Fanfic Barrage
Aug. 14th, 2007 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aeanagwenSo it's been forever. No particular comments to make about that; I just don't spend as much time online as I used to. For the last few months, I've been loosely following daily months, some months moreso than others. I thought I'd break silence here and just post the few fanfiction writings that have cropped up. There's not a great deal, and it's not all amazingly good or long, but I kind of felt like putting it up.
I've been doing a lot of writing and development work lately, though some of that development is for more productive projects than others. XD Anyway, here they are; I'm alive; etc etc.
Fandom: Fushigi Yuugi
Character: Miboshi
Warnings: Disjointed violence
Comments: Miboshi's first spiritual transfer. This is the fic I wanted to write in a much longer form, but for which I could never get the midget to cooperate with me.
May 6: metempsychotic break
::Wha..?::
/What's.../
jumbled thoughts blood on my hands and that isn't me
::Who the--what the hell?!::
/Where am I? Oh, god, is that--/
dark hair scattered papers a knife and blood
::The--you're--that skinny little--! What the hell?!::
/Oh, god, what's happening?! Where am I?!/
another voice inside a stranger that isn't me someone else's memories
paper and ink and candlelight, blood and shadows and muffled screams
::Get out! You get out! Get out!::
/Are those... I think I'm going to be sick--! How could you?!/
there's not enough room I'm smothering too many memories too many thoughts
::Yeah, that's right! And I'll do it to you again! Die! Die! Get out of my head!::
stabbing knife into neck chest stomach hard motions
grounding drives back the other me fading fading dying
..dying...!
/No! No! I won't die! I won't let you do this to me!/
resurgence and revival and a power like torrential rain
the knife falls
the other me screaming and clawing for hold and clawing my head
/Cold-blooded killer! You don't deserve to live! I deserve to live! I'm worth more than you! Get out! Get out!/
a wail that echos in the alley and
silence in my head
He stares down at the body that was him, but isn't now.
He reaches up to the back of the neck that wasn't his, but is now.
With trembling fingers, he traces out the strokes of a symbol that burns like lingering frost.
Fandom: Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3
Characters: Masaomi, Hinoe, and Atsumori
Comments: This prompt was impossible to make any coherent sense of. The whole ficlet is written around the prompt. Hinoe is getting along just fine in the modern world.
May 24: blue, like an orange
Masaomi leans back on the wall, arms folded, and watches Atsumori get shown around the room by Hinoe. He's gotten a haircut, and Masaomi wonders briefly what they did with the extra, as there're probably doll companies that would pay good money for hair like that. The new length is just long enough to fall with a slight wave on the young hachiyou's shoulders and along the nape of his neck. The locks at the front are no different, though, and still hang sheepishly in front of his eyes, poorly hiding the embarrassed flush in his cheeks.
The Ten no Seiryuu flashes them a thumbs-up when they come his way. "You oughta take Kurou out for another haircut. It's still clogging up the drain," he quips lightly, grinning in the face of Atsumori's stare.
Hinoe pulls a disdainful, disinterested face and rolls his eyes. "Kurou can take care of his own hair. Just like his clothes."
Masaomi does his best not to snicker at the mental image of Kurou with a short bob of hair like what Atsumori's now sporting. With that haircut, he'd look even sillier than he already does in all the clothes in blue, like an orange in an overcoat. "Guess he's got it coming."
Fandom: Eyeshield 21
Characters: Taki + cheerleaders
Comments: Taki is great. That is all.
May 28: Casanova in Hell
The cheerleaders all like Taki quite a bit, even his sister, more or less, and so he gets to go on what might otherwise be girls-only shopping trips. It makes Kuroki and Toganou rather irritable (which he unerringly fails to notice), but the cheerleaders like Taki because their Japanese, which they're still learning, isn't amazing; he isn't very complicated, making him easy to be with, and he flatters them all with equal favor. He's an idiot, but he makes them laugh, especially when he makes contributions in English, which he speaks only well enough to get by, though considerably better than he reads. Sometimes, after especially strenuous practices, as he drags himself off the field and lays on the sideline until he can stand up without shaking, one of them will come over from the cheerleader practices Suzuna runs with tyrannical enthusiasm with damp cloth or ice and pat him down sympathetically. Covered in sweat, he gives them trademark grins and calls them salvation angels, because Hell becomes infinitely more bearable when he's getting attention.
Fandom: Yami no Matsuei
Characters: Nagare and Tatsumi
Comments: Just a ficlet. Nagare finds out the truth.
