If I owned Digimon, Boring Iori wouldn’t exist, so, for his sake, it’s good I don’t. ^.~

Seiryuu, as described in this passage, is the property of Watase Yuu, the amazing and talented creator of Fushigi Yuugi. Similarly, the means of invoking him is her invention as well. Hey, good writers innovate, but lazy ones steal. ^.~

Oh, pictures of Seiryuu in his human-form can be found at:

1) http://www.oocities.org/neko_kami_1922/Seriyuu_seishi.html

2) http://members.tripod.com/~TheFourGods/8-98-4gods.html

Thanks to Keri for finding these for me.

It has been a while since I updated this story, hasn’t it? I’ve been slightly obsessed with getting Dancing finished. I’ve also been busy at University - I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve written fifty pages of various essays for my classes. Still, you do have my apologies. I hope this chapter has been worth the wait. Feel free to yell at me, if it isn’t.

Thanks to my betas as always. They stop me from looking stupid, and that’s always a good thing!

***

A STORM OVER BLOSSOMS

CHAPTER 14

‘UMI DREAMS’

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Umi removed the heavy tiara from her head with a sigh of relief and set it on the pearl-topped table beside her. Wrought out of gold and set with black pearls, there was something almost obscene about its ornate, elongated design. It looked like a hundred tentacles rising and writhing from the ocean. She was glad to have it off her, and not only because it weighed a ton. She rolled her head from side to side to work the stiffness out of her neck.

Getting to her feet, she slipped the elaborate kimono off her shoulders and it slithered to the floor in a pink and green shimmer. She picked up a nemaki from where it had been laid out for her on the bed, slipped it over her arms and tied it around her waist. Every morning and every evening, she found clean clothes waiting for her, although she never saw any servants placing them there. She had mentioned that to Takeru over their dinner together that night, and he had only laughed and replied that the best servants were those that one did not notice.

She shivered. There had been something strange about her fiance that evening. The whole time they had been eating, he had watched her across the table with a burning look in his grey eyes. Beneath his gaze, she had felt very naked and vulnerable, as if he could see through the multiple layers of her clothing to the skin beneath it. And his hand had lingered on her forearm a moment too long when she had said good night to him. With another shudder, she rubbed the place where he had touched her. He surely wasn’t wanting . . . He surely wouldn’t . . . .

Her eyes went to the door. Takeru always locked it behind her, saying that dangerous creatures roamed the halls of Y’ha-nthlei and that she should not venture from her room by herself. But it would not protect her from him. He had the key. He could unlock the door and slip into her room and there would be no one to stop him doing what he liked to her, including. . . . Umi felt her stomach turn at the thought. She loved Takeru, she truly did, but she wasn’t ready to have that sort of relationship with anybody.

“There has to be some way of keeping him out . . . .” she whispered, looking around herself. Her eyes settled on the sea-chest in the corner of the room, which she had often used as a seat. Its lid had been rusted permanently shut by the sea, and as a result all she knew about its contents were that they were heavy. She had tried shifting it once, and had almost broken her arms dragging it a few inches. In the end, Takeru had had to help her. Her mouth set in a determined line - there was no asking him now, so she would have to find the strength to do it herself.

Spitting on her hands and rubbing them together, Umi squared up to the chest. She grunted as she pushed against it with all her strength - it was even heavier than she remembered. It slid a bare few inches across the polished floor with a screech of protest. She felt her heart leap into her throat, and hoped desperately that none of Takeru’s servants had heard the noise. When no one came after about a minute, she relaxed slightly and made a second attempt at pushing the chest across the room. This time, it seemed to move even less distance and to make even more noise. She sighed in despair: this was impossible.

“You’re being ridiculous,” she told herself, “Takeru’s treated you with nothing but respect and kindness. He loves you. That’s the one thing you do remember. He’s not suddenly going to come into your room and . . . .” she shivered, “But I know I didn’t imagine that look.”

With new resolve, she bent to her task again.

