by Carly Chase
“Anya, if you want this, I’m yours. I’ve always been yours. It’s been agony to be with you, knowing we are supposed to be together, but that you couldn’t see it. Destiny does guide us on some things, and love is one. I can’t say what else you are supposed to do in this world, but my people know our true loves on sight, and you are mine.”
Her mind raced, there in the arms of this incredible man from another world, hearing that she was the one he’d been waiting for his whole life.
All those bad dates, all those lukewarm relationships, it never felt right because the man who was meant for me was in another dimension… And who in New York could compete with the leader of the tiger clan?
She almost laughed at the thought, in fact the sheer joy she was feeling was making her a little delirious. She had traveled further than anybody, to a strange and alien place, and yet here, in this little shack with this supernatural being kissing her neck and stroking her face, suddenly something made sense for once.
“I love you too,” she said breathlessly, knowing he would understand.
He let out a little cry of emotion before returning his mouth to hers, there was no need for more words now, everything was laid bare.
As he entered her for the first time, his mouth muffling her cry of pleasure, his hands holding down her wrists above her head, Anya’s swimming mind registered a truth that she’d never thought of before. That for all that people in her world valued experience in a lover, it was passion that really mattered. In his certainty that this was right, that destiny itself had brought them to this moment, Kiba moved confidently and powerfully, thrilling at every new sensation, his nerves on fire and his instincts driving him. In the way he made love to her, Anya felt him communicating everything – how hard it had been to restrain himself and wait for her, how strong his devotion to her was, and also, that he was not just a man but a powerful force of nature.
His arms now wrapped around her, holding her tightly as he increased his power and pace, she scratched at his back and bit his shoulder. She’d forgotten that her shield spell would stop it from hurting him, it was just what she needed to do as he drove her closer and closer to a climax that was already making her legs and feet spasm and shake. Her racing thoughts were gone, only the intensity of the feelings in her body and her heart were left in her experience now, and it was euphoric and liberating.
She would remember the bellowing cry he let out as he reached his moment of release for a long time to come, echoing around the room as his powerful body shuddered and Anya clung to him, her own body also being wracked by the most intense and prolonged climax she had ever known.
It was likely that almost everybody in the village would remember that sound too.
Chapter 14
When the sun rose this time, Anya found herself naked, her back pressed against Kiba’s sleeping body, and his arms protectively wrapped around her, just as they had been when she’d drifted off to sleep. There was no denying that things had changed, but it all felt so right that she was more content than she could ever remember feeling.
Lying there beside him, feeling his hot breath on the back of her neck, she wondered what it all meant.
I was just expecting my destiny here to reveal itself at some point, and it did. But no, I can’t have subverted the laws of time and space to get here just to get a boyfriend – there must be more to my connection to this place than just me and Kiba. I wouldn’t have these powers if I was just here because me and my destined love were accidentally born in different dimensions or whatever… Destined love! I’m starting to even sound like a yokai in my own thoughts!
She believed at least that part of what the yokai believed about destiny now though, as she felt Kiba stir behind her, kissing her neck as he awoke.
After they had both bathed at the hot spring, Kiba and Anya split up to go and speak to the other odd couple in the village. Kiba had said he needed to discuss some clan related matters with Ikari, and so Anya decided it was a good time to go and see Yuki-Shiro – armed with brushes and ink.
Sakura was on her way out of their house when Anya arrived, and greeted her with a warmer smile than usual and a hug.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Anya asked, expecting Sakura to know exactly what she meant.
“When you first woke up here, he asked for my advice. I see that it worked, you look quite radiant!”
“But how did you know we… Sorted things out?”
“Oh, when you get to my age, you can just tell when people are in love. Also, kitsune have sharp ears.”
Anya’s cheeks burned. Well, at least there would be no need to make an announcement.
“Is it OK if I go and see Yuki-Shiro? I want to try some stuff out with my pictures with her.”
“Sure, sure – she’s just inside, probably still looking at yet more swatches of fabric for her wedding dress. You’ll be practically sisters soon so there’s no need to be so formal!”
That’s… True. Does that mean everyone will be expecting Kiba and I to marry quickly too? That idea could take some getting used to after only one night… And this morning...
She waved goodbye to Sakura, and went inside, calling out to let Yuki-Shiro know she was there.
“Anya! I was hoping you’d come over – I want to hear all the gossip! I mean, Ikki is the best and all but everybody’s kinda wondered what Kiba would be like – he’s so strong and serious and gorgeous...”
Yuki-Shiro was in her fox-girl form, as she had taken to being all the time, just as she’d said. Sakura had modified her kimonos so she could wear human clothes with her nine tails sticking out the back, and once again Anya was moved by how adorable she looked, this time in a purple and green outfit. But not adorable enough for Anya to be willing to exchange private details with the younger girl!
She laughed off the question.
“Hey, that’s personal information! Anyway, I am here for something just as interesting. More interesting even, if you’re up for trying out some experiments with my new magic powers?”
Yuki-Shiro was filing her nails, and she put down her file, smiling, and gave Anya her full attention.
