The Hour of the Wolf, Chapter 1/?, RukixReita
Title: The Hour of the Wolf
Author: yukigafuru
Rating: PG-17
Chapter: Chapter 1/?
Pairings: RukixReita
Bands: Gazette
Warnings: tbc
Genre: angst, romance, fantasy
Summary: True courage is the strength to accept that everything you have ever known and believed is flawed and the strength to live with that knowledge. Few have to resort to this kind of unassuming courage. This is the story of some of those few.
Chapter 1
It had been a long time since he had last managed to find some peace. Tokyo was too full of life while he was anything but, filled with people coming and going, living their small unimportant lives: waking up early in the morning, getting on a filled-to-bursting train only to sit on a chair for more than 8 hours a day before repeating the whole thing over and over again.
In a world filled with human-looking robots, he was barely hanging on to his own pitiful life, one day at a time. The sounds of the big city grated at him. The trains tortured his ear canals with their screeching and grinding, the people always talked behind his back, the singing and crying and “irasshaimases” on every possible commercial occasion made him want to bang his head against a wall until it wouldn’t hurt anymore. The smells, once so fragrant, along with the smoldering hellish summer heat had turned the world into a rotting corpse and he found himself trapped in this nightmare day after day.
The days had been growing longer and his paintings more and more sinister. He used to paint waterfalls and angels, brilliant blue skies and towering sky-scrapers, laughing teens and smiling babies, all that was sweet and beautiful in this world, or at least what everyone thought so of. Nowadays, his paintings were little more than bold swatches of colors, enveloped in shadows and reds. Some whispered about them being post-modernist even while shaking their head and slithering away, but Ruki knew better. They just showed the world the way he saw it lately: a never-ending, distorted hell from which he couldn’t escape. And he was no Munch or Van Gogh either.
So moments like the one he was experiencing now were few and far too precious. The canvas he had in front of him had painstakingly been covered with the beauty of the valley and the temple right in front of him. Brilliant, vibrant shades covered every centimeter: greens and blues and reds, the white a fantastic mix of purple and pink, blue and white and so many shades of pastel grays. Ruki felt just a little more alive just looking at it and he knew that he would hardly bare to be parted from it while perfectly aware that it was the only one of his latest works that would sell. Still, he hated the idea of giving it up, even though at present he found himself in the same place he had painted it in. To anyone else, it would seem such an easy choice, to just paint another one but Ruki knew in his gut that this would be the only one he’d be able to paint.
No one could capture just one moment, no matter how much they would try to cling to it. Even now, the waning sun painted lengthy shadows on the luminescent valleys of his painting and in no time at all, night would set and a new day would begin, so much like the old one and yet never the same.
He had found the valley by accident. Tokyo had become too much, the relentless drill in his head had only worsened and the migraine combined with nausea and vertigo driving Ruki away, anywhere where he could get some air. He had jumped on one of those infernal machines, trains, and traveled aimlessly, not even bothering to look or listen for destinations and town names, aiming to just be further and further away from Tokyo. Finally, hours later the train had reached its last stop. There, he found a quaint little village stretching around the tracks, and behind, closer than he had ever seen them, the mountains. Tall and majestic, they loomed just up ahead, a wall between the earth and the sky, leaping from one yet never failing to reach the other, green-bearded giants witnesses of ages long forgotten. The sun didn’t seem so glaringly bright framed by those cliffs and the green of the forests invited the weary traveler down its paths. And the air was sharp and clear, a world apart from the hydra of stenches one got accustomed to in the metropolis.
The town seemed deserted for on his short wandering through the town, Ruki did not see one person lingering about the streets. He found the little sign indicating the old road leading to the temple by accident and without properly deciding on it, Ruki started to climb the mountain. Nature had repossessed the human-made road years ago and the once trotted on earth was now invaded by plants and rocks. The mountain road had never been an easy one to follow, not even when in use, for it cut across the mountain, the traveler having to jump here and there over exposed tree roots, grab on to something and host himself over stair-like rocks and slip on rain covered rocks.