After what felt like hours of slow, painful labour, she shoved the chest into position. She straightened, putting a hand to her aching back to ease it and looking at her handiwork. It might not keep him out of her room completely, but it would certainly slow him down and give her advance warning of his intentions. She looked around the room for a weapon, and settled on another of the jade figurines. This one was an elaborately carved dragon, and the weight of its slender coils felt reassuringly heavy in her hands. It felt like safety. She would not be defenceless, if he tried to surprise her during the night.

Gripping it tightly in her hand, she climbed onto the bed and curled up in a tight ball. She wished she had a sheet or a canopy to pull around her, to hide her from him. Despite all her precautions, she felt very vulnerable. Even if she did manage to fight off Takeru, where could she run? Where could she hide? She might be safe for a little while, but he would eventually find her and then the inevitable would happen. Worse, she might have to return to him, if she was not able to scavenge food or fresh water for herself. She might have to submit to what he wanted in order to survive. . . .

With those and other bleak thoughts in mind, it was a long time before she fell into a light and dream-troubled sleep.

***

Her feet washed by grey water, Umi walks along the white sand of a beach. She is dressed in a grey kimono, patterned with colourless cherry-blossoms, and its hem is wet with surf. The water creeps up the silk of the robe, darkening the fabric as it does so. Self-consciously, she lifts it a few inches above the waves. In the entire landscape, there is no sign of colour. On the horizon, a shoal of black rocks curve away from the shore, from the end of which a slender, dark needle thrusts upwards into the grey sky. She can see tiny figures kneeling around it and lifting their hands to it. They are chanting too, but their voices are swept away by the sea wind and she cannot hear the words. She is glad for that: the little she can hear of it sounds profane. It sends shivers down the back of her neck.

Wanting to put as much distance between herself and the strange worshippers as she possibly can, she turns away from the sea and walks up the beach towards the town built beside the shore. By look of its houses, it clearly has been abandoned for many years. Paint flakes off their walls and fences, their roofs sag, and their windows are broken. Their gardens are overgrown with scrubby dune grass and spindly trees.

She has just started up the street that leads up from the shore, when she sees something move out of the corner of her eye. Her muscles stiffen as she turns to face it, but she relaxes when she sees it is just a white cat. She wonders what it is doing in this strange, abandoned city. There can be little food or warmth to be found in it. Maybe it is a pet that was left behind when its owners moved away and that now survives on what it can scavenge. All the same, she finds its presence reassuring, if only because it means she is no longer completely alone.

The cat leaps up onto the wall and tilts its head to look at her. It is an oddly intelligent gesture, and it seems almost as if it is expecting something from her. She notices that its eyes are as brightly blue as gems - the only colour in the monochrome landscape.

“Who are you?” it asks.

Umi stares at it, not as astonished as she might otherwise be. With its weird lack of colour and obscene acolytes, this entire place is so bizarre that a talking cat does not seem out of place. At last, she replies haltingly: “I‘m . . .I’m Umi.”

The cat shakes its head and repeats its question, “Who are you?”

“I told you. I’m Umi.”

“Who are you?”

“Are you deaf? I’m . . . .” she begins in annoyance at the cat’s obtuseness, then pauses, remembering another name she once was called, “Hikari . . . I’m Hikari?”

With a satisfied swish of its tail, the cat jumps lightly off its perch and scampers deeper into the town.

“Wait!” she yells and runs after it, not wanting to be left alone again.

She chases it down twisting streets and narrow alleyways, between houses and through gardens, little caring that she will not be able to retrace her way back to the shore. At last, the cat pauses in the front garden of a house and glances up at her expectantly.

Breathing heavily, Hikari walks closer and peers through the window. Inside, she can see a boy standing in the middle of an empty room. With his golden hair and flushed skin, he stands out against the grey landscape like a sunny day in a week of rain. His eyes are closed, but tears trickle out from under his lids. They slide slow and silver down his cheeks. As each of them hits the floor, however, it turns to glass and shatters. The room is full of glittering splinters.

“Who is he?” she asks the cat, “Why’s he crying?”

“He has a heart of glass,” the cat replies, “And it is so fragile that every beat breaks it.”

“But who is he?”

“He is you. And you are him.”

Giving up on that line of questioning, “Can I talk to him?”

“If he remembers how to hear your voice.”

