[Team Canon] (Idyllic Countryside) Cocoon 2/3

[mikkeneko]

Prompt: Idyllic Countryside
Title: Cocoon (Part 2 of 3)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Fluff, angst, self-harm
Spoilers: Indirect spoilers for Kurogane and Fai's backstories.
Summary: Four travelers arrive in a strange town surrounded by walls, where no one is able to enter or leave. With no memory of who they are or where they're going, will they be able to find a way out - or even last long enough to try?

Author's Note: This was written for the 2012 Canon Vs. AU Olympics. I was on team Canon.

Quick cheat sheet:
Kurogane = Pyre
Fai = Fall
Syaoran = Rain
Sakura = Aught
Willow, Frost, Viv, Bubbles = OCs




Aught sat on the stone steps of the post office, the mailbag shifting towards her hip as she tied the roller skates onto the feet. From the open door behind her drifted the old postman's voice, rising and falling as he delivered a lecture she knew quite well, having heard it every day for a month now.

"That's the last of the morning's mail except for the big deliveries," he told her. "Once you're finished delivering them, you can take off for lunch. But make sure you're back in time for the one o'clock. And for God's sake be careful that you don't trip and break your fool feathered neck!"

"I will!" Aught sang out; she tied off the last lace and pushed to her feet, balancing easily on the skates despite the heavy mailbag at her side. She pulled the straps close, keeping the extra weight tight against her body and easy to manage, and set off down the street.

Not too many other people were on the streets right now, this being midmorning on a weekday; most people had gone in to work, but the lunch hour had not yet started. Her destination was a good few blocks away -- most of the people living closer to the post office had already gotten their mail for the day -- so Aught took pleasure in skating along the smooth, flagstoned streets as fast as she could go.

Her legs pushed in a steady beat against the ground, one-two, one-two, as the vibration of the wheels against the ground buzzed steadily against her feet. She held her arms out for balance, and her wings rustled excitedly; flapping them in the stiff breeze of her passage probably didn't actually  make her go faster, but she liked to think that it did. It was a warm day, the sun hovering hazily in the sky, but the wind of her passage as it whipped against her arms and bare legs kept her from getting too hot.

She turned a corner, her palms skimming off the metal pole of a streetlamp, and slowed down slightly as she made her way up the slight incline of the next street over. She passed the café; the baker, straightening up chairs as he swept between the tables, raised his hand to wave and call out to her. She returned his cheerful greeting, but did not slow down; if she'd stopped, no doubt the baker would have given her a fresh pastry or two from the morning's baking, but she had work to do first.

Gurie was really not a very large town; only a few blocks from the town square the buildings began to break apart, more and more space appearing between them and offering glimpses of the verdant green fields beyond them. There were only a few thousand people living here, far outnumbering the dozen or so Haibane but a small community by any other measure. They were still growing, though; the skeletal rafters of the construction site loomed above several other smaller buildings as she approached.

She slowed as she approached the construction site, coasting up to the very edge of the wooden barrier they set up to warn people away. The men and women were working hard to set up a new piece of scaffolding; she searched among them until she saw the tell-tale grey wings emerging from the shoulders of the largest one. His halo was hidden beneath the hard hat that all the workers had to wear, but his size was distinctive in any crowd.

"Pyre!" she called out, waving furiously. He turned his head to look at her, and his wingtips raised in a sort of salute, but he was carrying one end of a large beam and couldn't stop to do more. Nor could Aught get any closer to the construction site safely; she didn't have the protective boots and gear of the workers, and she had been cautioned repeatedly to stay away from the areas where falling debris was a danger. That was okay, though; even if she couldn't stay to talk, she liked to stop by and see him at work.

Still, she had a schedule to keep to, so she regretfully pushed away from the barrier and skated off down the street. Pyre was bigger and stronger than almost anyone in town -- he could do twice the work of any other worker, and had soon earned the respect of the foreman. He grumbled, sometimes, about the fact that he himself would never be allowed to live in any of the buildings that he helped put up; by law the Haibane could only live in older structures that had already been abandoned, like the old churchhouse, or the abandoned factory on the other side of town.

Aught liked living at the church -- it was where she'd been born, after all -- so she wasn't sure she really agreed with his complaints. But even when Pyre grumbled, she knew he didn't really mean it; he had a good heart, no matter how he tried to cover it up with brusqueness.

She turned another corner -- the construction site wasn't really on her route, but it was only an extra block over -- and slowed down, since some of the letters in her mailbag were for people on this street. As much as she loved skating fast, with the wind gusting the sweet smell of flowers across her face and the ground blurring by under her feet, she also loved being able to meet and talk to everyone on her route. She'd come to recognize most of the people on her route by face and name, and remembered them well enough to ask about things in their lives as she handed out letters. She felt responsible for them somehow -- as though their happiness were her concern -- and they were all kindly protective of her in turn.

Aught had actually been the last one of the four of them to get a job. Her three 'brothers' had all found work fairly easily; Pyre's size and strength made him a natural for construction work (as well, his height -- and the added height of the halo on top of that -- made him more comfortable outdoors than in the sometimes cramped town buildings.) Rain's love of old books had made his job choice easy, just as Fall's nimble fingers had assured him a         place working at the tailoring shop. But although Aught had been willing enough to try every kind of work, she hadn't proved especially skilled at any of them, and hadn't particularly enjoyed any one job more than another.

What she really loved had been going from one place to another within the town, meeting all the townsfolk and hearing them talk with love and pride about their jobs. She had bounced back and forth from one workplace to the next so often that they eventually began asking her to carry messages and parcels with her; and from there, the step to postman had been the most natural thing in the world.

Truly, Aught loved being out in the free air (although she loved it less when it rained,) and loved crossing the now-familiar streets of the town and handing out messages and parcels. The townsfolk enjoyed seeing her at work, as well; many of them regarded the Haibane as a sort of lucky charm, and the sight of a friendly little Haibane girl flying back and forth across town seemed to afford them a certain comfort.

A row of shops interrupted the houses, and she sped up again as she headed for one storefront in particular. This was one of the older buildings in this part of town, built of stone and plaster instead of metal or wood, and the storefront window was a hundred smaller panes of frosted glass set into a wrought iron frame. Aught  peered through the panes, and was delighted to see a tall, blond Haibane sitting at a table in the front room, stitching the collar to an embroidered shirt.

"Fall!" she called through the open doorway; he looked up from his work and smiled, whipping out a few quick stitches to hold the piece together before he set it down and stood up.

"Don't come in, my dear; you don't want to have to take off and re-lace your skates," he said laughingly. He ducked his head as he came through the archway -- the doorframe was tall enough to accommodate him, but his halo tended to knock against the top frame if he didn't. He smiled down at her, his blue eyes dancing. "Now; did you have some mail for us?"

"Oh! Yes," Aught quickly dug through her mailbags to find the envelope. Fall took it from her, tucking it away in a pocket of the tailor's vest he wore, pockets bristling with measuring tape and small scissors and needle cases.

"It wouldn't be fair to take something from a pretty girl without giving something in exchange," he said, and Aught blushed slightly at his teasing.  Fall grinned, and pulled something from his pocket wrapped in white lace; he presented it to her with a half-bow and a flourish.

"What is it?" Aught asked as she took it from him. It was small enough to fit in her palm, and crackled slightly. She brought it up to her face and breathed deep; a warm, savory scent of chamomile and amber flowed up to her nostrils. "Mmm!"

"I found it in the back of the storage cabinets, and Madame said I could have it," he explained. "It's for absorbing the moisture out of the air -- to protect things that might be harmed by it -- and freshening up the air if there's a bad smell."

Aught was pleased, but puzzled. "Well, it's nice, but why give it to me?" she asked.

Fall smiled at her, eyes twinkling. "Well, we no longer need it here at the shop," he said, "but I thought perhaps it might come in handy at the library, to protect all those old books and drive out the musty air. You were  going on to the library next, weren't you?"

"Oh!" Aught found herself blushing, again, despite her determination not to. "Well, um, I have to deliver all this mail…"

Fall laughed, and ruffled her hair affectionately. "Say hello to Rain for me," he said, "and tell him that if he stops to pick up cornflour on his way home, we can have hush puppies for dinner tonight."

"I can pick it up on my way home, too," Aught objected. "It's no trouble."

"Yes, but that much cornflour is heavy," Fall replied. "With your skates, it wouldn't be…" The older man trailed off in mid-sentence, a slight frown crossing his face as he looked past her into the distance.

"Eh?" Aught glanced behind her, but there was nothing there; there were no other buildings across the road, just an empty lot backing onto an open field. They were on a slight rise here, the source of Aught's trouble earlier, and this close to the edge of the field it was easy to look past the outskirts of town into the rolling green hills beyond. At the misty green edge of sight, the bright meadow grass gave way to the darker green of the forest. "Fall? Is something wrong?"

