JustAddWater/AThousandLies

The tiny, aged-seeming woman pushed open the door and limped out into the winter night, feeling every trace of the cold seep into her bones. Aoi-for that was the name she had been given, and she had long ago forgotten her real name, the name she had been born with- was actually younger, far younger, then she looked, but a lifetime in servitude to House Cynis and experiencing the range of the depravity that the scions of that House were known for had aged her prematurely, taken her beauty and youth and left her old before her time. But still, her master had kept her, for he still had a use for her.

"Kiyoshi, child?" she called soothingly, standing in the doorway. She knew that he was sitting outdoors: for some reason, he seemed to enjoy sitting outside at night, it was something that at least calmed him down, and she knew that he wouldn't try to run: after all, he, like all the others, knew the consequences for even trying.

She peered more closely into the darkness, and saw a slender figure sitting on the marble stairs, staring up at the stars. It always unnerved her, to see him watching them so closely, so calmly, almost as if the rest of the world matter. He'd done it when he was a child, spent hours and hours staring up at the night sky when he wasn't wanted (which was rare), and still took every chance he could.

"Kiyoshi," she repeated, louder this time, and startled, the boy turned his head towards her.

"A-Aoi?" he stammered softly, after a moment, soft voice nervous and barely audible, startlingly blue eyes flickering about, not looking at her. He knew, of course, why she was looking for him, bearing a summons, of course, delicate hands trembling. Ten years and he was still afraid, still somehow unused to it, and he could see the brief, very brief, flicker of pity in her aged, lined features, that had been beautiful once.

"The master wants you." Aoi said. After a long pause, she saw him swallow nervously, before standing and beginning to hurry past her, back inside. "And...he has friends."

Kiyoshi paused at the doorway, looking pained and frightened and so very, very young, and for a moment, it almost seemed that the star of the Maiden of Endings brightened briefly, before fading back to join her sisters, and the young man disappeared into the doorway in a flutter of translucent silks and long, long pale blue hair.

Aoi stood out there, for a moment longer, staring up at the night sky, and shaking her head. How that child had managed to go so long and never become numb...never simply *accept* it, still hurting...it was almost a tragedy, really. His life would be so much easier if he just became numb to it all, just let himself stop feeling. It was the only way she had survived so long without going absolutely mad.

"Being beautiful is the worst thing to be in this world." Aoi said to herself, folding her arms over her chest and staring up at the sky, thinking of how she used to look, of Kiyoshi's delicate, transcendent beauty...of all the beauty that House Cynis used and destroyed, of all the beautiful things and people who were broken in this world.

Because, the one lesson she had learned, in her years of living, was that beauty was pain, beauty made you an object to be possessed and used, and that it was not worth it to be beautiful. That it made life cheap, when all you were worth was your beauty, and that you were nothing anymore, worse then the nothing you had been, when it was gone.

Aoi turned and went inside.

Perhaps Kiyoshi would understand someday. That there was never an ending: misery simply went on and on. That maybe, one day, he would stop staring at the stars, and maybe just learn to endure, before he broke.

Perhaps.

Violet eyes went briefly out of focus as their owner bent, studying the images that the shimmering, woven threads presented to him, the sounds of the spiders chittering mindlessly as they wove.

"Well?" the soft, harshly musical voice of the blue-eyed woman behind him broke the silence.

"It's almost time." the man said, brushing his brown hair out of his eyes, and turning to his companion, who stood there robed in blue, arms folded across her chest.

"How long?" she asked.

"Didn't you look at the Loom yourself?" he asked dryly, taking some things out of a pouch as the two began to walk away, and beginning to mix some medicine to help with his massive headache. Looking into the Loom always gave him a massive headache, which was why he preferred not looking, but this was something to be determined.

"Of course not." she snorted. "The spiders hate me, and my head practically explodes every time I look into the Loom."

"You need to stop skipping out on Loom-watching duty." her friend said sarcastically, taking the potion he had just mixed, and drinking it down, the pain-crease between his brows easing slightly. "But to answer your question, which you could have seen the answer to yourself-"

The woman rolled her eyes, but he continued speaking, "There isn't much time. A day or two, at the very most."

She nodded. "I think I'd better get him, then. You don't have such a good way with bringing the young ones back...remember Sariel? You tried to bring her in, and she bolted the second your back was turned because you scared her half to death. I have a better way with younglings, and you know it."

"Fine, you do it. We can't have this boy go running off, especially not to *them*." he said. "The Gold Faction would love it if the one bearing Shizuka's shard went running off to them, and we can't let that happen."

