"/Kamui!/"
Fire surged through him in ceaseless rhythm, in pounding waves of flame...it fell back and then struck again with every beat of his heart. He could feel his pulse all through his body...could feel it outside his body, shaking the air around him....
"He's having another seizure...Miss, stand back."
The rhythm was building toward something, and every breath was pain. He arched against it--he arched against the terrible weight that was holding him down, that pressed him down further into agony....
"Be careful...."
"Don't worry, I've got him."
He couldn't breathe...and then a raw /hurting/ tore through all the muscles of his back, an anguish so much beyond anything he'd felt before in this timeless time of suffering that his mind couldn't even absorb it--and now he really couldn't breathe. Somewhere far away he heard a high-pitched cry that might have been his own.
"Oh, my God...."
There was a sudden rushing sensation, as if he were bleeding, a tremendously painful flood of release...and then he was thrown free, and fell down into a whirling nothingness.
He fell a long, long way, into the breathless dark.
Wings
An "X" fanfic
By Natalie Baan
Part One
He felt very warm...and tired. Kamui opened his eyes. He was in bed, a heavy covering of blankets drawn up over his back. He felt sore where they draped against his skin, and in a moment he'd get up and do something about that. For now, though, it was good simply to lie still, and be awake.
Turning his head very slightly, Kamui found himself staring at his hand, which was resting on the pillow beside his face. Somehow it was really absorbing, just to lie there and look at something as ordinary as that...Kamui frowned. Actually, he thought, flexing his fingers slowly, that feeling of fascination was strange. He felt kind of strange in general...had he been sick?
He had, Kamui decided: although he couldn't remember it clearly, there was the vague impression of feverishness and discomfort. At the moment he felt light, drained, and peculiarly unfocused--definitely not what was normal. The soreness in his back was worse too, now that he'd woken up enough to think about it...and he was /hot./ He wondered if he was over the fever after all.
Clumsily he pushed himself onto his hands and knees. Feeling a bit shaky, he sat back on his heels and shifted his shoulders, trying to shrug the blankets away. He felt dizzy and his balance seemed weirdly off somehow...Kamui shrugged once again, annoyed. Some of the covers had fallen down but something was stuck there, and his back itched in a really irritating way. He twitched and tried to twist around to shove the blankets off, and a great, dark shadow swept up from behind him.
"/WAAAAHH!/"
"/Kamui!/" He heard Sorata but couldn't see the monk at all behind that curving sweep of blackness. Trying to spin around, he got wrapped up in a tangle and fell on his face on the bed. He had too many limbs suddenly--he couldn't tell what were his arms and legs, and what were...he didn't know what. Thrashing, he tried to get himself put back together. He hit something that went "/Oof!/" with Sorata's voice, but he felt that blow in a place where he'd never felt anything before and pain shot down from somewhere and jolted across his back...he cried out again. He tore free of what he was wrapped in--he sat up, flailing and frantic--
"Kamui!"
Something grabbed him and he froze absolutely still. That had been Subaru's voice, raised as he'd only heard it raised once before, deep in the bottom of his heart.../Subaru./ He could feel firm hands grasping...not his wrist, but...Kamui turned his head. Shocked, he stared at the huge, black arch of wing that jutted, half-open, from behind him. He began to tremble, wanting to fight, to try to break away from this...this...but Subaru was holding onto the wing, and if he moved, he might hurt Subaru. He stayed perfectly stiff and motionless instead, although he could feel something starting to ache...there.
This just wasn't happening.
"Sora-chan?" The voice was Yuzuriha's. Sorata sprawled on the floor in a corner, half-propped against the wall, and the girl was bending over him quizzically. Slowly the monk sat up, moving his head from side to side as if it hurt. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah." Sorata's eyes wandered disconnectedly around the room until they located Kamui, and then he grinned. "Man! You've got some kind of knock-out punch!" He gave Kamui a somewhat shaky thumbs-up sign and began to get to his feet, helped by Yuzuriha and Arashi. "Ow...my head hurts," the monk muttered in a stage whisper. "Miss, will you kiss it and make it better?"
