet one. She'd raised Yasuo on her own, after Setto died (after I killed him, the treacherous voice in her mind whispered), and though it had been difficult, she'd enjoyed watching her mortal son grow into a man before her eyes.
And it seems that he would need me as much as I need him. Separate, we are both dangerous to the people around us. Together, the chance of either of us accidentally killing people is much, much less.
She wished there was a way to confirm some of the things he'd said to her, about Lin, and about how old he was. Perhaps a visit with the First Foxes might be wise.
How do I do that, though? She searched her memory, coming up blank. I have no idea how one talks to them. Taura wouldn't know. Who would? Perhaps a spell she'd been granted recently, a conduit to the gods, might help.
For the moment, she put her thoughts aside, leaning into Jeron. She felt him press a kiss on the top of her head, and after that they both sat still for a long time, wordless.
A bit of story, in which we learn something very interesting about the relationship between two races that look very different on the outside.
(Also, today's Order of the Stick is amusing. "Now if you don't mind, I'm somewhat preoccupied telling the laws of physics to sit down and shut up.")
Gryphon was lying in the shadow of Shrike's sails, clawed forefeet crossed in front of him, head down. Reiko, barefoot, came up to him and crouched beside him. "Kittycat? Are you all right?"
He turned his head to gaze at her with one eye. "Are you mad at me?"
She seemed startled by the question. "No--why would I be?"
"I killed Lin. You told me not to. But I had to! She made you sad."
"Oh, sweetling." She wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in his feathers and breathing in the dusty smell of him. "No, Kittycat. I'm not mad. I'm sad, but I'm not angry at you. It was the only thing that could have been done, it was the right thing to do, and I'm glad you waited until I wasn't there to do it." She sat down, settling herself between his forefeet, against the place where fur changed to feathers on his chest. "You're right, Lin did make me sad. But I also couldn't kill her, because she was my granddaughter. Now that she's dead, I may have difficulty finding someone who knows how to bring Setto back to life, but...I'll manage."
"Setto, to life? Why?"
"So the Demonbane will stop killing my people, Kittycat. Unless you want to kill him because he makes me sad, too."
The gryphon made a chuckling noise in the back of his throat, which Reiko knew by now was his noise for when he was irritated by something. "Can't. Yet. But maybe soon. Stop him making you sad. Then you'll be happy."
Unaccountably, Reiko found herself on the verge of tears. "Oh, if it worked that way, Kittycat, wouldn't the world be wonderful?" She scratched his ruff. "That's my sweet brave Kittycat, who is getting bigger and more beautiful every day. Thank you."
Gryphon swished his tail in pleasure.
Panda came striding by, and pulled up short when she saw Reiko curled up with Gryphon. The black-eyed samurai looked down at the kitsune. "Are you all right, Reiko? You looked a bit shaken back there."
"I'm fine, thanks. I'm thinking of sending my father a present."
She raised one cloud-white eyebrow. "A present?"
"Lin's head. That would get my point across, right enough. He took my granddaughter and enslaved her. And when she got free, where did she go? Right to Arenro."
The samurai weighed her next words, carefully. "Reiko, I think you shouldn't believe what Lin said to you. The dead are under no compulsion to tell the truth. I think she lied to you."
"Why do you think that, Panda?" Her tone was deceptively mild.
"The Demonbane had no reason to order her to steal your memories. He wanted you to remember. He wanted you to know what you'd done. And, besides, didn't you kill a lot more people than you otherwise would have?"
The kitsune nodded slowly.
"I just think you should take what Lin said with a grain of salt. Don't be so quick to blame the Demonbane for everything that's gone wrong in your life. She was involved with Arenro before she died, don't forget. And so she lied to you as her last act. One last kick at you, before she went on to her next life."
