Spirits of the Witching Hour

A… girl? Why was there a girl here?

Nagahisa never had the best luck with girls. His brother did. At the very least, Setsuna took Elegy in stride, in a way Nagahisa never quite could. Nagahisa loved Elegy, of course, but it was always mixed with unease, knowing that she might give him a tongue-lashing even when he was right. And that mixture, that ambiguity, never sat well with him.

Oh. Wait. No, Nagahisa realized. There was no girl here. Those wisps of straight, golden blonde hair, that small, pale nose — he was just imagining a woman’s face, because of how still he was. If there had been another person here, let alone one like that girl carrying a pearly white ball, he would have something to reach out to. But no, he was alone here.

Where was “here,” anyway?

That thought made Nagahisa feel cold, a sweatless cold that only existed in his mind and did not reach his skin. He was doing something, wasn’t he? Or maybe he already did it? He was walking somewhere, or maybe sitting down…

No, he wasn’t comfortable enough to be sitting. His head hurt like he’d been held upside down, and his pitch black surroundings were empty but felt suffocating. He wasn’t walking or sitting, but doing quite literally nothing, idle in some sort of aching limbo.

He moved his legs, remembering suddenly that they were there. He couldn’t walk, and he couldn’t sit. Nothing changed around him, but he still felt like he’d moved.

Was he… swimming? In absolute darkness? He wasn’t sure he was breathing, but he definitely wasn’t choking.

“Hey! Over here!”

A girl’s voice, behind him. Not Elegy, not Mirai…

Wait. Vivian! That was Vivian’s voice! He’d met her… today? Yesterday? Recently? That was definitely her.

He pushed against the nothingness to his left. It took effort just to turn and face her. Her green hair, golden eyes, ruby-red dress and perfect skin were visible, without a single shadow, against the pitch black darkness. She gave him a toothy grin and a thumbs up.

“Vivian, what are you doing here?” He asked. “I’ve gotten stuck in… whatever this is. Isn’t that a good enough reason to just move on?”

“Of course not, silly,” she tilted her head and kicked her legs up so she was lying basically flat. Then she started doing backstrokes. “This fix you’re in is temporary, but abandoning you would be permanent! You’d hold it against me, because you have more self-esteem than you think you do. Plus, you’re barely stuck anywhere. I bet Mirai is poking you with a stick as we speak — you haven’t gotten so bad it’s spilling out yet.”

At least in the moment, Nagahisa only heard one part of that. “But I’m getting bad?”

“Qualitatively! Not morally!” Vivian clarified. “You’re just doing that thing you always do when you try to sleep.”

“It’s called having a nightmare, Vivian.”

“But you’re not fully asleep, so wouldn’t it be a daymare? Then again, it’s not daytime…”

“Anyways.” Nagahisa cleared his throat. That felt good. Apparently he’d forgotten about having a throat for a bit, too. At least he didn’t feel thirsty; there was no water to be found here. “...If it’s just a nightmare,’ he continued, “then I’ll just wait for it to end. If I let it get its claws into me, that’s when it feels longer.”

Vivian disappeared, and he heard a funny squishing sound behind him. He turned his head to see her looking down at him, body only half-visible poking out of the inky blackness.

“But that’s just the thing! I think this was a more vivid nightmare earlier,” Vivian said, “but you already tried waiting for it to end. It’s more like… hmm… a really big cobweb that we need to unspin before you walk out the door.”

Nagahisa’s arms suddenly felt sticky. He growled, looking to either side and seeing that the black darkness was now joined by grey strands of something or other. Of course Vivian had to go and say that, and now he was…

Actually, maybe he was being too hard on her. If she was right, and to Nagahisa that was still an if, these “cobwebs” represented something that was here to begin with. She’d just made them visible to him.

“Okay, so what’s the problem this represents?” Nagahisa tried to lift his hand to indicate the cobwebs, but it didn’t work. His hands stayed down.