Ruki had never had to climb such a road and more than once he stumbled and fell, got up and climbed again. He couldn’t explain it, but the mountain was calling to him and he gladly followed. Since reaching the town, his migraine had lessened by degrees till disappearing completely and even though the pet bottle of water he had brought with him had long been emptied and he couldn’t even remember when was the last time he had eaten, he discovered strength he had never imagined he could have and simply climbed. When he would fall parched upon a boulder or a gnarled tree, he would somehow miraculously find a little spring or a patch of berries that would revigorate him enough to keep on going. It seemed like the mountain was helping him onwards and Ruki followed.
He finally stopped upon reaching a large plateau, surrounded by cedars, covered with monk’s hood and edelweiss, a sea of purple that gave way to a sea of green and blue, for the plateau stood at the entrance of a majestic valley, rows upon rows of dainty peaks rising up towards the sky, covered in forest of cedars, pines, maple and breeches.
The air was clean and fresh here and it was quiet. There was only the sound of the breeze dancing through branches and leaves, the faint trill of birds in the afternoon heat, the sigh of the river and the buzzing of cicadas in the distance.
Fortuitously, he had brought his last canvas with him, a small pathetic little thing that he had grabbed without entirely realizing why. Mixing his heart and art with the last of his oils, he would create his one masterpiece, the one piece to set his work apart, to truly make him an artist. Ironically, no one would be able to admire it, for Ruki knew deep in his heart that he would not get to climb off the mountain.
The brush moved in strokes and waves and points across the canvass while the sun painted its own broad stroke across the sky. The wind gradually turned chillier and light faded by degrees while Ruki kept painting. By the time he had finally finished coloring the blue sky, the evening shade had already fallen around him. In the twilight the world around him lost its vibrancy and darkness was quickly encroaching upon the valley.
Ruki could try to reach the temple impossibly perched on the other side of the valley. Even though it was summer, he knew he couldn’t possibly spend the night where he was and lights had been turned on inside so Ruki knew there were people there. The trail he had followed would probably surround the plateau and gently climb towards the temple and comparing with the distance he had climbed so far the temple did not seem to be so far away.
Still… what would he be striving towards? At least here he was content, happy even. Perhaps it was time to finally rest and leave the rest up to whatever fate was instored for him. He thought about falling asleep there, on the thick mattress of fragrant flowers, and if he woke up tomorrow, then tomorrow was another day and he would worry about it then. He was just taking out his coat from his backpack, along with a pet bottle to gather some water from the creak he had found earlier during his climb, when he heard a low, menacing growl the likes of which he had never heard before.
Surprised, he slowly turned around. His heart seemed to want to pound out of his chest, whether in shock or fear he could not know for there should have been no animal capable of such a sound in these mountains, so close to civilization. So, even though the growl had induced some form of primitive fear response, his rational mind kept screaming at him that his body’s reaction was stupid, that it would most probably be a rabid squirrel or something. Great was his surprise when upon turning, he found himself only a couple of meters apart from a supposedly extinct but very much alive wolf, canis lupus, the great predator of old… His mind couldn’t make sense of the information while his body had gone into shut down, unable even to move from fear. The wolf kept growling and snarling, his eyes trained on Ruki’s meager form, body taut and ready to spring. Pity that Ruki would probably end up as wolf food, his sarcastic side pointed out, while the artist in here longed to be able to pick up the brush again to sketch the majestic beast with fur that shined like fondued chocolate and yellow eyes sparkling like diamonds.
He had only seen a wolf up close at the Ueno zoo once, many years before, a poor animal trapped in a small cage, lounging on the fake concrete rocks and looking disinterestedly at the humans crawling by. His eyes had been empty and aimed at something far beyond and Ruki had never felt the need to go to the zoo again.
The animal he was now facing was nothing like the one seen years before. He was truly a king of the woods, majestic, proud and deadly dangerous and something inside Ruki was happy to have been in its presence even though he would soon die in its paws. Still, he figured there were worse ways to die, so Ruki closed his eyes, and waited.