June 11: ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolk, and friends
He looks into blue eyes filled with silent protest, but he can't find it within him to overcome the betrayal and reach out. It nestles in the depths of his heart like a canker, drawing up tears. His father gave him to the demon god, and the villagers keep him there, and the brother he wanted so to care for him attempted to poison him, and now Tatsumi, who had been so kind and concerned... Tatsumi, a shinigami...
"Mas--Kurosaki-dono... We were sent to--"
The roaring in his ears drowns out the sound, and his knees give out beneath him, the world blurring into red and pain.
This is the end. I can't... I've nothing left... I will... I can finally...
Distantly, he feels the tears on his cheeks as his eyes fall closed and Yatonogami rises from the darkness, a snake readying to strike. Remembered pain and pleasure swim up into his mind, drowning out his thoughts. Tasting the familiarity of despair, he falls, unresisting at last, into its embrace.
There's a flash of glasses and blue eyes, and then his awareness is torn away and cast into the depths as the demon god seizes its generations-awaited resurrection through a vessel long and lovingly prepared.
Fandom: Eyeshield 21
Characters: Monta, Sena, and Musashi
Comments: I think the contrast between Monta's declarations of what constitutes manliness and Musashi's personification of the same are hilarious.
July 01: Real men wear pink
"Monta? Why aren't you changed yet?" Sena looked over at his friend, who had his head stuck in his locker, hands in his duffel bag. The rest of the team was filtering out. Monta didn't respond, so Sena came over, trying to look over his shoulder, concerned.
"Monta--?"
"Mukyaaa, frustration MAX!"
Sena winced and covered an ear as Monta pulled back out of the locker, steaming. He was clinging to his jersey and staring at it like it was a dear friend who had turned up stealing from his bedroom. Sena looked at it, then Monta, in confusion. "What's--?" Then he looked again. The number 80 stood out black against faded red. Very faded. In fact, it was really closer to...
Oh.
"What happened, Monta?"
"Bleach! My mom tried to use bleach for the stains! She always used bleach for my baseball uniforms so she wasn't thinking about it!" Monta balled the jersey up in shaking hands. "What am I gonna do, Sena? I can't play in this!"
Sena had a brief, vivid mental image of Hiruma, bullets blazing and shouting about intimidation, and flinched. No, Monta really couldn't play in that.
The reciever hadn't stopped ranting, and was in fact now standing up on the bench. "Think of what people'll say! And Mamori-san! What'll Mamamori-san think, seeing me in this stupid color?!"
There was a sound from the door and Sena looked around with hair-triggered reflexes, expecting the familiar black, jagged silhouette. Instead, Musashi came in, looking around. He spotted a toolbox set in one corner and headed towards it. Sena started to try to pacify Monta, then did another double-take as Musashi leaned over, the sunlight from outside bright on his tank top.
"M-Monta..."
There was a long moment of silence as Musashi straightened up and headed back out. He paused in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder at the two younger boys, who were gaping at him incredulously.
"What?"
Monta leveled an accusatory finger at the errant kicker. "P-p-pi.."
Musashi looked down at his shirt. He usually wore white, Sena knew, but today, the tank top was a soft, watery pink color. The kicker shrugged. "Someboody's red ended up in the whites," he said simply, with his usual offhand deadpan. "Didn't have anything else clean." He turned again and walked out, then stuck his head back in the door, looking at Monta. "Just ask Hiruma about getting you another jersey. That guy always knows where to turn things up."
He closed the door and another few seconds passed quietly, Sena marveling to himself about Musashi's absolute calm. Finally, he looked up at his friend. Monta was trembling on the bench, head bowed.
"Monta?" the runner ventured, never quite sure where these moments were going to go.
"Real man MAX!" Monta burst out, unfurling his jersey. "If Musashi can do it and not flinch, so can I! I can't miss practice just for this! What was I thinking?!"
Sena sighed and trotted towards the door before Hiruma could come looking for them.
Fandom: Odin Sphere
Characters: Mercedes and Ingway
Warnings: Spoilers for the Mercedes vs. Darkova Bad End
Comments: I'm fairly happy with this, really. It expresses my thoughts on Ingway's perception of his and Mercedes' relationship.
July 03: Everybody knows the frog gets the girl in the end.
There was a voice he used for this, for her, and it had always worked. It stiffened her shoulders and compelled her resolve (or sometimes her protest, but always her attention). The best things she did were because he challenged her to do them. It will work now. It has to work now. If it doesn't work now, he'll...
