Humidity

A/N: Let me be the first to remark upon the absurdity of my not coming back to task, i.e. completing this story, until the humidity of my own clime has given way to the drab and chill that I sincerely hope is only Late Fall Preview—because otherwise where did my crisp but nice days go?! >.<  Naturally, the change in weather must be because I opted yesterday (the first really cool, in the sense of temperature, day we’ve had this month) to get my leg tattooed, which meant that late evening I still had to go about outside with my pant-leg rolled up, haha. 

 

But I digress; it’s still summer in the story.  So, using some literary terms here, or at least terms as taught to me in my 8^th grade English class, consider this chapter the last of the Rising Action; next chapter shall feature the stormy climax (which may not be exactly what one may envision following the words “stormy climax”); with a chapter of falling action and dénouement following that one.  So, two, possibly three more chapters after this one, and I swear they will write more easily than what I’ve encountered with this one.

 

But anyway, those reading, you’ve been so patient with me, so I’ll not delay you further!

 

Humidity

Chapter IV

Forecast

16 September 2011

 

At some point even Hiei had to give to the heat.  It made it hard to fall asleep, even with his effort to drive himself into exhaustion—with Kurama’s help. 

 

It also made him logy.  He perceived the space beside where he lied grow open and airy; a finger traced through his hair, down his scalp and over his ward, faintly tickling the Jagan beneath.  But for all this, he did not actually stir when Kurama left, and much later, after he awoke to a high and haughty sun glaring in his face, he did not immediately register, or remember why his side felt naked. 

 

Never mind that he was already naked.  He rolled over and stared at the ceiling a while, sunning himself and thinking over the information Kurama shared with him last night.  A meeting had been arranged, regarding a friend’s marital affairs, that was what Kurama said.  The Fox sure knew how to dress up his bait pretty, as Hiei was sure that uncertain, apologetic stance adopted for mentioning Toya had been just that, a rhetorical tool to prompt a reaction from him.  Previously Kurama refused to help shut the door on Yukina and him; now it was as though Hiei were being pulled over the threshold, enticed by some strategic words.

 

Kurama wished he could lay so sure a lure.  But the Jaganshi was not one to so easily play mind games with.  Let that male ice apparition discuss Floating Isle lore—for that would be all he would know—with Yukina; it was no threat to Hiei.

 

Still, it snagged in his mind, an annoying, conscientious barb.

 

***

 

Hiei poured a bowl of cereal, which he set on the coffee table, and propped his feet up next to it as he turned on the T.V.  He intended to eat out of it at some point, but first he flipped impassively through the channels.  Not that he expected the movie he half-watched yesterday to run a third showing today; but Kurama had said something about the beginning segments, so he thought he’d see.

 

Of course, there was nothing to see, and all the local channels had to offer were a bunch of painted humans baring their teeth at the camera, and a map of the surrounding area, wavy and glowing lurid green and orange.  With no remorse he killed the T.V. and turned his attention to his breakfast.  It already tasted sickly-sweet warm, and he put it in the sink.

 

He had to eat, though.  He begrudged his figure in the mirror and in the shower, in the scorn of Mukuro’s knowing, condemning gaze; Yukina’s—he should not think on her—subtle, so subtle curiosity; Kurama’s ambiguous observation, almost predatory in that Hiei was sure the Fox waited for some accidental overexposure, on which to call him out.

 

—And not so long ago, he’d been the one telling Kurama to eat.  And Kurama obliged him, if not wholeheartedly; and now Kurama was well, or well enough, and touring Gandhara.  And if nothing else constructive came from Yomi’s haphazard trips, at least Kurama felt a sense of fulfillment, rather than bereft.

 

And with the Fox gone, Hiei stood purposeless in this house, without even mundane chores to do because Kurama just had to be fastidious enough to tie up all loose ends before leaving town.  He hadn’t lost the old, old mentality, wherein every trip from home, did not necessarily entitle a trip back.

