Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Really?" Hikaro queried with genuine interest. A book about Klonoa and Mirabelle? They were yet children, it would be an interesting read.
"Might you have a copy about I can see?"

Hikaro's steps were a little heavier, though not by much. His wings folded back to allow himself into the narrow hallway as he followed the hououza before him to the upstairs compartments known to be shared by Klonoa's siblings. He had to resist the urge to thread his fingers through the boy's light lavender hair, so teasingly it bounced before him.

Hikaro seemed a little sad as well. He had wanted to meet the other hououza who lived with Klonoa. He'd met Mirabelle and Liberty so far, but Junpei, Shadda and Rika? He crossed into the room and sat beside Klonoa, watching the fluffy lavender hair bounce when Klonoa shook his head.

So lovely...

Hikaro's honey eyes were glazed with a foreign emotion, or one that at least should be foreign to Klonoa, his being still just a child. He smiled a little wistfully as he let the thought go, and watched Klonoa, keeping his ear to the door. Crossing his long legs, Hikaro released an easy sigh.
"So. Do you have any plans?"

Hikaro saw it. His eyes rarely left the marble phoenix, and the moment hit him like a punch in the chest. It was a moment caught between thoughts, between the beats of a heart, where time seemed frozen. Like a gargoyle, Klonoa became stone again, framed in the window, silhouetted. Breath caught, Hikaro barely had time to decipher what had happened when it broke, and time moved again.

Those violet orbs became shielded by grey lids as his eyes closed. He spoke with them closed, and Hikaro could imagine, really imagine what Klonoa was thinking. He'd never touched the sky of his own volition, he only knew the wind from where it lingered on the ground. Up higher, it was swift and pure, tinged only with the clouds.

There was a moment between them again. Maybe not as staturesque as before, but Klonoa looked at him, and Hikaro right back, through heavy eyes. Blonde lashes lowered to the floor, ashamed with his own thoughts. When he looked up again Klonoa was smiling, a precious smile that reminded him once again why he had pledged his life to preserving this boy. Mirabelle shattered his smile once before, and he never wanted it to happen again.
"They'll return when they'll return. I'm not too concerned." He said, excluding Mirabelle from the unconcerned portion. If he never saw her again, it would still be all too soon.

Hikaro let his knees slide up to his chest as Klonoa spoke. Arms folded over the knees, and chin came to rest on the arms. Tilting his head slightly, the bouyant blonde locks jounced around his eyes, resting eventually along his forehead, gilded strings lightly grazing his brow. Hikaro let Klonoa speak, more for the boy's sake than his own, he presumed. Self realization. Hikaro himself never had much of a lonely life, everyone liked him. People who'd he'd rather avoided followed him like a savior, and he'd suffered near kidnappings on three seperate occations.

But Klonoa faced a different fear. His life was filled with emptiness, with desolation, dispair, and death. It's no wonder he'd hadn't lost it long before now. Anyone else surely would have cracked under the pressure. Could Klonoa not see how strong he was? Stone was the most powerful, most lingering element. Fire was feared, lightning fierce, air misunderstood and water taken for granted, but earth...Earth was respect, of hearth, of home, and of endurance.

"Don't think of taking my life, Klonoa. I'm willingly giving it to you, because I believe in you." Hikaro stood then, watching the figure in the window. Klonoa had become ashamed too, but for entirely different reasons. Klonoa was ashamed of his being angry with his sister, Hikaro for reasons he couldn't bear to admit.

Hikaro approached the silhouette in the window, and knelt, taking Klonoa's hand. He marveled at the grey skin laced with purple streaks.
"Yes, you have the skin that rivals marble in beauty Klonoa, but I think you're finding statues in the wrong light." Hikaro paused to look into Klonoa's deep violet eyes, losing himself in them. He wanted to make all the pain and anguish vanish from those eyes forever more. He'd tear out Mirabelle's throat with his own hands if it would restore the light, though he had the feeling it would not.

"Marble is stone, and stone is earth, and earth is strong. You are strong Klonoa. As long as you stand, and as long as you breath, you will never be ruined. Earth is the foundation upon that which we all stand, and it is powerful. I've never thought ill of you, or your elementsake, and I never shall. Never unless you bend and submit to Mirabelle. Will you?" Hikaro let the question linger in the air. It was Klonoa's choice.