"Hmm?" He seemed to tear his attention away with difficulty, and focused another bright smile on her. "Nothing, nothing! Sorry to have delayed you on your route, my dear. I'll see you back at the church tonight, eh?"

At just that moment, the clock tower at the center of town struck noon. Aught gasped. "Oh, no! How'd it get so late?" she exclaimed, scrambling to seal her mostly-empty mailbag. "I'd better hurry -- see you later, Fall…!"

 The only things waiting in her mailbag to be delivered were a couple of books that belonged to the library; some of the older folk who lived more than walking-distance away found it easier to return the books by post than to hike all the way into town. Aught might have delivered them first, and lightened her load considerably -- but by saving them for last, she made sure that she could linger at the library as long as she wished.

When she pulled up before the door to the library she did take her skates off, this time, and swung them in her hand as she crossed into the hushed library lobby. The librarian at the front desk, an older woman with dark auburn hair pulled into a neat ponytail, looked up at the sound of the door and smiled briefly at her. "Looking for Rain, dear?" she said. "He's in the back, in the far workroom."

"Uh -- yes!" she exclaimed, then hastily opened her mailbag to pile the returned books on the desk. The skates went in the now-empty bag, and she bobbed her head at the librarian as she went past. "Excuse me, ma'am…"

The back of the library always had a hushed, solemn air that left Aught feeling slightly awed. Here were stored all of the oldest, most precious books that the library owned, and Aught was afraid to touch anything or even cough lest she do some permanent harm. Indeed, she held her breath as she knocked lightly and then pushed open the door of the far workroom.

The young man within was sitting at a drafting table a bit too tall for him; his feet were hooked on the rungs of the chair rather than dangling in the air above the floor. His ruffled brown hair was somewhat pushed about and disturbed by the large pair of examining glasses -- almost goggles -- that were pulled down over his eyes. Thin cloth gloves covered his left hand,  which he used to carefully turn the pages of a book that looked to be crumbling even as he read it -- but not his right, which was diligently copying onto a fresh sheet of paper.

He looked up when Aught stepped into the room, and his eyes widened comically behind the magnifying lenses before he pushed them back over his forehead. "Aught!" he exclaimed. "You're here, already? It's only…" He glanced at the clock on the wall, flustered. "Oh, I didn't realize it was so late…"

Aught couldn't help herself; she giggled. "You and me both," she told him, remembering her dismay at the noon bell. "Here, I brought you something." She pulled Fall's gift out of her pocket.

"It's not food, is it? We can't have food back here," he cautioned her, and she shook her head.

"Fall gave it to me," she told him. "He said it's good for absorbing moisture, and helping the room smell better."

Rain's expression brightened. "Well, that would be great," he said happily. "Put it on the back bench, would you? Let me just finish this page and I'll be ready to go to lunch."

"Okay." Aught sat down on the bench herself, her own feet swinging above the floor. "What have they got you working on?"

"Poetry," Rain said absently, flipping the glasses back down as he copied the last few lines. "Some of it's really good, some of it's kind of boring. But when I finish this book, the Professor has given me permission to go looking in the archive by myself. I've found a few books about the Haibane, and I think I know where to find more by the same author. It's really amazing what sorts of things I've learned."

"Oh? What have you learned?" Aught perked up. Rain had a taste for studying, researching and learning that Aught herself did not -- he was fascinated by anything as long as it was sufficiently old -- but information about the Haibane was of interest to all of them. Even Willow and Vivid -- the eldest of the Haibane before the four of them had appeared -- didn't know all that much about themselves, and hadn't known where to go to find out more.

"Well, for one thing," Rain said, and looked up at her with a grin that caused her heart to flutter. "We were  really strange. Do you remember Viv mentioning that there had never been such a thing as four Haibane appearing at once before? She was right. In all the records, the most there's ever been at a time has been two.  And they  were actually twins."

"Really?" Aught blinked as she absorbed the information. "Then, why were we different? You and I, maybe we could have been brother and sister --" although she wasn't really sure she liked that idea too much -- "but, Pyre and Fall don't look anything like us, or anything like each other either."

Rain shrugged. "I don't know yet," he said. "But, I'll tell you something else that's strange. You know how the other two are the oldest of the Haibane? Well, apparently they're also the oldest Haibane ever  to be born here. It's actually really rare even for Haibane as old as you and me to appear. Most of the time, they're much younger -- as young as Frost and Bubbles, or even younger than that, like the little kids."

"But," Aught frowned uneasily. "Willow is the oldest of the Haibane that were here before us -- and she can't be more than seventeen, eighteen at the most. And they do get  older, Frost told us so.  If all the Haibane appear as children, and there are no grown-up Haibane, then what happens to them?"

"Nobody knows." Rain's face looked grave. "They go, somehow. I've found a few references towards something called the 'Day of Flight' -- I meant to ask Willow about it when we get home. What all the accounts say is that at some point in time, a Haibane starts to act strangely, and then leaves for the Western Woods and never comes back -- only their haloes are ever found left behind, no bodies or possessions or anything. But no one knows exactly what happens to them there -- apparently, nobody's ever actually witnessed it first-hand."

Aught shivered, although the air in the library workroom was not cold. Rain caught the involuntary motion, and hastened to reassure her. "But, this is  good news!" he exclaimed. "This means that there is  someplace out there, outside of the walls! Haibane do  leave sometimes, and that means that we  can leave, too. We just have to find out how they do it!"

"I guess so," Aught said, although her voice was still somewhat troubled. She remembered Fall's strange preoccupation, earlier, with that distant glimpse of the western woods, and it made her uneasy. All of her 'brothers' -- Pyre and Fall no less than Rain -- were obsessed with the idea that they could leave Gurie, travel on beyond the walls to other lands. Aught wasn't sure she could understand it herself. They were happy here, welcomed, they had jobs and lives and a home. Couldn't that be enough?

---

The summer evenings were long, and by the time Fall had closed up the shop and locked the doors behind him, the sky was still full of slanting golden sunlight. The air was soft and warm, with just a hint of a cool breeze coming over the moors, and Fall was expected at home.

He turned over the closed  sign on the shop door, and put the key in his pocket. The Old Church had a number of bicycles, and even a rickety old motor scooter, but Fall did not ride any of them to his workplace. His legs were too long for the bicycles, and the scooter was usually saved for an emergency -- and any way, the walk from the church into town was a pleasant one. It was better than usual tonight, with the soft warm glow of the sunset around him and the cicadas beginning to take up their chorus in the tall grass.

The tailoring shop was on the edge of town, more or less -- within a few minutes of walking he found himself out between the buildings, on the verge of the road between two fields. Their first lush green was beginning to fade, the tips of the stalks lightly frosted with pale brown as the heads of grain began to ripen, bobbing under their own weight. A motor cart rattled past him, going along the same road, and the driver called out a laconic greeting as Fall stood aside to let him past. Fall raised his hand and smiled, the pleasant courtesy coming as second nature, long habit from lessons he no longer reminded. The man turned back, satisfied, and the smile faded away from Fall's lips as soon as there were none left to see it.

For all that the rolling hills of the valley seemed lush and endless, this valley simply was not that big. A day's walk could take you around the whole circumference of the walls, considerably less than that to cross the center. The sunlight was still heavy in the sky when Fall stopped at the crossroads; the road leapt a small brook with a weathered stone bridge before T-ending. The road behind him led into town; to the right was the old churchhouse and to the left, more distant farm buildings that Fall had never visited.

Ahead of him lay the woods.

He'd been warned against entering the Western Woods; all the Haibane had. The townsfolk avoided it without needing to be told, apart from the occasional teenagers urging each other to test their bravery. But the Woods were especially dangerous to the Haibane, he'd been told. No one was entirely sure why; the wall that enclosed the valley ran into the woods on one side and out the other unchanging, but Willow had been very firm on the fact that the section of the wall in the Woods was more dangerous somehow.

Somewhere in the woods lived the Touga, the mysterious figures who oversaw the dispensation of the Haibane and ensured the rules were strictly enforced. There were many things that Haibane must do, and must not do. Haibane must work, and work in one of the prescribed locations in town. Haibane must not accept charity from the townsfolk, use money, wear new clothing, or live in new buildings. There were a whole list of other rules dictating the way that Haibane and humans could -- and could not -- interact, but none of them had yet to impinge on Fall or his brothers or sisters, so he hadn't paid them much mind.

Nobody knew much about the Touga, not even Willow, who as the eldest was tasked with the duties of interacting with them on behalf of the other Haibane. It had been her job to report the arrival of the newcomers to the Touga, to register their names and bring back those mysterious haloes that marked them as full-fledged Haibane.

