Cats and Demi-gods Part II
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. And don't read if you're not old enough.
Please read: Part I - Mortality before continuing with this.
Title: Cats and Demi-gods
Chapter: Part II - The Scent of Sorrow
Universe: Rurouni Kenshin
Rating: R
Genre: Drama/Fantasy/Romance
Version: AU
It was eighty years later that she found him in a snow field, drenched in blood that was, once again, not his own. In his arms was the corpse of a human woman. She guessed from the smell the scene that would greet her long before she ever saw his hunched back. Yet, she was still surprised by what she saw when she came upon the field.
Grief.
It was as powerful as a touch. The cloying scent of it came off of the human woman in his arms, but even as he held the dead it could not latch onto him. "Fool," she had overheard him whisper as she treaded ever tighter circles around them, closing in with careful sweeping glances.
Yes, she had agreed thoughtfully as her feline eyes landed on his back. He was a fool to grieve so for a human. They lived and died so easily, their existence so brief. They were frail and weak, and she knew that better than anyone. Once she had almost been like them and had loved a father who had been no different.
But she was different now.
Not ever again would she be human, and yet, she was still too unskilled to call herself a true, full demon. Her tail swished in the cold air and her paws made neither sound nor prints upon the snow. It was the one thing she had learned and she took pride in it as she made one last wide circle around the greiving pair before settling in a spot to better watch his back for him.
He had saved her once, after all. She owed him this small moment of grieving, if nothing else. Her eyes skimmed the snow again, and she snapped into attention as her gaze fell on something that was not just snow or landscape. She tensed as she recognized another body a little ways off. At first she had puzzled at the feathers but in the end, it was not a bird she saw but a humanoid man with torn wings and a deep cut.
The guise that camouflaged him was melting away like a chipped shield and Kaoru blinked at the strange overpowering scent that came upon her like a wave, the smell of crumbling Power.
She tensed all the more when her once-savior rose and walked over to the being that laid in the snow. It was still alive, she realized with alarm. Whatever it was had began to laugh, and it was a rich, deep sound that was neither sinister nor human. "I won't be the last. This war has just begun," the thing said.
Her blood-haired savior cut into the other's vocal cords, twisting and pulling the blade out in a painful, precise and silencing move. His opponent gagged as fresh blood splattered onto snow. Fresh golden blood that seemed more like light than life force and more like metal than Power. The unfamiliar scent was sweet and delicious, something that made her feel as if she had smelt it before. It had the power to make her mouth water and her throat dry up with thirst. Yet, she made no move and only watched as her once savior expertly ripped the rest of the head off and raised it to eye-level. Lines of liquid gold fell from the detached head as the hair seemed to shimmer like snow beneath sunlight. "Tell your maker that I will be coming for him," her savior said in a different voice than the one he had employed when they had first met and he had saved her life.
The head could not answer and before long, the body and the deliciously smelling liquid that must have been the creatures blood, disappeared. Only the red prints of the dead female human remained with winged imprints in the snow to be the only telling of a story the humans would call superstition.
"I know you're there," he called out to her.
Her ear flicked but otherwise she held perfectly still as she watched him. He could have meant someone or something else, though she did not smell anything else except the scent of death. The being he had killed was scentless as he had been, it had surprised her to see it - or was it a him? - but it was not demon.
Her savior was also not demon, even if he looked feral now.
"You don't have the killing intent, but I do not like to be watched." He warned her quietly. She heard every word but still did not move. Her once-savior turned her way and cocked his head. "Is this a game of hide and seek?" he asked. His voice was harsh, almost impatient. She thought it strange how much younger he acted and how much smaller he seemed now that she was not looking up at him from the floor. His eyes were also red-rimmed from tears, clear as they now were, the evidence of a seemingly human heart could not be so easily concealed.
"If it is," she finally said when she intuitively felt his impatience began to shift towards violence. "I have obviously lost already." She assured him the best way she knew how, by admitting defeat.
He turned to her fully then as she came from under the low, snow covered bushes. Snow coated her fur and thin icicles hung on her whiskers. She watched him wearily as he stared back at her, the widening of his eyes showed he was surprised though there were no other hints.
"A demon? Who are you?" he asked her as she stopped by the shadow of the lone tree before the shrine.
She watched him for a long moment to see if he would recognize the color of her ears or the fading patterns on her tail, but he did not. "You saved me once," she finally answered. "Decades ago," she added. "My mortal name was Kaoru. And you, savior? Have you a name?"