It isn't supposed to go this way. She shouldn't be here. Then, though, this is the border of Ringford; where else could he expect her to be as Armageddon rained down on the world? She's a queen, a strong, brave, pure warrior-queen who defeated the beast Darkova. She isn't the problem; of course it's him. He's the one that shouldn't be here. A million things done wrong, every day of his miserable, mislead life, and he despairs that his mother's curse couldn't have killed him years ago. The Fairy Queen lays dying in the burning remains of her kingdom, a fate that should have been his.
A branch crashes to the ground close by, and the sparks rise and swarm like hornets. Her slim shoulders weigh so little, and her faltering smile is so sweet. He can feel his voice breaking higher as he soothes her, bolted frozen into the ground by the guilt and the realization rising up in him.
It had been such a story he'd made for himself here, a story about the person he wasn't and couldn't be, about the rogue and the princess, and it had been daring and dangerous and perfect. Everybody knows the frog gets the girl in the end, and it was true; he had--but in the end, he hadn't wanted that kiss. He'd gotten to like being a frog, and he knew that once the frog was a man again, all the guarantees were gone. Men had duties to attend to, scores to settle that they couldn't ignore. Stories about men and women could end any kind of way, and that's why it was all going so wrong now. He'd tried to end it the best way he could, leaving her with a promise to hold onto for long enough that by the time she knew the difference, it would be too late, and she'd never have to know how the story of the prince of Valentine ended. She was never supposed to see him again.
She's stopped breathing. At the treeline, the flames are growing brighter, kindling afresh as, without the queen's power to stave them off, they reach inward for the heart of the forest. The sob catches in his throat as she begins her return to the forest, the light suffusing in her wings glowing like the sun through stained glass. He tries to pull her close at the last, but too late, as the light of her flares brightly and disperses. Anguish rises up through him and the tears he held back for her sake spill free, but fall for nothing. He curses them as useless, wasted, his hands clenching in the empty space where Mercedes had lain.
Distantly, he can hear footsteps, laughter in the heart of the flames. Bowing his head, he renounces defiance and anger, praying that whatever approaches, it will be swift and brutal. Hopeless, and heartsore beyond measure, he slumps in his mantle, fists falling lax to his sides as he sinks fully to his knees and listens to the fires rise.
Fandom: Yami no Matsuei
Characters: Nagare
Warnings: Nothing explicit, but this mostly concerns Nagare and Yatonogami. Tread with caution.
Comments: I like some of the phrasing in here, but I think some of it devolves into cliche. I just wrote it today, so I don't think my opinion is settled.
August 13: Let loose your moorings, ride waves of ecstasy
The pain is excruciating, but the violation is worse, and Yatonogami is in his head now, always; he can feel the mockery and hatred in the back of his mind even under full sunlight. Nagare endures the days with a samurai's stoicism, learned in his youth long ago, and he can remember the feel of the boken in his hands as he practices the routine of daily formalities. Appearances, even surface ones, matter. His duty to the well-being of the village extends even to his behavior--he must protect them even from their own fear, and so they must not see him falter, must not know of his weaknesses. So there is the blindfold, and the bandages, and the words that no one speaks, and the screams that no one answers.
As the moon wanes, the influence grows stronger, and the times when the sky is a black sea of stars are torturous. Worst are the moonless summer nights when bloated clouds hang heavy, heat and moisture sweltering in the reeds of the fields as he drowns in the inky shadows of his bedroom. He has no defenses in the night, alone with Yatonogami and the portraits of his ancestors. He writhes, helpless in the serpent god's coils, and his thoughts are naked before the assault. Yatonogami taunts him with pleasure and release, and is tempted, and despises himself for it. It would be easy, so easy, and he can sense the ecstasy, a shadow's breadth beyond the pain, and he wants it so much...
The longing is a foulness all its own. He takes what respite can be found in leaving his throat raw with screaming, and struggles to remember his last reserve of strength--the knowledge that to surrender to that desire would be to loose his moorings wholly, to be torn from his sanity and subsumed by the god. There would be no return from it. It is all that he holds against Yatonogami and they both know it, though it arches between them unvoiced. Thwarted, the serpent turns its rage against him, redoubled and cloaked in fierce sadism. Every thought he has, it uses to wound him, it gives his every comfort a doubled edge.
