Garran has been exploring the ways in which Himoto and Hirusui are disturbingly animal. In keeping with the preferred halves of our characters' duality, I'm going to try my hand at exploring the ways that they are strange and human.
Himoto and Hirusui in springtime
began 2005 0422
The girl flopped onto her bare back, breathing hard, heart racing. The reeds of the tatami mat met her smooth, cradling her flat and open, as the last of the consuming night ebbed and shuddered through her frame. A lingering trace of winter snatched at her ragged breaths, pulling out a little of the moisture where her eyes could see it as it floated to freedom in the thick beams of the rafters. Then the air snatched also at the sweat on her skin and she shuddered again, but from chill. Her heart began to slow.
She looked up and, emboldened, raised her hand to draw her companion to her. But with his own hand he tapped the outstretched tips of her fingers, with just enough force to break her heart. She let her head and hand fall back to the floor. Then he leaned over her, long raven hair forming a tunnel between her downcast pout? and his own apologetic smile. He passed his right hand slowly over her face; her eyelids fluttered and she fell to sleep. (His darting left hand, the true magician, fingers held like the needle teeth of a cobra strike, smote swiftly a key nerve in her neck.)
Her face relaxed, body forced to accept the present as the present without clinging to it. He gathered her in his arms and laid her across the futon, straw rustling protectively as it accepted its charge for the night. He dressed in seven spare movements, then kneeling beside her again, drew from his sleeve a long, black crow feather and laid it between the rise and fall of her breasts, quill at the bottom of her ribcage by her diaphragm. He folded her hands over the feather and then drew the covers.
He rose and checked the door, binding it slyly with a second length of cord from his sleeves, for she would sleep long and deep that night and well into the morning, and he wanted no trouble to befall her because of it. Then he reclaimed his sandals from their place beside the door, tied them to the end of his belt, and shimmied up a beam into the rafters. Through a loose board in the ceiling he vanished into the night.
He ran along the roof of the great house, away from the wing that housed the servants and towards the woods. He vaulted the ten feet to the ground and was off into the trees, moving silently in the sparse moonlight.
Ahead of him a form emerged from the shadows, yellow eyes first. A girl. He stopped beside her, catching her momentarily in an easy embrace.
"How was yours?" she asked. They set off walking uphill. He smiled widely at her, but as his face faded back to a more neutrally cheerful a cloud crossed it. "Mine wanted to hold me after, too, wanted me to stay. He came close to begging. Really they should know better." She studied her hand thoughtfully. "Had to put him to sleep. Wasn't bad, otherwise. Little inexperienced, but he managed to come through."
Now they emerged from the forest again, on a bluff overlooking the great house. Their sharp eyes picked out another figure slinking across the roof below and they smiled. "Spring has everyone's' blood running again," the boy smirked, stretching. "Look at that young lord, trying to play our game. But they never think of anyone but themselves," he spat. "All take, no give. They don't play right at all."
The one who received a crow feather would lead a fortunate life, even a servant (and they had a longstanding treaty with the nobles to avoid family members). But one who received a young lord was likely only to receive a young lord again--either the same or his brother in jealousy--and again and again for a week or two until the nobles tired of the one and moved on, leaving either nothing or an extra mewling care behind.
The couple turned from the bluff. "C'mon," said the girl, "enough meddling for one night."
"Yes," the boy agreed, "now it's time to play farmer."
(...I blame code, fully and completely, for those last two lines.)