EMA. 柔

“Please, Ookami-dono, be quiet,” Ema preemptively warned the shinobi as he stepped down the stairs of Aishina Castle to meet with his Lord. Miko-sama had fallen prey to sleep and she had gently wrapped him in a warm cover. Miko-sama deserved some rest after all he had to go through and she was sure it was not in the Wolf’s nature to foully wake him up just for the selfish joy of being thanked for his sacrifice.

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EMA. 柔

Ema giggled, blowing out the candle Ookami-dono was standing next to. Poor thing didn’t know that the shinobi could clearly see in the dark and that her little trick wouldn’t have worked.

She inched a little closer and looked up at him, smiling softly before pressing one gentle kiss against Ookami-dono’s lips. They were cracked— and so dry. She was a little naive thinking she could kiss them better.

EMA. 柔

EMA. 柔

“no --- PLEASE. Don’t rise.”

He had been laying on those covers for three days straight without a single signal of being alive, other than feeble wheezing and moans of pain. Those wounds were alien to Ema, so as the dark secrection flowing out of his ripped flesh, and that armor --- she had rarely seen something more bizarre. But he was on the brink of death and as a medic, Ema couldn’t leave him to macerate without doing something. So she had cured him with everything she knew --- and it seemed to have worked, even if a little.

EMA. 柔

Ema was summoned to Genichirou-dono’s quarters in a hurry. She brought along her herbs and her unguents, sure that they would have come in handy.

As suspected, the bandages around Genichirou’s thorax were stained with blood. Nonetheless, he was proudly sitting up, watching her as she made her way into the room. Genichiro-dono was wildly different from his grandfather, in a way that made Ema a bit uncomfortable. She couldn’t tell if he liked her or not, and that put he on the ropes.

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EMA. 柔

“Longing for the places you used to know is not unusual, master Saimon,” Ema acquiesced his sentiments with a wistful tone, her oak-colored gaze fixed on the blood sunrise of Ashina. Her mind flew back to Yuuhikawa, the village of her childhood, where Mother raised her together with her half-siblings. She remembered the curious, judging eyes maliciously lingering on her unusual features, her ‘big nose’, her ‘rotund eyes’. 

Nothing of that place was kind, yet at night, under the stars’ bright light, she desired to go back to that harshness, if only to contemplate it with her wishful, child mind of wonder, filled with will to live.

@bcwblade || was it fluff mirin’s heart? who knows. this is beautiful.

EMA. 柔

Ema was surprised at the brief contact of Master Simon’s cold hands with her hair, ruffling those silk threads with his touch as the biting, cold air of Ashina’s unforgiving autumn burrowed through their skins. She had not even heard him coming closer, used as he was to stalk in the shadows, his step lighter than his breath, especially when all of her attention was focused on the scroll in front of her.

Distractedly, she brushed her fingers against the soft skin of the petals, before removing the flower from her hair to look at it. As she contemplated its scarlet color, a very similar tint spread across her cheeks. It took her a minute, but she did remember its meaning in hanakotoba. She was sure it was an innocent mistake on Simon’s part, but she could tease him a little for it.

“A sweet kiss to deliver on my betrothed’s lips, but I tremble in fear. Accept this red tsubaki, woman of my heart, to seal my ache and torment for your body and soul,” Ema recited an old poetry she heard Isshin speak to one of his lovers, looking at Simon with half a smile.

“Red camellia means ‘deep love, passion, longing, eternal union’. For the stem and the petals are never separated, even when the flower withers, so shall two lovers never be without the other no matter the circumstances. Not even death can keep them apart.”

The medic held the flower against her chest. The shade was indeed similar to her garments, which elicited a contented grin from her, if only because Simon’s gaze was sharp and attentive even for her. Especially for her.

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EMA. 柔

“And so... the blood of Yarunamu would be able to heal any wounds? Restore one to life?”

Ema was upset to hear Simon talking about such unsettling arguments. In her head, where the otherworldly meant balance and restoration, having something as impure as blood being the answer to eternal life disturbed her. 

Her dark eyes were lifted on Simon’s tanned countenance. She was visibly shaken, yet not by him, but by his experience. She tentatively held one of his hand in hers, covering it with her own and bringing it closer to her face. She gently rubbed her thumb on the back of his hand, lost in her thoughts.

Who had been beastly enough to gain such insight? Who was the first to experiment on the blood and discover its healing properties?

One might have argued that Dragon’s Blood was the same kind of devious instrument to escape fate, but Ema wouldn’t have agreed. The Dragon’s Blood was a gift of the ancient to a superior bloodline, and immortality could only be granted by those wise individuals to whom deserved it, such as Master Ookami. As per Simon’s own confession, the blood of Yharnam had been used indiscriminately to aid everyone in their purpose to cheat death.

Not even for a second Ema stopped to caress his hand. The torment in his soul was clear to her, and even though she had known him for enough time, she didn’t dare ask why he flinched every time he heard a screech, a howl, what enchanted him so much of their quiet lifestyle, what made him in rapture with her voice when she was speaking softly.