Clipped Wings [Dual PK]

[usercultist 148]

 

Crimson leaves drift like dying embers from a fading sky, settling upon untouched snow that glows pale beneath the autumn dusk. The forest is quiet - too quiet, save for the soft sigh of wind weaving through the cedars. Nearby, a forgotten campfire lies buried beneath frost, its last warmth surrendered to time.

 

Beneath the blisterbark, two bodies rest, departed in each other’s arms.

The larger form cradles the smaller, their robes darkened with the shared bloom of blood soaking into the snow. Blightsteel lies abandoned at their sides - ceremonial, gleaming faintly - its duty complete. Once again used by that of Tsukinomiya blood.

 

Samurai stand in a silent ring onlooking the pair, their armor catching the dying light. Men and women of the Shugonate. Witnesses. Sentinels to the tragedy they themselves commanded. None speak; none dare disturb the serenity now draped over the fallen.

 

The Owl and the Kite.

Two lovers, one soul - one conjoined fate.

A single voice breaks from the line of armored silhouettes - barely more than breath carried by the breeze. His Sashimono, the moon.

“Sayonara…”

The word drifts upward, swallowed by the canopy, as crimson leaves continue their descent - gentle, unhurried - covering the lovers like an autumn shroud.

 

 

---

 

“Hyōka-san. . .”

「氷華さん. . .」

 

“Okite. . . Watashi no itoshii hito..”

「起きて. . .私の愛しい人. .」

 

A soft voice drifts through the hush of falling snow.

The Owl stirs. His eyes heavy, dimmed by the cold - flutter open to find a familiar serenity gazing back at him. leering above him, as he is cradled, framed by the pale glow of the winter sun, is the Kite. Shizuka. Her silhouette glows against the frosted sky.

She lifts a trembling hand and cups his chilled cheek. Warmth returns to him in a single, fragile moment. His gaze meets hers - sage and shadow, calm and cold. A faint smile blossoms between them, small but radiant in the quiet.

The Owl rises, snow cascading from his shoulders like soft feathers. He folds his arms - his wings around Shizuka, drawing her into him. Their foreheads meet. Tears collect, then fall, shimmering before vanishing into the snow at their feet.

But the air shifts.

Footsteps approach through the curtain of crimson leaves, slow and deliberate. The Owl’s breath catches - not in fear, but in recognition.

Through the drifting reds steps a woman clad in weather-worn shinobi armor colored in the soft purity of shiro. The cloth, though aged, carries the dignity of countless battles. Her eyes - sage like his, rest upon him with a motherly pride.

 

“Yoku Ganbatta wa ne, kawaii ko.”

「よく頑張ったわね、かわいい子。」

 

“Kore ijo hokorashii koto nanta nai wa.”
「これ以上誇らしいことなんてないわ。」

“Watashi no.. Chiisana yuki-fukuro”
「私の小さな雪フクロウ。」

 

Shizuka gently loosens her hold as the woman extends a hand.
The Owl reaches upward, talons trembling, and allows her to lift him. He rises, steadier now, guided by a presence he has longed for since childhood.

Mother and son stand face to face - their lethal wounds a mirror to one another. Both victims to self-inflicted death.

With a tenderness that defies the cold, she pulls him close and presses a kiss to his forehead. Memory floods him - warmth, safety, the scent of home long lost.

Around them, crimson leaves whirl like silent witnesses. Witnesses to the reunion of mother and son, Raven and Owl.

 

 

---

 

The Kite rises slowly, lingering frost sliding from her robes. Her eyes follow the reunion unfolding before her - mother and son, bound again after death. A tender warmth, but one she cannot touch. Envy present in her gaze, thin and fragile, and beneath it a sorrow deep enough to hollow the air around her.

Then - movement.

Beyond the Owl and his mother, two figures step through the drifting veil of snow. A woman in a flowing shiro yukata, her face serene and luminous even beneath the muted winter light. Beside her stands a man with strong, familiar eyes. Their forms greet the kite with open arms, blurred only by her rising tears.

