The first step

As the sordid tale of life began, so did it end; there was so much to do, and so little time to do it all in. The setting was, above all else, idyllic; it looked like the gods themselves had come down onto this place and, in a fit of generosity to those inferior men beneath them, painted humanity their own chunk of accessible paradise. Deimos stood among these perfection, his back turned to the meadows and his fore facing the lake; vapid, monochrome eyes seemed lackluster even in the presence of the glittering stars, and all he did was stand.

His clothing, a beggar’s shirt and pants as muddled and gray as his eyes, was all he wore; hardly the accoutrements of royalty, but cloth did mean so little in terms of power, so he never bothered to change.

His body was as still as a statue, but that’s not where the interest lay. His mind was what was at work, gently picking away at millions of thoughts, reducing them down to thousands and then to hundreds with all the destructive power of a hurricane focused through the lens of a mind as powerful as his. An average person might think so far ahead as, maybe, a month or so into the future and take measures to accommodate their plans to the smallest degree of error; a truly ambitious person will set a five year goal to achieve, and this was saying something.

Deimos thought centuries forward from this point in time. He thought beyond the inevitable fall of this allegedly great land, far beyond the time when he would assume the throne and take this place as king; he thought of how best to mold the citizens, how best to regulate the crops and balance the economy, that his land would become a golden one. For centuries to come, all would know Deimos as a god-king; a man that had come to this pitiful place and turned straw to gold, made water to wine, and did so without once being questioned.

His eyes fell to the lake, the crystal clear waters that reflected the infinite seat of stars above them, and all the velvety blackness in-between; now his thoughts were on the here and now. Prosperity is all fine and well, but one cannot reach the end without a proper beginning.

“I’ve put everything into play now…but this is precisely the moment when everything is so delicate. Nothing’s rooted; one solid blow and it all comes tumbling down like a house of cards.”

It’s funny to think that standing there, framed by the dark sky and the undulating waters of the lake, Deimos Barrett seemed to all the world a simple, mortal man. So flawed; so perfect.

Oh how god himself was generous, generous enough to paint on a canvas of viridity and where upon it the gentle and unwavering strokes of the brush was perfect to create such a scene, such a portrait, of an existing reality; everlasting and serene. And such was this place, favored by most. But none was a place often visited by more than another… this other. One could wonder what the likes of a soul be doing walking around. Might’ve it been a lost one, a wandering type, a ghost of long forgotten past, or of flesh and bone, the silhouette of a woman would be unmistakable.

A fragrant of the wind; an aroma of sweet-sweet ambience, entwining the likes of anything and everything if it so well pleased. But not tonight, not this night. It swept the pasture and valley with a sway of a gentle breeze, lashing the weaker of plants, grass, flowers, flushing the stronger but still limp bores of the scattered trees. Around her, it sung with a familiar tune.

De`Omi; less of a name, mediocre in taste-- it was the second name after her first that would be remembered by travelers and their kinds alike-- any and those who witnessed the likes if a simple tea maiden was deeply regarded with respect to a benevolent heart, and a bright charisma. Second, none other than a signature yellow kimono, pale in color but not in taste.. Simple decorations but elegant enough were simplistic decorations woven seamlessly into a satin fabric, and with such a light and thin texture; it too swayed with and against the wind itself. Brown hair, long and wavy, was in a kempt bun but none too neatly.. If anything, she should have just let her hair free flowed. Thirdly, a pensive expression. After all, it was safe to do. No one was around, no one to question “why the look”. And finally, last but not least, the name of a Tea maiden. Her name was Saya.

She let lose her flip flops, picking them up with a single swoop of lithe fingers, to feel the cold earth on the sole of her feet that would soon reposition upon the water. There was nothing in mind, just utter content of the world around her, this place.. Whenever she was here, her life too seemed meaningful.

The woman’s steps were paced slow and unrushed by time for time was still and ageless. Looking off into the horizon, sepia hues noted the glimmer of a starry night reflected by the water current, flowing into the direction of something.. She halted to stop, eyes squinting to verify of it’s presence; a person.. A man.. The slight haze did very little to help with the sighting., for still the man remained obscured in a collecting mist.

Lids slid over eyes slowly, with a lack of purpose, and his senses were allowed to be rampant. A heady scent wrapped about his form, twined between his limbs and spiraled up his torso before laying waste to his thoughts; he did not recognize it in any specific detail, but Deimos knew right away that this was a scent that could belong only to a woman. For some time thereafter, he did not act; temporarily, Deimos was paralyzed by deep-rooted instinct, primal urges that clouded the mind and made his limbs want to act in ways that he simply did not condone.

He cast a single, sidelong glance over his shoulder, the way that his eyes were turned catching fragments of starlight and all but glowing with its argent majesty. The world around the woman broke away, shattered to insignificant pieces and thrown away by a violent wind until all his eyes could see was her silhouette.

“I remember you, we met before. You were that girl whose heart is just too big for her chest.”

Before the woman could see his mortality, the need to smile for reasons unknown even to him, Deimos turned his attention back to the waters of the lake. With a nonchalant flourish, as if his movements held no importance whatsoever, the man motioned to a spot on the ground directly beside him, hoping that the girl would follow suit and stand just there.

“So then, Miss De’Omi, just how long has it been since we’ve last seen each other. Days, weeks, months, years? Never mind the question, actually. I don’t bother keeping track of time nowadays, just the distance between sunrise and sunset for the sake of organization.”

He paused for a moment, thoughts whirring away, before bringing his hands from behind his back and thrusting them dutifully into his pockets; Deimos stance lost the imperious ambience it once exuded in waves, but there was something in the way he forged his words that was still somehow off. Something….hidden, dangerous even.

“You’re getting deeper and deeper into wonderland Alice, and your lover isn’t here. Has he left you?”

He knew the allusion would be lost on the woman, as they would be on most people, but he twisted words mainly to entertain himself, having long since accepted that the spread of knowledge seemed to halt within worlds.

