6: An Offer

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I read Loki's field guide until I'd passed out, my mind swirling with knowledge of Asgard, Odin, Thor, Sif, the Nine Realms with their dwarfs, light and dark elves, Jotunn, fire-giants and their demon hounds but even with my mind packed to exploding with this new information, knowing it was all real I still didn't have much time to think about it. We''d had to plan Yuki's funeral and most of the planning had fallen to me.

My mother was never reliable in hard times and Uncle Enmei was more broken than I'd ever seen him. So the burden had fallen on my shoulders, I'd made the phone calls to the funeral home and taken on the various things it entailed. Choosing a coffin and the those the deceased would be buried in, the flowers at the ceremony, writing her eulogy. The business of it had all numbed me to my grief and to the Nine Realms and now, the day was here. And as people began pouring into the house, I learned something else had changed with Yuki's death. Something so tiny I would never have expected it to happen.

I hated the words 'I'm sorry'. I never had before now but as mourners filled the house, I heard that word far too much and filled me with bitterness each time I had to hear it.

People all dressed in black, some with splashes of bright colors passed by myself and the rest of my family, (Uncle Eishun and my mother) and each one hugged us and said they were sorry. Their apologies came from a place of sympathy or empathy, and I knew that but it didn't matter. Their condolences didn't stop the bleeding in my heart. It didn't fill the hole that was left in any of our lives.

It didn't bring Yuki back and it didn't bring me closer to the killer. It was nothing.

People were starting to filter out of the house now as the day funeral came to a close and for that I was glad. I didn't think I had any tissues left in my pocket of my bright pink suit. It wasn't my style at all, but I felt it was truer to Yuki's memory than black. Black was dark, black was simple, black was the color of mourning and sorrow. Yuki had been none of those things. Yuki had been a rainbow, a complicated swirl of color and she radiated joy and enthusiasm.

She would have been sorry to see everyone in black. She'd have said it was boring. Even with the pops of color here and there. She'd have wanted everyone dressed in their favorite colors-not the traditional ones for such an event. She would have wanted them to do what she did-she'd have wanted us to paint the world a little brighter than it had been.

And so I sought to honor that by wearing her favorite color. I hoped, if there was a Heaven or some other sort of afterlife that she could see it. She'd have leapt for joy if she'd been here to see it. She'd been battling with me for over a decade to get me into that color. Too bad it had taken her death for her to win the fight.

More people filtered out of the house and the photo of Yuki on her graduation from the California Institute of Arts became visible again. Her hair was electric blue in that photo and her grin was only a little bit larger than mine. We'd been so happy that day, both of us finally ready to enter our chosen professions and the whole future had been opened to us then. But now the future was open only to me. The image tore open the hole in my heart and I turned away, unable to look at the smiling, bright face of my cousin. That image lined up with my last image of her, the still, pale and bloody one.

I couldn't look at who she'd been without seeing what that monster had turned her into.

"I need some air," I muttered to my uncle who nodded at me with red-rimmed eyes. I didn't wait for a response, he'd lost the ability to hold a conversation with me and I couldn't blame him. Every time he looked at me he was looking at the last person to see his daughter alive.

I walked out of the living room and out onto the back porch. The cool fall air cut through the material of the suit like a knife and I shivered as I stared at the lone tree in the backyard. Its leaves were changing now, bits of green still hung on, but oranges and browns were winning the battle.

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