![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Timeless
Most things never find themselves recorded in the pages of history, Horikawa thinks to himself as he rubs his hands together and tucks them back into the sleeves of his hanten. Like the little bugs swarming the banks of the Ichino river, microscopic children from this vantage point engaged in some game involved frigid rocks, frozen fingers and the passing flakes of breakaway ice meandering along the slow currents. Or the old man trudging along the path that follows the high ground on his way bath to his home and wife on the outskirts of town. At a great distance, he fades into the swirling snow.
And certainly all of them are more important still than any mention of the weather report. A bitter cold spell for the Musashi province flecked great white puffs of lazy snow on a singular winter day, seemingly insignificant except in retrospect.
Next to him, Izuminokami sneezes and Horikawa smiles at him fondly. His nose, where it peeks out from the scarf, look cold and red and not unlike a certain deer from a song the tantous had been singing only days before and he thinks he would like to kiss it. Instead he gives his partner a nudge.
Izuminokami grumbles, “He could have at least sent us off with a bottle of sake. Maybe some of the chicken.”
“Then you would just complain it’s soggy.”
“Okay but what about it’s the thought that counts?”
Time aside, nestled together in the entrance of a roughhewn rock cave, indiscriminate from the hundreds of others that surround them on the hill, it feels like worlds apart from the party they had left behind.
All they had for company now, was the dwindling warmth of the fire and the spirits of the tombs that now housed them, whatever remained of them from a bygone era so far out of reach, not even the retrograde army had thus far succeeded in touching it. Some of the entrances remain sealed with heavy slabs of volcanic rock.
Tomorrow, or the day after, the Hojo clan would trample through the fresh fallen snow with their standard on their way to confront that of Uesugi to reclaim Matsuyama castle and, in the process, erase all traces of the old man’s passage, already reduced to faint depressions where footsteps once fell. At times history is indeed a river. The banks may shift and change with the start and end remaining relatively unchanged. But sometimes a sharp bend gives way in the face of catastrophe leaving the isolated pool of precipitous events and memories to dissolve, less than forgotten. Until that moment, they have only each other.
They have no complaints.
Another sun of snow accumulates before Horikawa shifts again. His fingers protest the cold as he tugs at the knots of a furoshiki..
“It’s a little early but I picked up something for you.”
Izuminokami looks over his shoulder. Horikawa can feel the hot breath against his cheek. From the bag, he extracts a ceramic carafe, glazed and stoppered with a rough wooden cork. The characters splashed across the face of it are unmistakable.
“It’s not chicken but-“
“Kunihiro!” Izuminokami grabs the bottle with one hand and throws another around Horikawa’s shoulders. “Where did you get this?”
In reply, he merely lifts his hands and wiggles his fingers with a sly grin that Izuminokami returns with a laugh. The stopper comes out with a pop that echoes faintly in the cavern. The smell is sweet and crystal like the sake within, barely aged but meticulously distilled.
“Shall we warm it up first?” The bottle is halfway to Izuminokami’s mouth as Horikawa swaps it out for a small wooden box, leaving him little choice in the matter. It's only when he pouts that the wakizashi relents and tops off the pair of masu cups. Then, he pokes at the fire, until a hole in the coals opens for him to deposit their remaining prize away from the immediate lick of open flame.
Horikawa settles down again with his own cup and they settle together again to drink, surrounded by the companionable warmth and the intermittent crack as bark splits from wood.
Izuminokami sighs. “This is the best. You’re the best.”
Horikawa presses his fingers tight against the corners of his cup. His lips quirk. “What’s that? Do I have to cut you off already?”
“Are you complaining?” He scoffs. “Maybe I should pick up where I left off. You weren’t complaining then.”
Suddenly Horikawa finds himself engulfed in the blue mantle of their own private standard as Izuminokami, smirking, shoves him to the ground. The floor of the cave is cold and uneven despite the slight cushion of moss but his cheeks are flush. Dark hair drapes a curtain around him. It flickers like the fire, damp and ornamented with flecks of melting snow. Horikawa reaches up to run his fingers through it and as he leaves them there they start to numb.
He reaches with his whole body toward the figure bending over him with its magnetic eyes. Its cute red nose. Even as he relaxes back into the ground from which they came.