A faint chill quailed over her body, seeping through the thin fabric of her kimono, that did very little to barricade the wind in the first place. The source remained to be both unseen and unknown at first, between the man who stood as still as a statue whose countenance remained obscured, and the gesture of the wind. And then, as if the apprehension seemed almost too heavy and dense to carry on, almost did the woman turn and walk away.

But both the gesticulation of the wind that should have pushed, pulled instead; pulled and ideated an enticed Saya.. And his voice was familiar.

“You.”

The steps once more began, the earth beneath her feet algid, and it was as if the woman was cautious for her life. A visage plastered, a look between fright and peculiarity with a singular, intriguing, interest unlike their meeting before tonight. She found herself stopping short before the indicated spot on the ground he motioned, in his own way, for her to stand on.

Deimos’ way of words seemed like ice, cold and frigid. He seemed to care little about facts, then based a conversation with what amused him most. It had it’s way of having Saya stuck.

“Gene isn’t around. But you and I seemed to have crossed path once more. Is it coincidence, Deimos? Or are you here to kill me.”

The way those words should have been said should have been without restraint, overall confident, and lacking burden. It could have been said in such a way by any other, rather easily perhaps. But not this woman, not Saya. The words slipped brooding with vexation, a specific fear she had never felt. An odd feeling, different from the type felt when one would cross path with a ravenous killing monster, a conniving bandit, or staring into death itself whatever it may be. This fear she felt with this man was unexplainable. This Deimos was peculiar, a muse of something dark and with purpose..

It had been so long since he had last laughed; even before his escape from that…infernal prison, Deimos had never seen much purpose to laughter and those few things that struck him as humorous elicited only a macabre sneer from his lips, never a laugh. But this woman had, in so few words, broken past emotional barriers years in the instinctual making; Deimos laughed in such a soft, gentle manner that it completely belied the monster that lay within.

“Of course I’m not going to kill you, else I would have done so already. Miss De’Omi, as you’ll come to learn about me, I am not a man for pretense. I do not mince words, I do not play games; I answer questions and I solve problems, that is what I do.”

If there was one thing that could be said about Deimos, it was that, outside of battle, he moved with a certain degree of languidness, almost as if he were perpetually tired; those he knew him best, which given his enigmatic nature is only a few notches above everybody else, knew that Deimos moved slowly because he was not a man that could be made to move for anybody.

But this woman had, inadvertently, done what men had lost their lives trying to achieve without so much as batting an eyelash; with a single, slow step back, Deimos came to stand shoulder to shoulder with the innocuous tea-maiden.

“You are right, however, in assuming that this is no coincidence. That you would come here, blaze your own trail through these lands and forests and hills, of all places cannot be coincidence. This is a matter of willpower. One of us willed this situation to be, and the world has responded.”

One hand raked through listless strands of hair, pushing them away from his vapid eyes, and he focused his sights onto the woman. Deimos did not necessarily tower over her, but his stature was of enough height to be intimidating; if not that, then the wolf smile he offered.

“So, which one of us was it? Have I summoned you or have you summoned me?”

Oddly, her feet had become almost unbearably cold. With the flip flops still in hand, she started to, nonchalantly, twiddle with it, rubbing her thumb against the material of woven pieces that made up the zōri, before purposely dropping and slipped both feet into them. It helped a little.

Saya’s expression allayed placidly- why? It might have had something to do with Deimos’ answer. It was the second time he answered such- but ah, may it be the lightest of scale, with laughter this time.. But this ‘man’ who does not ‘play games’… Her face contorted with an incertitude grimace. She had recalled him toying with lives before- in fact, hers and Gene’s. The meaning could not be very far apart, in this she was more than sure. The scrape on her left arm had partially healed with a smallest of scar half an inch thick and almost an inch long, but it would be barely visible unless nearly examined by one.

“I don’t mean to commemorate, but I do recall several groups of uninvited vampires the day you and I first met.”

Was there a hint of sarcasm in that tone?…

“That night, you made it seem as if there no longer existed hope, but could give it once more as if it was there in the tip of your fingers all along. And second you were gone, I thought that I would never see you again.”

She took the time to pause, to listen to the harmonious strings that the unseen crickets played.

“Heh, I’ve never been so frightened by just the look of someone’s eyes. Tell me, why would I want to feel that way again?”

That was her answer to his question.

Those sepia spheres that seemed almost dull and brown in shade tried to search inside his depthless eyes. There was no strength in her eyes, no intent, they were weak and forlorn, as if worn out by seeking for something that wasn’t there- but even still, she didn’t seem to give up.

He stared into Saya’s eyes for a full minute, the silence between them growing and growing until it became deafening, washing over and silencing all other sounds; no gentle waves against the shore, no crickets, and no leaves fluttering in the wind. All that lay in these placid surroundings were a man and a woman, lost for better or worse in the eyes of the other.

“You can never truly know your limits until you’ve been tested, up until that point it’s all a bunch of guess work.” His words came out with a slow and deliberate drawl, a cadence that beat against her head and made sure that every single inflection was registered. “You’ve spent most of your life as what? A tea-maiden? Your scope of the world was from one end of the tea-house to the other; your knowledge of men and women existed only of the kind that frequented your shop.”

Another pause and he leaned in slightly, closing the distance between them, perched on his feet as if he were ready to pounce and take her.

“Up until that night, I bet you never knew the beast of courage that lay waiting in your heart, rattling against its bars, yearning for the day it would come out. I bet until that day, you didn’t know you were ready to risk your life for a man that you had barely met.”

Suddenly, with the sudden and sprightly strike of a serpent, and yet so gentle that his hand couldn’t even bruise a peach, Deimos let his fingers wrap around Saya’s left arm. With a simple turn, yet one which held this level of raw power that could bend a steel beam, Deimos turned her arm upward, eyes scrutinizing the limb as if it were alien. The tip of his pinky finger dipped past his lips and then, without a word, moved down to the scar; a painless sizzle could be heart when flesh contacted flesh, and steam rose from the contact site as Deimos ran the tip of his finger along her scar.