Yet nothing happened, and Ruki opened his eyes once more only to be greated with a completely different sight. There were two wolves now, the brown one with the hard yellow eyes and another, so white that Ruki would have doubted he was real if not for the traces of dirt staining his coat and paws a light gray. His position made it look as if he was threatening the other wolf, but in a way so bizarre Ruki could not make sense of it. Wasn’t there supposed to be growling and posturing and even snapping teeth at each other? He was fairly sure there should have been some kind of display of superiority and brutality, but the white wolf was just staring the other one down. His eyes were dangerous and threatening enough, true, two pinpricks of arctic blue, trained on only one target, but that was all there was apart from his stance exuding authority. Was he the alpha, Ruki wondered, but then why was the other one taking such a long time in submitting? Still, after what seemed like hours but could only have been minutes at mist, the brown wolf’s head and body dropped low, his ears flattened to his head, adopting a submissive position Ruki had seen dogs take before.
After his opponent had literally dropped on his belly, the snow-white wolf finally turned his attention to the human. And this one had no problem advancing, closing the distance between them. It wasn’t growling like the other one, just staring him down while taking small steps and Ruki wondered why he wasn’t leaping. The other was obviously not a threat any longer and the stench of fear had to be oozing out of Ruki’s pores. But more than its attitude, Ruki wondered at its eyes, for they were different from what he had managed to glimpse of them before, they were now the color of the sea, blue, deep, beautiful and surprisingly warm. The wolf seemed to be treading carefully, one step at a time, almost as if requesting permission, slowly but surely advancing towards him while the chocolate wolf was watching the scene, his eyes trained on the white one’s back.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the wolf reached Ruki and sniffed at him. Ruki had been resting on the grass after finishing his painting when the growl had broken the surrounding peace and he could not be in a more vulnerable position, the wold practically sniffing his neck. Having a wolf’s snout, even one seemingly pacific such as that one, so close to your beating pulse, after ages since last eating or sleeping properly can do things to a man, and Ruki then and there, to his eternal shame, blacked out.
A/N: I'm back and with work and everything I'm not quite sure if I'll be able to keep up with this one. But it's an idea that has been fermenting for over an year. And it's a fantasy, so for those readers that are still out there, be warned: expect anything.
Moreover, I have so few time to write and all that my bunnies are practically extinct. They have been revived by reading old comments just a tiny bit but need fuel for the weeks to come. Hopefully, there are some animal lovers left out there in the internet fanfic wilderness. Love to those of you that stayed.
Also, I need a new manip for the story but cannot promise when it will be done. Hopefully soon.
Squishes
Author: yukigafuru
Rating: PG-17
Chapter: Chapter 1/?
Pairings: RukixReita
Bands: Gazette
Warnings: tbc
Genre: angst, romance, fantasy
Summary: True courage is the strength to accept that everything you have ever known and believed is flawed and the strength to live with that knowledge. Few have to resort to this kind of unassuming courage. This is the story of some of those few.
Chapter 1
It had been a long time since he had last managed to find some peace. Tokyo was too full of life while he was anything but, filled with people coming and going, living their small unimportant lives: waking up early in the morning, getting on a filled-to-bursting train only to sit on a chair for more than 8 hours a day before repeating the whole thing over and over again.
In a world filled with human-looking robots, he was barely hanging on to his own pitiful life, one day at a time. The sounds of the big city grated at him. The trains tortured his ear canals with their screeching and grinding, the people always talked behind his back, the singing and crying and “irasshaimases” on every possible commercial occasion made him want to bang his head against a wall until it wouldn’t hurt anymore. The smells, once so fragrant, along with the smoldering hellish summer heat had turned the world into a rotting corpse and he found himself trapped in this nightmare day after day.
The days had been growing longer and his paintings more and more sinister. He used to paint waterfalls and angels, brilliant blue skies and towering sky-scrapers, laughing teens and smiling babies, all that was sweet and beautiful in this world, or at least what everyone thought so of. Nowadays, his paintings were little more than bold swatches of colors, enveloped in shadows and reds. Some whispered about them being post-modernist even while shaking their head and slithering away, but Ruki knew better. They just showed the world the way he saw it lately: a never-ending, distorted hell from which he couldn’t escape. And he was no Munch or Van Gogh either.
So moments like the one he was experiencing now were few and far too precious. The canvas he had in front of him had painstakingly been covered with the beauty of the valley and the temple right in front of him. Brilliant, vibrant shades covered every centimeter: greens and blues and reds, the white a fantastic mix of purple and pink, blue and white and so many shades of pastel grays. Ruki felt just a little more alive just looking at it and he knew that he would hardly bare to be parted from it while perfectly aware that it was the only one of his latest works that would sell. Still, he hated the idea of giving it up, even though at present he found himself in the same place he had painted it in. To anyone else, it would seem such an easy choice, to just paint another one but Ruki knew in his gut that this would be the only one he’d be able to paint.
