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FYI: IF YOU WANT TO BE ON MY NANO FILTER GO HEREEEEEEE
imitation black
2784 worlds
Original(/Vocaloid)
Context. :( You may judge me now.
I FEEL LIKE I SHOULD APOLOGIZE--this is one of the most strictly self-indulgent and utterly ridiculous things I have ever written in like. EVER, really. BUT NOW IT IS OUT OF MY SYSTEM, so I think I feel a little better. \o/?! My initial idea, okay, had been like WHAT IF ROMEO AND JULIET WERE ACTUALLY THE SAME PERSON AND BENVOLIO AND MERCUTIO ARE IN LOVE WITH HIM. HER. ROMEO. IT JUST WENT DOWNHILL FROM THERE, IDK GUYS.
+++++
"They want to redeem you," the proprietor says. "Both of them."
Princess does not turn away from the window. In the glass, her reflection is unblinking.
"They'd pay a lot," the old woman says. "But they're young men, both of them. A family of samurai, a family of merchants. Do you really think they'd want to keep you when people knew the truth about their bride?"
Princess shifts her weight just slightly; the edge of her dress slips down one thin shoulder. "I have no intention of being bought," she whispers. "I'd have nowhere else to go, if that happened."
The old woman clucks her tongue. She meets Princess's eyes in the window. "Just remember that, when they talk to you," she says. "You're a smart child. Smarter than the both of them together, I think."
She leaves on that, and Princess closes her eyes. Her fingers twist in the ends of the ribbon that is tied in her hair: a present from Murasaki, braided in with his own hands before he left the night before. Her lips move, but her words are lost to the silence.
+++
"I'll come back," Murasaki promises. His voice sounds too-loud and hoarse in his own ears. "No matter what, I swear, I--"
A cool finger presses gently against his lips and stills the beginning tide of words. In the wavering moonlight, Princess's eyes were liquid and dark, her painted lips pursed quietly shut.
"I know you will," she says softly; her finger traces the line of his lip for a moment, then drops away. He follows the movement of her arm with his eyes, frozen in place by her touch; he can see the beginning bruise on the delicate white skin of her wrist. He did that, he thinks, and a tiny thrill of guilty pleasure shivers through him: he'd put his lips against the paper-thin skin over her pulse and sucked shadows there, urged on by the soft sound of Princess breathing.
"Will you wait?" he asks. He can't look away from those marks; like everything else about Princess, he is utterly captivated.
"I will be here," she says, which isn't really an answer at all, but is almost good enough. Murasaki bows his head to kiss her.
+++
When Princess had been a little boy, she had been called Ren and lived in the shadow of a dead sister. She can't remember very much about the dead girl, only that there had been closets and closets full of lovely clothes, all delicate and made of satins and silks and lace. She had learned how to dress herself through trial and error, and some things couldn't be done without help, but she'd never dared to ask. Instead she dressed herself and dreamed of fine clothes of her own--and if the reality ended up being less than she'd hoped for, at least she was elegant now as she'd never been in the suits and trousers of her father.
+++
Aoi tucks a rose--dethorned already, naturally--behind Princess's ear and smiles. The effect is lovely, just as he'd expected: the blood-red petals are striking against the gold of her hair and the white of her skin. She is like a work of art, he thinks, sitting quietly and looking up at him with her dark blue doe eyes, but when his fingers brush her cheek in pulling back, she leans into it, coy as a kitten. Her skin is smooth as the silk of her dress. All of it together makes his heart ache in a pure sort of way, his throat so tight that breathing becomes difficult.
"The color suits you," he says. He brushes his thumb over the high sweep of her cheekbone, marveling at the delicacy that puts her together. "You're lovely as always."
Princess lowers her eyes for a moment, though her face is still upturned. He sees her mouth purse into a tiny pleased smile and feels his own rise helplessly to match. She reaches up to take his hand in both of hers, the skin of her fingertips smooth and cool against his palm as she turns it and presses a small, almost secret, kiss to its center. Her face tilts up to expose the long graceful arch of her throat, and Aoi traces the line of it with his eyes, swallowing when she does.