His will is the last breaker against the boundless sea of Yatonogami's spite. Clutching it leaves him battered and bleeding, and sometimes seems a pain worse than the beckoning of death. He weeps against fate and holds on, knowing that if he were to let the waves pull him away, no matter how much of a relief it would be, it would be but little time before they closed around him completely, and he would never see the surface again.
I've been doing a lot of writing and development work lately, though some of that development is for more productive projects than others. XD Anyway, here they are; I'm alive; etc etc.
Fandom: Fushigi Yuugi
Character: Miboshi
Warnings: Disjointed violence
Comments: Miboshi's first spiritual transfer. This is the fic I wanted to write in a much longer form, but for which I could never get the midget to cooperate with me.
May 6: metempsychotic break
/What's.../
jumbled thoughts blood on my hands and that isn't me
::Who the--what the hell?!::
/Where am I? Oh, god, is that--/
dark hair scattered papers a knife and blood
::The--you're--that skinny little--! What the hell?!::
/Oh, god, what's happening?! Where am I?!/
another voice inside a stranger that isn't me someone else's memories
paper and ink and candlelight, blood and shadows and muffled screams
::Get out! You get out! Get out!::
/Are those... I think I'm going to be sick--! How could you?!/
there's not enough room I'm smothering too many memories too many thoughts
::Yeah, that's right! And I'll do it to you again! Die! Die! Get out of my head!::
stabbing knife into neck chest stomach hard motions
grounding drives back the other me fading fading dying
..dying...!
/No! No! I won't die! I won't let you do this to me!/
resurgence and revival and a power like torrential rain
the knife falls
the other me screaming and clawing for hold and clawing my head
/Cold-blooded killer! You don't deserve to live! I deserve to live! I'm worth more than you! Get out! Get out!/
a wail that echos in the alley and
silence in my head
He stares down at the body that was him, but isn't now.
He reaches up to the back of the neck that wasn't his, but is now.
With trembling fingers, he traces out the strokes of a symbol that burns like lingering frost.
Fandom: Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3
Characters: Masaomi, Hinoe, and Atsumori
Comments: This prompt was impossible to make any coherent sense of. The whole ficlet is written around the prompt. Hinoe is getting along just fine in the modern world.
May 24: blue, like an orange
Masaomi leans back on the wall, arms folded, and watches Atsumori get shown around the room by Hinoe. He's gotten a haircut, and Masaomi wonders briefly what they did with the extra, as there're probably doll companies that would pay good money for hair like that. The new length is just long enough to fall with a slight wave on the young hachiyou's shoulders and along the nape of his neck. The locks at the front are no different, though, and still hang sheepishly in front of his eyes, poorly hiding the embarrassed flush in his cheeks.
The Ten no Seiryuu flashes them a thumbs-up when they come his way. "You oughta take Kurou out for another haircut. It's still clogging up the drain," he quips lightly, grinning in the face of Atsumori's stare.
Hinoe pulls a disdainful, disinterested face and rolls his eyes. "Kurou can take care of his own hair. Just like his clothes."
Masaomi does his best not to snicker at the mental image of Kurou with a short bob of hair like what Atsumori's now sporting. With that haircut, he'd look even sillier than he already does in all the clothes in blue, like an orange in an overcoat. "Guess he's got it coming."
Fandom: Eyeshield 21
Characters: Taki + cheerleaders
Comments: Taki is great. That is all.
May 28: Casanova in Hell
The cheerleaders all like Taki quite a bit, even his sister, more or less, and so he gets to go on what might otherwise be girls-only shopping trips. It makes Kuroki and Toganou rather irritable (which he unerringly fails to notice), but the cheerleaders like Taki because their Japanese, which they're still learning, isn't amazing; he isn't very complicated, making him easy to be with, and he flatters them all with equal favor. He's an idiot, but he makes them laugh, especially when he makes contributions in English, which he speaks only well enough to get by, though considerably better than he reads. Sometimes, after especially strenuous practices, as he drags himself off the field and lays on the sideline until he can stand up without shaking, one of them will come over from the cheerleader practices Suzuna runs with tyrannical enthusiasm with damp cloth or ice and pat him down sympathetically. Covered in sweat, he gives them trademark grins and calls them salvation angels, because Hell becomes infinitely more bearable when he's getting attention.
Fandom: Yami no Matsuei
Characters: Nagare and Tatsumi
Comments: Just a ficlet. Nagare finds out the truth.