 

Involuntarily Hiei shuddered.  Sometimes Kurama was too aware of his own mortality, as in the case of the memento mori spread over the face of their dwelling.  Even their humans neighbors, who had not been blind to and had not forgotten the incident with the ambulance that winter, knew enough o regard the façade with an appropriately morbid fascination, emphasis on morbid.

 

More so appropriate, he thought ironically, given that it was the façade of the dwelling of two demons incognito.  Even if that façade drooped ignobly now, in the heat and the plant manipulator’s absence.

 

There was an idea.  Hiei grabbed an apple off the counter, and bouncing it in one hand, walked outside, pacing the span of their modest yard and sizing up Kurama’s little garden.  It was already too hot for watering Kurama’s plants for anything more than pretense, so he crouched down and picked at the odd blade of grass and such trying to choke out the roots of some of his friend’s choice plants.  These he plucked out easily enough.

 

Then he found himself staring down at his discard pile, forlorn with their roots exposed, and felt something heavy shift inside him.  It was a highly unpleasant feeling, as though two rungs of his intestines were competing for space, sliding into and over each other in the process.

 

He grimaced, for the feeling as much as its cause.  How warped was he, to feel sentimental over a few weeds?

 

Chewing pensively on a large chunk of apple, Hiei picked the rejects over, selected a weird-looking weed with little barbs on its stems, and threw it in a spare pot by the door.  He sprinkled dirt around it until its roots were concealed.  There was his act of compassion for the day, toward a world Kurama knew so much better.

 

Back in the winter, Mukuro blamed his funk during Kurama’s hospitalization on “separation anxiety.”  Separation from what, he wasn’t sure, because even with Kurama round he was having these “panic attacks.”  Over what—once more—, he wasn’t sure.

 

He tore the last bite of flesh from its core, and looked around.  Not a human in sight, off burrowing somewhere in the cool like invertebrates do.  Smirking, he chucked the remains of the apple high in the air, zigzagged in-and-out-of the house in the time it took the core to peek in ascent, then wheeled out his sword and cut the core into even sixths on its fall back to the ground.  The seeds landed around the, split in perfect halves.

 

Hiei made an exhalation that was half-sigh, half-snort.  Anxiety and panic.  Well at least his problems didn’t affect his aim at all.  As for himself, regarding himself, he called phobia: he just needed to get out.  He sheathed his sword, lunged up a tree, and started running.

 

***

 

  Inevitably, despite himself, Hiei wound up on the old woman’s property.  There was a steady, if not heavy, traffic of demonic visitors curious about Human World, and even transients committed to settling there.  Kurama talked to some of them, and even occasionally there would be one that Hiei deemed had something of mild interest to say.

 

—And if, for instance, Kurama had arranged for someone from the Demon World to meet with someone in the Human World, here would probably be their terminal.

 

That ice demon wasn’t around, but then for all Hiei knew, Toya might be a part of Yomi’s trans-Gandharan tour.  Meanwhile another ice apparition, the one he dreaded more, was present across the grounds, closer to the temple than Hiei in his shaggy perch among the pine trees was.  Her husband-to-be accompanied her.

 

Hiei slumped against the rough bark his perch grew from, and wondered what he should do next.  Not stay here, at the very least.

 

“Young man, are you lost?” someone called up to him.

 

An old voice, but not Genkai’s; male, with a gravelly timbre Hiei had yet to hear any human accomplish.  Irked that someone he didn’t even know, and who didn’t know him, had nonetheless happened upon him, he looked down disdainfully at an old demon on the ground, who looked up soberly.  “I’m not a man,” Hiei muttered curtly.  Kuwabara was a man, Yusuke, even Kurama, for all the good and bad that came with it.  “I’m a demon.”  Through and through, for all the good and bad that came with that.  He jumped to the ground.  “Who the hell are you?”