He has seen many beautiful things--he lives in a world where that is only made up of beautiful things--and he thinks nothing compares to her. She is lovelier than anything or anyone has right to be, and there is always a moment where he feels so very ungainly around her, too clumsy and eager to touch her properly.
Yet, even when his fingers tremble and grip too hard, leaving a scattering of faint pink bruises on her white skin, Princess only smiles. Her eyes close when he finally kisses her, and the taste of her smile leaves him weak at the knees. He lowers himself carefully down--she's so tiny in comparison to him, and he doesn't want to crush her. Princess wraps her slim arms around his neck and opens her eyes slowly. Aoi looks deep and lets himself be carried away.
+++
There is no one in the Nightingale House who was there before Princess except for the proprietor herself. She has run the House for decades now, and she's seen many birds come and go from under her roof. Princess keeps herself separate from the others, taking her meals and spending her time in her room and only emerging to greet clients who asked for her specifically by name. She is never unkind, but she's never friendly, either; she glides from one place to the other, as if her feet never quite touch the ground.
She is always bone-pale, no matter how much time she spends in the sun--she doesn't go out very often, now. Sometimes she finds blood on her pillow and it vexes her: the stains are difficult to launder out of the fine cloth. There is no one for her to complain to, though, so she keeps her silence.
+++
Murasaki always comes in the hours just before dawn. He nods to the proprietor where she sits by the front door, knitting, and heads up the rickety stairs. He is a regular and has been for a year now; no one tries to entice him to even consider one of the others. His step is light enough on the stairs that they barely creak under his weight, but the door--as always--opens before he reaches it.
Princess looks at him from the other side, her doll-like face composed. Tonight she is dressed in deep violet, a robelike dress that is laced up both sides with emerald green ribbons. Under the hem, her dainty feet are bare. She extends a hand to him and he immediately goes down onto one knee, kissing the inside of her wrist. He recognizes the perfume she wears as one he gifted her with a month previous. He looks up at her and in the graying light of the pre-dawn hours, she is utterly ethereal. She doesn't smile, but her eyes soften and her hand turns in his until her fingers brush softly through his long hair. Murasaki makes a noise and closes his eyes.
"I came back," he whispers.
There is a rustle and whisper of sound. When he opens his eyes, Princess is kneeling before him, her eyes alight. "I'm here."
+++
If given the choice, Princess does not like to be naked. It is less about modesty and more about the illusion: without her clothes or the sheets, all that remains is her body, skinny and white and dreadfully inelegant. She does not hate it, but she dislikes it.
Sometimes a client wants a mirror set up so he can watch their bodies together. More of them like to strip her completely, pawing aside the lace and silk without a thought of how much effort went into creating a particular look. They want the crude contrast of her flat bony chest emerging from the layers of her clothes, or to grope between her legs with small slack-jawed wonder at what they find. They would rather gawk at the awkward boy-shell at her core than admire the careful creation she has made of herself.
When they come and pull off her clothes, Princess closes her eyes and allows them to do as they want: she doesn't mind lending them her body for a short time, and it's easier when she doesn't have to see them. Occasionally she comes back to herself and finds there's pain, in her wrists and between her legs, but more often it's just uncomfortable silence as the client dresses and she dresses and they don't look at each other. Some return, more do not.
Twice, though--twice, a client has come and understood the specifications she never speaks aloud. Twice, she has been touched like something delicate and precious: a hand fluttering gently up under her skirt, a head resting over her breast. Twice only Princess has allowed herself to open her eyes and her arms to a client and found herself treated as her namesake in return.
They will not keep coming forever, these two: that is the nature of the clients who come to the Nightingale House. Princess still bides her time, though, watching as dark shadows stretch out their long fingers with the sun's setting, waiting for a familiar shape in the gateway, all her thin fingers pressed to the window.
