Gilded Ashes

Raizen looked at the ceiling because he didn’t have anything else he could look at. The colour in his face had begun the slow journey from pink to something more normal, and the recognition that the entire group downstairs was probably about to know exactly what had happened on this rooftop last night - the broad strokes of it, at any rate - had begun to settle into him: A small disaster he was going to have to manage for the rest of the day.

He glanced sideways at Hikari.

She was still laughing into her hand. The other hand - the curled one - had not opened - he noticed that now. Her fingers were closed in the kind of careful fold that a person used when they were holding something small, warm and... Still asleep.

The house was mostly quiet - downstairs a chair scraped, Arashi said something muffled and Keahi said something even more muffled back.

Raizen kept looking at the ceiling. He was waiting for his face own to cool down, and Hikari – who was still laughing softly into her free hand across the gap between their mattresses, wasn’t really helping.

"Stop."

"I – heh - I’m not doing anything!"

"You’re literally shaking from how much you’re laughing. I can literally feel it in the floor."She pressed her hand harder against her mouth and made a small strangled sound through it.

Raizen turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were still bright with the laugh trying to come out, and her other hand was still curled exactly the way it had been for a few solid minutes now – loose, almost careful. Whatever was in it was being very elegantly protected.

Raizen slowly let his head settle back against the pillow.

"What’s that in your hand?"

After a few seconds, Hikari stopped laughing.

She looked down at the closed hand, then at him, then back at the hand. Her mouth opened and closed once, as if unsure of what to start with or what to say exactly. She seemed to be sorting through several different opening sentences and not liking any of them.

"Okay," she said eventually. "So... Last night. After you fell asleep on the roof."

He waited.

"Actually, no. You should probably just look."

She turned her hand toward him and uncurled her fingers, slowly, one at a time, the way a person opens a hand around a thing they don’t want to jostle.

For a few seconds Raizen didn’t see what he was looking at.

A small dark shape, completely curled. The proportions were wrong and his eyes were taking a moment to assemble it into something he could name. Black scales. A small head tucked against a small front leg. One closed eyelid.

Then he saw where the body stopped.

It stopped at the waist. The front half - head, shoulders, both front legs - was still there, mostly intact. But the back half wasn’t. Where the spine should have continued into hips and a tail there was only a small dark patch, the body simply ending in a strange way – it looked like dark waters rippling, yet somehow still holding together. It looked strange, yet somehow still natural, as if this fractured, strange form was always supposed to be like this...

Except Raizen knew it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t speak.

His other hand, the one not loosely tangled with hers, came up halfway and stopped in the air between them. He didn’t seem to know where he had intended it to go.

The lizard’s eye opened.

It looked at Hikari first - the small confirmation she was still there - and then tracked over to him.

For a long moment, neither of them did anything.

Then the lizard said, in a voice rougher than Raizen remembered and quieter than it used to be -

"...Sup."

That was all it had. All it wanted to say, or perhaps what it could say.

Raizen didn’t answer.

The lizard tried again. "You’re - yeah. Hi. Sorry. The vocabulary’s been a bit -" It trailed off, closed its eye for a second, opened it again. "...Hey."

"How," Raizen whispered. It came out trembling, almost.

"I don’t really - I’m working it out." The lizard shifted in Hikari’s palm. The motion was clumsy without back legs; it corrected with its front ones and resettled. "Half of me came back on these beautiful legs. The rest hasn’t yet. We’re seeing how it goes."

"Hikari, when did -"

"Last night. Around two."

"Two."

"Roughly."

"...You didn’t wake me."

"No."

He looked at her. Wanted to ask something else, but lost it halfway through. After blinking twice, he tried again then gave up. His hand was still hanging in the air, not knowing what to do. After a moment he set it down on his own knee, which made him feel slightly less ridiculous.

"Does it... Hurt?"

"Bits of it. The walking – sorry, crawling - is the worst part. I don’t recommend walking on two legs. It’s not as efficient as you’d imagine. Although I suppose you haven’t tried walking on half your legs when you already have two-"

"...You walked here."

"Most of the way. I climbed the last part."

"From Ukai?"

The lizard made a small sound that might have been a strangled cough. "Don’t ask me about distances, man. I’ve lost track. There were times where the sun behaved in ways I disagreed with."

Below them, downstairs, Arashi shouted something. The shout was followed by Keahi’s voice - low, dry, cutting through - and then by Arashi’s voice again, acting wounded, going back into whatever monologue he had been delivering before the interruption.

Raizen didn’t look toward the stairs.

He moved his hand slowly, just close enough that his index finger could reach the edge of Hikari’s palm where the lizard’s small head was resting. He hesitated, and pulled back a fraction. Then extended again, more slowly, until his fingertip was a few millimetres from the side of the lizard’s face.

He waited.

The lizard turned its head, with what was clearly more effort than the motion should have required, and pressed its small cheek against his finger.

Raizen’s other hand came up, and he rested his face on that fist.

Nobody said anything for a while.

The lizard’s eye closed. The pressure of its cheek against his finger relaxed slightly as the small body went limper – maybe saving energy.

After a long moment the lizard’s voice came again. Almost a whisper, except the new voice’s wannabe whisper sounded like two fabrics brushing togegher

"Missed me, much?"

Raizen groaned.

"You can - it’s fine. You can say it."

"You really want so much attention..."

"Of course. And I’m in a... Sort of a privileged prosition, no?"

"Fine, I missed you."

"...Okay, that’s more like it."

"I won’t say I missed you too, ok?" the lizard said eventually. "Don’t make a thing of it."

"I won’t."

"I’m serious. If you make a thing of it I will say something worse."

"Just shut up already. Half of the things you say don’t even make sense."

Downstairs, a cabinet slammed. Arashi yelled something about "Bread! Where is the bread! Why is there no bread!?" and Keahi’s voice answered almost on the same tone, not knowing where the bread actually was.

Strangely enough, Kori’s voice wasn’t really audible. She always used to shout first thing in the morning, and "exercise her vocal chords" with every minor inconvenience, just for fun.

Raizen finally looked at Hikari, but she was already looking at him.

The look did most of the work that words would have done.

"Hikari."

"Mm."

"I’ll... Tell you about everything later, but for now, please keep everything between us."

"You’re welcome."

"Also, Kori and the others-"

"Yes, yes, they won’t know. At least not from me."

He nodded once and looked back at the lizard.

The small ruined body was somehow asleep again, breathing settled into a slow uneven rhythm against Hikari’s palm, the cheek still resting lightly against his finger. This lizard either really, really loved sleeping, or this state genuienly didn’t have enough energy to stay awake.

After a while Hikari said, gently: "Your slate is still on the roof."

"...Right. I hope it’s not broken"

"I’ll get it."

"No, it’s fine. I’ll get it."

"You’re not getting up."

"I’m getting up in a minute."

She shifted slightly, her hand under the lizard moving an inch toward him until the small creature rested partly in her palm and partly on the edge of his blanket, supported by both. The lizard’s body didn’t even seem to sense the move.

Downstairs, Arashi was now monologuing about toast at a considerable pace, with what sounded like very little to no response from anybody.

Raizen finally got up, stretching his back. He made his way back towards the trapdoor, though Kori’s endless boxes and stuff, all crammed in the attic.

After reaching the trapdoor and pushing it away, he frowned. The trapdoor itself was colder than it should have normally been, and slightly heavier.

After pushing for a couple of times, it finally opened, but when Raizen climbed the ladder and touched the roof, he immediately pulled his hand back.

With a slightly terrified look on his face, Raizen looked at his hand.

It was wet.

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