He looked at her a bit dumb-founded, until she started to feel the urge to turn human and throw a shoe at his head. It was getting to be a bit insulting. "Kaoru?" he finally said, surprised and then looked away wearily. "Kaoru," he repeated as if a memory flickered faintly in his head as he turned back to look at her who was now fully transformed. "I am known by humans as Battousai." He finally answered her softly, turning to head back to the dead woman in the snow.
"And what are you?" she asked with a tilt of her head, watching his back bend as he lifted the corpse. "I know you are not a demon, despite your colorings. You are not a human either, for you do not carry the scent."
He gave her an assessing stare over his shoulder, cool and in control. "We are not alike, but it does not make me any less a demon. Humans believe us no different."
"Humans call anything different from their expectations and experiences gods or demons," Kaoru said pointedly, as he looked down at the human he held. She watched him but did not probe further, even when she wanted to. Now was not the time. She had received his name, and it was enough. "Battousai," she tested the title instead, as he turned to go. "If ever we run into each other again and you need my help, you need only ask it." Kaoru told him as he began to walk away. "I owe you a life's debt, after all."
"Is that all you came to tell me?" he asked skeptically as he looked to her again. His eyes were sadder this time, but he restrained himself in her presence.
She hesitated. "I smelled grief," she finally answered, carefully watching his non-reaction. "And it was like a touch. I had never smelled such strong emotions on a human before, but I was wrong to think it was impossible," she answered as her eyes flickered to the body with a combination of pity and curiosity. She sensed him drawing into himself, could see the faint light of power around his form, dimming as the snow covered them both. It was time to go, she knew it instinctively. "Until we meet again, Battousai," she said softly. Without waiting for an answer she turned as well and leapt into the shadows, only to come out in the midst of Aokigahara*.
She had scented him, and given him the message she had long wished to give. She was not powerful, but she was not mortal. Kaoru had meant what she had said after all. She owed him a life's debt and she had no qualms about him killing demons.
She had her own hunt to deal with, but the offer was given and now all she needed was to wait for him to collect.
She looked over her shoulder, almost expecting him to follow. He did not. "Battousai," she murmurred to herself as she turned back to the forest with a swish of her tail.
"We shall meet again."
---
She met a man on the road one day. He was in a great deal of pain when their paths crossed. "Who are you?" he asked her when the evening dimmed around them and her lantern swayed in the wind.
"I am Kaoru," she told him. She stepped forward and tilted her head. "Would you like some help?" she asked. "My house is not far from here." Her eyes trailed to the dark stain on his haori as his foot slipped against the dirt ground, wet with his blood, but she did not raise her lantern nor wrinkle her nose at the rich iron smell of his blood. She did not blink at him stumbling to right himself, struggling to keep upright.
"Why?" he asked through gritted teeth, swaying in the wind like the end of a wind chime.
"You remind me of someone," she answered just as he collapsed forward. Her light was his fading vision as her feet came into view.
He was unconscious for a day, but woke on the afternoon of the next. He had had a slight fever, but it had not been as terrible as his loss of blood. She had carefully sutured his wounds, but she was never certain, when it came to humans, who would live of those she helped.
His first word had been a quiet gasp, and so she fed him water enough for him to speak. "Who are you?" and "Where am I?" would have been what she had been expecting, but he introduced himself instead. "I am Kamiya. Kamiya Sousuke." He told her while his eyes scanned the room for danger and his body tensed under the hand she laid upon the bump of his shoulder, outlined by the futon.
"I am Kaoru," she told him once more. "You are at my house. We met on the road just outside and you had collapsed."
He was silent for a long moment. "Are you all by yourself?" he asked gravely. She did not answer but his frown deepened. "I could be a criminal, or rob you. You are a young lady, it cannot be proper for you to help out a stranger on your own." He turned his head away, as if ashamed for both of them that he was in this room without chaperons.
Kaoru only smiled at him, even if he refused to look at her with his stern eyes. It was not yet time to tell him that she lived alone as well. "If you were a criminal," she told him instead. "You would not raise such an alarm at my helping you out."
He turned his head this time to give her a weary scowl and he would have continued to scold her for her words, but he was too exhausted by then and was unconscious before he could open his mouth. "Humans," she mused as she brushed aside a stray hair. "So fragile," she added with a wasteful sigh.