 

“Less particular than you,” the old demon answered with a grimace.  He was short, shorter than Hiei, whiskered, and sporting prominent, pointed ears.  “But perhaps as disgruntled.  I am Denbun, newly expatriated from Demon World.  I understand that the old psychic woman—she is human, correct, so I may call her that?”  Hiei met his ironic look with a dispassionate one.  “Well, I understand that this is her temple, but that she is not here.  I’m looking for whoever else may be in charge in her absence.”

 

His voice was sour.  Hiei had come to recognize a certain look, a certain tone of voice, especially in older demons.  “Let me guess,” he said.  “You’re one of those who can’t tolerate the direction Enki and the others took, and now you’re ironically cloistering yourself in their realm.”

 

Denbun gave him a wry look.  “I’ve heard your voice on the radio, I’ve seen your visage on the television.  Weren’t you one of the demons that fought with those humans in the Dark Tournament?”

 

Hiei twisted the corners of his mouth.  “One of those ‘humans’ succeeded Raizen,” he said, a little defensively.

 

“And my former lord beat him in the Tournament that followed,” Denbun rejoined evenly.  “I’m not such a cloistered old man that I don’t keep up on my current events.”  Again with the sour face.  “And now I seek accommodations from another of the human fighters.  I’m not opposed to integration.”

 

His tone and expression suggested otherwise.  Hiei smirked.  “What soured you on Yomi?”

 

To his gratification Denbun grimaced.  “Times change and the world around us too, and every one of us must find a way to deal with those changes, or grow outdated and perish.  It’s practically a law of nature, and it applies to the great as well as the small.  But if frustrates an oldster like me, who’s lived out the latter years of my life in a stable kingdom, under a level-headed ruler, to see that same ruler lose his head, running around with that fox-consort of his.  Hiei raised an eyebrow, but Denbun’s lamentation continued: “Now I feel as though I have an idea how those pour fools in Tourin felt when their old king went on that stupid hunger strike…”

 

“‘Fox-consort’?” Hiei demanded, unconcerned by Denbun’s moral outrage.

 

Mournfully the demon nodded.  “Yes, that damn white Fox.  Of course near everyone has those feelings now and then, but I’ll tell you it’s a shame seeing a once-stern leader fall into that twitterpated mess.  No, I’ll switch out for simpler settings, even if those’re…” He shrugged off their surroundings.  “Human.”

 

‘That damn white Fox’… 

 

A fine line, that; fine as web, or a fishing line.

 

“Hn,” Hiei coughed out.  He felt full of air.  Not airy, he hardly felt elevated: It was as though all the spaces and cracks of his body had taken a deep breath and forgotten to release; now it was trapped inside him, stagnant.  His head felt like it was swimming.

 

“The ice apparition on the other side of the temple is something of an apprentice to the old psychic,” he told the demon hollowly.  “She’s the one accompanied by the human buffoon.  She may be able to provide you information.”  He swallowed.  A sickly-sweet, thick-textured taste lingered in the back of his throat, like fermented phlegm.  He felt sick.

 

“Yomi’s a damn fool,” he said.  “If he’s let amorous passions warp his senses like you say, and drive traditional denizens of Demon World into humanity’s grip.”

 

Or humanity’s embrace, as Kurama might counterpoint, and no sooner had Hiei acknowledged that, than he had to face the subsequent thought: perhaps he was a damn fool too.

 

He bared his teeth, because nearly all his other faculties were immersed under several layers of things he wished he could unsnag himself from.  “But if a little ‘instability’ in Gandhara makes you turn tail and flee to human safety, you deserve your fool king.”

 

Denbun gave him a reproachful look, but Hiei needed to turn the barb outward, a distraction, lest anyone notice him quivering on that—probably oblivious, but he didn’t feel like being compassionate, he was drowning—lure, the white Fox-consort…

 

That lure thickened and gained girth, and the lure became an anchor, and unable to detach himself, Hiei felt his mind and—even—his heart, sink with it.