Nikko

In the clouds, there is a small rocky outcrop; in the outcrop a patch of spring. Between the whistling reeds and stirring waters frogs gurgle and fish circle the depths, their scales shimmering as they catch light, and where the grasses are finally sprouting Nikko waits, his grain-fair fur drifting with the edge-pond ripples. Early bloom petals float break the serene face of the water and dip when the fish nip at them; quiet, be still now, He is waiting.

The boy-god flies in flutters and hushed whispers, though He prefers Himself heard and not seen. He loves crowing from the top of the skies, caressing the clouds, intimating with the air—blink and you'll miss it—He steals from the wind its duty and takes its breath for his own. But today is a quiet day, and quiet days are for seeing. Nikko, his eyelashes flutter now, his ear flicks away an insect yet buzzing, and as if not from this world at all his wheat-gold fur takes wing, leaving droplets in flying beads as if released from a pearl chain— to greet Him, the fish scatter.

At the edge of the clouds where the sea longs for sky, on a lonely mountain and a quiet pond the two see each other again; after a day lifetimes long, in which the sun had rose for ten-thousand years...


https://youtu.be/5OxdMOVGdxk



He remembers what he's done for—with— his friend. He sometimes thinks back on it to keep his will to stay on the mountaintop alive. Every time its flames hiss in appreciation of the tinder he's fed it the heat sears cuts into his insides. It hurt. Worse than the airless expanse, it claws, screams, throws itself around making a mess of reason. He wants Him to bury His snout into his fur and soak in the smell of fresh spring again. He does not want to cry.

There are so many things in the world, he thinks, it's not fair that he has to have them all. He had told him to wait, that he'd be back. He'd had a journey to undertake and it had to be alone. He didn't want to be away from him. He had to. It broke his heart but not his voice, it was still as light as the freshly fallen flakes of first snow. It was never Nikko's burden to know. He was to wait, but for how long?

The rocks, now white with winter, make poor company. He dares not crack the ice on the pond to keep the fish within warm. The world slowly fades away, as does the cold, though the ice now surely sticks to his hardening fur. Before his eyes glaze over completely he takes a last look of the cliff, in case he awakes to a world without Him. The sky is empty, unbroken blue, the clouds gone.

https://youtu.be/_5aZ6bhho68