+++
Aoi always comes when the sun has just finished setting and night has covered up the blush of evening. He brings flowers for the proprietor along with any he has for Princess, and he smiles at those who happen to meet his eyes as he takes the stairs two at a time. Like an unstoppable force he sweeps down the hallway and catches Princess in his arms, spinning her like she weighs nothing. When she looks up at him, wide-eyed and startled, he kisses her: her forehead, the tip of her nose, and he says, "Shall we dance, my princess?"
She looks at him steadily, as if the question is a ridiculous one, but she presses one hand to the small of his back and gives him the other, and together they waltz. Step one-two-three, step one-two-three, and Princess does not laugh, but she smiles, secretly into the dark. When Aoi lifts her to spin them both, she settles both of her hands upon his shoulders and squeezes, and he kisses the solemn twist at the corner of her mouth until it smooths out and relaxes.
"Someday, we'll fly," he tells her and presses their foreheads together. "You and I, together."
Her cool hand touches his cheek. "I'll wait for that."
+++
On a certain winter night, Princess dreams of her sister, so many years dead.
She stands in a pool of clear water, her bare feet white and clean. She wears nothing, framed in jewel-like fairy lights, and she is everything Princess has ever tried to be and never quite succeeded in being. Her smile is soft, more maternal than sisterly, and she raises her arms as if to offer an embrace. Before she quite realizes, Princess is running for her, skirts whipping around her ankles. Her heart is thundering in her chest and there are tears in her eyes and she doesn't know why: she never wept for her sister before, not in all the long years of silence, but now tears stream down her face and blur her vision. She reaches out, and the dream shatters like struck glass.
With a cry she wakes, breathing hard. There is blood on her pillow and a stinging pain in her chest; she touches her lip faintly and her fingers come away smeared with red. She closes her eyes.
+++
"I feel at peace, when I'm with you," Murasaki says. He is sitting with his head in Princess's lap, staring at the fire as she strokes his hair. "Even when the world outside demands everything from me, I feel like I can give it to you without trying."
"You flatter me," she whispers. Her fingers brush against his scalp and he makes a low noise of pleasure. She doesn't stop. "I am merely my lord's humble servant for this evening."
He turns to look up at her, eyes glittering, then pushes himself up. On his knees, he can reach her easily, and his lips brush against hers as he speaks: "I am not your lord, I am your servant, my princess."
She keeps her eyes open for the kiss, watching the familiar noble lines of his face.
+++
"You are my inspiration," Aoi tells her. A smile creases his face, makes him glow like the sky at midday. It makes him look earnest and boyishly handsome, too bright and precious for this dark little room. He has both of her hands clasped in his, their fingers intertwined, sprawled beneath her on her bed. "All artists need a muse. You're mine."
She cocks her head, raising an eyebrow. "Am I?"
"You are," he promises, and lifts his hands up, using the movement to tug her down against him, until they are pressed chest-to-chest. She tilts her face to wait for the kiss she knows is coming. "My lady, my muse, my princess."
+++
The next week, Aoi gives her a ring. It is a thin silver band set with three bright gems: two perfect sapphires bracketing an exquisite topaz. He kisses the skin of her finger as he slides it into place. There are two bright spots of color on Princess's cheeks and she bites her cheek, but she doesn't pull away. He smiles up at her with such perfect hope that she can't breathe.
The week after that, Murasaki gives her a necklace. It's a delicate golden chain hung with a stunning amethyst. He fastens it around her neck while pressing their foreheads together and the intensity of his stare tightens like physical weight in her chest.
The old woman who runs the Nightingale House takes them both when Princess hands them over, and in her small dark eyes is a tired old patience. They make the exchange without words.
+++
"The young samurai has spoken," the old proprietor says. "He has offered enough and then some for your debt."
Princess touches her bare throat. "Has he?"