No one could capture just one moment, no matter how much they would try to cling to it. Even now, the waning sun painted lengthy shadows on the luminescent valleys of his painting and in no time at all, night would set and a new day would begin, so much like the old one and yet never the same.
He had found the valley by accident. Tokyo had become too much, the relentless drill in his head had only worsened and the migraine combined with nausea and vertigo driving Ruki away, anywhere where he could get some air. He had jumped on one of those infernal machines, trains, and traveled aimlessly, not even bothering to look or listen for destinations and town names, aiming to just be further and further away from Tokyo. Finally, hours later the train had reached its last stop. There, he found a quaint little village stretching around the tracks, and behind, closer than he had ever seen them, the mountains. Tall and majestic, they loomed just up ahead, a wall between the earth and the sky, leaping from one yet never failing to reach the other, green-bearded giants witnesses of ages long forgotten. The sun didn’t seem so glaringly bright framed by those cliffs and the green of the forests invited the weary traveler down its paths. And the air was sharp and clear, a world apart from the hydra of stenches one got accustomed to in the metropolis.
The town seemed deserted for on his short wandering through the town, Ruki did not see one person lingering about the streets. He found the little sign indicating the old road leading to the temple by accident and without properly deciding on it, Ruki started to climb the mountain. Nature had repossessed the human-made road years ago and the once trotted on earth was now invaded by plants and rocks. The mountain road had never been an easy one to follow, not even when in use, for it cut across the mountain, the traveler having to jump here and there over exposed tree roots, grab on to something and host himself over stair-like rocks and slip on rain covered rocks.
Ruki had never had to climb such a road and more than once he stumbled and fell, got up and climbed again. He couldn’t explain it, but the mountain was calling to him and he gladly followed. Since reaching the town, his migraine had lessened by degrees till disappearing completely and even though the pet bottle of water he had brought with him had long been emptied and he couldn’t even remember when was the last time he had eaten, he discovered strength he had never imagined he could have and simply climbed. When he would fall parched upon a boulder or a gnarled tree, he would somehow miraculously find a little spring or a patch of berries that would revigorate him enough to keep on going. It seemed like the mountain was helping him onwards and Ruki followed.
He finally stopped upon reaching a large plateau, surrounded by cedars, covered with monk’s hood and edelweiss, a sea of purple that gave way to a sea of green and blue, for the plateau stood at the entrance of a majestic valley, rows upon rows of dainty peaks rising up towards the sky, covered in forest of cedars, pines, maple and breeches.
The air was clean and fresh here and it was quiet. There was only the sound of the breeze dancing through branches and leaves, the faint trill of birds in the afternoon heat, the sigh of the river and the buzzing of cicadas in the distance.
Fortuitously, he had brought his last canvas with him, a small pathetic little thing that he had grabbed without entirely realizing why. Mixing his heart and art with the last of his oils, he would create his one masterpiece, the one piece to set his work apart, to truly make him an artist. Ironically, no one would be able to admire it, for Ruki knew deep in his heart that he would not get to climb off the mountain.
The brush moved in strokes and waves and points across the canvass while the sun painted its own broad stroke across the sky. The wind gradually turned chillier and light faded by degrees while Ruki kept painting. By the time he had finally finished coloring the blue sky, the evening shade had already fallen around him. In the twilight the world around him lost its vibrancy and darkness was quickly encroaching upon the valley.
Ruki could try to reach the temple impossibly perched on the other side of the valley. Even though it was summer, he knew he couldn’t possibly spend the night where he was and lights had been turned on inside so Ruki knew there were people there. The trail he had followed would probably surround the plateau and gently climb towards the temple and comparing with the distance he had climbed so far the temple did not seem to be so far away.
Still… what would he be striving towards? At least here he was content, happy even. Perhaps it was time to finally rest and leave the rest up to whatever fate was instored for him. He thought about falling asleep there, on the thick mattress of fragrant flowers, and if he woke up tomorrow, then tomorrow was another day and he would worry about it then. He was just taking out his coat from his backpack, along with a pet bottle to gather some water from the creak he had found earlier during his climb, when he heard a low, menacing growl the likes of which he had never heard before.