Saya was healed.

“There is no such thing as a place where hope doesn’t exist; so long as there is a single creature a live, neither hope nor fear will be absent. Like I said before, it’s odd that you’d find yourself here…maybe I did wish for your presence.”

Deimos grip relaxed and he took a step back, the purpose of proximity taken care of, and voiced a question that came to mind.

“Tell me…what is it that you desire most?”

A yearning of the heart.

On the seconds, it went by quickly, fast.. as if it never even happened. It seemed useless searching within them, those eyes of his, those single shaded eyes, daft and lacking life. Saya could turn away, she should have had, but the purpose of his stare- that full minute of spellbinding fascination, once it began it was impossible to look elsewhere. But this time she would sense no fear and no distraction. As lackluster as they were, she had sensed the beguilement in him.

Saya would be deplorably unaware of the ongoing around her, the silence that rose and swallowed anything and everything, except the words he spoke slowly and surely. Indeed, it had registered somewhere in the depths of her mind. She had not realized it until now. Those customers, by-passers, travelers & wanders; they all had a place that was etched into her heart and memory, and so she could never forget them.. But what of them?.. Could they have also remembered her? A tea maiden who watched the rotation of the world through the window sill of her teahouse? And while everyone else treaded on their life’s carriage, learning and encountering and witnessing all at once…, could she had been still remembered?

.. Perhaps it was that ‘beast’ inside that collected, bit by bit, piece by piece, by the envious fact that she could not do the things that they had already done- the life they were in that Saya could only hope for.

And then, thoughts were distracted by the quick chary of his hands and fingers that wrapped around her thin arm. Saya gestured drably with a shrug, and that was all. Her sight fell upon it, brows furrowing towards the steam and sizzle at seeming and sounding so painful, but didn’t feel so at all.

“Healed?..” The astonished former tea maiden was in awe, allowing the opposite of her fingers to trace upon restored flesh.

She bit her lip, nonchalantly, to the former situation, and looked at him once more. Her chest broadened for a moment as if to prepare her lungs for a deep respiring sigh and a second later, she did. “What I desire most?” For an instance, her gaze rummaged into space, as if the answer she seeked was lingering in the air, the lake, and the rocks.

“..many things.” There was idle in her tone, blunt and unclear. Where her answer was most was much more vivid in her mind, daring to scream past her lips; that she longed for an escapade, an adventure, something daring where no rules laid in tact. But to conquer those would mean one thing….. And she answered, just as dully as her first:

“To… be less of a burden.”

Deimos did not pity this woman; she was lost in a world of indecisiveness, a place that had no bearings, where she could not look forward to where she was going nor back to where she has been. Lost forever in a black parade, a palpable darkness that beleaguered her on all sides and let her heart beat echo around her, showing her truly how empty all of this was. No, he did not pity the woman; his heart ached for her.

There was something about this woman that Deimos found irreproachably appealing; she had admitted her fear of him within the first few minutes of their second meeting, and given the circumstances of their first she could hardly be blamed. And yet did she run from him the moment recognition settled into place? Was there anything to gain from courage, even foolish courage, brandished and paraded around? There was no reason for her presence here, no rhyme to her logic, and yet there she stood, right before him, answering his questions as if he were some kind of mentor to her, some manner of friend.

“To be…less of a burden?” Her words were echoed emptily, bereft of her sentiments, and filled with something else; irritation, perhaps, and undeniably some level of annoyance. “You’re never a burden to those who enjoy your company, and to those that do find you a burden, perhaps they don’t deserve the pleasure of your presence.”

He thought about her then; like the first time he laid eyes on her tonight, her body was fragmented from her surroundings. The lake fell empty, the ground was torn away until mere dust and pebbles remained, and the sky was shattered to pieces; all he saw, all there existed, was the simple, humble form of the tea-maiden Saya De’Omi. Mentally, he played with her spatial orientation, flipped her around in his minds eye and revolved her until he knew, in intimate detail, ever contour of her body.

At that moment, and really only for the briefest measure of time as was humanly possible to comprehend, Deimos had fallen in love with Saya, knowing more about her than any living being before him. He knew, then, that above all else, above his plans for domination and destruction, for salvation and growth, that he must have her, that he must have this Saya De’Omi. And he would have her, he would take her in the only way that he knew how.

“I can give you what you want Saya, whatever you’d like.” Deimos tapped his chin idly, the calm surface belying the turmoil and angst bubbling inside of him like lava. “Anything at all you desire. You wish to no longer be considered a burden?” Then his lips twisted in such a sly smile that it moved nearly like silk. “I can do that for you, would you like me to?”

Saya could not tell through the abysmal stare of Deimos, how he dissected past the consistence of her core and fragile body- and as if developed her life of a nineteen year old story into a written chapter of prolonged pages that he read entirely with a single swipe of his glance. There was no force on earth, no jocund factoid, no viable certainty, that she could have grasped it, such a knowledge, even on the very surface of her brain- what Deimos had done during that brief moment.

She could only wonder what he could be thinking of, what vacillated the depths of his mind, what didn’t, his fears, his joy, and if he had any to begin with. Oh, such a man was this Deimos, a living, breathing, enigma. Never had a single creature conceived and portrayed such a bewilderment in her eyes; and not in a sense of mystery, but a lucidness of all feelings: fear, adore, hate, interest, admiration, curiosity, lust.. A fluctuation of emotions felt all at once and one by one.

Her gaze drifted past a void of contemplation, returning once more in the enthrallment of his gaze. Her face boggled, dumbfounded and questionable. All she could think about was why?

To be given whatever I desire, anything at all that I've ever wanted and longed for.

She turned from him, more so, turned to the side, thumb near the lip and started to think, idle in appearance. For a moment, she thought about the words, why why why? A lump had almost gotten stuck as hard as the woman swallowed. And for all it seemed, the questions Deimos asked both mattered and depended, sardonically, between life and death… Her head lifted from pondering and wryed to face him.