"He would make you his concubine alone." The old woman's eyes are sharp. "And never share you again with another man."
She touches her naked finger. "He'll regret it," she murmurs. "I'm not meant for the light of day." Both her hands drop away and she turns to the window again.
"You're a nightingale," the old woman agrees. "It's for the best."
+++
Princess dreams of her sister again. The water at her feet is still pure, and looks so cool and inviting. She knows if she could step in, she could be washed clean of everything--every forgotten sin, every last imperfection. She wants to reach her sister, but however hard and fast she runs, it's never--quite--enough. When she falls, she can feel skin and cloth tearing and there is blood all over her hands. She pushes herself up, staring at the barely-remembered face (so similar to her own) and blinking through tears.
"Please," she says, "please."
Her sister presses a finger to her lips. She says something, gentle as eiderdown, and Princess catches her breath.
"Really?" she whispers. "Even someone like me ... ?"
The dream ends before her sister can answer, but though there is pain in her chest and in her hands and knees, she is smiling.
+++
"Say yes," Murasaki begs, his voice cracking. "Say yes, and you can have everything you've ever wanted."
Princess thinks of a gentle voice long gone and she closes her eyes and says yes, yes, yes.
+++
"Give me a chance," Aoi pleads, the free and open sky trembling in his wide eyes. "Give me a chance, I'll take you everywhere you've ever dreamed of visiting."
Princess thinks of a cool pure spring where the waters were clear as crystal, and says anything, anything at all.
+++
The blood on her pillow ceases to vex her. It only fascinates her now.
+++
A note is left on her bedside table, written in her sloping elegant hand:
I think of you every day, the shape of your shoulder as we embraced.
Before everything disappears--I'll come to see you ...
+++
At precisely midnight on the first night of the new year, Princess closes her eyes. The last thing she hears, as she falls asleep, are the sound of beating wings, lifting her up, through violet skyover dark blue waters.
imitation black
2784 worlds
Original(/Vocaloid)
Context. :( You may judge me now.
I FEEL LIKE I SHOULD APOLOGIZE--this is one of the most strictly self-indulgent and utterly ridiculous things I have ever written in like. EVER, really. BUT NOW IT IS OUT OF MY SYSTEM, so I think I feel a little better. \o/?! My initial idea, okay, had been like WHAT IF ROMEO AND JULIET WERE ACTUALLY THE SAME PERSON AND BENVOLIO AND MERCUTIO ARE IN LOVE WITH HIM. HER. ROMEO. IT JUST WENT DOWNHILL FROM THERE, IDK GUYS.
+++++
"They want to redeem you," the proprietor says. "Both of them."
Princess does not turn away from the window. In the glass, her reflection is unblinking.
"They'd pay a lot," the old woman says. "But they're young men, both of them. A family of samurai, a family of merchants. Do you really think they'd want to keep you when people knew the truth about their bride?"
Princess shifts her weight just slightly; the edge of her dress slips down one thin shoulder. "I have no intention of being bought," she whispers. "I'd have nowhere else to go, if that happened."
The old woman clucks her tongue. She meets Princess's eyes in the window. "Just remember that, when they talk to you," she says. "You're a smart child. Smarter than the both of them together, I think."
She leaves on that, and Princess closes her eyes. Her fingers twist in the ends of the ribbon that is tied in her hair: a present from Murasaki, braided in with his own hands before he left the night before. Her lips move, but her words are lost to the silence.
+++
"I'll come back," Murasaki promises. His voice sounds too-loud and hoarse in his own ears. "No matter what, I swear, I--"
A cool finger presses gently against his lips and stills the beginning tide of words. In the wavering moonlight, Princess's eyes were liquid and dark, her painted lips pursed quietly shut.
"I know you will," she says softly; her finger traces the line of his lip for a moment, then drops away. He follows the movement of her arm with his eyes, frozen in place by her touch; he can see the beginning bruise on the delicate white skin of her wrist. He did that, he thinks, and a tiny thrill of guilty pleasure shivers through him: he'd put his lips against the paper-thin skin over her pulse and sucked shadows there, urged on by the soft sound of Princess breathing.