"No," Arashi answered promptly, removing her hand from his arm. "But Inuki might, if you ask nicely."
Baffled, Sorata stared after the priestess as she turned and walked toward the bedroom door. "Huh? Did Miss just make a joke or something?" He looked back at Yuzuriha, who was stifling a giggle with one hand, cat ears twitching.
Inuki just seemed confused.
"Kamui. Are you all right?"
Kamui caught his breath. He'd been focusing his attention on the others, on the comfortingly normal teasing that went on all the time between them, and trying as hard as he could not to think about what had just happened to him. Reluctantly he looked at Subaru instead. "Yeah."
Subaru ran one hand up the edge of the wing, slowly. "Can you feel that?"
He did feel it, a cool, familiar touch. "Yeah...." Subaru pulled gently, and Kamui tensed, frightened of losing his balance again. He tried to hold the wing rigid, but it ached, and he could feel muscles in his shoulder starting to tremble violently with the effort not to move--
"Relax," Subaru told him, that soft voice flat and calm as it usually was, as if nothing at all was the matter. "Stretch." Surprised, Kamui obeyed. As he unclenched himself, Subaru walked backwards, drawing the wing out to its full length, and as the wing extended the tension in it and in Kamui's shoulder mercifully faded away. Relieved, Kamui breathed deeply, then looked with horror at that huge, angular expanse of taut, black skin and projecting bone. Even though they were in one of the enormous bedrooms of the Imonoyama mansion, it reached nearly all the way to the wall.
If he /had/ to have wings, why did they have to be so damn big?
"Now, the other way," Subaru instructed. He pushed lightly against the wing, and with that pressure as a guide Kamui found he was able to pull the wing back with relative ease. He drew it all the way in, and with a touch or two from Subaru to help arrange it, he folded it neatly behind him. "Good," the onmyouji said. He stepped up onto the bed behind Kamui, running his fingers down the wing and then across Kamui's back as he did so, sending an involuntary shiver across Kamui's skin. He knelt down behind Kamui, placing his hand on the other wing, just above the shoulder. "Now, this one." Slowly Kamui stretched that wing out, and then folded it as well. It was easier, having already done that once; he was starting to make sense of the way things felt and moved.
"See, it's like your hand," Subaru explained. For him, it was being unusually communicative. The onmyouji traced his hand upward along the line of the wing. "This part of the leading edge is like your wrist." He stood up on the mattress and walked around to Kamui's front. "This is a thumb," Subaru went on, reaching up and hooking a finger gently under the claw-like protrusion on the top of the wing, "and then the rest of the leading edge is like a long finger. The other bones are fingers too; they have joints, and you can bend them." Kamui blinked, and looked at the wing again. He tried flexing it slightly, curling those "fingers" inward--and it was a lot like moving a hand, only a hand much, much bigger than any hand should be. Cautiously he curved the right wing forward, half-circling himself and Subaru, and then shifted it back behind himself again. "That's it," the Sumeragi murmured encouragingly.
"Wow!" Yuzuriha had abandoned Sorata to come over and watch the proceedings, and for some reason she looked impressed. "That's so cool! Subaru-san, how do you know so much about this kind of thing?"
"I...had an interest, once." Kamui saw the brief hint of aliveness which had come over Subaru's face fade away, and he felt a pang, so fierce that it surprised him. Subaru stepped down off the bed, those green eyes dulled again.
"Subaru...."
Arashi had been speaking to someone outside the room. She stepped back now, distracting Kamui's attention, as the person she'd been talking to leaned in through the door. It was Nokoru Imonoyama; he smiled at Arashi in a way that made Sorata sigh noisily, before his gaze traveled across the room to settle on Kamui. The most extraordinary look lit up his face. "Amazing!" he exclaimed, his entire being seeming almost to glow with an instant, brilliant smile of wonder and delight. Nokoru had the bluest blue eyes that Kamui had ever seen--and Kamui realized abruptly that he himself was sweaty, rumpled, and wearing nothing but an old pair of pyjama bottoms. And had a giant set of demonic-looking wings growing out of his back, too...damn it, why did the Imonoyama always have to look so perfect? Kamui hugged one arm defensively across his chest and scowled down at the bed.