“I’ve thought about it,” she shifted her body towards him, and again, they would be standing face to face. “Thought about why you would want to offer me the world- the likes of me. Your proposal, Deimos, is.. baffling, it’s beyond me to even grasp.”

She was insane for thinking the thoughts that rang and argued and debated in her head. But here, the marvel to her life was standing feets before her. No, she was not insane. An insane person would have said ‘no’. And so, she took a step, a single short stride of step, towards him. “.. yes.”

“The why’s aren’t important, not right now.”

And as easily as that, Deimos dismissed Saya’s inquiry; he did it as if he had the power to ignore reality as simply as another man might snap their fingers. He did not expect his motives to be questioned and, even if they were and he could be convinced to actually answer, he never expected anyone to actually understand his machinations, such was their complexity and their depth. He had grown used to doing things in the song of silence, with only his mind to drive his desires forward.

And yet, despite all the isolation and the solitude and the utter insanity he had been subjected to, been forced to live through, to thrive on, Deimos could not help but feel something odd at her answer; like a cold hand making a fist in his stomach, or the sensation of his black, wizened heart skipping a single beat. It was either anticipation or anxiety; neither were emotions he had experienced recently, frequently, or of any substantial strength. This was all so alien to him and yet, on some awkward level, it was comforting.

Still, he could not bring himself to accept this; true, it had been eons since he had allowed something other than his mind to drive his focus, even if it had only been for the lapse of a second, and that a younger Deimos would consider him nothing short of an absolute fool for even harboring discussion with this woman…invariably, Deimos was a man of logic.

“You need to be sure. This isn’t some…fairy tale; everything you do and everything you say changes the path of your life and your very real actions consequently yield very real consequences.”

The voice had taken on that apathetic, mechanical cadence that seemed most fitting for him; it did not sound as if he were holding any form of conversation with a real, living human being, but rather reading from a long and formal book some kind of discourse on the most asinine thing. Deimos sounded almost bored.

“So, I’ll ask you a gain, and I implore you to think about this; once you say yes or no, that is your answer, and you will never be able to take it back, you will never be able to change it. Do you…want me to give you what it is that you desire most?”

Oh, how Saya wished it could have been, a fairy tail that is.

She had thought she was confident enough when she gave the answer, made sure of it with the valiant step. Eyes gleamed of white sparkles that effervesced in the depths of a sepia hue, with it sparked with a glistening alternation of sureness. And so, Saya was perplexed as to why he asked again.. She should have nodded in the quickness, or said ‘yes’ again. But confounded and lost at sea with his perennial question, her expression twisted in a bland disdain.

Deimos refused to give a reason why and it had upsetted her with bittersweet. By the hours, or were it minutes, that she had known him, from the very first time of their meeting, he was always one to ‘explain’ and verbalize and declare, conquered even, with but his tongue, to a certain degree that throttled tediously Saya. But instead, The why’s were not important, not right now.

And even now, at a time when she thought that she was sure, and without Deimos’ explanation, it turned her stomach. This question, this inquiry, would be a gamble.

But it was one that she was willing to take..

What was it? Why the feeling? Why a sudden interest? She itched to know for the answers that didn’t seem all too dormant within the mans eyes, or anywhere else for the matter. A whim, perhaps, an interest that elicited infatuation to want to know him and everything about him. It kindled a fire beyond reason.

She would answer again, “I do.”

Deimos nodded solemnly, as if those two words had ensured death for thousands; that was the gravity in which he accepted her response. In truth, he could not have been more overjoyed; things were playing precisely the way he wanted them to, and what man could not be ultimately satisfied by having his every wish to be met? In a single second, the man’s priorities had drastically changed; first, this woman, and then the world.

He stepped forward, something otherworldly began to surround him; the air wavered from Deimos’ mere presence, as if he gave off more heat than the sun, and underneath the ground croaked as if met with this unforgivable weight. Ropes of sand spiraled around his ankles and up his legs and the very stars in the skies themselves began to wink out of existence, their presence snuffed out one by one by one until all that existed above was a blanket of impenetrable dark, and all that was before Saya was a single man.

With a delicate touch, as if Deimos were afraid that even a single jarring movement would break her, he laid his hands on her shoulders and drew her close; the distance between their faces was negligible, inches at best, and his eyes stared deeply into her own. At this distance, her scent was intoxicating; it wasn’t of flowers and sunshine, or ocean breezes or fresh cut meadows. Deimos could smell her; he smelled Saya, and it was heady.

“Don’t shrink away from me; remember that this is what you asked for.”

His breath was warm against her flesh and smelled of spearmint mixed with oleander; his grasp on her shoulders grew even more relaxed, offering her escape where his words promised there was none, as he pulled her in. In a single motion, as fluid as it was unbridled, Deimos pressed his lips against hers in a motion that had absolutely no forethought, a thoughtless kind of action of which Deimos had only executed one other time in his life.

He could have done the transfer any other of several ways; a simple handshake, a prod in the shoulder, or he could have foregone physical contact completely and merely given it to her. But that is not what he wanted, that is not what his heart yearned for. The sensation for Saya would be something akin to painless electricity surging from her lips throughout her entire body, leaving her arms and legs tingling and the very core of her person warm. For Deimos, it was a world-turning experience; his legs almost gave out beneath him, he almost collapsed before the woman he had just claimed, but managed to stay standing.

He would not release her, unless her struggles grew frantic, for a full 5 minutes; in that infinite span of time, he merely basked in the grandeur of it all, and when the time came to part lips and step back, Deimos walked slowly; transfixed.

“There...” A whisper far too soft. “It’s done.”

Saya stood statuesque before Deimos. Her audacious expression had been ostensibly allayed, as if to say to him alone that she was ready- ready as any mere woman of her stature would be. With her chin tipped outwards slightly, her eyes lambency from the starry night and his reflective ones, she awaited for it.

And then, in irreality to Saya, as the earth, wind, and godly cosmos themselves reacted upon a splendor of strides that Deimos took, her eyes boggled.