Shizuka freezes.
The breath leaves her chest.

And then she is running.

Snow cracks beneath her bare feet as she rushes forward, flying past the Owl, past the crimson leaves swirling in the wind. Her cry bursts into the silent realm - raw, young, long-held. She collides into them with all the force of her aching spirit.

Warmth envelops her.

Her mother folds her close; her father’s arms wrap around them both. The Kite buries her face into their embrace, trembling as they hold her as though she had never been lost at all.

No words pass between them.
None are needed.

Only the sounds of soft weeping.
the mother’s gentle sobs,
the father’s low, aching breaths,
and Shizuka’s broken cries. . .

A family reunited, not in life, but in the quiet eternity beyond it.

 

 

---

 

Many tears are shared between them all. Mother and son, couple and daughter. However as the overhead frosted son begins to fall - the long deceased gently guides the birds to rejoin one another. 

 

Hand-in-Hand, Tsukinomiya Hyōka - Fuyukaze Shizuka appear upon each other. Their gaze meets once more before turning to the sheer white in the distance. A nervous chuckle shared between the two before they begin their shared travel to the afterlife. Two lovers, one soul - destined to reincarnate. Hand in hand, they are to be reborn as soulmates once more.

 

 

 

---

 

As the surrounding winter fades to sheer light - memories of all that surround them begin to fade as well. Family, friends - enemies. All they once knew fade.

 

Visions of a beautiful, fragile woman drift toward Shizuka like echoes through the fog of her fading mind. Her mother.

Silken-blade hair, eyes the deepest shade of midnight - shadowed like her own, yet carrying a warmth she once knew by heart.

Her smile blurs first . . . Then her voice.

The melody that once soothed her - trembles, fractures..

And fades into the light.

 

Visions stir at the edge of Hyōka’s fading consciousness,

A silhouette wrapped in mystery, yet warm in a way the world could never understand.

His mother.

Her rare smile, the one ondly meant for him,

Wavers.. Blurs.. Slips from his reach.

The calm of her presence, once his hearth,

Fractures into shards of memory - desperately trying to remain.

 

A man in worn, tattered farmer’s attire appears - her father.

He greets the young Kite with a rough palm atop her dark hair, offering the familiar hoarse cackle he saved only for her.

A sound meant to waver the stormclouds from her feverish mind, even when most desperate for food.

For all his toughness, he always knew how to make her smile.

Such laughter began growing distant.. His teachings fading into the light..

 

Flickers of laughter and shared footsteps through the shop ripple from the dimming edges of Hyōka’s mind.

His siblings,

Two bound by blood, the other bound by something just as real.

Their shapes blur.. Their voices thin..

And the memory of that fleeting bliss of family fades,

Glimmering once more before it disappears into the afterlife’s glow.

 

A woman the color of Haganeki petals - soft pink as Shizuka’s own lips - stands surrounded by wild nature, her feline-like gaze both fierce and protective.

The Geisha had once been Shizuka’s refuge, the warmth she embraced when the world grew cold.

But in the vision, she turns away - shoulders tense, offering no comfort.

A solemn memory - yet one she still treasured, even as it slips..

 

Soft light cuts through the flashes of darkness, revealing two shifting silhouettes.

Their bickering, though nigh endless, had kept monotony from swallowing his life.

A small joyous humor he never asked for, yet appreciated the same.

Even when tiring, their loyalty reminded him he was not alone.

The two smear into color as the sounds dim.

 

An older man appears, blind eyes half-lidded, his unsettling cackle echoing one lost to her faded memories.

He’d once gifted her weapons - in support of her goal to protect her beloved owl..

And offered warmth back into her life.

A family she thought she’d lost, returned through him.

This memory clings stubbornly to her fading mind,

Because she’d loved him like kin.

 

A duo shone through, siblings. His aunt and uncle.

Though he came with such contempt, they still wished to accept.

Though his future was so dim, they still allowed him to retain honor.

It had been a quiet kindness, one steady and undeserved, a choice he held close.

