Dusk [Okami]

Title: Dusk
Fandom: Okami
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Shiranui!Amaterasu
Rating: PG
31_days prompt: April 30 / Searching for the future
Summary: After the dark of night comes the dawn. Always.
Author's notes: I learned her name as "Amaterasu Omikami" (天照大神) before I played the game, and I prefer that to how it was translated for Okami (Okami Amaterasu). And I suck and have only beaten Okami once, so please tell me if I get anything entirely wrong.
Warnings: If you're not most of the way to the end of the game, here there be spoilers.

---

She stalked through the village, haunted the shadows and slipped away, silent as a cat, when the men came out of their homes with torches and weapons to drive her away (all they saw was the wolf, the white wolf, the agent of Orochi).

For one month before, from the waning full through the dark of the new moon and then until the night of the festival, the night of the sacrifice (an arrow formed from eight perverted elements piercing the darkness) she haunted the trees, the houses—weighing the boys as they were born and grew and died, and waited—for the one that she had been told about (Eight years for each of Orochi’s heads until he will be born, and only after ten by ten years have passed will he be ready).

Eight by eight years passed since she had face Orochi last (every year and every death was a burning mark in her heart—one more pain to revenge upon her enemy) and the night before the full moon (the sacrifice moon), in the house at the edge of the village, the wailing of a child broke the quiet, brought the families to gather in front of the house to greet the tired mother (her first), the father (his son), and the child the child the child (Nagi, they named him, and at the sight of him her heart rose like the sun, out of the darkness that was her sorrow).

A smile on her face (lips curled up with fierce joy at the thought of Orochi’s coming death, showing fangs white and deadly, a snarl rising in her throat as she drew back into the shadows) and the goal she had was close, so close (to beings such as he and she, the passing of the thirteen moons of the mortal year was like the passing of one day—sunrise to sunrise—to the people she watched over and that he stole the lives from).

--

That year she traveled north, to pay her respects to those who had died on the fallen ark, the followers who she had let down (she had failed) in the land of snow and ice, frozen (with grief and pain) in the depths of the lake. One day the ice would melt (she had taken her brush to melt it, to confront the evil that held it, and stopped herself. Orochi must fall before she could face this greater evil) and the Ark would rise again, to return to Celestial Realm.

(After the dark of night comes the dawn. Always.)

She raised the brush to the sky and in a single stroke brought a flood of colors (a rainbow bridge across the sky).

Who was that? Who did that?

The only one I see is a wolf.

…Maybe she knows. I’ll ask her.

A feather touch against her mind, and she pushed it away (a gentle rebuff: do not enter without permission), searching for the source of the voices. There, on the altar, stood two people no higher than her paw.

W-what?

Ishaku, what’s wrong?

…Who are you?

I am the rising sun (the promise of light, first glimmer on the horizon). I am the noon sun (the full glory, radiance in the blue sky). I am the setting sun (the dying glow, lifeblood on the horizon). I am that which illuminates the heavens.

Amaterasu.

Ignoring the sputtering of the one she had answered, she left, a trail of paw-prints in the snow behind her (she could bring spring to this frozen land, but she would need all that she had to fight Orochi—the people were losing faith and she had to hoard her power, to preserve it).

It was in Sei-an that he caught up (Hey! You! Wolf-face!) and with a sigh, she took to the water (lily pad stepping stones) to escape him. She could have simply stepped onto the water—danced across its surface like sunbeams—but so few could see her brush in action. Would he see it? Could he follow?

Brush strokes fell on the water, shimmered and took form—and his voice came from behind her, closer. She smiled and leapt onto a dock to wait for him.

You—furry-faced menace! I followed you all the way from Kamui!

He paused, breathing hard at the edge of the dock, and she waited.

You’re really Amaterasu? You really hold the Brush Techniques?

In reply, she drew the sun close in the sky (the technique she knew better than all the others—she is sunrise and noon sky and setting sun, and nothing could take that away from her) and grinned as he looked between her and the brightly shining sun.

I’ve decided! he announced, and leapt onto her head—she shook him off, but he just jumped back on. I’m going to follow you until I’ve learned every single one of your techniques. There’s no way to talk me out of it, so don’t even try!

She sighed, and didn’t try.

--

What—why can’t they see what you really are? Ammy, why do you let them… Why?

Because I must wait.

Wait for what?

He’s only a child.

Who?

The one who can defeat Orochi—until he is grown, until a hundred years have passed since I fought Orochi and failed—I must wait for him to be ready.

But—you’re Amaterasu! You’re the god of the sun!

And the sun of this body’s life is setting. The people lose faith in the gods.

You can make them believe again! I know you can!

Faith is not something that can be forced, Ishaku.

--

He grew, and she watched him once a year, from full moon to full moon, and the village lived—survived—but it did not thrive. It was a village of exiles, of outcasts—those that society deemed unworthy and discarded. It was a village of lost travelers, herded by monsters to keep their master in meat, and guarded jealously.

All she could do for them was to make the flowers bloom, to make the sun shine brighter—to bring the rain and help their crops grow. Until Nagi was ready—she was bound (shackled) from Orochi’s cave.