She watched him step, drew closer and close, until the space between them were no longer considered boundaries. The crinkling of her brows suggested it, if he had merely forgotten by chance. She heard her breathing hollow, heard the beating of her heart multiply in beats, an other worldly emotion that Saya felt, as if the soul were shunned from her body and witnessed the endeavor happen elsewhere. “Wh-” she almost spoke out to him. Her eyes fell at his lips that were inches from hers, and smelled the aroma of his breath that reminded her of home…..

She had never felt anything like it. The kiss. The instant his lips touched hers, her body jolted; literally. A spiral of energy like waves that originated from the central of his lips and pelted away throughout her body. The jounce left a painless effect on her arm and legs; a tingling sensation, and stimulated a tepid presence within her own. Her eyes shutted. And for a full five minutes, she endured this frisson.

It was over before she knew it; just like it started, it ended, just like that. Her lids partially parted, though still semi-closed, not looking particularly at him. The digits of fingers, as well as both arms, diddered slightly with the after effects. Her body quivered in such an ordinary way, where one could assume a draft of chill in wind would cause.. But instead, Saya was left breathless. Plain, and simple.

Although he would not have said so out loud, for the admission of this fact meant that Deimos could not exercise absolute control of his body whenever he so deemed necessary and thus implied some form of weakness or imperfection in the man, he was still feeling the after-effects of the kiss; it was something lingering, not quite solid but far from being absent, that made it feel like a number of fist-sized rocks had come into being inside of his stomach.

Without consent, and truly without thought, Deimos’ hand swam upwards and the very tips of his fingers played across his lips; the sensations were almost surreal. Even in the I-Realm, hell even before it, he had never felt something quite so strong. It wasn’t alien, for as he was a man so did Deimos hold the ability to feel the complete range of human emotions despite their lack of exercise, but the sheer magnitude of it all was sobering. He could safely say, though he most certainly would not, that he had never felt this way before.

“There, now you are not, and never will be, a burden for as long as either of us lives. There is no creature in this world, or in any other, that will not look to you without some kind of reverence. They will learn to fear me, and by proxy, will be taught to respect you.”

Subconsciously, Deimos closed the very distance he had forged between them and let his arm rest on her shoulders; his eyes, once again, never left hers.

“Now I am yours as wholly as you are mine. We share a link that can never be broken. My heart, from this day forward, beats only for two things; for itself and for you.” The hand began to gently worm its way down her arm, resting slightly to reassuringly grip the crook of her elbow, and then moved downwards once more until the very tips of his fingers could play against her own.

“I…” A pause; could this man truly be uncertain? “Well…no matter what Saya, you can never be a burden to me, no matter what it is you do. I…I know I said this before but you are mine, and I’m yours. That’s all there is to say. I can only hope that you don’t grow to hate me, if you don’t already.”

Deimos did a fine job of it all; if one weren’t paying attention, the steady cadence to which he delivered the news made it seem as if they had struck up some kind of bargain, as if all that Saya had done was sign a manner of contract. If one wasn’t careful, one would not realize the deal for what it was; for all intents and purposes, without crowds of cheering people and vows to be said, they had been wed.

Unified.

Her expression, once in awe, unstrained and relaxed. Saya did not smile, she did not laugh, there was something else in her countenance that was much more than that, something that a simple curve of the lips, or an emitted giggle, could not portray what and how was felt. Although, as he would stare into her eyes, the comfort of an utmost solace was there. It was, as if, stipulated, that some promise was made and that she had missed it, that she would no longer be a dired burden, for anyone, any more, so long as Deimos was there.

And still, she couldn’t help but feel lost. His actions, once bleak, cold, turned on a sudden twist on its path. And like his threats that once stabbed with a force of a serrated knife, of their previous meeting, prior to this night, that night with Gene, no longer mattered, as if he had never said anything damaging in the first place. And yes, just like that, the dreaded memories were overshadowed by tonight.

Saya felt the weight of him as well as the weight of his consoling words. Neither were heavy and was far from it. She looked down at it, as his hand traced the length of her arm and found it’s way to the softness of her fingers. “Deimos…” She looked at him. I am his, and he is.. Mine?

Suddenly, she hurled her weight with an abrupt step, her arms wrapping around his body and pressed her own upon it. The side of her face came against his chest, and when a moment of being completely still, with the wind as a witness, she heard the beating of his heart.

She closed her eyes, “Thank you, Deimos.”

He was stunned, in one awkward sense or another; very few things that he had done in all of his lifetime elicited any form of thanks, so it was utterly surprising that Saya, a woman that Deimos had all but damned to a life spent with him, would choose then and there to thank him, even in spite of the prior atrocities he had committed for what seemed like no reason at all. But his logic was frail and insubstantial; in a matter of seconds, he lost himself in the warmth of her embrace, those thoughts dashed against the shores of his heart and his body reacted in a reflexive fashion that Deimos did not know he actually had.

Arms, as if floating in the middle of the ocean, drifted lazily upwards until they could gingerly wrap around Saya’s waist and pull her in for a tighter embrace; he pulled her closer and closer until the gap between their bodies was completely nonexistent. He could feel their hips touching, the outside of his leg pressing firmly against the inside of hers and he let the side of his face rest atop her head. This proximity did everything except inspire any mention of lewdness; this was too intimate for anything so obscene. Right now, he could know only the silk touch of her flesh, the warmth that pressed against his own skin, and that lovely scent that marked Saya as her and no other.

Deimos took a deep and wavering breath, as if steeling himself against something truly fearsome, and the world around them grew mundane in response; starlight began to filter through the tenebrous blanket that had once covered them, color flooded their surroundings, and the gentle crash of the lake’s waves against the shorelines was pacifying.

“This will sound weird, I know it will; you aren’t at all like I am Saya, and so this won’t make any sense at all. But I’ve thought 1,000 years in the future about many things, and just a single year ahead of where we stand now, in regards to us. In that time, I will come to love you as no other man could possibly fathom; a love so deep that it will pain me, but a love that I could not do without. I can’t say that I love you now, but I can say that I will; forevermore.”