Vivian drifted to his side, the inky darkness rippling as she moved and making a sound like squishing mud. He winced as she leaned in close, putting a finger on her chin. “Hmm… hands and arms stuck, thin cobwebs… maybe you feel powerless because of something that should be easy for you to solve!”

“I don’t know how you came to that conclusion,” Nagahisa said, “and it also doesn’t narrow things down much.”

Vivian kicked her feet up, and managed to come to a stop with her legs folded as if she were sitting in a chair. “Well, I say ‘should be easy for you to solve,’ but the problem might be tougher than you think, and accepting it is what’ll get us out of here.”

“Us?”

“Yes, us! I really don’t think I could leave without permanently severing my connection to you.”

Nagahisa scoffed. “Well, most demons would take that trade, so I guess I should thank you.”

“You can thank me once we’re done! Now… do you have any ideas what the problem could be, Nagahisa?”

“Well, I’m not happy I couldn’t blow that guy away with a spell,” Nagahisa said, “but that’s not a real issue. I wouldn’t have done it anyway. It would be wrong. Just as wrong as him sending me flying with an explosion.”

“You mean Decarabia?” Vivian tapped her chin. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s the problem here… You haven’t even known him long enough to hate him!”

“Well it better not be about someone I’ve hated for a long time.” Nagahisa’s tone was as grave as a funeral.

“Oh, no, no, no, I don’t think that’s it either!” Vivian waved both of her hands in front of her. “Just a hunch. But, it’s probably not about that other girl, and probably not about Mirai… I mean, you’ve been having a good time with her, haven’t you?”

Nagahisa couldn’t move his arms to reach for the blackness around him. So instead, he sacrificed his dignity and used his teeth. He bit down on the inky blackness.

Vivian watched with great curiosity.

Nagahisa pulled his head back like a cat yanking a toy into their grasp, and then pulled his mouth away. The shadows wobbled, danced, and began to take the form he had in mind for them: an image of Mirai, desaturated but clear enough, closer to her teens than her toddler years. She wore her school uniform, not pajamas, and had a soccer ball under one arm.

“This is how I remember her most recently.” Nagahisa looked back to Vivian. “She’s about my age.”

Vivian pulled her legs closer together, winding one ankle around the other. “But is that how you remember her most fondly?”

“I don’t know. But I do know that she’s a little different from what I was expecting.”

“Only a little, though?”

“She’s still Mirai.”

Nagahisa squealed. Something sharp had jabbed his side. It wasn’t painful enough to be a sword or a claw, but wasn’t a blunt finger either. He looked down, and saw half of a twig.

He also saw flowers in bloom beneath his feet, their petals and pistils barely reaching out of the inky blackness as if straining for the light of the sun. He could feel the tickle of grass, faintly, as if he were barefoot – but simultaneously he felt the dulled crunch of grass beneath his feet, the sort you’d only experience wearing shoes.

“Vivian,” he said, “what’s going on?”

Vivian’s gums and teeth receded behind her lips. She closed her mouth, creating a large dimple on her cheek, and then frowned. She put a finger to her mouth, looking anywhere but Nagahisa’s eyes, as his stomach began to drop.

“Welllllll…” she finally began. “It might not be the worst possible way for things to go… and it also might be out of our control, which I like to say, means you shouldn’t worry about it!”

“SHOULD I?” Nagahisa sputtered out, raising his voice. He wasn’t mad at her. Okay, maybe he was a little mad at her – but only because that was less than an answer to his question. And because he felt the stick continuing to jab into his side, the grass and flowers with their sticky dew passing through his clothes and reaching his skin.

Vivian kept her mouth closed as she smiled, looking childishly innocent. She kicked one foot against the blackness. “I think you’re sleepwalking, Nagahisa! But not just that… here in Makai, a place between dreams and reality, that’s causing this dream to spill out into the waking world!”