She had talked a little bit about them, so that they would know what to expect if they ever had to go there; how they all dressed in long, tan-covered robes that fully obscured their bodies, and masks that covered their faces. How they never spoke aloud, except through a single delegated spokesman called the Communicator; and how the worst possible breach of etiquette was for a Haibane to raise his or her gaze to look them directly in the eye, or speak to them uninvited.

At the time, none of them had been in any hurry to visit the distant enclave of the chill, formidable Touga; and Fall did not wish to do so now.

But there was something in the woods. Something that called to him. He could hear it clearly now, more clearly every day, a distant thumping or a vibration that was felt more than heard, silent and invisible yet as palpable as his own heartbeat. He'd mentioned it casually to the other three first, then more indirectly to the elder Haibane. None of them had seemed to have any idea what he was talking about; they only repeated that the Western Woods were dangerous, and should be avoided.

Why could none of the others hear what he heard, feel what he felt? Was he going mad?

He had to know. This doubt, this uncertainty was surely more terrifying than any truth could be.

Aught and the others wouldn't be expecting him for a while yet. Fall turned away from the sun-drenched crossroads leading back to the church, and his worn leather shoes shirred across the grass as he stepped off the path and headed for the woods.

It was cooler under the trees, the air damp and full of the damp smell of moss and rot. The going was hard. This was clearly no tree-farm, no decorative stand of vegetation planted for the benefit of the townsfolk. The trees grew thick and close, their branches crossing and twining as they battled for space and sunlight; the ground was uneven, with roots and stones and sudden precipitous drops and ridges. Generations upon generations of fallen leaves and twigs had rotted into a thick black loam underfoot, unbroken by footfall or animal track. This was an ancient woods, primeval, and he could feel the trees' breath stirring cool and disinterested on the back of his neck.

The going was slow under the trees. Although it had been quite light out in the open, most of the daylight was blocked by the deep green leaves, and there was nothing resembling a path. It was difficult enough even to tell direction in here, out of sight of the sun and sky; he could not simply walk around a tree and continue in a straight line, but had to pick his way through a twisty maze of fallen and upright tree-trunks and slanted gullies. Fall was no woodsman; he had no idea how to track or even blaze a trail, and could easily have become hopelessly lost as soon as he was out of sight of the road.

The only thing that kept him on his course was the pulsing, the deep, steady rhythm that drew him further and further into the woods.  

At least the dark and close canopy kept the forest floor clear of much underbrush -- apart from twining vines and thick shaggy moss that hijacked the tree trunks to gain height and breadth over the ground, nothing else grew but the ancient trees. Fall kept a wary eye out for danger -- the shaded darkness could hide any manner of wild animal -- but nothing warm-blooded stirred. This was truly a domain ruled by the trees, the lords of the vegetable kingdom, and nothing short-lived was welcome here.

Fall did not know how long he had been struggling through the trees, his clothes soiled by black slime from the tree roots and bits of decaying leaves, his hands and knees skinned from scrambling over roots and out of gullies. The light faded swiftly under the trees to a confusing gloaming; it was not night yet, not quite, but it was difficult to see where he was going. When the trees opened out at last, he might have hoped to get some sunlight under the branches, but by then the sun had disappeared behind the great wall, casting the clearing into shadow.    

Here.

The clearing was not large, but completely free of trees or saplings, as though the forest itself drew back appalled from what dwelt there. There at the center of the clearing sat a low, circular pile of dark stones, forming a shadowed ring in the ground. A well. The rotted traces of a wooden contraption and a rusted chain languished nearby, years uncounted having all but devoured them. A well that had been long abandoned.

The strange pulsing was louder than ever, echoing in Fall's head, in his blood like a second heartbeat. There could be absolutely no doubt that it emanated from the well, which seemed to flinch and swell slightly with every pulse.  It called to him, compelled him, so that his feet carried him forward even as Fall's senses struggled to resist. What is that? What is happening to me?  He could have shouted the question aloud, but there was no one around to hear; even if anyone at all could have answered him.

The mouth of the well seemed to breathe out darkness, a cold wet chill that spread over the clearing and lapped at the edges of the trees. Fall took another step forward, and then another, although his teeth chattered and his feet dragged through the sparse grass which was all that would grow in this forsaken clearing. The well called to him, attracted him even as it repulsed him; and although Fall could dig his heels in and refuse to advance any further, he could not force himself to turn around and retreat. What was down there, so unworldly and unnatural, and why did it call out to him, calling so insidiously that he could not ignore it?

As he approached the well, the air of the clearing seemed to distort around him, the color and heat draining out of the landscape. It felt unreal, like a dream. A dream?  The stones of the well -- black, close-set, rimed with a black moisture that rendered them too slick to climb -- he had seen stones like these in his dreams, hadn't he --?

He stopped at the edge of the well, teetering on the very brink of his horror, and the dark throat of the well stretched out into darkness below him. All at once the world heaved and shifted, turned inside out, gravity itself undoing until Fall did not know whether he looked down into a round well, or up along the curved wall of a tower that loomed an endless height in the darkness above.

These stones, this wall… I saw it in my dreams… Fall remembered; and as in the dream, he was overcome with feelings of horror and fear. Something bad had happened here, something very bad, something was waiting in the darkness for him --

Movement, in the darkness below. Something stirred. Movement, and Fall shuddered with the realization -- he had not dreamed of falling, the black stones rushing underneath him -- something was moving towards him,  with the ominous inevitability of an onrushing train --

Fall broke and ran.

He bolted like a rabbit, all rational thoughts banished from his head; only the panic remained, rebounding and echoing through him until his entire body shook with the cold, crashing waves of fright. Branches slapped his face and wings, stones bit at his feet, but he hardly felt them. A sharp wind whistled across his face and past his ears, making his eyes water furiously, and cold tears coated his cheeks and his lips drawn back over his teeth with fear.

He did not know what he was running from, and it didn't matter -- pure instinct had taken over, driving his legs with the speed and strength of a hunted beast. He did not look behind him to see if he was being chased -- dared not, when he could not spare an instant's attention in his panicked flight, lest he trip over an exposed tree root and break his neck in a ditch.

At last he slowed, out of pure exhaustion if nothing else. He staggered and wheezed, lungs laboring and heart pounding as he strove to catch his breath. He had no idea how far he'd run, how much time had passed when he was caught up in that mindless panic, only that he recognized none of his surroundings.

Nothing had pursued him. Now that he'd finally slowed down a bit, the thundering panic in his head that had screamed at him to flee settled into a more recognizable clamoring. Run -- run -- you are not safe -- they are coming for you,  his mind howled at him, but there was no sense or reason to be found in that panicked cacophony. Who or what were they? He had no idea; he did not remember. The key to understanding, the knowledge of who or what had planted that seed of terror, had been wiped from his memory as surely as his own name. All he had left was the litany of fear, which whispered to him every waking moment that he must not stay here, that he must keep running, that he would never be safe.

And then his dreams --

"This is a place of sanctuary," a hollow voice said.

Fall whirled around, his breath and voice seizing in his lungs. A figure was standing on the rocky bank above him, dressed in dark and pale browns and draped over with a light grey cloth; it blended into the background so well it took a moment for Fall's blurred eyes to focus on it.

The figure was that of a man, a little shorter than Fall and a little stooped from age, leaning on a gnarled wooden stick. But the face under the grey hood was wholly inhuman, a stark visage of yellow wood that was only just not the color of human bone. The shape was only vaguely reminiscent of a human face, with perfunctory markings indicating where the nose and mouth ought to be; but at the top of the face there was only one gaping hole, centered in the forehead like a staring Cyclops, so deep and black it swallowed all light around it.

It was a mask, Fall realized; narrow slits on either side of that staring darkness his the speaker's true eyes. And the resonant, hollow echoes of that voice when it spoke came from behind the brittle wooden mask. "A place of respite," the man went on, "a last refuge for those to whom all other doors have been closed. Here they can find shelter, here they can find healing, and here, in time, they may find redemption for their sins."

The man moved slightly; the gaping emptiness of the mask was now staring directly at Fall. Ornaments of metal, wood and bone clinked as he moved; strings of little metal bells chinked from the end of his sleeves, rang from the head of his staff. This was one of the Touga, Fall realized with a start, the frightening figures who ruled the lives of the Haibane; and Fall was not permitted to speak in his presence.

"But for you, there will be no healing here," the man went on. His voice was implacable, devoid of either censure or pity; he could as well have been remarking on the weather. "Too much remains undone for you, young one, for you to find peace or redemption within these walls. Forgetfulness will provide no cure for you, innocence will bring no grace. You do not belong here."

With that pronouncement hanging in the air like a death knell, the man turned and began walking away, leaning on his cane. Despite the hobbling gait of his legs, and the uneven surface of the rocky slide, he moved with an astonishing speed; he was receding into the distance before Fall could unlock his frozen muscles enough to move.

