#brandfrost

[thathoutaiga-blog]

Whispers of the Heart

@brandfrost

As far as penthouse suites go, Taiga had been in far better in his lifetime. But he was avoiding attention, and plugging into the supernatural side of his life, and that required being out in asscrack nova scotia sharing ass space with men like his reclusive neighbor.

Taiga was out on the balcony, his heels up over the edge of the balustrade and crossed, his hands folded over his chest. This was technically a bridal suite.

Tension around his mouth relaxed as he dropped the needle and let the record player scratch to a start.

This was a recording of a Chinese resistance singer whose music was blacklisted by the government watch dogs in China. It was a bit of a thrill, a real kick in fact, to play it out in the open like this.

The sound wafted down over the front of the building and the hills. Early evening made the sky dark but still visible.

Taiga leaned back, and lit a cigar.

[crowmasayoshi-blog1]

Flood Plain

Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, June 1617

@brandfrost

The rains came on sudden and hard. Crow, a foreigner in a strange land, tried to hug a cliff. The rain beat down harder than Crow had ever felt before, high winds slamming him repeatedly into the rock wall lining the path until he was bruised, disoriented, and bleeding from a collection of scrapes.

There had been only one other traveler on the road, a dour European man Crow could barely see in the rain.

A crash echoed, a great shearing sound rolling down the mountain, and Crow realized he was next to an entrance of a cave, a darker shadow through the torrential rain. The wind plucked at him, just as the rumbling grew louder.

Ahead of them, the side of the cliff cut off, a huge mound of mud and stone rolling down over the road.

Landslide, Crow realized. Grabbing the other traveler thoughtlessly, he pulled him into the jagged mouth of the cave.

Only minutes later, the clay and mud slammed down the trembling cliff from above them, burying them. Crow caged his head in his arms and screamed, stumbling away from the entrance and soon bumping into something.

There was an old statue in the cave, from before the days Indonesia had become Islamic, some ancient God in a state of disrepair.

The rumbling quieted, the landslide over. Holes in the shallow cave’s ceiling let in rain and air so they wouldn’t suffocate.

Crow wondered how to grow plants to burn without alerting the man to the fact that they hadn’t come here naturally. His teeth chattered, the stones icy when he crouched down close to them. His ears were ringing from the roar.

“This is great,” he muttered in Japanese. “Hello,” he told the European in Dutch, “My name is Crow.” He used Kraai, the Dutch word for Crow. "What languages do you speak?”

He began subtly healing the bruises and scrapes, touching his chin and frowning at the blood.