[ Memories ] Edo Lullaby

The sharp lingering song of a shamisen cuts through the room, only to be viciously extracted by a change of note. A goze sits still before it, her voice as haunting as any siren to graze the waters of Kina.

Enters the bold laughter of men and women, drunken on shochu; a rough, earthy beverage that seemed staple on the island more so than sake. Armor is discarded to the sea-kissed floors and the slaves, shackled in chains blessed with a reinforcing spell, are swift to tidy after their masters. They gather round the tables, singing of allegiances and good faith.

She steps from the stairwell, quiet on bare soles. Her kimono bunched up above her ankles as she snuck toward the shadow. Prevalent was the scar on her face, the ink-black ribbons of hair that trailed behind her. Yet not so much as the smile that curls her lips as she looks toward the entrance to the kitchens. The servants see her but they do not acknowledge the ghost of a woman that moves past.

In this solitude, she rummages through the cupboards, all to find a large bottle in which the uncorks and clumsily pours herself a cup. A sweet, peach wine reserved for their most esteemed guests — a drink more than suited for a princess.

A rough graze of elbow to nose was enough to cause her to startle. Splashes of liquor leap from the bottle into loud splats onto the floor and in thin trickles down the neck in between her fingers. Her head whips around to a man she had never seen before. As ships passing through the night, his presence is alarming and thus she is brought to pause.

He steps back and immediately places a hand over the offended facial feature. "Do you always greet guests with violence?"

The light from the flames beneath the ovens danced like wild stallions in the field of his irises. His blonde hair a stark contrast to the dim, dark gloom of the island. As if he were born from the very sun she so longed to touch her skin where all around her was endless storm.

"Yes. I do," she replies, taking a cautious sip of the sweet pink wine. Her eyes never unlocking from his own as she stares him down. A chill befitting of the clear glint of ocean in which she glared from. "Especially those who find it sensible to approach me so close from behind."

After all, she was a princess.

"It is not in my duty to appease the filthy pigs my father brings to our home."

"Is that so?"

His charm was not lost, even amidst his surprise of her answer.

"Were you not unaware of your surroundings?"

The bottle is set down onto the counter and she crosses her arms with a roll of her eyes. There is a twitch of her lip and a light flush upon her cheeks as she realizes her absent-mindedness. "I was very much aware, thank you," she blurts, quick to respond to what she took as accusation. Even if it was by no means true.

"And bold of you to call me a pig, don't you know who I am, princess?"

For him to say such things and continue to beam such a smile at her was a potion that left nausea sitting in the pit of her stomach. His presence was despicable as it was insulting.

"And don't you know who I am?" She chides, eyes narrowing further in her contempt. "You were invited into my home after all."

His voice rings out in hearty laugh. "If you say you were, then you were."

There was nothing left to say to him but to deliver a scowl back at his laughter. She despised him more and more by the minute. But at least he admitted she was right despite the lie within it.

"You're my future wife, are you not?"

His words stun her and for just a moment, the beating heart in her chest flutters and eyes widen ever so slightly. Freedom seemed as thought it were within her fingertips and all she had to do was grasp it. Even so, a spark of caution struck her back into reality.

"Am I? I doubt my father would give me away so easily," she says, leaning back onto her hands. "What is so special about what you bring by wedding me that rises above even my worth?"

An army of men who would bring down gods? Gold enough to fill the pockets of every corridor in the castle? She could guess but none of them ever seemed to be worth her hand.

"There is nothing I can bring that rivals your worth. You are as beautiful as you are capable - however - I can offer you the world."

He bows then, obnoxiously so, with a hand behind his back and kneeling to the ground. "None of the material things that I could offer could match watching the sunset from our bed chambers."

The noble bend of the knee, words sweet and bold enough to tickle her ears pink. Her eyelids lower just above a perse gaze bent on luring him in with her own charm.

"You must be quite the conqueror," she lulls, "to offer the world as if it were your own."

But Ren had no patience for entertaining courtship unless her freedom was guaranteed. Many lords had tried to take her and all had been denied such a luxury. Whether it be through her own denials or that of her father.

"I know little about what goes on outside of this island but I've never heard of a man quite like you."

It was enough to make her laugh, and so she did in a soft breath with a derisive smile.

"No whispers of your name has passed into these halls. No titles befitting you. Nor any claims of land."

She leans off the counter behind her, reaching and lowering herself down towards his face. Breath just a small breadth away from the shell of his ear. The soft perfume of a garden of ashes and roses lingering so close between them. "Since I know you're not the emperor," she murmurs, fingers pressing cold into the sides of his face. "I'd suggest you tell me the truth before you lack a mouth to speak." Nails trail faint red marks in their path where decay was bound to follow. It was a shame to ruin such a handsome face. But with a skilled healer and a bit of glamour, it might just be saved.

There is silence that follows her statements, his gaze never straying as she moves to grace him with the soft of her touch. He dares to lean into it; his own hand rising to graze her neck. A mock warning and a challenge.

"It might as well be my own." His eyes alight with mischief, "I am one of a kind, there is no other man like me."

His fingers stray from her neck as his other hand aims to wrap around the slender of her wrist.

His touch sears into her skin like hot iron. A burning flush of scarlet spreading over her flesh. Her heart thrums and she shudders with a hiss as she is left utterly breathless. Emotions course through her like wildfire and the only one she can identify is fear.

There is no decay that follows, his skin burning with pain he's long since learned to ignore when it was this much. He is unmarred, hands calloused from incessant training. "So tell me, are you seeking to ruin my mouth with the sweetness of your kiss?"

Terrified of the unknown that presented himself before her. She goes to step back but she is a rose caught within the very embrace that threatened to reduce her to ashes.

He would not move from his knees, his grip rather loose and a smirk adorning petal pink lips.

Her trembling fingers once pressed rough into his face drift into a gentleness unbecoming of the executioner she was. In hushed tone, she offers him a question:

"What are you?"

The flush of her cheeks only serves to widen the arrogant sneer that seemed so soft against the femininity of his features.

"I am yours, if you'll have me." Without even skipping a beat.

There was no hesitation on his part and he stays ever still on the ground, molten gaze staring into her astonished iridescence. The moment is quiet, but the air is still electric all the same.

The storm that brewed in the tight space between them pushed and pulled her desire, crashing into her in violent waves.

Wanting and yet not wanting.

With all the years she had longed to touch. What knelt before her could not have been any less than divine. It was as though he were sent by Izanagi himself; with flesh immune to the disease of death that the commanded with her magic.

And yet she despised him so.

The bottom of her lip retreats, bitten behind her unease. Her breath falters with an indistinct shake of her head. Fear and anticipation twists within her core. A disgust tries to pry its way onto her expression but it falls short behind brows tilted back and a slight collapse of her posture, drawing her closer to him.

“I don’t want you,” she says softly, pitch shrinking into a whisper. “I just want to be free.”

A short laugh as her ghostly pain nestles at the base of his neck - a brand.

"Then, just take my hand and trust in me."

There is a flinch of her fingers, slightly closed into her cool palms as she slips them off his flesh. The surface of his skin was not grey, nor cracked into dust. Only but a slight blush of irritation resided. And that, too, would soon fade.

She feels her insides churn and her vision clouds dark around its edges. It was now that she noticed the incessant pounding of her heart thrum in her ears. Her breath releases itself from her hold, sharp and shaken.

Without a word, one of her hands finds itself towards his own.

Trust.

It was a word she had heard more often than her own name. It was a word that failed her more times than she could bother to remember.

And yet fingertips slide slow and hesitant across the surface of his palm.