“So am I awake or not!?” Nagahisa cried. “The goal is for me to get out of this nightmare, isn’t it?”

“Wellll, there’s a few ways that could go…” Vivian paused. “It’s possible for your nightmare to simply extend all the way into the waking world, destabilizing everything around you. But you might also simply spill out as the nightmare ruptures! That would be the better outcome, and it’s no less likely!”

“Okay. So. How do we. Make that happen.” Nagahisa clutched his face with one hand. Wait, with his hand, attached to his left arm… the cobwebs holding that arm were gone, although he still couldn’t move the other one. Maybe Vivian was right that the better outcome could just happen on its own, but right now,  he felt justified in being anxious to steer the outcome.

“You want that to happen? I mean, it’s still not the best outcome… but that’s great!” Vivian gave him a broad, huge-toothed smile and a thumbs up. Nagahisa could feel that it was an attempt to be reassuring, but it was working a little bit at best.

“I’ll take good instead of best if I have to,” Nagahisa told her, trying to steady his voice and sound less harsh. “What do we need to do?”

“Well, if you wanna spill out of the nightmare, you need to be in line to do it, so to speak!” Vivian rubbed her chin. “I guess that’s not the best metaphor, so, um… Basically, you need to plunge headfirst into the nightmare, to beat out all the ooey-gooey evil that’ll be trying to go first! Most nightmares have less scary parts, you know, but those aren’t the ones people remember. They’re not as powerful!”

“What about you?” Nagahisa asked. “You’re a night demon, stuck in my head, you’re the most visible thing here, and you at least claim to be a good person. Are you some kind of retired nightmare?”

“No, no! I’m just… an exception to the rule.”

“I’ll pretend that’s reassuring and see where it goes,” Nagahisa said dryly. “Plunging into the nightmare. How?”

“Well, a lot of it is just… a state of mind,” Vivian said. “I mean, literally in this case! Not doing something symbolic with your body, even though that usually works when body and mind are being compressed like this. Try… thinking of the scariest possible thing you can, and stop being scared of it! Show yourself that whatever your nightmares throw at you, you’re the boss!”

Nagahisa swallowed and frowned. Imagining the scariest thing in the world to him wasn’t easy… the dead coming back to life, maybe, but that was old hat for his worst nightmares by now. Could they actually do worse? He closed his eyes, shutting out his primitive perception of the nightmare world around him. He needed to dig deeper.

Unfortunately, the last thing he’d seen was Vivian, and so the first thing he imagined was Vivian in black leather, decked out in all sorts of occultic charms, her grin twisted from almost cute to truly mad like a hatter, carrying a… whip, and with a pair of goat… horns…

No, that definitely wasn’t scary at all. Except the possibility that Vivian had seen him thinking about that. He opened his eyes to look at her. Her face was innocent, seemingly unresponsive to his bizarre train of thought.

“Are we making any progress?” he asked.

“I… don’t think so,” Vivian admitted. “I’m trying to think of other things we can try, though! I would have suggested my deepest fear, but… aheh… I think it might be counterproductive here.”

Nagahisa clicked his tongue. Was this curiosity or desperation? Either way, he found himself asking his question instead of just thinking it.

“What’s your deepest fear?”

“Being alone.” A rolling shadow passed over Vivian’s face – no, her entire body. She jumped back, but another shadow rolled past, deeper and darker, nearly obscuring her from Nagahisa’s sight. “Eep!”

Nagahisa’s eyes widened. “I shouldn’t have asked! How do I– wait, no, it’s just going to stop you from answering.”

Shadows rolled across Vivian’s body like clouds covering a blue sky. She was growing harder to see, but also more distant. If she faded entirely, he’d be stuck here, all alone… and, being honest with himself, he wouldn’t want to follow her plan of plunging further into the nightmare.

He had to follow her. He pushed forward, trying to swim, or walk, or anything, to keep up with her as she faded into the background.