He got better under her care. She had been the daughter of a medicine man for awhile, after all. It had been a means to make money for her father and herself when they had travelled everywhere. Helping others, Kaoru found it brought her closer to the memories of those years when her father still lived.
When he was up to it, she brought Sousuke food, which surprised him in that there was always meat from wild game and hearty vegetables that he guessed were from her own garden. It still tasted horrible though, as if she'd never learned how to cook properly even with the variety of foods she brought him. But he ate it nonetheless.
She had leaned into him many times while she checked his wounds, and though she usually did it when he was asleep, he woke once or twice during her ministrations. She never smelled of soft perfume or heavy incense when she got close, but it was always a familiar odor that he had not expected to smell on any woman. It was the scent of the wild and the wind and the earth and the forest. Her face always greeted him when he woke, and he usually knew her presence was there from his own dreams. As quiet as a shadow she would sit and watch over him, and he would dream of the forest and the mountains when he slept whenever she was there.
There was also something strange about her eyes. He noticed that when he would wake for longer times and note the exotic color of them. It was not a color he had ever seen on anyone.
It was not often their gaze would meet in the daylight hours. Darkness often blinded him when he usually woke, and he never stayed awake long enough that first week to truly observe or remember anything too clearly. But as he got better and remembered more, he remembered one afternoon, with faint light in the distance, he had opened his eyes to watch her pull away. Their eyes had met while the sunlight was just starting to shyly pour into the dark room. He saw then, in the pale and feeble light, that she had strange, alien blue eyes, framed by shadows.
It was not the color of wood or of earthwarm browns, not of honey nor of a black midnight sky, or of any shades he had seen of the people he had met throughout his life. It was indigo blue like deep, stormy oceans and dark lagoons. Those eyes were intense and fathomless and they sometimes made him uneasy when she looked at him, as if they were trying to enchant him. If she had not saved his life, he might have thought her possessed or meant him harm, though he had trouble reading the expressions that lay in her gaze.
It made him distinctly uncomfortable at the wrongness that she was the only other person in the house with him. When he had found out, he had tried to leave, but the action opened old wounds that were too new for such sudden motion and she had scolded him instead for his foolishness.
"Who do I remind you of?" he asked her one morning, when he had been well enough to go outside. Her form was a pale shadow on the white linen sheets while he watched her hang the laundry in her yard.
She glanced at him over her shoulder, a bit surprised by his voice. Just as quickly though, her gaze slid away. He sensed that she knew her eyes made him uncomfortable. "You said, when we first met, that you helped me because I reminded you of someone." He prompted her when she did not answer right away. "Who?" he implored, wanting to believe she was human and real and like himself.
A pause ensued at his question and he wondered if he had over-stepped his bounds. "You remembered?" she said at last as she bent to take out another sheet. He saw her mouth straighten into an expression that could only be called loneliness as she turned to look over the wall surrounding her courtyard. "My father," she finally answered, her eyes still averted but she did not turn her back to him to hide the expression on her face. "You reminded me of my father," she clarified. "He died a very long time ago."
Ashamed that he brought up such sad memories to his hostess and savior, Sousuke remained silent for the rest of the day in Kaoru's presence.
---
The graveyard may seem like the perfect place to meet a demon, but he was surprised to see the white of her kimono as she turned her head his way. "Battousai," she said as her eyes averted to the side.
He stilled at her naming him with such familiarity and certainty. There was not a question in her infliction and yet her face was as unfamiliar as any other.
How could a demon know with such certainty his human title? He had killed all things, demons or humans or the soldiers of the other side that hunted his footsteps. They knew who he was and they had all been erased from the plains of this world. He had only ever met but one...
"Kaoru," he finally said with certainty that it could be no other. She had changed, from the half-transformed demon he first met and the demon form she used to greet him with later. This was her full human disguise, without the slanting cat eyes and fanged teeth that cut her tender human-like lips while she struggled between worlds.
"Why are you here?" she asked as her eyes finally rose to meet his.
"I smelled grief," he answered. "I did not know that demons could grieve until I met you."
Her eyes shimmered like the deep sea beneath moonlight. Dark and deep and human-like, but still unreadable. He had never seen demons who had such eyes either, as if the demon inside her was a physical being only and held no sway over her human heart. In a way, they were similar in this one thing, if nothing else could tie them.
"I wish I didn't know how," she finally said with a voice that did not break like her eyes did beneath his eyes. Her shuddering breath came out in a puff of white in the space between them, evaporating like smoke and ghosts.