"Wait!" he shouted out, forgetting in his desperation that he was not allowed to speak. "If I don't belong here, where should I go? What should I do? Please, tell me!"

He scrambled up along the side of the ditch, fingers scrabbling for a hold among the loose gravel and damp roots. Rocks turned under his feet and he slid; he had to claw himself desperately upwards, reaching up to grab the underside of some tree root before he could haul himself over the lip. Dark soil, damp with fungus and flecked with shining beetles, pattered past his face; he shuddered at its touch. Then he heaved himself upwards over the bank and he was on level ground again.

The Touga was already far ahead of him, his drab-colored garments making him almost invisible against the forest ground. Fall broke into a run, stumbling over the uneven ground, chasing after him. "How do I get out of here?" he shouted desperately after the receding figure; but his voice seemed thin, torn away on the winds. He had no idea whether the Touga had heard him; he hardly heard himself.

Loose rocks and gnarled tree roots grabbed at his feet, tripping and slowing him. His ankle turned under him, and he had to grab sideways at a low-hanging branch to keep from throwing his whole weight onto it and twisting it painfully. By the time he managed to right himself, limping forward and looking up from the tree, the old man was gone.

Fall slowed in the space under the trees, and then stopped. There was no clear path among the sun-pierced gloom; it was impossible to say which way the Touga had gone. Fall wasn't even sure at this point which way he could go back to get back to the old church.

You do not belong here…

Fall's breath caught raggedly in his chest; his calves cramped painfully from the desperate uneven chase. The world swam about him, the patches and flickers of sunlight sliding along the ground like a viscous golden-brown liquid. The rustle of leaves and twigs in the wind grew to a cacophony that filled his ears, threatening to deafen him.

You do not belong here…

"How do I get out?" he said hoarsely, to no one listening at all. "How?"

------------------

Getting out of the woods, at least, proved simple. In his panicked thrashing he had actually brought himself to a lighter part of the woods, with gaps in the tree cover showing patches of pale sky and green fields in the distance and a lighter, more open ground to cross. He managed to make his way out of the woods at last, and at the top of a small bald hill he glimpsed the distant rooftops of the town, reflecting the last of the setting sun. Between that landmark and the brighter glow of sunset above the western wall, he was able to orient himself at last.

Through the growing darkness he walked, first over grass-grown meadows and then on the verges between fields. Although his halo shed enough light that he could just barely make out where to put his feet, the plants themselves were colorless masses in the dusk, their bright green extinguished. At last, he found the road -- he had come out on the wrong side of the intersection, somehow, and passed the bridge on his right as he walked back towards the church.

It was full night by the time he got back, and only the glow of the lights in the church windows guided him through the last half-mile. Someone had set a lantern out in the courtyard, which they didn't normally do at night; they had noticed his absence, then, and had put it out for him.

You do not belong here…

Voices drifted through the night air, from the kitchen in the side wing. For a moment Fall wavered, tempted by the promise of light, food, and human company. But at the last moment he veered aside, and headed instead for the far wing which housed all their sleeping quarters.

The hallway was dark, the rooms empty. No doubt everyone else was at dinner. Fall turned on the lights in his room, then in the bathroom, and he set himself in front of the bathroom mirror with a washcloth and attempted to clean himself up after this afternoon's excursion.

You do not belong here…

Neither the familiar walls of the bathroom, the hollow splashing of water against the copper basin, nor the sting of soapy water against his bruises and scrapes were enough to keep Fall's mind from wandering. Willow and the others were right; the woods were dangerous to Haibane. He should never have followed his mad impulse to go to into them alone, and he knew that he could never gather the nerve to go back.

He had learned nothing. He still did not know what lurked at the bottom of the well, save that it was evil, and unnatural, and that he must stay away from it for his very life. He still knew nothing more about himself; whether he was truly mad, or somehow sick, or something else entirely.

But there was one  thing he knew now, that he hadn't known when he'd set off for town this morning -- so ignorant, so innocent. In that terrible moment at the mouth of the well, he had briefly relieved his dream from the cocoon -- and he remembered something from it that he had forgotten, before. Why he was so driven, every waking moment, with such a helpless dread. Why he was so sure that someone, some nameless, terrible forces, were coming after him. To catch him, to punish him.

Because I deserve it.

He had done something wrong. Something terrible. He couldn't remember what, but of this much he was sure. And no matter how far he ran, he could never outrun his own sin.

He'd gotten most of the dirt off by now, the mud and tree bark that had coated his hands and face and wings after that wild sprint through the forest. But there were a few black spots on his wings -- on the feathers towards the lower edges, towards the tips -- that he could not seem to get rid of.

He scrubbed harder.

---

It was midafternoon, and the sun beat down on the construction site like a hammer. The heat might have been -- just barely -- bearable in the shade, but there was little shade to be had out here outside of the framework of steel girders and the dusty line of tents strung up around the perimeter.

The building, when it was done, was going to be five stories high -- the tallest building in Gurie apart from the clock tower that overlooked the town square. For that it would need a sturdy, flexible metal skeleton -- and a strong, solid foundation. The huge slabs -- cut from a quarry outside down, nearby to the old abandoned factory that made up the Haibane nest -- had been rolling into town all day, closing off one of the streets.

It was up to Pyre and the others to slot the enormous slabs into place, forming the foundation. They were too big for any man or even a team of men to handle without the aid of motorized carts and levers, but it was still a huge effort to wrestle the stone blocks on and off the trestles. The construction workers were a sturdy, hardy bunch, but after a day of this they were flagging, and quitting time was still a few hours away. Between the heat, the dust and sore muscles, tempers were running high all over the site.

"Hey, Heron!" one of the shift supervisors shouted at him. "Get a move on! We've got a stuck trestle on the northeast."

Pyre slammed the load he'd been carrying and turned to glare at the woman. He hated that nickname, which the other workers had landed him with practically his first day here. Apparently there was a local water bird -- the night heron, they called it -- black-headed and red-eyed, which stood as tall as a man when it stretched to full height. Oh, they probably didn't mean any harm by it -- it was just their idea of a friendly ribbing -- but he hated it. His own towering inches and unusual coloring (to say nothing of the wings) made him stick out like a sore thumb among the shorter, buff-haired crew, and the nickname really just hammered home how much he didn't belong.

"Northeast corner's not my beat," he growled. "Tell those lazy-ass twins to get on it." The crew included a pair of non-identical twins, Rust and Reed, who between the two of them just about did a full person's worth of work, as far as Pyre was concerned.

"They're busy," the supervisor bawled back at him over the noise and chaos of the construction site. "Get to it, Heron! The sooner we finish the foundation level, the sooner we can all knock off and go home."

Pyre growled under his breath, throwing a length of cable to the ground and stomping off in the requested direction. What was it to him if they got this done today, tomorrow or next year? What good was it for him to finish early when there was nowhere to go? He'd just get home late, take an unsatisfying shower in the weak water pressure of the church's broken-down plumbing, and sit down to a dinner where everyone worth talking to would already have made their excuses and run off.

This wasn't his home.  Not Gurie, and not the old churchhouse, and it pissed him off that people kept telling him it was. He and the other Haibane weren't even allowed to live in town, they were kept separated and subjugated in old, falling-down crumbling structures near the town's edges that would never be as fine and fancy as this fucking building he was sweating blood to build.

No, this place wasn't home, it would never be home, and Pyre would never allow himself to think that it was. He would be true to his own homeland -- he would remain loyal to it, even if he couldn't remember it.  The emptiness, the fleeting blankness in his head when he tried to close his thoughts on those memories frightened him, and more than that, it infuriated him. Why had he come here? Who had done this to him -- taken away his memory, his         past, his very name?  What the fuck had given them the right, to rob his mind and brand him with these marks that made him forever an outsider? Work hard, be diligent, obey the rules -- and for what?  For the right to be held in a cage, displayed like freaks in a zoo for the amusement of these fucking peasants?

The trestle really was stuck. Some idiot had overloaded it, piled four of the foot-thick stone blocks on a machine that was only graded to carry two, and the extra weight had caused the whole machine to actually sink inches into the ground. He hit the motor, and it whined unpleasantly, a rising grinding noise, before he hit the cutoff switch. Completely souped.  "What nutbrain thought this was a good idea?" he growled, turning his glare on whoever was nearby.

"Hey, don't blame us for trying to speed things up!" one of the other workers exclaimed, holding up gloved hands in defense and backing away from the responsibility. "We can't all have superhuman strength like you, okay?"

Pyre's teeth clenched, and he saw red as he turned back to the intractable trestle. Lazy, weak-armed assholes!  he thought furiously, biting back the desire to throw the words in their faces, or just throw a punch. Fury thrummed through his veins, compounded by the heat, the glaring sun, the sweat running down his neck and back and coating his wings in a soggy paste of sweat and dust. I'm not your fucking beast of burden!