"Ah...I just wanted to make sure that everything was all right," Nokoru said, somehow managing to mix cheerfulness and courteous apology in near-flawless measure in his tone. He was nice, too; it was hard to stay properly angry when he was around. Kamui frowned miserably at a fold of blanket. "We've all been worried about you.... Say, is it all right if I let Akira up here with some dinner?" Nokoru smiled even more brightly, if that was possible. "He's been desperate to feed you for the past two days, but of course you've been unconscious."
Two days--had he really been out for that long? And the others had been taking care of him during all that time...Kamui drew a surprised breath, then ducked his head in embarrassment and shame. They'd been put to so much trouble just on his account and now he was being a jerk to them again.
"Yeah," he mumbled gracelessly. "That'd be great...thanks."
"Anyone else hungry?" Nokoru asked.
"Mm!" Yuzuriha said. "And maybe we could get something to make Sora-chan's head feel better, too!"
"Oh?" The Imonoyama glanced curiously at Sorata. "What happened to it?"
"He broke it," Arashi murmured under her breath, her voice holding the faintest edge of sarcasm. Sorata looked profoundly wounded.
"The only thing broken here's my heart," he declared. "Miss, you could be more sympathetic toward your future lover." Nokoru's silvery laugh covered over whatever Arashi might have been going to reply, which probably was a fortunate thing.
"Come on, Sorata-san. Maybe we can find something for your heart as well." Taking Sorata by the arm, Nokoru looked kindly back at Kamui. "Why don't we all give Kamui a little while to rest? Kamui, we'll be back when the food arrives."
"Um, yeah." He watched the others start to file out. Sorata was making sad eyes at Arashi as Nokoru ushered both of them from the room, and Arashi in turn ignored the monk completely. Yuzuriha waved to Kamui, holding the door open for Inuki to leave, and then skipped out herself. As the door swung shut behind her Kamui sighed and let himself slump, relieved to have some peace and quiet at last.
"Are you tired?"
Kamui started at that sound. He looked back over his shoulder, flicking one wing awkwardly out of the way, and saw Subaru leaning up against the bedroom wall. The Sumeragi hadn't left with the others, and Kamui found himself strangely glad: there was something about Subaru's presence that he found...different. Different from anyone else's. It made him feel both anxious and relaxed at the same time, heartbreakingly sad and yet also mysteriously, deeply joyful. He never knew quite what to say to the onmyouji's constant pain, and yet he felt as though some part of it lived inside his heart as well, the echo that was his own crushing loss. And that they shared this thing, terrible though it was...somehow it made him happy.
He didn't understand it at all.
"I'm tired of being in this bed," he said irritably. "I want to get up for a while." He crawled down to the foot of the mattress, and Subaru stepped quickly around to stand in front of him, holding out one hand as if to help. Kamui stopped and stared.
"You'll be weak, after the fever," the Sumeragi explained, "and also, with the wings your sense of balance will have changed. It may be that you'll have to learn to walk all over again."
Kamui recoiled in dismay, pulling away from Subaru. "I'm fine!" he insisted, getting up to his knees. He gestured widely with the arm that he'd been using to prop himself up with. "See?" Kamui wobbled, and then to his mortification he started to tip over. He spread out his wings in alarm, which only changed the direction of his fall. Windmilling his arms and flailing his wings, he began to topple headlong from the mattress--and his fall was arrested halfway as he fell into Subaru's arms. He found himself leaning sharply forward off the bed, tilted at a nearly impossible angle, with his arms locked around Subaru's body and his face mashed into Subaru's chest.
Not for the first time in Kamui's life, he wished that he could die from sheer embarrassment.
