foxinthestars

Yup, I made it! The badge is significantly uglier than the one I got in '05, but still.

Of course, the crucial question is "Now what?" I got through probably half or less of the plan I have to finish the story, and in '05, I broke down quickly after NaNo was over, so this time I must try to do better. If you all want me to continue blogging drafts, let me know, although I might (or might not) do it anyway. When I started back to work on the FY Mirrorverse here, my plan was actually to draft it all the way to the end before polishing it up for FF.net and such (I also got on the waiting list for Ao3), and I haven't quite decided if I'll hold to that or not.

But anyway, one last time...

50075 ★ 50000 (100.15%)

(Actually the NaNo site gives my count as 50,031, but here I used the RoughDraft word count for the sake of consistency.)

Again backing up a bit...

“Yui-chan?” Chichiri asked.
“Yes?” Nuriko was just helping Yui down from the horse as they were stopping for the night.
Chichiri turned another way. “Chiriko-chan?”
“Yes?”
“This is amazing no da! It’s true, I can actually see you no da!” Sure enough, when Nuriko offered an arm to help her down next, she reached to take it without having to be touched to know it was there. Once on her feet, she was all excitement. “And there are trees there, there, and there,” ---she pointed accurately --- “and there are the horses no da!”
At that she bounded demonstratively toward horses inside the paddock that they were dismounting outside of and ran straight into the fence. Nuriko had to grab the back of her shirt to keep her from pitching over it.
“Be careful! Hikitsu still needed an attendant, remember?” Yui told her.
“Sorry no da! Oh, I should have looked for the gaps in the grass --- there they are, but they’re pretty hard to see no da...”
It was true that Chichiri not running ahead as before had cost them time, but she still thought that if it enabled her to give an advance warning of an ambush, or to find the guardians of Byakko’s Shinzahou rather than wander aimlessly through a desert, that it was worth the risk. Racing the Seiryuu Seishi might be a futile exercise anyway; Hikitsu had told her that they were already “near Sairou’s border.” If they were setting up an ambush, then they would cross paths no matter how slow they travelled, and if they were hurrying toward the Shinzahou, it was probably impossible to catch up with them.
Some of the inn’s stablehands took their horses, with Tasuki’s making a parting attempt to kick him, but the others couldn’t notice them staring at Chichiri.
“You know it works now, you could take that off,” Tamahome suggested.
“Nai no da! I’d need a lot more practice before I could just close my eyes and do it; if I take it off now I’ll have to start all over just when I’m getting the hang of it no da!”
“Well, let’s get you up to the room anyway...” Nuriko took her arm and led her away from the embarrassment that she was so indifferent to.
“Focusing so much on it, she must be exhausted,” Hotohori said.
It was true that using Hikitsu’s power had tired her, but the fatigue was pushed back by the fascination and excitement of every living thing around her blossoming out of the darkness as a tracery of rich color. The Sei of Suzaku naturally appeared in a strong red, and Yui had a slighter but easily visible red corona around her. The grass, the trees, the horses, the people, they all showed up in a marvellous variety of subtler hues, and with the walls of the inn completely transparent to this form of sight, she could see everyone there; the invisibility of the floors gave it a curious look as though the patrons on the upper levels were levitating in the air. In the kitchen, the fresh vegetables could still be seen, and the cooks lent the aura of their persons to their tools; while the others made arrangements for the room and paid, she watched through the walls, rapt, as someone chopped an onion and added it to a pan where its glow of life melted away as it cooked.
However, Chichiri quickly found that she was much more helpless indoors, where the walls and furniture were invisible to her. Nuriko had to carefully help her up the stairs. The room itself, empty until they entered, looked to her like utter nothingness, and still had to be led around by the arm to navigate it. Any length of time dealing with this would certainly be frustrating, and she wondered at the change from what it had been like outdoors. If only she were in a forest, she thought, where even dead trees were already overtaken by living things even before they could fall, it would hardly be a handicap at all.
When the meal was brought up, it too was invisible, and Tamahome, who happened to sit beside her, had to help her eat it; she would tell him what she wanted, and he would place her hand on it. After they had eaten, everyone again tumbled exhaustedly toward the beds, pausing just long enough for Nuriko to plan watches. Chichiri, still excited to explore her new ability, insisted on being first.
When everyone else had fallen asleep, she sat up straight and quiet. Yui had told her that Hikitsu could see over great distances, and the story she told of her encounter with the guardians suggested that he could even take in all of the four empires at a glance. Chichiri thought that this would take much more practice for her, if it were even possible with her lesser connection to the power, but little by little, like a beginning swimmer making her first ventures into the water, she was able to roam around with her focus, first into the other rooms, then the stables and yard, then outward into the town. This form of vision was independent of illumination, so within its field every scene felt timeless; only the fact that most people were laying prone and still made clear that it was night, even as everything outside the circle of her focus fell away into blackness.
It was a thrillingly precarious balance, spanning the sounds of the room around her and the sight of another place, as though she were staring through a roving window. When she tried to raise herself up for a wider bird’s eye view, she couldn’t maintain it and came tumbling back to herself, but if she only sent her sight wandering close to the earth, revealing a small patch as though walking with a lantern, she didn’t yet know how far she cold go.
Within the town, with stones and buildings equally invisible, the road was hard to discern, but at the edge of town it became easy to pick it out as the line of nothingness threading between banks of verdant grass. She followed it as far as the next town before exhaustion finally got the better of her and she shook Nuriko awake to take over for her.