The northeast corner was the closest to the street, the very street that Aught skated by and called out to him sometimes. Now it was thronged with townspeople, busy and impatient, jostling each other as they tried to get around the traffic jam caused by the construction trucks on the other side. Every few minutes one of them would stop, grab his neighbor by the shoulder and whisper to him as he pointed towards the construction site; and they would stand there and stare at him gape-mouthed, just like travelers at a sideshow.

A surge of heat and fury rolled through him, the blood-haze spreading to cover his entire vision as his frustrated anger spiked. To hell with this, to hell with this place, this job, these people,  none of whom he gave a fuck about and none of whom gave a second fucking thought for him --

Pyre almost didn't realize he'd pulled his arm back and swung, his fist loosely clenched as though gripping a handle, until the crack  of the impact had echoed through the entire construction site. He barely even felt the hit in his hand, would hardly have thought he'd made contact at all, except --

For the other construction workers, reflex took over and they hit the dirt as the explosion rocked throughout the area. Not only the two cubic meters of solid stone shattered, not only the trestle beneath them creaked and groaned as it warped into an impossible shape, but a good two feet of the wall already constructed beyond him broke and crumbled.

The noise roared around him, raising a cloud of dust that tumbled and swirled in a whirlwind; beyond it, Pyre could hear the screams of the townsfolk as they ducked and scattered to try to get out of the way of the falling debris, fists-sized chunks of stone and metal raining down on the street below.

-------------------

The foreman's office wasn't really an office -- that was only a formality. It was just another one of the construction tents, a little more spacious than the rest, which housed the foreman's desk and the big metal filing cabinets that held all the paperwork. The foreman was well-known for his heavy smoking, so the clear plastic 'windows' of the tent had darkened and grimed over with smoke over time. The workers thought he liked it that way; it meant it was impossible to tell when he was in his tent and when he was out, looking over their shoulders.

He was in now, and Pyre let the heavy canvas tent flat fall behind him. The foreman wore a pair of thick, round safety glasses that he never bothered to take off, and he was puffing a cigar under a bushy mustache gone grey with age. As Pyre stepped before his desk, looming over him by a good yard, the foreman glanced up, put the manila folder he'd been reading aside and leaned back in his folding chair. "Well, Heron," he said. "I assume you know why you're in the doghouse here."

Pyre didn't say anything, just glared. His roaring rage from earlier had quieted to a sort of simmer, tempered by shame. He'd been wrong and he knew it, damn it, but he didn't need to stand here and be lectured about it.

"I'll tell you right up front that I like you, kid," the foreman said. "And I don't mind giving one of you people a job. But look at it from my point of view. This is a small town and that's a fact, and there's not too many of you. The fact is that the whole town knows that I've got a Haibane on my work crew, and if you get involved in some sort of problem, everyone in town is going to hear about it. Now, I don't want to give you your walking papers, because I like having you around --"

Of course he didn't, Pyre seethed. No one would want to fire a worker who he they didn't have to pay.

" -- but the truth is that you caused some serious damage today, and set back two good days' worth of work," the foreman went on. "And it's just good luck that nobody in the street got hurt by the falling rocks.  I don't know how in the hell you did that with your bare hands, and I don't really care.  If you can't find some way to get yourself under control, boy, then you're going to be more of a liability than an asset."

Pyre ground his teeth. "You knew when you hired me that I was strong," he said. "You hired me because  I was strong. Don't know why you're complaining about it now."

The foreman tipped his chair back down with a thump, and his hand slammed down on his desk. "Don't be a fool, boy," he said angrily. "There's only use in being strong if you use that strength for  something. What good is strength if you only use it to destroy? I've got controlled demolitions for that; I don't need damn-fool kids doing it as well!"

Pyre glowered, but couldn't keep from saying, "And stop calling me 'boy' like I'm some fucking kid. I'm not one."

The foreman snorted, and leaned back again as he took another puff from his cigar. "Just a tip, son; the only people who object to being called a kid are the ones who still deserve the title."

Pyre couldn't think of anything to say to that that wouldn't get him sacked on the spot, so he just glared off into the corner of the tent instead. The old man was at least partly right, and he knew it. He'd lost control out there on the site today, and he had no one but himself to blame for it. It was just that being chewed out for it like a dog who'd peed on the carpet wasn't helping him control his temper.

He glanced up to see the foreman looking at him intently through a cloud of smoke; appraisingly and a bit sorrowfully. "You might be big and strong on the outside, but you're still young where it counts," he said. "You've got some growing up to do still. All you Haibane do. You come in this town when you're still children, and you leave before you're really done growing. That's how it is. But so long as you're here, you've got to pull your weight,         and I don't just mean lifting blocks."

Pyre's jaw worked, but he swallowed the angry retort that wanted come out. He gave a grudging nod.

"Take the rest of the day off," the foreman advised him. "Tomorrow too. I'll mark you down as half-pay for both days so you won't get far behind. Come in on Monday when you've worked out what's getting up your ass and making you a hazard in the workplace. We'll see how you do next week. If there's no more problems, then we'll let this all blow over. If not… then I'll have to let you go."

"Thanks," Pyre muttered, still addressing the smoke-hazy corner of the tent. "I'll… work it out."

"See that you do," the foreman said, and picked up his manila folder with a shuffle of papers. "Good luck, son."

Pyre had to duck awkwardly under the top bar of the tent on his way out, and the late afternoon sun made him squint. He went to get his bag from the roped-off area where the construction workers hung around when they weren't working; a few of the others were there, eating from their lunchboxes, but some of them avoided his eyes and even the friendliest of them glanced at his thunderous expression and said nothing. Pyre grabbed the canvas bag from the pile and slung it across his chest, removed the hardhat from over his halo and tossed it on the rack, then turned around and marched back.

The walk back to the church gave him an uncomfortable amount of time to think. The weight of the canvas bag, slung over his shoulder and rough where the strap rubbed his skin, was just another reminder of what he didn't want to face.

Fall had made this bag for him; they hadn't been able to find one with a strap long enough for him to comfortably hold, or tough enough to hold his equipment. It was just another thing that pressed on him in this cramped, confining little world. Some days felt like everything was too small, or too fragile, or bound about with rules like old lace embroidery -- he couldn't take a step or make a move without tearing one. 

But things had been like that ever since he'd come here, and he'd always managed with no problems before. What had changed? Only that at first, he'd always had others to help him deal with his constant irritation, good friends that could listen to him vent, help him let off steam in a safe way before it all built up to be too much.

Somewhere in the last few weeks, he'd lost that. He still had the kids -- Aught and Rain and the other Haibane as well -- but they really couldn't offer the same understanding. Fall and himself shared a special bond, the two that were always out of place -- too tall, too old. Too full of dark places, under the shiny blank surface.

Pyre hated to think, when he looked back over the past few weeks, how much of his moodiness was simply caused by Fall not being around much anymore. The stupid blond fool had taken to spending most of his time in his room, only coming out for meals or sometimes not even then, presumably cooking his own meals alone late in the night. He'd claimed to be too tired to come down and join them, and indeed the dark shadows deepening under his eyes bore up that claim -- but Pyre had also seen lights on his room well into the night, well past the time that anyone should have been asleep.

He hated the fact that losing Fall's presence from his life should drive him so crazy, but he hated just as much that it had taken this long -- and this much of a humiliation -- to see the problem.

He had a couple days off now. He vowed to himself that he'd take the time to finally track Fall down, corner him and demand to know what he thought he was doing by shutting himself off from the world this way. Fall had to get back to normal, for his own good -- and Pyre's.

-------------------

Pyre found Fall in the sanctuary, after searching high and low in each of the other wings. He supposed he should have checked here earlier, but there was just no reason  to spend time in the chapel; it was empty and cold with the drafts that could never fully be patched.

The chapel had been patched up with electric lights, but they were not turned on. Instead Fall had lit some of the candles at the end of the aisle, and was sitting on one of the pews a few rows away. His back was to the door, and he didn't move when Pyre came up beside him.

"So here you are," he said. Now that he'd actually found his quarry, he was uncertain how to begin. He was no good with words or feelings; any of the others could have done better. "Look --" he said, then stopped.

He wanted to find some way to get through to Fall, to explain to him how much he meant to all of them -- Pyre no less than the others. Maybe more than the others. How much it hurt them all to see Fall so withdrawn, remote, how much they wanted to help him if only he'd allow it. But there was no way he could think of to broach that subject, so at the last moment he changed his mind. "Come in to dinner," he said instead. "Everybody's worried about you. Don't think I've missed seeing how many meals you've skipped. Whatever it is that's on your mind --"

"Did you ever stop to think about what this means, Pyre?" Fall said. He still did not turn around.