As she receded, he advanced. The shadows continued to roll, passing over Vivian again and again, but they still weren’t stealing her away entirely. No, better – his forward motion was progress. He could see her face again, somewhat clearly. She was smiling, a growing Cheshire cat grin that gradually exposed more of her teeth.

“Okay! We’re doing it!” She declared, as Nagahisa came within arm’s length of her.

The shadows behind Vivian shattered like glass, spreading black fragments across the now fading darkness. A new scene was forming around them, fading in like an old-timey television show. Wood floors, a narrow circular window, candlelight and dust and claustrophobia… a western-style attic?

Their shoes touched the ground, and only then did Nagahisa remember that he was meant to be tangled up in the darkness himself. He lifted his now-free arms and looked at his pale hands, and blinked.

“Umm…” Vivian walked up right next to him, hands behind her back. “Just to get ahead of things, I didn’t do any of that on purpose! It really was a mistake to mention that!”

Nagahisa lifted his head to look at her, and he frowned slightly. “I wasn’t thinking about that at all. Do you really think I’d accuse you of–”

“Well, you would have earlier!”

“...That’s true.”

He glanced around.

Vivian scooted over with haste and grabbed his hands in hers. “Okay, before you take too close of a look, please remember you’re in a lady’s room! I’ll give you a guided tour!”

Before he could turn to look at her, Nagahisa could already see why she reacted that way. Hung from the ceiling against the far wall near the door, the skeleton of some humanoid creature dangled from a set of beautiful threads. It was small — not even reaching the floor — but dense, with maybe a hundred bones interlocking with one another. Each one was as yellow as amber, and they curved in unnatural ways, so he imagined the skeleton must have belonged to some ancient, monstrous demon.

Now he turned to Vivian, his attention passing over the chests and trunks and fabrics on the floor.

“If you don’t mind me asking—“

“Well!” Vivian cut him off. “You see, that was the skeleton of a skeletal demon — think of a Turdak — who added the bones of his enemies to his own, getting stronger all the while!”

“And… how did you get his… remains, I suppose?” At this point, Nagahisa didn’t want to imagine Vivian was much of a fighter.

“Yes, he got stronger, but he also got slower! This bone here…” She pointed to one that ran vertically through the entire skeleton; Nagahisa had thought it was a complete spine. “…was the last one he ever took!”

“So his greed was his undoing?”

“That’s a little harsh… but I won’t say it was wrong. It made him nearly invincible, but… it also immobilized him.” Vivian’s voice fell almost imperceptibly, her usual cheer tinged with a small, sharp sadness. “All the people who hated him… well, you can imagine what it was like. I was the one to drag him out of there, but I was too late to save him.”

“And no one would have respected his grave if he had one,” Nagahisa concluded. He paused. This demon was doubtless a brutal warlord. If he made a habit of saving puppies, Vivian would have emphasized that.

“Exactly! So… I thought… maybe this world will forget about him one day. There are still stories about him, but… I want to make sure to preserve something about him. I don’t know… he didn’t ask or anything. I’m sure it sounds silly.”

“I haven’t decided if it’s silly or not yet.”

Vivian tapped her foot, lowered her head, and put her hands behind her back. Nagahisa didn’t have time to interpret the gesture before she reached out and grabbed his hands again.

“Oh right!” she said. “I should show you some of the things here. I think you’ll like them.” She pulled him over to the corner left of the window, where there were several old wooden chests, with arched lids and black iron bands. They were free of dents and dust. When Vivian let go of his hands to throw one open, it didn’t creak or buckle the way Nagahisa would have expected.

Looking at his palms, which now smelled of wildflowers and wax, Nagahisa spoke over the sound of Vivian rummaging through the chest. “You could have brought whatever’s inside to me, you know. Or you could have asked. You didn’t have to pull me over here.”