That’s when something curious happens. A break in the storm. It starts as the waxing moon glancing out from the cloud cover. The world outside is silent as a tomb.
Horikawa slides his hand from Izuminokami’s hair, to his neck, tracing the fringes of his voluminous layers. He shudders and the skin pebbles beneath the touch.
“S’cold…” He murmurs, not much for a protest.
And the moon struggles, thin rays slumping around them and into the depths of their shelter. It’s a near futile effort against the glow of the flames at their side. Then Izuminokami gasps.
Horikawa looks into the cave. Then out. The light is everywhere, creeping up the chiseled walls, golden green and ethereal. Finally, he realizes it’s coming from him. Or the place precisely below him and all around. The moss is lit by a cold fire.
It sweeps a patina of dancing greens on reds across his partner's face. If it weren’t for the visible clouds of breath he would have thought they had stopped altogether.
Izuminokami speaks first but rather than break the spell they weave a new one all their own. “This is the part where we say Merry Christmas?”
Horikawa nods.
The seconds that comprise the storm’s respite contract like the space between them and the world around them that closes into the space of their holy sanctuary. They come together. They can’t say who gets there first because it doesn’t matter. And then Izuminokami’s lips close over Horikawa’s
They don't believe in god. Barely in the fragile uncertainty of their own divinity. But another kind of scripture comes to Horikawa from across the river of time.
Between the conception and the creation, the emotion and the response, falls the shadow. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever.
Their life is very long indeed.
Better to have faith in one another.
As he pulls back, he can only whisper.
"Hallelujah."
Izuminokami knows exactly what he means.
And the night wears on. The clouds return and the lights fade and as the snow fall resumes, it's still a poor veil to their effigy. But it hard matters at all with no one left to remember it. Sometimes that moments that shake the world leave no more trace than a relic buried in a tomb.
In two days, Hojo Ujiyasu and Takeda Shingen would march on the castle, vanguard to the battle that would detain them all in the mountains of Musashi for three months. Their victory would prevail over the second battle waged in the shadows.
The children would play another day.
The river would flow on.
And they would turn toward home and their footstep would fade as soon as they closed the book on this particular chapter.
notes
takes place during the seige of musashi matsuyama castle which supposedly started in December
nearby one can find the hundred caves of yoshimi which are kofun era tombs that house hikarigoke or schistostega moss
completely incongruous use of ts eliots the hollow men i am very sorry
and you know
the bible
Merry Christmas
And certainly all of them are more important still than any mention of the weather report. A bitter cold spell for the Musashi province flecked great white puffs of lazy snow on a singular winter day, seemingly insignificant except in retrospect.
Next to him, Izuminokami sneezes and Horikawa smiles at him fondly. His nose, where it peeks out from the scarf, look cold and red and not unlike a certain deer from a song the tantous had been singing only days before and he thinks he would like to kiss it. Instead he gives his partner a nudge.
Izuminokami grumbles, “He could have at least sent us off with a bottle of sake. Maybe some of the chicken.”
“Then you would just complain it’s soggy.”
“Okay but what about it’s the thought that counts?”
Time aside, nestled together in the entrance of a roughhewn rock cave, indiscriminate from the hundreds of others that surround them on the hill, it feels like worlds apart from the party they had left behind.
All they had for company now, was the dwindling warmth of the fire and the spirits of the tombs that now housed them, whatever remained of them from a bygone era so far out of reach, not even the retrograde army had thus far succeeded in touching it. Some of the entrances remain sealed with heavy slabs of volcanic rock.
Tomorrow, or the day after, the Hojo clan would trample through the fresh fallen snow with their standard on their way to confront that of Uesugi to reclaim Matsuyama castle and, in the process, erase all traces of the old man’s passage, already reduced to faint depressions where footsteps once fell. At times history is indeed a river. The banks may shift and change with the start and end remaining relatively unchanged. But sometimes a sharp bend gives way in the face of catastrophe leaving the isolated pool of precipitous events and memories to dissolve, less than forgotten. Until that moment, they have only each other.
They have no complaints.
Another sun of snow accumulates before Horikawa shifts again. His fingers protest the cold as he tugs at the knots of a furoshiki..
“It’s a little early but I picked up something for you.”