One he would cherish until his final moments, 

Before it too, slipped into the light.

 

Butterflies - soft violet wings brushing against her skin like silk - drift through her vision.

And with them, a woman whose gentleness seemed woven from the lilacs themself.

A druii, her true mother in every way that mattered.

Shizuka feels the ghost of a jade comb through her hair, remembers the taste of beef she were fed for the first time…

Remembers being held like the child she never truly got to be.

This memory refuses to vanish, it lingers warm, stubborn and precious..

Until eventually fading.

 

Again that light awoke, a man illuminated purely by the moon.

The Shugo, his grandfather.

Years of hatred smothered in an instant, 

When he came to speak with the man, yet he still accepted him as kin.

Granted him a home, a safe-haven to dwell with his beloved, despite short-lived. 

 

Then the moon rises in her memory.

A man adorning the crescent, gaze solemn, aged, and tired.

A man of few words - yet each one had mattered.

She had known him briefly, yet he had offered her more kindness than she had ever dared dream.

The Shugo.

A quiet blessing she carries even as the memory dims.

 

For a moment, there was only stillness.

Then his heart pulsed, joyous and liberating.

A reminder of when his soul relinquished the years of hatred gathered for his homeland, and how freeing such a moment was.

If only he had freed himself sooner, met them sooner, was accepted, sooner.

 

Snow-white fur,

Eyes of deep scarlet,

A nose brushed with soft pink.

Small in stature, yet with a heart far greater than most she’d known -

A mentor, a caretaker, a true friend.

The little rat samurai who stood at her side like a father.

Even as the world of memory collapses into haze,

Kikurage remains clear,

A white flame refusing to go out - until it finally snuffs.

 

His newest, yet last memory,

The gentle tug of warmth upon his hand soothed his mind.

A fleeting glance was given to the Kite’s hand, and the shimmering crimson string that bound their ring fingers.

 

 

---

THE OWL

Piercing Cold.

That was Hyoka’s first memory - an icy sting that cut straight through his newborn soul. There was no cry at birth, no wail to mark his entry into life. He emerged into life as if born beneath a blanket of snow, the world around him muffled, distant.

Silence.

The youngest child of long removed Tsukinomiya now newlywedded Isenfulds grew beneath that quiet like a shadow. Crapes, bruises, the injuries of reckless youth - none drew a sound from him. His voice, when it did surface, came rarely and with deliberate weight. Each word shaped as though forged, measured and honed. Speech was a blade, and he wielded it sparingly as did his mother.

Silence was with him on the worst day of his life.

He remembered the way his mother’s body had folded before his grandmother’s shrine, her hands still gripping the Blightsteel blade that slit her belly - breath slipped away after her final goodbyes in private prayer to the long lost Yu. Hyoka did not scream. He did not tremble. Grief settled upon him, not as fire but frost.

Cold, suffocating, absolute.

From that knot, hatred bloomed.

Hatred for Koyo-kuni, the land that branded his mother a blemish, unworthy of their name. Hated for Norland, whose rigid and frozen ideals shaped his father into a man too brittle to protect what should have been sacred.

The hatred did not devour him.

It refined him.

A cold flame smoldered in the hollow of his chest - quiet but unyielding. It drove him to sharpen his body and spirit against the very borders that rejected him, against the bloodlines that carved a blade through his family - a blade through his mother’s own life.

And from that flame, a vow took shape,

Hyoka would carve a place of his own - a place where the mixed, the forsaken, the cast-aside could stand without fear, where silence would not mean weakness.

And where frost would no longer claim the ones he loved.

 

THE KITE

 

“Okaasan. . .?”

 

Her small form curls against the blanketed body that once wrapped her in warmth. The corpse does not answer, its limbs stiffening under the weight of her own desperate embrace. Nights pass as the little kite—lies beside her mother in a stillness she refused to name. The world outside continues, the wind brushing through the broken straw roof, light passing over the two as if statues.

As moons pass, the small Kite’s body shrinks—skin drawn thinner beneath the sun peering through the shelter’s broken roof. And with further moons passing, he returns. A father, a husband, a farmer. Many titles were used of this man. None truly lasted.