Reiko shifted, Gryphon putting one hand around her protectively, without thought. "Maybe, Panda. And maybe she was telling the truth." She drew in a breath and let it out again. "I'll ask the Demonbane the next time I see him. As far as I know, he's never lied to me. He's omitted important parts of the truth, but he's never outright lied as far as I know. Speaking of..." She nuzzled Gryphon's fur briefly. "Kittycat, let me up."
Panda asked, "Where are you going?"
She shrugged. "It occurs to me that there are possibly a pair of people on this ship I owe an apology to."
"Who might that be?"
"Jeron, for one." The kitsune grimaced as if she were tasting something bitter. "And Funitsu. But Jeron first. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to say to the Scorpion."
Reiko found Jeron speaking with a pair of the other Thrykreen, at the stern of Shrike. She settled herself out of earshot, and waited until he was done and the others had walked off.
She rose, and approached him. He was seated and looked up at her, surprised. "Reiko."
She nodded. "Jeron. I have...come to apologize."
"For what, my lady?"
She wore a rueful smile. "For my anger. It was perhaps undeserved. But before I know whether or not it was, I have to ask you a question. You knew about the Scorpion connection to the kitsune. Why did you just hint at it, instead of telling me?"
"Truly, would you actually believe a Thrykreen sent by Demonbane? How do you know I am telling the truth or Demonbane's truth?"
"I'm not sure, really. But I'd prefer that I make the decision whether or not to believe you." She shrugged. "Besides, as far as I can tell, you're not truly much under the Demonbane's control. Or if you are, it's far subtler than the usual."
"Demonbane holds no real control over me, just my people."
"I didn't think so, from what you said before. I have to say that I wasn't sure about him sending you away from him. It seems like a gamble. You probably know many of his secrets." Reiko seated herself next to him, not touching him, though even from her she could feel the energy running under his skin, and longed to drink.
"I know probably far too many of his secrets, but it was time for me to go."
Casually, she said as if she had not been thinking about this for the last few days, "You're not quite what you seem, Jeron. Different from your people, definitely. You seem--older."
"I am a bit older than my brothers and sisters, yes."
Obviously, that line of conversation wasn't going to get her anywhere. He's waiting for me to ask the right questions. I can feel it. She switched subjects again. "He probably could have sent you anywhere. Why to us, I wonder? It probably doesn't matter. Just out of curiosity, how did you know about the Scorpion/kitsune connection? It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that even the Demonbane would talk about much."
Slowly, Jeron replied, "I was there, Reiko."
She blinked, shocked. "A bit older than your brothers, Jeron? That was, ah, two thousand years or so ago. That would make you older than me."
"You are some four hundred years old, correct?"
"A bit older. Seven hundred or so. I'm not sure, exactly."
"Ah, seven centuries. You don't look a day over two." There was a teasing note in his voice.
She rolled her eyes at him. "I get that a lot." Her voice was warm, and she was pleased. He did indeed have a sense of humor under there somewhere.
"Then I am about twenty times your age, to be accurate."
She looked up at him in astonishment, biting her lip, doing the math. "Fourteen thousand years? You were alive for the Warresh wars, weren't you?"
He nodded. "I was."
"And you're an immortal. Like me. Were all of your people immortal, then?"
"Once, long ago. I think I am the last."
She tilted her head at him, inquiringly. "Was it the Demonbane who changed you? I can see him making that a condition of rescuing your people."
"We were hunted to near oblivion, holding on to the last vestiges of what we'd been in remote corners of Japan. I made a deal with the devil to save my race, but it's led both of us here, to the situation we face."
Reiko shuddered. "Dear kami. That's terrible. Even worse than my own people having anything good in us removed by Funitsu's people."
"His clan may have wounded you, Reiko. He did not."
She laughed, a bit self-depreciatingly. "Oh, I know. I'm occasionally a bit unreasonable, Jeron. A few days usually sees me able to think things through, and put my anger in its place. Just like my anger at you, it fades relatively quickly." She thought about the Scorpion, muttering, "It doesn't help that I find him highly irritating much of the time. Ah, well. I'll apologize later."