June 11: ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolk, and friends
He looks into blue eyes filled with silent protest, but he can't find it within him to overcome the betrayal and reach out. It nestles in the depths of his heart like a canker, drawing up tears. His father gave him to the demon god, and the villagers keep him there, and the brother he wanted so to care for him attempted to poison him, and now Tatsumi, who had been so kind and concerned... Tatsumi, a shinigami...
"Mas--Kurosaki-dono... We were sent to--"
The roaring in his ears drowns out the sound, and his knees give out beneath him, the world blurring into red and pain.
This is the end. I can't... I've nothing left... I will... I can finally...
Distantly, he feels the tears on his cheeks as his eyes fall closed and Yatonogami rises from the darkness, a snake readying to strike. Remembered pain and pleasure swim up into his mind, drowning out his thoughts. Tasting the familiarity of despair, he falls, unresisting at last, into its embrace.
There's a flash of glasses and blue eyes, and then his awareness is torn away and cast into the depths as the demon god seizes its generations-awaited resurrection through a vessel long and lovingly prepared.
Fandom: Eyeshield 21
Characters: Monta, Sena, and Musashi
Comments: I think the contrast between Monta's declarations of what constitutes manliness and Musashi's personification of the same are hilarious.
July 01: Real men wear pink
"Monta? Why aren't you changed yet?" Sena looked over at his friend, who had his head stuck in his locker, hands in his duffel bag. The rest of the team was filtering out. Monta didn't respond, so Sena came over, trying to look over his shoulder, concerned.
"Monta--?"
"Mukyaaa, frustration MAX!"
Sena winced and covered an ear as Monta pulled back out of the locker, steaming. He was clinging to his jersey and staring at it like it was a dear friend who had turned up stealing from his bedroom. Sena looked at it, then Monta, in confusion. "What's--?" Then he looked again. The number 80 stood out black against faded red. Very faded. In fact, it was really closer to...
Oh.
"What happened, Monta?"
"Bleach! My mom tried to use bleach for the stains! She always used bleach for my baseball uniforms so she wasn't thinking about it!" Monta balled the jersey up in shaking hands. "What am I gonna do, Sena? I can't play in this!"
Sena had a brief, vivid mental image of Hiruma, bullets blazing and shouting about intimidation, and flinched. No, Monta really couldn't play in that.
The reciever hadn't stopped ranting, and was in fact now standing up on the bench. "Think of what people'll say! And Mamori-san! What'll Mamamori-san think, seeing me in this stupid color?!"
There was a sound from the door and Sena looked around with hair-triggered reflexes, expecting the familiar black, jagged silhouette. Instead, Musashi came in, looking around. He spotted a toolbox set in one corner and headed towards it. Sena started to try to pacify Monta, then did another double-take as Musashi leaned over, the sunlight from outside bright on his tank top.
"M-Monta..."
There was a long moment of silence as Musashi straightened up and headed back out. He paused in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder at the two younger boys, who were gaping at him incredulously.
"What?"
Monta leveled an accusatory finger at the errant kicker. "P-p-pi.."
Musashi looked down at his shirt. He usually wore white, Sena knew, but today, the tank top was a soft, watery pink color. The kicker shrugged. "Someboody's red ended up in the whites," he said simply, with his usual offhand deadpan. "Didn't have anything else clean." He turned again and walked out, then stuck his head back in the door, looking at Monta. "Just ask Hiruma about getting you another jersey. That guy always knows where to turn things up."
He closed the door and another few seconds passed quietly, Sena marveling to himself about Musashi's absolute calm. Finally, he looked up at his friend. Monta was trembling on the bench, head bowed.
"Monta?" the runner ventured, never quite sure where these moments were going to go.
"Real man MAX!" Monta burst out, unfurling his jersey. "If Musashi can do it and not flinch, so can I! I can't miss practice just for this! What was I thinking?!"
Sena sighed and trotted towards the door before Hiruma could come looking for them.
Fandom: Odin Sphere
Characters: Mercedes and Ingway
Warnings: Spoilers for the Mercedes vs. Darkova Bad End
Comments: I'm fairly happy with this, really. It expresses my thoughts on Ingway's perception of his and Mercedes' relationship.
July 03: Everybody knows the frog gets the girl in the end.
There was a voice he used for this, for her, and it had always worked. It stiffened her shoulders and compelled her resolve (or sometimes her protest, but always her attention). The best things she did were because he challenged her to do them. It will work now. It has to work now. If it doesn't work now, he'll...
