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Mixing My Mythologies
I'm still waking up one or two times a night to have a coughing jag. So not totally 100% over the flu yet. The fracturing of my sleep was compounded, not last night but the night before, by an intensely vivid dream involving Yuu*Yuu*Hakushou meeting a plethora of tropes/characters from European mythology, culminating in Kurama being "chosen" (it's a trap, it's always a trap; lucky for him he's pretty damn good at figuring such things out in advance) as the fox the Wild Hunt was chasing.
End result: Wild Hunt getting pwned and trapped forever within the boundaries of the hunt, since they can never kill the fox, as the fox within the boundaries was merely an illusion.
Do not mess with Kurama.
End result: Wild Hunt getting pwned and trapped forever within the boundaries of the hunt, since they can never kill the fox, as the fox within the boundaries was merely an illusion.
Do not mess with Kurama.
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PS - making me miss YYH, not good, I don't have time for anything as it is. XD <3
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Reminds me a teensy bit - re the Wild Hunt basically - of what I think is the only YYH fic I ever...wrote? Finished? "Le Renard et Le Corbeau". Hmm.
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Once upon a time, the fountain had stood at the center of the town square. Now, it was almost hidden, down a side street – which still led to the lake – under a wide, columned portico. The mosaic at its back had changed since the days of the Romans; originally Diana and the hounds who’d been Actaeon’s undoing; now it showed the conceit of a younger king.
Another Louis XIV? Kurama wondered. They were far from Versailles, but the Sun King’s visage still cropped up here and there. Hiei perched in the shadows among the columns, waiting for Kurama to finish laving his face and arms in the water. The train would arrive soon. Hiei still thought they should have simply transported to the site itself; what difference could it make if these weak fee knew they were coming or not? Koenma was tossing them a thin bone this time; just something to keep them busy while Yusuke and that idiot Kuwabara blundered through their exams.
Kurama looked up at him fondly and shouldered his day-pack.
The train ride was quiet. Few other people got off at their stop; it was a small town, off the usual tourist maps. Hiei and Kurama followed the streets heading in the required direction, and crossed the Pont d’Argens on foot. In mid-span, with one foot lifted, the other planted lightly on the ancient stone of the guard rail, Hiei paused. Kurama stopped a few strides further and looked back at him.
“The flow of reiki here is greater than expected,” the little fire-demon said. He looked out over the open fields and copses. Out to the low hills in the hazy distance; far to the south, just beyond the sight of his two eyes, was the Sea. Between them and the Sea, his jagan could see the Ningenkai was bent, ever so slightly; shimmering in the Mediterranean sun. There was more wrong here than Koenma knew. Hiei and Kurama grinned at each other; a real challenge after all.
They crossed the bridge, following the road. A blue-coated man on a bicycle, with a bundle of flowers in the basket, cocked an eye at them as he passed. Kurama smiled sunnily and waved. They walked on into the afternoon, into the late-season fields, into the lengthening shadows of the occasional trees. A breeze from the south cooled them, and the stars came out in the east.
“Nani?” Kurama stopped, and looked up at the purple sky.
Hiei walked on. “We’re no longer entirely in the Ningenkai.” The transition had been so gradual, even he would have missed it had he not been watching for it. “But if we’re in the Reikai, it’s a part I’m not familiar with.”
Kurama nodded. “A twilight realm. Koenma said they used to be common in this part of the Ningenkai.” His crimson hair blew outward as he sought with his ki. “It’s…a bubble…of sorts… What are they…? Mou, this must be what Koenma’s monitors were picking up. It’s getting bigger.”
“Hn.”
Kurama met his ruby gaze. “Shall we go find those pesky fee?”
Hiei put his hands into pockets that hadn’t existed a moment ago and walked onward down the road. The kitsune laughed and followed.
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They strode on under the deepening sky, wind picking up, odd scents drifting, breathing in the unfamiliar patterns of reiki. Alert to everything around them.
Kurama lifted his head. Then suddenly he was four paws, hackles raised, tails bristling, body trembling. Hiei tore off his headband, freeing his jagan, but all he saw were whispers; the ghosts of phantoms, nothing substantial. Then Kurama was human again, shaking.
“What was that!?” he gasped. What could force him into a shapechange with only a half-imaginary scent?
Hiei watched him with wide eyes and restless hair that couldn’t decide if it would stand up in one point or two. But Kurama got to his feet and took a deep breath. They continued on.