Surprised, he slowly turned around. His heart seemed to want to pound out of his chest, whether in shock or fear he could not know for there should have been no animal capable of such a sound in these mountains, so close to civilization. So, even though the growl had induced some form of primitive fear response, his rational mind kept screaming at him that his body’s reaction was stupid, that it would most probably be a rabid squirrel or something. Great was his surprise when upon turning, he found himself only a couple of meters apart from a supposedly extinct but very much alive wolf, canis lupus, the great predator of old… His mind couldn’t make sense of the information while his body had gone into shut down, unable even to move from fear. The wolf kept growling and snarling, his eyes trained on Ruki’s meager form, body taut and ready to spring. Pity that Ruki would probably end up as wolf food, his sarcastic side pointed out, while the artist in here longed to be able to pick up the brush again to sketch the majestic beast with fur that shined like fondued chocolate and yellow eyes sparkling like diamonds.
He had only seen a wolf up close at the Ueno zoo once, many years before, a poor animal trapped in a small cage, lounging on the fake concrete rocks and looking disinterestedly at the humans crawling by. His eyes had been empty and aimed at something far beyond and Ruki had never felt the need to go to the zoo again.
The animal he was now facing was nothing like the one seen years before. He was truly a king of the woods, majestic, proud and deadly dangerous and something inside Ruki was happy to have been in its presence even though he would soon die in its paws. Still, he figured there were worse ways to die, so Ruki closed his eyes, and waited.
Yet nothing happened, and Ruki opened his eyes once more only to be greated with a completely different sight. There were two wolves now, the brown one with the hard yellow eyes and another, so white that Ruki would have doubted he was real if not for the traces of dirt staining his coat and paws a light gray. His position made it look as if he was threatening the other wolf, but in a way so bizarre Ruki could not make sense of it. Wasn’t there supposed to be growling and posturing and even snapping teeth at each other? He was fairly sure there should have been some kind of display of superiority and brutality, but the white wolf was just staring the other one down. His eyes were dangerous and threatening enough, true, two pinpricks of arctic blue, trained on only one target, but that was all there was apart from his stance exuding authority. Was he the alpha, Ruki wondered, but then why was the other one taking such a long time in submitting? Still, after what seemed like hours but could only have been minutes at mist, the brown wolf’s head and body dropped low, his ears flattened to his head, adopting a submissive position Ruki had seen dogs take before.
After his opponent had literally dropped on his belly, the snow-white wolf finally turned his attention to the human. And this one had no problem advancing, closing the distance between them. It wasn’t growling like the other one, just staring him down while taking small steps and Ruki wondered why he wasn’t leaping. The other was obviously not a threat any longer and the stench of fear had to be oozing out of Ruki’s pores. But more than its attitude, Ruki wondered at its eyes, for they were different from what he had managed to glimpse of them before, they were now the color of the sea, blue, deep, beautiful and surprisingly warm. The wolf seemed to be treading carefully, one step at a time, almost as if requesting permission, slowly but surely advancing towards him while the chocolate wolf was watching the scene, his eyes trained on the white one’s back.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the wolf reached Ruki and sniffed at him. Ruki had been resting on the grass after finishing his painting when the growl had broken the surrounding peace and he could not be in a more vulnerable position, the wold practically sniffing his neck. Having a wolf’s snout, even one seemingly pacific such as that one, so close to your beating pulse, after ages since last eating or sleeping properly can do things to a man, and Ruki then and there, to his eternal shame, blacked out.
A/N: I'm back and with work and everything I'm not quite sure if I'll be able to keep up with this one. But it's an idea that has been fermenting for over an year. And it's a fantasy, so for those readers that are still out there, be warned: expect anything.
Moreover, I have so few time to write and all that my bunnies are practically extinct. They have been revived by reading old comments just a tiny bit but need fuel for the weeks to come. Hopefully, there are some animal lovers left out there in the internet fanfic wilderness. Love to those of you that stayed.
Also, I need a new manip for the story but cannot promise when it will be done. Hopefully soon.
Squishes