Quote:
The Calling (12) : A beautiful melody drifts on the air from somewhere far away. The vocals are in a language you don’t quite recognize, but feel somehow familiar to you. Something about the song calls to you, but no matter where you go, the song seems to sound the same distance away. The longer it goes on, the more emotional the song becomes--and the more emotional you become. Something about the song is possessive and consuming, like it’s all you can think of. Something resonates in you as the song crescendos, and the feeling is at its strongest--be they good, bad, anything, but suddenly the song fades, and there’s only an emptiness inside of you. The feeling of loss is strong, and can leave someone feeling emotionally numb. Someone out there was calling to you, and you couldn’t find them.
Star Festival was always a good time. Perhaps that was silly of Izanami to say; "good," after all, was relative, and there were a lot of reasons to be nervous this time of year, especially when one considered the myriad magical phenomena that tended to appear around holidays of any kind. Halloween, Christmas, the city's own Star Festival...all of them were likely to spawn a weird event or two. This year was no different, of course; the radiation bear, the strange fruit growing from a dormant tree, flowers blooming out of control. But Izanami herself had found that it was...peaceful. At least, this year was.
She sat on the edge of an apartment building a few blocks from home, looking down on the city below, and hummed to herself. A lovely night, with little to distract her from doing her job as a Senshi. Perhaps she ought to visit her planet--that would round off the evening nicely. There was, after all, ever work to be done pulling weeds, cleaning the graves, tending to the manor house. And there was, she was sure, much more to explore--bit this little corner was what she had become most familiar with, and she suspected it was where her past self had spent most of her time. A lonely guardian, watching over the dead.
Not such a bad way to be, if Izanami thought about it. She'd had her duties, and she'd clearly had friends--Izanami had gotten glimpses and skips of memory of laughter and smiles with visitors, and of solemn ceremony. Never much more than a moment, as if she was being shared piecemeal shards in a montage of her past life, but enough to feel content.
She was about to pull out her phone and teleport off when she heard it.
A song.
It was quiet at first, but she turned towards where it seemed it was coming from, and it seemed to get louder as she paid more attention. Two vopices, harmonized, male and female, over....she wasn't sure, but it almost seemed like the entwined melodies of a shamisen and some other guitar-like instrument.
The melody felt almost familiar, but not quite, like a variation on a song she'd heard a thousand times.
And it called to her. In a way that made her chest ache.
She stood. Turned towards it.
Took off running, as if she could catch the source of the song if she was just swift enough, just believed hard enough--
As if she could outrun the way it made her hurt, by settling itself in the lonely places in her heart. The ones she filled with video games and work and more work and family, and tried to ignore as best she could. But this music--this strange melody--it wouldn't let her ignore them. Wouldn't let her pretend. It was as if the song called to that part of her, and dragged it to the fore, and made her yearn.
And as the song built to a crescendo, Izanami felt as if her heart was going to burst with the fullness of it.
She fell to her knees, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. And as the song faded out around her, Izanami felt more alone than ever.
[541 words]
