by Carly Chase
“That actually makes a lot of sense. I have to admit, I was afraid this place would be one of superstition and mysticism that I just wouldn’t be able to get my head around, but the way you look at things… I like it.”
Looking back, she would never be sure what about Kiba’s thoughtful words had made her do it, but at that moment, she reached across the table and took his hand, touching him intentionally for the first time. They sat like that while the sun faded, with Kiba only removing himself to light up the lamps when Sakura’s footsteps sounded on the wooden porch outside. Anya didn’t know it, but he didn’t, and never would, need light to see her.
It had been a long day, and Anya fell asleep easily after they’d eaten the hearty stew that Sakura had brought for them. She resolved that in the coming days she’d learn how to cook in the small kitchen in the house, however – she didn’t want Sakura to feel like she had to do everything for her, even if the kitsune matriarch seemed to very much enjoy being a good hostess.
Kiba had offered to keep guard outside the house while she slept, but she’d assured him that she felt completely safe in the village, and besides, how long had it been since he had slept himself? He had therefore said he would sleep in the next room, but that she was to wake him if anything at all was bothering her, even if it was just the blanket being too light.
When the light streaming in through the window pressed on her eyelids, Anya woke, feeling well rested – a thought which surprised her when all things were considered. She tried to count back and see what day this would be back in her own world, wondering what she’d normally be doing right now, but with no idea how the timezones compared she gave up quite quickly. What she could discern was that in her own world, she almost never felt like she’d had enough sleep, or woke with the dawn without several presses of the snooze button. Perhaps this place was agreeing with her.
She gently slid back the screen door separating her room from where Kiba was sleeping, and saw him lying, still clothed in his leather garb, on the bare floor. He looked like he was in a deep sleep, and so she carefully closed the door again, but not without a pause to look at him. In sleep, he looked younger somehow, and despite the fact he was sleeping, there was a tension in his face – his jaw set, his forehead slightly furrowed. She wondered what yokai clan leaders dreamt of, and what anxieties his mind was working through right now, while his body rested.
She dressed in her blue kimono, making a note to herself to find out how people washed their clothes here later. Then, realizing she didn’t have anything in particular that she had to do, Anya decided to revert to doing the thing she loved most – something she hadn’t been able to devote a single second to since arriving here. Taking the brushes, ink and papers she had taken from Shiro’s room just as the yokai attack had started, she stepped outside into the dappled morning light of the clearing where the house was set. She sat down cross-legged on the soft ground opposite it, and began to do an ink drawing of the little house – just as she’d told Kiba she’d been itching to do.
She had been at this for some time, lost in the focused yet serene act of trying to recreate something beautiful on paper (reveling in using a brush and ink – not her usual tools), when the door of her subject opened, and a worried looking Kiba appeared.
“Ah, you’re just out here – I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but worry a little when you weren’t in your room. Good morning, by the way!”
“Good morning! Yeah, I didn’t want to wake you, and like I said last night, I feel really safe here, I don’t think you need to worry about me… Not that I don’t appreciate it, it’s not like I know what I’m doing here at all, there’s a strong chance I might do something stupid like eat whatever those green things are on that bush.”
“Actually, you can eat those.”
“Useful to know! Anyway, come here, if you don’t mind – I’ve been drawing the house, just like I said I wanted to yesterday. It’s not quite finished, but I’ll show you anyway!”
For some reason, it felt important to show him her talents.
Kiba sat down beside her, and looked at the black inked house drying on the paper. He said nothing, but he looked very confused.
“What, don’t you like it? I mean, maybe it’s a different style to what artists here would do, but...” Anya said, deflated.
“The picture is beautiful, it’s just… The house is just a wooden shack. Do you always embellish real things with so much imagined detail, is that a thing that artists in your world do?”
“What do you mean? That bit right there, that’s the enameled flower border around the door, then here, that’s the shape of the roof...”
Kiba brought his hand up to his hair in a gesture of sudden realization.
“Sakura.”
“What about her?”
“Well, as Yuki-Shiro said last night, kitsune can create powerful illusion magic, but it only works on humans. Sakura must have made things look prettier for you. It doesn’t affect me, and I can assure you, the reality of that house is a lot more humble than this picture. I wish I could see the illusion now though!”
“Oh… That’s kind of a strange feeling, to see something so vividly I can draw it, but for it not to be real.. That’s a disconcerting type of magic… Do you think she’d turn it off for me?”
“Of course – she won’t have meant to deceive you, just perhaps to make you happy, or maybe just because she could, and wanted to impress you with a beautiful village.”
“I know, I know. I just… I would rather see what’s real than a prettier fantasy.”
Kiba smiled, got to his feet, and wordlessly jogged off, returning back with a large, freshly picked flower, somewhat resembling an orchid in his hand.
“For now, will you draw this for me? This is real, and I’d really like to see your interpretation of something we can both see.”
Anya nodded, smiling broadly, and beckoned to him to sit next to her again and watch her work. It was strange, she normally hated drawing with someone looking over her shoulder, but she felt like she wanted him to understand something, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but which was important to who she was.