"Will you wait?" he asks. He can't look away from those marks; like everything else about Princess, he is utterly captivated.
"I will be here," she says, which isn't really an answer at all, but is almost good enough. Murasaki bows his head to kiss her.
+++
When Princess had been a little boy, she had been called Ren and lived in the shadow of a dead sister. She can't remember very much about the dead girl, only that there had been closets and closets full of lovely clothes, all delicate and made of satins and silks and lace. She had learned how to dress herself through trial and error, and some things couldn't be done without help, but she'd never dared to ask. Instead she dressed herself and dreamed of fine clothes of her own--and if the reality ended up being less than she'd hoped for, at least she was elegant now as she'd never been in the suits and trousers of her father.
+++
Aoi tucks a rose--dethorned already, naturally--behind Princess's ear and smiles. The effect is lovely, just as he'd expected: the blood-red petals are striking against the gold of her hair and the white of her skin. She is like a work of art, he thinks, sitting quietly and looking up at him with her dark blue doe eyes, but when his fingers brush her cheek in pulling back, she leans into it, coy as a kitten. Her skin is smooth as the silk of her dress. All of it together makes his heart ache in a pure sort of way, his throat so tight that breathing becomes difficult.
"The color suits you," he says. He brushes his thumb over the high sweep of her cheekbone, marveling at the delicacy that puts her together. "You're lovely as always."
Princess lowers her eyes for a moment, though her face is still upturned. He sees her mouth purse into a tiny pleased smile and feels his own rise helplessly to match. She reaches up to take his hand in both of hers, the skin of her fingertips smooth and cool against his palm as she turns it and presses a small, almost secret, kiss to its center. Her face tilts up to expose the long graceful arch of her throat, and Aoi traces the line of it with his eyes, swallowing when she does.
He has seen many beautiful things--he lives in a world where that is only made up of beautiful things--and he thinks nothing compares to her. She is lovelier than anything or anyone has right to be, and there is always a moment where he feels so very ungainly around her, too clumsy and eager to touch her properly.
Yet, even when his fingers tremble and grip too hard, leaving a scattering of faint pink bruises on her white skin, Princess only smiles. Her eyes close when he finally kisses her, and the taste of her smile leaves him weak at the knees. He lowers himself carefully down--she's so tiny in comparison to him, and he doesn't want to crush her. Princess wraps her slim arms around his neck and opens her eyes slowly. Aoi looks deep and lets himself be carried away.
+++
There is no one in the Nightingale House who was there before Princess except for the proprietor herself. She has run the House for decades now, and she's seen many birds come and go from under her roof. Princess keeps herself separate from the others, taking her meals and spending her time in her room and only emerging to greet clients who asked for her specifically by name. She is never unkind, but she's never friendly, either; she glides from one place to the other, as if her feet never quite touch the ground.
She is always bone-pale, no matter how much time she spends in the sun--she doesn't go out very often, now. Sometimes she finds blood on her pillow and it vexes her: the stains are difficult to launder out of the fine cloth. There is no one for her to complain to, though, so she keeps her silence.
+++
Murasaki always comes in the hours just before dawn. He nods to the proprietor where she sits by the front door, knitting, and heads up the rickety stairs. He is a regular and has been for a year now; no one tries to entice him to even consider one of the others. His step is light enough on the stairs that they barely creak under his weight, but the door--as always--opens before he reaches it.
Princess looks at him from the other side, her doll-like face composed. Tonight she is dressed in deep violet, a robelike dress that is laced up both sides with emerald green ribbons. Under the hem, her dainty feet are bare. She extends a hand to him and he immediately goes down onto one knee, kissing the inside of her wrist. He recognizes the perfume she wears as one he gifted her with a month previous. He looks up at her and in the graying light of the pre-dawn hours, she is utterly ethereal. She doesn't smile, but her eyes soften and her hand turns in his until her fingers brush softly through his long hair. Murasaki makes a noise and closes his eyes.
