#fire wind

@oh-heartlessman

For months, Kiki Takayama had been gathering. She woke every morning with another step of the familiar ceremony in mind, picked up a pad of paper and then wrote out all the ingredients that she would need to find in order to complete it. She consulted her books, she checked all of Howl’s shelves twice over before she headed out. And then, once she was certain of her grocery list, she grabbed her brook and way she went—to find, to collect, to carry, to protect. Her room filled with little vials like dominoes. She placed them side by side lest they need special treatment—her moonlight kept in a bowl covered with a  cloth, her sunlight placed in an open cup, her rainbows rolled out and draped over the back of her chair and the back of her bed. Find, collect, carry, protect. She ticked each item off her list then moved onto the next. Find, collect, carry, protect.

Until there was nothing to look for anymore.

This happened in the last few days of September. Kiki darted up at the chime of her phone and her hand reached for her notebook as it had before. But when she drew it onto her lap, she stopped. Her brain felt like a smooth, empty piece of paper. She turned back to the pages from the previous days, searching over the ingredients to see if she’d perhaps missed one. But there was all of the ingredients that would help her conjur the essence of Earth, and there was all the ingreidents for the essence of Water, and there for Fire, and there for Air, and there for the Void as well. But that couldn’t be right, could it?

She reached for the books and the scrolls next. She unbound an old one, one the Tayakamas had received from the Tibetan monks some two hundred years ago. She read over the script and checked her notes. She flipped to the indexes of the book, examined the charts. She climbed out of bed and dug deep into her desk’s drawer for a bound leather book—Jiji’s journal, which she had tried not to touch. But she touched it now, revealing his careful hand. By the time she had finished all this, her stomach ached with hunger, her mouth still tasted foul, and it was nearly noon.

But she was done. She was done. Kiki Takayama had collected all the ingredients.

She couldn’t believe it. Blinking slow, she padded down the hall and into Jiji’s old room, where Jiji now sat, locked in a cage, upon the bed. She climbed onto the bed and sank to her knees and then slipped her notebook through the bar.

Jiji hissed.

“Jiji, please,” she whispered. “What did I miss?”

Jiji stared at her with empty eyes. She reached in for her book again and his paw darted out, claws ripping at the back of her hand.

Kiki jerked back with a small gasp of breath. “Jiji,” she said, as tears filled her eyes. Jiji looked at her, unblinking, still gone. Still far away.

Kiki went back to bed, thinking over her ingredients. She dreamed about paper and pen and lists and errands. She slept until her stomach woke her again, growling, and then she wandered downstairs to find the living room empty, the sun setting outside, and Cal chewing on the logs in the fire.

She carried with her the notebook and once again slipped down onto her knees. “Hi Cal,” she greeted the spirit. Maggie Rose stirred in her bed of coals by the fire, blinking her eyes open.

Taran Collins is a loner. He doesn’t particularly like anyone, Indians included, but when he sees an Indian woman and an old injured Indian man pursued by a mob of cowboys, his hatred of those who abuse the weak trumps his other dislikes, and he intervenes to save them He soon finds himself outnumbered and about to be done in, but a strange orb, shining brightly, comes to his rescue. The old man…