#unari

He was coming to see her, in those dripping dark halls beneath the Okinawan Ocean – soon, now.  Unari’s insides tangled, thinking on it…  Reminding herself, so that she ran webbed fingers through her hair and scrubbed bits of clinging seaweed from between the scales of her winding tail. Fidgeting.  Expecting.  He’d made his promises to her years before – plenty of children had been born and grown into their human lives since he’d spoken them.  Every year, Mizuki came to visit Unari’s caves and corridors, her slow-brewing Water of Evolution and ageless, sharp-toothed smile.  Every year, whatever had been happening at the shrine he served.  Whatever had been happening in all that strange, too-fast world beyond the deep.  

               Sometimes he came with a batch of his sacred sake, humming to himself and content…  Possibly a little drunk, already.  Sometimes he came wearing strange clothes from a human store and carrying gifts from the mortal world beyond.  The tissue paper stuffed around those gifts would be only a little damp after his trip through her sea, in that case.  Unari wouldn’t have expected anything less from a divine water snake familiar.

               And sometimes…  Later on… Mizuki came with his eyes red and stinging, because his human love was growing so frail, so fading, and he could pour out all his cleansing holy powers – gather all sorts of cryptic medicine – and still not save her completely.  Human creatures weren’t built to last long, after all – especially if they were determined to stay human and die a human death.  But Mizuki would come check in, even so, and smile for Unari as though he thought she was wonderful.  Say it was good to see her, and truly, truly mean it.

               Unari actually believed Mizuki meant it, anyway, which was no small thing for someone who’d lived as many lonely, doubting centuries as she had.  She hadn’t gone around with her face eternally hidden in a long time, but of course she remembered what the world looked like through a ghostly film… Through a veil, yes, but more through her own clouded sense of self.  Unari couldn’t help but remember the way her mother had taught her to be ashamed of her dragon blood, ashamed of her stark horns and face half scabbed with scales.  Maybe she would always remember, and it would well up inside her sometimes like a hateful, simmering tide.  

               She would have good days, and bad.  She would feel like her best self, and she wouldn’t. That was a gift her childhood had left for her, and Unari had told Mizuki about it a little bit from year to year to year.  Feelings came and went like tides, and he understood, she thought.  He would accept her whatever sort of day it was, and knowing that always helped her look into her own face again.

               Unari had offered her arms to Mizuki without questioning it at all, when he came with his eyes red and his voice shaking a few years back…  When he had hospital phone numbers saved in his contacts list and very little experience with the passage of mortal lives.  He’d crumpled into her for just a second, face against the crook of her neck and shoulders shivering as if the world were freezing around them, though Unari knew it wasn’t.  He took in a long, watery breath, and Unari held him as well as she knew how.  It was the way she’d held him a couple times before, by that point, and the way she’d once been afraid she would never be able to hold anyone in all her time on that earth.

               This man had nearly been her husband, Unari’d thought, without really meaning to.  If she hadn’t released Mizuki from their agreement.  If she hadn’t seen that love and want and pain he felt, churning beneath the smoothed-out surface of him.  Beneath fangs and sharp venom-green eyes, beneath holy purpose and the word of his god.  Mizuki felt all those things, even still.  Even now.  All those things for some bright-eyed human girl.  

               Unari held Mizuki as long as he needed to be held, and thought about how they might have been married.  Might’ve been together all the time.  She reminded herself not to think about any of that, of course, just as soon as she remembered to.  It could only hurt, after all.  

               And then the moment passed.  Mizuki was propping himself back up, soon enough, and offering a story about something strange that had happened on his way to her corner of the world.  His human love had asked him to keep smiling if he could, he’d said, and Unari didn’t think he would’ve let that smile slip for just anybody.  