*Aokigahara - A forest in Japan that is said to be haunted.
Please read: Part I - Mortality before continuing with this.
Title: Cats and Demi-gods
Chapter: Part II - The Scent of Sorrow
Universe: Rurouni Kenshin
Rating: R
Genre: Drama/Fantasy/Romance
Version: AU
It was eighty years later that she found him in a snow field, drenched in blood that was, once again, not his own. In his arms was the corpse of a human woman. She guessed from the smell the scene that would greet her long before she ever saw his hunched back. Yet, she was still surprised by what she saw when she came upon the field.
Grief.
It was as powerful as a touch. The cloying scent of it came off of the human woman in his arms, but even as he held the dead it could not latch onto him. "Fool," she had overheard him whisper as she treaded ever tighter circles around them, closing in with careful sweeping glances.
Yes, she had agreed thoughtfully as her feline eyes landed on his back. He was a fool to grieve so for a human. They lived and died so easily, their existence so brief. They were frail and weak, and she knew that better than anyone. Once she had almost been like them and had loved a father who had been no different.
But she was different now.
Not ever again would she be human, and yet, she was still too unskilled to call herself a true, full demon. Her tail swished in the cold air and her paws made neither sound nor prints upon the snow. It was the one thing she had learned and she took pride in it as she made one last wide circle around the greiving pair before settling in a spot to better watch his back for him.
He had saved her once, after all. She owed him this small moment of grieving, if nothing else. Her eyes skimmed the snow again, and she snapped into attention as her gaze fell on something that was not just snow or landscape. She tensed as she recognized another body a little ways off. At first she had puzzled at the feathers but in the end, it was not a bird she saw but a humanoid man with torn wings and a deep cut.
The guise that camouflaged him was melting away like a chipped shield and Kaoru blinked at the strange overpowering scent that came upon her like a wave, the smell of crumbling Power.
She tensed all the more when her once-savior rose and walked over to the being that laid in the snow. It was still alive, she realized with alarm. Whatever it was had began to laugh, and it was a rich, deep sound that was neither sinister nor human. "I won't be the last. This war has just begun," the thing said.
Her blood-haired savior cut into the other's vocal cords, twisting and pulling the blade out in a painful, precise and silencing move. His opponent gagged as fresh blood splattered onto snow. Fresh golden blood that seemed more like light than life force and more like metal than Power. The unfamiliar scent was sweet and delicious, something that made her feel as if she had smelt it before. It had the power to make her mouth water and her throat dry up with thirst. Yet, she made no move and only watched as her once savior expertly ripped the rest of the head off and raised it to eye-level. Lines of liquid gold fell from the detached head as the hair seemed to shimmer like snow beneath sunlight. "Tell your maker that I will be coming for him," her savior said in a different voice than the one he had employed when they had first met and he had saved her life.
The head could not answer and before long, the body and the deliciously smelling liquid that must have been the creatures blood, disappeared. Only the red prints of the dead female human remained with winged imprints in the snow to be the only telling of a story the humans would call superstition.
"I know you're there," he called out to her.
Her ear flicked but otherwise she held perfectly still as she watched him. He could have meant someone or something else, though she did not smell anything else except the scent of death. The being he had killed was scentless as he had been, it had surprised her to see it - or was it a him? - but it was not demon.
Her savior was also not demon, even if he looked feral now.
"You don't have the killing intent, but I do not like to be watched." He warned her quietly. She heard every word but still did not move. Her once-savior turned her way and cocked his head. "Is this a game of hide and seek?" he asked. His voice was harsh, almost impatient. She thought it strange how much younger he acted and how much smaller he seemed now that she was not looking up at him from the floor. His eyes were also red-rimmed from tears, clear as they now were, the evidence of a seemingly human heart could not be so easily concealed.
"If it is," she finally said when she intuitively felt his impatience began to shift towards violence. "I have obviously lost already." She assured him the best way she knew how, by admitting defeat.
He turned to her fully then as she came from under the low, snow covered bushes. Snow coated her fur and thin icicles hung on her whiskers. She watched him wearily as he stared back at her, the widening of his eyes showed he was surprised though there were no other hints.
"A demon? Who are you?" he asked her as she stopped by the shadow of the lone tree before the shrine.
She watched him for a long moment to see if he would recognize the color of her ears or the fading patterns on her tail, but he did not. "You saved me once," she finally answered. "Decades ago," she added. "My mortal name was Kaoru. And you, savior? Have you a name?"