* * * * *
Kamui reached the far end of the bedroom. He made the turn with care and began walking slowly back the way he'd come. He almost was steady on his feet by then: just once he wavered, staggering to the left in a single small hop, before he was able to shift the wing on the other side down to compensate and regain his balance. The more he practiced, the easier it became to control the wings, until he very nearly didn't have to think about it at all. They were becoming a part of his sense of himself, as though they were something that he'd been born to possess.
Somehow, thinking about that didn't improve his mood.
As he passed by the bedroom door, he paused. For a moment he'd heard a voice lifted in the sitting room outside. He hesitated, then turned to the door and cautiously opened it a few inches. The soft murmur of conversation halted as he looked out.
"Kamui, you're looking so much better this morning! Did you sleep well?" Yuzuriha was curled up on the corner of the couch closest to the door; it had been her voice that he'd heard above the rest. She scrambled to her knees immediately and leaned forward over the arm to inspect him. "I was starting to think you weren't ever going to get up!" Maybe, Kamui thought, he shouldn't have...he glanced past Yuzuriha's cheerful smile. At the far end of the room Sorata was hunched over a game board of some kind, his nose practically touching the pieces and an expression of fiercely absorbed calculation on his face. Arashi, facing him across the board, turned only her head to look at Kamui, her dark eyes serene and unreadable. Kamui flinched from her gaze. He looked instead at Seiichirou, who was sitting at the opposite end of the couch from Yuzuriha. The man smiled gently, and then went back to trying to poke a piece of thread through the eye of a sewing needle. Kamui watched him, bemused.
"...for lunch. Oh! and then, because it's such a beautiful day, afterwards we thought you might want to go outside for a while," Yuzuriha was bubbling onward, scarcely stopping to catch a breath. "But Kamui, with your wings, none of your old shirts will fit! So Aoki-san and I thought we could help you--he sews really well, once his needle's threaded!" Seiichirou readjusted his glasses with pleased embarrassment and jabbed more decisively at the needle's eye.
"HAH!" Sorata broke in dramatically. He made a bold move on the game board, then leaped to his feet and posed, the light of a rising sun seeming briefly to blaze at his back. "And with my cunning strategy, Miss is now completely at my mercy! Ahahahaha!" Holding up an admonishing finger, he winked at the Hidden Priestess. "If you're wishing you could join the sewing circle and avoid your destined fate, it's too late now!"
"I don't like to sew," Arashi said, and she shifted one of her pieces a single square over to the left. Sorata looked down at the board again.
He immediately began to sweat.
Yuzuriha had been fumbling in the cushions at her side. She found what it was she'd been looking for and held it up. As she shook out the roll of cloth, making her sewing needle dance merrily on the end of its thread, it became obvious that what she was holding had been one of Kamui's shirts. "We made slits in the back for the wings," she explained, pointing them out, "and then we put fastenings on the tops so they wouldn't flop apart." She pulled one slit open with a scratchy, tearing sound. "See?" she said enthusiastically, her cat ears poking out--"It's Velcro!" She looked at Kamui and the ears went down again.
"Um...Kamui?"
Kamui shut the door on all of them. Turning, he stalked across the bedroom to the window. The long, sweeping curtains had been drawn almost closed, but a narrow gap in their folds let a thin slash of brilliance fall into the room. Inching one curtains a little further open, Kamui stared out blindly, seeing nothing but a blur of golden sunlight and the green, shifting patterns of the wind-stirred leaves.
Damn it.
Damn it all to hell....
He heard the door ease softly open and then close once again. /Get out,/ he thought, but didn't say the words...because the room still was silent behind him, the only sound being a whisper of footsteps so quiet as to be almost imagined, the only presence which disturbed the emptiness being one that was so familiar, so oddly gentle....
"What is it, Kamui?"
Subaru...he must have been in the sitting room also, somewhere out of the angle of Kamui's sight. Kamui shut his eyes and gritted his teeth. "These wings,"he began in a whisper, then blurted out-- "I hate them!" Immediately he wished he hadn't said that.
