YOU ARE NEEDED HERE. THE PEOPLE WILL QUAIL WITHOUT YOU.
They have Hana and Kaiah.
SHE IS ONLY A GIRL.
What the hells do you think I am?
Buruu tilted his head, answered as if she had asked her own name.
YOU ARE A STORMDANCER.
And what’s a Stormdancer without her thunder tiger? Where would Kitsune no Akira have been without Raikou? Who would have flown Tora Takehiko into Devil Gate if not Gufuu?
I WILL NOT LEAD THEM INTO DANGER.
His eyes flitted to her belly, to the iron breastplate covering the tiny bump of warmth.
Gods, don’t start that again …
I DO NOT GO TO EVERSTORM FOR TALK, YUKIKO. I GO TO KILL OR DIE.
And you expect me to just sit here and pray?
WHO WILL BRING YOU BACK IF I FALL?
Why would I want to come back if you did?
FOOLISHNESS. YOU WILL BE A MOTHER SOON. MUCH TO LIVE FOR. MUCH TO FIGHT FOR. THIS WHOLE COUNTRY NEEDS YOU.
But I need you, Buruu. Don’t you realize I can’t do any of this without you?
She threw her arms around his neck, squeezing tight. He could feel the aching of her heart like a blade in his own chest, her fear turning his gut to water. This girl who meant more to him than life itself. This girl he loved with every moment, every breath, as much a part of him as the wind and the rain and blood in his veins.
I LOVE YOU, YUKIKO.
And I love you.
YOU MIGHT NOT SAY THAT. IF YOU KNEW.
He bowed his head, pushed his cheek against hers, the rumble of thunder overhead sending shivers down their spines.
IF YOU KNEW.
He felt her near that place; the place she’d never sought to enter despite the power and pain growing in her mind. A locked door, barred and rusted. The place he was at his worst. The place he’d lost his pride and his name and himself.
But she loved him. She’d always love him.
Wouldn’t she?
Her thoughts were gentle as summer rain.
Show me.
And so he did.
*
To call it a storm would be to call the ocean a raindrop, a hurricane the spring breeze.
Lightning unending, the thunder a constant barrage. Rain like falling swords, a wind not so much a wall as a cliff, set against a vast blackness crashing like avalanches overhead. Jagged spires of dark stone, cracked at their summits and spitting fire into blackened skies. Ashes. Embers. Great floods of molten rock flowing from the earth’s belly, cooling at the boiling ocean’s touch until mountains stood tall and defiant in the seething oceans.
The throne of Susano-ō, god of storms. Here he made his music, the vibration seeping into volcanic water and lulling the great beasts beneath the waves. Vast as time they were. Old as gods themselves. Ancient and reptilian, a hunger ten thousand fathoms deep. Their children spiraled in the waves above their heads, scales of silver, katana teeth. But they themselves didn’t stir. Not once had they woken since first Susano-ō offered to sing them to sleeping.
Their names were lost now to humans, swallowed in the shadows of myth and eon. But the arashitora remembered.
Niah and Aael. Father and mother of all dragons.
Atop the tallest volcano, now sullen and cooled, stood the aerie of the Khan; a series of tunnels in black stone, good and strong and warm. The wind kissed the fissure mouths, singing a haunting tune, all open endless vowels speaking of times long vanished, when Shima was but a dream in Lady Izanami’s womb. Before her death. Before her fall. Before her vow of vengeance.
The whole pack would only gather when the Khan called a greatmoot, or when a female felt her first flushing and time came for the males to fight for her attentions. Then the pack would watch the blooding, the unmated bucks clashing across lightning-flecked skies, the mated males held in check by the musk of their own mates beside them.
But though they could go months without seeing each other, they were family. They were Pack. The last thunder tigers left in all the world, dwelling in their father’s cradle and living free from the monkey-children and their burning flowers and poisoned skies.
The Others would come occasionally—young bucks mostly, black eyes and blacker feathers, flying from eastern lands to test themselves against the Everstorm’s males. They would fight to the blood, a pseudo-war meant to test each other’s strength. Occasionally, a thunder tiger female would go back with them, to the lands the monkey-children called Morcheba. Yet sometimes it was years between visits—years with none but the storm for company.
This was Buruu’s world. All he’d ever known. Sitting atop the Khan’s aerie now, looking out over the edge, stretching his little wings. Barely a year old, ready to fly for the first time.
His first real memory.