Ink Stained

31: get out of the way*

On Jirou, Kuniumi echoed snidely. Oh, but Shin's already there. He's out hunting.

"Karasatengu-san, please!" she shouted. "I have to go!"

He blinked in surprise. She never raised her voice, not to anyone, not even to the kids when they were being too much to handle, or if they did something wrong. But he shook his head firmly again. Pai had already been hurt once because he was lax and hadn't thought to go down the mountain to wait for them. If he had, she wouldn't have been kidnapped by the Onihitokuchi. He'd have been there to stop it from taking her. Karasatengu wasn't about to let her get hurt again.

"I am sorry," He said apologetically, keeping his tone gruff so she'd see he meant what he said. "I can't let you through. It's too dangerous. Go back inside, where it's safe."

Safe for who!

She wanted to scream and tear her hair out from frustration. She almost did, lifting her hands – shaking from the violence of her emotions – up to her head as if she really were really about to pull out her hair right from the roots. The wind picked up again, howling as it blew into her clothes and ruffled up the stray strands of white trailing down her neck.

Her teeth chattered from the cold, and a headache was building up at the base of her skull. The two points at her throat that Kuniumi had somehow squeezed to nearly choke the breath out of her burned, as if they were open wounds touched by the freezing cold of the snowflakes that swirled gently from above.

Damn it, she screamed in her mind. I don't have time for this!

A fizz of electricity snapped by her ear. An icy calm stole over her. Her shaking nerves abruptly settled, and she wasn't quite so frantic anymore. Her breathing went back to normal in an instant, and her legs didn't feel like they would give out beneath her at any given moment. Her eyes closed to half-lidded, and her lips flattened out to a thin line. Her head twitched to the side when a torrent of something invaded her senses.

That something was hundreds of different sensations. She could hear the clamouring of each individual bird screaming and twittering at each other – somewhere far, far away. The rustle of crumpled and dead leaves crunched against snow as little animals still active in the beginning of winter ran to and fro across the ground as they searched for the little burrows they'd dug for themselves to weather out the blistering cold of Hokkaido winter.

The morning light, leaking through the cover of heavy grey clouds that promised stormier weather, intensified until it stung the back of her eyes. She had to close them when a lancing pain shot through her head. Her skin burned from the ice-cold touches of the few snowflakes that landed on her exposed neck and hands. She worked against herself to keep from tucking her hands under her armpits and lifting her shoulders to hide her neck.

[focus]

The voice was no longer like Midori's. It was different – lower, delicate yet hoarse at the same time, the sound of a wind instrument that could play hard and soft tunes.

It sounded a lot like her own voice, in a way she had never heard it sound like before.

[see doesn't hurt think one no pain]

Her breath fogged as she blew it out from her mouth in a slow exhale. Her eyes flicked up to Karasatengu. They were no longer the brown everyone was used to seeing, but darkened to black, her pupil indiscernible from the iris. When she spoke, her voice doubled, speaking in two warped into one.