He looked at her a bit dumb-founded, until she started to feel the urge to turn human and throw a shoe at his head. It was getting to be a bit insulting. "Kaoru?" he finally said, surprised and then looked away wearily. "Kaoru," he repeated as if a memory flickered faintly in his head as he turned back to look at her who was now fully transformed. "I am known by humans as Battousai." He finally answered her softly, turning to head back to the dead woman in the snow.
"And what are you?" she asked with a tilt of her head, watching his back bend as he lifted the corpse. "I know you are not a demon, despite your colorings. You are not a human either, for you do not carry the scent."
He gave her an assessing stare over his shoulder, cool and in control. "We are not alike, but it does not make me any less a demon. Humans believe us no different."
"Humans call anything different from their expectations and experiences gods or demons," Kaoru said pointedly, as he looked down at the human he held. She watched him but did not probe further, even when she wanted to. Now was not the time. She had received his name, and it was enough. "Battousai," she tested the title instead, as he turned to go. "If ever we run into each other again and you need my help, you need only ask it." Kaoru told him as he began to walk away. "I owe you a life's debt, after all."
"Is that all you came to tell me?" he asked skeptically as he looked to her again. His eyes were sadder this time, but he restrained himself in her presence.
She hesitated. "I smelled grief," she finally answered, carefully watching his non-reaction. "And it was like a touch. I had never smelled such strong emotions on a human before, but I was wrong to think it was impossible," she answered as her eyes flickered to the body with a combination of pity and curiosity. She sensed him drawing into himself, could see the faint light of power around his form, dimming as the snow covered them both. It was time to go, she knew it instinctively. "Until we meet again, Battousai," she said softly. Without waiting for an answer she turned as well and leapt into the shadows, only to come out in the midst of Aokigahara*.
She had scented him, and given him the message she had long wished to give. She was not powerful, but she was not mortal. Kaoru had meant what she had said after all. She owed him a life's debt and she had no qualms about him killing demons.
She had her own hunt to deal with, but the offer was given and now all she needed was to wait for him to collect.
She looked over her shoulder, almost expecting him to follow. He did not. "Battousai," she murmurred to herself as she turned back to the forest with a swish of her tail.
"We shall meet again."
---
She met a man on the road one day. He was in a great deal of pain when their paths crossed. "Who are you?" he asked her when the evening dimmed around them and her lantern swayed in the wind.
"I am Kaoru," she told him. She stepped forward and tilted her head. "Would you like some help?" she asked. "My house is not far from here." Her eyes trailed to the dark stain on his haori as his foot slipped against the dirt ground, wet with his blood, but she did not raise her lantern nor wrinkle her nose at the rich iron smell of his blood. She did not blink at him stumbling to right himself, struggling to keep upright.
"Why?" he asked through gritted teeth, swaying in the wind like the end of a wind chime.
"You remind me of someone," she answered just as he collapsed forward. Her light was his fading vision as her feet came into view.
He was unconscious for a day, but woke on the afternoon of the next. He had had a slight fever, but it had not been as terrible as his loss of blood. She had carefully sutured his wounds, but she was never certain, when it came to humans, who would live of those she helped.
His first word had been a quiet gasp, and so she fed him water enough for him to speak. "Who are you?" and "Where am I?" would have been what she had been expecting, but he introduced himself instead. "I am Kamiya. Kamiya Sousuke." He told her while his eyes scanned the room for danger and his body tensed under the hand she laid upon the bump of his shoulder, outlined by the futon.
"I am Kaoru," she told him once more. "You are at my house. We met on the road just outside and you had collapsed."
He was silent for a long moment. "Are you all by yourself?" he asked gravely. She did not answer but his frown deepened. "I could be a criminal, or rob you. You are a young lady, it cannot be proper for you to help out a stranger on your own." He turned his head away, as if ashamed for both of them that he was in this room without chaperons.
Kaoru only smiled at him, even if he refused to look at her with his stern eyes. It was not yet time to tell him that she lived alone as well. "If you were a criminal," she told him instead. "You would not raise such an alarm at my helping you out."
He turned his head this time to give her a weary scowl and he would have continued to scold her for her words, but he was too exhausted by then and was unconscious before he could open his mouth. "Humans," she mused as she brushed aside a stray hair. "So fragile," she added with a wasteful sigh.
He got better under her care. She had been the daughter of a medicine man for awhile, after all. It had been a means to make money for her father and herself when they had travelled everywhere. Helping others, Kaoru found it brought her closer to the memories of those years when her father still lived.