"Why?" Subaru's voice was level and without expression, as neutral as an unruffled sheet of water. The question hardly seemed to move the air of the room.
"They're...they're ugly," Kamui stuttered. He felt more embarrassed and confused with every word that came out of his mouth. "They're.../naked/." That wasn't what he meant at all, but at the same time the explanation held a kind of truth. Saying it like that sounded stupid, though. Kamui ducked his head. He pressed his face against the curtain, his fingers clenching the edge of the rich cloth, and for a terrible second he saw an involuntary mental image of Fuuma, his mirror and twin star. He saw the grand arch of feathered wings that were white, purest white, like an angel's, and he wished--
--he wished--
"You don't like your wings, because they make you different."
Kamui's eyes flew open. Frozen except for a single caught breath and the sudden, rapid flutter of his pulse, he stared out of the window at the restless trees. From somewhere behind him, invisible, Subaru went on:
"No person wants to be different from everyone else. To be thought of as strange.... Even to be special--although people think they'd like to be like that, the ones who are special want nothing more than to be the same as all the other, ordinary people. To be the same as everybody else.
"Kamui, everyone's different. Everyone has things inside that they think aren't like what other people have: things which frighten them, and which they don't want anyone to see. So they hide by pretending on the surface to be normal, or by struggling to seem special and to be admired by others. No matter how much they deny it, though, even to the point of denying it to themselves, that doesn't change the fact of who they are.
"And for you, Kamui...it's just that you can't pretend anymore."
Kamui ground his forehead against the rough silk brocade of the curtain. He would not...he wouldn't cry.
How did the onmyouji always know what to say to him, in order to throw the realities that Kamui wanted to escape into such clear light?
"I don't think your wings are ugly at all," Subaru murmured then. "After all, they're just another part of you."
Kamui's aching heart faltered for an instant. He drew a sharp and startled breath. The harsh light of truth, and then this other light, no less true and yet so different: that simple honesty which made something in Kamui want to cry out with delight, a high, wild cry....
"Thanks," Kamui whispered awkwardly, fumbling after control of himself.
He didn't want Subaru to think he was a total idiot.
"And as for not having feathers," Subaru went on almost conversationally, "if you think about it, it'll make the wings easier to keep clean. There's nothing to trap dirt or pests. They won't get waterlogged, either, the way feathered wings can unless you preen and oil them all the time...these will be very convenient, actually, for wings."
Kamui straightened up, a little bit surprised. He'd never thought of it that way. He glanced at the dark fall of wing to his left, then dipped the wing down slightly to look over it at Subaru. The onmyouji stood a few steps back and to one side, just at the edge of the curtain's shadow. The golden line of sunlight fell a little in front of his feet. In the dimness, his face was as serious and remote as ever, but he watched Kamui steadily, an unwavering look from a very long way away, as if the things that Kamui felt might matter somewhat, even against the weight of endless sorrow.
As if a stone had fallen into that vast gulf which divided him from the world.
Kamui turned slowly and carefully, a half turn, then flicked the wing behind himself. Subaru's gaze came to rest on his face. Kamui looked into the dark green eyes and wondered if what he thought that he'd seen could be so, or if he were only wishing...wondered if it were possible that he might be something more to Subaru than just "what was there"....
And why the hope of that one thing would make him so frightened and so happy, at the same time.
Subaru's eyes did not flicker with the slightest emotion as he remarked quietly, "There's another advantage too." Kamui blinked and refocused, trying to find his place in the conversation. "Compared to a bird's wings, this type is much more flexible. It means that you can fly at very low speeds--and also, you'll be extremely maneuverable in flight."
Confounded, Kamui could only stare at the Sumeragi blankly.
"Flight...?"
* * * * *
"Kaichou, are you sure this is a good idea?" Nokoru flapped a hand at his second-in-command absently, his eyes fixed on the slender, dark-winged figure poised at the edge of the mansion's roof. Suoh sighed and glanced toward Akira. They'd seen their fearless leader like this many times before, riveted to the object of his attention with complete disregard for all other considerations. At least this time, Suoh thought, there wasn't any immediate danger to Nokoru himself.
