at zhiyi's request. part of the miki shinichirou drabble effort. >_> ref - chapter 23 of Matantei Loki Ragnarok ( volume 5 ) ----------- ouroboros ----------- I. The memory of Midgard's waters is impossible to shake off, and it's not as if Yamino even tries. Still, time has a way of blurring even the deepest memories, and who is Yamino to question time? It has been a long while since he was left to those dark waters - though no time at all, against the eternity he has spent already - and he has started to forget the sensation of waves against cold scales. Yamino even thinks of himself with this name, now, foreign though it is. It is not, he reflects in rare moments of contemplation, as if he ever had a real name as the Midgard serpent or Jormungand. Even if he had, there would have been no one to speak it. But Yamino is not the sort to lose himself in blind philosophising, and that thought, too, is easily lost. He turns his attentions instead to all the petty riches of the human world - mail-order, and tea, and the feel of sunlight on soft, warm skin. *** There are times, of course, as there will always be, when Yamino is back in his true form. With its return comes all the raw urgency of his power, and the softness of the human world fades like a dream in daylight. He has never forgotten - can never forget - but still, every time, the return feels a bit like recollection. II. Consider: the scent of tea, the softness of carpet, the sound of bells. The sunlight breaking over the horizon, the sunlight spilling through glass, the sunlight caught in laughing green eyes. The mechanics of a smile, and its uncalculated response. The freedom of a world that will always be too large for him, and the curious frailty of a human body. Consider how Loki almost seems to need him, and consider how he has a place by Loki's side. Yamino has had the time to think about these things, or at least the chance to notice them. They give an odd purpose to how he goes about the daily chores, a wistful sentimentality to every morning he can wake in a bed and draw the curtains to the dawn. Sometimes Yamino thinks that the eternity he will never have would not be enough anyway. III. Yamino has never forgotten. The distant knowledge of his fate, tattooed on his unknowing soul since his life began, surfaces with the hum of the serpent's blood. There is a rightness to this: the questions fade to certainties, the world turns coldly absolute. Yamino's eyes are grim at Freyr's words, but dry with the acceptance of one too old for human tears. When those eyes finally close, the Midgard serpent rears its head behind them, silent and ready - as if it has known all along how everything is to end, and has merely needed this reminder.