Her hand moved quickly over the small rectangle of paper, creating stem, petals, and leaves with her instincts, as Kiba watched in fascinated silence.
“And now I add this little bit here on the stamen and – "
She was about to say the drawing was complete, when something bizarre happened to it. The flower on the page started to glow bright blue, making her gasp in shock and drop her brush to the ground.
“What does that mean?”
“I… I don’t know. I mean, the paper itself, it looks like the type that priests use to put simple wards on to give to people to keep yokai away, and it’s glowing in the same way as wards look to me, but it’s blue, instead of red… And you can see it too, right?”
Kiba seemed as confused as Anya was.
“Yeah, it looks blue to me too… If it was a ward, it would hurt yokai, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, I mean, higher yokai like the people in this village would barely notice it, it’s more for the little nuisance ones that people seem to use these papers, but we’d still feel uneasy around one. I don’t feel that way looking at this.”
“The drawing of the house didn’t do this. Is there anything special about this flower?”
“I really just chose it because I thought you’d think it was beautiful… But I think the kitsune do use it in a poultice for healing wounds. I wouldn’t know too much about that, my clan has a healer but I’ve never been injured badly enough to need treatment,” he said, with a clearly feigned humility that made Anya smile wryly.
“Well, maybe somehow this picture has some of the same properties as the flower? I mean, if words on paper can have the power to stop some kinds of yokai, maybe some other things, like pictures, also have some kind of power...”
“You think maybe it has the ability to heal wounds then?”
“Well, it’s only a hypothesis… We don’t have any kind of magic in my world. We use technology to do some amazing things, things that wouldn’t be possible here like communicating instantly with people around the world, or accessing information very quickly, or using machines to fly at high speeds to other continents – things that would sound like magic probably to you. But when it comes to how the laws of nature work here, all I can do is guess. We’d need to test the idea out somehow. Maybe there is someone in the village with a minor injury or – ”
Before Anya could finish, Kiba was already on his feet. Swiveling where she sat to see what he was doing, she found him enthusiastically punching the bark of a tree with his right fist, grunting a little with each blow.
“Kiba, what are you...”
As he turned around, she saw what his plan was. It wasn’t something she’d have thought of, but she had to admire his pragmatism. The knuckles on his fist had had the skin broken by the rough bark.
“There was no need for that, we could have just asked around to see if anybody had a bruise or a scratch or something!”
“That would have taken too long,” he said, with a shrug and a lopsided smile. He didn’t look like he was in any real pain.
He knelt down in front of her and held out his battered fist. Anya too rose into a kneel, clutching the picture of the flower, which was still glowing blue. She held her breath, her heart pounding with the excitement of seeing the results of this experiment. Did she really have some special ability here after all? Tenderly, as if she was nursing someone with a serious wound, she touched the paper against his bleeding hand.
The blue light from the picture seemed to fade, but it wasn’t vanishing, it was moving. Kiba let out a slight moan, like someone experiencing a pleasant massage.
“I don’t know what it’s doing, but it feels great…” he said, with slight embarrassment.
Now, the picture of the flower looked normal, a plain black ink drawing. Anya moved the paper away, but she already half-knew what they would see underneath. Indeed, Kiba’s hand was not only healed, but the skin looked completely fresh and new. He held up his other hand for comparison – the left hand bearing the kind of scars and callouses one might expect from a warrior, and the right, a flawless hand, one that had never done a day’s work, or punched a single tree in its life.
They both let out a breath of wonderment in unison.
“I think I’m going to spend the day drawing, today, Kiba,” Anya grinned.
Chapter 13
A week had passed, and Anya had spent the majority of her time testing out different ideas, trying to find out what this strange art magic could do, and how it worked. Kiba had bought her all the papers and inks he could find in the village, and had also made sure she took breaks to eat and rest – noticing how compulsive she seemed to have become about finding out the secrets to all of this.
Luckily Sakura was still stopping by with meals, as Anya’s resolve to start cooking for herself had quickly vanished in her excitement. The kitsune matriarch had just left what was now known as ‘Anya’s house’, having excitedly delivered the news that Anya and Kiba were to help in planning Ikari and Yuki-Shiro’s wedding. She’d also left an aromatic supper of spiced rice and fish.
“How can they be so sure that they’re right for each other? I mean, it’s clear that Ikari and Yuki-Shiro are devoted to each other now, but they’re only 20 and 18, and Ikari has only known her as her current self for a few days...” Anya asked.
Kiba sighed inwardly. He still hadn’t explained how yokai love worked to her, even with all the talk of their belief in destiny. It seemed like if he did, seeing as how inquisitive she was, her next question would almost certainly be about his fated love, and that would be a tough one to answer. If he confessed how he felt, it may still be too early, even though he was sure he saw growing signs of affection in the way she’d been looking at him during their days in the kitsune village. If he didn’t tell her it was her, then of course, she’d rationalize that he belonged with someone else, and any interest she might be developing in him would suffer a big setback.
