Shrike's Heart (#4)

[idolpro]

The woman before you is beautiful—fair of features, with lovely golden skin and luxurious long black hair, petite. You have the immediate and distinct impression that she's just let go of your hand, and she steps back, and smiles.

It's not quite a happy smile.

"I'm sorry," she says. "There's just nothing I can do, as things are. But the way is there; it just needs to be lit."

You open your mouth—maybe to say something, or to express confusion—but you have to cough, and taste something metallic, spattering black blood onto the ground in front of you. Then you realize—blood seeps from opening wounds in your arms, your chest, your stomach, your face. It rims your eyes and trails from your nose and you feel like you're dissolving—

—and you fall through the ground like it's the surface of a lake, and go down, down, down.

> Wake Up

Comments

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[worthathousand]

[ After the funeral, she takes a moment to look for the shrines Griffin mentioned. ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[softlyfalling]

[ From the outside, it looked like an ordinary house, but—there's something odd going on inside here. There's a handful of ink drawings on paper set out standing up, each with a sort of... strange little shrine with its own offerings. In the middle is one for avante en garde's Cardigan; laid out in front of it is a few sprigs of amaranth, a golden spear, and a bottle of sake.

The rest of the room is filled with artifacts—lost dolls, dried flowers, notebooks, keepsakes, roughly sorted into piles. Pinned to some of them are notes that seem like names, though most of them bear question marks. ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[worthathousand]

....They really are shrines.

[ she goes to kneel by the one to Cardigan, to inspect it and its neighbors more closely ]

Re: THE RUINED TOWN

[worthathousand]

[ and she will search for the ink and quill to create her own contribution to the shrine: ]

My love,
The instinct in me says that I must write to my home, but in the life we have been given, where can I say that is?
Someday, perhaps I can show you Tsubaki Province: the river, and the fields, and the cherry trees in Ascending Wood. But until that time, you are my home.

The blossom falls
I catch it
in my worn hands
and place it behind your ear.

- Amakura