Provided that Kamui didn't fall on him, of course.
"Wonderful," Nokoru was murmuring with excitement, speaking half to himself, "...oh, Kamui's so lucky! Doesn't it make you want to go hang-gliding again?"
"We will, Kaichou," Akira said reassuringly. "We'll go again soon, I'm sure. For now, though, we can just be happy for Kamui, right?" He smiled at Suoh, and Suoh maintained a neutral expression, keeping his own counsel as to the wisdom of letting the "Kamui" of the Dragons of Heaven launch himself from the roof of a three-story building...and a particularly tall three-story building, too.
And Nokoru had pulled his fan out from somewhere, Suoh noticed.
Somehow that made him nervous, even now.
On the roof of the Imonoyama mansion, Kamui narrowed his eyes against the sunlight's glare. The wind had picked up; it came in under his half-furled wings and threatened to lift him from his feet. He tried to curl his toes around the gutter's edge, but without much success...maybe he shouldn't have worn shoes.
Well, it was too late now.
Precariously regaining his balance, he looked down at the knot of people waiting in the mansion's yard. He hadn't really wanted a cheering section for this...he could see Sorata, Yuzuriha, and Seiichirou holding little flags--where the heck had they gotten those from?--which they began to wave the instant that they noticed him looking. Glancing up, Arashi shaded her eyes with one hand; the other, half-hidden in the folds of her skirt, held...yes, a flag. Kamui blinked. Karen, who'd managed to steal a little time off from work and as usual had taken her seat high in the branches of a convenient tree, waved and blew a kiss.
Everyone was looking at Kamui. His wings twitched.
It wasn't that he was scared there'd be a disaster. From this small distance above the ground he could save himself with his own powers if something went wrong and the wings didn't work as they should. Although it would be embarrassing, that wasn't why he was wishing so fiercely that this could have been done without any people watching...no, it was because he was scared to death of what he knew this day meant. It was a step from which there could be no turning back. To fly was to lay claim to his wings and to all they signified: to all that made him different and set apart from everyone else. And although it was true, as Subaru'd said, that trying to pretend was pointless...still, a part of him wanted very badly to pretend.
It was stupid, and he knew it. Everyone here had been good to him. They'd stuck by him through those difficult times, and not one had ever seemed the least bit put off by his wings or by any of the other parts of being "Kamui." /These/ people wouldn't turn against him, even knowing the truth of what he was, and although everything that he'd ever experienced was telling him otherwise...
...somehow he had to keep on believing in that.
Swallowing hard against remembered pain and loss, he gazed up unseeingly toward the sky. Fuuma...had his wings come out, too? Were they the same as Kamui had seen them in dreams--as he saw them in his mind's eye now, a beautiful white sweep like the wings of a swan?
There was that feeling, Kamui discovered to his shame, that recurring feeling.
Envy.
He closed his eyes.
How much of what he'd felt toward Fuuma had been envy all along? How much had come from longing to be what he'd thought the other was? A happy, friendly child with an unbroken family, a mother, a father, and a sister. A family that always had seemed to love each other so much....
A family that always had been admired.
/Look at the father,/ other people in the neighborhood had said, /so kind and conscientious. Look at the mother: so beautiful, so affectionate with her children, so devoted to the members of her family./ And the children themselves, those caring, generous, goodnatured children, those children who were adored by all who knew them--
--who had been his friends--
--and then later, meeting them again and seeing them so completely unchanged, still so kind and welcoming to him, even when he'd tried desperately to push them away and protect their little world.... It /hurt,/ not only the terrible memories but also the realization that there had always been that stain on what he'd felt for them: that even when he'd loved them he had wanted to have what they had, that perfect, blameless life. To be so happy and secure that one could afford to give a little bit of that happiness away.
To be so kind that one could even be good to a fatherless, outcast boy.
But...it had all been a lie.
Behind the glorious white wings there had been the shadow of blood and death.