Izuminokami looks over his shoulder. Horikawa can feel the hot breath against his cheek. From the bag, he extracts a ceramic carafe, glazed and stoppered with a rough wooden cork. The characters splashed across the face of it are unmistakable.
“It’s not chicken but-“
“Kunihiro!” Izuminokami grabs the bottle with one hand and throws another around Horikawa’s shoulders. “Where did you get this?”
In reply, he merely lifts his hands and wiggles his fingers with a sly grin that Izuminokami returns with a laugh. The stopper comes out with a pop that echoes faintly in the cavern. The smell is sweet and crystal like the sake within, barely aged but meticulously distilled.
“Shall we warm it up first?” The bottle is halfway to Izuminokami’s mouth as Horikawa swaps it out for a small wooden box, leaving him little choice in the matter. It's only when he pouts that the wakizashi relents and tops off the pair of masu cups. Then, he pokes at the fire, until a hole in the coals opens for him to deposit their remaining prize away from the immediate lick of open flame.
Horikawa settles down again with his own cup and they settle together again to drink, surrounded by the companionable warmth and the intermittent crack as bark splits from wood.
Izuminokami sighs. “This is the best. You’re the best.”
Horikawa presses his fingers tight against the corners of his cup. His lips quirk. “What’s that? Do I have to cut you off already?”
“Are you complaining?” He scoffs. “Maybe I should pick up where I left off. You weren’t complaining then.”
Suddenly Horikawa finds himself engulfed in the blue mantle of their own private standard as Izuminokami, smirking, shoves him to the ground. The floor of the cave is cold and uneven despite the slight cushion of moss but his cheeks are flush. Dark hair drapes a curtain around him. It flickers like the fire, damp and ornamented with flecks of melting snow. Horikawa reaches up to run his fingers through it and as he leaves them there they start to numb.
He reaches with his whole body toward the figure bending over him with its magnetic eyes. Its cute red nose. Even as he relaxes back into the ground from which they came.
That’s when something curious happens. A break in the storm. It starts as the waxing moon glancing out from the cloud cover. The world outside is silent as a tomb.
Horikawa slides his hand from Izuminokami’s hair, to his neck, tracing the fringes of his voluminous layers. He shudders and the skin pebbles beneath the touch.
“S’cold…” He murmurs, not much for a protest.
And the moon struggles, thin rays slumping around them and into the depths of their shelter. It’s a near futile effort against the glow of the flames at their side. Then Izuminokami gasps.
Horikawa looks into the cave. Then out. The light is everywhere, creeping up the chiseled walls, golden green and ethereal. Finally, he realizes it’s coming from him. Or the place precisely below him and all around. The moss is lit by a cold fire.
It sweeps a patina of dancing greens on reds across his partner's face. If it weren’t for the visible clouds of breath he would have thought they had stopped altogether.
Izuminokami speaks first but rather than break the spell they weave a new one all their own. “This is the part where we say Merry Christmas?”
Horikawa nods.
The seconds that comprise the storm’s respite contract like the space between them and the world around them that closes into the space of their holy sanctuary. They come together. They can’t say who gets there first because it doesn’t matter. And then Izuminokami’s lips close over Horikawa’s
They don't believe in god. Barely in the fragile uncertainty of their own divinity. But another kind of scripture comes to Horikawa from across the river of time.
Between the conception and the creation, the emotion and the response, falls the shadow. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever.
Their life is very long indeed.
Better to have faith in one another.
As he pulls back, he can only whisper.
"Hallelujah."
Izuminokami knows exactly what he means.
And the night wears on. The clouds return and the lights fade and as the snow fall resumes, it's still a poor veil to their effigy. But it hard matters at all with no one left to remember it. Sometimes that moments that shake the world leave no more trace than a relic buried in a tomb.
In two days, Hojo Ujiyasu and Takeda Shingen would march on the castle, vanguard to the battle that would detain them all in the mountains of Musashi for three months. Their victory would prevail over the second battle waged in the shadows.
The children would play another day.
The river would flow on.
And they would turn toward home and their footstep would fade as soon as they closed the book on this particular chapter.
notes
takes place during the seige of musashi matsuyama castle which supposedly started in December
nearby one can find the hundred caves of yoshimi which are kofun era tombs that house hikarigoke or schistostega moss
completely incongruous use of ts eliots the hollow men i am very sorry
and you know
the bible
Merry Christmas