The shadow of the world fell upon them. The moon rose. A few scattered groves became a forest. Hiei concealed his jagan once more, but loosened his sword in its scabbard.
Far, far in the distance they heard the baying of hounds.
Kurama gave a hybrid cry, clutching his chest, eyes black rimmed with pale green, fighting the change. But the sound drove like splinters into his blood, wrenching his body through the boiling of flesh, red in tooth and claw. The fox’s eyes flared golden, the lean body reared back; Youko snarled, crouching, ears flat against his skull.
“Kurama!” Hiei held him to keep him from bolting. “Kurama, dammit, tell me what’s happening to you!” The kitsune thrashed, but the fire demon held him fast, no matter how many shapes he took. “Kurama, stop this…look at me!” Youko bared his teeth; his hair was half silver, half cardinal. He was shaking and shifting so badly the words came jumbled at first, hardly coherent, but Hiei pieced together something like an explanation.
Araunt Hounds… Someone spoke a curse better left unsaid, someone woke the Hounds that should have been dead. The first Hounds, older than the Wild Hunt, le Chasse Gayere, with blood-red ears and silver-white coats and eyes the color of the sun. Kitsune-bane. All a fox can do is run. “When they catch me, Hiei, all that will be left are my bones; and when you touch them, they will still be warm…”
“Enough!” the fire demon hissed. “They won’t catch you, Kurama. I won’t let them.” He had never seen Kurama Ryouko so completely terrified, on the edge of atavistic panic. “You have to calm down, tell me about these Hounds…”
Kurama came up for a moment, his eyes shifting from green to gold and back. “You can’t hurt them with fire…”
The baying came closer. Kurama screamed – a fox’s cry entirely now; he convulsed in human form once, then lost the battle.
The Hounds belled, the fox ran.
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Kurama ran. No matter how he turned and twisted, no matter how many fox’s tricks he knew, the hounds were ever behind him, and getting closer. No matter how fast, no matter how far; the moon passed overhead and still they chased him.
They’re driving him. Not yet out for the kill. Where!?! If Hiei had known where he was, he would have taken them both straight back to the Reikai, assignment or no.
“Run, fox,” whispered the Araunts. “Run until your lungs tear and your paws bleed.”
Kurama ran.
Hiei followed.
They chased the kitsune down all the roads, but not to the sea. In the twilight forest’s darkest keep, rose a moonswept hill. On that hill, the fee were dancing – dancing their way between worlds. In the tallest oak, Le Corbeau watched. The dancers were just the weavers; the pattern was his. He felt the coming of the hounds, and began the greater tapestry. But something was amiss.
Between La Rouquebrussanne and Rians, in the morning, humans would find the scattered bodies of foxes; grey and red, old and young, and the crows gathering already.
Kurama stumbled into the clearing, drawn into the circle of fee, his paws tracking crimson on the grass. The hounds formed the outermost ring, running faster and faster, a blur of moonlight and flame.
“Dance, fox,” whispered the fee. “Dance until your heart bursts and your legs break.”
Kurama danced. Pulled up into two-legs once more, his bloody footprints traced an intricate pattern, wound into that of the fee, into the greater tapestry, inextricable. The kitsune whirled and spun; his grace that of the Wild Folk, the light from his body no less bright than theirs.
Hiei snarled his way into the circle, slashing at the small spirits with cold not-steel. The fee screeched and shrieked at him, torn by his swiftness until Le Corbeau looked down and gave them an answer.
“Look!” shouted the fee. “Look at how the fox moves! Look how he flows! No mortal loveliness; see how he dances!”
“Thou beauty,” whispered Hiei, and was caught. They wove the spell of Kurama’s beauty around the fire demon, stilling him, keeping him, binding him with that which had bound him in subtler ways already.
“Bank your fires,” said the fee. “Sleep, little ember, safe and warm…”
Sleep and dream of beauty and wake a hundred years hence…
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Le Corbeau strove with the nets of time, fighting the changes and swift currents the kitsune had brought with his blood. But he needed the power, and power there was, unspooling from Kurama’s body and soul; perhaps the fineness of that strength would make the difference.
“No…” Kurama moaned. His fingers were bright threads; the undoing was working its way up his arms and legs, into all the halls and spaces of his hair. And it wasn’t just his body being consumed; that he had escaped before.