"I had wondered what you were angry about, kitsune."
She shrugged again. "I was angry. You and Funitsu happened to be connected to what made me angry. I'm not very good at grudges, most of the time, though. My father being the exception to that."
"Your father has a great deal to answer for, Reiko, and I'm sure he will. And the Scorpion may be able to help you, if you let him."
"We'll all pay for our sins, some day." Her fingers toyed idly with the topaz that was hanging around her neck. "And if he feels like helping, yes, he might at that. I might just ask. After all, the worse he can do is say no, and if he does I'm no worse off than I am now."
"You might just need to ask." She felt rather than saw him shrug, and then he sat back, making himself more comfortable. "You'll be no worse off even if he says no, and you might find that he can help in ways you don't understand yet."
"If nothing else, he might feel the need to redress some of the wrongs his ancestors have done. At least, I'm pretty sure he thinks it's a wrong. The boy's really far too nice to be a good Scorpion much of the time."
"He might lead them to a new age of peace instead. One never knows. Time has taught me that at least. "
She looked at him, tilting her head, admiring his sun-colored hair and the way it fell against his cheek. "If he manages to survive the next three months, that is. Though, really, I'm the one who seems to have the shortest life expectancy around here. Sort of ironic, considering that I'm an immortal."
Jeron glanced over at her, seeing her amber eyes full of fretting. "You can be very fragile sometimes for an immortal."
"Tell me about it. of course, it doesn't help that kitsune aren't meant to go into battle. And until the last few months, I think I successfully managed to avoid getting into any physical battles. At least, I don't remember any. Silly things we do for love, anyway." She sighed gustily.
He nodded, and added, "Of course, you have to relearn all the things you knew before after each memory reset. That can make one more fragile."
"True. I'm at once seven centuries old--and only twenty-two. Speaking of. Would the Demonbane have had any reason for ordering Lin to do a reset of my memory every thirty years or so? Panda mentioned that that didn't make any sense, and she's right. I'm suspecting that Lin may have lied."
The Thrykreen shook his head. "No. The Demonbane hated that fact more than any other. He wanted you to suffer with your memories, not have them wiped clean every few years."
"That was probably all Lin, then. Maybe with some suggestions from Arenro. Which means that I can't believe anything else she told me, including who was behind the attempt she made to capture me that ended up getting her killed." Reiko grimaced, twisting her pendant until the cord that held it was tight against her throat."
"No, that was Demonbane. He did want you captured. Lin hated that she died for him and found her own torture of him by wiping your memories. Thereby denying him his torture."
She let go of her pendant. "And so, even after death, she wanted me to blame him for what she did. Devious girl. I'll have to tell Panda that, yet again, she was right."
"There is something to be said to the cold logic of that one." Reiko couldn't tell if he was making fun of her again, but on the balance she rather suspected he was. She found herself not minding, and replied in kind.
"I'm starting to get a better appreciation of it as we go along. Not enough to want to imitate her, even if I were able to. I'll take my kitsune nature, both the good and the bad." The urge to touch him was getting stronger, but she resisted, because she knew that once she gave in, she'd probably forget anything else she wanted to ask him. "I actually have one more curiosity, Jeron. I noticed that you never change your form. Would it be too personal for me to ask why?
He shook his head. "I am in my real form. The Thrykreen form for me is a more like a werewolf transformation, rather than an illusion. That is no longer true for the rest of us. Demonbane took what was left of our humanity."
Remembering something he'd said a few days ago, she asked, "You know, you said before that with every generation, you're getting closer to what you once were. Will you recover that humanity, do you think?"
"That is my hope, that a generation will be born where humanity isn't an illusion."
"And you might recover your immortality."
"Maybe. But I find that immortality isn't much of a gift without someone to share it with." He was looking directly at her as he said this, a raw honesty in his sea-blue eyes.
