I finished my gift for @noctusfury (or @herbyuki)! It is a "long" oneshot by me, and it is HakiZana!
I know you've been working hard to give us a HakiZana Week coming up, and I read your and Els' cowritten first chapter of a fic, and I was surprised to see that you made yourselves into Haki and Izana's children! So, I thought, you would enjoy a fic, with them as parents too! :)
Also, you get a bonus side of ZenYuki, which I thought you would also enjoy!
there’s something nestled
in these scars
in these teeth
in this soil and hidden amongst these leaves; loved –
something like
the world and all this Narnia
cradled in these calloused hands
and held in our roots;
how deep into the forests will you venture, oh King of Narnia?
-
Your world is dipped in golden threads, spun high above your head in between what breathes and aches underneath your feet, bare on this soil, and your hands, warm and rough on all our bark, and all our lives intertwined at the tips of your fingers. You stumbled into this world, see, with all that was rotting your world frothing at your mouth and buried deep within the pit of you, half drowning in that fur coat – and half in her smile and her needle-teeth.
You came into our world coated with stolen sugar, and we came into yours coated in leaded ice. Together, we unhinged our jaws and our hands and all our lives and swallowed the witch whole, see, until the world bloomed, again, in your sister’s hair and dripping from your siblings’ cheeks. We’ve spun this Narnia about you, and the way you’ve unstuck your fingers and your cheeks and your lips, until it lay golden and sluggish; slow underneath your sister’s sun. Our leaves have not yet started wilting, and your smile has not yet hardened with each winter’s breath, like the rise and fall of our chests.
Your sister is canine teeth and torn skirts; iron-cast and laughter in our arms, like something from a nursery rhyme born of a mother with soft hands and a softer voice – something forged of a dream or perhaps a memory, too fuzzed for you to still keep strung up between your mouth and your chest – or perhaps like something hidden in a witch’s nightmares. Or perhaps the nightmare goes something like this:
This sword is too heavy for you. This world sits atop your brother’s shoulders and tangled in your sisters’ tears. Around you, spring draws near and tight around her glass-shard skin, the way it digs into her palms and her throat. Around you, we sprout from the witch’s bones and the cracks in her skin until she lies, gold-spun and breathless; doomed; in the tangle of us; until you lie, blood-stained and fireflower-alive in your family’s arms.
This world doesn’t spin, see. This world stays suspended and unmoving and alive stretched across the fourfold canopy of you, with all its stars and all its laughter contained within. This autumn is stitched across your hands and into our fruit – heavy and sun ripe and still clinging to your smile. Your hands are smeared with the sugar of us, and rough with our bark, and you dance, barefoot and untrembling and alive in this autumn’s last harvest.
On the fields of Beruna, the rose dryads still play amongst glass shards, with their teeth as sharp as the Queen’s, with their laughter tangled in this grass, and you smile, still; fruit-heavy and world tangled and alive in our forests, the Just King treads our ground, barefoot.
“You shouldn’t worry so, my dear. He is a capable man, and has a good crew.”
Lilianna started slightly as her father came up behind her, then sighed and leant down onto the balcony. “I know, I just can't help myself. What if he reaches the Edge and decides not to come back?”
Ramandu opened his mouth to answer, but a squawk from the Table interrupted him. Pittencream had lifted his feet from the floor and was sweating profusely. “There’s another mouse here. Dratted things,” he muttered.
Ramandu shot him an irritated look, and then turned back to his daughter. “As I was saying, he’s far from helpless. He’ll come back and maybe…” the retired star trailed off, perusing his daughter carefully.
“Is everything all right?”
“I want to ask you something.” Ramandu tipped his daughter's chin up and looked her in the eye. “When he comes back, will you go with him?”
Lilianna’s jaw dropped. Leave the island and her father? The only life she had ever known? “How could you say such a thing?” she cried. “Who would help you sing the dawn here? I could never leave you - and besides, he probably wouldn’t want me on board - what help would I be?”
“My dearest daughter, at some point, I will leave to dance the great dance once again, and who knows when the next ship will pass by? I don’t want to leave you alone here, and Caspian is a good man - I am sure that he will take you with him. You are young, and I don’t want to steal your life from you because of selfish reasons.”
*
Though they argued about it long into the night, Lilianna eventually caved to her fathers will, and agreed to leave when on the Dawn Treader. And not a moment to soon, because the ship pulled in the very next week.
*
The crew piled off the ship, their faces shining with the unearthly light of people who reached the Silver Sea and drank from it’s waters. The king was the first off board, and after a polite greeting to Ramandu, asked for the whereabouts of Lilianna.
“I’m here,” she said, stepping out of the shadows behind him.
“My lady,” he bowed, “I brought you a gift.” He moved closer to her and tucked something in her hair. Glancing in a nearby puddle, she gasped. A beautiful white flower lay behind her ear, glowing softly in the dawn light.
“Thank you, it’s stunning!” she said.
“We must talk.” Her father interrupted the awkward silence that had fallen. Caspian looked up shaken out of his stupor.
“Very well.”
*
Two months later, Lilianna was on the deck of the Dawn Treader, staring out on the ever-shifting colours and shades of the ocean. The brisk breeze whipped her hair across her shoulders and blew foam in changing patterns across the water. She noticed Caspian come and stand beside her. In the past months, their relationship had become one of love, and she felt his arm wrap around her waist.
“It still feels odd to be away from the island and the Table,” she murmured as she leant against him.
“It must be difficult… do you ever regret it?”
“No. Not once. Because if I hadn’t left,” the star’s daughter turned to look into his eyes, “If I hadn’t left, I would have never been able to do this.”
And for the first time, she closed the distance between their lips. His breath was warm, and as they held each other, the wind tangling their hair and bringing the blood to their cheeks, she knew that - despite the odds stacked against her - she had found what she never knew she was searching for.