If it was at all possible Deimos would have drawn Saya closer still, even taken her within him, that was the message that the slighter quaver that ran through his body gave.

In silence Saya awaited for nothing in return, only with the assumption in mind that she would not get any. Such was the response that, still, she was accustomed to, where oddly it might have seem that she knew this Deimos for months and years, had the presumptuous of doubt- regardless of his spoken promise to her, as well as the kiss. She anticipated no endearing hope that this Deimos would step down from his pedestal for the likes of her. And then she bit her lip rather toughly in fear of just that.

But, and to the contrary of her thoughts, those arms of his had done the opposite of being motionless to embracing. Her eyes struck open, in surprise that he had done it. Again, her body jolted.. But the source, of by no means, was being transmitted through like its previous time. No, the origin of it would be deeper within, with a deeper meaning, and of deeper mending; that sky rocketed from the core of her chest, to every single one of her nerves.

This intimate gesture, as it would be enough, was soon followed by what Deimos said. And she was left stupefied with very little words to say in return..

“I..”

Beyond any doubt, she too would learn to love him, much sooner than he would, and much sooner than she thought; for all she knew, with the inkling in her heart, it was already there.

Deimos cared very little for the passage of time; he had spent so much of his life in a place where time was an inconsequential being, where it had been a powerless mistress, that he had learned to dismiss its reign as easily as one might ignore a child’s reprimand. As such, especially since his eyes were closed and his mind focusing on the grandeur of the situation unfolding before him and of the woman in his arms, Deimos had lost track of time; it may have been seconds, minutes or even hours before he finally let his arms fall from around Saya’s body, taking a step back while one hand slid down her arm and let their fingers intertwine.

“Thank you for forgiving me Saya, I assure you that this is possibly the best path you could have taken in life. I promise, I will do my best to personally ensure you will never regret this. Now let’s go, we have many things to take care of, and none of it can be done from here.”

Deimos made the motion to move forward, towards the vast body of water that sat directly before them, and then, for no reason at all, stopped and turned to look at her. He let his eyes bore deeply into her own, the once soulless, gray orbs filled with something altogether unknown, but undoubtedly present. His left hand rose lazily to rest in the gap between their bodies and his fingers clenched tight.

“One last thing. You’ve…well, you’re part of a different world now Saya. It’s no longer a world of tea and cakes. From this day forward, in everyone you meet, you’ll have to keep your eyes open for treachery and murder; I have many enemies from my past, and in the time it will take me to rule this world, I will make many enemies more. Trust no one you meet other than me; sometimes, not even me.”

Something suddenly came to life in the center of his enclosed fist; through the cracks of his fingers, iridescent light beamed outwards, changing colors rapidly from red to blue to green to yellow and violet. His fingers pried themselves open and a butterfly came into the world, its prismatic wings all but glowing in the moonlight, and it came to land on her shoulder.

“That’ll protect you. Before I take you away from all this, is there anything you want to bring with you?”

In adverse to the innocuous tea maiden, time would be everything. As she saw it, it was an essence in life that answered dutifully and honestly, and should its moment of time be simple or great, small or vast, good or evil, it had its equal weigh in the world. An inwardness in time meant a lesson learnt. For who knew how long it would take to obtain and maintain perfection (days, months, years, perhaps eternity), it would take only but a second for a mistake to be made.

To Saya, the moment of time of their embrace was preserved forevermore. She longed for nothing else, yearned for nothing more, than to listen in content of the beating of his heart, being so close, as to dare touch his godly flesh. She didn’t want this to end; in fear that it in fact would for the worst. It felt, and she knew, that no where else in this world had she felt safest than when being within Deimos’ amorous hold.

She did not want it to end when it did; a few minutes was not enough. But they wouldn’t be parted for too long as his hands, no later than soon, found its way down her arms and the welcoming of her fingers when his digits drew near. She gave reassuring nod that she understood.

In time of his preambling of what would come, of the hostility that she will surely face, a manifestation of fret blanketed her visage.

But such the emotion had little reason to persist.

..and in awe, her eyes steadily watched the ever shifting lights of an iridescent rainbow take place seeping from the miniscule gaps of his fingers that stayed clenched. The lights ignited the dual tones of her eyes; shifting from the darkest of hues of brown to the lightest shade of a red tint.

Saya smiled in admiration as a butterfly emerged the moment his hands loosened and opened. Born into this world, it’s wings fluttered with beauty, before it landing on her shoulder. With a slight turn of her neck, she looked at it, then, lightly, giggled placidly; the kind of laughter that made her feel all warm and cozy inside.

“No, nothing.” She spoke at him, but her happy gaze did not stray from this butterfly. It was of little important into the situation now, but it would be Deimos’ absolute first time seeing Saya so; blissful and happy, with a freehearted spirit that was this tea maiden.

Deimos nodded once, just once, in recognition to the fact that Saya had nothing left tying her to this world of subservience, and that she was ready to embark on the journey which would eventually lead him, and by proxy her, to the power that the two of them deserved; Deimos could only help to think how grateful his future land must be, that they have Saya’s kind-heart to curb his iron fist. He turned once more to the lake and leaned towards it when, suddenly, his logical progression of thought was overtaken.

“No, let’s not go yet. I’ve given the others very specific instructions, and if they follow what I’ve told them exactly as I’ve told it to them, then there is little to be done tonight. So, rather than get swept up in the torrent of power and whatnot to follow, let’s take the time to…how do they say, ‘smell the roses’?”

Without even the semblance of further procrastination, Deimos let his the only link between their bodies be the gentle grasp of his digits to hers, and then he brought his body down onto the spot where he was just standing; if all went well, Saya would fall in line right next to him or, if she were awkwardly swept up in his eagerness, she’d find herself sitting in his lap. Deimos, either not one for sentimentality or simply unable to grasp it beyond what he had shown already, would continue regardless of her positioning.