Pyre followed his unflinching gaze upwards. Fall was staring at one of the stained glass windows in the church, enormous works of lead hatching and colored glass in a brilliant mosaic. There were a dozen of them around the chapel and Pyre had never paid them the least attention. "What, this window?" he said.

"Everything," Fall said. "Our dreams. These wings. These haloes. This place. Did you ever really stop to wonder about it?"

Pyre had, sometimes -- but since there were no answers to be found, he generally didn't let himself waste time in useless speculation. "Not really," he said.

"Look," Fall said. "It's right in front of us."

The window? Baffled, Pyre looked up at it again. It was a riot of bright colors and rounded shapes, and art was highly stylized to begin with. It took him a minute to sort out one thick-lined window pane from the next, but the brazen crimson color caught his eye first.  Scattered in drops and puddles along the ground, it was obvious enough that it was intended to be blood.

Once he'd identified the blood, it took him a few more seconds to realize that the dark double-thick lead lines next to it were meant to be swords. The scene resolved itself, a terrible battle -- a line of stylized, side-portrait warriors marched across the window, leaving bodies in their wake.

Behind the soldiers followed a group of men in saintly robes, wielding blurry books and scepters and thuribles. They bent and touched the fallen bodies, and ghostly white figures rose up from the corpses and floated in a line across the blue glass sky towards the ceiling.

The floating people all had wings and haloes, just like them.

"We're dead," Fall said, and his voice was so calm, so eerie that it took Pyre a moment to process what he'd said. "It's the only explanation. We're dead, and this is the afterlife. Why else would you dream of burning, and me of freezing? All the other dreams, too? What else could that be but our last moments before dying?"

"That's -- ridiculous," Pyre said, and he could hear in his own voice just how unnerved he was. "That's an awful big leap to make based on one old painting. You --"

He put his hand on Fall's shoulder, intending to pull him around face-to-face to talk sense into him. But he paused, with his hand inches above Fall's shoulder, to stare at his wings. There was something… something about the feathers on those wings…

"Maybe this is meant to be heaven," Fall was saying, as though Pyre had said nothing at all. "I don't know. But it's not meant for me. Children -- all the others are children, and they're innocent. I'm not, I'm not. I don't belong here -- that's what he said, and now I understand, this kind of heaven was never meant for me --"

Pyre ignored his babbling, grabbing Fall's shoulder and pulling his back into the light. He ran his other hand along the edge of Fall's wings, and then back, more slightly, pulling against the grain of the feathers.  No -- they weren't  feathers; they were little fluttering scraps of white linen, cut into small triangles and fitted carefully over each of Fall's own feathers.  They ruffled up under his touch, and the thin white scraps of linen pushed away, revealing the dark, iron-grey stains beneath them.

"What have you done to yourself?" Pyre whispered.

The scraps of cloth fluttered, almost like wings themselves, as under the pressure of Pyre's hand the stitches of white thread began to give way. Tiny drops of bright red blood beaded along the vanes, thread pulling taut against the tiny holes where the white scraps had been sewn into the skin. Pyre had a sudden vision of Fall working long into the night -- that lamp, burning for hours and hours in his room -- with his back turned to the mirror and neck twisted painfully over his shoulder, pulling the needle and thread through his own flesh.

Fall had sewn scraps of white cloth over his feathers to hide himself. From a distance, it had been enough to make him appear normal -- and he'd kept them all at a distance. But it was only an illusion, less than skin deep. Under the screening cloth of the linen cloth, his wings were stained back. At the top of the wings, near the crest, the feathers were almost a normal light, ashy grey. But the further down his wings they descended, the color deepened to dark grey and then to coal black. The feathers along the very bottom were ragged, almost withered, the very tips glistening an oily black color that seemed to be eating its way inward.

"The walls, the gates, they're not to keep others out," Fall was rambling. "They're to keep us in. Land of the dead. But that means I can't get out, I can't stop it from happening. Whatever happened before, I'm being punished for it now, and I can't stop it. The walls -- they won't stop it from happening. They're going to come for me, to judge me for my sins, and I can't get away. No second chances -- there's no way out -- there's no coming back from being dead, I --"

Enough of this. Pyre seized Fall's shoulder and yanked him around to face him straight on, grabbing his upper arms to force Fall to look him straight in the face. "I'M -- NOT -- DEAD!" Pyre roared.

Fall stared at him, shocked into silence. For a moment, only their breathing could be heard in the silence of the chapel. "And neither are you," Pyre said at last, breaking the tension. "Wherever we are -- whatever  we are -- we've got to live the life we find ourselves in, understand? It's not our place to just lay down and die, whatever you think happened before."

Fall's breath drew in sharply, and he turned his head aside, blinking rapidly to counter the wetness in his eyes. "It's not that easy," he whispered, and the pain in his voice was unbearable.

To hell with this. What was the use of talking? Pyre grabbed Fall's shoulders and pulled him into a tight hug, trapping the smaller Haibane's arms against his bodies. Fall made a startled noise and shifted, pushing weakly away -- but Pyre ignored it. After a long moment Fall released a shaky breath on what sounded almost like a sob, and relaxed into Pyre's arms; his hands found their way awkwardly to Pyre's sides.

"If you're hurting or afraid, don't hide it from us," he said sternly; it was easier to say what he was thinking when he didn't have to look at Fall when he did it. "We'll find a way to help. We'll all try. Trust in us a bit, will you."

"Pyre," Fall whispered, and then his head dropped to rest against Pyre's shoulder. "Please."

---

Aught hesitated in the hallway, one hand clutching her package and the other raised to knock. At breakfast that morning -- the first time any of them had seen him after he'd vanished the night before -- Pyre had reappeared, and called herself, Rain and Willow aside for an impromptu emergency meeting before work.

He'd explained, with a quiet voice and very hard eyes, that Fall was sick -- he'd gotten some sort of infection in his wings, that turned them dark and ragged. For the time being, he said, Fall would be staying home from work until he felt better. They should all look after him and take turns watching over him, and he was absolutely not allowed to do any more sewing work in the interim.

"I've heard about this," Willow had said, a disturbed and distraught expression on her face. "This black wing disease. I've never seen it myself, but I remember Silver said once that some Haibane are born with black wings and nobody really knows why. I never heard that it was a sickness -- is it contagious? Will any of the children catch it?"

"Don't think so," Pyre had replied. "He must have been sick for a while now, and none of them have caught it yet. I think that's why he's been hiding in his rooms so much lately."

Rain had been frowning in that usual intense, earnest way that he had when he was looking at a new problem. "You say that this has happened before?" he asked Willow. "I can do research, then -- I can look at the old books in the library, and try to find out what causes it and what the cure is."

"Oh, yes, please do," Willow said, sounding relieved. "In the meantime, what should we do? Should I cook some chicken soup for him -- would that help?"

Pyre shrugged, his own grey wings rustling irritably. "It's worth a try. Drop in on him sometimes, try to cheer him up. Whatever it is, it's getting him down… pretty badly. I'll keep working on him, as well."

They each had promised to do the best they could for Fall -- Rain vowing research, Willow planning special meals and medicinal teas. But Aught couldn't cook as well as the others, and she didn't have access to any special books. So instead she had planned to make wing covers for Fall, to protect them from drafts and chills and to make him feel less self-conscious about the color. Frost had said that they made them every year in the winter, anyway, since most of their clothes didn't cover their wings; this would just be special for Fall, instead of for everybody.

She felt terribly insecure about the workmanship of the gift -- she wasn't much of a sewer. Fall could have done a much better job… but then again, it wasn't like she could have asked him for help on his own gift. Most of the other Haibane knew how to sew to some extent, although none of them were as good as Fall; she'd asked Willow and Bubbles to show her how. She'd always relied on Fall to do her sewing for her, but it was well time that she learned how to do it on her own.

Yes, it was past time she gave something back to the people who always helped her. With that thought in mind, she firmed her resolve and lifted her hand to knock on the door. It was a soft, timid tapping, and for a long time there was no answer. Perhaps he was asleep? If so, she could come back later -- but no, Pyre had said that they shouldn't let Fall sleep all day. He wouldn't be able to sleep at night and that would just make him get sicker. She knocked again, louder this time. 

Finally, Fall's voice came from the other side of the door. "Who is it?" he called out. He sounded tired; maybe he had been asleep after all.

"It's… it's me," she called out. "Can I come in?"

"Oh, Aught," Fall's voice came. "Yes, of course. Come on in."

Aught smiled and reached for the doorknob, but was caught up short when it didn't move. She tried again, a little harder just in case it was stuck, but with the same result. "Um… Fall? Your door is locked."

