After so long sequestered and ageless, I have forgotten how to live in this fractured place, where everything is made only to be broken.

(And now you are gone. And now I have lost you-- we have lost you.)

Hot city dark, the grit and pulse; this late in July, Toyama is oppressive in its heat. No redemption, the world so very old... No, it is I who am old. I know nothing of this place, though I have lived here all my life. So long motionless pristine, and now the urge for movement is almost overwhelming-- to run and run--

But I have lived too long with illusions to exist without them now.

It has been a long time since I have been without a master. Without a mission. We are afraid to speak too much to one another. Afraid, I think, that if we talk at all we will discover that we hate one another. Nothing in common, and too much of shared memory. But who else to speak to? Arago-sama gone like a candle-boat down the river, and we are left in the silence of his absence. Without.

Grieving. All grieving. How unlikely is that? You, the arrogant fourth, whom we fought and dearly loved to hurt. We mourn your passing. We were made to follow; what direction do we take, now?

(Every green glance becomes yours, every sweep of red hair, your hair. But that is a small comfort.)

Anubisu is watching the stars coming out, in the evening sky dark and sweet as plum wine. "Our presence here changes nothing." His voice is soft, like remembering. You said so, once.

I realize that the soft shush of rushing water from the other room has been going on for hours.

Anubisu looks up from his stargazing, glancing expectantly at me; it is my turn. Surely enough, as I open the bathroom door, I see Naaza asleep in a blissful sprawl in the shower. The water is steamy, and I am shivering with heat as I maneuver the handle, try to lift him from the bathtub. He murmurs sleepily into my shoulder, a languid stretch slurrying waterdroplets from the long sleek musculature of him. He blinks oddly lidded eyes at me. "Made with reptiles in mind," he slurs. "Warm waterfalls..."

And then he is asleep again, soft green hair tickling my neck as I get my arms around him and hoist him to the bed.

It is with surprise that I realize it-- he's never seemed more content, smooth fine skin, never more serpentine and luxurious. Never more beautiful. Nor Anubisu-- I cannot remember the last time he looked so sharp, so perfect. The way his blue-black hair shimmers in the summer evening, his attention absorbed in the sky he reads.

I have to laugh-- Naaza has slid across the satiny hotel sheets to the bodywarmth Anubisu exudes, has wrapped those long naked legs over him. Effectively shattering his concentration. Anubisu casts a desperate glance at me, but already I can tell that the stars are forgotten through the windowframe and Naaza is no longer really sleeping. There is cool clearness in Anubisu's eyes, an evenness to his amused smile that has not been there since--

I cannot remember.

(Could you remember? No, but you are gone. Never will that cinnamon hair fall through my potent fingertips as once it did. For that matter, how long has it been since my fingers held half the magic they used to? Half a charm last week, just to hide my eye, and I was spent.

Oh, I begin to see what you meant of the mortal realm, Sh'ten. It's grown far larger than we had imagined, hidden away in our chrysanthemum world. How must it have felt, self-named guardian of the woman and the little boy-- who knew this world so well in a way they took for granted, who breathed real air for all their years, and understood the world they saw.

More than we did, we who thought to take it all.

How much is just illusion?)

"It's not like you to be distracted." Naaza. Those violet eyes are warm, now, with an unusual sort of understanding. Anubisu angles his head at me, with the beginnings of a wolfish smile.

The sleeping gown I wear feels suddenly odd against my shoulder, stiff fabric sliding against my skin like the new unaccustomed slip of mortality against my mind. But then, I realize, shrugging out of it, that my skin is just as strange to me, the spreading warmth as foreign to my time-frozen heart...

I lose my balance, flat on my back on the web that I have spun for so long, hopelessly lost-- Only to find myself surrounded, caught up, and this web not of my own weaving, but of cool deft fingertips and sun-warm hair, of greedy mouths and thirsty eyes. We touch where we cannot speak, our tongues learning to listen, to find things not hidden so deeply as we may have thought. I am not the only one speechless.

Out of nowhere, amid the tangle of bodies and the breathless murmurs, peace sends cherrypetals scattering down around our upturned faces-- a quietness of spring in the midst of my disbelief, in the midst of that hot city dark.

(And I can imagine you, standing atop those skyscrapers, above the mortal-dimness of this city, laughing, laughing.)