"I came back," he whispers.
There is a rustle and whisper of sound. When he opens his eyes, Princess is kneeling before him, her eyes alight. "I'm here."
+++
If given the choice, Princess does not like to be naked. It is less about modesty and more about the illusion: without her clothes or the sheets, all that remains is her body, skinny and white and dreadfully inelegant. She does not hate it, but she dislikes it.
Sometimes a client wants a mirror set up so he can watch their bodies together. More of them like to strip her completely, pawing aside the lace and silk without a thought of how much effort went into creating a particular look. They want the crude contrast of her flat bony chest emerging from the layers of her clothes, or to grope between her legs with small slack-jawed wonder at what they find. They would rather gawk at the awkward boy-shell at her core than admire the careful creation she has made of herself.
When they come and pull off her clothes, Princess closes her eyes and allows them to do as they want: she doesn't mind lending them her body for a short time, and it's easier when she doesn't have to see them. Occasionally she comes back to herself and finds there's pain, in her wrists and between her legs, but more often it's just uncomfortable silence as the client dresses and she dresses and they don't look at each other. Some return, more do not.
Twice, though--twice, a client has come and understood the specifications she never speaks aloud. Twice, she has been touched like something delicate and precious: a hand fluttering gently up under her skirt, a head resting over her breast. Twice only Princess has allowed herself to open her eyes and her arms to a client and found herself treated as her namesake in return.
They will not keep coming forever, these two: that is the nature of the clients who come to the Nightingale House. Princess still bides her time, though, watching as dark shadows stretch out their long fingers with the sun's setting, waiting for a familiar shape in the gateway, all her thin fingers pressed to the window.
+++
Aoi always comes when the sun has just finished setting and night has covered up the blush of evening. He brings flowers for the proprietor along with any he has for Princess, and he smiles at those who happen to meet his eyes as he takes the stairs two at a time. Like an unstoppable force he sweeps down the hallway and catches Princess in his arms, spinning her like she weighs nothing. When she looks up at him, wide-eyed and startled, he kisses her: her forehead, the tip of her nose, and he says, "Shall we dance, my princess?"
She looks at him steadily, as if the question is a ridiculous one, but she presses one hand to the small of his back and gives him the other, and together they waltz. Step one-two-three, step one-two-three, and Princess does not laugh, but she smiles, secretly into the dark. When Aoi lifts her to spin them both, she settles both of her hands upon his shoulders and squeezes, and he kisses the solemn twist at the corner of her mouth until it smooths out and relaxes.
"Someday, we'll fly," he tells her and presses their foreheads together. "You and I, together."
Her cool hand touches his cheek. "I'll wait for that."
+++
On a certain winter night, Princess dreams of her sister, so many years dead.
She stands in a pool of clear water, her bare feet white and clean. She wears nothing, framed in jewel-like fairy lights, and she is everything Princess has ever tried to be and never quite succeeded in being. Her smile is soft, more maternal than sisterly, and she raises her arms as if to offer an embrace. Before she quite realizes, Princess is running for her, skirts whipping around her ankles. Her heart is thundering in her chest and there are tears in her eyes and she doesn't know why: she never wept for her sister before, not in all the long years of silence, but now tears stream down her face and blur her vision. She reaches out, and the dream shatters like struck glass.
With a cry she wakes, breathing hard. There is blood on her pillow and a stinging pain in her chest; she touches her lip faintly and her fingers come away smeared with red. She closes her eyes.
+++
"I feel at peace, when I'm with you," Murasaki says. He is sitting with his head in Princess's lap, staring at the fire as she strokes his hair. "Even when the world outside demands everything from me, I feel like I can give it to you without trying."
