𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 | 𝐁𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 [MINOR EDITING]

𝟓 | 𝐁𝐨𝐦𝐛 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐥

Whatever is going on, I don't understand a lick of it. Our family name is Kakaku, as I'd explained, though apparently, we have another. And when a certain name had come into conversation--

"Kayanara?" I end up repeating after them. Shōri has yet to let go of me, although, she has stopped glowing. It'd been something one of the men who'd come for us had done.

"Lady Kayanara," one of the men say, "was the matriarch of the Kaoku Clan."

"A great leader," says a second.

"She has thrived as the clan's head for nearly eight centuries," says the third. "She changed her name upon her descent to the World of the Living."

"Descent? You make it sound like she were some kind of goddess," I murmur. "She was nothing special."

"Lady Abaron!" the three men gasp in unison.

"Please, do not sully Lady Kayanara's name," the first man says beseechingly. "While you may not be so fond of her, her ladyship has been a guiding light for us."

"She has kept us safe, and in return, all she has asked is for us to guard the Soul Society in her name," the second says.

"She is more than simply the leader of our clan; she truly is a goddess."

"Her incredible power--"

"Her undeniable intellect--"

"Not to mention her stupefying natural beauty--"

"She truly is a goddess," they all breathe in unison. I blink at them, unable to take in their words.

"Are you joking?" I say. "Is this a joke?"

"Erm, no, milady," the third man says. I scoff.

"It has to be. My mother was no goddess. She wasn't even around to raise her own children. She hired the strumpets of the village to take care of us. Her incredible power was ordering those under her around. Sure, she was smart. Smart enough to escape motherhood. And in terms of beauty... she was just as average-looking as the strumpets.

"However it is you knew my mother, which is impossible considering she was very much alive as of thirty-five years ago, not eight-hundred, I do not care to hear. If she truly was a goddess, she wouldn't have abandoned her children. And if she were around to protect us, we wouldn't have died and ended up here.

"I do not want anything from my mother," I go on to say. "She has never been a mother to me. And the only thing that once connected us was my umbilical cord, which I'm sure she couldn't wait to sever."

"Lady Abaron..." The first man is at a loss. The second man looks about ready to burst if he were to open his mouth. And the third man simply stares at me.

"Here in the Soul Society, there are two types of beings," he says. "You, the souls, who live in Rukongai. And us, the Soul Reapers, who live in the Seireitei, and whose jobs are to protect the souls and send them to the Soul Society. Your mother was not human as you may have thought. She, too, was a Soul Reaper. A Captain, as it were. That is what "

I narrow my eyes at him. In the back of my head, question after question are threatening to explode out onto my tongue, like me and Shōri and Kei, all being of another species, and the possibility of our mother truly being a goddess.

"You keep using past tense words," I decide is the first thing to point out. "Why is that?"

The third man takes a deep breath, his eyes shifting from me to his newly-clasped together hands.

"Because... Lady Kayanara is to be executed tomorrow evening."

Updated July 13th, 2021 | 650 words