Warm Seasons
He didn’t know how long the black had been his only companion. Days, weeks, months, years—nothing but the occasional glimpses of the night sky marked the passage of time. Faint stars. Sometimes, not even that.
Nothing, nothing. Not even his own shadow. Simply the rough and old mattress he slept on, the cold floor beneath his feet, the washroom that was so small echoes had nowhere to travel. A cage with no bars to peer through, a box with no holes.
It was the worst during the moonlit nights, when he could almost remember the feeling of sunlight on his face, of warmth deep into his bones; where he could nearly recall laughter and grass and voices of those he loved. The cool light was a pale mockery, offered no comfort, yet reminded him.
Remembrances of family. Of freedom. Of life and the living.
Of the passing seasons and who he once was.
She last came to him under a waxing moon, the light not yet enough to steer his thoughts to absolute rage, still only a faint reminder of the faux life he kept.
The doorway was small, hardly more than an animal door. His glimpse beyond was too short to be soothing. His glimpse beyond was too long for his psyche.
“The seasons turn cold again,” she said, settling onto the bed next to him. The tone of her voice was light, simply an observation, a truth. The breeze that followed her into his domain was indeed cooler, autumnal.
But he knew she did it on purpose. The wordplay.
He hated her for it.
She didn’t oppose him when he grabbed her, pushed her down, pulled her legs up into the air. Her eyes merely watched him in that same way, a charade of kindness and pity, lacking the heat of a living being. Her body didn’t resist his intrusion, and he growled at her like he could make up for her lack of response.
“That man is gone, you know,” she told him. “Soon, you will be too.”
Impersonal, empty words. It made him tear away from her as if he were the one that could not get away fast enough. As if she was the one taking something from him.
She must have left the door ajar when she entered, as he was able to flee far from her side, far from the shadows that contained him. The light outside was dim, but he could see by it. Enough. Enough to get away.
Not enough to be free. Not enough to live.
He was beneath the sky once again. The empty black was no longer his only companion.
Yet it was.
The town was dead. Decaying. A corpse. Nothing breathed, nothing moved, nothing had the color of the living. The lives he sensed around him, beyond him—all of them, nothing. He sensed life from them, but not life. They milled around with their petty existences, unaware of what lurked beside them, behind them, within them, anywhere but where they could see. Unaware. Unaware. Blind.
Darkness. Black.
Death.
Dead.
What little caught his eye, pierced his ears, what touch he felt beneath his feet and fingertips, all of it, the death throes of something no longer. Something gone. Going through reactionary motions, not sentient, not alive, not pursuing an existence.
He hated it, hated it, hated it, hated it. He wanted to tear it apart, tear apart their fragile reality, wanted to show them the truth.
He would show them the black cave they truly resided in, the light that was beyond their reach. He wanted that same cold light he hated to be the last thing they knew.
The seasons had gone cold, so he sought out the illusionary warmth that kept others at peace.
The first body he tore into was warm. Warm skin. Warm blood. Until she no longer drew it, her very breath was warm. Even the tears she cried were warm to the touch.
For a scant moment, he remembered warm days, warm houses, the warm grass on his back and warm laughter from friends and family. The faint sensation of warmth leaking between his fingers and crawling up his toes returned fleeting thoughts and memories to his head.
He could not remember how long he stood there in remembrance. Until that sensation seeped away.
When he reached down to draw more from the young woman beneath him, he found she no longer gave up that warmth. Already, the night air and cold light from the moon had stolen it. Her body was cool to the touch, her blood cold like what he felt crawling through his veins.
The seasons grew colder again. He sought shelter until he could find something else to warm himself with.
They laughed. Laughed. It bubbled from warm lungs and throats and lips. He wanted it silenced.
There were two this time. Younger than the last. A boy and a girl. They looked alike. Ran alike. Laughed alike.
From the shadowy eaves of a building, he came down on the boy, wrenching him to the ground by his hair. The girl looked back and screamed, fell away. He locked gazes with her, felt the fear he had come to know reach her, felt her lock in place from it.
He warmed himself in the boy, tore that sensation from him with his bare hands. When he felt once more cloaked in it, he turned to reach for the girl.
She managed to cry out a name before he took the laughter from her too. It was not the name of an individual, yet was. It reminded him of more taken from him, and he was glad to rip it right out of the girl’s throat until she too knew coldness.
The truth of her cold existence took her, and the brother she called out for did not answer.
Heat swept over him.
The next warm body he tried to take instead gave him more than he asked for.
He growled, hissed at it, wanted to make it his own, command it, control it, contort it, bend it, wrench it from its source and steal it back. He clawed at it with bare hands as if he could grasp it, then tore cold blood from his own body to try and cut into it, close in on it, harness it, mold it.
His cold blood burned away.
Roaring at it, screaming at it, he sent wave after wave into the inferno before him. He was to remind it that time turned to cold again, that the light out there would pull further away, that the darkness would reclaim everything.
Autumn was supposed to turn to cold.
Autumn was supposed to die away.
The blood about her body literally boiled until it was no more. Right down to the molecular level, she removed every atom of heat, of energy, tearing it away like the life she was sundering, until nothing remained.
Then it took from him.
He thought of his own body as cold. Death knew him well, sat with him in that darkness, whispering, chanting, promising—he was going to do the same to the others, let them know it was with them too, all the time, and they would know what he knew, and they would grow cold—
But warmth did leave his body, warmth he thought he had already surrendered, lost, had already been taken from him.
The breath he took was warm for an instant, filling his lungs even as the rest of his body turned to ice in the wake of the heat lashing over him. He tried to clamp down on it, keep it inside his body, keep it infused within him.
He didn’t know when he had fallen over, but he found himself staring up at the waxing moon again. He wanted it to go away, hated the reminder even as he wanted to share it with others.
She eclipsed that light, dark mane spilling over his face until he could no longer make out the pale light. She pressed her hand over his eyes, her fingertips gently soothing his sight into darkness. He did not feel the heat that started to boil around them. He heard what sounded like raindrops striking a hot furnace, felt something touch his cheeks for a fleeting moment.
“Goodbye, SHIKI,” Akiha whispered into his ear, closer than he thought she was.
The quiet darkness that he had known for so long came to reclaim him. He clawed from it, desperate to escape, and sought the warmth he remembered as his sister.
End
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Originally Posted by Kohaku
