somehow, i've been alluding to icarus a lot
Silliness, oh the silliness. 8D;; This is just one of those days when I indulge myself and give in to earthly pleasures like writing Icarus!Aiba. But I promise to have real fic to offer by the end of this month! ♥
... and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
"Musée des Beaux Arts", W.H. Auden
One day, Aiba falls out of the sky.
He doesn't arrive on a shooting star or via other equally dramatic methods of transportation. Without any particularly grace, he just plunges, pulled by his own weight, into the sea.
It's a day in which the skies are transparent blue and even clouds are few. Nino is running errands on his mule, Sho is bent over his abacus in the accounting house, and Jun is sitting on his goats because they won't stop licking his hair. The day is normal, as normal as breath and beat, until Ohno walks into lunch with his fishing net full of feathers.
"I think I caught a really big one," he says, and the bundle flails.
Sho gets out of his chair and takes a few steps back. "You caught something with feathers - in a body of water," he says, incredulous.
"Its name is Aiba-chan," Ohno says. "It told me."
There's more struggling. White flutters everywhere until a foot breaks through the netting and a head saturated with melting wax ducks out of the hole. The disheveled boy, about their age, pouts at Ohno. "I am not an it!" he says.
"A sea monster, then. I thought this type of creature was only supposed to live at the edge of the world," Nino says. He's eating his meat as he usually would, not appearing to be too disturbed. "But I guess it's pretty cool, considering only dead sailors have seen one of these."
Sho takes another step away as Jun takes a step closer and narrows his eyes at Aiba.
"Did you escape from the underworld?" he asks.
"Crete," Aiba corrects. "I was running an experiment to see how well these wings could hold up. People from my island want to explore the world!" He seems to read the uncertainty in the air around him because he adds, "I'm human, you know."
Jun shakes his head. "No, we're human," he says. "The four of us without feathers."
Aiba slips the rubber straps of his wings off his arms. "These are detachable. I got too excited when I was flying and got really close to the sun, so the wax - that's what these are made out of, see - melted. That's why I fell into the water."
"So Aiba-chan is an angel," Ohno says.
"I'm human," Aiba insists and laughs. "Although I wonder what angels' wings are made out of. They're probably much sturdier, huh. Hey, is that chicken?" He looks at the food on Sho's abandoned plate. "Can I have some? I'm starving."
"Um," Sho says. "Sure."
Aiba gives his gratitude and says grace and seems happy in a way that's loud in the rustic quiet and beautiful like the waters that cushioned his fall.
They never figure out what Aiba is for sure, but they keep him anyway. Because in what world could you turn away something that tumbles out of the sky like a miracle to the land, with broken wings and a sun-kissed smile?
EDIT: Also. Unrelated, but OH GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE I SIGNED UP FOR je_holiday. AWO;IEJFI THINK THIS IS CONSIDERED MASOCHISM, Y/Y? YANNO DESPITE THAT I AM ACTUALLY PRETTY EXCITED ABOUT IT...ahaha. Ahem. :|