It isn't supposed to go this way. She shouldn't be here. Then, though, this is the border of Ringford; where else could he expect her to be as Armageddon rained down on the world? She's a queen, a strong, brave, pure warrior-queen who defeated the beast Darkova. She isn't the problem; of course it's him. He's the one that shouldn't be here. A million things done wrong, every day of his miserable, mislead life, and he despairs that his mother's curse couldn't have killed him years ago. The Fairy Queen lays dying in the burning remains of her kingdom, a fate that should have been his.
A branch crashes to the ground close by, and the sparks rise and swarm like hornets. Her slim shoulders weigh so little, and her faltering smile is so sweet. He can feel his voice breaking higher as he soothes her, bolted frozen into the ground by the guilt and the realization rising up in him.
It had been such a story he'd made for himself here, a story about the person he wasn't and couldn't be, about the rogue and the princess, and it had been daring and dangerous and perfect. Everybody knows the frog gets the girl in the end, and it was true; he had--but in the end, he hadn't wanted that kiss. He'd gotten to like being a frog, and he knew that once the frog was a man again, all the guarantees were gone. Men had duties to attend to, scores to settle that they couldn't ignore. Stories about men and women could end any kind of way, and that's why it was all going so wrong now. He'd tried to end it the best way he could, leaving her with a promise to hold onto for long enough that by the time she knew the difference, it would be too late, and she'd never have to know how the story of the prince of Valentine ended. She was never supposed to see him again.
She's stopped breathing. At the treeline, the flames are growing brighter, kindling afresh as, without the queen's power to stave them off, they reach inward for the heart of the forest. The sob catches in his throat as she begins her return to the forest, the light suffusing in her wings glowing like the sun through stained glass. He tries to pull her close at the last, but too late, as the light of her flares brightly and disperses. Anguish rises up through him and the tears he held back for her sake spill free, but fall for nothing. He curses them as useless, wasted, his hands clenching in the empty space where Mercedes had lain.
Distantly, he can hear footsteps, laughter in the heart of the flames. Bowing his head, he renounces defiance and anger, praying that whatever approaches, it will be swift and brutal. Hopeless, and heartsore beyond measure, he slumps in his mantle, fists falling lax to his sides as he sinks fully to his knees and listens to the fires rise.
Fandom: Yami no Matsuei
Characters: Nagare
Warnings: Nothing explicit, but this mostly concerns Nagare and Yatonogami. Tread with caution.
Comments: I like some of the phrasing in here, but I think some of it devolves into cliche. I just wrote it today, so I don't think my opinion is settled.
August 13: Let loose your moorings, ride waves of ecstasy
The pain is excruciating, but the violation is worse, and Yatonogami is in his head now, always; he can feel the mockery and hatred in the back of his mind even under full sunlight. Nagare endures the days with a samurai's stoicism, learned in his youth long ago, and he can remember the feel of the boken in his hands as he practices the routine of daily formalities. Appearances, even surface ones, matter. His duty to the well-being of the village extends even to his behavior--he must protect them even from their own fear, and so they must not see him falter, must not know of his weaknesses. So there is the blindfold, and the bandages, and the words that no one speaks, and the screams that no one answers.
As the moon wanes, the influence grows stronger, and the times when the sky is a black sea of stars are torturous. Worst are the moonless summer nights when bloated clouds hang heavy, heat and moisture sweltering in the reeds of the fields as he drowns in the inky shadows of his bedroom. He has no defenses in the night, alone with Yatonogami and the portraits of his ancestors. He writhes, helpless in the serpent god's coils, and his thoughts are naked before the assault. Yatonogami taunts him with pleasure and release, and is tempted, and despises himself for it. It would be easy, so easy, and he can sense the ecstasy, a shadow's breadth beyond the pain, and he wants it so much...
The longing is a foulness all its own. He takes what respite can be found in leaving his throat raw with screaming, and struggles to remember his last reserve of strength--the knowledge that to surrender to that desire would be to loose his moorings wholly, to be torn from his sanity and subsumed by the god. There would be no return from it. It is all that he holds against Yatonogami and they both know it, though it arches between them unvoiced. Thwarted, the serpent turns its rage against him, redoubled and cloaked in fierce sadism. Every thought he has, it uses to wound him, it gives his every comfort a doubled edge.
His will is the last breaker against the boundless sea of Yatonogami's spite. Clutching it leaves him battered and bleeding, and sometimes seems a pain worse than the beckoning of death. He weeps against fate and holds on, knowing that if he were to let the waves pull him away, no matter how much of a relief it would be, it would be but little time before they closed around him completely, and he would never see the surface again.