When he was up to it, she brought Sousuke food, which surprised him in that there was always meat from wild game and hearty vegetables that he guessed were from her own garden. It still tasted horrible though, as if she'd never learned how to cook properly even with the variety of foods she brought him. But he ate it nonetheless.
She had leaned into him many times while she checked his wounds, and though she usually did it when he was asleep, he woke once or twice during her ministrations. She never smelled of soft perfume or heavy incense when she got close, but it was always a familiar odor that he had not expected to smell on any woman. It was the scent of the wild and the wind and the earth and the forest. Her face always greeted him when he woke, and he usually knew her presence was there from his own dreams. As quiet as a shadow she would sit and watch over him, and he would dream of the forest and the mountains when he slept whenever she was there.
There was also something strange about her eyes. He noticed that when he would wake for longer times and note the exotic color of them. It was not a color he had ever seen on anyone.
It was not often their gaze would meet in the daylight hours. Darkness often blinded him when he usually woke, and he never stayed awake long enough that first week to truly observe or remember anything too clearly. But as he got better and remembered more, he remembered one afternoon, with faint light in the distance, he had opened his eyes to watch her pull away. Their eyes had met while the sunlight was just starting to shyly pour into the dark room. He saw then, in the pale and feeble light, that she had strange, alien blue eyes, framed by shadows.
It was not the color of wood or of earthwarm browns, not of honey nor of a black midnight sky, or of any shades he had seen of the people he had met throughout his life. It was indigo blue like deep, stormy oceans and dark lagoons. Those eyes were intense and fathomless and they sometimes made him uneasy when she looked at him, as if they were trying to enchant him. If she had not saved his life, he might have thought her possessed or meant him harm, though he had trouble reading the expressions that lay in her gaze.
It made him distinctly uncomfortable at the wrongness that she was the only other person in the house with him. When he had found out, he had tried to leave, but the action opened old wounds that were too new for such sudden motion and she had scolded him instead for his foolishness.
"Who do I remind you of?" he asked her one morning, when he had been well enough to go outside. Her form was a pale shadow on the white linen sheets while he watched her hang the laundry in her yard.
She glanced at him over her shoulder, a bit surprised by his voice. Just as quickly though, her gaze slid away. He sensed that she knew her eyes made him uncomfortable. "You said, when we first met, that you helped me because I reminded you of someone." He prompted her when she did not answer right away. "Who?" he implored, wanting to believe she was human and real and like himself.
A pause ensued at his question and he wondered if he had over-stepped his bounds. "You remembered?" she said at last as she bent to take out another sheet. He saw her mouth straighten into an expression that could only be called loneliness as she turned to look over the wall surrounding her courtyard. "My father," she finally answered, her eyes still averted but she did not turn her back to him to hide the expression on her face. "You reminded me of my father," she clarified. "He died a very long time ago."
Ashamed that he brought up such sad memories to his hostess and savior, Sousuke remained silent for the rest of the day in Kaoru's presence.
---
The graveyard may seem like the perfect place to meet a demon, but he was surprised to see the white of her kimono as she turned her head his way. "Battousai," she said as her eyes averted to the side.
He stilled at her naming him with such familiarity and certainty. There was not a question in her infliction and yet her face was as unfamiliar as any other.
How could a demon know with such certainty his human title? He had killed all things, demons or humans or the soldiers of the other side that hunted his footsteps. They knew who he was and they had all been erased from the plains of this world. He had only ever met but one...
"Kaoru," he finally said with certainty that it could be no other. She had changed, from the half-transformed demon he first met and the demon form she used to greet him with later. This was her full human disguise, without the slanting cat eyes and fanged teeth that cut her tender human-like lips while she struggled between worlds.
"Why are you here?" she asked as her eyes finally rose to meet his.
"I smelled grief," he answered. "I did not know that demons could grieve until I met you."
Her eyes shimmered like the deep sea beneath moonlight. Dark and deep and human-like, but still unreadable. He had never seen demons who had such eyes either, as if the demon inside her was a physical being only and held no sway over her human heart. In a way, they were similar in this one thing, if nothing else could tie them.
"I wish I didn't know how," she finally said with a voice that did not break like her eyes did beneath his eyes. Her shuddering breath came out in a puff of white in the space between them, evaporating like smoke and ghosts.
*Aokigahara - A forest in Japan that is said to be haunted.