               Every year Mizuki showed up, and Unari tried to meet him with seashell ornaments pinned in her hair– like the one she’d made as a child, before her mother reminded her why she shouldn’t be seen.  Mizuki would compliment her for that, she knew, and his voice would go all breezy and tender.  So different from the way he’d taunted the former wild fox, Tomoe, egging him into spectral fire…  So different from how he spoke at the foot of Lord Mikage, his newest god.  Mizuki’s easy manners changed Unari’s home for a while, no matter what.  His laughter lit everything up, at least so far as she was concerned, like river water catching in the sunlight.

               And then, of course, Mizuki left.  Back to Mikage Shrine, riding along the spine of that winding white freshwater serpent.  Waving to her over his shoulder or making a heart with his bent fingers, tender and gentle and gone.  He had his place, and she had hers.  He had snarky quips to make about the goings on back at Mikage Shrine and she had an ocean to keep as pure and deathless as she could.  Sometimes he stayed for a day or so, and sometimes he stayed a bit longer… But not usually.

               And yes – yes –

               Maybe Unari wished things could be different. Wished it somewhere deep and real inside herself, like magma bubbling into a vein of heat and want beneath the pitch-dark sea.  Maybe she was still hoping for a change.  

               Hoping that this time of all times, Mizuki would lean in so much closer to her.  Maybe now he’d brush his cold fingers against hers and learn what wanting to stay with her tasted like...   Maybe he’d lick his lips before murmuring something new – before changing things between them.  He would taste the salt of that place, then, the way Unari always, always tasted salt. She was an ocean-born creature, after all.  

               This man could’ve been her husband.    

               It was hard not to remember that, sometimes, even as Unari tried to shove the thought away.  

               Mizuki could have learned to live beneath waves, beneath salt wind and whale song and coral palaces constantly growing, becoming new. It wouldn’t have been just a visit, then, and it definitely wouldn’t have meant so many goodbyes.  They could have had something eternal.  

               But that wasn’t what Unari was going to ask for, when Mizuki came to see her again that year.  At the beginning, she’d asked him to stay with her plenty of times.  Over and over again. She’d hinted that he could change his mind and become hers whenever he wanted.  But now?  

               Now, Mizuki brought ice cream when he dropped by – it was a human food his second goddess… (his mortal love) … had taught him about.  He gave Unari a choice of different flavors, voice so airy and familiar she felt her heart in her throat.  He propped his cheek on his palm and listened to her talk through how her year had been; he brought photos of the forest around Mikage shrine to show her, and photos of human shops and gardens and a shimmering city that seemed to grow stranger all the time.  So much glass!  You wouldn’t be able to escape your reflection for long in a place like that, wherever you went.  It was possible Unari wouldn’t have minded too much, if Mizuki had been there with her, though.  It was possible she wouldn’t have minded much at all.  

               He brought photos of his mortal love’s great-grandchild, too, that little thing who called him “Uncle Mizuki” just the same as the child before her, and the child before that.  He smiled, fond and sad, flipping through those pictures…  He smiled like he knew Unari already understood whatever he could say.  And she thought maybe she did, after all their years together.  

               Now, Unari just asked if Mizuki would like to attend a party with her while he was staying beneath her waves…  One of those galas her mother had never wanted to take her along to.  You know. She knew he could say yes to something like that in good conscience, and a knowing little grin might slither over his face like a shared secret.  

               Mizuki could’ve been Unari’s husband, sure, but what they had was honest.  That was important.  That was theirs.  And maybe Unari would vow to get him home before his Lord Mikage started hinting that he was taking an awfully long time away from the shrine, next – and maybe Mizuki would do an impression of Tomoe the former wild fox scolding him for shirking his duties.  It had been a long time since Tomoe had done a thing like that, but they’d laugh together like Mizuki’d gotten lectured just yesterday.  As if he’d been lounging around waiting for the stars to come out or reading a novel or something when the fox decided he was supposed to be cleaning dishes.  Unari thought she could do a pretty decent impression of Tomoe’s voice by that point, too.