"You flatter me," she whispers. Her fingers brush against his scalp and he makes a low noise of pleasure. She doesn't stop. "I am merely my lord's humble servant for this evening."
He turns to look up at her, eyes glittering, then pushes himself up. On his knees, he can reach her easily, and his lips brush against hers as he speaks: "I am not your lord, I am your servant, my princess."
She keeps her eyes open for the kiss, watching the familiar noble lines of his face.
+++
"You are my inspiration," Aoi tells her. A smile creases his face, makes him glow like the sky at midday. It makes him look earnest and boyishly handsome, too bright and precious for this dark little room. He has both of her hands clasped in his, their fingers intertwined, sprawled beneath her on her bed. "All artists need a muse. You're mine."
She cocks her head, raising an eyebrow. "Am I?"
"You are," he promises, and lifts his hands up, using the movement to tug her down against him, until they are pressed chest-to-chest. She tilts her face to wait for the kiss she knows is coming. "My lady, my muse, my princess."
+++
The next week, Aoi gives her a ring. It is a thin silver band set with three bright gems: two perfect sapphires bracketing an exquisite topaz. He kisses the skin of her finger as he slides it into place. There are two bright spots of color on Princess's cheeks and she bites her cheek, but she doesn't pull away. He smiles up at her with such perfect hope that she can't breathe.
The week after that, Murasaki gives her a necklace. It's a delicate golden chain hung with a stunning amethyst. He fastens it around her neck while pressing their foreheads together and the intensity of his stare tightens like physical weight in her chest.
The old woman who runs the Nightingale House takes them both when Princess hands them over, and in her small dark eyes is a tired old patience. They make the exchange without words.
+++
"The young samurai has spoken," the old proprietor says. "He has offered enough and then some for your debt."
Princess touches her bare throat. "Has he?"
"He would make you his concubine alone." The old woman's eyes are sharp. "And never share you again with another man."
She touches her naked finger. "He'll regret it," she murmurs. "I'm not meant for the light of day." Both her hands drop away and she turns to the window again.
"You're a nightingale," the old woman agrees. "It's for the best."
+++
Princess dreams of her sister again. The water at her feet is still pure, and looks so cool and inviting. She knows if she could step in, she could be washed clean of everything--every forgotten sin, every last imperfection. She wants to reach her sister, but however hard and fast she runs, it's never--quite--enough. When she falls, she can feel skin and cloth tearing and there is blood all over her hands. She pushes herself up, staring at the barely-remembered face (so similar to her own) and blinking through tears.
"Please," she says, "please."
Her sister presses a finger to her lips. She says something, gentle as eiderdown, and Princess catches her breath.
"Really?" she whispers. "Even someone like me ... ?"
The dream ends before her sister can answer, but though there is pain in her chest and in her hands and knees, she is smiling.
+++
"Say yes," Murasaki begs, his voice cracking. "Say yes, and you can have everything you've ever wanted."
Princess thinks of a gentle voice long gone and she closes her eyes and says yes, yes, yes.
+++
"Give me a chance," Aoi pleads, the free and open sky trembling in his wide eyes. "Give me a chance, I'll take you everywhere you've ever dreamed of visiting."
Princess thinks of a cool pure spring where the waters were clear as crystal, and says anything, anything at all.
+++
The blood on her pillow ceases to vex her. It only fascinates her now.
+++
A note is left on her bedside table, written in her sloping elegant hand:
I think of you every day, the shape of your shoulder as we embraced.
Before everything disappears--I'll come to see you ...
+++
At precisely midnight on the first night of the new year, Princess closes her eyes. The last thing she hears, as she falls asleep, are the sound of beating wings, lifting her up, through violet skyover dark blue waters.
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YOU HUSH!
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But thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. ♥
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Wow.
Seriously, wow.
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BUT THANK YOU ahhhhhhhh♥ sob stupid singing robots!!
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I have the fandub done by dasoku/clear/valshe on my car cd. :(