The Time It Takes To Fall

Maybe Someday

England, 1812 A.D.

Kai didn't feel the fifth koi brand disappear from his arm as he had the four previous times it had smoldered into nothing. In fact, he wouldn't have even noticed it was gone if he hadn't been staring at his left forearm the second it had wilted away.

He hadn't felt anything for over seventy years, and he wasn't about to start now— not after everything he had experienced.

For the past seven decades of nothing but the overwhelming pain and then numbness, Kai had done nothing but lay upon the floor of whatever shack or street he decided to call it quits on. He hadn't tasted food in all that time, for he felt that he didn't deserve it— and of course, he didn't need it to keep him in this miserable state.

He had wandered about, his clothes nearly the same throughout the years, only changed during the first hours after Pimchan's—death because of all the blood—and the few times since when the fabric had become something close to nonexistent.

But he had been in his shack for the past decade and a half, listening to the sound of the waves, and waiting for her to find him.

It surprised Kai that in all the years since Pimchan's death, Blue had yet to come and visit him. She had kept close in all the previous years, even visiting while he had been jailed in Australia. But now she was gone, and Kai was completely alone in the world.

He had no clue as to where Selene's last reincarnation had been, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know.

Kai sat up from the floor, glancing around at his surroundings. The shack itself wasn't all that bad; he paid for it with the little money he still had left at this point, and aside from that, only bought wood for his fire. Because after seventy years without any physical contact, even in the smallest manner, Kai was tired of being cold.

He was so cold and alone—and it hurt. This feeling of emptiness and agony was a feeling all in its own. It was something that he wasn't sure he could ever come back from.

The fire was burning low, so Kai stood from the dirt that had been his bed for the past few hours. He threw another log on, watching as the orange burned into yellow.

He stared, letting the brilliant flames mesmerize him into a sort of reverie. There was something so exotic and mysterious about fire— they were the opposite to all the blue that had filled his life from the time he had left China.

A bang reverberated throughout the shack, doing nothing to startle Kai. In fact, the only sign he made as to hearing the soft knock was the slow blink of his eyes.

"Enter," Kai said, his voice barely above a whisper. He had hardly spoken during the last seventy years of isolation, and his vocal cords struggled with the simple word.

The door opened, and in stepped a majestic creature, veiled in the darkest hues of the ocean, with nothing but her naked, dark feet peeking through as she walked in. She was a creature that did not belong to this world any more than Kai did, and yet, they were both there.

"My thoughts were only just imagining when you would next transpire to impose upon my company," Kai rasped, turning away from Blue and seating himself directly in front of the fire.

"I thought it best to give you a moment of serenity to gather your thoughts and prepare for your next conquest. But alas, you never deigned to give this reincarnation a single thought," Blue said, her voice even and low as it always was.

"I cannot carry on as I have in the past," Kai whispered, his words lost in the crackle of fire upon wood. "No longer can I venture to inflict pain upon the only one who owns my heart."