“That butterfly, it will be your guardian for when I am not around to protect you. It has no identity yet, no name by which to call it or even a gender by which it can identify itself. For now, the only purpose to its existence is to keep you safe; you can name it whatever you’d like, it’ll grow as you do.”

Vapid eyes scoured the rippling surface of the lake; to Saya, it’d feel like a slight pressure had come to rest on her shoulders, as if someone lay their hands onto her just then, but to the world it’d be a much, much more forceful realization. The gentle caress that the lake provided onto the shoreline began to wane until the entire body of water had become completely placid, as still and unmoving as glass. The corners of Deimos’ lips twitched upwards in a satisfied smile.

‘There, now it’s as if a piece of the sky is right before us; a perfect mirror. I’d like to know more about you Saya, whatever you’d expect a…whatever my role in our relation ship is, to know.”

This butterfly conformed with the relaxation of her shoulders after a heaved of a pleasant sigh acted. She had about taken a step, with the means and intensions of obeying what she was told, and she would do so passably, for now, without question nor inquiry that should have been harboring these woman’s callow thoughts. And then, Deimos’ paused of continuing on with the infelicitous remark of the saying, ‘smell the roses’. Saya but blinked nonchalantly in number, and she could not help but smile either.

“Oh,” it was an utter of little importance, but to merely state that as Deimos’ moved to ground, to where soon she would as well, his posture and entire demeanor seemed to almost change. Once, he stood the ground with a poise so stoic that his attributes served him best as a god persona. But for him to lower onto the earth, where no other being in existence could subject him to, he seemed almost.. man.

Her smile heated warmly, as she dropped slowly next to him, and by the motion of Deimos’ eagerness, found herself comfortably on his lap. Then, as if she had done something wrong, like child’s mild mistakes acted in front of their parents , she perked straightening her back, and soon her cheeks would flush a rose red hue.. But Saya’s chain of thoughts, during tranquil times, was a never ending aisle of fascination.

When this woman was content, all captivated her. Previous as well as current thoughts were easily deviated within the very next appeal that was worth noticing.. Or such, in this occasion, this butterfly that still astonished her. She aloud herself to ease into Deimos as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do; and truly it was.

Saya frowned when Deimos told her of the butterflies origin and purpose of existence, which was souly to protect and accompany her. She wanted more for the butterfly than just that. “I’ll call her, Ina.” Now, this butterfly had a gender as well as a name. With the lithe loose of her index finger, she stroked the frame of her wings. In fluttered in response. If this butterfly could talk, Saya had a reassuring feeling that it had no problem being called ‘Ina’ at all.

Then without warning, it seemed as if the weight of the air pressed down unto her. Her mundane senses perked towards the lake and its shores began to subside until the currents were nonexistent, and refused to act upon the natural wind and tide. A huge mirror that was once a lake, reflecting the beauteous celestial sky and its infinite sparkles. “That’s… unbelievable." Saya was in awe.

She had to force herself from her mesmerize state; a simple shake of the head would do. Saya looked back, up at Deimos, “you’d.. like to know about me? My life was nothing special before this. You read me right Deimos. Almost everything that you perceived about me was right.” There was an almost sadness that was unmistakable, the type of brooding voice, that Saya was so accustomed to, to the point that she no longer realized that she spoke in such a way at times.

She forced a smile that he could not see, as her gaze heightened, from the mirror of this lake, to the similar sky. “Never mind that. Wont you tell me about you? Please?” The word ‘please’, afraid that he would deny her of her request.

With movements so subtle as to be unconscious, Deimos settled Saya comfortably in his lap and let his arms wrap wholly about her body, pulling her closely until he could feel her radiant warmth pressing firmly against his own skin. He said nothing, more than content to keep his eyes on the impossibly still lake that reflected the starry night sky above, and listened intently to everything Saya had to say. When inquired about his own past, Deimos did not reacted as most other men; in this day and age, it seemed a trend to attempt to be mysterious about one’s past, which was likely angst-ridden with dead mothers and fathers and all that good stuff.

Deimos responded cleanly in kind.

“I spent my younger years in the hold of an average family; my mother and father loved each other, we had a middle-class income, and they treated me as kindly as they would their actual son. I knew I was adopted, however, when I came to the realization I was my parent’s intellectual superior at five years of age. My biological mother has been in an insane asylum since I was born and I’ve met her a few times since then; she seems perfectly sane so long as you don’t show her the color green. She has a fiercely powerful mind; if she so desired, I imagine she could have collapsed that entire establishment with such an afterthought.”

Deimos shifted his weight uncomfortable side to side, splaying his legs out before him for the sake of comfort, and finally turned his eyes to Saya’s eyes. There had been a horribly subtle change to his voice; most of the time when Deimos spoke, it was either as horribly mechanic as a man reading from a book or dripping with the kind of hubris that only a god could retain when speaking to a man. But now, when speaking of his past to this simple woman, it was…normal.

“After that, I went to meet with my father, Goliath Barrett. He was…I don’t know how else to explain it, he was unstoppable. He was in a metal straight-jacket, chained from head to toe, suspended from the ground in a solid metal room guarded by 10 guards at all time. He never moved, but his mere presence wore away at his chains; when they replaced his bindings, they did so a single chain link at a time. He was intelligent too, though far less than my mother and known among the commoners as the Devourer of Villages.”

Deimos sighed just once, feeling that he had been rambling on for a bit; his arms tightened around her waist and Deimos let his head rest atop her head while he continued in whispers.

“At age 13, I had read every scrap of literature in my town, so I left; at 15, I was a master swordsman; at 16, I was more than proficient in hand to hand combat; at 17, I forged my own set of armor. And then a lot of other, boring things. I want to know more about you Saya. Your favorites; your goals; what drives you?”

