She gave a shrug. Sen fell to a silence, and they walked together, closer than before. Things had changed, since that day on the trailside in Kitano, since they fought at the echo pond. He didn’t know how to explain it. He felt the conflict, the sadness in her, which matched so well the things he felt inside himself. He knew that, out of all the people of the world, if things went wrong, the only person he would go to, and seek help, was her.
Slowly, softly at first, he began to hum a few notes from one of the common songs, a tale of love between two children-of-the-sky. He paused, laughing at himself, as she watched and smiled back.
“How do you know that song?” Rui asked. “It’s a lowborn song.”
“Everyone knows ‘The Magpie’s Wing’,” Sen said. He lifted his voice for the last, most famous verse:
The autumn princess was so sad
Her lover fell beyond the sky…
Oh, the magpies, the magpies…
She cried so much, the magpies saw her
And their hearts did ache, they made an offer
To carry the autumn princess across the river
The bridge of heaven
To meet the sky lord’s daughter again
Let no rain come
Let no rain come
Let no storms wash them all away
Let no rain come
For the tears of Akihime
In the end, with the words drifting off, sure as fireflies, sure as the setting sun, he fell to silence. “I…” He stopped. Bashful, suddenly off balance again – as if he’d just exposed too much, as if he’d shown his heart. He said: “Anyway… it’s just a thought.”
“We should probably be getting back,” she said.
Another moment passed, then another, and Sen realized she was lingering, unable to say what she really felt, what she thought, or what she feared. It was the hardest thing of all.
“It was just a dumb idea,” he said.
“Sen,” she told him. “I’d love to.”
But even then he saw that something else was weighing on her, hanging over her, a shadow on her thoughts.
“Why don’t you go on ahead of me,” she said. “I’ll catch up later.”
“You sure?”
“I… have some things to do first,” she said.
He’d wanted to believe that Rui had left the whole incident behind her, but that was wishful thinking. You couldn’t leave something like that behind. It would always have an effect, and Rui was affected. She was quieter now, more subdued. The events of the past year had changed her. She could still be hot-headed, but at the same time, something, yes, felt changed. A pallor lay across her heart. It didn’t fit the story of herself that she’d been telling to herself, he knew, didn’t fit her conception of who she was – and yet it happened.How do you come back from that?
“I’m not who I thought I was,” she’d told him, months before. “I don’t know what I thought, but not this… never this.”
“It’s all right,” Sen said now, and fell quiet, feeling an emptiness within his words. This, he thought; these hollow words, inadequate. Rui shook her head, tried a smile, and walked along the path.
“It is what it is,” she said.