She nodded. "But *you* be careful with him when you're teaching him. This will work, if you're careful. If we're careful. Very difficult, yes, but if we work carefully, we can perhaps get him to see our point of view. "

The two continued speaking, quietly, as they exited the building and did not notice the shadow lingering in the corner. The green-eyed man smiled, slowly.

"Plan if you may, but plans have a habit of going awry."

And nearby, a spider chittered.

It was another night like usual, as the slender young man walked, slowly, gracefully, and hesitantly, up the stairs, translucent white silk and long, long pale blue hair trailing behind him. He knew this route well...he had walked it many times, and he wished, vainly, that he wasn't in the position to know, that he would never have had to know, the way that he was going.

He turned a corner, and walked down the hall, footsteps slow. But no matter how he tried to stretch out the time, to make it slower (but if he was too slow, it would be worse on him), it didn't matter, he would always get there in the end, have to face the inevitable (for there was no such thing as coincidence in this world, only the inevitable).

As his hand settled on the handle of the door, his gaze was briefly caught by the starlight that shone through the nearby window, and he stared for a moment at the same stars he had been staring at the other night, especially the one that shone violet in the night sky. Something about it called to him, though he didn't know why.

Finally, he broke the fascination, broke the spell of the moment, and reluctantly pushed open the door, stepping inside. He swallowed, nervously, staring at the floor, not even looking (demure and submissive, always, as he was taught to be) at the man who lounged, lazily, on his palatial bed. Alone this time, the boy noted from the corner of his eyes, but that was only marginally better.

Obediently, he drifted forward, and submissively knelt by the bed, blue eyes fixed on the floor, trying to ignore what was and what would happen, all the whle staring at the patterns of starlight painting themselves on the floor, glimmering silver-violet.

Ivory Winter Dreaming, Chosen of the Maiden of Serenity, slid silently and unseen through shadows, walking outside the realm of Fate. Where she was going now, she could not be seen until the proper time, and this, of course, carried with it a great deal of risk.

Gracefully, she leapt up, adjusting her fate briefly so that her body forgot the earth, catching onto the ledge with her fingers and pulling herself up, balancing catlike and invisible, sidling along the narrow ledge, back to the wall. Momentarily, she stepped back into fate, still carefully to remain hidden with a careful application of Essence.

She spit out a globule of green essence, which formed itself into a cute little miniature spider, which chittered at her. She chittered her question back, and it scrambled away on its invisible web, to find out what she had asked of it. She waited patiently for it to return, which it did momentarily, chittering its answer to her, and disappearing.

"That way." Ivory murmured to herself, stepping outside Fate once more and stepping along the ledge, until she stopped beneath the window of the room the spider had indicated. She looked inside, briefly, and saw what was happening inside the room, gritting her teeth: she wanted to step in, but she knew that she could not, not until the boy Exalted. He would have to find his own way to Exaltation, and stepping in now had too much of a risk. Especially with the Cynis in the room.

For his sake, she hoped that he Exalted soon.

A long time ago, Kiyoshi had learned to be silent, no matter what his master or his friends did to him. About the only things they didn't do were anything that would leave scars or marks: apparently his skin was too perfect to be marred, but all that basically did was make them find creative ways to hurt him without causing marks or scarring. He had screamed once, a long time ago (he had been a child then, tiny and small and delicate) and he might as well have not made any noise at all for all the help it had given him: which was to say, none.

His master loved to see him cry, though. But Kiyoshi had learned to endure the pain, learned to ignore it as best as he could, even while his master or one of his friends (or even more then one at a time) took him, made him bleed, tried to make him cry (because he was even more beautiful when he cried, or so they said).

The boy stared, fascinated, at the silver-violet pattern the starlight traced on the floor, his head tilted sideways to watch it, attention caught, even as his master took his pleasure with him, over and over again, he could dimly feel the blood and semen trickling down his thighs, dimly feel the pain-his master was trying extra hard tonight to make him cry, and if the starlight wasn't so strangely fascinating, he knew in the back of his head that he would have been. He barely noticed when even the Cynis's stamina was finally exhausted, though he did feel the twinge of pain as the Dragon-Blooded pulled out of him, far less then gently.

Dimly, he noticed as his master lay back again, and knew that he was expected to pleasure him (with tongue and lips and hands) until he was aroused, again, and obediently, as he had long ago learned to do, the boy pushed himself up from where he had been lying on the bed, feeling his abused body protest with the movement-

Starlight, from the nearby window, spilled in, and across the bed, painting the fabric silver-violet. And, suddenly, Kiyoshi felt dizzy, his head aching, as his mind seemed to expand, for a moment, and he could see more in an instant then he ever could before, possibilities, outcomes, futures, things he simply hadn't been able to see before-

And for an instant, he could see forever.