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The moments ticked by with the same beat as the rhythmic swipes of her tongue over the demon kings facial features. Her kisses roamed most over his skull, too modest and young to have the guts to go to the neck. Those would be saved for later when they could be appreciated ever the more fervently. Toffee dream catchers blurred their vision as she fell into a drill, calmly moving the water from his cloak, just as he had done for her. She caught him over the brow once, and hesitated there, putting herself back out of her body for a moment and wondering I'd the gentle lion here looked tame. If he was-- cute. She smiled with the next swipe continuing through that brow. Not two heartbeats later, something crashed upon her. She had been so captivated by the way his skeleton had moved that she totally forgot about his limbs. The girl tensed, eyes wide. Don’t you dare squirm away. I want to hold you for a bit. Her muscles relaxed, forming back into the teddy bear softness they had been before. Kobato was not toned. She had never had to fight a day in her life. Sure she had been stubborn about some things, but those were hardly events to be in need of strength. Her strength was not the physical kind. Kobato did not need brawn in order to protect herself or those she cared about. Though her tactics had been a bit skewed when she and her dragon had faced the ice king… Be good. She smiled and put her head on her paws, enjoying every second of this unexpected attitude from Vladya. What had started out as a horrible night had become one that she would never want to forget.
Kobato… what happened back at Abendrot? From the first word of his sentence, she knew that she was going to be faced with a difficult question. Kobato was not used to her demon calling her by her name. It made her feel important, now that he spoke her title. Like a line of intimacy had been crossed on his part. Of course, Kobato being Kobato, she didn’t quite understand the question. It were as if the pale sir knew she wouldn’t get it at first. Before Kershov there was something wrong. Very wrong. You were always so happy whenever you came to see me. I… I didn’t know… you could be like that. She was happy. So utterly happy that he had asked. That, although he knew it must have been traumatic, he was still in need of the truth. He didn’t want anything hidden from him? Kobato blinked slowly, then realized something: she was frozen. The internal clock of her heart had stopped ticking. It's brass hand hovered over the last second it had been placed in. Please tell me. A plead. Her own scream echoed in her ears, a voice from a point in time she didn’t think she was quite ready to face again yet. Sobs. A cold corpse next to her own, living, breathing body. Blue eyes that would never re-open. She nodded slowly, as if in a trance, then spoke—mechanically at first.
"Vladya," she said quietly, aware of the delicacy of her own voice. She felt like glass. No… she didn't just feel like it. She was glass. "Wishes that come from the heart do not simply come true. They must be worked for." Had she ever told anyone why she was the way she was? Did she herself know it? Was the Kobato she had named herself as for the past two years… even… real? The she wolf didn't know. How could she? "A heart cannot be made happy just by wishing itself to be. In order to climb the ladder towards a wish for love, one has to be selfless. They have to be fearless. They have to be… simple rays of light." Hadn't been what he had called her? A simple ray of perfect light.
She was glad now for the affectionate move from Vladya that kept him from seeing her face. For she couldn't smile. Not right now. He had asked a very personal question… and while he deserved an answer, she didn't want him to regret doing so. So she made it so that her face was cleverly hidden away. "I was born before the war. Though the two sides of our home got along well enough, they were never really at peace. Everyone knew that war was coming—they were just waiting for the first shot to be fired. And when the war was brought to my home, I was saved by a boy I had known practically since birth. He hid me away, snuck me out of the hell I had been thrown into. But he himself was too deep within it." Every second was replaying itself now. This was to be the first time she had recalled the incident since waking up to see Vladya worried sick, held within the confinement of Abendrot. "Ioryogi," she breathed, testing the name on her lips once quietly before saying it out loud again, stronger. "Ioryogi told me to wish for happiness and to help others when they were in need of a light. By helping others, I could make my own wishes come true."
A low hiss came from her throat, rattling her incisors as it came out in the form of strained words. "I was a fool. I managed to make a home for myself here. I have never voiced my past. I made friends and helped a lot of people. Helping others--- making others happy… that was what I needed to do to get to my wish. Foolish foolish child."
"When I returned to the area, the battle was long over. My father, my true father, had however, gotten a bad hand in the turn of things. My mother had been killed and I had suddenly gone missing. A blip off the radar. He found Ioryogi after months of tracking down who had seen his little girl last. The boy had been on the opposite side of my family during this war. Despite our friendship, war is war, and not even blood relations can keep death from be falling one if they are on different sides of the spectrum." This is the part where the dove took a deep breath. She bit her lip and closed her eyes tight, pretending she couldn’t see the fatal wound in her dear Ioryogi’s throat. Pretending she couldn’t see him fight for every breath. Pretending she couldn’t see his eyes flicker with recognition when she stepped close to him.
"He killed my Ioryogi without even knowing the true story. He killed my precious, precious hero. And then he took his own life—for what had he left? No family, no love, no home." Kobato clenched her teeth together. There was no hate in her voice. Hate had not never been a part of the game she played her whole life. She could understand her father's thinking.
“Vladya? What do you say to a dying person? Do you know?” Her hidden face turned back to Vladya and she breathed in his scent. “Do you wish them well? Do you say your goodbyes? Do you tell them you’ll meet again someday?” She took in a shaky breath, knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to keep from crying. Not this time. “How do you tell the person you love that they’re going to be alright, even when they themselves know they’re not?” And now the tears arrived. Slowly, then all at once. “I found him too late, and though I came running to his side, I knew from the wound that he wasn’t going to be able to pull through. . . I guess he could tell that I was despairing over him, because he smiled at me, and told me that a ray of light had come his way after all. Though her voice was shaky, Kobato couldn’t feel any pain. I stayed by his side. I never wanted to move. I guess at some point, my feet found themselves without me telling them to.She was crying, but she could only picture Ioryogi’s smiling face. How gentle he had looked, after she had cleaned the blood off of his dead body, covering the gash in his throat by sweeping his cloak around it, keeping it secret. She was sad, but she wasn’t in anguish. The doll too close to the edge of the shelf teetered, but it wasn’t going to fall, after all.
Up until a while ago, I was convinced that I was living for Ioryogi. That he was my wish—for my wish, after all, was true love. I figured that the kind of varg who risked his own life to help an enemy was one to be sought after. A piece of opal in a coal mine. Precious and something to be held dear to the heart. But… She hesitated here, because she knew that this would be a confession. She tossed the nervousness in her heart aside, letting it be swept up into nothingness. But I realized that though I loved Ioryogi, it was not ‘true’ love. I realized… that my heart had led me back to the one place that, among all my hand-made relations, it truly wanted to be around. If he had been my true love, I wouldn’t have been able to leave him. So when I woke up, it was as if I had had a nightmare, and you were the angel who had pulled me out of it. She smiled nervously, auds twitching in embarrassment, her warm portals searching this way and that as another round of lyrics settled out of her jowls. I’m sorry for thinking that you were just another rung of my wish ladder. I didn’t realize that you were indeed the very top. She laughed shakily, flinging her tears away with a simple twist of her head. She wasn’t broken. Though here she was made of glass, she was not in danger of being handled improperly. For who could handle glass better than the skilled crafting hands of Vladya?
In that moment, the girl’s voice became more solid. She had passed the worst of her re-encounter, and now she was rolling on forward as water does. Her eyes rose to meet with his. Which is why Kershov will never have you back.
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