Impatient with the cat’s riddling replies, Hikari raps on the window with her fist. The boy does not seem to hear her; his tears continue to fall and break around him. She knocks a little harder. This time, he notices her. He slowly turns to face the window, and opens shockingly blue eyes. They are the same brilliant colour as the sky after rain, and they widen when they see her standing there. He runs to the window, his lips moving in words she cannot hear, crushing splinters of glass under his feet.

An expression of amazement on his face, he presses his hands to the glass, and she lifts hers to touch them against his. She stares at him for a long time, trying to work out who he is, examining every feature of his face. The blond hair that feathers across his forehead. The small, white scar on his left cheek. The lips that look on the verge of a smile. He seems so familiar, as if the cat’s words were true and he were a part of herself, but she has no name by which to know him. He is trying to say something to her, but she cannot hear him or read his lips. If only the glass between them would vanish, she thinks desperately, she’d be able to speak with him. . . .

The thought has no sooner formed in her mind than the windowpane vanishes. Her cold palm presses against his warm one, and she feels his fingers tighten protectively around her hand. He smiles at her, astonished and delighted. Something inside her seems to twist, like she is falling from a great height and there are black rocks beneath her and his hand is the only small safety she can find.

And she knows.

“Takeru?” she whispers in amazement, “You’re Takeru?”

He lifts his hand to her cheek, as if he can’t believe she is real, “Hikari? You’re back with me?”

And everything is blue and she is floating. Desperately, she looks around herself for Takeru or the cat, but both of them are gone. She is alone in the middle of a vast and empty sea. She can see no island, beach or ship on the horizon, and she knows that she may be thousands of miles away from any other humans or any hope of rescue. The water supports her weight without her needing to tread water or swim, but she is still afraid. Hot tears rise to her eyes.

“Why do you weep, Child of Sunlight?” a voice asks her, sending shudders down her spine. It is the most terrible voice she has ever heard. In it, there is a pitiless, merciless acceptance of the brutality of the world and of the inevitability of nature. People will go to war, animals will hunt and kill, nations will fall to dust and memory, and this voice knows it.

Astonished and more than a little frightened, Hikari looks up to see a beautiful man standing on the ocean in front of her. His features are delicate and almost feminine. His blue hair falls around his face as soft as sea-spray; his eyebrows are high and arched above wave-bright eyes; his purple ears are as pointed and scalloped as a shell. Somehow, though, his beauty makes him even more terrible.

“Who are you?” she whispers.

“I am Seiryuu, the Blue Dragon of the East. My wing beat is war drums, my flame is the burning of conquered cities, my talons are sword and spear and arrow. I am god of flowering spring, god of flowing river and sea,” he says in the same awful voice, “And you are my child, Child of Sunlight, and I shall come to you if you call me.”

Hikari stares up at him in disbelief. From her reflection in the water, she can tell she is only a young girl: how can she have the power to command a god, especially this one who seems so powerful and so pitiless? How can she have the ability to call him?

“How?” the question is barely audible.

“There is a word that will summon me: Kaijin. You need only to speak it, and I shall come to your aid.

“Kaijin . . . .” she echoes, and the world goes blue again.

***

Her breath coming quickly, Umi sat up in bed and looked around herself. The room was dark and quiet, apart from the soft, sighing sound that she had come to realise was Y’ha-nthlei breathing. She was relieved to see the chest still stood in front of her door, unmoved. Takeru had not tried to enter her room while she had been asleep in order to take advantage of her. Maybe she had been worried about nothing . . . .

She lay back against the pillows, breathing in the sweet scent of rotted silk and cloth. She tried to think back to the strange dream she had just had - she had the vague sense it had been important. However, like so many dreams, it had almost vanished completely on waking. She could remember bits of it, blurred and imprecise like something at the bottom of a stream. A monolith rising from the rocks. A cat that had tilted its head and looked at her. Blue eyes and the pressure of palms. A vast and empty sea. A beautiful man with a terrible voice. In fact, the only thing she could recollect clearly was a single word.

Kaijin.

***

TO BE CONTINUED!

***

Make my dreams come true, press the button to review!