“Look!” was her response, as she turned to him holding…

Actually, the gleaming turquoise she was holding was quite beautiful. Perfectly preserved, and shiny even in the dim light. And it wasn’t just a gemstone: it was a figurine, with four legs and… ah! It was a sphinx figurine!

Vivian smiled, and Nagahisa found himself smiling back.

“Okay, you’re right,” he said with sheepish humour in his voice. “Where did you get this? Is it from Egypt?”

“Absolutely! It was made with what they call faience, a long time ago. The first owner believed it was magic… and it is, but not right now!”

Nagahisa gave the figurine a second, slightly apprehensive look. “Right now?”

“It’s sleeping!” Vivian turned and gingerly placed the figurine back in the chest. “It protects whatever home it’s in from demonic intrusion! You could think of it as the focus of an Estoma spell. But it’s also slightly… alive. After it’s done enough work, it needs to rest.”

While Vivian said it was alive, Nagahisa couldn’t sense even the faintest trace of magic from it. He almost thought it was her overactive imagination – but, he decided, he would give her more credit than that on this one.

Especially because, being honest with himself, he kind of wanted to take the figurine to his home. That was its purpose, wasn’t it? And Elegy knew people who could work with magic items… no. She could trust them, maybe, but he couldn’t. Still, his mom would know some way to help it ‘rest’.

“Can I have it?”

The bottom seemed to drop out of Vivian's face as she gave him a cartoonishly enormous frown. “Well... I don't want to say no...”

Nagahisa waved her off. “But you don't want to say yes either. It's fine, Vivian.”

“It's just so... beautiful. A relic created to protect, not to harm. And I might want to use it to keep nightmares from sneaking in here!”

“You have to deal with nightmares?” Nagahisa scratched his head. “I guess... you must mean other demons, right? Aren't you one of them?”

“Oh, Nagahisa.” Vivian gave him an oddly relieving smile. “I'm happy you can imagine me having a peaceful life, and I do, but... demons like to compete, to see who's stronger. And if you don't fight, that means... either you're super weak or super strong. Everyone wants to know which it is!”

He should have known. Nagahisa rubbed his chin. It's not like gentle demons were unheard of, even if most of them think it's okay to end a bad conversation by trying to kill the other person. Even... yes, Takajou, for all his other faults, wasn't a violent person. But he didn't have to be. A pixie could probably crawl out of Deep Hole and scare the surface demons into submission.

“So which is it?”

“Welllll... honestly, neither. I'm not a bigshot and I'm not defenceless,” Vivian replied, putting her hands behind her back. “If we end up fighting someone, I'll be okay... but I might want you to protect me!”

“Isn't that a contradiction?”

“Nope! I can take care of myself, but I like being protected. It's such a nice gesture. And people tend to like protecting others!”

Did Nagahisa like protecting others? He paused as he thought about that, and then felt what was maybe guilt for pausing to think about it. Those with power, and he was such a person at the end of the day, should like protecting others. But then that gets into the definition of “like” – while those with power should like protecting others, the greater and more effective argument was to duty. You could see that in Asmodeus, who seemed to like his time at the gym more than protecting Elegy – though, of course, Elegy wasn’t in great need of protection. Was Vivian stronger or weaker than Elegy?

“Soooo!” Vivian interrupted Nagahisa’s thoughts by grabbing one of his hands in both of hers. She pulled him towards the door of the attic, and he let himself be dragged along, even though he was curious about some of the other things on the walls or the floor. There was a diagram of some sort, depicting sets of one line or two in rows like a ba gua, but not in the configuration he would have expected.

And then, Vivian pushed the door open and they were outside, atop a gently sloping hill covered in purple and orange wildflowers that smelled like gentle candles, surrounded on all sides by patchwork pine forest. It was like something out of Hobbiton – he’d only seen those movies once, but their landscapes were memorable for their beauty, for their similarities and their distinction from what he would see driving out of Tokyo.

“So is this where you live?” Nagahisa asked, stumbling into a fairly standard question but with genuine curiosity.