There was a long silence from the room beyond, before she heard the sound of footsteps on the floorboards. The door chunked and rattled, and then swung open partway. Fall smiled tiredly. "Sorry about that," he said. "I forgot I'd locked it. Is there something I can do for you, my dear?"

"Um…" Aught made slight motions towards the room, until Fall got the idea and moved aside so she could slip in. She didn't know what she'd been expecting to find, but was relieved to see that his bedroom wasn't a mess; indeed, the room was almost painfully neat, with only the bedclothes in disarray. The lights were off and the curtain partially drawn over the window. "I just thought I'd stop by and…" she trailed off, making a gesture in the air with the package.

Fall reached out and plucked the cloth bundle from her hands. "A sewing project?" he asked, folding the paper back around it. "Did you want my help with this? I would, but our big lunk of a housemate said I wasn't to…"

"No -- no, it's finished," Aught said, flushing -- it was kind of amateur-looking, with the stitches still visible around the corners. Like Bubbles had shown her, she'd cut the two pieces of cloth to a shape, sewed them together using an over-and-over stitch and then pulling them inside out to hide the seams. It was the same technique they used to make mittens, but cut in the shape of a wing instead of a hand. "I made it for you. For your wings."

Fall fell silent, his fair hair falling into his face as he bent his head over the gift. Now that he wasn't meeting her eyes, Aught glanced up at his wings, and barely stifled a gasp as she got a clear view of them for the first time.

It was harder to tell in the dim light of Fall's room, but the feathers of his wings from a few inches below the upper ridge to the tips were obviously discolored, stained a dark shade of grey. The remiges, near the bottom of his wings, looked tattered and disarrayed as though they'd been cut at with scissors. Suddenly, Aught thought that Pyre's strange edict that Fall should not be allowed to handle any sewing tools made sense.

"I hope they're the right size," Aught blurted out. "I just thought that i-if -- you know. If you'd feel more comfortable wearing these, maybe you could come down to dinner more often."

"Thank you," Fall said, and he lifted his head to give her a smile. "I appreciate the thought, my dear. Perhaps I'll be down later."

"Really?" Aught's heart lifted. "Then…"

"If you don't mind, I'd like to be alone for now," Fall interrupted her, and he gently took hold of her shoulder and turned her towards his door. "I'm a bit tired, and I'd like to rest for a while."

Reluctantly, Aught allowed herself to be herded out into the hallway. Fall gave her another smile through the doorway, before shutting it gently but firmly behind her. She heard the lock click into place.

She stood there for a long moment in the hallway, then turned slowly away, and wondered how Fall smiling at her like that could make her want to cry. 

---

Rain cracked a jaw-aching yawn, aborting at the last second a move to cover his mouth with his hand. He was still wearing the archivist's glove on that hand, and he didn't particularly want to inhale a mouth full of dust.

He stopped to rub at his eyes with the top of his forearm, then reached over and pulled a fresh sheet of paper towards him. He was exhausted, his head throbbing and his mouth dry with the taste of dust and mildew, and his eyelids seemed to be coated by lead. There were no windows in the archive room, but he could see from the cracks around the doorway that sunlight was beginning to creep into the hallway. Had he really been here all night?

The librarian had been kind enough to grant him full run of the archive rooms, once he'd finished his work for the day. Last night -- no, it was two night ago now -- he'd hunted exhaustively through the archives in search of one obscure tome that all the others seemed to refer back to, hinting about the darker secrets of the Haibane. When at last he'd found it, it had been only to discover that it was written in some language he couldn't read. He'd given up and gone home to bed, exhausted.

The next day he was back in the library, however, afire with determination and convinced he'd seen books written in that language before. He'd finally managed to assemble a working dictionary, and had lost himself in transcribing and translating passages from the ancient tome. Once he'd started, he didn't want to lose his place and have to begin from the beginning again.

And now he was almost done. Fighting the waves of exhaustion that threatened to overtake him, he bent his head and scratched out the rest of the page. As he'd hoped, the ancient book  finally had some of the information about the Haibane that he'd been missing. Perhaps in these pages, he'd finally find the hoped-for key that would tell them how to escape this place.

How old could this tome be? The binding style and ink were completely unlike any of the other books in the library -- even the paper didn't seem quite like real paper. It was practically falling apart as he handled it, despite the protection of the glove and the most delicate motions he could make, and he regretted the loss -- but at last, he found some useful information.

At times,   the book wrote,  the Ash Wings may fall to a moste peculiar Affliction of the Spirit, brought on without Insult or Contagion. That was true enough, Rain thought; none of the other Haibane had become sick.  Under this Malady, the Ash Wing may become lethargic, her Affect moste depressed, and the Colour of her Wings may darken to black. 

That description seemed painfully accurate. In the week since Pyre had explained to them what was going on, Fall had gone into a bleak depression. He had been avoiding the others for some time now already, but since yesterday morning Fall had not even eaten the meals that Aught took up to his door. Everyone was worried, and it was this increasing sense of urgency that had driven Rain back out here at first light this morning (yesterday morning?) to try to find some way to help their friend. Now, at last, they had some real information on the sickness that had overtaken Fall. Rain read on avidly.

The Transformation may be partial or complete,   the old tome wrote, and then diverged into a full page listing different case studies of Haibane who had been affected; some had seen only the edges of their wings turn black, or part of the wing, where others had seen the discoloration spread over the entire surface of both wings. Some had borne the dark wings for years with not much change; for others, it had appeared and then spread frighteningly quickly. Many of the cases seemed anecdotal, a story related by the aunt of a neighbor of a grandmother; apparently not many Haibane had been available at the time the book was being written.  

His attention sharpened again on the word Treatment.  Of treatments,  the unknown author wrote,  there are few. The Feathers cannotte be pluck'd, as they will only grow in a darker Colour than before.  The book then went on to describe a number of different approaches; the wings could be brushed in a medicine distilled from the sap of a certain tree that grew next to the Wall, or else the patient could be fed a mixture of certain herbs culled from the Wood. Both, frustratingly, needed to be harvested in the spring, which was six months away now.

The results of these treatments, when tried on the patients, were mixed. It seemed that some of the Haibane had recovered fully, while others made a partial recovery but then lapsed again. Others showed no improvement at all. Several other remedies were suggested, but the book did not seem very hopeful about their efficacy. Indeed, the entry ended with a chilling warning.

Our gentle Reader would do well to note,   the text wrote, that the Ash Wings are notte as mortal Men, and the Illnesses that afflict them cannotte be encompassed by any mortal Healer's Art. If it be so willed, the Ash Wing will notte thrive, but continue to sicken according to her Destiny. If the Malady cannot yield to your Ministrations…

He was almost at the end of the book. Rain leaned forward, the pen dangling nerveless from his hand, his lips moving as he painstakingly translated his way down the page.. " -- then -- the black Colour will spread throughout her Wings until such time as all are -- " He had to stop to look this word up in the dictionary, and his eyes widened in horror as he found it. " -- necrotic, and the Wings may fall away from the Body --" Rain gasped, jerking back from the book as the horrifying implications sunk in.

That couldn't be true, could it, that the wings would just continue to rot until they fell off! If the wings were gone, then what made them a Haibane anymore? Rain swallowed, and forced himself to bend back to the page. Only a few lines were left.

" -- and -- with the loss of the Wings, and the Halo darkened of its Light, then the Ash Wing herself will…"

The chair banged to the floor, the clatter of wood on stone nearly deafening in the quiet room. The pages of the ancient book flipped and fluttered in the wind of passage, the sheet containing the translation slipping to the floor. The door swung back against the hallway wall, creaking in protest at the force of the slam, but Rain paid it no mind.



-------------------

"Please don't do this," Aught begged him.. "Rain, you'll get hurt!"

At any other time, the tearful tone of her voice and the anxious pleading in her wide green eyes would have melted his heart in an instant. But even as he felt his resolve waver, he squelched it. He had made up his mind what to do and he was going to do it, no matter what anyone said to persuade him otherwise. "I'm not worried about myself," he said. "Somebody has to do something, Aught, we can't just sit around and wait for things to get better on their own. If we don't find a way to get out of here, then Fall will die!"

The ground sloped up steeply below their feet, robbing them both of the breath to argue. They were off the road, climbing a rolling hill covered with unmown meadow grass speckled with a thousand tiny flecks of purple and white. He pushed his bike beside him, instead of riding it; the wire basket was full of his supplies. Aught was able to keep pace beside him, although she'd taken off her skates and carried them now in her hand.

In a way, Rain wished that she hadn't caught up with him on his way to the outer wall. If he succeeded in his plan, he could make his way back to the church and bring the rest of them back. If he didn't succeed… well, he wasn't going to think about that. He had to succeed, that was all.

"Rain, you know we're not allowed to touch the wall," Aught argued desperately. "Look at what happened to Fall. He went into the Western Woods when everybody told him not to, and look at him now. The last thing we need is for you to get sick, too!"