Hikaro's own honey eyes became pained as he watched Klonoa drive himself further and further into hysterics. He presented the option so cleanly, and Klonoa had to cleave it. To fight or to fail, it was as simple as that. He brought up rocks and erosion, ah yes, but not acid rain.

"Rocks erode, they become sand yes. But they only become smaller and are never fully destroyed. And you know what? Even if rock is broken, if it falls to the depths of the sea, and is buried, and when it hits magma, it melts, and reforms as more rock and emerged again. Like water, rock is eternal."

Hikaro let his gaze drop to his own hand, the one that held Klonoa's mere moments before. He could see the thin rise of an artery, could see the pulse of his heartbeat as it pushed blood along, preserving his life for yet another moment.
"Do you...do you know the legend of the Hououza...?" He queried suddenly, not lifting his gaze from his hand. Of course, the legend.
"We all lived once before. Each and every one of us was alive, until something wiped us all out. Every Hououza was killed where they stood. But instead of truly perishing, we remained. Condensed to our barest essense, a feather..."

Hikaro closed his eyes, trying to remember his life before he'd been killed the first time. It was hazy, all that he could recall was songs, faint lullabyes that drifted like a fog.
"And now we live again. Death is nothing to be feared, for if the soul remains, even the hands of death can be turned backwards."

Hikaro's eyes snapped to meet Klonoa's. The gentle honey was replaced by a phoenix red fire. Passion blazed in those orbs. "I cannot promise that I won't die, but you can be sure you won't be alone if I do. I'll try my damnest to avoid getting there in the first place though, and I can only hope you'll do the same."

Hikaro sat still, listening to Klonoa's words. Boy, when that boy wanted to talk, he sure could run a mouthful. He didn't mind really, because at least now Klonoa's words were not all disparaging. The golden phoenix shifted slightly, to sit on crossed legs, resting his chin on the upturned palm of his hand. The blaze in his eyes extinguished, leaving him looking a little weary. He thought Klonoa wanted to sit and not think? He could go for some of that.

"I wouldn't trade our friendship for anything. What we have is special. While not perhaps as obligatorially bound as blood relatives, but we can be just as close." What Hikaro didn't add was that if he and Klonoa were siblings, it would also make him related to the hellish tyrant who called herself Mirabelle.

Golden lashes fell over the honey yellow eyes, and Hikaro's thoughts were again his own. When he opened them again, Klonoa was staring at the floor. His face looked clouded, and Hikaro wondered what it was he was thinking about.
"What troubles you, Klonoa?"

Klonoa suddenly stopped moving, and unlike before, Hikaro became frightened. This wasn't the serene moment of before, it was the freezing of an unwilling body. From Klonoa's still form, a phoenix emerged and perched precariously, before leaping off and soaring through solid objects. Stunned, Hikaro could only sit in silence and watch through confused eyes at the display. What had brought about this sudden change?

When the phoenix cawed at him, Hikaro instinctively rose, without fear and walked to the spirit. It was a near autonomous reaction as he lifted the incoporeal ghost to stand upon his arm, and grasped the paper between trembling fingers. Hikaro turned, following the spirit's gaze. It decended upon Klonoa, who's very breath had stopped, despite his living functions continuing on. There wasn't much time. He approached Klonoa and gently set the words into the stiff hands, holding out with his other arm the phoenix spirit. He hoped this would work, they'd come too far already to let it end so suddenly, and anticlimactically.

((MM, I don't know. I was expecting some huge showdown between Mirabelle and Klonoa, for him to just up and die would have been anticlimactic.))

Hikaro shielded his eyes from the flare of light that composed the song belonging to the phoenix. From atop the head of the stone boy Klonoa a light so radiant it threatened to outshine the sun came forth and pointed to the heavens, pleaing with the gods for more time, another day to walk among fools and mortals on this land they called earth. The light turned back and entwined between them like a golden ribbon as words written by fate's hand itself rose to take the light's place. Hikaro's eyes turned back to Klonoa as he reverted to as he was before, living and breathing and moving and...insecure.

Awash with relief, Hikaro's knees soon buckled and he slid to the ground. Another threat thwarted. Sinking to the floor, Hikaro's eyes were shielded by his curtain of yellow hair. He shook his head.
"Never so much before as right now. Klonoa, why would you wish such a thing after all this? Nevermind, do not answer, what is past is past."

Hikaro's eyes turned upward. He gazed at Klonoa with what looked like he was on the verge of tears. His voice became a whisper,
"Can I touch you? I cannot yet believe you are not still stone."