Behind the masquerade of a happy family, secrets and tragedy.
The world he'd wanted to protect had destroyed itself in the end--everything that its members had hidden had flowed out like a tide, devouring what he'd thought to be true. No one had even seen the darkness hiding behind that mask. From that dream of a normal life, only Kotori had been real--only she had worn her flaws openly, being nothing other than what she seemed. The silliness, the cowardice, the weak heart...they had all been real.
And so had her kindness.
Tears stung at the back of Kamui's eyes, but he would not cry. Not now, at least. Later, though, when all of this was finished....
Maybe then.
"Kamui!" Looking down, he spotted the Imonoyama standing on the roof of one of those long, black cars of his. Nokoru was wearing sunglasses against the afternoon's brightness, and in one hand he brandished a fan. "Are you ready!"
"Yes!" Kamui's eyes snapped forward instantly and he put everything else out of mind. He'd do this quickly, quickly enough that he wouldn't be able to stop in time, that he wouldn't be able to think.... Half-crouching, he unfurled his wings a little, already feeling the air moving around him, trying to carry him from his stance. He took a last, deep breath then, and leaped out from the roof, springing out as far as he could jump...
...he spread his wings...
...and the wind took him, and lifted him, and he was flowing over the top of it, a movement as fluid and easy as the current of a river. He could feel on every inch of his wings the sensation of that movement, the liquid shift and play of living air. Shivering, he shifted their angle just a bit, keenly aware of the wind swirling across all that skin, feeling the tiny whorls that formed as the shape of wing against air changed, and then the resistance that slowed his glide, letting him slip very gradually lower as he lost speed. He could feel everything, every touch, every slight variation in the consistency and direction of the air, and it all made /sense/--
The first trees at the end of the yard were coming up--not as quickly as they had been, now that he'd slowed down, but still growing nearer and higher. Eying that shrinking distance with care, Kamui raised his wings into the wind's push, then abruptly swept them forward and down. A rowing stroke, as the Imonoyama had instructed him in their long, long talk about the mechanics of flying, and miraculously his wings cupped the air and caught it, lifting him higher into that rushing stream. Taking another stroke, and another, finding the rhythm of it now, he watched those trees begin slowly but easily falling away below. There was an endlessly open, forever higher place up there above him; he was climbing on steps of air, going further above the ground with every beat; he was /flying/ and it was...wonderful.
/Wonderful./
He didn't want it ever to stop.
Dimly against the rush of wind he heard distant, shouting voices. He was reaching the edge of the mansion's grounds. Remembering more of what he'd been told, he dipped one wing sharply, changing arch and direction, and feeling the rightness of the motion as much in his body's stretch and the dance of the wind against him as in anything that his mind had merely learned. He swept into a turn--no, not so tight, he realized, feeling the air threaten to cut out from beneath the smaller surface that his angled wings presented. He evened their slant out hastily, wobbling before he found the balance point. There...that was better. Now the breeze was at his back and it hurried him toward the mansion again: faster than before, but without so much lift. He glided along with it, wings stretched out wide. The wind carried him forward and also down at a very slight angle; and now he could see small figures coming into view, jumping and cheering....
He curved into another turn--shallower at this end, because he didn't have the height he'd had before or that headwind to sustain him. His gaze leaped from person to person as he swung around the yard and then began stroking with his wings once again, reclaiming height. His eyes skipped over those excitedly waving arms and delighted faces, and instead hunted the corners of the yard, urgently searching...searching....
There...in the shade of the trees, barely visible beneath the lowest fringe of branches and leaves, a figure was standing up against a slender trunk. That person leaned forward just a little as Kamui swept past, following the line of his flight. The face came into view, its green eyes fixed on Kamui, leaf shadow and the glimmer of the sun's rays patterning it, but also something more...a slight change of expression there, slight but unmistakable, a lightening into what was very near to being a smile....
Suddenly Kamui found that he was intensely, perfectly happy. Spreading his wings, he kicked himself higher into the shining air.