*******

Mitsukake looked up and saw a small cluster of tiny white lights; it was the stars shining down through the skylight. Because of that one window onto the sky, he was aware of passing phases of the day, but as day after day had gone by trapped on this small crag with nothing to be done --- he had even learned at last to ignore Tenkou’s diatribes --- the hours had become irrelevant; night and day had bled out of their borders, from a time for action and a time for sleep into a diffusion of dozing. The sun no longer pained him when it fell on his face. He knew the shape of his shelf of rock so well by now that the blindness of night brought no sense of danger.
It had occurred to him at one point to throw himself over the edge intentionally, but only as a passing thought. If he had thought of it and been capable of it earlier, when the remnants of the river demon were still raw and dangerous, he might have done it, but now there would be no point. It was doubtful that Tenkou would let him die in any case. Like this, he was no use to anyone, but was surely no danger to them either, so he might as well wait. There was always the hope that something beyond his control would happen and change the situation.
As he lay there, drifting passively under the faint glow of the stars, he at last let himself think about Shoka. He remembered her eyes as grey as a stormy sky; he remembered going to gather herbs with her, how the smooth watery scent of the wind seemed to collect on her skin into a subtle perfume. At the memories, tears rose in his eyes and fell down across his temples, but his face and his breath remained steady. At the time, he had thought --- perhaps he still thought --- that that was all he wanted out of life. He had known that he had the Mark of Suzaku and that the Miko would arrive someday, and he had half-dreaded it, hoping only that when the time came he could fulfill the duty quickly and return home to Choukou. Now, he thought he might never go back there.
When the court physician had come from the capital, he might have resisted, but he had known right away that he couldn’t finally refuse --- not because he feared a government threat, but because leaving someone to die for lack of his help was unthinkable. He had told no one but Shoka, and he had thought of taking her with him. If it were a plot to trap him in the palace, it would be bearable if they were there together; it might even be in his power to give her a life as a noble lady, but he hadn’t done it. They weren’t yet married, so it would be improper, and the summons left no time for any arrangements. He didn’t want to take her from her parents, whom he now thought were surely dead. Most of all, he had wanted to leave her there as his anchor, so that he wouldn’t lose the will to return.
As it turned out, no one had tried in the least to detain him, but even returning immediately, he had arrived too late --- barely in time for Shoka to be buried with the ribbons he had bought for her in the capital.