Six years. He had grown from a toddling infant into a boy with wide eyes and a fear of the dark (of white fur in torchlight).

Nine years. The boy went dry eyed during the day and at night wept for his mother, for the unborn sibling who had died with her.

Ten years. He boasted, bragged that since he had no parents, he could do whatever he wanted when he wanted, and spoke of braving the Plains, of going to Hana Valley to pick a night-blooming flower (he left the house at the edge of the village that night to find one, shaking—if he didn’t follow through the others would laugh and laugh—and resting on the ground in front of his home was the very flower he had claimed he would get).

Seventeen years. The boy grew into a young man, still full of the plans he would never follow through with—the boys he used to brag to are gone, struck out to find their luck and only finding their grave. He thinks himself smarter for not trying to escape this village. It is the white wolf that haunts the village that draws him from its bounds, and he finds a sword—he thinks that it is holy and that it is the reason that Shiranui had disappeared—that it had driven Orochi’s familiar away.

Eighteen years. He is betrothed, now, to the newborn daughter of a couple that he found chasing after Shiranui—the wolf had disappeared, and instead of following his self-proclaimed enemy he brought them back to the dubious safety of Kamiki.

Twenty four years. He found the girl weeping behind his house, and he promised that he would protect her, that she wouldn’t have to go to death as her mother had, at the jaws and the fangs of Orochi, and she clung to him.

Thirty six years. He offers to release her—after all, it was her parents who had arranged the betrothal, and they were both gone now, but she shook her head—she had grown up knowing that she would be his wife, and that was all she had left to cling to now.

It was time.

He was ready.

--

But on the day of the full moon—the one who had told her of Nagi’s birth arrived.

Amaterasu—you must go through the gate.

What’re you talking about, you half-baked prophet?! It’s been a hundred years! Nagi’s ready to fight! She can beat Orochi now!

I don’t know how—but everything will be taken care of. You are needed, Amaterasu Omikami. You must go to Wawku and help the ones that fight there.

Are you kidding? She’s not going to—Ammy?

--

She didn’t know when she is, but she knew exactly where she is. Kamui—where her followers rest in the hold of an icy lake, and where one day she would fight against the evil that had taken their lives.

In this time, there was as much faith as in her own—but the day of darkness was coming. She was weakened (weaker than she should be—she did not belong in this time).

Dusk was coming.

Ishaku, guard the entrance, she told him, and he refused immediately. There are people out there, and none that look fit to fight. What if something attacks them?

Do you think that I—can protect them?

I have faith in you.

…I won’t let you down.

In the temple, she followed the scent of the ones who had entered before her—followed the scent she knew better than any other when they split paths.

She wasn’t surprised to see herself facing one of the twin Demons.

--

Ammy—Ammy, you can’t die!

I am the sun, Ishaku, you know that.

But—

You saw her, did you not? She is the rising sun, the growing light. I am the setting sun.

Ammy—

She took as deep of a breath as she could, racing back to the gate that had brought her here. In her path, the snow melted, flowers blossomed—she gave what little life she could to the frozen land as she went. Her power was not needed, any longer—for she had succeeded. The sword would react only to a generous spirit—and only if Orochi had been defeated.

The her-that-would-be would be the one facing the darkness that held the world, and she would go—willingly—into death.

Sunset must give way to the night.

Night must give way to the dawn.

Ishaku… I have a task for you.

I’ll do anything.

Go back to your village. You know the brush techniques—teach your people, all of them, the way of the brush. They must know. They must be ready to help her.

What can we do?

Give the people a reason to believe.

--

Orochi lay dead, and the Moon Cave crumbled—she saw the rock falling toward the man who had been the boy who feared her and didn’t even think twice—she stood between him and it, protected him for the last time (thirty six years she had watched over him, watched him grow, and it was only now that he looked upon her without hatred or fear). He carried her back to the village and didn’t see the white wolf that raced ahead of them, a small girl on her back.

She lay, panting, at the foot of the Guardian Sapling, watching the villagers watch her, and closed her eyes.

…Ishaku.

Ammy—

Go.

No!

She smiled as best she could—I will see you again, my friend. Count on it.

Ammy… I’ll hold you to that promise!

--

Amaterasu…

Waka… Give this to the spirit of this tree.

Your reflector?

If I cannot return on my own, I will need someone to bring me back. It’s tied to my life.

You… know of her already?

I—she—will surpass the power I held in this life. Guide her, Waka.

…I will wait for your return, Amaterasu.

--

The sun grew distant—the summers shorter, the winters longer—the land forgot its gods. The people forgot how to see (how to believe). Truth became tale became myth.

A grandfather pushed his grandson to succeed (pushed too hard, too far—pushed him into bitterness, into running away).

Eight by eight years passed and a boy was born in the house at the edge of the village, the night before the full moon (the festival moon). There was no white shadow to watch over him as he grew (listening to tales, to myths, stories of an ancestor he didn’t believe).

Ten by ten years passed, and the boy grew into a man who scorned the stories as mere imagination and entered the Moon Cave (to prove them false, to not believe).

As the clouds of darkness spread, a single light broke through.

Daybreak. Sunrise.

(Here comes the sun.)