"I know." She closed her eyes briefly, feeling abruptly a little lonely as she remembered Setto, and how she had always known that her time with him was going to be a candlespan when compared with the rest of her life. Remembered a constant stream of lovers, each with her for so little time. How many more don't I remember? Hundreds, probably. "You're the only person I've found in seven hundred years that I can't accidentally kill." Her mouth was set in a wry twist, and she looked down at her hands. "That energy you have running along your skin. Did you have that before the Demonbane altered you?"
"Yes, and that is not all it does."
This was new and interesting information, and Reiko pounced on it as if it were a mouse. "Really? What else does it do?"
"It's got a range, and within that it's deadly to anyone--except a kitsune. But I'm the only one of my kind that can do it."
"That's...interesting. And you build up a charge of it, and have to release it every so often?"
"Periodically, unless it's drained."
She followed that thought down, completing it. "Drained by a kitsune. So. Are the Thrykreen and the kitsune two halves of the same whole, then? I've noticed a...I can't describe it. It feels almost like an addiction, to that energy of yours."
He was watching her carefully, as if unsure of her reaction. "You may be the female of the species, Reiko."
She blinked, opened her mouth, thought better of what she was about to say, and closed it again. She sat perfectly still as she considered this idea. Kitsune and Thrykreen? It makes...sense. Out loud, she said, "That's an interesting idea. All of your people are currently male, aren't they?"
Jeron nodded. "They are all male. Look at our forms, Reiko. We are both beautiful by human standards, as all our people are. Your other form is fox, ours is mantid. But even Tadaki has a bird form...we may be related somewhere deep in the past, even if not directly."
She fretted at the sleeve of her kimono with one hand. "It could be. And there's the fact that when a kitsune has children, the girls are all kitsune, and the boys are human. But...that could be because we mate with humans, couldn't it?"
"And how fertile are you with humans?"
"Not very. I've had one child in seven hundred years. And I probably don't have to tell you how many chances I've had to become pregnant." She made a wry face.
The Thrykreen was looking thoughtful. "What if it takes a human with mantid blood to be truly compatible? Is that the reason it takes kitsune so many tries to become pregnant?"
"It's an...interesting idea." Without thinking about it, she moved over from where she sat to tuck herself against Jeron, closing her eyes. After a moment, she felt him put his arm around her, and pull her close.
The energy flowed under his skin, and Reiko basked in it, not drinking but just feeling it move. It was a sensual pleasure, and she admitted to herself that it was one she'd been wanting, even as she'd been angry with the mantid. I like him. A lot. I wish I could find out if he's telling the truth. I think he is, but...how many men have lied to me?
And there was something else, as well. I can't kill him accidentally. But that also means I can't kill him on purpose. That's my one natural defense, and without it I'm completely vulnerable. The thought was not as frightening as it might have been, but it was still food for thought.
The question was, could she trust him? Being near him feels like coming home. But I don't know if I can trust my instincts about him. Perhaps it's wishful thinking. But on the other hand...wouldn't it be lovely to love someone who's also immortal, who isn't going to age and die in less than a hundred years?
If I'm reading him right, that's what he might be offering me. And to have children, if what he says is true... The thought was a bittersweet one. She'd raised Yasuo on her own, after Setto died (after I killed him, the treacherous voice in her mind whispered), and though it had been difficult, she'd enjoyed watching her mortal son grow into a man before her eyes.
And it seems that he would need me as much as I need him. Separate, we are both dangerous to the people around us. Together, the chance of either of us accidentally killing people is much, much less.
She wished there was a way to confirm some of the things he'd said to her, about Lin, and about how old he was. Perhaps a visit with the First Foxes might be wise.
How do I do that, though? She searched her memory, coming up blank. I have no idea how one talks to them. Taura wouldn't know. Who would? Perhaps a spell she'd been granted recently, a conduit to the gods, might help.
For the moment, she put her thoughts aside, leaning into Jeron. She felt him press a kiss on the top of her head, and after that they both sat still for a long time, wordless.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-30 11:57 am (UTC)