“For now!” Vivian said. “I can move my house around a little bit.”

That reminded Nagahisa of another movie. Was Vivian made out of old-timey inkblots, or stained tape reels?

“But not like Howl’s Moving Castle! It only drifts when I need a change of scenery, and that doesn’t happen often. Heck, it’s ended up in this exact spot at least five times!”

“And… where was it, where were you, originally?”

“Ummm…” Vivian stooped her shoulders as she turned to him, wringing her hands. “Promise you won’t get mad?”

“Why would I get mad?” Nagahisa immediately thought of a few reasons he could get mad about Vivian’s origins. “Never mind. I promise I won’t get mad, but I do want to know.”

“Deep Hole!”

Oh… so she wasn’t really from the movies, she was more from the circus. Or a horror movie circus, maybe?

“Wait a second.” Nagahisa thought of something else to be overly scrupulous about. “How did you know I was thinking of Howl’s Moving Castle?”

“Um… because it’s the obvious first thought?” was Vivian’s innocent, seemingly honest answer. She raised her hands above her head, indicating the velvety orange sunrise above them and the natural beauty around them. “I know it looks a bit like a Ghibli movie. I’ve seen them… and not second-hand!”

A gentle breeze whipped through Nagahisa’s hair. She was right. That kind of was just obviously not her reading his mind but knowing what any modestly cultured Japanese teenager would think of.

He looked out towards the trees. They cast long shadows in the dim light, but didn’t feel foreboding. “Is… it because of you that it’s like this?”

“No, no, no! I’m not quite that powerful. Nagahisa, you can think of Makai as… a delicious bowl of slow-cooked stew. Except the slow cooker has been on since heaven first emptied, so there’s a lot of different ingredients. Most of those ingredients come from demons… or, well, humans.”

Nagahisa nodded slowly. “I guess that’s true. I just wouldn’t have thought of Makai as having something so… straightforwardly nice. These flowers don’t even put people to sleep, do they?”

Vivian stooped down to look at one of the orange flowers. “Sure, Makai has some scary places, and a lot of them are kind of in between… like Frost Land is cozy, but it’s not a super nice or safe place for outsiders. But there’s also places that are the opposite of scary. All of human – and demon – experience is reflected here, and I don’t think the world is more sad than happy!”

Nagahisa paused to chew on that one. He let himself stoop down too, to look at the flower. The smell was pleasant but not overpowering, and it really was pretty… and he didn’t feel sleepier sitting next to it.

“You don’t?”

“Well, when you peel the extra layers away, things like confirmation bias, and tricks of memory–”

A squeaky, exuberant voice drowned Vivian out. “Viviaaaan! Be careful! He’s gonna fall over onto that flower!”

Nagahisa stood up immediately.

“Orchid!” Vivian stood up after him, then waved both of her hands as a figure flew at them! On a broomstick, no less! Nagahisa tensed up; it was only natural Vivian would be friends with witches, or at least demons taking their form, and yet the black shadow that soared towards them was…

…only black at the extremities. A black hat, black sleeves, long black nails, the black broom… and a black ribbon on a lavender cat’s tail. In fact, she had cat ears as well, which shared that same lavender colour with a fane of swirling, flowing hair.

Nagahisa had to admit that this catgirl witch was kind of cute, though she was also kind of cheating, as cats did in that regard.

The witch named Orchid landed on her feet next to them, and spun her broom like a baton as she pulled it out from under her legs. She was short, shorter than either Nagahisa or Vivian, though not comically so. She pointed one clawed finger, adorned with the edge of a ribboned, fingerless black glove, at Nagahisa and smiled.

“Don’t worry, I knew you actually wouldn’t once I got your attention!” Orchid said, smiling proudly. “The flowers we’ve cultivated are beautiful, but they’re still not as striking as meeee!”

Another work in progress by Raindare, to be continued in due time...