 

“Otosan. . .”

 

The Kite’s voice creaks out as she reaches for him, nails splintered, hands torn by days of hunger. The corpse’s odor, rancid and suffocating—clings to her skin. The child attempts to rise, dizzy with grief, vision blurred by tears long dried, dying her skin.
Though, she was not greeted with the warmth she craved.

“Gomenesai Yumeko-san.”  The father weeps, passing by her as though she were a shadow. He kneels beside his wife’s pale face, cradling it to his chest. “Gomenesai.. Aishitemasu..”

Hours pass. The child rests at her mother’s hip while her father’s sobs fill the ruin of their home. Months of illness had chipped away at Yumeko, carving her down before death claimed her. The little Kite wonders—if she had gathered more firewood, worked harder, cried less—would her mother have been saved? Would her father have come home sooner?

“Sugoku. . . Tsukareta yo..”
 

Shizuka’s eyes pry open to the overhead moon’s cold glow. Her trembling hand rises as if to touch the light leaking through the torn roof. Moonbeams slip between her fingers like threads she cannot grasp. The air is thick with rot, with dried blood, with the silence of things that once breathed.

 

She pushes herself upright—slow, aching, hollow. Her parents lay behind her: the rotting Yumeko, the freshly slain Takezo. Death has closed its grip around the small household. Two lovers, one soul, one fate - ascended together. The belief of Reincarnation held strong.

 

Her heart heavy - Shizuka couldn’t bear to spare more tears as they’d all run dry. Instead, she turns to gaze upon the moon - seeking its guidance. 

 

For days she walks. For weeks she stumbles through forests and fields, past villages that do not see her, past shrines that do not hear her prayers. Hunger gnaws through her like worms through old wood. Every step is a needle driven into her feet, every breath a weight crushing her ribs.

 

She eats what the land allows—roots dug from the edges of rice paddies, insects shaken from stones, scraps of wheat left unattended by careless hands. Her limbs grow thin as winter branches, her muscles stringy but stubborn. She keeps moving because stopping feels too close to joining the dead she left behind.

Years carve themselves into her body. Her voice fades to a whisper used only for speaking to the moon. Her memories become her only warmth—her mother’s gentle singing, her loving touch. Her father’s teachings of farming and martial arts, the smell of steamed rice they could seldom afford.

Yet even as starvation hollows her, even as loneliness bleeds into her bones, Shizuka lives on. Lives because something in her refuses to let the world take her as easily as it took them.

Lives because the moon still rises, and for reasons she does not understand, she still wishes to rise with it.

Upon the snow she arrives.. Looking upon crimson leaves does the young woman stop to admire an owl, particularly his blade. . .

 

 

---

Spoiler

These characters were an absolute blast to play, despite them being around for such a short amount of time. Thank you to all who interacted with us :]

 

[CelestialMochi 580]

Ichika would pray for the two daily, wanting nothing but peace and love for them. She loved them like they were her own children and she sent them off like any loving Oyashiman family member would...

[ArcaneChicken 121]

Spoiler

🥲😥😭

 

[PolarLoLs 984]

 

A young Oyashi learned of their death, so he thought ’pon the degradation of his entire flock

“...”

He had no words for there was nothing to say, who would he speak  to?  they’re dead. A promise  

quickly broken, made of a sudden folly.

 

[lemonke 6014]

Spoiler

 

 

 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Ehiba could hear the cries of those who had fallen, on how they suffered, but at least they sang in unison, as a duo, together. Yet, she already knew that those who placed chains upon the innocent would soon blame her, but it no longer mattered. The world always sought someone to cast its guilt upon, some scapegoat to justify its hunger for control, its cruelty, its need to twist wicked deeds into false righteousness. Even so, she did not feel sorrow. In her heart, she knew the two had abandoned her out of fear. She felt betrayed, yes, but she would still be content if they found happiness. She only wished they had listened, that they had heeded her, and not misplaced their trust.