“Do people marry later in your world, then?” he asked, deftly dodging the matter.
“Usually. I mean, it varies. Not many of my friends my age are married yet, but some people do marry at Yuki-Shiro’s age. I’m not sure about the divorce rates for those, though...”
“What are divorce rates?”
“Oh, the percentage of the people who get married who break up. We have records of that stuff for the whole country, so you can find out things like that.”
“Yokai who get married don’t break up. So I suppose we don’t need such records.”
“Really? Never? I mean, is that a legal thing, like there is no divorce here or something? So you have to stay married even if you stop loving each other?”
“Yokai who get married never stop loving each other.”
“So, you mate for life, I suppose, like some animals do. That’s beautiful. Such a big commitment though, for people as young as them, to choose a partner to love for the rest of their lives…”
“For yokai, it is not a commitment to fear. It is a source of great joy to be united in that way.”
“But you’re 28, right? And you’re not married, are you? You never mentioned if you are...”
Kiba detected some slight concern in her voice.
Could it be she is hoping that I’m not married yet?
His spirits lifted ever so slightly at even that tiny thought. Strength was something he had in abundance, which was lucky, as enduring this agonizing need to be with her required it, but patience was not.
“I am not. It was simpler for Ikari to find his true love, because she has been close to him most of his life. Mine has not.”
He was trying to be vague, trying so hard not to give too much away until he was sure, but as he said these words, words so much colder than his soul needed to say, he couldn’t help the intensity of his gaze into her eyes.
“Kiba,” she said quietly, “there’s an experiment I haven’t tried yet. Will you help me?”
“Of course,” he said hoarsely, not daring to hope that the meaningful undertone in her voice wasn’t just his imagination.
The sun was setting once again as Anya lead Kiba into her bedroom. Sakura had removed her enchantments, and now Anya knew they were just in a rickety wooden shack, but she already loved this place as if it were her home, and the way the light gently poured in at this time of the day was just as lovely, even when the window it came through was utterly plain.
“It’s best if you lie down for this. And I’ll need you to have your chest bare. I want to try drawing directly onto your body. We already know that the type of paper doesn’t matter, and I’ve found over a dozen images that create the blue glow, even if I don’t know what they all do yet. So now, what I really want to know is, can I use them to help you, even if I have nothing to draw on...”
She knew the intimacy of what she was asking him, just as she knew that he would know she could have simply asked Sakura if she could draw on her hand or something to test this theory. She wanted him to know. This was as much an experiment to see if he felt the same chemistry that she did, if he wanted to be more to her than a protector and friend. Because she’d realized that she needed him. She was in this world forever now, and he had been by her side the whole time, helping her, looking out for her. She’d also realized that she wanted him, but inside, she’d known that much from the moment she saw him. There had just been too many questions.
The warm light reflected off of his body as he undressed from the waist up, his soft smile reassuring, his eyes telling her that what she was asking was what he wanted too. Anya’s mouth felt a little dry as she took a little bottle of ink and a paintbrush, and slowly straddled him where he was now lying on her futon, her silky kimono (a fuchsia pink one this time – a gift from Yuki-Shiro) slipping up around her thighs.
“I’m going to start with one tha
t I know works on paper, and I know what it does, so we should see the results quickly,” she said, her voice thick. His eyes were locked with hers and she could hear the quickness of his breath. It matched her own. He nodded his assent.
She’d also chosen the quickest and easiest to draw, a simple shape, really. A shield. Her brush delicately painted it over the center of his chest, over his heart. As she connected the line to complete the shield, the ink glowed blue, and that blue receded into Kiba’s body as she watched, leaving just the black shape behind.
“So far so good, now, I apologize if it hasn’t worked, but I’m sure you’ll be able to take it...”
She dug the nails on her right hand into the skin on his hard pectoral, and dragged her hand slowly down his chest, taking care to miss the nipple. She was scratching hard enough to at least leave a mark, if not make him bleed, but it did nothing at all, except make him gasp a little at her touch. The spell had worked.
Sweat prickled her brow. She could feel, where she was sitting on him, that he was aroused, and the fact he wasn’t trying to hide it meant he wanted the same thing she did, but still, it was nerve-wracking. What now? Should she draw things out, try painting more things on him? No, she’d already proven it worked. Should she kiss him? She certainly wanted to. But, it was still there in her mind: Yokai mate for life. Would he want that with her? He’d never done this before, any of this, and she had. Would he mind about that? She looked into his eyes, almost pleading for him to give her a sign…
But he did more than that.
Kiba’s hands slid firmly up her back, his touch through the silk she was wearing making her tremble. He pulled her gently downward towards him, and their lips met at last. Anya’s heart thumped as he kissed her hard, insistently pressing his tongue into her mouth, holding her close in his strong arms. Somehow, the world spun as he effortlessly flipped her over, and she found herself underneath him, still locked in his embrace, her little moan of surprise muffled by his increasingly hungry kiss. He broke away for a moment and, in a voice ragged with emotion and desire, spoke close to her ear.