“So, I don’t know whether your mom told you, but since she seems to know everything everybody around here is doing at all times, I can only assume she’s mentioned something. Basically, in my own world I was a designer – that’s an artist of sorts – and since I’ve been here, I’ve discovered that certain things I draw can have positive effects on yokai. Last night I tested out that I can actually draw something directly onto a yokai, and they will get the effects from it, so I don’t even need paper –”
“Did you test that out on Kiba? Was he naked?”
“Ummmm, yes, and, not quite. Can we stick to magic please?” Anya mock scolded.
“OK, OK!”
“So, I know some pictures that work – there are probably more I haven’t discovered yet too – and I know they work on yokai, but don’t do anything to me. This means, I think, that I can see which ones will do something because I created them, but they actually don’t work on humans. I can’t use their magic on myself at all. What I was interested in then, was whether they’d work on you, given you’re half human and half yokai.”
“You know, I have been thinking about it and I think, rather than half human and half yokai, I prefer to think I’m both human and yokai. I’m not any less of a human or any less of a yokai than I was when I was two girls, I’m just both in one now. Which makes me twice the woman!”
Anya chuckled.
“Well, that makes sense, but in any case, I want to know if I can use these magic pictures on you at all, and if so, if they have a lessened or different effect to when I use them on regular yokai.”
“Sure! I think, see, that even though I can’t still do the kitsune magic Yuki-me could do before, and I don’t think I can still do any of the priest stuff Shiro-me picked up from Mamoru, I still feel like there is something magic in me, you know? Like, there’s some kind of extr
a energy in me that feels like magic, and it’s not the same feeling as when I transform. There’s something else I can do, I just know it.”
“Well, OK, I’ll start with an easy one. We can work out straight away if this one has worked.” Anya said, sitting at the table across from Yuki-Shiro and taking her ink and brush out of a pretty little fabric bag that she’d bought from the village’s seamstress using a picture she’d done of her pet cat as currency. Yes, fox yokai could, for some reason, have pet cats, Anya had been surprised to learn.
Yuki-Shiro laid out her hand, palm down, on the table, three out of five of her nails now perfectly manicured.
Anya carefully painted on the image of a flaming torch. It was more complicated to draw than the shield she had used on Kiba, but she didn’t feel quite so comfortable doing anything that might hurt the dainty teenage girl, and the only way to test the shield was to try and damage someone who was using it.
“Is it supposed to do that?” Yuki-Shiro said, looking at her hand as, with the last stroke, the ink began to dimly emit a feint, colorless light.
“Well, with Kiba it glows bright blue, and then the light kinda goes into his body and the effect starts to work. In your case, it seems like it’s registering that it’s supposed to do something, but it’s not properly taking, I don’t know. It hasn’t worked though I’m afraid – the torch picture simply creates light, so when other yokai use it they can either have light coming from themselves, or hold the paper with the picture on and use it as a torch.”
“But it’s trying to do something… I wonder, is there any way your magic can boost someone’s powers? Like, could you sort of buff up my kitsune side by using a drawing of a fox, or something?”
Anya had actually wondered about this – whether a picture of tiger would make Kiba even stronger, or have some other useful effects on his tiger form. But she’d need him to transform to see if that worked, and after the first time she’d asked him, when he hadn’t seemed to want to do it, she’d felt a little uncomfortable asking again. She had tried drawing both a tiger and a fox, and they did indeed both produce the glow that showed they had some kind of power, but she’d stashed those away to experiment with once she was comfortable enough with someone to have seen both their forms. Yuki-Shiro was already in her transformed state, though hers was unique, so why not?
“OK, give me your other hand, I’ll leave the torch on this one, and then we can see if adding the fox does anything to it.”
Yuki-Shiro watched intently as Anya painted a simple, but pretty little fox on her other hand. Anya had found that it didn’t seem to matter how detailed the drawings were, and differences like whether the fox was standing up or sitting down didn’t matter either – it appeared to work based on the meaning of the image she was thinking of when she created the picture, not its exact execution.
As she finished the last line on the fox’s tail, it began to glow powerfully – as brightly as the shield she had drawn on Kiba, and then faded into Yuki-Shiro’s hand. However, the torch on her other hand showed no change.
“That’s odd. It seems like the fox has worked on you in some way, but I’m not sure how… Do you feel any different?”
“No, not really… But… If it’s boosted my kitsune-ness, then maybe...”
Yuki-Shiro closed her eyes, and looked like she had fallen asleep for a moment. Then, suddenly, the room around them was full of butterflies. Colorful, bright butterflies of all different sizes, flapping at Anya, landing on her hair, causing her to swat and gasp at how real they felt. But Anya knew what this meant.
“OK, impressive show, can you make them go away now, please?”
Yuki-Shiro opened her eyes and laughed outrageously for a few seconds at Anya, finding her distaste at being descended upon by hundreds of fluttering insects hilarious. And then the butterflies disappeared.