 

A trembling breath escaped her, guilt gnawing deeply at her soul. She had not prepared them for the world, had not warned them how merciless, how narrow-minded it could be. She had taught them the meaning of family, unity, compassion, and understanding... but not how blood and kin could become the sharpest knives upon one's back.

 

And so, on that day, she climbed the mountain of her homeland. There, she lit two lanterns, letting them rise into the sky. With her hands pressed together in prayer, she wished that the pair would remain safe and united, forevermore. No matter where they would go, no matter what she did, or what they did. She will remain their mother, their family. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

 

 

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

 

Then, a thought drifted into her mind as she prayed, something The Aspen had told her long ago. No tears fell from her feline eyes; instead, she whispered that memory aloud. Still carved with the pain of her loss, yet accepting it all the same with no great sorrow, she allowed herself the first step forward. She had accepted it...

 

"To let go."

 

"I need..."

 

"To let go..."

 

@DragonofTaters

── ⟢ ・⸝⸝

[Adelemphii 1766]

Miyu frowned as the messenger birds returned again, each one dropping the tiny notes at her feet. She untied them and glanced at the paper- still unread by their intended recipients.

“That’s… odd,” she muttered, tilting her head. They should have made it by now. Maybe the winds were playing tricks, or perhaps someone had intercepted them.

Shrugging, she tucked the papers into her satchel. Miyu’s impression of Mask-dono was as a strong, nimble owl, unlikely to end up captured. Miyu just hoped they were all right. The birds would try again tomorrow.

 

Spoiler

I miss Mask-dono :(

 

[megavoltar 1634]

"Store their files in deep storage.  We won't be needing them for the present dissidents anymore."

 

At their desk, a heavily armored chief lowered their clockwork hands onto the files with drawn mugshots.

 

They stopped on a particular page after flipping through, and began repeatedly tapping on it...

 

'Sculk infection present in residence.  Link?  Violent behavior?  Masks to ventilate airborne pathogen?'

 

"Don't shred the documents on that place."

 

 

[Fishy 2709]

Shugo Honda burned a stick of incense, meditating on the death of his estranged grandson and fiancee, a grim reflection within his stormy enclave. 

[Mayios 542]

 

Kiyoko stood at the front of the former containment cells, the blood of her healing ritual remained there, engraved into the floor as an everlasting memory. Her hands that rested beside her gripped onto the cloth she wore tightly. Her jaw tightened as felt something.. Rage. Anger. She's felt such before, but never to such a degree.. 

 

"Lat must learn how tu cure someone before cursing them." The thought echoed through her head, the day she casted her first curse - the day she met her first and only true friends. 

 

"One day, lat will have tu choose ah path. Tu be a good shomo, or walk the thin path of mortality." Maukurz's lesson continued echoing in her ear.. and it was then she realized - she chose neither. She wasn't good, she was never destined to be good. If she wanted to be a good, friendly shomo, she would've been the pitiful farseer learning in kurai-kunai.. a healer she'd be - but she was the opposite. She wanted revenge. She wanted to make those who hurt her, her friends, lead them to such points - suffer. 

 

Despite her Ojiisan Kretz's warning of spirits, despite Maukurz's words of picking one side or the other ... Kiyoko didn't listen. Instead, she chose her own path. She pacted that night with a spirit of pain & suffering.. Durkizum, the lesser of Krathol. In return, she must live with an endless starvation that consumed her, such a feeling mixing with the emptiness she now felt without her only friends.

[Reckless Banzai Screamer 15456]

Ena lit some incense for the two young lovers, one his friend the other his nephew.

 

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you two. I am just a man. I hope I have honored your last wishes. This was perhaps the greatest test of my Budo, my warrior way. I wish I could have known you more as well nephew. I will honor you through Tsubaki."  

[Mallow 243]

It was a horrible day for rain.

 

Spoiler

 

[latte 2238]

“Red leaves on white snow”

“Sake purifies the blade”

“Two hearts fall as one” 

- Okami Seiryu Hina.