@unpossession SAID: a funeral home parlor arranged too perfectly. - and hear me out. this is a much younger willow pre or post one of her random relatives funerals. walk with me toward the past… + a crowded subway platform just before the last train. - again could be set during willows time in ny before she came to la… if u want.. + a library corner no one ever uses. ✶ random settings prompts ✶ say a PRAYER?
He takes shelter from the London rain in the nearest building. The sweet-rot scent of lilies is the first thing he notices. The next thing is the open casket, a grand, cathedral-like box that looms prominently in the mourning chapel. Surrounding it are people with pale faces and dark clothes, their heads bowed as if grief is a physical weight in their skulls.
Yato makes a conscious effort to value life, the war-god in recovery. He will not turn away from this stranger’s funeral. He approaches the casket—a stark contrast to the other mourners with his unkempt hair and tracksuit, but he is unconcerned with making a good impression. Nobody will notice him. In foreign lands he exists even less.
Six coins is a large sacrifice for him, but he makes it anyway. One by one, he places them in the casket, the toll to cross the river to elsewhere.
Excuse me. What are you doing?
It startles him to be addressed. He hasn’t made himself known to anyone; he should be effectively invisible. He jumps, tenses like a cat.
The girl looks at him with owlish eyes. Who are you?
He stammers. What he says isn’t even an answer: “You—you see me?”
Of course I see you. She could be a spirit herself, an immovable ghost. She’s human, but touched by something, connected to other shores. Wise and perceptive beyond her years, but too young and naive to put any of it to use, or even to fully understand it. What were you doing just now?
Other mourners notice the girl talking to nothing, to no one, and begin to murmur amongst themselves. Yato glances around the room, then holds a finger to his lips. “If you meet me outside, I’ll tell you.”
It takes her ten minutes to find him outside. She seems relieved to find him there, that he didn’t leave. She tells him her cousin was reprimanding her for acting strangely. Why can’t they see you?
“Most people can’t see me unless I blatantly call attention to myself. Even if they do, they’ll quickly forget me. You must see me because you’re special somehow.”
Are you a ghost? No. What are you? A god! A god? Like in church? A different kind of god. What kind of god? The good kind. People always say ‘God is good.’ Well, I aim to be better than that. Will I forget about you when you leave? Most likely. I don’t want to. That makes me so…, and then she starts to cry.
Inside, in the aftermath of the service, her eyes were dry. She looked sad, but her eyes were dry. Yato doesn’t understand why she’d cry now. He doesn’t know what to do. For all his divinity, he feels quite useless.
In an hour, Willow’s mother will find her in the nearby meadow, curled up like a fox with twigs in her hair. She will not remember falling asleep, or what she was doing out there in the first place. She will not remember playing hide-and-seek with a god from the east, who told her that they can make a game out of remembering.
For a split second, when she is slapped, she will remember blue light and a boy. In the next instant it will be gone.
With all the people, all the jostling, it would look like an accident, she thinks. And it’s a far enough fall that she’d probably knock herself out before the train crushed her like meat.
In New York it is important to be apathetic. Take no notice of the person beside you unless absolutely necessary, and even then you may get barked at like a dog. She doesn’t know what she expected disappearing into a city like this. It’s only made her more lonely. If she died in front of these people they would care less about the loss of life than the fact the subway would be delayed. They have places to be. In New York it is very important that you have a place to be.
It would be humiliating to be an inconvenience. But really nobody would be to blame if she pushed a little closer to the edge, craning her neck in anticipation for the train. In fact she can hear it; in just a few moments it will be upon them. She’s feeling a little dizzy. It’s late. She drank too much. But she really does want to make sure it’s the right train—isn’t it the last train?—and that she’s granted passage, so she pushes through the other waiting bodies, twisting this way and that, the world spinning, her ankles about to give—
Somebody grabs her and pulls her backward. She falls face-first into a bony chest with a pleasant scent. Bright red, she steps back. I’m—I’m—I’m sorry, I—
“You were about to fall.”
Dark, unkempt hair, a tracksuit, an ethereal air. Something about him is familiar, but she isn’t sure how. It’s been a long time since her great aunt’s funeral.
They stare at each other. Yato is the one who asks first: “Do I know you?” Then, immediately: “Oh, never mind, that’s not important. Are you okay?”
No—nobody knows me. I mean, no—I don’t—you look familiar, but—um, yes, I mean, I’m okay. Thank you.
Yato laughs, giving her shoulders a squeeze. The laugh is unlike the callous, mean-spirited laughs she’s grown accustomed to; it’s warm, a cozy spring breeze. “Good. You know, I was worried you were a suicide case there for a second.”
She hopes she isn’t turning any more red.
“Tell you what, if you give me a nickel I’ll escort you home. Maybe you should walk for a while in the fresh air.” Yato is grinning, boyish, playful, like he hasn’t just saved a life.
She knows better than to wander off with strange men, but she’s buzzed and wanted to die anyway, so why not? Besides, somehow—she isn’t sure how exactly, but somehow—she can tell he means no harm. She gives him a nickel. He flips it in the air before pocketing it, saying something silly about her wish being heard loud and clear.
He takes her arm and guides her away, back out into the city. They make their way through the park, which has always terrified her after dark, but now seems uncharacteristically tranquil and friendly. The boy chatters at her, cheerful and mindless. He doesn’t relent, regardless of how sluggish and morose she is. After a while he even gets her to laugh.
At her doorstep, she’s finally brave enough to say, You really do seem familiar to me.
“Yeah, I think I remember now—we played hide-and-seek once.”
It hits her suddenly, a memory she didn’t know she had. She bursts into tears and throws her arms around his shoulders. No, no, no, I don’t want to forget this.
By the next morning, she has.
Yato is curled up in the space between two dusty bookshelves, dreaming of prosperity that will never be his. When he wakes, he sees a familiar face half-obscured by dark hair, scanning the shelf beside him.
The girl is different now. Her soul has been incurably infected. Time has taken its toll on her yet again. The melancholy in her eyes has ripened into something even darker. His breath catches in his throat.
It’s his turn to cry this time.
She looks at him without recognition, slipping a book back onto the shelf. Are you okay? And then, of course, Do I know you?
He sniffles and wipes his nose on his sleeve, feeling so very old and beaten down. “We played hide-and-seek once.”