"Everybody knew the Woods were dangerous," Rain said stubbornly. Fall had warned them all, upon his return, of the great evil lurking in the well at the center of the woods, and told them in no uncertain terms to stay away from it. But it had been too late to keep it from affecting him. "The Wall's different. It's here to protect us, everybody says so. I'll be fine."

"That's just it! It's here to protect us from the outside! If you try to cross over the wall, who knows what'll happen?" Rain ignored her, marching along in stubborn silence, so Aught tried another tactic. "You're not the first one to think of it, you know! I heard the story from the man who runs the hotel. When he was a boy, his grandfather told him the story about another Haibane who tried to scale the wall. He couldn't do it, either, and he almost got killed trying!"

"But he didn't die," Rain pointed out. He'd heard the same story around town, although the details had differed slightly depending on who was doing the telling. Some people said that the Haibane boy had been trying to get back to the girl he loved who was outside the Wall; others said that his girlfriend was another Haibane and he did it just to impress her. All the stories agreed that the attempt had been a catastrophic failure. "Besides, he was trying to break down the wall. I'm not going to do that, just climb over it."

"But --"  Aught fell silent, biting her lip, but her expression was cloudy, troubled.

They had reached the Wall.

Although the days had begun to shorten, it was still bright and sunny today with summer's warmth. The stone wall looming up ahead of them seemed to drink up the light and heat and leave the day dim, breathing back cold air into the warm. The collision of heat and cold made the air feel electric, like the sky before a thunderstorm. It somehow did not surprise either of them that the grass and flowers drew back before quite touching the stones of         the wall.

Good,   Rain thought. He wouldn't have to clear much space. He set the kickstand of the bike on the most level ground he could find, and began unloading his supplies from the basket. They included a hammer and chisel, several ells worth of rope, and a clanking handful of long metal staples.

"It's not… not really that high," Rain said, forcing his jaw not to chatter. He'd picked this spot because the ground was the highest here, and the Wall stretched only a dozen or so yards above his head. If he could just place enough of the staples, like rungs of a ladder… Fall or Aught should be able to climb to the top without even needing to touch the wall at all.

"Stay back, Aught, please. I don't want you to get hurt," he told her.

She stamped her foot on the grass, her green eyes blazing with anger. "Rain, you hypocrite! You don't want me  to get hurt --? What about you?"

"I'll be fine," Rain said, clenching his jaw shut. He turned to face the wall, and squared his shoulders. He'd made his decision; he wouldn't back down.

He picked up his hammer and chisel and approached the wall, trying to judge the distances by eye. The edge of the wall overhead eclipsed the sun, casting him into shadow; he looked up the sheer face of it and tried not to quail. This was where the Wall was shortest, but what had looked so short and easy from the distance seemed immeasurably far away from the foot of it. If he got partway up and then lost his grip and fell --

Well, that was what he'd brought the ropes for. Before he could lose his nerve, Rain set the first pivot against the stone surface of the Wall and slammed the hammer against it.

As soon as his hands touched the surface of the wall, a numbing cold spread up from his fingers through his arms. It was far colder than the faint chill of the air could have suggested -- shockingly, unnaturally cold. It was like putting his hands on the pump handle of the well in the dead of winter, when the surface was covered by thick furry frost -- and instead of warming against his skin, it only grew colder the longer he touched it. It stole his breath away, made his hands and arms want to seize up and freeze just from the mere touch.

Ignore it! Keep going!   Rain sucked in a deep breath and forced his arm into motion, drawing his arm back and slamming the hammer forward again. On the third blow the rock cracked, the metal point of the stake driving several inches into the wall, and the small victory galvanized him. He picked up a second staple in hands too numb to feel it, and raised the hammer again.

The freezing cold of the wall was excruciating, freezing and burning all at once -- and now Rain wasn't really sure at all whether it was  cold he felt, or burning hot, the red-hot stovetop that confused the skin at first touch as to whether it was hot or cold. After that, Rain became more and more certain that it was hot after all, a seething white-hot fury concealed behind the stone façade. Agony spread through his hands, his wrists throbbing, up the inside of his arms as though red-hot lead were being poured into his very bones. He had to stop. He had to let go. He had to…

He might well have stopped right then, had he not received a sudden vision -- almost a memory, but more like a certainty --  that he had done something like this not long before. He had reached through a fire, or something like a fire, and it had burned him and hurt him -- but he hadn't given up then, because the thing he was reaching for was far too precious to abandon, because he was reaching for something that was worth all the pain.

And he hadn't let go then, he hadn't given up, and he had reached it… whatever it was, he had accomplished his goal. It would be the same way now, if he just hung on. If he never gave up…

The blows of the hammer rang in his ears, deafening him to the rest of the world. His vision narrowed down to a tunnel, shot with blinding colorless sparks; he could just see his hands, clenched around the iron spike. The pain wasn't so bad anymore; he could barely feel his fingers at all. With immense concentration, forcing each digit to move separately, he shifted; he climbed up on his first stable and hung onto the second by one arm, then reached up to place his third.

Each crash of impact shook his entire body; the crashing sound of the iron spike against rock made a constant din, punctuated by silences. In those silences he began to hear echoes, like the sound of voices overlaid with the chipping of solid stone. He heard schoolchildren laughing and jeering, throwing childish insults that hurt all the same; Bubbles' low and gentle voice, sobbing as if heartbroken.

"I'm a little concerned about your preference for alcohol over food," a voice spoke directly in his ear, and Rain almost turned his head to see the speaker. Despite the chiding words, the tone was warm and wry -- a loving father's voice. Another voice chimed in from the other side; angrier, harsher. "Not in this house! Do you hear me? I won't have that damn garbage in this house! If you want to sleep under this roof, that goes down the toilet right now!"

Aught's voice came to him, calling his name, and there was terror in it -- but she seemed so very far away, and somehow that name didn't seem to belong to him anyway. The last thing he felt was a pair of hands grabbing his ankle, trying to pull him down from his perch -- but then she cried out, and the hands vanished.

It was a battle, now, between him and the Wall -- which of them could last longer. He could almost see it, now, not with his own eyes but with his mind. A towering presence, ageless and inhuman, with the patience of endless years behind it. The Wall had been here for eons before their brief mortal lives intruded into it. The passing of the sun in a year-round cycle was less than a moment to it.

Who had set it to its duty it knew not, but it knew its duties and it kept them: to keep the mortals inside the walls, to keep all others out. To receive, to hold and to keep the memories that were given into it, and to release them at the proper time into nothingness. The wall did not want him to pass. It did not care if it hurt him, not in the way that a human would care. But it could not kill him. It did not have the power to kill, and he could bear anything else that it could throw at him. Others had attempted to best it before, and they had all failed.

But he would not fail.

Faces swam across his vision; young, old, beautiful, homely.  A middle-aged man smiled at him, sandy-haired and with thick spectacles over kindly eyes. A much younger man, not much older than Rain himself; he had fine, handsome features and well-coiffed hair, but something about his expression seemed haughty and self-absorbed. A little girl, burnish-haired and freckle-nosed, smiling a wide gap-toothed smile. None of them faces he knew, yet all of them weirdly familiar somehow.

And then -- Pyre? -- His friend's familiar face appeared, or -- it looked like him, but much older, with laugh lines around the eyes and an unfamiliar scar along the chin. He was dressed in strange clothes, clothes Rain had never seen in this valley, and the black tattoo of a dragon wound around his wrist and hand before disappearing up his sleeve.

His own face, eyes blank, devoid of any human feeling. A black eyepatch slashed across that face, locks of his own brown hair drifting weirdly in the nothingness. Reaching out towards him, hands opened to clutch at his throat.

If you will not yield,  a soundless voice told him, then you must forget.

A bolt of light crashed into him, and in an instant all the voices and faces and all thoughts in his mind fled. All he knew was the whiteness, the infinite light that obliterated all in its path, an expanding bubble of utter nothingness.

And then he fell, and he did not remember when he hit the ground.

Next chapter -->
Incidentally, this is the black-crowned night heron, the bird that's native to the valley.

Comments

[tarmachan]

Quick point out before I rush off to the next part:
"For all that the rolling hills... The road behind him led into town; to the right was the old churchhouse and to the left, more distant farm buildings that Fai<===== had never visited."
:)

Also I've seen one of those herons before! They're pretty.
*on to the next part~*

[mikkeneko]

WHOOPS. /fix

The decision to have the other workers give Kurogane a nickname (and having him haaate it XD) was rather last-minute, but as soon as I saw a picture of that heron I knew I had to work it in somehow. *laugh* Can you imagine a more perfectly Kurogane bird? Well... maybe if its crest feathers were sticking up instead of laid flat. >.>