Not looking your best

The crystals had a sweet taste in his mouth and at the same time he was revolted by them.  The taste was a lie, a bit of candy to hide the poison these things seemed to enjoy giving out.  Kotori tried to get as little of the crystals to stay in his mouth or get swallowed as possible.  However these didn’t do nice clean breaks but shattered into pieces which caused some to easily slide down his throat.  Damn, was he going to end up like the rest with the crystals growing out of them?  Still, decision made he carried it out.  Ikigai also understood, despite her pain she urged him to do more.  He tried to remember she had said that when all he heard after was her screaming.

Once he was finished Kotori stepped back to look at the finished product.  There was no way he could easily get all the crystals off of her, cut down the ones on her till they were hardly visible.  They caused her too much pain for small details and he’d seen crystals would grow back when cut if he risked doing it too close to her skin.  She was a crying, goopy, tear-streaked, sparkly mess.  Kotori had called her pretty and it was true, under all the yuck there was pretty.

The larger wolf would have liked to just let her lay there and cry but he didn’t feel good about things yet, “Iki,” his voice was low but there was an edge of command to it, “you have to get up.  You can’t stay there, its probably not safe.” It seemed cruel to demand anything from her in that state but what good was causing her all that pain if she just ended up in the same situation.  A small sigh and more gently adding, “we can get you in the water, wash you off.  I can help you get to the water and clean up if you're too weak.”  He’d already bitten into the crystals at this point how much more damned could he be from possibly touching the crystals remaining on her?  Really, Kotori was glad he’d gotten stuck with madness over the other choices.  He still hated it, but it seemed a far cry better than what Ikigai was going through.

It really was hard to look at her there, crying, still hearing her scream in his mind and acknowledge he had caused it.  The fact it was a necessity did not change the fact of his guilt.  Too damn bad.  He could be soft and gentle once she was safer.


"Kotori Fatalis"