new_kate | Moar Saiyuki crack

Title: Swamp
Notes: R. This was supposed to be ch1 of 5. Maybe it still is!

The swamp was going on forever.

That was something Goku had said, and Hakkai couldn’t help but agree. There was a certain sense of unchanged, eternal harmony to this landscape. Silent, still, stagnant, indulgently lush, perpetually decomposing and rebirthing itself from the rotting matter of its own existence, it seemed to have stood there since the dawn of time, since the days when the earth was young and this place was already ancient, already exactly like this.

“What I mean is, we should’ve been out of it by now, right?”

The map had disappeared sometime during the first night. They’d made a camp under twisted, hollow tree trunks that were brittle like crumpling bones, soggy and mushy inside. Soft emerald moss covered every inch of the bark, greedily sucking out tree blood, and Hakkai could almost hear it grow as he sat sleepless on his bedroll, stared upwards and couldn’t see a single star. Leaves, lianas, garlands of climber plants were woven tight above their heads like a thick thatch roof. The swamp was enclosed, secretive, guarding itself from outsiders, but they were already in, and planned to go deeper.

They expected to be out by the next dusk, but, as Sanzo maintained, they have been trotting mud for days now. Hakkai didn’t keep track, somewhat distracted by the task of laying a safe path between the deadly mires. Covered by crisp young grass, they were indistinguishable from the solid parts of the swamp surface. Yet he could feel them lying in wait, calling out for their prey. Soft ambient light filtering through the green kept the place submerged in perpetual twilight during the day, and at night the poisonous mushrooms on trees began to glow, illuminating the swamp’s tranquil beauty. He dared not sleep, often leaving the hammock they were camped on and wandering around, taking time to explore and observe, and listen.

He still made breakfast for everybody – without starting any fires, of course – but no longer ate himself. He was never hungry. Occasionally, he would pinch a leaf off a stem or pluck a berry out of the moss where it rested like a jewel on a velvet cushion. He would enjoy the sensation of soft plant fibres being crushed by his teeth, dying on his tongue. Eating offerings of the swamp felt like communion.

The air was thick, warm, moving slowly, like syrup, coating everything in a film of sticky dew. The exhale of thousands of plants, the dying breaths of everything that made this soil rich and fertile. The swamp was all around them, on their skin, inside their lungs. It held them like a soft, dark womb, like a Leviathan’s belly, nurturing and devouring them in one majestic motion of mindless, unstoppable life. It stretched around, growing larger with their every step, reaching toward the sun and deep into ground, toward the future and into the past, all at the same time.

The soil was soft and mucky, giving underfoot with every step. Wetness seeped into his shoes, and very soon he cast them off and walked barefoot, sinking his toes into soft, glossy mud. The swamp lived, breathed under his feet, and he could feel its every movement now, heed its every word. The vines twitched under his skin and tried to sprout roots.

It came to him suddenly, one morning, as he watched the dying foxfire and toyed with a clump of moss, carefully separating fragile threads. For a while now he could feel the power of this place permeating his own, awakening him in unexpected, unsought-for ways. Youkai magic and human spark of the divine were finally falling into step inside his soul, no longer in conflict. He knew everything this place knew, and he knew there was no death, no end to anything, and he knew that nothing was impossible.

Even if he was split down the middle, he could regrow himself whole, like trees. He ran his fingers over the smooth bark of the nearby birch and thought about Kanan. Her spirit was still here, in his heart; all that was missing was flesh, and he could see now how little effort it would take to rectify.

All flesh is grass, after all.