Saya reacted with a supple ease when Deimos moved and shifted about. Had his legs extended and spread for comfort, to her it would exult in an intimate snugness. She closed those eyes of hers from the beauty that lay before her, perhaps, because an irk in depths of her conscious that she felt unworthy, afraid that she might take an alluring wonder such as this before her for granted, either that, or the woman was tired and longed for sleep. She could have done so, fallen asleep, in an instant within his arms like this, carefree and quite soundly, but she didn’t. Rather, the closing of her eyes helped picture the story he told, as if it were bedtime.

In reality, she tried to fathom his past all together. Within the likes of her mind, working and working, until an efficient enough picture was drawn, where Deimos stood walking, and walking, and walking, in the middle of an aisle of everything that was said. This man, Deimos, was a genius, a living prodigy, who operated the world with how he saw fit, no consequences cared for, existing boundaries that were brushed aside with but a whim. The days and years spent inside and around her mundane teahouse stimulated the woman’s naivety and how she saw the world; serene, beautiful, and lonely -- and so, Saya could not begin to fathom Deimos‘ story, not yet, her mind… was not as intricate, to let alone comprehend.

Those hands, warm, caused by their heat, moved over his arm and felt around at its fore. She gripped tightly than loosely, and tightly again, repeatedly, and she opened her eyes. ‘He’s real, he’s man, and this world has so much to offer him and he has so much to offer for the world’. Deimos would realize Saya staring intently, not towards the sky, her gaze was too low for that, and it was not the lake either.

And then, like the snapping of the fingers, she was brought back to reality with the question.

“What drives me..” those words vocalized with very little intent regarded Saya’s conscious thinking; like the words spoke of were negligent to mean anything and were savorless of meaning. In truth, her thinking was vast in Deimos’ spoken history. His life story was both unexpected and temerariously told, almost practically.

She parted her lips, peach tint and moist, for some brief seconds, nothing came out of her mouth. It was as if she was trying to search for words to say, to place in order her life to as far back as she can remember.

“I suppose, that I was a foundling once, roaming about the outskirts of some village. I don’t remember much about it, only that it was cold and dark, and there were so many trees. Then, a much younger Hori-San, who later adopted me, my Grandfather, took me in. He owned a tea house in the rural area up the mountains, far from here.” Suddenly, she paused, as if something clicked in her mind. “I almost forgot!” She whispered. Palm in palm, she clasped it together and lifted her hands so that it was near her face, closed her eyes, and nodded a bow twice, for her late Grandfather, and continued with her story, like it was never interrupted.

“Where was I? The teahouse, oh yes-- oh, I wonder how it’s doing. I hope alright.” Saya couldn’t help but miss the only the place that was known home, and even if it wasn’t much of a home at all, it was all she knew.


Her gaze lessen to the ground, as she continued. “As far back as I can remember, I was Saya De`Omi, the tea maiden. I have always known that I was found, with no parents to call my own. Hori-San hardly acted like a father to me, but even now, I couldn’t complain about it. I longed for a family as a child, stared into space more times that what was considered normal just day dreaming about them, what they would look like, if I had siblings, and… If they are still alive.” She had not realized it, the sorrow that was born in her soft tone. It was so natural and nostalgic, so deep, that she almost found herself back home when she would but blink. “It pained me so much that I remembered crying myself to sleep almost every night, just wondering why they left me and why wasn’t I good enough. Hmm, I guess you end up thinking a lot when you’re still small. But,” she forced a smile and it came out oh so cleanly, as if previous practice perfected this fakeness, “that’s my childhood. It’s not as exciting as most, I know.” By now, Saya’s tone had almost took a drastic change in mood and tone. She was talking normal, like it was any other day.

“And.. I guess what drives me, is my curiosity towards the world.”

Deimos eyes flitted back and forth between Saya and the placid lake before them, as if he were trying to decide which thing of beauty he should immerse within his vision, finally deciding the better of the two and absorbing every contour of Saya’s face with snapshots in-between blinks. Her words went in through his ears and were instantly filtered, allotted in appropriate memory slots; Deimos never wasted a memory, there was a rumor that the man was capable of going so back in his timeline that the could recall his own birth and everything thereafter, but he did have a system. Unimportant memories, like faces he had seen in passing, were pushed to the back of his mind, and important information such as future plans, were put at the front; anything to do with Saya found itself in, at the very least, his top ten priorities.

Deimos found her bows, her respects paid to her surrogate father that had passed on who knows how long ago, pleasantly rustic; Deimos had spent much of his time in the company of men that could either not be bothered by religion, for their malignant nature all but promised them a wrathful end to their sin-soaked lives, or men that had reached a pinnacle of logic so profound that they completely discounted the possibility of so powerful a being. Deimos, in that sense, was a black sheep; he had gone beyond most of the intellectual limits that mean bogged themselves down with, becoming cognizant of the fact that in spite of how much power he has accrued in his own lifetime, there is the possibility that someone was stronger than he, and one stronger than that, and so on and so on.

The thing at the end of this chain; he was likely God.

“Saya…”

His left hand came to press against the side of her face, cupping her cheek gently as he stared deeply into her eyes; his breathing leveled out, coming so steadily in and out that it could be described as mechanically, and the ends of his lips drooped downwards slightly. By himself, Deimos was not a man of any particular measure of emotion. Things like being sad, in particular, he found to be something of a waste of time; you cry only when you cannot do something to better the situation, and for Deimos the tools were always within grasp.

But it was his Saya that was sad; and when her heart bled, as thus, his could not help but bleed in turn.

“I want you to remember this, this day and your past, and never forget about it. You’re strong Saya, so much stronger than so many I have met. I’ve talked to men and women alike that have lost their families, but they’ve found their pitiful ways to cope; every single of them has ended their lives with power, taking the gloom in their past lives and subjecting it to others. You don’t have that kind of power, and it has made you so much…so much stronger than any of them.”

Deimos leaned in slightly, letting his head press slightly against hers and a light smile played at the ends of his lips.

“You’re still kind, you’re still gentle, and you’re so full of grace. You’re stronger even than I; look at what I must do to make up for my family. I grew tired of a family that loved me, and now I must take over the world; you, you have no such chains. You don’t ever change that about yourself, swear to me this instant.”