heritage

Chapter Eighteen: Melliloquent

 "The harmony of two lives can sometimes be heard by neither..."

          Vacant. That is the only way she can describe the feeling that drapes across her skin. It seems to stick, reaching into every pore and clinging there. A pervading atmosphere of emptiness. It is unnatural, but... unthreatening, Sakura eventually decides. At least for now. Not the first thing she had been expecting after returning to consciousness. She inhales slowly, feeling as if one too-sharp move and something will break.

It's so silent.

And really, that is the only sound that seems to echo in this place, wherever she is.

She groans quietly, her throat constricting at the way the sound seems to echo for miles. It cuts off the noise, and she breathes shallowly. She rolls onto her stomach. Carefully minding how every shift of movement sends a rustling reverberating off of whatever structures surround her.

Sakura finally opens her eyes, slowly sitting up. It's almost too bright. Blinding even, she might say. Though such a descriptor fails to feel accurate in the slightest. She can't see the source of the light, but that does not keep the platform she's on from being illuminated.

It is the only structure to be so, however. Slate gray pillars protrude from an unknown chasm surrounding her, the light fading the farther out she looks. Fading until it seems that there really is nothing beyond Sakura, the platform, and the nearby pillars. Perhaps there isn't. She quickly looks away before her eyes begin to play tricks on her.

If she strains her hearing a bit more, she can pick up a sound beyond the silence, though it isn't much. Like the deep ferocity of a sea storm rumbling just beneath an atmospheric breath of nothing. There is not much that she has experienced to compare it to.

Climbing to her feet, Sakura's brows pinch together as the center of the illumination seems to follow her. She knows that it cannot possibly come from her. At least, not of Sakura's own making. She takes a step forward, mildly disturbed as the perimeter of the light again moves with her. As if it only exists because she herself exists within this space.

Belatedly, she realises that this space reminds her of the endless shallows.

Except the kami had already said their piece. So why bring her here?

Sakura mulls it over. She doesn't really think that they did. There had been no music, no presence, when she had been taken. But she cannot disregard the similarities between this space and that of the shallows. If they did not take her, then they must have done something to the place she had been taken. But the question still remains.

Why?

It is of course, just as the question crosses her mind, that it is answered.

"Forgive me." Sakura hears a voice. And though no choir precedes it, nor do any instruments follow it, she already knows the owner. Spoken bereft of the two others that almost always accompanied it, there is only one possibility.

"Motoyo-sama." Sakura says, an acknowledgement and warning in one. She knows that Enkai told them that she could hardly handle their presence anymore. Though perhaps that is why there is only one of them here. The shift in atmosphere a third of what Sakura is used to. She refuses to turn around to see if Motoyo-sama is physically there.

"I am." Sakura cannot tell if Motoyo-sama confirms the statement as an act of self-importance or a plea of assurance. Whatever inflection may be in her voice is lost to the low ambience of this space. Sakura grits her teeth, carefully breathing her nose. If Motoyo-sama can feel her frustration, she does not acknowledge it. The silence, while short, lasts until Sakura breaks it.