“So, with your fox drawing, I have my old magic back! It’s a shame the other one didn’t work on me, but even having my illusions back is amazing – the only bad thing about my new form is not being able to play pranks on humans anymore!”
“Well, it’ll only last until the ink washes off, as far as I can tell. I can make you a bunch of fox drawings on cloth or something that you can tie around your wrist or wherever to use when I’m not here, but still, it’s not quite as good as giving you your magic back permanently.”
“It’s still awesome. Thank you Anya! And thanks for making the fox so cute!” Yuki-Shiro said, holding out the hand with the fox on it in front of her and admiring it like it was jewelry.
“I was thinking though, did you say you also knew some priest magic, from Mamoru?”
“Well, yeah, he made Shiro-me learn some stuff, but I haven’t even tried to see if I can still do that. I didn’t want to scare away or hurt yokai before, and I certainly don’t want to now!”
“I know, I am just wondering about the differences between priest magic and whatever it is that I can do. Could you possibly try and make a ward or something for me now? Just to see if you can? I have never really seen one before, but if I had some I could experiment on I might be able to find ways my picture magic can counter them, or even protect yokai from priests.”
“I suppose I can try. If it works, I can’t make anything powerful enough to affect the people here anyway, so it should be safe to try some stuff out. I don’t like the idea of making things that are used as weapons against yokai, but I know you won’t use them for anything I wouldn’t like.”
Anya still had some of the paper slips she had taken from Shiro’s bedroom – the paper Kiba had said priests used. As soon as she had realized her magic worked when she drew on just about anything, she’d saved those for just this sort of situation. She took one out of her bag and gave it to Yuki-Shiro.
“Can you do a paper ward with this?”
“I used to be able to. Those are pretty easy. Not as easy as the ones regular people learn how to make, but very easy for a priest. Mamoru made Shiro-me and Reo practice them all the time.”
Anya slid the bottle of ink across the table to her.
Yuki-Shiro deftly painted some characters on the paper, in a kind of prayer-like concentration, that probably was a meditation of some kind. That had to be the trick to it, just as only Anya could do the picture magic, because what it really used was what was in her mind, not marks of ink.
“It’s not working. You wouldn’t be able to tell, because humans can’t, except for if they made them themselves.”
“That’s the same as with my pictures. So, this looks like a normal piece of paper to you, too?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I can’t say I’m too disappointed not to be able to do them anymore, but it would have been cool to find a way to beat them...”
“What about if we wash off the fox? If that’s boosting your kitsune energy or whatever, maybe it’s suppressing your human side too? I promise I’ll draw it back on afterwards, don’t worry.”
Yuki-Shiro shrugged, and went to wash her hands in some of the well water Sakura had in a pail in her kitchen.
After drawing out the characters on a second piece of paper, Yuki-Shiro looked down at them with scrutiny.
“You know how you drew that torch, and it looked like it was trying to work but it didn’t do anything? This ward is kinda like that. It looks like it has some power, it’s just far, far more feeble than it should be – than it would have been when I was Shiro-me, even when I first started learning.”
Anya’s next hypothesis was a simple one, then. Quickly, she took Yuki-Shiro’s left hand, and inked a stick man onto it. Just like the fox, it glowed bright and sent its power into the girl’s body.
“Now try.”
Chapter 15
“So, with two pictures, Yuki-Shiro can basically shift from being able to use human priest magic or kitsune illusion magic. She actually asked me if there was a way we could make the fox picture permanent, though – neither part of her wants anything to do with priest magic.”
“And is the
re a way to make your pictures permanent? It could be useful for all of us if there is – even just having the effect of that shield permanently would be useful for people – sometimes just hunting can lead to some injuries, especially for the weaker ones,” Kiba replied.
“Well, we could tattoo the images on, theoretically – do you have tattoos here?”
“Yes, some clans and tribes use them as identifiers. It’s not a thing with my clan and I don’t think it’s a practice in this village either, but I’m sure we could find someone in the region who could do them for us – I think other tribes and clans will help us with whatever we want in exchange for some of your drawings.”
“That’s the thing though – the pictures only work when I do them. I do vaguely know how tattoos are done, but I have no experience in that – plus you don’t have the tools here that people in my world use for tattooing, so I’d have to do it the most painful way… And if it didn’t turn out to work, you’d be stuck with some ugly mess, and no magic powers! We’d have to find someone who could teach me to do it using the methods used here, before I’d be OK with trying that. Maybe that’s a task for the future.”
“What if you didn’t use ink, but just made a scar on someone that represented the image?”
Anya felt a bit squeamish about that, what was she supposed to do, draw a fox on Yuki-Shiro with a scalpel?
“Maybe… I am not really comfortable doing that though, I don’t like hurting people.”
“I’d let you do it to me for a test. You know I’m not bothered by a little cut. And then, if it doesn’t work you can just heal the scar anyway.”
“Maybe, I… I want to do some more tests before I start making anything permanent. This thing with the wards is bothering me. Yuki-Shiro made me some to experiment with, and so far it’s going well, but, I’ve just got this idea that makes me really uneasy.”