The fee danced, higher, wilder, calling the pattern up from the earth.
Hiei watched, and wanting to see the glittering facets of Kurama’s beauty more clearly, pulled the white band from his brow.
Nani!!?! The spell shattered; the fire demon shouted, but his sword had no more effect on the strands that were unraveling the kitsune than it had on the Araunt hounds. Kurama was being taken completely apart, his name erased from all of time, and not even the jagan could keep Hiei from forgetting him once the process was done. Kurama would have never existed.
“Kurama!” Hiei crouched before the kitsune’s bound form and thrust his sword into the ground; a warding for all the good it would do. Kurama’s arms and legs were gone. Jagan blazing, Hiei held Kurama’s agonized face in his hands; spring-green eyes locked with blood-red; their combined wills fighting the undoing. But the tide of bright threads only slowed, creeping up his torso, and along the sides of his face. Past and future disintegrating; the timelines were already changing… Hiei couldn’t remember who had helped him steal the Three Sacred Objects.
Kurama drew in one last breath while he still had lungs…
Far and far away, Keiko gasped; for a moment she could see through Yusuke. Yusuke gasped and dropped to his knees. He could feel himself fading…
Lord Koenma dropped his Seal. “What in any nine hells…?!!” George, trembling, retrieved the Seal and placed it back in Koenma-sama’s hand, beginning to be very frightened, all of a sudden.
“MOTHER!!” Kurama screamed.
Le Corbeau twitched and turned.
“Child of the Makai.”
Hiei’s triune gaze never wavered.
“If you would stop…the unwinding…of your beloved’s name…” Le Corbeau was still busy with his own task. “You must accept something…that is beyond your nature to accept.”
“No riddles, damn you!”
“A gift freely given.”
“THERE’S NO SUCH THING!!” Hiei raked his hand across the air between them.
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“This is no ‘gift freely given’. You used him, used his blood.”
“He should not have been here. No kitsune should have. His blood has complicated matters; I can no longer foresee what the outcome of my task will be.”
“I accept.”
“Really? Do you truly understand what I offer?”
“I ACCEPT! Kurama, don’t leave me…”
Indeed. And perhaps this will negate the difficulty caused by the kitsune’s blood… “Given.”
The unwinding of flesh and spirit ceased, reversed, until Kurama was whole again and the bindings in his limbs and hair fell away. For a moment, Hiei thought the starlit body he held tenderly was only a shell, left behind. Kurama…!
“You call your beloved back from death?” Le Corbeau was curious.
“I would have killed him myself!” Hiei shouted. And met him at Enma’s Gate… He buried his face against Kurama’s chest. I would have killed him myself. Though a part of him would have been shattered past repair.
The body in his arms soughed with breath, the heart pounding its double beat; all the simple, homely human sounds.
The Tapestry complete, Le Corbeau spun a light above them in the air; an incandescent bubble, opening at last, freeing the one within. Cloaked in emerald moonstones and shadows, she stepped through, joining her consort after a thousand human years. The Lady embraced Le Corbeau, their shadows merging as the fee scattered, singing. The Hounds sank into the earth, back to stone and dust and all but forgotten. Then the Lady looked down.
“Alors,” said she. “Un petit renard. Et un demon du feu. Est-qu’ils les amants?”
“Oui,” said Le Corbeau. “They are as we are, Beloved.”
“Such a lovely fox,” said the Lady, bending down to kiss Kurama’s brow.
Hiei nearly called the Black Dragon then and there.
The Lady merely laughed, but she forbore to ruffle the fire-demon’s spiky, soft hair.
“Allons-y,” said Le Corbeau gently, for he and she had much to do.
Hiei was left alone with the stars and the trees -- the moon had set -- and Kurama unconscious and growing cold in the night air. Blue fire flared to warm him. Hiei closed all his eyes and rested his forehead against Kurama’s alabaster cheek.
A disturbing youki coalesced around them. Hiei looked up. They were surrounded by kitsune. All different; young, old, kits and couples, rust and grey, black and silver and white; all fox-spirits. But not Kurama’s clan.
An ancient nine-tail tottered forward, supported by two young males. “You,” croaked the nine-tail to Hiei. “You have saved Le Renard de La Rose…”
“What?” said Hiei.
“Remember,” said the nine-tail. With a yip and a flicker, all the kitsune vanished.
“Hn.” Hiei lifted Kurama in his arms and blurred from the grove.
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